Strategist: CLARITY Act delay is a matter of national security

James Thorne, chief market strategist at Wellington-Altus Private Wealth, is reframing the CLARITY Act debate. The bill, usually discussed in terms of market structure and regulation, carries a different weight, he said. Delay in its passage raises a question about the U.S. position in the future global financial system.

Thorne criticized what he calls the “consensus” view among regulators and bank incumbents in Washington. “Its latest error is the conviction that Team Warren, the regulators, bank incumbents, and professional crypto skeptics clustered around Washington, can permanently defeat Bitcoin and the broader digital-asset economy,” he said.

He drew a direct comparison to the U.S. experience with semiconductor manufacturing. Allowing strategic industrial capacity to relocate offshore created dependencies that eventually became national security issues, he argued. A similar mistake could play out with digital asset infrastructure. If regulatory uncertainty forces blockchain developers, exchanges, and tokenization platforms beyond U.S. borders, other countries may end up setting the rules for digital assets.