CLARITY Act Failed. Now SEC and CFTC Could Rewrite U.S. Crypto Rules - Bitcoin Foundation

The CLARITY Act has failed to advance, leaving the question of how U.S. crypto assets should be classified and supervised largely unresolved by Congress. According to the Bitcoin Foundation, attention now shifts to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the two agencies most likely to shape digital-asset oversight through their own rulemaking rather than legislation.

For markets, the key implication is procedural. Agency-led rulemaking can move faster than a divided Congress, but it is also more exposed to legal challenge, shifting leadership, and reversals between administrations. That uncertainty matters for exchanges deciding where and how to list tokens, and for firms weighing compliance costs against the risk that today's guidance is revised later.

What to watch: formal rule proposals, public comment periods, and any joint statements between the SEC and CFTC clarifying which assets fall under securities versus commodities law. Enforcement actions may also signal the agencies' direction before formal rules arrive. Until that picture clears, U.S. crypto regulation is likely to be defined incrementally by regulators rather than by statute.