Congress on August recess, the highly anticipated Clarity Act remains stalled in the Senate until at least mid September and to make matters more complicated, the SEC just canceled its planned Friday meeting where regulators were expected to unveil a tailored offering regime as well as innovation exemption for digital assets, and they did cite a scheduling conflict.
Now, despite this temporary delay, SEC Paul Atkins has recently declared that writing clear.
Rules is job number one leaving markets to wonder how aggressive regulatory rulemaking will fill the legislative void.
Meanwhile, political reporting that the White House will play host to crypto and prediction markets officials next Wednesday, a day before the first CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee meeting.
We're joining us on this Friday morning ahead of the weekend to break down the policy roadmap and what this means for markets ahead of the weekend is Josh Reisman, chiefly.
And strategy officer at GSR.
Josh, happy Friday.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you so much for having us.
Great to be here.
Well, there was a lot of anticipation coming into Friday for that SEC gathering, but when it comes to institutional momentum and digital assets in 2026 right now, where do we stand?
Institutional adoption is really running at full speed, so we've been saying across the board that there's a big dislocation between the price action and the volumes we're seeing.
Traditional digital assets and the rapid adoption on the institutional side and engagement such that we've never seen in our history in this space.
Yes, and I'm glad you brought up price action because it goes without saying that we're still seeing this crypto winner, especially when we're looking at the price of Bitcoin or say Ethereum.
But when it comes to the legislative side, it is a midterm election year and there's a lot of anticipation about what will happen when it comes to the.
Regulatory landscape.
So what are you anticipating in the coming weeks?
It's been a crazy and exciting time over the past few weeks.
We've got farther than we've ever gotten in the history of comprehensive digital asset legislation in the United States.
We have really high hopes for the Clarity Act.
We're big supporters.
We think it addresses the concerns of most of the parties.
Like everything in politics, it's a compromise, and we think this is an interesting piece of compromise legislation.
That should at the very least get a vote and should have a good chance of passing.
That being said, the fact that they were not able to vote on it before August recess, it has now been moved back to a September 15th date, leaves us questioning probably a lower likelihood that we're going to pass clarity on this act, but it's not dead yet.
There's a lot of engagement, so we have hopes, but me personally, I'm lowering my expectations of passage in this term.
Yeah, and when it comes to the rulemaking side and what's happening amongst the agencies, the CFTC as well as the SEC, give us your take on what you're hearing on the ground.
So it's interesting.
The CFTC and the SEC are incredibly engaged with the digital asset industry and looking for ways to provide clarity that has henceforth not come, right, whether from the legislative or from the regulatory agencies.
That being said, I do believe they're under a certain amount of pressure from DC to not move too fast until we really figure out what's going to happen on the legislative side, because the market could start getting mixed messages if we're getting progress on activity out of the agencies at this.
Same time we're negotiating final language in the Clarity Act.
So while I think they're kind of really gunning to get something out to market, I understand there's a decent amount of pressure coming out of DC to maybe wait to see if we can get anything done.
That being said, I think what they're showing with their engagement and their proposals that have come out thus far is that they're ready and willing to act in the absence of any comprehensive legislation.
There's plenty of laws on the books that we can interpret in a way that gives us some kind of.
Clarity about how to move forward as an industry and where the lines are, and I think they're willing and able to do that, and they will if we don't get some kind of greater progress on the comprehensive legislation we're all would prefer in a perfect world.
And Josh, of course I'm sure you have conversations on a regular basis with stakeholders.
So what areas are you concerned about the most and the longer that we have to wait for comprehensive legislation, the more that risks do rise.
So what do you think?
Needs to happen and what are your stakeholders telling you right now?
Yes, our biggest concern is for entrepreneurs and people building in this industry.
We work with projects from, you know, literally 2 guys in a garage, two big large institutional players, and they all tell us the same thing they want to invest and they want to build in the space.
In order to build, they need to know where the lines are.
Obviously in digital assets, the historical issue has been about this division between securities and commodities, and we think it's, and this is one of the big.
Aspects that's dealt with in the Clarity Act.
And so the question for everyone is, hey, we just need to know where these things go and what the rules are, and then we are going to build the infrastructure to provide the kind of new financial system that we've all been building together.
So there's a lot of investment and entrepreneurs a little bit on the sidelines.
They're engaged, but they haven't been fully over the line until they see where this goes.
And finally, Josh, before I let you go, you've navigated policy across.
Both Trad as well as DeFi, and given this constant shifting of timelines as well as meeting, what is your outlook for the industry and how do you think they should actually be engaging with US policy moving forward?
So the industry is at a super exciting place, I think, since this wild experiment started in Bitcoin and has really expanded, I think the wildest hopes of everyone was that we were building a parallel financial system, and now I think it's even more.
Exciting than that, it's not parallel.
It's all going to be one financial system, and a lot of it is going to be built on blockchain ledger technology because ultimately for the moving of assets and value over the internet, this is a better technology and so we see the industry continuing to grow.
How that interacts with price action, I think really there's a lot of macro elements that matter.
There's no doubt that the technology itself and the industry has a lot of green shoots as we look.
Forward and so it's really important.
Two things I'll say is one is that we continue to make this issue bipartisan is that there's bipartisan engagement from both sides.
Blockchain ledger technology is not a political issue as much as people want to admit, but it is politics to get legislation over the line.
So you have to engage in the process, but realize this is not a partisan issue.
This is a political issue that we'll work together to find a compromise.
Yes, and before I let you go, we have about 60 seconds here.
You mentioned a key word, and that is macro.
We know that all asset classes have seen volatility so far this year and we are already well into the second half of this year.
So when it comes to the macro outlook for GSR, what are you paying attention to?
So when we look at kind of the major digital assets, and you kind of look at the environment you're in, extremely low volatility, rising interest rates, and somewhat of a bottoming in prices.
And so what we hope is that this is the beginning of kind of a change in the. or potentially a bottom and to move into a different market structure, but no doubt that right now with interest rates on the rise, low volatility, this is a poor environment for action in the majors at the very least.
But these kind of things can change very quickly.
We've seen them change very quickly, and our long term outlook is still rather bullish.
Well Josh, I appreciate your time as well as your perspective here.
Thank you so much for joining us as we head into the rest of the summer weeks.
Awesome.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
