Witnesses Say "CLARITY Act" Provides Regulatory Certainty for Digital Assets

Witnesses before the House Agriculture Committee urged swift passage of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025. They argued that the bipartisan Act would "bring regulatory certainty to digital assets." 

House Committee on Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson called the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (the "CLARITY Act" or the "Act") a chance to "cement America as the global leader in innovation." (See related coverage.) He noted that "other nations put pen to paper and created and enacted frameworks," while the US has lagged behind. 

Michael S. Piwowar, Milken Institute EVP and former SEC Acting Chair, endorsed the CLARITY Act as a comprehensive, bipartisan framework to bring regulatory certainty to digital assets. He argued that the agency's investor protection language ("don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal"), best interest and fiduciary standards, and custody and capital rules should be extended to digital asset markets. Mr. Piwowar urged Congress to avoid the pitfalls of Dodd-Frank's swaps regulation by maximizing self-effectuating statutory language and narrowing the scope of the "investment contract" definition to improve clarity for digital asset issuers. 

Chelsea Pizzola, partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and former CFTC Deputy Chief of Staff, praised the proposed "jurisdictional clarity" between the SEC and CFTC as outlined in the CLARITY Act. She warned that, without legislation, any SEC restraint could be reversed by a future Chair—recalling that a SEC Chair Gensler had claimed jurisdiction over "[e]verything other than Bitcoin" and pursued sweeping enforcement. Ms. Pizzola argued that primary market sales (capital-raising issuer sales) should appropriately fall under SEC oversight, while secondary market transactions should be regulated as commodity transactions by the CFTC. 

Ryne Miller, partner at Lowenstein Sandler LLP and former FTX US General Counsel, praised the CLARITY Act's balanced allocation of oversight between the CFTC and SEC, its clear pathway to platform registration, federal preemption of inconsistent state regimes and support for US leadership in tokenized markets. Drawing on firsthand experience with the collapse of FTX, Mr. Miller contended that a regulatory framework (segregation of customer assets, governance standards, audits, transparency and regulatory examinations) would have mitigated such failures.