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. This is not just a legislative deadlock; it’s a clear sign that the two-year “honeymoon” between Silicon Valley’s crypto elites and Wall Street’s old money has completely shattered. This isn’t some noble act to “protect investors,” it’s purely a street fight over who gets a piece of the $33 trillion stablecoin transaction flow.
CLARITY Act: From “Savior” to “Trojan Horse”
If the initial bill passed by the House in July 2025 was a olive branch extended to the crypto world, then the amendments inserted by the Senate Banking Committee in early 2026 are a dagger coated with deadly poison on that very branch.
The original script was perfect: the CFTC would take jurisdiction over Bitcoin and Ethereum, the SEC would loosen its grip, and everyone would happily ring the Nasdaq bell. But Wall Street bankers clearly don’t intend to let these hoodie-wearing programmers pass so easily.
The current deadlock centers on a group of senators, surrounded by banking lobbyists, suddenly adding plot twists—several “poison pill” provisions that threaten to suffocate the industry.
Most ironically, they not only want to ban stablecoin issuers from paying interest to users but also attempt to de facto ban tokenized securities (Tokenized Equities) on the blockchain. This move is a “kill switch,” cutting off the core blood vessel through which crypto finance (DeFi) feeds traditional finance.
The bankers’ logic is simple, crude, and arrogant: if I can only offer 0.01% interest on a savings account, why should you get 5% backed by government bonds? Since I can’t compete with you, I’ll make you illegal through law.
This is what they call “fair competition”—a fair fight after breaking your legs. Even more absurd are the regulatory clauses targeting DeFi.
The new bill attempts to redefine “DeFi intermediaries,” meaning that developers who only write code and don’t touch user funds could be forced to register as broker-dealers. It’s as ridiculous as requiring road builders and bridge constructors to be responsible for every car accident on the bridge.
This isn’t regulation; it’s designed to cause decentralized finance to collapse under the weight of compliance costs, forcing all liquidity back into the arms of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.
The Aftermath of the GENIUS Act and the “Siege” of Stablecoins
While the CLARITY Act remains in limbo, the already half-year-old GENIUS Act is playing out another absurd drama. This seemingly wise-sounding law has actually turned the stablecoin market into a giant siege. Although its requirement for 1:1 asset reserves appears to increase security, it actually grants “legal licenses” to fraudsters. New York Attorney General Letitia James recently issued a public letter exposing this. She pointed out that the lack of mandatory recovery provisions for stolen funds in the GENIUS Act gives giants like Tether and Circle an “excuse for legal inaction” when facing stolen assets. Tether even had to create a special “USAT” brand for the US market to comply, while Circle continues to enjoy high interest on government bonds while resisting law enforcement freezing requests.
This creates a bizarre incentive mechanism: as issuers, freezing hacker funds benefits them little; instead, leaving the money on-chain to keep circulating or even keeping it in their own hands to earn interest on underlying assets is the most commercially advantageous. This isn’t regulation; it’s a celebration of legal robbery.
Eric Trump and his World Liberty Financial (WLF) have made a high-profile entry at this critical juncture, claiming “financial modernization,” but everyone can see it’s the Trump family trying to set up a toll booth between traditional finance and the crypto world. The current situation is that the compliance threshold has been raised to a level only giants and elites can cross, while the true ideals of decentralization are being gradually strangled by these so-called “clarity” measures.
Only the Paranoid Survive
The market is now in a state of extreme mental schizophrenia. On one hand, Bitcoin has retreated from its high of $120,000 to $80,000, shaking market sentiment; on the other hand, institutional penetration into infrastructure is accelerating. Whether it’s Coinbase’s resoluteness or Tether’s shell-shifting for survival, fundamentally they’re betting on the same future—a compliant but castrated crypto market. For investors, the next four years’ logic is very clear: don’t expect the so-called “regulatory dividends” to benefit everyone. U.S. regulation has evolved from “Regulation by Enforcement” to “Regulation by Strangulation.”
In the coming months, the game between the White House, banks, and crypto giants over the CLARITY Act will determine whether DeFi in the U.S. becomes a driver of financial innovation or a synonym for underground black markets. If you don’t want to be sacrificed in the upcoming reshuffle, don’t just watch the price charts—pay close attention to those so-called “for your own good” bills in Washington. That’s where the real slaughterhouse for harvesting retail investors is.