16 days to pass CLARITY Act, CFTC chair says in push for crypto bill

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said 16 legislative days remain before Congress breaks for its August recess, and the window to pass the CLARITY Act is closing fast. The goal, he said, is to lock in a statutory framework for digital assets that a future administration cannot undo through agency rulemaking.

“We want to make sure the next administration, if it’s a Democrat administration that’s hostile to crypto like the last one, can’t tear apart all of our rules,” Selig said. “That’s why the bill’s named CLARITY.” He added that the United States must remain the crypto capital of the world and that clear statutory rules, not regulation by enforcement, are the only way to get there. If innovation does not happen in the US, he warned, it goes to China or another foreign country.

Lawmakers are still working through provisions around bad actors and ethics language that have slowed progress in the Senate. The most vocal opposition comes from the banking industry, led by JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

“The banks will not accept it the way it is,” Dimon said in a separate interview. “We’ll fight it. If we lose, we lose and we’ll live. It will be fought.” His objection centers on stablecoin provisions that would allow crypto companies to effectively pay interest on deposits without the FDIC insurance protections banks must carry. Selig pushed back, describing the banking industry’s reading of the stablecoin and commodity exchange provisions as a misreading of the statute. He framed the administration’s position as pro-competition and pro-innovation, with investor protection and market integrity remaining on the table.

If the CLARITY Act clears the Senate before recess, it would for the first time establish clear legal boundaries between the SEC and CFTC over digital asset jurisdiction. That would end years of regulatory ambiguity that has kept significant institutional capital on the sidelines and forced crypto companies to operate under constant legal uncertainty. The bill would also define which tokens are commodities and which are securities, removing the threat of enforcement-driven classification.

Selig also pointed to tokenisation as the next frontier already taking shape. Brokers are allowing customers to post tokenised collateral, he noted–a signal that blockchain-based financial market infrastructure is moving from concept to operational reality faster than most observers recognise. The CLARITY Act would provide the legal backbone for that shift to scale.

The remaining 16 legislative days will decide whether the bill gets to a vote before August. The fight is between two visions of how crypto fits into the US financial system: one that enshrines clear rules in statute, and one that preserves the banking industry’s current competitive advantages. The outcome will affect every company handling digital assets, from exchanges to custodians to stablecoin issuers.