OPINION:
On Sept. 15, the Senate is scheduled to vote on whether the United States leads the digital asset economy or surrenders it to our competitors around the world.
The Clarity Act is the market structure legislation that would finally begin to end all the doubt and uncertainty about this new generation of financial technology. Industry leaders, consumer advocates, law enforcement leaders and legislators from both parties have pressed Congress to act.
Now the path forward runs on a single procedural vote. The choice should be an easy one: Move forward on adopting Clarity as law.
Without 60 votes to end debate, Clarity would die with it. Every additional month of delay means more American entrepreneurs building offshore, more consumers exposed to unregulated products and more ground lost to Europe, the U.K. and Singapore, which have already built frameworks and are actively courting our talent and capital.
The Clarity Act does four things that matter. It draws a clear line between when a digital asset is a security regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and when it is a commodity overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It focuses regulation on intermediaries, and it gives law enforcement a defined statutory toolkit for effectively preventing and punishing fraud and illicit finance.
By anchoring dollar-denominated digital assets in a stable American framework, the bill reinforces the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.
Yet the bill is being deliberately slow-walked. Some of the resistance is genuine policy concern that can be resolved by debate and future amendments, but much of it traces back to the traditional banking lobby, which sees regulated digital assets as competition instead of a building block for the future.
There are also lingering misconceptions on Capitol Hill: that Clarity somehow weakens consumer protection or that it gives the industry a loophole to scam American consumers. However, there is a growing pro-crypto voter community in this country that is speaking up.
More than 67 million Americans own digital assets. This means that senators who block Clarity on Sept.15 should be aware that some of their constituents are likely to hold them accountable.
The stakes are clearest when you look at what happens without a market structure law. Consider LBRY, a small New Hampshire company that created a decentralized content platform to rival YouTube built on a blockchain to maximize freedom among creators. It used a token for users to reward creators they liked.
The SEC sued LBRY in a district court where the presiding judge had little background on the securities questions at issue, with the intent of destroying a small start-up as a chilling signal to the wider industry. It worked.
A promising American technology project was destroyed in court — not because it defrauded anyone, but because it could not afford to defend itself against a regulator that had chosen shock-and-awe litigation over deliberate and careful rulemaking.
I served on New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s Commission on Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets, and I watched the LBRY case up close. The lesson was straightforward: When there are no clear rules, regulators write them through lawsuits, and the companies that lose are almost always the ones without the deep pockets to fight.
Better-funded companies, such as Ripple Labs, survived similar SEC attacks via the courts. LBRY did not. Without Clarity, the next LBRY is already being built somewhere and the next regulatory attack is already being drafted in some corner of Washington.
The Trump administration has made its position clear. The GENIUS Act, signed into law in July 2025, delivered the first federal framework for stablecoins. The House passed its version of the Clarity Act with bipartisan support the same month. The Senate Agriculture and Banking committees have moved their pieces forward.
The votes are there. The only question left is whether the Senate has the discipline to end the filibuster and make the right choice to pass the Clarity Act and send it back to the House before the lame duck session.
Sept. 15 is the test. A “yes” vote on cloture is a commitment to finish the debate and deliver the rules that consumers, entrepreneurs and law enforcement all need. Blocking it protects no one and costs America its future.
• Craig Stevens is a partner at Washington-based DCI Group and leads the firm’s crypto practice. He served as a commissioner on New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu’s Commission on Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets.
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