Most people don’t think much about crypto regulation until their money disappears — ask anyone who got burned by FTX. That disaster is exactly why Congress finally moved on the CLARITY Act, and on July 18, 2025, the House passed it 294-134. Bipartisan. Real votes. Something actually happened in Washington.
Most people ignore crypto regulation — until their money vanishes. FTX taught that lesson the hard way.
The bill, H.R. 3633, was sponsored by Chairman French Hill of Arkansas and backed by Ranking Member Don Davis from North Carolina. Even Ranking Member Angie Craig from Minnesota got behind it, specifically calling out FTX-style meltdown risks. That’s not nothing. When both sides agree crypto needs guardrails, something must really be broken.
The CLARITY Act tries to fix the messy turf war between the SEC and CFTC over who controls what in crypto. The CFTC gets exclusive authority over digital commodities — fraud, manipulation, spot markets, all of it. The SEC handles securities-classified digital assets and shares stablecoin oversight with the CFTC. Clean lines. Finally.
Customer protections are baked in too. Firms can’t commingle customer funds with their own money. Assets must be segregated. Capital and liquidity standards apply. Risk disclosures are required. Bankruptcy procedures exist. These aren’t wild ideas — they’re basically what normal financial firms already do. Crypto just didn’t have to bother. Until now, maybe. Critically, the Act’s segregation requirements mirror portfolio diversification risk principles that financial experts have long recommended to protect investors from catastrophic single-point failures.
Industry groups are onboard. The Crypto Council for Innovation pushed for a yes vote, citing market certainty. The Investment Industry Association praised specific consumer protection sections. The Decentralization Research Center supported pathways for security-to-commodity shifts. Support from all angles.
But here’s where it gets frustrating. The Senate has stalled — twice. The bill needs markup in both the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee, covering the SEC and CFTC elements respectively. Neither has moved. Midterms are creeping closer. Political bandwidth shrinks fast.
Banks haven’t exactly rushed to embrace crypto regulation either. Whether Congress can line up enough institutional backing before time runs out is genuinely unclear. The bill also applies Bank Secrecy Act requirements to registered digital asset firms, a provision that could either draw banks closer or push them further away. Meanwhile, industry leaders like Ji Hun Kim from the Crypto Council for Innovation have warned that without Congressional action, U.S. innovators migrating offshore remains a real and growing risk. The House did its part. The Senate is just sitting there.
