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The U.S. CLARITY Act, the most advanced crypto market\u2011structure bill to reach Congress, is moving toward a Senate Banking Committee markup in the second half of April, with lawmakers targeting a potential floor vote as early as May. Also known as H.R. 3633, the bill passed the House 294\u2011134 in July 2025 and cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee in January 2026, putting it closer to becoming law than any previous attempt to define a national framework for digital assets.<\/p>\n
At its core, the CLARITY Act draws a statutory line between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, assigning \u201cdigital commodities\u201d to the CFTC and leaving \u201cdigital securities\u201d under SEC oversight. Phemex summarized the split by noting that the CFTC\u2019s remit will focus on \u201cprinciples\u2011based, market integrity\u201d in spot markets, while the SEC retains a \u201cdisclosure\u2011based, investor protection\u201d mandate for tokenized securities.<\/p>\n
In a January explainer, Indonesian exchange Pintu described the CLARITY Act as an effort to replace \u201crule\u2011making through enforcement\u201d with clear, ex ante rules for everything from Bitcoin to DeFi projects and stablecoins, arguing that legal certainty should make it easier for institutional investors to enter the market. That certainty now extends explicitly to non\u2011custodial protocols: draft language circulated in March carves out DeFi developers and self\u2011hosted smart contracts from being treated as deposit\u2011taking institutions, focusing prudential rules instead on centralized intermediaries and stablecoin issuers<\/p>\n
The political compromise comes at the expense of yield\u2011bearing stablecoin products. FinTech Weekly reported that compromise text reviewed by industry leaders in late March would prohibit digital asset service providers \u201cfrom offering yield directly or indirectly on stablecoin balances, or in any manner that is economically or functionally equivalent to bank interest,\u201d closing off passive rewards on custodial balances.<\/p>\n
EarnPark, in its analysis of the same draft, said the provision \u201cprohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interest, dividends, or yield on stablecoins held by users,\u201d while allowing activity\u2011based rewards such as loyalty schemes or transaction\u2011linked incentives. A separate breakdown by French outlet Cryptoast stressed that \u201cles \u00e9metteurs de stablecoins ne pourront plus r\u00e9mun\u00e9rer un utilisateur simplement parce qu\u2019il d\u00e9tient leurs tokens,\u201d while rewards tied to specific on\u2011chain actions like lending or liquidity provision remain permissible.<\/p>\n
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That distinction effectively protects core DeFi protocols, where users earn yield by taking on risk in lending pools or automated market makers, but it sharply limits the \u201crisk\u2011free yield\u201d wrappers that had turned stablecoins into bank\u2011account substitutes. As Pintu noted, the CLARITY Act\u2019s treatment of stablecoins emphasizes reserves and governance standards to \u201cprotect users from the risk of default or misuse of funds,\u201d even if the higher compliance bar \u201ccan be challenging for small stablecoin issuers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CLARITY Act progresses alongside the separate GENIUS Act, which directs that permitted payment stablecoin issuers be treated as financial institutions under U.S. anti\u2011money\u2011laundering rules, further pulling dollar\u2011pegged tokens into the traditional regulatory perimeter. Together, the two laws would leave DeFi protocols relatively free to innovate while turning yield\u2011bearing stablecoins into a tightly constrained, bank\u2011adjacent product class \u2014 a trade\u2011off that many in Washington appear willing to make.<\/p>\n
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Summary U.S. CLARITY Act heads for Senate Banking Committee markup in late April after clearing key early hurdles. Draft text hard\u2011codes SEC\u2013CFTC jurisdiction and protects non\u2011custodial DeFi, while tightening rules…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25766,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25765\/revisions\/25766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}