Crypto Stocks Surge As Senate Committee Advances Long-Stalled CLARITY Act
The Senate Banking Committee advanced the crypto industrys top legislative priority after nearly a year of gridlock and months of negotiations, sending crypto-exposed stocks rallying on the news, with Coinbase up roughly 9%, Strategy up 8% and Robinhood and Galaxy Digital both up 6%. AFP via Getty Images Key Facts The vote fell largely along party lines, with Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego the lone member of his party crossing over to join all Republicans in support. The bills core function is to settle a years-long turf war between two federal agencies—the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates stocks, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates commodities like wheat and oil futures—neither of which had clear authority over crypto. CLARITY would allow most crypto tokens to get classified as “digital commodities” overseen by the CFTC, while a smaller subset deemed “securities” stay with the SEC, as well as requiring crypto exchanges to follow the same anti-money laundering rules that banks do. A long-running fight over stablecoins, crypto tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar, was resolved earlier this month with a compromise that allows stablecoin issuers like Circle to pay rewards to holders, but with restrictions designed to keep them from functioning as bank-deposit substitutes (that compromise