Coinbase reacts to CLARITY Act advancing in Senate – ‘More work left’

Despite clearing the Senate Banking Committee’s hurdle, the CLARITY Act still has an uphill task. 

In a recent interview, Coinbase’s legal chief, Paul Grewal, acknowledged that key stakeholders were still interested in seeing the bill passed into law.

But he noted that there was still some heavy lifting to do. 

There’s work yet to finish the job on Clarity, but if the markup showed us anything, it’s that Democrats, Republicans, the Admin, and industry are prepared to stay engaged to pass this bill.

What’s next ahead of the Senate floor vote?

The bill passed the Senate committee’s markup with a 15-9 vote. This will allow it to proceed to the broader Senate floor vote, where it will be merged with the other half from the Agriculture Committee, dealing with the CFTC mandate.

If passed into law, this would be the second regulatory framework for crypto firms and other stakeholders in the U.S., after the stablecoin law, the GENIUS Act.

In fact, such a development would prompt others like India to follow suit and turbocharge the sector, according to John O’Loghlen, head of APAC, Coinbase. O’Loghlen told AMBCrypto that, 

With the US joining markets like Singapore and the EU in establishing regulatory clarity, we expect this to turbocharge cross-border regulatory cooperation.

Still, there will be a series of amendments before the final floor vote. And with the powerful banking lobby still calling for a total ban on stablecoin yield and sticky ethics issues, a lot could change, too. 

In fact, Sen. Reuben Gallego, one of the two Democrats who voted for the bill during the markup, warned that he won’t support it on the Senate floor if the ethics provisions aren’t included. 

For the bill to pass the Senate floor vote, it will need 60 YES votes, meaning at least 7 Democrats if all 53 Republican members back it. 

TD Cowen’s managing director, Jaret Seiberg, raised the odds of the bill’s passage to 40% but still expressed reservations. He noted, 

We are not more optimistic because we continue to believe Democrats will demand a vote on an amendment that would apply conflict of interest standards to President Trump.

At the time of writing, BTC was down 5% and traded below $78K, suggesting profit-taking after Thursday’s vote.

Nic Puckrin, macro analyst at Coin Bureau, told AMBCrypto that the vote was already priced in, but the West Asia crisis was still a headwind. 

Bitcoin ran out of steam very quickly after yesterday’s little pump on the Clarity Act news. The regulatory news was mostly priced in, but the geopolitical and macro headwinds aren’t.

Final Summary

• Coinbase legal chief Paul Grewal was hopeful the bill could reach the finish line but acknowledged there was still more work to do. 
• But TD Cowen cautioned that the ethics provision could derail the Senate floor vote.