U.S. Agencies Take Separate Crypto Steps After CLARITY Act Vote Fails
The SEC, CFTC and Federal Reserve issued targeted relief, enforcement guidance and stablecoin proposals after the Senate rejected a motion to advance H.R. 3633 on Sept. 15.
U.S. regulators have taken separate steps covering tokenized securities, derivatives software and payment stablecoins after the Senate blocked broader crypto market-structure legislation.
The Senate voted 49-50 on Sept. 15 against advancing H.R. 3633, the CLARITY Act. The motion required 60 votes, leaving the bill’s proposed division of responsibilities between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission unresolved.
Within nine days, the SEC, CFTC and Federal Reserve announced actions under existing authority or previously enacted law.
The SEC announced its Innovation Exemption on Sept. 17. The temporary relief covers eligible venues that facilitate permissioned trading in certain tokenized NMS stocks without exchange registration under Section 3(a)(1) of the Exchange Act.
The exemption also provides conditional relief for certain liquidity providers from the Exchange Act’s dealer definition. Eligible tokenized stocks must preserve investors’ traditional dividend, voting and other shareholder rights.
SEC Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda said the relief limits the number of permitted symbols and caps trading volume. It also requires regular public release of transaction data such as price, size, time, pool address, end-of-day pool size and daily volume.
“The Innovation Exemption allows TSVs temporary relief from concerns that they may be viewed as an ‘exchange’ under the Exchange Act when they make tokenized NMS stocks available for permissioned trading via innovative automated market makers and liquidity pools,” Uyeda said.
The SEC’s temporary relief is intended to bridge toward longer-term rulemaking. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said the exemption would allow tokenized stocks to trade in permissioned environments while the commission considers additional action for onchain trading.
“The Innovation Exemption, while temporary, would allow TSVs to trade tokenized NMS stock in a permissioned environment today while the Commission considers the need for additional action to facilitate onchain trading,” Atkins said.
The CFTC’s Market Participants Division issued a separate no-action position on Sept. 17 for passive software providers. The position covers qualifying providers and personnel whose software gives users access to regulated derivatives markets, provided they meet the stated conditions.
The Federal Reserve announced separate proposals on Sept. 24 at 2:30 p.m. ET (18:30 UTC) for payment stablecoin issuers supervised by the Board. The proposals would require issuers to maintain one-to-one reserves made up of approved assets such as short-term Treasury securities and other high-quality liquid instruments.
They would also establish standardized capital requirements for certain credit and operational risks, risk-management standards and an application process for Board-supervised banks seeking approval to issue payment stablecoins under the GENIUS Act. The comment period would close 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.
The measures provide near-term regulatory guidance for specific activities, but they do not create a single market-structure statute. The Senate’s vote that halted the CLARITY Act left the broader legislative framework unresolved.
