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Clarity Is Coming Either Way: Inside the CLARITY Act, the Bill That Would Finally Split Crypto Between the SEC and the CFTC
The CLARITY Act is the furthest advanced attempt to settle whether a token answers to the SEC or the CFTC, and a fresh push from the White House and industry leaders has thrust it back into the spotlight.
A long running fight over who should police cryptocurrency in the United States has returned to the center of the debate, as a fresh push from the White House and industry leaders has thrust a market structure bill known as the CLARITY Act back into the spotlight.
The legislation represents the furthest advanced attempt to settle the defining question of American crypto, namely whether a given token answers to the Securities and Exchange Commission or to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
What the bill would do
At its core, the bill would route decentralized digital commodities to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, while keeping fundraising and investment contracts under the Securities and Exchange Commission, drawing a line that has been blurry for years.
The Senate version expands the commodity regulator framework to cover digital commodity pool operators, digital commodity trading advisors and their associated persons, extending familiar oversight structures into the world of tokens.
The same version includes a compromise on stablecoins, prohibiting interest or yield on idle balances while permitting activity based rewards, along with a framework for decentralized trading protocols and stronger measures against illicit finance.
A renewed push
On July 22, 2026, Senate Republicans released their latest version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, marking another step in a long effort by Congress to build a comprehensive federal framework for digital assets.
The bill gained new momentum when the President pushed Congress to pass it, a call that helped lift crypto prices, and when the chief executive of Coinbase publicly endorsed the bipartisan measure in a television interview.
That executive argued the legislation would protect consumers and help prevent another collapse of the kind that shook the industry when a major exchange failed, framing clear rules as a safeguard rather than a burden.
Two roads to clarity
He also offered a striking prediction, writing that clarity is coming either way, and pointing to two possible routes, one being a Senate vote he placed in mid September, the other being a new set of rules from the two market regulators shortly after.
Even so, several fights remain unresolved, including who should enforce the ethics rules, whether the stablecoin rewards will survive the final text, and how far the protections for software developers should ultimately extend.
For an industry that has long complained about regulation by enforcement, the appeal is obvious, since a clear division of authority would replace years of uncertainty with defined rules, whichever of the two paths finally delivers it.
