Experts comment on the CLARITY bill: Why the U.S. Stagnation bill hasn't become MiCA's opponent-at

On the significance of the stalled U.S. Cryptography Act to founders, compliance teams and institutional participants

Can the CLARITY Act truly become a check and balance for Europe's MiCA, or is it just an isolated island of U.S. regulation?

The first thing to focus on is the status of the bill, because this is crucial: As of early August, the CLARITY Act had not yet become law. It passed the House in July 2025 and was approved by the Senate Banking Committee in May, but it is still short of the required 60 votes. The forecast market currently believes that the bill will pass in 2026 is about 30%(down from about 48% in June-July and 82% in February). Therefore, any so-called "checks and balances" are still only conditional.

Even if the bill is finally passed, the issues solved by CLARITY and MiCA will be different, and direct comparison will easily be misleading. "MiCA" is a single framework covering 27 member states. A compliant issuer can qualify for universal access to the entire EU. Its advantage lies in the certainty of large-scale supervision. CLARITY clarifies federal jurisdiction over digital assets, but basically retains the state's fund transfer supervision systems. It imposes new rules on top of existing compliance requirements, rather than removing obstacles-which is exactly what MiCA is trying to solve.

The United States 'advantage lies in depth. The world's largest asset managers, derivatives markets and custody networks are all denominated in U.S. dollars. If CLARITY can provide a clear legal environment for tokenized securities and stablecoins to operate stably within existing U.S. infrastructure, it can compete without copying MiCA's architecture.

The real risk is not the formation of an isolated "American island", but the cost. Running two compliance frameworks at the same time may cause mid-sized issuers to abandon dual-market layouts, splitting global liquidity into dollar-denominated markets and euro-denominated markets.

What this means for founders:

Don't try to adapt both MiCA and CLARITY from day one. Most companies cannot afford it. Select the main market based on the actual location of users and funds, achieve full compliance in that market, and then expand the second market as a second phase with an independent budget. If you are a U.S. issuer, the focus of your recent work is not on Brussels, but on sorting out the state's fund transfer regulatory systems that are not touched by CLARITY.

How can the compliance team prepare for an ethical rules framework that meets the banking lobby's concerns about stablecoins while also catering to the Democratic Party's exposure to official cryptocurrency positions?

Most compliance departments are not waiting for the final text. When the direction is clear but the details are still being negotiated, building early is much cheaper than rebuilding afterwards. The ethics clause is the reason why CLARITY is currently at a stalemate, so this is not a hypothetical issue.

Deposit loss is the simpler of the two. The core concern of the banking lobby is not reserves per se, but disintermediation. If dollars can be deposited in a stablecoin that behaves like deposits, money will flow out of the banking system, reducing the deposit base on which banks rely to lend. The asymmetry of reserve requirements makes this migration easier and appears unfair to banks-because stablecoins provide similar deposit-like functions without having to bear the same prudential obligations. But the loss of deposits is itself a structural threat, which is why banks have lobbied so fiercely for restrictions. The compliance team has responded in terms of reserves: strengthening information disclosure and building certification infrastructure, many of which have been carried out in accordance with the stablecoin rules of the GENIUS Act that have come into effect.

The ethics clause is much more complex. Restrictions on personal positions of elected officials not only increase paperwork, but also introduce personnel risks. Any institution involved in co-investment arrangements or token allocations needs a conflict-of-interest screening layer if one of them later enters public service-a feature that most current frameworks do not have. The solution is not exciting: Compare every public-private relationship with the strictest version of the proposed restrictions and establish an information disclosure infrastructure before anyone asks for it.

These two demands go in opposite directions. The banking lobby wants conservatism: stable reserves, predictable redemptions, and a slower path for deposits to flow out of the system. Ethics clauses require transparency in relationships that the industry has historically been reluctant to disclose in regulatory filings. Companies that view both as permanent landscape features rather than political conditions to be endured will be in a better position when the final text is implemented.

If Democrats add strict trading bans and disclosure requirements for federal officials to the final text, how will the compliance team manage public-private partnerships? Does this inhibit institutional participation?

Numbers change the political landscape. Trump's 2025 financial disclosure report released on July 1 showed that his cryptocurrency revenue was approximately US$1.4 billion, which was basically evenly distributed among World Liberty Financial token sales and memin royalties. This provides a specific basis for the Democratic Party's amendment and has become the only clause that is currently stuck in the bill. Strict trading bans and mandatory disclosures on federal officials are no longer marginal demands, but the possible price to pay for the passage of any bill.

For compliance departments, the first pressure point is talent. Traditional finance has long relied on recruiting former government officials to gain regulatory connections. If the trading ban is applied retroactively, this talent pipeline will narrow and companies that develop regulatory strategies around these relationships will have to rethink how to get signals. The deeper issue is token allocation. Companies that have provided special access to individuals who later entered public office will face scrutiny if disclosure rules include retroactive clauses. Identifying this risk now before text is locked is the only pragmatic move.

Whether this will inhibit institutional participation depends on the specific form of the rule. Disclosure requirements alone will not bother large institutions-they already operate under extensive SEC and FINRA reporting requirements. But a complete trading ban is another matter, because it cuts off the informal dialogue companies rely on to predict the direction of regulation before regulatory rules are introduced. Large organizations with legal teams can withstand it, but small participants who rely more on relationships than in-house legal advisers will feel the pressure.