Clarity Act Stalls, Leaving U.S. Crypto Regulation Back in the Hands of the SEC and CFTC
With the Clarity Act dead in Congress, digital asset oversight reverts to the SEC and CFTC, prolonging regulatory uncertainty for crypto issuers and trading platforms.
Clarity Act Fails to Pass Congress
The U.S. crypto market structure bill, the Clarity Act, failed to win congressional approval, returning the primary authority over digital asset regulation to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). According to Decrypt, the bill was intended to draw clear boundaries between securities and commodities for crypto assets and to define the respective regulatory jurisdictions of the two agencies.
SEC and CFTC to Continue Case-by-Case Approach
With the bill's defeat, the SEC and CFTC will continue to define the legal status of tokens through enforcement actions and case-by-case guidance under the existing legal framework. This means crypto projects still lack a statutory basis for compliance, and issuers and trading platforms must continue to grapple with the uncertainty caused by overlapping jurisdictions between the two agencies.
Compliance Strategies Remain Reactive
For stablecoin issuers, trading platforms, and DeFi protocols, near-term compliance strategies will continue to revolve around engagement with the two agencies and existing case law, rather than waiting for a unified legislative framework to take shape.
Source: https://decrypt.co/378688/how-clarity-act-defeat-sec-cftc-wheel-crypto
Provenance & status
- Byline
- OceanAlt Editorial
- First published
- 2026-09-20
- Last updated
- 2026-09-20
- Content type
- Newsflash
- Source material
- View original ↗
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