The Financial Services Committee of the United States House of Representatives has scheduled a live hearing in New York on 17 July to discuss the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The bill was seen as an important step in the regulatory framework for the United States encrypted market, and the hearings would also gather the views of exchanges, investors, financial institutions and block chains.
Legislative progress
The Senate Banking Commission moved the bill forward by 15 votes in favour and 9 against on 14 May. Nevertheless, Polymarket currently gives a pass-through probability of 43 per cent during the year, a decrease of 22 percentage points from the previous period.
Regulatory division of labour is the focus
One of the main points of the hearing was how the Bill divided the competences of the Commission for Commodity Futures Trading (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The bill seeks to clarify when digital assets are regulated as commodities and when they are treated as securities.
The bill also addresses exemption arrangements for some non-hosting encryption infrastructure providers. Proponents argue that open-source software developers, nodal operators, prophecies providers and non-host wallet developers should not be regarded as money senders or brokers without controlling customer funds.
The differences remain unresolved.
Senator Cynthia Lummis said that Clarity Act was trying to make it clear that "writing codes does not amount to money transfers." In her view, that definition was relevant to whether future developers would remain in the United States.
But the bill still has to cross too many thresholds. The Senate needs 60 votes and the Senate and Houses need to coordinate the differences and agree on the final text. Negotiations around ethics and 604 have also complicated the process.