After CLARITY: Building Through the Next Phase of Crypto Rulemaking

By Dorothy DeWitt, founder and CEO of Tölt Strategies and Renato Mariotti, partner at Paul Hastings

The Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act has put a major congressional effort to establish a comprehensive U.S. digital asset market structure framework on hold. On September 15, the Senate voted 49-50 against invoking cloture on the motion to proceed, leaving the legislation stalled for the time being. 

That does not mean the regulatory agenda has stopped. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) were already moving on digital asset regulation before the vote. On October 5, the CFTC issued its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets.” Comments are due December 14. 

What changes when the immediate path shifts from legislation to agency action? And how should firms build when the direction of regulation may be getting clearer, even as the legal framework remains unsettled? 

Dorothy DeWitt and Renato Mariotti discuss what comes next and what digital asset market participants should be thinking about now. DeWitt is founder and CEO of Tölt Strategies, former Director of the CFTC’s Division of Market Oversight and former General Counsel of Coinbase. Mariotti is a partner at Paul Hastings.