Overview
- President Donald Trump urged Congress to approve a “fair version” of the CLARITY Act during a White House meeting with crypto and finance executives on Wednesday, Aug. 19, saying the law would keep firms in the United States and lock in the administration’s pro‑crypto policies.
- The SEC formally unveiled its Regulation Crypto Assets proposal in mid‑August, creating two fundraising tracks that let issuers raise either up to $5 million over four years or up to $75 million in 12 months and offering a conditional safe harbor and disclosure rules with a 60‑day public comment period.
- Senate negotiations remain deadlocked over ethics provisions linked to disclosed Trump family crypto earnings, the legal treatment of decentralized finance and rules on stablecoin rewards, and the bill must clear a 60‑vote cloture test in a tight mid‑September window to advance.
- Industry leaders from Coinbase, Gemini, Ripple, Robinhood and others publicly backed the White House push and markets responded — Bitcoin climbed above $70,000 and several crypto‑linked stocks posted sharp gains after the event.
- Regulators and the White House say agency rulemaking can ease near‑term frictions but cannot legally redraw the SEC‑CFTC jurisdictional line, so congressional action will determine whether fundraising, custody and market‑structure changes become durable law.