Update, August 6, 2026, 11:22 p.m.: A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) announced Thursday evening that the Clarity Act would not receive a vote before senators left for August recess, but that it would be “queued up first thing when we come back.”
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which the U.S. House of Representatives passed in 2025, would be the first piece of federal legislation establishing a national regulatory rulebook for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. Cryptocurrencies are currently governed by a combination of federal agency regulations, state laws, and state regulations based on varying interpretations of crypto as a security or a commodity.
Proponents of the Clarity Act say that the bill establishes a clear set of rules for cryptocurrencies, allowing consumers and firms to understand their rights and obligations and regulators to operate under a unified framework. They also argue that the status quo is too ambiguous to allow for effective regulation or to promote innovation.
Critics maintain that the framework codified by the act is harmful, undermines regulatory authority, and “legitimizes risky and exploitative crypto industry practices” while failing to address illicit uses. Democratic legislators have also pushed for an ethics provision that would prevent elected officials and their families, and President Donald Trump in particular, from continuing to profit from an industry they are responsible for regulating.
The Senate is currently considering the bill but has only a few days before its August recess to bring the legislation to the floor for debate. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has said he plans to hold a vote on the bill this week, but he may not have the votes to do so without buy-in from Democrats, who say they have not received assurances that their concerns surrounding ethics and enforcement provisions have been adequately addressed.
Without that initial vote, it is unlikely that the legislation will take priority over the upcoming midterm elections and debates over a government funding bill when senators return in September.
The Maroon spoke to Kara Calvert, vice president of U.S. policy at the crypto firm Coinbase, about how the framework established by the bill would work, criticisms of its ethics and enforcement provisions, and whether the Senate will vote to pass the Clarity Act before its recess begins next week.
Note: This interview, which was conducted on August 2, has been edited for clarity and brevity.
In a post on X earlier this month, you said that it was “no exaggeration” to call the Clarity Act one of the most important pieces of tech legislation since the 1996 Telecommunications Act, [which updated a 1934 federal communications law to include the internet]. Other proponents of the bill, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have praised it for clarifying the regulatory framework around cryptocurrency and for putting investor protections in place to protect consumers. Why do you think the Clarity Act is so impactful, and how does it change the current state of play for the cryptocurrency industry and for the broader financial sector?
I’ve been doing technology policy for 25 years, and this truly is the bill that will transform the future of finance. And just like the 1996 Telecom Act transformed how we think about the internet, how you access the internet, who can access the internet, making sure that there was interoperability [different systems were able to interact with each other], making sure that people were protected. All of those things hold true for the Clarity Act and are even more important because we’re not just talking about transferring information across the internet and the airwaves; we’re really talking about transferring value.
This [bill] is one of the most important things I think we can do for our generation, for your generation, for our parents’ generation as they think about how they are going to start to move value and money cheaper, faster, better. But we can’t do without rules, and so that’s what we’re asking for.
What would the Clarity Act change about the framework that exists now? Or is your argument that there isn’t a framework right now, and if so, what would the Clarity Act put in place?
Right now we are primarily regulated by states. So, in Illinois, there’s a crypto law that will be coming into effect next year that only exists in two other places, California and New York. Every other state really operates under a money transmission license that sets out rules: How do you move money? How do you hold money? How do you custody it? But it doesn’t really set out a framework for these new types of digital assets, for things like Bitcoin, for Ethereum, for stablecoins [cryptocurrencies that maintain a generally fixed value relative to another currency, like the U.S. dollar]. If you think about the way the rails move right now for our financial system, they’re really built on the old way of moving money. And so, what we need is a new way to move money, and we need the rules to reflect that.
Some states are ahead on how to think about this new transfer of value, but really we need a federal framework that will take this. It will uplevel consumer protections for everybody. It ensures that when you use [cryptocurrency], you know what you’re getting. You can read about it. It’s disclosed. It really will help prevent scams and frauds.
That’s the other thing that we frequently hear: “I don’t really know about this [digital asset], but I just hear it’s used for scams and fraud.” We need to get beyond that, because the use cases are so transformational for crypto.
You’ve spoken a little bit about the consumer aspect of it, but what about for industry—what is the Clarity Act doing for platforms like Coinbase that are heavily involved in the cryptocurrency industry? What are you all getting out of this new law?
We are getting a set of rules. For the last, really, four to five years, the crypto industry has very much been under attack, and it was I think largely born out of, again, this idea that it was only used for scams and fraud. We had a couple of really bad actors in terms of the FTX failure and some of the other truly fraudulent activities. And what we get out of this is a stable environment, a stable market in which to grow.
Coinbase, we are a centralized intermediary, so we allow you to come to our platform. It’s often the first access that people have to crypto. That’s why we were founded, actually, was to buy and sell Bitcoin, and now we have evolved into, I think, the app for everything. So, whether you’re buying and selling Bitcoin or any other asset, or entering into [decentralized finance], you come to Coinbase to open an account. We know who you are. You give us your information. So, it’s similar to a bank in that respect. We really need to know who people are. That’s how we prevent bad actors from engaging.
And so, what this does for Coinbase is it sets out that framework for us to engage. But it also does it for all sorts of other types of intermediaries that are common in the financial system.
What we tried to do was create a similar [framework], not identical, but similar—with the same outcomes of consumer protection, of making sure that we combat illicit finance. Basically, the bad guy is overseas. The bad guy is here [in the United States]. We need the tools to go after those folks. And so, for a company like Coinbase, it’s a federal framework. For law enforcement, for example, they love it because it gives them new tools to go after bad guys. The government loves it because now they know what we’re actually doing. Who are the players involved? You have to register. You have to know your customers.
[While some law enforcement groups, including the Fraternal Order of Police and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, have supported the Clarity Act, others, including the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and the National District Attorneys Association, have criticized the bill for “weaken[ing] longstanding investigative and enforcement authorities.”]
Then you have the builders and the developers. Developers [who make blockchain-based programs] have been pushed overseas…. Right now, it’s a risky business in the sense that people don’t know if the investment’s going to keep up. They don’t know if they’re going to be buying digital assets because, again, we need a federal framework.
Industry reports and national surveys put U.S. consumer crypto ownership somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. What are everyday Americans using cryptocurrency for, and why are they putting their money in crypto over other more traditional investment options?
Sending money to friends, sending money overseas, buying things. It is a faster, cheaper, better way to use a digital dollar. When you use Venmo or PayPal, or even sending something by a debit card, all of that feels instant to Americans because it looks instant. But, really, there are anywhere between four to 12 intermediaries that touch every single transaction, and every one of those transactions has a cost. It either has fees, it has time, it has uncertainty because every time those dollars or messages transfer from person to person—there’s risk.
What this does, what stablecoins [do], is to take the risk out of it. It allows you to transfer a digital dollar from me to you instantly and for less than a cent. That has never been done before. So that’s what the excitement is…. Blockchains are just a new way to transfer information and value.
I, as a consumer, have a level of federal protection if my bank goes under; my money is insured up to a certain point. I have some protection against fraud and other things, either through the bank or from my government. One of the critiques of crypto is that that same level of security against scams, for instance, doesn’t exist. If you lose your money, you have little recourse. How should consumers think about that aspect of it compared to their bank, where they know what they’re getting and they know that they have some level of protection?
The bank comparison is a great one, because the reason banks have a rule book set out that requires them to have FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation] insurance, requires them to have clawbacks… is because they do something called fractional reserve lending. So, when you take $1 to your bank, they immediately lend that dollar out. That’s how they make money. It’s also how they provide loans in your communities. So, it’s a really, really important function that these banks play.
What we do is different. When you bring $1 to Coinbase, or when you take it to, say, a stablecoin, and you want $USDC [a stablecoin matched to the U.S. dollar]… that dollar stays in the account; it’s not lent back out. So, when you come to Coinbase and you buy a Bitcoin, that is backed one to one. You know that your Bitcoin is here, and so it doesn’t have the same type of risk that a bank has if a bank fails because a bank doesn’t have all the money to pay you all back if something bad happens. We hold it all one to one.
A stablecoin provider in the same way holds your dollar in a bank or a treasury [bond] or some other type of very highly liquid asset, and the risks just aren’t the same. But it’s really important that if you come into Coinbase, you will see that your account is not FDIC-insured, because we don’t fractionally reserve lend. We don’t do that type of lending. So that’s the important comparison there.
And it’s not just crypto where we have all these scams and fraud. We spend a lot of time working with law enforcement, and every Tuesday we put out updates on what to look for, and how to combat fraud, and how to not be a victim. But the reality is the phishing scams, the takeovers, the text messages, the—I hate this word—but the pig-butchering fraud. That is real, but it’s not specific just to crypto.
[According to a 2025 Federal Bureau of Investigation report, Americans lost around $11 billion to crypto-related cybercrime that year, accounting for half the value of all reported cybercrime. Since 2024, the FBI has intervened to prevent approximately $500 million in cryptocurrency scam losses.]
Why should the 70 or 80 percent of Americans that don’t invest in crypto care about this bill’s passage? Why is more regulation, or a different kind of regulation, important to the vast majority of Americans?
Where we are is still not necessarily [the crypto industry’s] infancy, because crypto’s been around now for 15 years. Bitcoin obviously is the longest-running digital asset and has still the highest market cap, highest liquidity. So, I think what you are going to see in the next five to 10 years is we will continue to see the transformation of digital finance…. Somebody needs to set out the rulebook because in 10 years, most Americans won’t know that they are using crypto…. But, in order to do that, they need the tools to make that happen. And this is just another one of those tools.
Reporting that we’ve been following from this weekend suggests that Clarity will at least get its procedural vote in the Senate, but we have about a week left before senators go on their August recess, and then when they come back, the midterms sort of throw everything into turmoil. What have you been hearing about what the chances are for Clarity to actually get passed this week, and do you think it is less likely for the bill to pass if they do not get that final vote before August 7?
I am very bullish that there will be a vote this week. I think that there has been so much work put into this by [members of Congress on] both sides of the aisle, so Republicans and Democrats… have spent countless hours, thousands, months and months of work on this. It’s really hard to see them just walk away from, you know, a 616-page bill and really a bipartisan work product that now has been in the making for this. The first version of this bill was introduced back in 2018, so nothing has happened quickly. It has had years of deliberation, and I feel very positive that it will come up for a vote this week.
Some of the final holdouts, particularly on the Democratic side, have raised a couple of concerns, both with regard to the ethics provisions of the bill and how they relate to President Trump and his family, and also this question of what role state attorneys general (AGs) will have in enforcing the bill, or if it will solely be federal-side enforcement. How are you thinking about these last hurdles?
The ethics issue has certainly been a major issue that has been raised. Last week, the president agreed to the first-of-its-kind ethics provision.… I guess depending on what side you look at it, it’s either a win or it’s a massive concession.… [The Clarity Act would establish] an obligation for the president, vice president, members of Congress, and their spouses not to issue digital assets or promote and endorse [them]. It’s industry- and sector-specific—which I think is a bit frustrating for the crypto industry, that [it would face] a different set of standards, but I think it’s part of the process at this point and an important part of the process. So that is something that will have to be worked out. It’s above our pay grade. It’s certainly between the White House and the senators as they determine how best to resolve those issues.
State AGs will still have the ability to enforce against things like fraud, manipulation, deceit, other types of consumer protection laws, other laws in which they can go after bad actors.… But because you now have a federal regulator with the [Securities and Exchange Commission] and the CFTC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission], it becomes very clear what your rulebook is, and they can enforce against that. That, I think, is the key, and that’s what’s going to make sure that everybody has consistent standards across the United States. If we start to allow for state AGs to regulate and effectively create more silos on different types of rules, it negates the reason you’re doing this bill, which is really kind of that federal preemption, [when a federal law takes precedence over a state law], one set of rulebooks, one level of protection for everybody.
One of the criticisms of the Clarity Act’s regulatory framework is the idea that the CFTC as it currently exists might not have the capacity to effectively regulate the crypto industry. Staffing has gone down significantly in the second Trump administration, and they’re issuing far fewer enforcement actions than they have previously. Is the CFTC the appropriate regulator for this, given the capacity issues that they clearly already have without this new set of tasks on their plate?
I think I would separate out the two issues. So, is it the right regulator? Absolutely. They regulate these markets today. They already regulate… the contracts used to buy and sell [futures and derivatives]…. So, they already have a really clear rulebook for what we would refer to as brokers and dealers and custodians and exchanges.
The second question of whether or not they have the resources or the staffing. This bill does provide for, I believe, $150 million to make sure that it’s properly staffed and to start to both beef up enforcement, make sure that they have the appropriate people in there.
But also, this is going to take a lot of rule-writing. It’s 616 pages. There are some 45 rulemakings required, so they need people in the building to write the rules. It’s absolutely critical. One of the other parts of this is right now there is only one commissioner, [the] chairman, and so there’s been a lot of discussion about making sure that the president nominates two Democrats and two Republicans to fill out that five-person commission.
So, I think that yes, it’s the absolute right regulator. Yes, it absolutely needs more resources, and yes, it absolutely needs to be staffed up. So, hopefully, that can all occur quickly because the faster they move, the faster things like preemption kick in, the better we will have rules, the more consumer protections everybody will have.
Senator Andy Kim (D-N.J., A.B. ’04) voted against advancing the Clarity Act when it was first under consideration by the Banking Committee. In addition to ethics and conflict of interest concerns, he cited the use of cryptocurrency platforms by terrorist organizations to launder money and get around sanctions as a concern that isn’t adequately addressed in this bill. How do you respond to some of those concerns? Do you think that the Clarity Act is a good way for the government to combat these issues, or do you think further legislation will be needed to prevent more money laundering?
I think any senator can unequivocally say that this bill is better than the status quo for any kind of combating illicit finance or terrorist financing, without a doubt. It expands [the Treasury Department’s] authority. It expands sanctions authority. It expands the ability to cease transactions or to blacklist transactions. There are, I mean, just countless tools in here for law enforcement.
And I think one of the key things, and we’ve talked to Senator Kim a lot about this, [is that] the blockchain is the most transparent tool that has ever been created for financial services. You can go on the internet right now… and see where these transactions are going.
People have these wallets where they hold their cryptocurrency; I think about 600 of them are on the sanctions list today…. [Based on those 600 unique identifiers,] we’ve frozen millions of wallets because it looks like they’re connected to bad actors; you can’t do that in the traditional financial system. So, we can actually look and follow fraudulent transactions, and then the most important thing is seeing where they come out of the system. On- and off-ramps like Coinbase, that’s why it’s so important that we know who our customers are. That’s why when we move those dollars or those Bitcoin or whatever it happens to be off of our platform, we want to keep it here in the United States.
We want to keep it here where it’s safe because once it moves over to China or Russia or any of those other countries that don’t have the same interests at heart as we do, it’s gone. And, so, we usually have, you know, in working with law enforcement, illicit finance, those types of transactions, scams, fraud, we really need to know within 24 to 48 hours, 72 hours, to be able to track that down. But you can see all the movement of money, and we can then freeze those wallets.
I think it’s a myth that blockchain is better for terrorists. It just is. That’s why you actually see fewer organizations using it. I think the issue is it’s fast and it’s cheap and it’s a secure way to move value. And so that’s why, of course, bad actors want to use it. But bad actors use telephones and bad actors use cash a whole lot more than they use crypto.
[Although experts put the percentage of terror attacks financed with crypto at only around 20 percent, there is no clear evidence that the number of groups using cryptocurrencies is shrinking.]
One last thing on the question of enforcement—as you’ve noted, the bill certainly lays out a set of tools for regulators and other agencies to use in in the pursuit of prosecuting financial crimes that use crypto, but the second part of the question is whether the government is willing to use those tools. You saw [in 2025], President Trump pardoned [Binance founder] Changpeng Zhao, whose platform had been used by bad actors for financing things like terrorism. Yes, these tools exist, but is the current administration willing and able to use those tools at a time when there are financial incentives not to use them?
They are absolutely using the tools that they have…. That’s why you’ve started to see more and more law enforcement groups come out in favor of this bill because they want these tools. They need these tools, and the Department of Justice, all of the intelligence agencies, they are using their tools today to disrupt and take down bad actors. And they absolutely have investigations. They’ve sanctioned, they have freezed, and they’ve seized wallets. The U.S. Marshal[s] Service has… been working to recover these funds. So, there are a lot of tools that are being used today.
[The second Trump administration has taken a lax approach to regulating the domestic cryptocurrency industry, dropping charges, ending investigations, and eliminating a Department of Justice crypto task force. Trump and his family have also made more than $1 billion from various crypto-related ventures since he took office.]
One of your colleagues has previously said that crypto is supported across the aisle, and that the pushback to cryptocurrency legislation is largely generational and not political. Earlier this year, in the Democratic primary for one of Illinois’s Senate seats, the crypto-backed super PACs Fairshake and Protect Progress spent millions of dollars to defeat a candidate—Juliana Stratton—who ultimately won the primary by almost 10 points. Do you still think that cryptocurrency is supported by a majority of Americans? Why do you think that Illinois residents are so willing to vote for someone like Stratton, who’s been endorsed by Elizabeth Warren and J.B. Pritzker, two open critics of the crypto industry?
I mean, we do see people on all sides of the political spectrum who support crypto. I think that there is a faction, particularly of the Democratic Party, [opposed to crypto]—this is something that [Massachusetts Senator] Elizabeth Warren wanted to create four years ago, her anti-crypto army, and I think that that has taken hold with a lot of politicians. At the same time, you have a lot of really smart politicians and lawmakers who are thinking, “Why would we not want to create rules?” If you’re pro-regulation, you’re pro–consumer protection, you’re pro–law enforcement, why would you not want a federal law? It just doesn’t compute.
And, so, I think, you know, Congressman [Raja] Krishnamoorthi [who ran against Stratton in the primary] was strongly supportive of rules, and that is, I think, a decision that the super PACs had to make. This guy was there. He talked about it. He’s pro-crypto. He showed up at Stand With Crypto events, and so that, I think, is a really important part of this political process. You support the people who support what your like-minded goals are.
So, I’m hopeful that this vote on Thursday will actually establish the fact that this is bipartisan. You have to have Democratic support, and so, again, everybody along the political spectrum, from folks like [Representative] Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), to [Representative] Angie Craig (D-Minn.), to [Senator] Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)… they’re all thinking about how this impacts their constituents. And I hope that when a new senator comes from Illinois, they think about it in terms of how it affects their constituents.
Given how close this vote is expected to be, and what you’ve already said in terms of supporting people who have like-minded perspectives on crypto, do you anticipate that a yes or a no vote on Clarity will be decisive in how the crypto industry spends money in November’s elections? Will crypto industry PACs like Fairshake, which has been supported by Coinbase, spend against Democrats or Republicans who vote against Clarity or vote to prevent it from getting to the floor for a debate? How is the industry thinking about its political spending as the midterm elections get closer?
Well, I think it’s unquestionable that this is the most important vote that the Senate will ever take on crypto, and it may be the last if there aren’t 60 votes. I think that it is a really important moment for both parties to come together and find a way to get to that 60-vote threshold. I would love to see much, much higher than 60 votes. It could be very close. We could actually see, you know, with [the 2025 Genius Act, which created a regulatory framework for stablecoins], we had, I believe, [18] Democrats who supported the Genius Act.
And I think that the senators are going to have a decision to make on Thursday or whenever this vote comes up as to whether or not they want rules in place, and… frankly, if you like crypto or hate crypto, you should still want federal rules. So that will be a moment that I think everybody will be looking at going into the election.
Stand With Crypto [a pro-crypto advocacy organization] has 3 million advocates that have sent in over a million emails and phone calls because they care about this bill. Those are going to be the people that are voting in November.
People see political ads, and maybe if you are less involved in the activist part of crypto, attack ads can still be decisive. In the Illinois primary, the crypto industry and pro-crypto groups didn’t exclusively run attack ads about crypto, but about other issues too. So I think it’s still worthwhile to ask where money will be going based on support or opposition to the Clarity Act.
It’s a great question for Fairshake, honestly. They are an independent organization. They’ll make those decisions, but I think they will look at the different decisive moments. There will be a few, and this is one of them.
