On July 30, 2026, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins sat in a CNBC studio and, when asked about the prolonged indecision of the Clarity Act in the Senate, gave an answer that the entire U.S. cryptocurrency industry could not ignore — "If Congress fails to pass the Clarity Act, the SEC is prepared, willing, and able to enforce its own regulatory rules for the cryptocurrency market." This statement directly shifted the regulatory dialogue away from the tug-of-war between Congress and the executive branch into a more pointed suspense: if this long-awaited comprehensive framework becomes stuck in the Senate, who will draw the red lines for the U.S. cryptocurrency market? The Clarity Act passed the House of Representatives last July with a vote of 294 to 134, and again cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May this year with a 15 to 9 vote, yet it has still not been submitted for a full vote, trapped in a gray area of "pending" due to the 60-vote threshold and an undetermined voting timeline. Atkins emphasized on camera that "regulations are a way to look to the future," asserting that the market needs "regulatory certainty," acknowledging the industry's desire for clear rules while also laying the groundwork for the SEC to take over regulation through administrative rules; trading platforms, issuers, and various intermediaries, who originally thought they only had to focus on the Senate vote, now find themselves having to prepare for two completely different compliance paths simultaneously. Caught between the uncertainties of whether legislation will pass and how the SEC will act, they are forced to accept the new reality of elongated compliance expectations and amplified regulatory uncertainty.

The Clarity Act Stuck in Senate Voting

For the industry, the Clarity Act was initially a clear legislative thread: Last July, it passed the House of Representatives with a vote of 294 to 134, a result interpreted as "bipartisan willingness to bring cryptocurrency issues to the table." Subsequently, the bill was sent to the Senate Banking Committee for review, and in May this year, it passed with a 15 to 9 vote, seemingly successfully overcoming the technical hurdle of the professional committee and gradually moving towards the goal of "becoming the first comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the U.S." — from how assets are classified to which transactions are compliant issues and which are illegal offerings. This act was expected to clarify regulatory gray areas with a set of unified rules.

The real bottleneck occurred outside the committee doors. According to current procedures, for the Clarity Act to move from the committee meeting room to the Senate floor, it must first be submitted to the full voting agenda, and then needs to secure at least 60 votes of support in the chamber to continue advancing. However, by late July 2026, there has been no public timetable provided by the Senate for a full vote on this bill, which means it has neither been rejected nor formally placed on the "fast track," but is instead left hanging on a to-do list whose start time is unclear. For the U.S. cryptocurrency industry, this bill is viewed as the "long-awaited unified regulatory framework," stuck in a systematic threshold in the Senate — the voting threshold is clear, but the timing remains vacant. The legislative path has neither regressed nor progressed, leaving all market participants who hoped to resolve regulatory ambiguity with a law to continue waiting during this uncertain window for the Senate's willingness and timing to formally move it to the scoreboard.

SEC's Backup Plan: From Enforcement to Rulemaking

At the moment the legislation hit pause, Atkins began to present an alternative script. On July 30, he explicitly stated on CNBC that if Congress ultimately fails to pass the Clarity Act, the SEC is "prepared, willing, and able" to craft regulatory rules for the cryptocurrency market. Almost simultaneously, he repeatedly emphasized on X his commitment to supporting Congress in advancing the Clarity Act, clearly outlining priorities: the first choice is for Congress to write it into federal law, and the backup is for the SEC to initiate a rulemaking process under existing authority to fill in the increasingly glaring regulatory gap.

The implication of this backup plan sounds quite harsh when viewed against the SEC's past practices. In recent years, the U.S. cryptocurrency sector has been more familiar with the "sue first, explain later" approach — the regulatory body primarily relying on enforcement actions to initiate lawsuits against major trading platforms and related businesses, and then piecing together substantial regulatory standards from settlement terms and court opinions. What Atkins is now offering is a potential shift from "case-based regulation" to explicit rules: the SEC could define the classifications, disclosure requirements, and registration obligations for digital assets through administrative processes, allowing the industry to avoid guessing boundaries solely from judgments. In interviews, he stressed that "regulations are a way to look to the future," indicating that what the market needs is "regulatory certainty" that does not entirely change with shifts in government, essentially communicating to everyone that as long as Clarity stalls in the Senate, this SEC-led, rule-centered framework could be initiated at any time.

For market participants, the real issue is not who writes the rules, but what costs will be incurred. Federal laws have a higher legal standing than administrative rules, and the SEC's self-crafted rules could potentially be subject to court review or modified with the appointment of the next chairman, signifying that they offer a form of "medium-level" certainty: more predictable than relying solely on enforcement deterrence, yet far less stable than congressional legislation. Once the SEC initiates formal rulemaking, centralized trading platforms, digital asset issuers, and intermediary entities like brokers and custodians will confront organized compliance obligations — types of licenses, capital requirements, and information disclosure timelines could all potentially be uniformly written into the Federal Register, tightening the previously ambiguous spaces for business innovation. The rules would shift litigation risk from "whether a violation occurred" to "whether terms are being executed," imposing a structural change on those who will pay the price of this backup path — trading platforms, issuers, and intermediaries forced to recalculate costs between higher compliance thresholds and narrower operational spaces.

Legal Bottom Line of Legislative Clarity vs. Regulatory Rules

If the Clarity Act ultimately clears the Senate, it establishes a hard boundary written into the "constitutional order" as a federal statute — how digital assets are classified and what behaviors fall under what regulatory categories will become a unified coordinate system under congressional authorization. For trading platforms, issuers, and intermediaries, this isn't just a compliance checklist; it's also a long-term expectation mechanism: as long as they do not cross the red lines defined by statutes, regardless of who the SEC chairman is in the future, the enforcement style may fluctuate, but the underlying structure won't easily be overturned. This is the "anti-flip" function of the legislative proposal — once encoded into the federal code, any institution must revert to the slow process of political negotiation in Congress to change the rules, rather than rewriting the fate of the industry with a regulatory announcement.

In contrast, if the SEC leads in setting cryptocurrency rules, the focus shifts back to administrative processes. SEC regulations can also be formally written into the Federal Register, but legally, they will always rank below congressional legislation, inherently exposing them to dual uncertainties: firstly, judicial review by courts, which may wholly or partially overturn them on grounds of "overreach" or "procedural defects"; secondly, policy shifts caused by changes in leadership, as a new chairman could completely rewrite standards under the same authorization provisions. Atkins emphasized on CNBC that he "does not want the regulatory framework to change with shifts in government," ostensibly fighting for stable rules for the industry, but also highlighting the inherent risks of administrative pathways — once Clarity gets stuck in the Senate and the SEC is compelled to fill the regulatory gap with rules, every upcoming election and critical lawsuit could become triggers for this framework's reconstitution, and the ones bearing the brunt of this will continue to be the cryptocurrency businesses that must operate amid turbulent expectations.

Who is Most Impacted: Exchanges and Token Issuers

For centralized exchanges, issuers, and intermediary service providers, the Clarity Act and SEC's "self-rule" are two distinctly different but equally costly scripts. If Congress completes the legislation, the Clarity Act will write the classification and trading rules for digital assets into federal law, directly locking in hard standards for listings, delistings, and disclosures: which assets must be managed as securities and which can be traded under lighter rules will have a predictable path for judgment. The advantage is that exchanges can redesign their license structures, listing processes, and disclosure templates around this legislative framework, while issuers and intermediaries involved in underwriting or custodial services can arrange their fundraising pace and cross-border distribution according to unified standards. The downside is equally clear: whoever is first to massively clean asset pools, complete disclosures, and rewrite agreement terms according to Clarity's standards will be the first to bear the compliance costs and endure extra scrutiny as a "compliance sample" against which regulatory bodies will compare line by line. But, at least under the "regulatory certainty" that Atkins has emphasized, these investments correspond to a relatively stable legislative order that won't easily flip with successive governments.

If Clarity continues to be stalled in the Senate, and it falls to the SEC to draw the lines under the current securities regulatory framework, the pressure shifts from "spending to buy certainty" to "high-cost bets on uncertainty." The SEC redefining portions of digital asset liability boundaries through rules may seem to provide operational guidelines, yet it actually pulls exchanges, issuers, and intermediaries back into an administrative world swaying with leadership changes and litigation directions — previous enforcement actions against exchanges and issuers have already shown that these institutions are prime targets in the regulatory pressure zone. "Compliance pioneers," once adjusting their license layouts and product designs according to SEC standards, risk becoming typical cases for retrospective action if the rules are rewritten during judicial reviews or leadership changes. For U.S. domestic platforms, this means they must reserve larger licensing redundancy, choose the most conservative classification standards for asset listings, and break business lines down enough to cope with possible regulatory redefinitions; for leading institutions operating globally but unable to abandon U.S. users, it means repeatedly negotiating between local licensing systems and U.S. rules: whether to "isolate" the U.S. market and reconstruct products according to SEC logic, or sacrifice parts of global listing schedules to lower overall risk exposure per American standards. Whichever path is chosen, the true cost will fall on those large platforms and token-issuing intermediaries who cannot simply "exit the U.S.," as they will absorb the initial and most significant compliance shock in licensing plans, asset selections, and product architectures.

Undefined Regulatory Direction: The Upcoming Months of Negotiation

Currently, U.S. cryptocurrency regulation is caught at the intersection of two tracks: "Congressional Legislation" and "SEC Administration" — on one side is the Clarity Act, which has already passed the House with a vote of 294 to 134, and succeeded in the Senate Banking Committee with a vote of 15 to 9 in May this year, yet has yet to be scheduled for a full vote; on the other side is Paul Atkins's public release on July 30 of an alternative plan that states "if Congress does not act, the SEC will set the rules itself." In the coming months, whether the Senate arranges and completes a vote securing at least 60 votes will determine whether the oversight of U.S. digital asset regulation will be dictated by Congress drawing boundaries at the federal legal level or by the SEC guiding through administrative rules open to judicial scrutiny and subject to potential rewrite with leadership changes. For centralized trading platforms, issuers, and intermediaries, they must now prepare scenarios along both paths of "Legal Clarity" and "Regulatory Rules": one set oriented to reshape license, asset classification, and disclosure systems under comprehensive legislation, and another set assuming the SEC continues tightening definitions following the "enforcement + rules" approach, reserving enough maneuver space in product design, user coverage, and risk control resources, as the question of who will lead the delineation might determine compliance cost structures for the U.S. market for years to come.

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