The White House has set a March 1 deadline for the banking industry and crypto companies to reach an agreement on stable coin yield, paving the way for the Clarity Act, the market structure legislation intended to put the industry on solid legal footing in the United States.
The House adopted clear measures seven months ago. The Senate set numerous deadlines to move it forward, and they were all missed. The last deadline was also missed without any agreement.
The crypto industry has focused on legislation as the next catalyst, as if it is the only path to long-awaited regulatory clarity in the world’s largest economy.
But legislation is not the only way.
Existing laws that provide authority to market regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are broad and flexible. These agencies are acting now.
New legislation would safeguard against future Gary Genslers, but the era of Gary Gensler is over. President Donald Trump appointed a friendly president to bless the industry, just as Gensler appointed a hostile president to torment it.
And while everything Trump has done regarding crypto has created political headwinds, it could be that all he really needed to do was pick the right leader for the SEC, and I suspect he did that.
Trump appointed a veteran, Paul Atkins, who knows how to write regulations that will withstand legal challenges. Trump then appointed one of Atkins’ deputies to head the other investment agency, the CFTC, ensuring harmonization of rules across all markets. All the industry needs to do to keep from screwing up is to avoid another FTX-like implosion.
This is the crypto game to lose.
Not his first rodeo
Paul Atkins served for six years at the SEC in the 2000s, under three different presidencies. Since then, he has been an advisor to the Chamber of Digital Commerce and Securitization.
He was sworn in in April 2025. A few weeks later, he spoke at an event at the SEC office, saying the agency had the authority to grant the crypto industry the rules it needs to operate.
Later, in front of a dozen reporters, he was asked whether he should wait for Congress to draft legislation on market structure before he could act. He reiterated that his staff could and would act with or without new legislation.
Atkins promised to act with confidence, like a regulator who understands the scope of his current authority.
Harmonization
And Atkins will be aligned with the head of the SEC’s sister agency, the CFTC.
Gensler was never aligned with Rostin Benham, the former head of the CFTC. Benham kept asking Congress to act, which Gensler kept saying was unnecessary.
Benham clearly did not believe that every coin was a security, but Gensler believed that only Bitcoin escaped his scrutiny. They were not harmonized.
But to regulate effectively and provide confidence to founders, it is essential that agencies not argue over when and if a digital asset can move from the jurisdiction of the SEC to that of the CFTC.
So I think one of the main reasons why Atkins has not yet released the draft rules for public comment is that he wanted to do it in concert with the CFTC. However, Trump changed course by appointing a chairman for that agency, and the new helmsman, Michael Selig, was not sworn in until late December.
It would not be surprising if one day we learned that Atkins convinced the president to change course on the appointment of CFTC chairmen to ensure that the two agencies work together.
Expect a formal memorandum of understanding between the two agencies outlining responsibilities soon. This arrangement will be reminiscent of the historic Shadd-Johnson Agreement of 1981.
The new sheriff
By this fall, I assume the Crypto Project will have submitted draft rules – each written in consultation with the other – before their respective committees.
By next spring, these rules will have been modified based on public feedback and, most likely, finalized.
This will be the first administration to actually write rules with decentralized financial networks in mind.
Under the new rules, it should be possible, for example, for exchanges like Kraken, Coinbase and Crypto.com to finally say that all their operations are registered with an agency and under state control.
It should also be possible for new companies to raise funds through token sales. Some of these tokens will likely benefit from rights that entrepreneurs have avoided in the era of app-based regulation, such as the ability to distribute revenue.
Provided the rules are written conservatively enough to survive legal challenges, the industry will likely have two or three years to develop before it can even return to the work of Atkins and Selig (since it will require both a Senate nomination process And a new regulatory process).
Accomplished fact
Even though we all know that crypto has always been an industry that welcomes new participants, the president’s family has done digital assets a disservice by launching memecoins, a stablecoin, and bitcoin miners. These activities could have been enough to torpedo any hope of satisfying the crypto lobby’s ambitions for this session of Congress.
But while Congress dithers, agency staff are writing rules.
If the SEC and CFTC work together effectively – both agency leaders announced the arrival of several crypto policies today – whatever arrangement they design could become law anyway. After all, Congress codified the Shadd-Johnson Agreement in the early 1980s.
So lobbyists might ultimately get the legislation they want, but only after crypto becomes mainstream — without Congress, which is why Trump’s decision to appoint Paul Atkins might already have been enough to give the industry enough legal space to reach its potential.
