Market Commentary

The CLARITY Act: what US market-structure legislation means for digital assets

The Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act would, for the first time, set out in US law how digital assets are classified and which regulator oversees them. It is not yet law — but its direction of travel matters for the whole asset class. This note explains what it is, how it would work and what it could mean for institutional participation.

Manuel E. De Luque MuntanerCEO & Founder

25 July 20268 min read

Key takeaways

The CLARITY Act is proposed US legislation that would divide oversight of digital assets between the CFTC (digital commodities) and the SEC (investment-contract assets), replacing years of case-by-case uncertainty.
It is not yet law. The House passed it in July 2025, the Senate Banking Committee advanced it in May 2026 and a merged Senate framework followed in July 2026 — but the Senate broke for August without a floor vote, and several provisions remain contested.
Its central idea is a path by which a token first sold as an investment contract can, once sufficiently decentralised, be treated as a digital commodity on secondary markets.
Regulatory classification has been the single biggest structural barrier to institutional participation in the US; clearer rules would make compliant products, listings and custody easier to build.
Regulation is a global picture — the EU's MiCA framework is already in force — and Block Asset Management's approach is jurisdiction-aware, risk-managed and built to adapt as rules evolve.

What the CLARITY Act is

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the “CLARITY Act” (H.R. 3633) — is proposed United States legislation that aims to establish, in statute, how digital assets are classified and which federal regulator supervises them. It is the market-structure counterpart to the stablecoin legislation that has advanced in parallel.

It is important to be precise about its status: this is a bill, not yet law. It passed the US House of Representatives in July 2025 with notable bipartisan support, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced its version in May 2026. It still requires passage by the full Senate, reconciliation between the chambers and the President's signature before it takes effect — and, as set out below, several provisions remain actively debated. Nothing here should be read as assuming it will be enacted, or in what final form.

Status update, 10 August 2026. Senate Republicans released a merged 616-page framework on 22 July 2026, but the Senate adjourned for its summer recess without holding a floor vote. In the early hours of Saturday 8 August, at the end of an overnight session, the Senate Majority Leader filed cloture on the motion to proceed — a procedural step that puts the bill on the floor calendar and sets up a vote on Tuesday 15 September, the day after the chamber returns. It is worth being clear about what that is and is not: filing cloture does not pass anything, and invoking it requires 60 votes, which supporters did not have before the recess. Several disputes remain unresolved, among them ethics enforcement, illicit-finance provisions and how the Senate Agriculture Committee's text is folded in. The practical stake is unchanged: if a comprehensive market-structure bill does not clear this Congress, the work effectively restarts with the next one.

That sequence is worth sitting with, because it illustrates the point this note made in July rather than contradicting it. A bill can command bipartisan support, clear a chamber, clear a committee, be merged into a floor-ready text — and still not be law. Legislative direction and legislative certainty are different things, and only one of them is available to plan around.

How it would divide oversight

The bill's core purpose is to answer a question that has dogged the asset class in the US for years: is a given digital asset a security (overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission) or a commodity (overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission)? The CLARITY Act would draw that line more explicitly than case-by-case enforcement has.

Digital commodities — assets intrinsically linked to the operation of a blockchain system — would fall under CFTC oversight for their spot markets. Securities, stablecoins and derivatives are treated separately.
Investment-contract assets — tokens sold to raise capital — would remain under SEC oversight at the point of offering, protecting early-stage investors.
A maturity or “decentralisation” pathway — the bill's most distinctive feature — would allow a token that began life as an investment contract to be treated as a digital commodity on secondary markets once the underlying network is sufficiently decentralised (judged by factors such as control, concentration of ownership and governance).
Disclosure and market-conduct rules would accompany this, with registration regimes for the intermediaries that trade, custody and broker digital assets.

Why it matters for the industry

For institutional participants, legal classification is not a technicality — it is the gate. When it is unclear whether an asset is a security, a compliant product cannot easily be structured around it, a regulated venue cannot list it with confidence, and a custodian cannot hold it without carrying legal risk. That uncertainty has been the single largest structural constraint on US institutional participation in digital assets.

Clearer statutory rules would not remove the risks inherent in the asset class, but they would remove a layer of legal ambiguity that has sat on top of them. A defined perimeter — this regulator, these obligations, this path from security to commodity — is precisely the kind of infrastructure that lets professional allocators, exchanges and service providers build with confidence rather than caveat.

What remains unresolved

A measured reading has to weigh the open questions as heavily as the promise. Several points remain genuinely contested and could change the bill's shape — or its prospects.

The treatment of yield or rewards on stablecoin balances.
How decentralised finance (DeFi) and non-custodial software should be supervised, if at all.
Conflict-of-interest and ethics provisions concerning officials and digital-asset holdings.
Timing and legislative risk — a bill that clears committee can still stall, be amended materially, or not reach a floor vote within a given session.

How to read it as an investor

The CLARITY Act is best understood as a signal about direction rather than a settled fact. If enacted in something like its current form, it would mark a meaningful step in the maturation of digital assets as an institutional asset class in the world's largest capital market — reinforcing a broader, multi-year trend toward regulated access. But it is one jurisdiction's evolving framework, not a global on-switch, and it is not yet in force.

It is also worth remembering that regulation is a global picture. In the European Union, the MiCA framework is already in force, giving European managers and investors a defined regime today. A disciplined approach follows these developments closely, treats regulatory standing as a first-order consideration in any allocation, and is built to adapt as rules crystallise — rather than betting on a particular legislative outcome.

Block Asset Management

How Block Asset Management helps

Regulatory change is part of the terrain in digital assets, not a distraction from it. As a European, Luxembourg-based manager, we approach the evolving global framework with the same discipline we apply to markets and managers.

Jurisdiction-aware by design

We follow regulatory developments across the jurisdictions relevant to our strategies — including EU frameworks such as MiCA and evolving US market-structure legislation — and factor them into how we access the asset class.

Regulatory standing in due diligence

When we assess managers and venues, their regulatory posture, licensing and jurisdiction are first-order questions, not afterthoughts — reflecting how much classification and oversight matter to real-world risk.

Focus on liquid, well-understood markets

Our systematic strategies concentrate on the most liquid segments of the market, where the regulatory and operational picture is clearer and risk can be managed with discipline.

Risk management that adapts

Defined limits, continuous monitoring and human oversight let us respond as the regulatory and market environment changes, rather than being locked into a single set of assumptions.

Institutional access, responsibly

We give professional and qualified investors governed access to digital assets — with the transparency and controlled, auditable process institutions expect as the rules of the road continue to take shape.

The CLARITY Act has not passed, and its final form is not settled. But the fact that a serious market-structure framework is advancing through the US Congress — alongside the EU's MiCA regime already in force — tells you something about where the asset class is heading: toward clearer rules and, with them, more governed institutional participation.

If your organisation is thinking about how the changing regulatory landscape affects a digital asset allocation, our investor relations team is happy to discuss our approach. Professional and qualified investors can also register for access to our detailed strategy materials.

Important information

This material is provided for information purposes only and is intended for professional and qualified investors. It is commentary on proposed legislation whose status and content may change; it is not legal, tax or investment advice, nor an offer, solicitation or recommendation of any strategy or financial instrument. References to the CLARITY Act describe a bill that, as at the date of this note, has not been enacted into law. Digital assets are volatile and involve significant risk, including the possible loss of the entire amount invested. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

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