President Donald Trump and top financial regulators hosted key figures in the cryptocurrency and digital assets industries at the White House Wednesday, with a major legislative priority for the administration and those industries nearing the finish line.
Cody Carbone, CEO of The Digital Chamber, attended the meeting and said in an interview with FOX Business the "main takeaway was that the U.S. is not going to slow down in its objective of becoming the crypto capital of the world."
"There was a lot of talk about the CLARITY Act, this legislation that's in front of us, and that there was a desire and need to get this done," Carbone said, noting there is bipartisan support for the bill and that President Trump indicated he hopes to sign it into law in September.
"It was very clear from the president's comments and from the discussion that the U.S. government and the Trump administration are not going to wait, necessarily, for legislation," he said. "The SEC and the CFTC have been given the authority from this White House and the mandate to move very quickly."
The CLARITY Act would establish legal definitions for digital assets, network tokens, digital commodities and more, while also creating mandates for regulatory agencies, including the SEC and CFTC, to regulate the sector without creating overlapping or contradictory rules.
"The biggest thing that the bill will do is durability. People need to understand that the regulatory framework that is going to be created by the CLARITY Act is not just going to be here for decades and decades to come," Carbone said, noting it will help builders, issuers and platforms certainty about regulatory compliance.
"It'll give retail investors, institutional investors more consumer protections, more disclosures," he said. "When you pass clear rules of the road, like we saw with the GENIUS Act, the market responds immediately. The stablecoin market in the post-GENIUS Act world in the first year almost doubled overnight in the U.S. CLARITY will do that for the rest of the market."
The Senate is expected to begin the procedural process of considering the CLARITY Act in mid-September, when the upper chamber is scheduled to be in a three-week session before a lengthy recess in October ahead of the midterm elections in November.
"There is a ton of motivation, not just from the administration as we saw [Wednesday], but from Republicans and Democrats in Congress to get this done — especially before the election. It just becomes too hard to legislate after September. Then you're in the October recess, then it's the election and then it's the lame duck," Carbone said.
"We don't want to leave this up for chance. This is the time. We've never been closer to enacting a market structure bill."
Carbone said if the CLARITY Act stalls in September with no path forward, the focus is likely to shift to agencies like the SEC and CFTC. He noted that SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig indicated they would look to implement many of the bill's provisions through the regulatory process.
"They all want to see CLARITY done, just like we do. But if the ultimate fate of CLARITY over the next six weeks is that it will not pass — and we're hoping that's not the case — then I would imagine the SEC and the CFTC will get even more active very, very quickly, shortly thereafter," he said.
The meeting was also attended by representatives from more traditional corners of the finance sector, including exchanges, and included an overarching theme of American innovation and technological leadership spanning not just digital assets and blockchain but also artificial intelligence (AI).
"This was pretty remarkable to hear the president double and triple down that it's not just about the U.S. being the crypto capital of the world, but we need to be the envy of the entire world on all innovation," Carbone said. "That's pretty amazing to hear.
"It was a breath of fresh air and almost a sigh of relief," Carbone said, explaining that while there "may be some disappointment about where the legislation stands right now, that this administration is not going to let up.
"They're going to do everything that they can to make sure that U.S. entrepreneurs feel very, very comfortable, U.S. investors feel very, very comfortable, that they can continue to build wealth and to invest in new products right here in the U.S."
