13th January 2026 > > The CLARITY Act.

tl;dr

I am hopeful we see progress for The CLARITY Act this week.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

US federal investigators have opened a criminal investigation into the Chair of the Fed, the hapless Jerome Powell, regarding his testimony to Congress about a large overspend on building renovations. Just for once, Powell has probably got it right by claiming that this is just political pressure from Trump since they fell out some time ago about the pace of interest rate cuts.

What is patently not true is the common misconception that the independence of the Fed is at risk, for the Fed is not independent of its political masters and never has been. Powell has proved that himself on several occasions. We cannot have a new Chair soon enough.

Curious Crypto’s Commentary – The CLARITY Act

A successful, and preferably swift, approval of The CLARITY Act would be very helpful for crypto markets. We will likely see some movement this week as both the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Agriculture Committee have planned simultaneous markups of The CLARITY Act.

Both Chairmen are pushing to move the bill out of the committee stage and onto the floor of the Senate as soon as possible. Which is fine, as there are more supporters of this bill than detractors amongst the one hundred senators. But there is an issue, for if there is not a bipartisan agreement, the threshold of sixty votes that prevents the risk of filibuster may not be crossed. If it is, The CLARITY Act could be just weeks away from Trump’s signature passing it into low. Otherwise, the timescale stretches to months, which is only of benefit to those who fight against liberty and freedom.

There are several key issues which remain outstanding. There is the long-held perception of grift regarding the Trump family-owned World Liberty Financial. Though those concerns are valid, similar concerns have been raised about every President since Independence, though obviously not in the crypto sphere.

Of equal importance has been the pushback from TradFi about stablecoins. TradFi firms are lobbying hard to prevent stablecoin issuers from offering yield on those stablecoins, a restriction levied by The GENIUS Act but one which has come in for a lot of criticism. If it is maintained, this lessens the competitive impact of stablecoins on one of the more reliable income streams for banks. The lobbying – as ever – is being portrayed as a concern for the interests of investors, but that is a falsehood. It is being driven by a concern about banks’ profits and the commensurate size of the bonus pool for the management executives.

Another interesting point of debate, and one that shouldn’t derail the safe passage of this legislation, for I am sure the final decision will be delegated to the regulators, is the extent to which a blockchain must be decentralised to move it out of the category of a security and into the commodities world. Even Gensler, the anti-hero of crypto enthusiasts globally, publicly stated that BTC, given its clear and indubitable decentralisation, is a commodity. He failed to provide any further clarity for any other coin, all part of his dastardly plan to slow the crypto revolution with his regulation by enforcement approach. I think it is widely accepted that the lines drawn by this debate will see that at a minimum ETH and SOL will forever be classed as commodities, though there will be other coins which will benefit too.

I hope that all will become clear from tomorrow onwards.

Curious Crypto’s Commentary – China’s CBDC

You will not be surprised to be told that the country that is most advanced in the deployment of CBDCs, that instrument of coercion and control, is China. The best piece of advice I can share about China is simple – never, ever, even consider visiting that country. It is just too scary (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/27th-february-2025-interregnum-1-1-1-1-1).

Mass murderer Xi has given the go-ahead to allow Chinese banks to pay interest on balances held using the digital Yuan in e-CNY wallets. This is in stark contrast to the ban on USD stablecoins built on public blockchains from rewarding holders with interest, or interest-like payouts. Once Convicted Criminal Christine Lagarde realises her dreams of deciding how the billion or so EU residents are allowed to spend their personal Euro CBDCs, I am sure she will allow interest or interest-like payouts, for otherwise there would be little to no demand for CBDCs, unless forced, though the latter option cannot be ruled out when it comes to Lagarde.

The large TradFi banks are doing everyone a disservice by their lobbying designed solely to restrict the growth of USD stablecoins in a forlorn attempt to push back the crypto revolution.