[Block Media Reporter Ham Ji-hyun] The Senate processing of the CLARITY Act, the first comprehensive legislation addressing the U.S. digital asset (cryptocurrency) market, has been postponed to September, leading to analyses that this is a time to buy for issue coordination.
The Senate processing that the industry initially expected to happen during the summer has not materialized. According to CoinDesk, the delay in processing may not necessarily be a bad sign for the bill, as it is believed that if a vote had been forced, the necessary votes would not have been secured.
Currently, to process the CLARITY Act in the U.S. Senate, 60 votes are needed, which requires cooperation from some Democrats. Disagreements over ethical provisions and stablecoin yield payments have not been narrowed down, leading to uncertainty about securing sufficient support even until just before the recess.
If the vote were to fail just months before the elections, there was a risk that the discussion of the bill itself would be pushed to the next Congress. Therefore, utilizing the more than one-month recess period to adjust the issues and processing again after mid-September is seen as a more realistic choice.
In fact, Democratic Representative Angela Alsobrooks, who is supportive of the CLARITY Act, has expressed her willingness to continue negotiations on the bill even after the recess.
Moreover, the fact that the bill has already entered the cloture stage has been evaluated as avoiding the worst-case scenario. Republican House Minority Leader John Thune submitted the cloture documents just before the recess last Saturday. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill at 3:15 AM (Korean time) on September 16, right after returning in September. This vote will determine whether the CLARITY Act can be brought to the floor.
Currently, the biggest challenge in negotiations is the issue of 'ethical provisions'.
The CLARITY Act is a bill that establishes comprehensive rules for the U.S. digital asset market. The key is to clarify by law what is considered a security among digital assets, what is considered a commodity, how far the SEC and CFTC will supervise, and what obligations will be imposed on exchanges, brokers, and dealers.
As the passage of the CLARITY Act is seen as a boon for the digital asset market, the fact that former President Donald Trump and his family have significant economic interests in the digital asset business has emerged as a problem. It has already been reported that President Trump earned $1.4 billion (approximately 2 trillion won) from digital assets last year.
In response, the Democrats have been demanding that separate regulations to prevent conflicts of interest regarding digital assets for the President, Vice President, members of Congress, senior officials, and their families be included in the CLARITY Act.
Some of the discussed ethical regulations include restrictions on public officials and their spouses from directly issuing or sponsoring new digital assets. Democrats and some ethical organizations argue that this is insufficient.
For example, even if it is prohibited for the President to issue a new 'Presidential Coin' while in office, if they can still maintain their existing digital assets, shares in digital asset-related companies, family businesses, licenses, and revenue-sharing contracts, the conflict of interest issue is not resolved.
In this context, Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego delivered a bipartisan ethical provision negotiation proposal to the White House last week.
This proposal includes provisions requiring federal officials, including the President, to sell their shares in digital asset companies if they hold more than $1 million in shares that account for more than 10% of the company's value. The regulation targets shares of companies that generate most of their revenue through the issuance or sponsorship of digital assets. Government officials holding more than $15,000 in digital asset shares must either place those assets in a blind trust or dispose of them.
In a situation where cooperation from Democrats is needed to pass the CLARITY Act, the ethical provisions have become a key negotiation card that could determine the bill's passage rather than just a simple ancillary provision.
Recently, the issue of stablecoin interest and rewards has also emerged as a major variable in negotiations.
Previously, the U.S. limited stablecoin issuers from directly paying interest or yields to holders through the payment system stablecoin regulation bill, the Genius Act.
The problem arises when a third party, rather than the issuer, provides compensation. For example, if a stablecoin issuer does not pay any interest to users, but an exchange offers customers holding that stablecoin an annual reward of 3-4%, formally, the issuer is not paying interest, but from the consumer's perspective, they receive an economic effect similar to bank deposit interest.
The banking sector is concerned that stablecoins could effectively compete with interest-bearing deposit products, leading to a massive outflow of bank deposits.
As a result, recent negotiations on the CLARITY Act have discussed a compromise that limits 'revenue paid simply for holding stablecoins' but does not uniformly prohibit rewards for actual activities such as payments, transactions, and liquidity provision.
Separate from political debates, the original purpose of the CLARITY Act is to reduce regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. digital asset market.
In particular, the key approach is to distinguish between the digital asset itself and the investment contract under which that asset was sold.
In existing U.S. digital asset regulations, there has been controversy over whether a specific asset should be considered a security if it was sold as part of an investment contract.
The CLARITY Act suggests that "an investment contract may be a security, but the digital asset itself delivered through that contract does not automatically become a security."
In this context, a concept that has emerged in U.S. digital asset legislative discussions is 'ancillary asset'. This concept suggests that even if an asset is provided to investors through an investment contract, if that asset does not represent rights to equity, dividends, or debts like stocks or bonds, it can be viewed as a separate asset from the investment contract.
In other words, while the initial development team may be subject to securities law under the Howey Test for raising funds from investors by promising network development and value appreciation, once the network matures sufficiently and the dependence on a specific development team decreases, whether transactions of that token among users should still be considered the same securities transaction requires separate judgment.
In this process, whether a specific entity controls the network, how decentralized the token supply or governance is, and the so-called level of 'decentralization' also become important factors in judgment.
Meanwhile, there has been a claim that the CLARITY Act should be viewed not merely as a financial regulation bill but as part of the U.S. national security strategy.
Mark Esper, who served as Secretary of Defense during Donald Trump's first administration, recently argued in an article that the passage of the CLARITY Act is a national security issue for the U.S. Esper is currently also a member of the Coinbase Global Advisory Council.
Esper stated, "The strength of the U.S. comes not only from military power but also from the dollar and the dollar-centered global financial system," and pointed out that as blockchain and dollar-based stablecoins grow into a new global payment infrastructure, that advantage is no longer automatically guaranteed.
He continued, "If regulatory uncertainty persists, other countries will set the standards for new financial infrastructure," warning that if digital asset activities move to less regulated offshore markets, the risks do not disappear but rather shift out of the sight of U.S. law enforcement agencies. This would push businesses and capital out of the U.S.
He emphasized, "By bringing exchanges, brokers, and dealers into the U.S. regulatory framework and clearly defining obligations such as anti-money laundering (AML), customer verification (KYC), and sanctions enforcement through the CLARITY Act, we can also strengthen the U.S. financial security capabilities.",
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