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Comprehensive Analysis of the CLARITY Act

Family members who frequently read the Little Wealth God Daily should often come across a term—"The CLARITY Act." So, what exactly is this, and what are its specific contents and impacts? Today, let's discuss it.

Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives, with overwhelming bipartisan support (294 votes in favor, 134 against, including 78 Democrats), advanced an important new "market structure" bill. This bill is the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633), which aims to establish a clear regulatory framework for the digital asset market. The bill has now entered the Senate for review.

👉What are the main contents of the bill?

1. Clarification of Digital Asset Classification System

The bill categorizes digital assets into network tokens, auxiliary assets, and other types, and clarifies the regulatory jurisdiction for each:

Network Tokens: Essentially closely related to distributed ledger systems, their value mainly derives from or is expected to derive from the actual use of the system. When certain conditions are met, network tokens will be classified as "non-securities" and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Auxiliary Assets: Also within the category of network tokens, but their value largely depends on the ongoing operations of the issuer or related parties. These assets may involve securities issuance, such as investment contracts, and thus are subject to partial regulation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

This classification clearly delineates the regulatory responsibilities between the SEC and CFTC, ending the previous ambiguity over their respective jurisdictions in the digital asset space.

2. Regulation of Digital Asset Issuance and Trading

Digital Asset Issuance: For activities involving securities-like digital assets, the bill sets strict disclosure requirements. Issuers must regularly submit reports to the SEC covering company fundamentals, business operations, technical details, risk factors, and more, ensuring investors are well-informed.

Secondary Market Trading: Centralized digital asset trading platforms, brokers, and others must register with the CFTC and comply with standards similar to traditional financial institutions, including client fund segregation, anti-money laundering (AML), risk management, etc. This aims to improve market infrastructure transparency and prevent fraud and abuse.

3. Strengthening Consumer and Investor Protections

Protecting consumer and investor rights is a key goal of the CLARITY Act. The bill provides specific protections and disclosure requirements for stablecoin holders, digital asset ATM users, and others. Additionally, it imposes strict restrictions on illegal activities such as insider trading, limiting early stakeholders from exploiting informational advantages to harm ordinary users.

4. Promoting Responsible Financial Innovation

While enhancing regulation, the bill also considers the innovative needs of the digital asset industry. It explicitly permits regulated banks, credit unions, and other traditional financial institutions to participate legally in various digital asset activities, supporting the integration of traditional finance and digital assets. Moreover, the bill establishes a "regulatory sandbox" for small innovative firms, allowing experimentation within a controlled environment—balancing innovation vitality with risk prevention.

5. Regulation of Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

The bill recognizes the existence of DeFi but defines it narrowly. Protocols under "joint control" or those that retain the ability to modify rules or restrict trading will be required to undertake obligations similar to those of banks.

6. Combating Illegal Financial Activities

To prevent digital assets from being used for money laundering, terrorism financing, and other illegal activities, the CLARITY Act fully incorporates digital asset businesses into anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) frameworks, including the Bank Secrecy Act. The bill requires digital asset companies to establish comprehensive customer identification, transaction record-keeping, and suspicious activity reporting systems, strengthen cooperation with law enforcement, and set up dedicated mechanisms for fraud prevention and enforcement, cracking down on illegal financial activities involving digital assets.

👉Controversial Stablecoin Provisions—Wall Street’s Bank Defense Battle?

Recently, the most hyped aspect of the CLARITY Act has been the provisions related to stablecoin yields. In the latest "compromise" version in the Senate, stablecoins are purely regarded as payment tools, prohibiting stablecoin issuers from paying interest or offering activity-based rewards to holders.

It’s obvious that this is a move to protect Wall Street banks’ deposit customers by suppressing competing stablecoins. Imagine if an ordinary person could hold a dollar-pegged digital asset and earn an automatic annual yield of 5% or higher just by holding it on-chain—why would they keep their money in a JPMorgan or Bank of America account earning little to no interest?

In response, the largest publicly listed crypto company in the U.S., Cbase, publicly withdrew support for the bill. CEO Brian Armstrong stated that this conflicts with the fundamental nature of money and would weaken the competitiveness of stablecoins, making the industry’s development worse than maintaining the status quo.

Additionally, organizations like the DeFi Education Fund have expressed concerns about the DeFi regulatory clauses in the bill, arguing that the rigid definitions could impose extra uncertainty on developers and users, hindering innovation in DeFi technology.

👉Which government agency will be responsible for regulation moving forward?

The CLARITY Act will provide a clear, structured pathway for the transition of regulatory authority from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for digital assets.

👉When is the final passage expected?

After passing the House of Representatives, the bill will be sent to the Senate. The Senate Banking Committee and Agriculture Committee may review and amend the bill through their respective processes before submitting it to the full Senate for a vote. If both chambers approve their versions, they will need to reconcile any differences—either through informal negotiations or a formal conference committee—before each chamber votes on the final compromise. The main leaders of the House and Senate have set a goal to send the market structure bill to the President for signature by the end of September.

👉How does the CLARITY Act relate to the recently passed GENIUS Act?

The newly enacted GENIUS Act is a key step toward modernizing the financial system. The House overwhelmingly passed this significant legislation (308 votes in favor, 122 against, including 102 Democrats). However, this new legislation on stablecoins greatly increases the need for broader market structure legislation like the CLARITY Act.

Why? Because the GENIUS Act will accelerate stablecoin adoption, driving more financial activities onto blockchain and increasing reliance on blockchain for widespread payments and commercial transactions. This trend is already happening, as ubiquitous payment processors, traditional financial institutions, and mature payment networks increasingly adopt stablecoins.

But current stablecoin legislation does not regulate the underlying blockchains that these assets depend on, nor does it require these "channels" to be secure, decentralized, or transparently governed. This gap introduces systemic risks to consumers and the broader economy.

Once the GENIUS Act becomes law, the demand for the CLARITY Act will become even more urgent.

The CLARITY Act provides the necessary standards and oversight to ensure that the infrastructure supporting stablecoins—such as underlying blockchains, protocols, and other tools—meets safety, transparency, and control standards. Its objective, measurable criteria for defining mature blockchain systems also help entrepreneurs understand how to meet these standards.

Without these complementary protections, stablecoin adoption could accelerate reliance on unregulated, opaque, or even hostile infrastructure. The CLARITY Act aims to ensure stablecoins operate on secure networks, further protect consumers, reduce financial risks, and reinforce the dollar’s dominant position and leadership in the next-generation financial system.

👉Impact on the Cryptocurrency Industry

1. Impact on the Stablecoin Market: The bill’s strict regulation of stablecoins will likely shift market share toward compliant issuers. For example, Circle’s USDC, as a compliant stablecoin, is expected to gain a more advantageous position in the market. Conversely, less compliant issuers like Tether may face delisting from major U.S. exchanges, significantly shrinking their market share.

2. Challenges for Decentralized Protocols: The regulatory requirements for DeFi will impose greater compliance pressures on fully decentralized protocols. Since the bill requires stablecoins to have a clear "legal entity" responsible for regulation and to provide 1:1 backing with real assets, algorithmic stablecoins and protocols that are entirely decentralized may struggle to meet these demands, potentially becoming marginalized and unable to access mainstream financial settlement systems.

3. Overall Industry Benefits: The introduction of the CLARITY Act marks an important step forward in U.S. digital asset regulation. Its significance lies not only in providing a clear regulatory framework but also in balancing innovation with risk, consumer protection with industry development. The bill ends long-standing regulatory chaos in the U.S. digital asset sector, offering companies stable development expectations. The U.S. digital asset industry will gradually move toward standardization and maturity, providing valuable experience for global digital asset regulation.