21st September 2025 > > The SEC & the CLARITY Act.
- Mark Timmis
- Sep 21
- 3 min read
tl;dr
There will soon be an explosion in the range and number of spot crypto ETFs on offer in the US, driving institutional adoption of cryptos. The CLARITY Act gets a timely boost.
Market Snap
Market Wrap
Arguably a technical point, the refilling of the US TGA account by nearly a TRILLION dollars is almost complete. Arthur Hayes, as always, has his view:
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – SEC
The new enlightened and very pro-crypto management at the SEC, headed by Paul Atkins, announced last week new listing standards for commodity spot ETFs. Not directed specifically at cryptos, it is interesting that just a week before this announcement, Paul told us that in his – and therefore the SEC’s view – that almost all cryptos are commodities. Coincidence? I think not.
The new rules provide a means for new commodity spot ETFs to be listed on Nasdaq, Cboe BZX, and NYSE Arca without specific and individual approval by the SEC, if certain criteria are met. These include the requirement that the asset is already traded on a regulated market, most likely the futures market. It is a relatively trivial task from a regulatory perspective to list futures on commodities including cryptos.
This is excellent news for it dramatically speeds up the process for the launch of new spot crypto ETFs such as DOGE, SOL, and XRP, all of which have long been core holdings of the CC Treasury.
Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, explains:
“It was expected, but big, because it’s gonna mean that about 12 to 15 coins are good to go. You start getting the coins coming in waves. It's a beautiful thing.”
oo right, Eric, too right.
…
Gary Gensler, ex-Chair of the Fed, made a rare and most unwelcome appearance on CNBC just after the ground-breaking announcement by the SEC we discussed above.
As a key lieutenant in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s anti-liberty and anti-democracy army, Gensler had the gall to claim on CNBC he was “proud” of his time at the SEC. It is true that he managed to delay the rise in price to over $100k by at least four years, giving him the opportunity to accumulate his personal stash of BTC once he stepped down at a much cheaper price than it would otherwise have been. If that is what he thinks is a solid day’s work, his new employers must surely be having some serious regrets.
He also claimed that:
“We were consistently trying to ensure for investor protection. And in the midst of it, we had a lot of fraudsters: Look at Sam Bankman-Fried, and he wasn’t alone.”
Which rather conveniently ignores the fact that Gensler was an enabler of Bankman-Fried. If crypto exchanges had been allowed to register with the SEC, and therefore operated under US laws and regulations, the FTX fiasco would likely never have happened, for very few people would have lent money to a non-US regulated platform.
So yes Gensler, the loss of investor’s money following the related implosions of Alameda Capital, FTX, BlockFi, Voyager Digital, Celsius Network, Genesis Global, Three Arrows Capital, Terraform Labs, was not only on your watch but happened because of your actions. You are personally responsible for the loss of vast amounts of investors’ wealth.
The man (used in the broadest sense of the term) has no shame.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – CLARITY Act
The most pressing legal issue is the slow progress of the CLARITY Act through the Senate. You will recall that this bill will formalise the split of responsibilities between the CFTC and the SEC in the regulation of cryptos, further cementing this brave new world of co-operation between the regulator arms of the US government and the crypto industry.
That slow progress is about to change.
On Friday, twelve Democrat Senators wrote an open letter to their Republican counterparts:
I quote:
“Last week, we released a framework on market structure legislation, highlighting our desire to work on this issue. As we stated then, digital assets are a $4 trillion global market that will require a considered and bipartisan approach to regulation.
We hope our Republican colleagues will agree to a bipartisan authorship process, as is the norm for legislation of this scale. Given our shared interest in moving forward quickly on this issue, we hope they will agree to reasonable requests to allow for true collaboration.
For this process to work, it must start from a place of mutual understanding. We look forward to engaging with our Republican counterparts in such a manner.”
The CCC has long been upset by the obvious political divide in the US on the topic of cryptos. If this is a harbinger of the future, and not some political stunt, we will all rest more easily at night.
Comments