Grayscale research director Zach Pandl said U.S. crypto regulation can continue to move forward even if Congress does not pass the CLARITY Act, pointing to active policy tracks covering stablecoins, token issuance, tokenized securities and perpetual futures.

Pandl said the CLARITY Act would help define regulatory jurisdiction between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, but argued that a failure to pass the bill would not stop other regulatory measures already underway. His comments frame the current U.S. policy process as a set of parallel tracks rather than a single legislative bottleneck.

Among those tracks, President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2025, establishing a regulatory framework for payment stablecoin issuance. According to the details cited by Grayscale, the law requires issuers to maintain sufficient reserves and disclose reserve composition each month. It also bars misleading claims that tokens are federally insured or backed by the U.S. government.

Grayscale also pointed to the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets. The proposal would allow eligible projects to raise no more than $5 million over four years, or no more than $75 million every 12 months. Related exemptions and safe-harbor treatment for certain investment contracts remain at the proposal stage, with public comments due by October 20.

On the legislative side, Grayscale said the latest procedural step for the CLARITY Act was a termination-debate vote on September 15 that requires 60 votes to pass and was not the final vote. While the bill remains relevant because of its potential to separate SEC and CFTC oversight more clearly, Grayscale’s position is that other parts of the U.S. crypto rulebook are already being built through legislation and agency action.

Why It Matters

The key significance is that U.S. crypto policy may keep advancing even without a single comprehensive market-structure law. For the industry, that points to a more fragmented but still active regulatory path, where stablecoins, fundraising rules, tokenized products and derivatives could each develop on separate timelines.

That matters for market structure because jurisdiction remains one of the biggest unresolved issues for crypto firms operating in the U.S. If the CLARITY Act stalls while narrower rules move ahead, companies may get more guidance in some business lines while still facing uncertainty over which regulator oversees broader spot and derivatives activity.