CLARITY Act explicitly leaves DeFi rules blank, risking a total retail protection collapse if negotiations fail

The planned January 2026 markup for the CLARITY Act in the Senate Banking Committee is merely the start of a multi-year process, as key contested issues remain unresolved, with statutory language still in brackets. The bill divides crypto into digital commodities, investment contract assets (flipping from SEC to CFTC oversight), and stablecoins. However, crucial definitions, particularly what constitutes a "security" and how DeFi infrastructure should be regulated, are still bracketed, with Senate Agriculture leaving entire DeFi sections open for feedback due to disagreement. The Act establishes new registered entities like digital commodity exchanges and brokers under CFTC jurisdiction, while banking regulators supervise stablecoin issuers. A major unresolved trade-off involves DeFi carve-outs: making them too broad risks collapsing retail protections, while making them too narrow risks pushing protocols offshore. Furthermore, the bill delegates most specific details—custodial standards, disclosure templates, and listing rules—to regulators, who have 360 days to 18 months to write them post-enactment, leading to years of hybrid status. The political backdrop, including concerns over presidential control of agencies and potential regulatory arbitrage, suggests that litigation over token classification and DeFi treatment is inevitable once rules are finalized.

(Source：CryptoSlate)