President Trump Pushes CLARITY Act as SEC and CFTC Build Their Own Crypto Rulebooks

Washington is no longer waiting for one perfect crypto bill to settle every question.

President Trump used a White House meeting with major industry executives to press Congress for a workable version of the CLARITY Act. At nearly the same moment, the Securities and Exchange Commission moved ahead with its own crypto fundraising proposal, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission signaled that it is prepared to use existing authority if lawmakers remain stuck.

Congress still has the power to write the durable market structure that exchanges, token issuers and investors have asked for. The agencies are making clear that a stalled bill will not leave a policy vacuum.

Decrypt reported that the White House discussion included Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, a16z crypto managing partner Chris Dixon, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi. The conversation centered on the CLARITY Act, U.S. jobs, bringing crypto businesses back onshore and the ethics language that has complicated a bipartisan deal.

The executives met privately with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick before public remarks and discussed the ethics provisions holding up a bipartisan deal. Supporters broadly agree that federal law should divide authority between regulators, but negotiations remain tangled in proposed restrictions involving elected officials and their families’ crypto interests.

The administration brought together companies spanning trading, venture capital, payments and digital-asset infrastructure, then focused on the bill’s remaining political obstacle. Its message to lawmakers was direct: resolve the ethics dispute without throwing away the market framework the industry has spent years seeking.

Dixon’s public account of the meeting reinforced that message:

Thank you @POTUS for inviting crypto leaders to the White House yesterday and leading the push for CLARITY. I also appreciate @ChairmanSelig doing the same at the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee meeting. It’s clear that there is a lot of support for crypto innovation from the…

— Chris Dixon (@cdixon) August 20, 2026

The SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets is aimed at capital formation rather than the full market-structure question. It would create tailored pathways for certain crypto offerings, including a startup exemption and a larger annual offering route, while requiring disclosures and placing conditions around when a token could move beyond an investment-contract framework.

The package includes a startup exemption that could cover up to $5 million over four years and another route for offerings of up to $75 million in a twelve-month period. It also addresses the point at which a crypto asset may move beyond an investment-contract framework after an issuer’s promised managerial work has ended.

Issuers would face disclosure and reporting duties, and the safe harbors would carry conditions rather than acting as a blanket declaration that every token is outside securities law. The proposal remains open for public comment, so its limits and compliance costs are not final.

In March remarks previewing the framework, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins argued that developers need a time-limited runway to build while investors receive clear disclosure about what a project team has promised to do. He described a non-exclusive startup exemption, leaving existing securities-law fundraising options available alongside a crypto-specific path.

Atkins tied the safe harbor to the end of an issuer’s essential managerial efforts, a line meant to answer when an investment contract stops controlling the legal treatment of the underlying asset. He also acknowledged the SEC’s boundary: only Congress can establish a durable, comprehensive market structure across agencies.

The formal proposal turns that earlier outline into detailed rules and forms for crypto issuers. It can open a fundraising path under securities law, but it cannot settle the long-term SEC-CFTC division by itself.

Reporter Eleanor Mueller highlighted the tension between the SEC proposal and the separate innovation-exemption debate:

News: The SEC pushed the release of its "regulation crypto" proposal to Tuesday following a mix-up over a separate but related proposal, "innovation exemption," that officials fear could bog down the crypto bill, people familiar with the talks tell me: https://t.co/6KUPseh1WF pic.twitter.com/79hk9bWrKL

— Eleanor Mueller (@Eleanor_Mueller) August 19, 2026

The CFTC’s official agenda confirms that its August 20 Innovation Advisory Committee meeting covered crypto-asset regulation alongside artificial intelligence and prediction markets. The committee includes leaders from Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Uniswap Labs, a16z crypto and traditional financial institutions.

According to Decrypt’s account of the meeting, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig argued that passing CLARITY remains the strongest protection against a future enforcement-first regime. He also said agency staff had been directed to explore rules under the CFTC’s existing authority if Congress does not act.

Selig framed the committee as a way to keep regulation moving at the speed of new products. Current commodities law cannot reproduce every section of a comprehensive bill, but the warning raises the cost of delay for lawmakers who want to decide the boundary before regulators and courts do it piecemeal.

The next signal is whether Senate negotiators can separate a genuine market-structure compromise from the ethics dispute surrounding the president and his family’s crypto interests. A bill that cannot hold a bipartisan coalition will remain vulnerable to procedural failure no matter how strongly the industry supports it.

The second signal is the SEC comment process. Token issuers and investors will need to examine the disclosure burden, offering limits, safe-harbor conditions and the point at which managerial promises are considered complete.

Those details will decide whether the framework works for real projects or exists mainly on paper.

The third is how far the CFTC believes its current commodities authority can reach. Any agency-built regime would face legal limits and likely court challenges, especially where spot-market oversight and securities questions overlap.

Washington now has a legislative track, an SEC rulemaking track and a CFTC fallback track moving at the same time. Federal crypto rules are coming.

The fight is over which institution writes them first—and how durable they will be when the next administration arrives.

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