After a Clarity Act funeral, the crypto world would keep turning

"Only Congress can ensure that regulation in this area is future-proofed through comprehensive market structure legislation," he said.

The pending SEC moves would follow a spate of guidance from both the SEC and CFTC that has clarified how U.S. crypto efforts can proceed without running afoul of the regulators, whether it's mining, memecoins, rewards or several other categories. The most important of these regulatory statements emerging from the agencies was the "taxonomy" that sought to carefully define how the regulators would categorize different digital assets, and how those assets would be supervised.

Fed & Co.

Meanwhile, the banking regulators have been rapidly granting charters to crypto firms, and the Federal Reserve has been working on a tailored access to its payments rails and other services to cut out the banking go-betweens the digital assets players have relied on to serve customers. The new bank charters will have some durability, even when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that issues them changes management down the road.

As the Treasury Department and its tax branch, the IRS, also implement crypto-specific policies, the momentum of U.S. regulation becomes increasingly difficult to reverse.

The industry already counted a massive win last year in the passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS) Act. From a dicey 2022 in which crypto crashed and its highest-profile advocate was prosecuted for fraud, the sector turned things around in Washington to get a law governing U.S. stablecoin issuers and — for the first time — officially adding crypto to the regulated financial system.