The time is now: the Senate must act on crypto market structure legislation
The United States needs to finally establish a clear framework that the market needs.
The GENIUS Act addressed payment stablecoins. The CLARITY Act sets the rules for everything else: registration and oversight of trading venues and intermediaries, jurisdictional lines between the SEC and CFTC, disclosure and compliance across the token lifecycle, and the protection of non-custodial technologies under U.S. law.
These are the foundational rules that determine whether the next generation of financial infrastructure gets built here in America – or elsewhere. Within the last 10 years, the number of developers in the U.S. dropped by 51%. Nearly 90% of global CEX volume is offshore. America needs foundational rules because without them, the same dynamic that preceded GENIUS would apply to the rest of the market. Trading activity, protocol development and institutional engagement in digital asset markets will continue to flow toward jurisdictions that have already provided the regulatory clarity Congress has yet to deliver. Other jurisdictions, including the EU, Singapore, and the UAE, have already enacted market structure regimes and are providing the regulatory clarity yet to be delivered.
The Senate Banking Committee, alongside offices on both sides of the aisle, has spent the better part of two years building toward this moment. Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks deserve credit for resolving the stablecoin yield question in a bipartisan manner, the single most contested provision in months of negotiations. The compromise substantially expands the scope of the prohibition framework in GENIUS across digital asset market participants. The digital assets industry made significant concessions. The resulting approach is restrictive in several respects – ultimately, the broader and most critical objective remains advancing comprehensive market structure legislation, and this agreement moves that process forward.
