5 Crypto Launches That Bet on Clarity but Are Still Going

The cryptocurrency industry spent years citing U.S. regulatory clarity as the prerequisite for its next phase of growth. This past week showed the industry may have had the sequence backward.

On Sept. 15, the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the legislation intended to establish a broader market framework for digital assets, with the 49-50 vote falling short of the 60 votes required to proceed. But the blockchain financial infrastructure being built around an anticipated U.S. crypto ecosystem did not stop with the lawmakers’ vote.

S&P Global acquired blockchain security company OpenZeppelin in order to expand its risk assessment business to on-chain financial products on Sept. 17. A day earlier, Circle introduced Arc, a blockchain designed for financial markets, real-time money movement and agentic economic activity. Also on Sept. 16 — just one day after the failed Senate vote on the Digital Asset Market Structure Clarity Act — cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase moved ahead with a product designed to put crypto inside community banks, and on Friday (Sept. 18) reportedly requested regulatory approval to list perpetual futures tied to individual large-cap U.S. stocks.

Elsewhere, business payments firm Bottomline on Sept. 17  formed a partnership with blockchain company Chainlink, with Global Pay Connect enabling banks to connect “seamlessly to multiple blockchain networks through a single, network-agnostic integration model” through connectivity with Bottomline.