GENIUS Act just signed; what next? CLARITY
The focus in D.C. will now turn to crypto “market structure” legislation. Why does this matter, and what can you do?
GENIUS now signed into law
At the White House today, the first major piece of U.S. crypto legislation was just signed into law: The GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act), which provides clear rules for stablecoins. It recently passed both the Senate and House of Representatives with broad bipartisan support.
This is a historic moment — not just for crypto, but for the world at large. That’s because stablecoins give us something we’ve never really had before: open money infrastructure. Stablecoins are a better form of money: faster, cheaper, and more global. They cut fees and eliminate intermediaries. They are auditable and programmable. They allow developers to build new kinds of apps that weren’t possible before: low-to-no cost remittances, programmatic micropayments, AI-native transactions, transparent and disintermediated global commerce, and more.
Stablecoins give the world access to the dollar, they spread financial freedom, and they ensure that the next generation of financial infrastructure is built on U.S. standards.
For too long, innovators in crypto have operated under legal uncertainty. That uncertainty has stifled progress, driven builders offshore, and created a fragmented internet. The GENIUS Act reverses this: It creates clarity for stablecoins, and sets us on a path toward broader crypto market structure reforms.
This is how the internet moves forward: through clear rule-making. With the GENIUS Act, stablecoins have clear rules, paving the way for better payments, financial products, and an overhaul of the global financial system.
We believe that the U.S. can lead the next era of the internet — the read-write-own era — by enabling open, user-owned protocols instead of the closed, corporate platforms that defined the last one. This legislation lays the foundation for that future. It's the beginning of a new chapter.
CLARITY: What comes next, and what can you do?
Next up, the focus in D.C. will turn to broader crypto “market structure” legislation. The House of Representatives recently advanced the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act or the “CLARITY Act” (HR 3633) with overwhelming bipartisan support as well: 294 to 134, with 78 Democrats supporting. The bill now progresses to the Senate, which is working on its own version of market structure legislation that will be informed by CLARITY.
If passed, the CLARITY bill (which builds on the bipartisan momentum of last year’s FIT21 bill) will establish clear rules of the road for blockchain systems — ending the years of uncertainty that have stifled innovation, exposed consumers to harm, and favored profiteers embracing opacity over the entrepreneurs pursuing transparency. Like the Securities Act of 1933, which established investor protections and powered a century of U.S. capital formation, the CLARITY Act could be a generational law.
The CLARITY Act would:
create a clear regulatory pathway for digital commodities — without undue regulatory burdens or uncertainty;
enable better oversight of blockchain-based intermediaries, ensuring that centralized actors in crypto (such as exchanges, brokers, and dealers) are subject to robust oversight — including registration, compliance standards similar to those that govern traditional financial institutions, etc.; and
better protect consumers — through requirements like mandatory public disclosure obligations, restricting trading by insiders, and more.
Ultimately, the CLARITY Act is crucial to aligning innovation, consumer protection, and U.S. national security.
With the just-signed GENIUS Act, there’s even more need for such a market structure bill. Why? Because GENIUS will accelerate the adoption of stablecoins, increasing reliance on blockchains for widespread payments and commerce. But current stablecoin legislation does not regulate the blockchains on which all those assets move — including no requirements that those rails be secure, decentralized, or transparently governed. This gap exposes consumers, and the broader economy, to new systemic risks.
So what is the CLARITY Act, why does it matter, and what do *you* need to know — whether builder, consumer, policymaker, or anyone interested in innovation? We explain what’s in it, industry implications, what comes next, and what you can do:
— a16z crypto editorial team
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