The Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act with a procedural vote falling short 49 to 50 after more than a year of negotiations. Then just two days later, the SEC moved ahead with its own approach — approving a five-year innovation exemption for certain tokenised stocks to trade on-chain. Joining me now is Christian Narvaez, Founder and CEO of Rayo Capital Group and President of Stand With Crypto Alliance here in New York. Chris, welcome back to the show.
Good morning Johnny. Glad to be back.
The Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act. What does this mean for crypto right now?
It means that we don't have federal law in place for digital asset market structure. For now, we have to continue to leverage what the SEC and CFTC existing laws for commodities and securities are out there. But they have been proactive in providing guidance for the digital asset market to move forward.
Without a law, is the SEC making the rules — and is that enough?
The SEC can do a lot. And this year there has been a lot of progress. In March, they provided an MoU and gave guidance on what can be done from a securities perspective. Regulation Crypto Assets came out in August. And recently the tokenised securities announcement also came out.
What does the SEC's new rules for tokenised stocks actually change?
The conversation now goes from being a crypto conversation to a traditional capital markets conversation — because now it is no longer hypothetical that blockchain technology can be used for capital market stocks. The SEC is providing guidance to do controlled experimentation specifically with tokenised equities.
How does the US compare to the UAE which already has clear crypto rules?
The UAE did a great job at putting forth digital asset-specific regulation. Within new financial centres, it is a little bit easier to move forward when it comes to regulation. In the United States, we have the largest capital market and deepest liquidity market in the world — and with that, we have robust established laws for securities, commodities, and banking. That will obviously move a little slower.
What happens next for the Clarity Act?
Failing to advance the Clarity Act doesn't kill the bill. It opens it up to bring it forth whether before or after the midterm elections. For now, we have seen a lot of progress from the SEC and CFTC providing guidance to the market so the digital assets ecosystem knows what to do and what not to do.
And from Stand With Crypto NY — what are you doing now?
For us it is very simple — continue to do the advocacy work, representing the voice of founders, developers, and builders, and continue to educate not only market participants but also policymakers and the general population about the benefits of blockchain technology and its real world use cases.
Thank you so much for your insight.
Always happy to be here.
