SEC Says It Will Advance Crypto Regulation Rules If CLARITY Act Legislation Is Blocked
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officials stated that if Congress ultimately fails to pass the CLARITY Act, which delineates regulatory authority over crypto assets, the SEC is prepared to develop its own regulatory rules for crypto assets under existing securities law frameworks. This aims to provide a foundational compliance path for the market and address the long-standing debate over whether digital assets are considered securities.
The SEC is currently working with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to preliminarily categorize digital assets in guidance documents, emphasizing that in the absence of new legislation, the two agencies will not wait indefinitely but will continue to establish an operational framework for the crypto industry through rule-making and enforcement practices to ensure investor protection and market transparency.
In terms of market mechanisms, this means there are two potential paths for the regulation of U.S. crypto assets: one is that the CLARITY Act would unify the delineation of regulatory boundaries between the SEC and CFTC, clearly stating that certain mainstream tokens are not securities; the other is that if the bill stalls, the SEC would expand its regulatory scope under existing securities law, requiring projects and platforms to operate under higher uncertainty and stricter compliance requirements, leading to adjustments in the risk premium and compliance cost expectations for capital in the U.S. crypto market.
ABAB AI Insight
Historically, the SEC has leaned towards "regulating under the existing securities law framework first, then seeing how Congress changes it" in crypto asset regulation: during former Chairman Gensler's tenure, the SEC classified many tokens as securities and established jurisdiction through enforcement; after entering Trump's second term, the SEC and CFTC jointly issued new guidance categorizing digital assets into five categories, including digital commodities, stablecoins, and digital securities, and for the first time officially acknowledged that "most mainstream tokens do not constitute securities." However, it also clearly stated that in the event of delays in the CLARITY Act legislation, regulation would not come to a halt, and the SEC would provide an operational framework for the market through its own interpretations and rules.
In terms of capital pathways, the CLARITY Act represents a route that "locks in long-term structure through legislation": the bill would assign primary regulatory authority over the digital commodity spot market to the CFTC, leaving investment contract-type assets to the SEC, and grant both agencies clear anti-fraud and market oversight powers; if the bill passes, mainstream tokens like BTC and ETH would gain non-security status legally, and stablecoins would receive exemptions under compliance reserve conditions, allowing institutional capital to allocate crypto assets under clear divisions of labor without worrying about certain tokens being suddenly classified as securities in the future—this would transform the current "soft rules" reliant on institutional interpretations and enforcement cases into a "hard framework" that can be discounted, significantly reducing compliance uncertainty premiums.
However, if the CLARITY Act stalls or fails in the Senate, the SEC's current statement is essentially a form of "regulatory fallback": it has already issued a joint explanation with the CFTC, providing classifications for five types of assets and approximate regulatory boundaries, and clearly stating that this explanation can operate independently if the bill does not pass—meaning the SEC will not abandon rule-making for digital securities and certain non-security assets simply because Congress has not legislated, and will continue to issue interpretations, guidance, and regulations, embedding its version of "market structure" into regulatory practices; this allows the crypto market to still have an operational set of rules, albeit more easily adjustable by administrative power, even in the event of the bill's failure, and implies that the boundaries and treatment of certain asset categories may still change based on the interpretations of successive governments and committees.
In structural judgment, this game is essentially about "who controls the pricing power and rule-making authority of the crypto market": if the CLARITY Act passes, the core of the rules shifts from individual regulators' interpretations to a framework set by Congress, with the SEC and CFTC working within the boundaries of the bill, allowing market participants to plan products and compliance pathways based on legal texts; if the bill fails, the SEC's current path is to fill the gaps with interpretations and rules, temporarily suppressing long-term structural issues through administrative tools—viewed from a capital perspective, the former is more conducive to building a "predictable, discountable" long-term compliance premium, while the latter means that the U.S. crypto market will remain in a more variable environment dominated by administrative interpretations for the next few years, requiring projects and institutions to leave space for "rules to be rewritten without legislative anchors" when designing asset structures and business pathways.