Breaking: Congress Charges Ahead with Crypto Regulation—GENIUS & CLARITY Acts Set to Reshape Digital Assets

Washington finally wakes up to crypto—with not one, but two landmark bills hitting the floor. The GENIUS and CLARITY Acts could define the next decade of digital finance. Or die in committee like every other attempt. Place your bets.

### The GENIUS Act: Smart Rules for Dumb Money?

Lawmakers claim this framework will 'protect investors' while 'fostering innovation.' Translation: more paperwork for startups, more loopholes for whales. The usual.

### CLARITY’s Dirty Secret: Banks Win Again

Buried in Section 4B: provisions letting legacy institutions tokenize anything—from your mortgage to your cat—with regulatory fast-tracking. DeFi projects get 18 months to comply or get wrecked.

### The Bottom Line

If either bill passes, expect a 72-hour market tantrum followed by institutional money flooding in. The crypto casino just got its gaming license—and the house always wins.

GENIUS Act requirements

The GENIUS Act establishes a federal framework for the issuance and supervision of payment stablecoins. 

The bill directs the Federal Reserve to register and examine insured depository institutions at the national level while allowing qualifying state-chartered entities to issue dollar-backed tokens under comparable reserve, disclosure, redemption, and risk-management standards.

Issuers must hold high-quality liquid assets, such as cash, Treasury bills, and short-duration government securities, equal to their token liabilities. Additionally, they must report attestations at set intervals. 

The measure instructs banking regulators to establish an examination schedule, creates consumer redemption rights at par within limited time windows, and sets segregation rules so that issuers cannot rehypothecate backing assets without obtaining specific customer authorization. 

House clears CLARITY Act for Senate review

In a separate action, the House approved the CLARITY Act by a 294‑134 vote and sent the bill to the Senate. 

CLARITY defines jurisdictional lines for digital asset trading venues that list tokens meeting functional tests, which fall outside the scope of securities law, once the networks reach sufficient decentralization and public float. 

The bill directs the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to establish a joint registration lane that allows platforms to list qualifying tokens, trade spot, and derivatives under coordinated custody standards, and file token disclosure packets that scale with market capitalization tiers. 

Issuers that conduct sales to US persons must submit initial information statements. The measure also instructs banking supervisors to recognize qualified custodians that hold both stablecoins and non‑stable digital assets under shared segregation and audit rules.

The White House expects to host the signing of the GENIUS Act tomorrow. The Senate now takes up the CLARITY Act on a schedule that leadership has not yet set. 

The House action locks in the first chamber‑wide votes to codify federal stablecoin oversight and to define trading venue treatment for broader digital assets in the current Congress.