Lummis Promises CLARITY Act Will Stop the Regulatory Circle Jerk by New Year's

Senator Cynthia Lummis, the architect of the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Act (because every treasury needs a digital gold backstop, right?), informed the suits and degen-curious at the DC Blockchain Summit that the perpetually "imminent" CLARITY Act will actually be finalized before we're all setting New Year's resolutions to ape into the next memecoin.

She detailed that the Senate Banking Committee will finally give the bill its attention in the latter half of April, once they've recovered from their Easter egg hunts, and will proceed to "markup the bill"—Washington-speak for arguing over commas—before punting it toward a full Senate vote. The committee is anticipated to perform some linguistic plastic surgery on the text during that session.

The CLARITY Act aims to finally build a wall between the CFTC and the SEC's sandboxes, explicitly define when a digital asset is a security (the SEC's turf) versus a commodity (the CFTC's problem), and slap new "transparency" requirements on market participants, because nothing says "freedom" like more mandatory paperwork.

While the House managed to pass a similar bill last year with support from both sides of the aisle—a rare moment of bipartisan agreement usually reserved for naming post offices—the Senate has proven to be a regulatory stalemate machine. In January, the Senate Agriculture Committee rammed through its own version with solely Republican votes, as Democrats watched from the bleachers. A scheduled Senate Banking Committee hearing that same month was abruptly canceled after Coinbase, in a move of peak crypto drama, yanked its support.

*This is not financial advice. It's just news, served with a side of sarcasm.