SEC and CFTC signal push for crypto rules after Clarity Act stalls
Regulation & Gov ·
Both agencies say they will rely on existing statutory authority to set crypto derivatives and market rules after the Senate failed to advance the bill.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have indicated they intend to move forward on crypto regulation without waiting for Congress, after the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act, according to The Block. Leadership at both agencies has said it will use powers it already holds to give the industry clearer rules rather than wait on legislative action that has repeatedly stalled.
The CFTC's jurisdiction already covers futures, options, and most swaps tied to commodities, a category broad enough to include bitcoin and ether, and the agency also holds anti-fraud and anti-manipulation authority over spot markets in certain circumstances even without a derivatives product involved, per leviathan.news. That existing toolkit is what regulators are pointing to as the basis for near-term action, rather than waiting for Congress to define market structure through new statute.
The SEC's involvement follows a similar logic: with the Clarity Act unable to clear the Senate, the agency has said it will develop its own crypto rules using current authority, according to reporting in the cluster. Coverage from Decrypt frames the moves by both regulators as a joint doubling-down after the legislative path failed to advance.
The push comes as the CFTC has been active on multiple crypto-adjacent fronts, including enforcement actions and disputes over prediction markets and event contracts, underscoring how much of the agency's crypto oversight already runs through existing statutory tools rather than new legislation. That backdrop reinforces the agencies' argument that they do not need the Clarity Act to begin shaping rules for derivatives, spot-market conduct, and adjacent products.
What remains unresolved is how far SEC and CFTC rulemaking can go without new legislation, and whether action taken under existing authority will produce rules with the durability that a statute like the Clarity Act was meant to provide. Also unclear is the timeline for specific proposals from either agency, and whether the Senate will revisit the bill once regulators begin acting on their own.