A Three-Punch Legislative Week: GENIUS Signed, CLARITY Still in Play
Crypto Week delivered a legislative trilogy. The GENIUS Act—solely focused on stablecoins—is already law. Still grinding through the pipeline are the Anti-CBDC Bill and the CLARITY Act—a statute that could redraw the entire regulatory map.

Unlike GENIUS, CLARITY zeroes in on first principles: what counts as a public chain, how DeFi is treated, who may issue a token, and where the lines are drawn between the SEC and the CFTC. It is explicitly the sequel to 2024’s FIT21 Act.

Only by understanding how we arrived here can we read the road ahead.

Financial Liberalization and the New Wild West
Monetary sovereignty versus inflation: the Fed protects the former in the name of controlling the latter; Trump expands the former by abandoning the latter.

The GENIUS Act cracked open the era of free-market stablecoins, slicing the Fed’s monopoly and handing slices to Silicon Valley upstarts and the Wall Street ancien régime. Yet Peter Thiel still wants the libertarian’s absolute freedom.

Flash back to 2008. The crisis turned derivatives into public enemy №1. Obama needed a technocrat to rein in a $35 trillion futures market and a $400 trillion swaps market. Enter Gary Gensler as CFTC Chair. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act swallowed the derivatives Wild West. “We must civilize the Wild West,” Gensler declared—his first regulatory victory over markets.

History loops. In 2021, Biden nominated Gensler to chair the SEC, unleashing him on the newest frontier: crypto.

Two battlefronts emerged:

1. BTC and ETH were labeled commodities, but every other token and IXO was deemed an illegal securities offering—SOL, Ripple, and beyond.

2. High leverage on exchanges was cast as “predatory,” triggering enforcement blitzes against Coinbase, Binance, and offshore venues.

Yet Gensler’s armor had a chink: the ETF. In 2021 the SEC green-lit Bitcoin futures ETFs while stonewalling spot ETFs from Grayscale et al. By 2024, after a partial court loss against Ripple, the SEC capitulated on spot Bitcoin ETFs—crowning MicroStrategy’s circular BTC-equity-bond strategy.

Crypto, the wilder party, had conquered the SEC, CFTC, White House, Congress, the Fed, and Wall Street. The age of zero defenses was here.

Footnote: SBF’s 2022 mega-donations to Biden ended with him behind bars—arguably the trigger for Gensler’s harsher stance.

CLARITY: Crypto Gets Its Legal Name
Trump repays favors; crypto steps into daylight.

In 2025 the newly inaugurated Trump fired Gensler—Democratic relic—and installed Paul Atkins, an ally since 2016, ushering in laissez-faire maximalism.

Introduced in this backdrop, CLARITY (still mid-process: through the House, awaiting the Senate) is the capstone. The Senate’s own Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act will almost certainly pass under Republican control.

Drawing the Lines: Digital Commodity, Digital Asset, Stablecoin
CLARITY’s current draft builds a three-tier scaffold:

1. Stablecoins are ring-fenced as payment instruments.

2. Digital commodities fall under the CFTC.

3. Digital assets remain with the SEC.

CFTC Wins Big: ETH, Decentralized Chains, and the 75-Million-Dollar Safe Harbor
ETH is a commodity; any truly decentralized L1 token is a commodity—trading supervised by the CFTC.

IXOs and SAFTs still start life as securities under the SEC, but enjoy a $75 million exemption window. If the token decentralizes within four years—no enforcement.

Digital commodities are redefined: not mere “virtual assets” but digitally embodied commodities that serve real utility for public chains, DeFi, or DAOs. They are not securities.

Caveat:

• NFTs are assets, never commodities—they are unique and lack fungibility.

• Yield, rewards, or profit-sharing tokens are commodities only if they sustain protocol decentralization. Anything else stays with the SEC.

Three Real-World Scenarios
To translate theory into practice:

1. IXO launch: securities at birth; tokens may exit that label if they meet the digital-commodity test.

2. Airdrop: points = securities; tokens that clear the test = commodities.

3. Exchange distribution: not securities unless any yield is promised.

The key test: the project must credibly evolve into a decentralized protocol, tradeable without intermediaries, and participants must not be promised profits.

Case Studies from the Past

• ETH itself is a commodity; SAFT-based fundraising for an ETH project is a securities offering. Once the protocol decentralizes, the token graduates to commodity status under the CFTC.

• Native ETH staking is a commodity—system-level behavior securing PoS. Whether third-party liquid-staking tokens (Lido, EigenLayer) qualify is still TBD.

• New L1/L2 chains that launch via SAFT or IXO have four years to decentralize—no single entity may control >20 % of tokens or votes. Generic foundations or DAO wrappers may not suffice; token dispersion will be scrutinized.

Joint Oversight and the Missing DeFi Act
CLARITY meticulously choreographs a dual-agency waltz between the SEC and the CFTC, acknowledging that digital commodities straddle virtual securities and physical commodities.

Yet DeFi operations remain gray. CLARITY has already rewritten the Securities Act, but DeFi is too consequential to be crammed into a stablecoin-chain-token omnibus. It deserves its own DeFi Act.

This is not mission creep. Consider the ongoing Tornado Cash case; co-founder Roman Storm’s fate may yet force the judiciary to accelerate legislative clarity.

Conclusion
CLARITY is the keystone of U.S. crypto regulation. It gives tokens and public chains their legal identities, delineates digital commodities, and relegates everything else—NFTs, stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets—to the asset bucket.

But DeFi still wanders the frontier. Until a dedicated DeFi statute arrives, the industry will watch every courtroom as closely as every congressional hearing.

A Three-Punch Legislative Week: GENIUS Signed, CLARITY Still in Play
Crypto Week delivered a legislative trilogy. The GENIUS Act—solely focused on stablecoins—is already law. Still grinding through the pipeline are the Anti-CBDC Bill and the CLARITY Act—a statute that could redraw the entire regulatory map.

Unlike GENIUS, CLARITY zeroes in on first principles: what counts as a public chain, how DeFi is treated, who may issue a token, and where the lines are drawn between the SEC and the CFTC. It is explicitly the sequel to 2024’s FIT21 Act.

Only by understanding how we arrived here can we read the road ahead.

Financial Liberalization and the New Wild West
Monetary sovereignty versus inflation: the Fed protects the former in the name of controlling the latter; Trump expands the former by abandoning the latter.

The GENIUS Act cracked open the era of free-market stablecoins, slicing the Fed’s monopoly and handing slices to Silicon Valley upstarts and the Wall Street ancien régime. Yet Peter Thiel still wants the libertarian’s absolute freedom.

Flash back to 2008. The crisis turned derivatives into public enemy №1. Obama needed a technocrat to rein in a $35 trillion futures market and a $400 trillion swaps market. Enter Gary Gensler as CFTC Chair. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act swallowed the derivatives Wild West. “We must civilize the Wild West,” Gensler declared—his first regulatory victory over markets.

History loops. In 2021, Biden nominated Gensler to chair the SEC, unleashing him on the newest frontier: crypto.

Two battlefronts emerged:

1. BTC and ETH were labeled commodities, but every other token and IXO was deemed an illegal securities offering—SOL, Ripple, and beyond.

2. High leverage on exchanges was cast as “predatory,” triggering enforcement blitzes against Coinbase, Binance, and offshore venues.

Yet Gensler’s armor had a chink: the ETF. In 2021 the SEC green-lit Bitcoin futures ETFs while stonewalling spot ETFs from Grayscale et al. By 2024, after a partial court loss against Ripple, the SEC capitulated on spot Bitcoin ETFs—crowning MicroStrategy’s circular BTC-equity-bond strategy.

Crypto, the wilder party, had conquered the SEC, CFTC, White House, Congress, the Fed, and Wall Street. The age of zero defenses was here.

Footnote: SBF’s 2022 mega-donations to Biden ended with him behind bars—arguably the trigger for Gensler’s harsher stance.

CLARITY: Crypto Gets Its Legal Name
Trump repays favors; crypto steps into daylight.

In 2025 the newly inaugurated Trump fired Gensler—Democratic relic—and installed Paul Atkins, an ally since 2016, ushering in laissez-faire maximalism.

Introduced in this backdrop, CLARITY (still mid-process: through the House, awaiting the Senate) is the capstone. The Senate’s own Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act will almost certainly pass under Republican control.

Drawing the Lines: Digital Commodity, Digital Asset, Stablecoin
CLARITY’s current draft builds a three-tier scaffold:

1. Stablecoins are ring-fenced as payment instruments.

2. Digital commodities fall under the CFTC.

3. Digital assets remain with the SEC.

CFTC Wins Big: ETH, Decentralized Chains, and the 75-Million-Dollar Safe Harbor
ETH is a commodity; any truly decentralized L1 token is a commodity—trading supervised by the CFTC.

IXOs and SAFTs still start life as securities under the SEC, but enjoy a $75 million exemption window. If the token decentralizes within four years—no enforcement.

Digital commodities are redefined: not mere “virtual assets” but digitally embodied commodities that serve real utility for public chains, DeFi, or DAOs. They are not securities.

Caveat:

• NFTs are assets, never commodities—they are unique and lack fungibility.

• Yield, rewards, or profit-sharing tokens are commodities only if they sustain protocol decentralization. Anything else stays with the SEC.

Three Real-World Scenarios
To translate theory into practice:

1. IXO launch: securities at birth; tokens may exit that label if they meet the digital-commodity test.

2. Airdrop: points = securities; tokens that clear the test = commodities.

3. Exchange distribution: not securities unless any yield is promised.

The key test: the project must credibly evolve into a decentralized protocol, tradeable without intermediaries, and participants must not be promised profits.

Case Studies from the Past

• ETH itself is a commodity; SAFT-based fundraising for an ETH project is a securities offering. Once the protocol decentralizes, the token graduates to commodity status under the CFTC.

• Native ETH staking is a commodity—system-level behavior securing PoS. Whether third-party liquid-staking tokens (Lido, EigenLayer) qualify is still TBD.

• New L1/L2 chains that launch via SAFT or IXO have four years to decentralize—no single entity may control >20 % of tokens or votes. Generic foundations or DAO wrappers may not suffice; token dispersion will be scrutinized.

Joint Oversight and the Missing DeFi Act
CLARITY meticulously choreographs a dual-agency waltz between the SEC and the CFTC, acknowledging that digital commodities straddle virtual securities and physical commodities.

Yet DeFi operations remain gray. CLARITY has already rewritten the Securities Act, but DeFi is too consequential to be crammed into a stablecoin-chain-token omnibus. It deserves its own DeFi Act.

This is not mission creep. Consider the ongoing Tornado Cash case; co-founder Roman Storm’s fate may yet force the judiciary to accelerate legislative clarity.

Conclusion
CLARITY is the keystone of U.S. crypto regulation. It gives tokens and public chains their legal identities, delineates digital commodities, and relegates everything else—NFTs, stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets—to the asset bucket.

But DeFi still wanders the frontier. Until a dedicated DeFi statute arrives, the industry will watch every courtroom as closely as every congressional hearing.