Overview
- Senator Cynthia Lummis said the CLARITY Act is a firm commitment to clear rules for digital assets as the bill waits on the Senate calendar for full consideration.
- The bill creates three legal categories—digital commodities, investment contract assets, and permitted payment stablecoins—and assigns primary oversight to the CFTC, the SEC, and a tailored stablecoin regime respectively.
- A central 'blockchain maturity' on‑ramp would let tokens that start as SEC‑regulated investment contracts graduate to CFTC commodity status if networks meet defined decentralization and utility tests.
- The text mandates consumer protections such as segregation of customer funds, custody rules, conflict disclosures, and anti‑money‑laundering and recordkeeping requirements to prevent failures like the FTX collapse.
- Key obstacles to final passage include unresolved ethics and conflict provisions, contested stablecoin and DeFi rules, the need to reconcile competing committee texts, and securing roughly 60 votes to move the bill to a final Senate vote.