#Gate广场五月交易分享 #CLARITY法案下周审议 After the Genius Act, what should the Clarity Act focus on?

Moving from the margins to the center, ultimately under the spotlight.
Crypto Week’s triple play, the Genius Act’s exclusive regulation of stablecoins has become law, while the anti-CBDC bill and the Clarity Act are still in the legislative process.

Unlike the Genius Act, the CLARITY bill targets the fundamental definitions and authority allocations in crypto, especially regarding public blockchains, DeFi, token issuance, as well as the powers and responsibilities of the SEC and CFTC, and it is closely linked to the FIT21 bill of 2024.
Based on this, the U.S. has built a comprehensive regulatory framework derived from past practices; understanding history is key to clarifying the future.

Financial liberalization, the Wild West of the new frontier
Minting rights and inflation, the Fed defends the former in the name of controlling the latter, while Trump relinquished the latter in the name of amplifying the former.
The Genius Act ushered in an era of free stablecoins, with Powell’s insistence on independent minting rights divided and allocated to Silicon Valley’s new elites and Wall Street’s old money, but that’s not enough—Peter Thiel seeks absolute freedom for libertarians.
In 2008, the financial crisis made derivatives the target of criticism. Obama urgently needed experts to help regulate the $35 trillion futures market and the $400 trillion swap market.
Thus, Gary Gensler was nominated as CFTC Chair, and in 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was enacted, bringing derivatives markets under existing regulation.
Gary claimed, “We must tame the Wild West,” marking his first regulatory victory over the market.
History is cyclical: in 2021, Obama’s ally, then-President Biden, re-nominated Gary Gensler as SEC Chair, attempting to cycle into a new frontier—cryptocurrency.
Two focal points:
1. The SEC agrees that BTC/ETH are commodities, but considers other tokens and IXOs as illegal securities offerings, including SOL and Ripple;
2. Regarding high leverage on exchanges, Gary believes this is “inducing” users, leading to special regulatory actions against onshore and offshore platforms like Coinb and bm. However, a flaw emerged: Gary was ultimately defeated by the ETF product, which seemed outside the core regulatory focus. In 2021, the SEC approved Bitcoin futures ETFs, but remained tight-lipped on spot ETFs like Grayscale’s.
But whether it’s fortunate or unfortunate, after losing the Ripple IXO case in 2024, the SEC finally approved a Bitcoin spot ETF, allowing MicroStrategy to openly play the crypto-stock-bond cycle.
This time, cryptocurrencies represent a more wild side, conquering the SEC, CFTC, White House, Congress, the Federal Reserve, and Wall Street—an era of unguarded openness has arrived.
A footnote: SBF donated tens of millions to Biden’s campaign and successfully sent himself to jail in 2022, which may have been a significant reason for Gary’s strict stance on the crypto industry.

The Clarity Act, giving crypto a proper name from now on
Trump’s gratitude must be repaid; the crypto industry is now in the open.
In 2025, as a relic of two Democratic presidents, Trump, upon taking office, chose to fire Gary Gensler and appointed Paul Atkins, who had established good relations with him since 2016, as his successor, beginning a period of complete deregulation.
The Clarity Act was proposed against this backdrop, but it’s important to note that it is still in the legislative process. It has completed the House procedures and now awaits Senate review.
The Senate also has its own “Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act,” but under the Republican-led agenda, crypto-friendliness is inevitable.
The current Clarity Act targets frameworks for digital commodities, digital assets, and stablecoins, primarily limiting stablecoins to payment forms, with digital commodities managed by the CFTC and digital assets overseen by the SEC.
1. The CFTC’s victory: clarifies ETH and CFTC’s status, blurs the boundary between SEC and asset issuance. ETH is a commodity; truly decentralized public chain tokens are commodities, and their trading falls under CFTC jurisdiction.
IXOs, SAFTs, and other financing methods still fall under SEC regulation, but with a $75 million exemption, tokens issued and decentralized within four years are exempt from penalties.
2. Digital commodities are digital in form but commodities in content. As technology advances, the binary distinction between “physical goods” and “virtual assets” is being refined. Recognizing digital commodities means that as long as they have practical value for public chain, DeFi, or DAO protocol operation, they are no longer securities. But! NFTs must be assets, not commodities, because they are unique and only hold “speculative” or aesthetic value, not suitable as a universal medium of exchange like currency.
Furthermore, earning, rewards, and profit-sharing must be valuable for maintaining decentralized protocol operation; otherwise, they fall under SEC regulation.
This definition remains abstract: fundamentally, the Clarity Act distinguishes between token issuance and token operation:
• IXO issuance is a security; if token issuance meets certain conditions, it is not.
• Airdrop points are securities; if airdropped tokens meet conditions, they are not.
• Exchange distribution is not a security, but promised yields are securities.
The criteria for “meeting conditions” refer to the definition and basis of digital commodities, and promises to convert to decentralized protocols in the future without intermediaries.
However, participation in projects itself is a form of investment; if expecting returns, it’s an asset issuance.
How future definitions will evolve remains unclear, but many past cases provide reference points:
• ETH is a digital commodity, but financing projects via SAFT is a digital asset issuance, regulated by the SEC. If it later becomes fully decentralized, it becomes a digital commodity managed by the CFTC.
• Native staking of ETH is also a commodity, as it maintains the PoS feature of the blockchain. But whether third-party DeFi staking tokens qualify as commodities is uncertain—Lido is debatable, EigenLayer might lean more towards commodities, requiring clear regulatory rules.
• Ethereum is a blockchain, but many L1/L2 tokens issued via SAFT or IXO need four years to decentralize. Control of tokens or voting power not exceeding 20% is required; current foundations or DAOs may not be exempt.
The detailed framework of the Clarity Act sets up joint SEC and CFTC regulation, balancing the different characteristics of virtual securities and physical commodities—both must be addressed jointly.
In conclusion, the Clarity Act is a key part of U.S. crypto regulation, defining core issues like tokens and blockchains, clarifying the definition of digital commodities. The remaining focus is on assets like NFTs, stablecoins, and tokenized assets (RWA).
But DeFi operations still exist in a blurry zone. Although the Act has amended the Securities Law definitions, DeFi is too important—like securities law, the crypto market needs a dedicated DeFi Act, separate from stablecoins, public chains, and tokens.
This is not overreaching; amid the ongoing U.S. crypto regulatory framework development, the Tornado Cash case is still unfolding. The fate of co-founder Roman Storm may become a litmus test driven by judicial pressure to legislate.