Solana Policy Institute presses Senate to move on crypto market structure bill
Regulation & Gov ·
The advocacy group says lawmakers have a narrowing window to pass the CLARITY Act before Congress pivots to election-season priorities.
The Solana Policy Institute has called on the U.S. Senate to prioritize the CLARITY Act, warning that the legislative calendar leaves little room for delay once campaign season absorbs lawmakers' attention, according to The Block. The group frames the bill as a chance to end years of uncertainty over how digital assets are treated under federal law.
At its core, the CLARITY Act would set statutory lines separating which tokens fall under Securities and Exchange Commission oversight as securities and which fall under Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight as commodities, while also laying out disclosure, custody, and exchange-registration standards. That distinction matters because neither the SEC nor the CFTC can rewrite the underlying statutes on their own; only Congress can resolve the jurisdictional gap that has left courts and regulators issuing conflicting signals about how assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins, and DeFi protocols should be classified.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has separately pushed for the bill, arguing it would help bring digital-asset activity onshore and rejecting the idea of a U.S. central bank digital currency as an alternative path. Not everyone agrees on the bill's scope: New York Attorney General Letitia James has warned that the current draft could undercut states' ability to prosecute crypto fraud, and has urged Congress to tighten anti-money-laundering, ethics, and investor-protection provisions before passage. Separately, gaming groups, tribes, and unions have pressed lawmakers to strip sports-related prediction markets out of the bill entirely, adding another point of friction to negotiations.
The push also comes amid other signs of how crypto policy is intersecting with Washington politics — from Senator Elizabeth Warren's accusation that SEC Chair Paul Atkins misrepresented enforcement data, to a sitting House member's disclosure of a Bitcoin purchase valued at up to $250,000, one of the largest such filings by a member of Congress. Lobbying groups have also urged lawmakers to pass a separate measure, the Tax Clarity for Mining and Staking Act, without changes, so that staking rewards are taxed only when sold.
What remains unresolved is whether the Senate can reconcile the competing demands — tighter enforcement language sought by state regulators, carve-outs demanded by gaming and labor groups, and industry's push for speed — before the legislative window narrows further heading into election-season scheduling.