The U.S. Senate Banking Committee has postponed planned action on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act following opposition from the CEO of Coinbase, who publicly stated that the world’s leading crypto exchange platform could not support the bill in its current form.
For context, the CLARITY Act was introduced in 2025 to standardize regulatory classification of digital assets while clearly defining the roles of the SEC and the CFTC in overseeing and enforcing regulations. The overarching goal was to promote innovation with clearer rules for crypto-native businesses, while protecting consumers and giving regulators the tools needed to combat illegal and unethical activities.
While the CLARITY Act itself is a result of years of lobbying by Coinbase and other major crypto firms, CEO Brian Armstrong claimed that the bill had "too many issues" and that the company was not ready to support it. For the most part, the reasons for the backlash were practical business-model limitations concerning the treatment of tokenized equities and decentralized finance constraints.
This latest episode is a significant blow to the legislation, and it shows that the "pro-clarity coalition" is more fragile than many industry leaders had assumed. Crypto firms themselves remain split on which concessions are acceptable to them, while banks and other traditional financial services firms continue lobbying to limit stablecoin yield to prevent deposit flight. As a result, what was intended to encourage innovation appears to be once again turning into a banking-vs-crypto battleground.
It seems unlikely there will be a straight path to enforcement of the CLARITY Act and instead an extended period of renegotiations and multiple amendments. Nonetheless, the current bill text will most likely shape enforcement posture and lobbying throughout 2026 and beyond, so it makes sense for fintechs in the space to stay proactive. That means treating compliance planning as a modular endeavor, rather than betting on a single ‘final’ set of rules.
Moreover, fintechs involved in stablecoin product design should invest in contingency plans, since things like yields, rewards, and other "activity-based" incentives may be constrained differently—and unexpectedly—going forward. Even fintechs that aren’t crypto-native should pay attention to upcoming developments, since other operations like payments, cross-border settlement, and treasury operations may also be impacted.