A top Coinbase executive says US senators are closing in on a compromise over the CLARITY Act, a bill that could finally give digital assets a clear regulatory framework in the United States.
Paul Grewal, Coinbase's chief legal officer, told CoinTelegraph that lawmakers have made meaningful progress toward agreeing on the CLARITY Act and that a Senate markup vote could happen in the near future. No specific date has been set, but the fact that negotiations have reached this stage signals a shift in how Congress approaches crypto regulation after years of ambiguity and enforcement-driven oversight.
The CLARITY Act, introduced earlier this year by a bipartisan group of House members including French Hill and Dusty Johnson, aims to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets. Its central goal is straightforward: define which assets fall under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission and which belong to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Right now, that line barely exists. The result has been a patchwork of enforcement actions, Wells notices, and court battles that have left companies guessing and investors exposed to sudden regulatory risk.
A markup is the stage where a committee debates, amends, and votes on whether to advance a bill to the full chamber. It is the legislative equivalent of moving from a rough draft to a polished manuscript. Most bills never reach this point. They get introduced, referred to committee, and quietly expire when Congress moves on to other priorities. So when Grewal says a Senate markup is expected soon, he is describing a tangible procedural milestone, not just political optimism.
The House Financial Services Committee already advanced its version of crypto market structure legislation, the FIT21 Act, in May with notable bipartisan support. Forty-one Democrats crossed the aisle to vote yes. That vote demonstrated something that had been in question for a while: enough lawmakers on both sides understand that the absence of rules is actively harming the United States' competitive position in the global digital asset market.
The Senate has been the slower chamber. Its banking and agriculture committees share jurisdiction over crypto, which creates procedural complexity and, frankly, more opportunities for delay. But several senators, including Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand, have been pushing their colleagues to act. The CLARITY Act represents the most serious bipartisan effort in the upper chamber to date.
What this means for crypto businesses and investors
For founders and executives building in the crypto space, regulatory clarity is not an abstract policy concern. It determines whether a token launch is a multimillion-dollar compliance exercise or a potential enforcement target. It affects how exchanges structure their listings, how custody providers operate, and whether institutional investors feel confident enough to allocate capital to the sector. The current ambiguity has driven significant activity offshore. Companies like Binance, Bybit, and OKX have built massive operations in jurisdictions with clearer frameworks, including the European Union under its MiCA regulation and Singapore under its Payment Services Act.
According to research highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, the United States has lost ground to Europe and parts of Asia in attracting crypto startups and venture capital since 2022. A workable federal framework could slow or even reverse that trend, but only if the final legislation balances consumer protection with enough flexibility to allow innovation. Overly prescriptive rules could achieve the opposite, cementing the offshore advantage while doing little to protect retail investors.
The timing is also relevant. Bitcoin has been trading near record levels above $100,000, institutional adoption through spot ETFs has accelerated, and the outgoing SEC chair Gary Gensler's enforcement-heavy approach is widely expected to wind down under new leadership. Congress acting now would catch a wave of renewed mainstream interest in digital assets rather than legislating in reaction to a crisis.
Grewal's public comments suggest Coinbase, which has spent heavily on lobbying and faced its own Wells notice from the SEC, sees a genuine window for progress. Whether that window produces a signed law or another stalled initiative depends on whether senators can resolve the remaining sticking points, particularly around how to classify tokens that may start as securities but evolve into commodities as networks decentralize.
Watch for the markup announcement. Once that date lands, the real negotiation begins, and the details that emerge will shape the next decade of crypto in the United States.
