Coinbase wants Congress to treat the CLARITY Act as nearly done. If you're building in crypto, the safer bet is to watch what regulators are already doing.
Coinbase has a simple message on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act: the bill is close. Close is doing a lot of work there. The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act on May 14 in a 15 to 9 vote, with Democrats Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland joining Republicans, according to Investor's Business Daily and MarketWatch. That was real movement. It still wasn't a law.
The House passed its version, H.R. 3633, on July 17, 2025. The GENIUS Act, the stablecoin bill, made it all the way through Congress and was signed by President Trump the next day. CLARITY didn't. It moved from the House into the slower and more expensive part of Washington, where the question isn't whether crypto should get rules, but who gets protected by the final wording.
That's the fight. It isn't abstract.
Coinbase cares because stablecoin rewards are a large business line, not a side issue. The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Coinbase offers some USDC holders a 3.5% reward through its relationship with Circle, while banks argue those payouts look too much like deposit interest without the same capital rules and examinations banks live under. Jamie Dimon didn't need a white paper to understand the threat. JPMorgan and other banks see a direct attack on deposits.
The fight is about money, not vocabulary
The clean public version of CLARITY says the bill would decide when a digital asset is treated as a security and when it falls under commodity regulation. You should care about that if you're issuing tokens, running an exchange, backing a wallet company, or writing a check into any of them. But the argument holding the bill in place is much narrower and much more practical: whether crypto firms can keep paying customers yield that banks say is economically equivalent to interest.
Coinbase already showed how hard it will fight on that point. The Verge reported in January that Brian Armstrong withdrew support for an earlier Senate draft hours before a Banking Committee markup, saying on X that Coinbase would rather have no bill than a bad bill. Tim Scott, the Republican chairman of the committee, then canceled the markup. Frankly, that tells you more than another optimistic quote from an executive ever could.
There is also the ethics problem. AP reported last week that Trump's federal disclosure showed about $1.2 billion from crypto-related businesses in 2025, while other outlets have put the crypto haul even higher. When the president's family is making that kind of money from the same industry Congress is trying to regulate, disclosure language stops being a footnote. It becomes part of the bill's political cost.
So yes, CLARITY is closer than it was before May 14. It also still has to survive the full Senate, the Agriculture Committee's piece of the market-structure work, floor time, amendments, and whatever deal banks and crypto lobbyists can bear to sign. Close isn't done.
Circle didn't wait for Congress
The more useful signal this week came from Circle, not from the Senate. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency approved Circle's plan to launch Circle National Trust, a federally regulated national trust bank. The Financial Times reported that the license allows Circle to manage reserves backing its $73 billion USDC stablecoin, though it doesn't let the company take deposits or make loans like a traditional bank.
That is the practical map for founders. Agencies are already moving. The OCC can approve a trust bank. The SEC and CFTC can issue guidance, bring cases, or soften old positions. Congress can still write the grand framework, but it isn't the only institution shaping the market.
If you're building a U.S. crypto company, don't build your compliance plan around a bill that has been called almost finished for months. Build around the regulator in front of you, the license you can actually apply for, and the bank partner that will still answer your emails if CLARITY slips again.
Coinbase may be right that the bill is near the goal line. But the hard yards in Washington are usually the ones after everyone starts saying the work is almost over.
Also read: How to Farm Crypto Airdrops Without Getting Sybil-Filtered • Circle Wins Final OCC Approval to Become a National Trust Bank • Mike Novogratz Turned a Distressed Bitcoin Mine Into an AI Power Giant
