The Senate’s failure to advance a landmark cryptocurrency bill has pushed the spotlight squarely onto President Donald Trump’s top Wall Street regulators.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig have spent months laying the groundwork for a sweeping regulatory push targeting the digital assets industry.
The collapse of the Clarity Act has injected fresh urgency into their efforts, with the two agencies now positioned as the primary drivers of crypto policy in Washington.
“We moved the ball forward, and now it’s time for the SEC and CFTC to set clear rules of the road for digital assets until Congress legislates,” Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said.
Trump came to power with a promise to transform the United States into a global hub for cryptocurrency, a pledge tied directly to building a new regulatory framework for the more than $2 trillion digital assets market.
With the Clarity Act now stalled and broadly considered dead, the SEC and CFTC represent the industry’s best remaining hope for meaningful regulatory clarity in the near term.
“President Trump promised to deliver a future-proof crypto asset regulatory market structure one way or the other, and we will help him get the job done using our existing statutory authorities,” Selig said in a statement Wednesday.
“The CFTC is locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance,” Selig added, signaling the agency’s intention to move aggressively without waiting for congressional action.
Atkins and Selig are likely to face significant resistance from Wall Street incumbents who are watching closely to see whether crypto firms gain competitive advantages without being subject to equivalent regulatory burdens.
Democrats have expressed deep reservations about the two agency heads proceeding without legislative backing, warning that rules issued without the Clarity Act’s statutory foundation will be vulnerable to legal challenges and future reversal.
The Clarity Act would have provided crucial legal cover for any agency-issued crypto rules, protecting them both in court and from potential rollback by future administrations with less favorable views toward the industry.
Atkins and Selig are both expected to push forward with expanding 24-hour trading in financial markets, a model long associated with cryptocurrency exchanges that operates outside traditional market hours.
Atkins’ SEC is preparing to unveil a closely watched initiative that would allow U.S. stocks to be traded using crypto-based technology, a proposal that has drawn concern from traditional financial firms including GOP megadonor Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities.
Bank regulators are simultaneously working to implement a law passed last year that established a formal regulatory structure for stablecoins, a category of digital currency pegged to the value of the dollar.
