With CLARITY stalled, plan compliance against SEC and CFTC staff, not statute

The SEC and CFTC, both led by Trump appointees, are preparing to write their own cryptocurrency rules while the CLARITY Act sits stuck in the Senate ^[1]. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has filed a cloture motion setting a September 15 procedural vote that needs 60 votes, and a failure there could effectively end the bill ^[2] - which means the operative American crypto rulebook for the next year is likely to be agency interpretation rather than legislation.

The calendar is the whole story. The Senate left for a five-week recess without voting on CLARITY, the industry's top legislative priority ^[3], and lawmakers have roughly 14 working days after they return before an October election recess ^[4]. That is under three sitting weeks to move a bill that would define which tokens are securities, which are commodities, and which regulator has jurisdiction ^[5]. Reuters reported on August 18 that regulators are moving in to set policy of their own in the gap ^[6].

What that looks like in practice: the SEC is expected within weeks to propose a rule exempting some token offerings from securities requirements ^[7], and the CFTC is scheduled to put crypto on the agenda at an industry gathering ^[8]. The agency work has already had one false start. On August 14 the SEC canceled a meeting at which it was to vote on proposing "Regulation Crypto," its first formal crypto-specific rulemaking ^[9]. That proposal would have created three routes for offering tokens, including one letting startups raise about $5 million without full registration and another allowing up to $75 million ^[10] - the larger path is fifteen times the smaller one ^[11]. Officials pulled the vote out of concern that the SEC acting alone would hurt CLARITY's chances in Congress ^[12]. A separate "innovation exemption," which would have let firms issue and trade digital versions of stocks and bonds outside full registration, was also delayed ^[13], after the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association argued changes that large belong in proper rulemaking rather than exemptions ^[14].

The political theater is on schedule. The White House was expected to host executives from crypto, prediction markets, and traditional finance on Wednesday ^[15]; Nate Geraci of Nova Dius Wealth wrote on X that expected attendees included SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, Acting CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, and executives from Coinbase, Ripple, Polymarket, Gemini, Nasdaq, the NYSE, CME Group, and DTCC ^[16]. That was one day before the CFTC's first Innovation Advisory Committee, a panel drawn from crypto, gambling, finance, and prediction market firms ^[17].

The reason firms are still paying for a statute after spending hundreds of millions on lobbying ^[18] is durability. Agency rules can be challenged in court and a future administration can scrap them ^[19]; the current one already reversed dozens of Biden-era SEC and consumer-protection policies ^[20], and former SEC Chair Gary Gensler sued dozens of crypto firms ^[21]. Josh Riezman, chief legal and strategy officer at GSR, told Reuters that new SEC and CFTC policies help in the short term but "the next administration, depending on how that shakes out, we can be looking very much like a potentially Gensler 2.0 type scenario" ^[22].

The blockers have not moved. Democrats want tougher anti-money-laundering safeguards and tighter ethics rules ^[23]; a July Republican update barring the president and federal officials from issuing or sponsoring crypto, with penalties reaching $250,000 a day, still leaves the parties split over whether the Justice Department or state attorneys general enforces it ^[24]. CME Group sued the CFTC in June over its approval of perpetual crypto futures ^[25].