Crypto market structure can't wait for shot at post-election Clarity Act surge: White House
White House and U.S. Treasury officials agree that despite some hope that Congress' "lame duck" session could see the bill again, the work's in regulators' hands.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Officials from the White House and the U.S. Treasury Department agreed that the so-called lame duck session of Congress doesn't offer enough hope for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act to divert attention from the proper new focus: the crypto work of the U.S. markets regulators.
Patrick Witt, the White House crypto adviser, and Luke Pettit, assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial institutions, expressed similar views at the CoinDesk Policy & Regulation event in Washington on Tuesday. The several weeks at the end of the year in which federal lawmakers' work is sandwiched between the elections and the arrival of the new Congress — the lame duck session — will likely depend on the outcome of the midterm congressional election in November, they both suggested.
"I don't think it's dead, but I do think that there is a sense that the focus is shifted to the administration," Pettit said at the Washington event, just a week after the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act to establish U.S. crypto market regulations — the digital asset industry's top policy priority. In Congress, he said, "the waters are incredibly chilled" for the legislation.
However, last year's crypto legislative success in converting the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act into law is still an ongoing focus of the Treasury and banking regulators assigned to implement it.