CLARITY Act: what it is, what changes and how it affects crypto markets

The regulatory landscape before the CLARITY Act

The CLARITY Act does not emerge from a legislative vacuum. In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins), which became the first federal law on cryptocurrencies in the United States. Its scope is specific: the regulation of stablecoins, the digital assets designed to maintain parity with a fiat currency, such as the dollar.

The GENIUS Act requires issuers to maintain 1:1 reserves in high-quality liquid assets, establishes a system of federal and state licences, and subjects issuers to anti-money-laundering rules. That law is already in force and undergoing regulatory implementation.

In March 2026, the SEC and the CFTC jointly issued an interpretive guidance (Interpretive Release No. 33-11412) setting out a five-category taxonomy for digital assets and identifying concrete examples of which would be considered "digital commodities" under the existing framework. This guidance carries administrative weight but is not law: it may be amended or withdrawn without congressional approval.

The CLARITY Act is the second legislative piece of the puzzle. Its aim is to resolve what the GENIUS Act left open: establishing who regulates which type of digital asset, and under what rules the overall market structure operates.

Where the problem originates

To understand why the CLARITY Act matters, one must understand the origins of the regulatory chaos.

In the traditional American financial system, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulates securities (shares, bonds, debt instruments, ...) whilst the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulates commodities and their derivatives (oil, wheat, gold, ...). Each agency has its own legal framework, its own supervisory powers, and its own Congressional committee that oversees it. That separation, which works reasonably well in traditional finance, became a structural problem when cryptocurrencies arrived.

When Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies appeared, neither agency had clear jurisdiction. Bitcoin can be argued to be a commodity—a scarce asset with no central issuer—but many tokens more closely resemble securities because they are issued to finance projects, purchased in expectation of profits from the efforts of third parties, and their promoters hold privileged information about their development.

The legal test that determines whether something is a security in the United States is called the Howey test, established by the Supreme Court in 1946. Its logic is as follows: if someone invests money in a common enterprise expecting profits derived from the efforts of others, that constitutes an investment contract and therefore a security subject to SEC regulation. Applied to crypto, the result was decades of ambiguity.

Under Gary Gensler's tenure as SEC chairman (2021–2025), the agency applied that test aggressively, classifying the majority of tokens as securities and triggering a cascade of legal actions against exchanges, issuers, and protocols. The industry contested this in the courts, case by case, with no general rule to guide everyone from the outset.

The practical result was twofold: permanent legal uncertainty that, according to the industry, drove projects, capital, and talent to other jurisdictions with more clearly defined frameworks; and a series of costly legal disputes that, in many cases, were resolved without establishing useful precedents because they were closed through out-of-court settlements before reaching a judgment.

What the CLARITY Act proposes: three categories

The CLARITY Act divides digital assets into three categories, each with a distinct regulatory regime.

# Technical name Regulator Key criterion

1 Investment contract assets SEC Meets the Howey test: investment made in expectation of profit from the efforts of a third party

2 Digital commodities CFTC Decentralised and mature network: open source, functional, no single entity controlling more than 20%

3 Permitted payment stablecoins GENIUS Act framework Issuance already regulated by law; CLARITY governs trading and integration

The first category is "investment contract assets": tokens that meet the Howey test, meaning they are sold or distributed in the context of an investment contract in which the buyer expects a profit derived from the efforts of an identifiable third party. These fall under SEC supervision during a project's launch phase, when an issuer retains control over the development and value of the asset.

The law creates a simplified disclosure pathway called "Regulation Crypto", which allows projects to raise capital from investors without meeting all the requirements of a conventional public securities offering, subject to a cap of $50 million per year over four years, or up to $200 million in total.

The second category is "digital commodities": assets whose network has reached a state of "maturity" defined by four specific criteria set out in the text of the law. First, the network must be functional for transactions, access to services, or governance. Second, the code must be open source. Third, the operating rules must be pre-established and transparent. Fourth, no individual entity or co-ordinated group may control more than 20% of tokens in circulation. When an asset meets all four criteria, it may certify its "maturity" before regulators and be reclassified as a digital commodity under CFTC supervision.

Bitcoin would meet this threshold without question. The case of Ethereum is more contested, and that is precisely the kind of debate the law seeks to channel through objective criteria rather than resolving piecemeal in the courts.

The third category is "permitted payment stablecoins": assets whose issuance is already regulated by the GENIUS Act. The CLARITY Act does not govern how stablecoins are issued—that is already established by law—but rather how they are traded and integrated into digital asset platforms.

The central mechanism of the law is the transition between the first and second categories. A project may begin by issuing tokens under SEC supervision, with the attendant disclosure obligations. If its network evolves to meet the four maturity criteria, it may certify that status and move to CFTC regulation as a commodity. This is, in practice, the equivalent of the lock-up period in a traditional stock market listing: a phase of heightened regulatory scrutiny while identifiable centralised control exists, which eases once that centralisation disappears and the network takes on a life of its own.

Beyond the asset classification framework, the law introduces a mandatory registration regime for intermediaries: digital asset exchanges and brokers will be required to register with the CFTC as "digital commodity exchanges", with obligations covering client asset protection, market surveillance, reporting, and anti-money-laundering compliance. Client assets must be kept segregated from the platform's own funds—a requirement that speaks directly to what happened with FTX in 2022.

The law also incorporates a section known as the "Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act", which protects software developers who do not hold third-party funds from being classified as financial intermediaries subject to regulation. In practice, this means that a programmer who writes the code for a decentralised protocol without having access to or control over user funds would not be treated as though they were a bank or a broker.

One additional element in the text—less discussed but politically significant: as a complementary title, the law includes a prohibition on the Federal Reserve issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) directly to citizens, a position championed by the Republican wing of the Committee.

Why two Senate committees are involved

The passage of the CLARITY Act involves two separate Senate committees—something that may seem puzzling to those unfamiliar with the American legislative system, but which follows a precise institutional logic.

In the US Congress, each committee has jurisdiction over a specific area of public policy and over the federal agencies that implement it. The Senate Banking Committee oversees the SEC, the securities regulator. The Senate Agriculture Committee oversees the CFTC, the commodities regulator.

The link between agriculture and commodities is no accident: the CFTC was originally established to regulate agricultural futures markets (wheat, maize, livestock, and so on) and gradually expanded its mandate to cover other commodity markets, including oil, gas, metals, and eventually financial derivatives. The Agriculture Committee inherited that oversight role and retains it to this day.

Since the CLARITY Act affects both agencies—the SEC will have authority over tokens in their launch phase, and the CFTC over mature and decentralised assets—both committees have legitimate jurisdiction over different parts of the legislation.

This is why two parallel drafts exist: the Banking Committee text, which focuses on SEC authority and asset classification, and the Agriculture Committee text, formally entitled the "Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act", which focuses on the CFTC regulatory framework for the spot market in digital commodities. Both texts will need to be merged into a single bill before the full Senate can vote on it.

The hottest issue: stablecoin yield

The most heated technical debate within the passage of the CLARITY Act is not about who regulates what, but about a deceptively simple question: can a crypto platform pay interest to its users for holding stablecoins?

This is what is known as "stablecoin yield": the practice whereby platforms such as Coinbase offer their users an annual percentage return (in some cases around 3.5%) simply for holding digital dollars (such as USDC or USDT) in their accounts. The mechanism is functionally similar to a bank savings account, but without the safeguards that surround bank deposits: no deposit insurance, no mandatory regulatory capital, no safety net of the traditional banking system.

The banking sector sees this as a direct threat. A US Treasury study cited by JPMorgan estimates that banks could lose up to $6.6 trillion in deposits if stablecoin yield were to become widespread without restrictions. If a crypto platform can offer 3.5% per year on digital dollars without meeting the same requirements as a bank, deposits will migrate to those platforms, reducing banks' capacity to extend credit to households and businesses.

The American Bankers Association has demanded a ban on any form of yield on stablecoins, whether it is called interest, reward, or economic equivalent.

Crypto platforms argue the opposite: that such yield is the reason users adopt stablecoins, that removing this functionality pushes users towards unregulated offshore platforms, and that the net result is worse for the American consumer.

The compromise reached ahead of the committee vote draws a clear line: rewards linked to user activity are permitted (such as cashback on transactions, incentives for providing liquidity, or staking yields), but paying yield on idle balances—that is, on the mere act of holding stablecoins without doing anything with them—is prohibited. The distinction is economically significant: it turns stablecoins into a tool for active use rather than a substitute for savings accounts.

Neither the banking sector nor the crypto industry was entirely satisfied with that compromise, but it was enough to unblock progress in committee.

Who supports the bill and why

Supporters of the bill—exchanges, stablecoin issuers, specialist venture capital funds, and Senator Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and the initiative's principal sponsor—argue that regulatory uncertainty has been the single greatest brake on the development of the ecosystem in the United States. The CLARITY Act, in their view, is not a concession to the industry: it is the minimum condition for the sector to operate in an orderly fashion with genuine protection for users.

Supporters contend that regulatory clarity would attract more institutional capital, and that such capital would add liquidity and reduce structural volatility over the long term. This is not an argument about short-term price action: it is an argument about the market's maturity as infrastructure.

The industry adds that regulation by enforcement—acting against individual actors in the absence of prior rules, which was the model under the Gensler era—does not protect users: it merely exposes them to the uncertainty of judicial outcomes, case by case, whilst deterring legitimate operators from establishing themselves in the United States.

From the banking sector, the position is nuanced: the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, and several allied organisations published statements supporting the bill's progress as a general framework, whilst demanding that restrictions on stablecoin yields be tightened. It is conditional support: yes to regulation, but with more restrictions than the current text envisages.

Who is opposed and why

Criticism comes from several quarters, with concerns that do not necessarily overlap.

The traditional banking sector fears that the legislation would allow digital asset platforms to compete with banks in functions that have until now been the exclusive preserve of depositary institutions. This concern is explored in detail in the previous section on stablecoin yields.

The labour front, represented by the AFL-CIO (the principal trade union confederation in the United States), has warned that legitimising crypto without sufficient safeguards could threaten the stability of pension and retirement funds, exposing workers to systemic risks arising from the sector's volatility.

The law enforcement front has stated that certain provisions of the legislation, particularly those governing DeFi protocols, could hamper investigations into money laundering, terrorist financing and sanctions evasion. The specific concern is that the regulatory exemption for decentralised software developers (the "Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act" embedded in the text) could be invoked to circumvent customer identification requirements in protocols that, in practice, have identifiable operators.

The political front, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, encompasses both of the above concerns and adds a third: the legislation does not resolve the conflict of interest arising from elected officials holding significant financial stakes in the very sector they are legislating.

Warren described the bill as "a law written by the crypto industry for the crypto industry", and cited polling showing that crypto ranks as a very low priority for the average American voter, arguing that the Senate should devote that legislative time to other matters.

This last point has been the principal obstacle to Democratic support. The incompatibility clause that Democrats are demanding—which would restrict senior officials' holdings in digital assets—is not included in the current text because the Senate Banking Committee has no jurisdiction over legislative ethics: that is the territory of other committees. The clause must be incorporated at a later stage of the process.

The White House has indicated that it would not accept any clause naming a specific officeholder, but would accept rules applied uniformly from the President down to the most junior government employee.

Senator Mark Warner (Virginia), a Democrat who has led negotiations within his party for months, described the situation as being in "crypto purgatory": willing to reach a deal, but conditional on resolving the outstanding issues around DeFi, ethics and money laundering. His position represents a strand within the Democratic Party—prepared to negotiate—that is distinct from the outright opposition led by Warren.

That distinction matters because, to overcome a filibuster on the Senate floor, the bill needs precisely those Democratic votes that Warren will not provide but Warner could, if the outstanding issues are resolved.

What remains to be done

The approval in the Senate Banking Committee is a significant step, not the end of the process.

The two Democratic senators who voted in favour (Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland) publicly qualified their support: Alsobrooks stated explicitly that her favourable vote in committee, which allows the bill to advance to the next stage, is not equivalent to an affirmative vote on the Senate floor. This is a standard legislative tactic: voting in favour in committee to allow debate to continue, without committing to a final vote until outstanding issues are resolved.

Before reaching the floor, the bill must be merged with the parallel version passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee, which focuses on the CFTC framework for the spot market in digital commodities. Once merged, the unified text will need to resolve the points still open: the ethics clause, the treatment of DeFi protocols, and the debate over stablecoin yield (the return that platforms may pay users for holding or using stablecoins).

On the Senate floor, the bill requires 60 votes to overcome the procedural obstruction known as the filibuster, meaning it must secure a significant number of additional Democratic senators beyond the two who voted in committee. According to analyst Cody Carbone of the Digital Chamber, the ethics agreement is likely to be concluded before the text is brought to the floor, because without that agreement its backers will have no certainty of commanding 60 votes.

The informal deadline set by the White House is before 4th July 2026.

Should it pass the Senate, it will need to be reconciled with the version passed by the House of Representatives in July 2025 (the text formally known as H.R.3633), which differs substantially from the Senate text. That reconciliation is an additional negotiation that could modify significant parts of the final outcome.

Prediction markets placed the probability of the bill being passed over the course of the year at around 67% as of May 2026.

The impact beyond American borders

The CLARITY Act is an American law, but its effects are not confined to the United States. The dollar stablecoin market—the asset most directly affected by the legislation—is a global phenomenon: 99% of stablecoins in circulation are denominated in dollars, and the majority of transactions occur outside the United States. When the US regulates that market, it regulates something that already exists on the mobile phones of millions of people in Argentina, Nigeria, Vietnam, Turkey, and dozens of other countries.

To grasp the scale, one figure suffices: dollar stablecoin issuers hold more than $155 billion in US Treasury bonds as reserves, making them the seventeenth-largest holders of American public debt in the world, ahead of many sovereign states. Regulating that market is not a technical matter: it is global monetary policy.

This context is shaped by two events worth keeping in mind. The first is the collapse of TerraUST in 2022, the algorithmic stablecoin that wiped out approximately $40 billion in market value within days and demonstrated that the "stability" of a stablecoin can be a marketing term with no real backing. That collapse accelerated the regulatory urgency that led to the GENIUS Act and to the stablecoin provisions in the CLARITY Act.

The second is the entry into force of MiCA in Europe in December 2024, which made the EU the first major market in the world with a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets. The US arrives later, and the rest of the world watches as the two largest financial markets on the planet align their rules.

Europe

The debate over the CLARITY Act is taking place against the backdrop of a Europe that already has its framework in force. MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) entered full application in December 2024, establishing a unified framework for digital assets across all 27 member states. Exchanges and issuers wishing to operate in the European Union have required a licence ever since.

The 1st of July 2026 is the deadline for the transitional period: any unauthorised provider still operating on European territory will be in breach from that date. As of April 2026, 38 stablecoin issuers are accredited in the EU; 78% of platforms have obtained MiCA licences, and 15% have chosen to exit the European market rather than bear the costs of compliance.

Europe moved first, and with a model distinct from the American one: rather than dividing regulation between two agencies with disputed jurisdictions, MiCA created a single framework with one regulator per country, operating in coordination with the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). A provider licensed in any member state may operate across the entire EU through the European passport system.

If the CLARITY Act is passed, the global landscape will feature two major defined regulatory frameworks: MiCA in Europe and the GENIUS+CLARITY pairing in the United States. They are neither equivalent nor interchangeable. MiCA is an issuance and operating framework for digital assets in general. GENIUS specifically regulates stablecoin issuance in the US. CLARITY regulates secondary market structure and jurisdiction over different types of assets. They represent philosophically distinct approaches to the same problem.

For exchanges already operating under a MiCA licence that wish to access the American market, the passage of the CLARITY Act would open a more clearly defined regulatory path, though registration requirements with the CFTC or the SEC are independent of the European licence and would require separate processes.

For the individual European investor, the CLARITY Act does not directly alter their obligations or rights: MiCA regulates the platforms that serve them.

It does, however, carry a relevant indirect effect: regulatory clarity in the US (the world's largest capital market) tends to reduce the risk premium that American institutional investors demand on digital assets. That premium has historically been reflected in valuation discounts on assets operating in legal grey areas. If that grey area narrows, the effect on valuation is structural, even if its magnitude and timing remain unpredictable.

There is a tension that Europe is watching closely. The ECB has warned that, without a strategic response of its own, the advance of dollar-denominated stablecoins could erode European monetary control. MiCA limits the scale that stablecoins denominated in non-European currencies may reach within the single market, partly in response to that concern. The ECB is simultaneously working on the design of the digital euro, though its implementation as a retail payment instrument remains at the preparatory stage.

Asia

Asia is the world's other major regulatory pole in crypto, but without a unified framework: it is a constellation of jurisdictions with their own strategies, each competing to attract capital and innovation from the sector.

Japan was one of the first countries in the world to regulate crypto exchanges, from 2017, and has the most mature market in the region. In April 2026 it reclassified crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA), raising the bar on disclosure requirements. A proposal to reduce the tax rate on crypto asset gains from 55% to 20% (in line with other countries) forms part of an effort to compete with Hong Kong and South Korea in attracting investment.

Hong Kong has set its sights on becoming Asia's leading crypto hub, with a regulatory strategy more open to retail participation than Singapore's. Its stablecoin regime came into force in August 2025. In April 2026, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority granted the first two licences under that regime. Standard Chartered described HKD-denominated stablecoins as "the foundation for a new era of settlement in digital commerce".

Mainland China, by contrast, maintains its ban on crypto and the use of private stablecoins, though it is experimenting with digital yuan (CBDC) pilots in controlled circuits.

Singapore has built the most systematic framework in the region, with more than 30 Major Payment Institution licences linked to stablecoin operations. Its approach, more cautious on retail participation than Hong Kong's, prioritises the soundness of institutional operators.

South Korea is advancing its Digital Asset Basic Act, albeit with an internal obstacle: the Bank of Korea requires banks to hold at least 51% of any won-denominated stablecoin issuer, while the Financial Services Commission rejects that condition. Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan are also working on their own frameworks, at varying stages of maturity.

What changes for these markets if the CLARITY Act is passed? The most precise answer was offered by Binance's CEO, Richard Teng, in May 2026: the GENIUS Act had already prompted regulators in Hong Kong, Singapore and the UAE to accelerate their own stablecoin frameworks so as not to be left behind. The CLARITY Act would produce the same pull effect on market structure.

However, research by HashKey Research, published on the same day as the committee vote, points to a less obvious consequence. If the United States restricts the yield that platforms can offer on stablecoins, capital seeking that yield could migrate to Asian platforms operating under more permissive regimes.

The competition between the US and Asia, in that scenario, would not be about who leads on regulation but about who controls the capital flows generated by the global adoption of dollar stablecoins. It is not a zero-sum game: as the same study notes, the focus of future competition will not be on who replaces whom, but on who most effectively connects dollar liquidity, regional assets, local financial institutions and regulation-compliant channels.

There is also a structural asymmetry that the data document. The Asia-Pacific region recorded annual on-chain transaction volume of $2.4 trillion between July 2024 and June 2025, more than double the previous year.

Yet stablecoins denominated in Asian currencies represent a marginal fraction of the market: 99% of stablecoins remain dollar-denominated. The regulatory frameworks of Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea seek to create viable local stablecoins, but face the same problem as Europe with MiCA: regulation enables issuance, but cannot conjure by decree the liquidity or network effects that the dollar has been accumulating for decades.

Latin America

To understand the impact on Latin America, one must first understand why the region is the world's most organically developed market for stablecoins. In economies where inflation destroys the value of the local currency and capital controls make access to physical dollars difficult, stablecoins function as a savings-protection mechanism accessible from any mobile phone. This is not speculation: it is emergency financial infrastructure.

Argentina is the most thoroughly documented case. Between July 2023 and mid-2025, the country processed more than $91bn in on-chain volume, the highest in the region. Stablecoins account for 60% of that volume. More than 22% of the population already uses crypto in some form.

Since late 2025, Argentina's central bank has been preparing regulations that will allow banks to offer crypto services directly. Brazil has the region's most explicit legal framework for crypto banking. Mexico has regulated exchanges since 2018 under the Ley Fintech. Chile, Colombia and Uruguay are developing their own provider-registration frameworks.

For these countries, the passage of the CLARITY Act has concrete effects in two respects. The first concerns legitimacy: when the world's largest market establishes that dollar-denominated stablecoins are regulated financial instruments with full legal backing, their adoption as a savings vehicle in de facto dollarised economies deepens. The second concerns infrastructure: regulated American platforms that have historically cited legal uncertainty in their home market as a brake on expansion into emerging markets will have greater certainty to develop local operations, improving access for end users.

Remittances are the third channel of direct impact. The US–Mexico, US–Guatemala and US–Colombia corridors move tens of billions of dollars each year. In countries such as Guatemala, remittances represent nearly 20% of GDP. Stablecoins already operate in this circuit thanks to their speed and lower cost relative to traditional systems. American regulation of those stablecoins facilitates their integration into the banking systems of recipient countries, reducing friction in the process.

Western Union announced in April 2026 its entry into the stablecoin market with its token USDPT: this is the clearest signal yet that the traditional remittances sector sees the shift coming and is positioning itself accordingly.

There is a risk that few Spanish-language sources have identified clearly. USDT, the stablecoin most widely used in Latin America, is issued by Tether, a company that operates outside the American regulatory perimeter and has not, to date, registered under the GENIUS Act framework. If Tether does not regularise its position, American platforms operating in the region could find themselves obliged to restrict or withdraw USDT from their services in order to comply with American legislation.

For Latin American users who hold part of their savings in USDT, this could translate into greater friction when accessing the most liquid platforms, or into a need to migrate towards USDC or other stablecoins with registered issuers. This is neither an imminent nor a guaranteed risk, but it is a real variable that media coverage tends to ignore.

Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is, after Asia, the world's fastest-growing crypto market: between July 2024 and June 2025, the region recorded more than $205 billion in on-chain value, 52% more than the previous year. Nigeria and Ethiopia rank among the 15 countries with the highest crypto adoption globally, according to Chainalysis's annual index. In Nigeria and South Africa, close to 80% of crypto users already hold or use dollar stablecoins, according to a YouGov study conducted with BVNK, Coinbase and Artemis.

The drivers are the same as in Latin America: foreign-currency shortages, inflation, monetary instability and limited access to formal banking services. In Nigeria, the naira depreciated from 360 to more than 1,400 units per dollar between 2019 and 2024. In that context, USDT and USDC function as working capital and a savings vehicle for businesses and individuals who have no other means of accessing the dollar. Approximately 70% of African countries face foreign-currency shortages that make it difficult for businesses to obtain the dollars they need to operate.

Africa's regulatory landscape advanced significantly in 2025. Nigeria and South Africa were removed from the FATF grey list in October 2025, a direct signal to global markets that both countries had made progress on anti-money-laundering compliance. Nigeria passed the Securities and Investment Act 2025, which formally recognises digital assets as securities. Kenya signed the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act in October 2025.

Ghana, Mauritius and South Africa have licensing frameworks at various stages of consolidation. Algeria and Egypt maintain the criminalisation of digital assets, creating a continental divide between north and south that remains unresolved.

African regulators are not simply adopting USDT and USDC: they are also creating domestic alternatives. Nigeria has approved the cNGN (a naira-backed stablecoin) and South Africa the ZARU (rand-backed), signalling that regulators wish to participate in the stablecoin market rather than merely contain it. The East African Community has approved a plan to integrate regulated stablecoins into the region's payments infrastructure before 2031.

The impact of the CLARITY Act on Africa is indirect but real, through the same mechanism as in Latin America: when the United States sets a standard for dollar stablecoins, that standard affects the instruments that millions of Africans already use as money. Academics at the European Central Bank and the IMF describe this as a transfer of monetary authority: the GENIUS Act, and by extension the CLARITY Act if passed, effectively shift part of monetary-policy control away from African central banks towards American regulators and private issuers based in the United States. Not by deliberate design, but as a structural consequence of Washington-regulated digital dollars becoming the de facto instrument in economies where the local currency has failed.

The same Tether risk that exists in Latin America exists in Africa. USDT is the dominant instrument in African trade corridors, and any restriction on its use on American platforms affects the liquidity available to African businesses and individuals who depend on those corridors.

What the CLARITY Act does not say, nor could say, is anything about the price of any asset at any given moment. Regulation defines the rules of the game, not the result of individual matches. And the match is still being played.