It’s Over for Waiting on Congress: SEC and CFTC Make 9 Moves to Write Crypto Rules Without the CLARITY Act
The CLARITY Act is dead for 2026. The Senate failed cloture 49–50 on September 15, falling 11 votes short of the 60 needed.
But U.S. crypto regulation has not stalled. The SEC and CFTC have collectively made at least nine concrete regulatory moves, and they did it without waiting for Capitol Hill.
Regulators Move Without Congress
Within 24 hours of the Senate vote, SEC Chair Atkins confirmed the crypto agenda will proceed even if the CLARITY Act stalls.
CFTC Chair Michael Selig echoed that position. Both regulators said existing statutory authority is enough to build a working framework.
On September 17, the SEC issued the Innovation Exemption, a five-year conditional window for Tokenized Securities Venues to trade tokenized U.S. stocks.
The same day, the CFTC cleared the path for crypto developers to build trading tools without broker registration. Both moves landed on the same calendar date, not by accident.
The market felt the CLARITY Act loss immediately. Spot Bitcoin ETFs bled $450 million after the Senate blocked CLARITY, the biggest single-day outflow since June.
Fidelity’s FBTC shed $214.8 million. BlackRock’s IBIT lost $161.7 million. Ether ETFs followed with $141.47 million in exits.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong had already told the market that crypto gets regulatory clarity even if the CLARITY Act fails the Senate test. That framing is now the base case.
Nine Moves That Replaced One Bill
The SEC and CFTC have not been idle. Their joint token taxonomy in March classified BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, and DOGE as digital commodities.
A harmonization MOU ended years of jurisdictional overlap. The CFTC launched an Innovation Advisory Committee with Coinbase, Ripple, and Robinhood CEOs at the table.
Updated CFTC crypto FAQs landed on September 24, telling registered firms exactly how they can use blockchain.
Franklin Templeton partnered with Bybit the same week to offer tokenized money-market funds while Congress remained gridlocked.
ARK Invest launched its tokenized ARKVX fund on Ethereum. Products are shipping. The CLARITY Act was optional.
There are limits to what agencies can do. Rules written without a statute can be reversed by a future commission.
The Innovation Exemption is temporary and volume-capped. The CFTC’s proposed crypto market rule, “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets”, is still under White House OIRA review and is not yet final.
Senator Lummis warned that if the CLARITY Act misses this Congress, market structure legislation slips to 2030.
Midterm math makes a 2026 revival effectively zero. For now, Atkins and Selig hold the pen, and they are writing.
