Mark Uyeda, who served as acting chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) before Paul Atkins’s confirmation, said the agency dropped civil cases against cryptocurrency companies filed under the previous administration because it was preparing a “180-degree change” in rulemaking.
In a Wednesday panel at the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy’s Financial Markets Quality Conference, Uyeda said the SEC dropped cases involving crypto companies in early 2025 as it could have hurt the agency’s credibility in arguing positions in court contrary to its planned policy changes. Uyeda argued that there had been “significant concerns” that the cases against crypto companies were “justifiable under law.”
“I’m not about to have our litigators, even though they’re having cases that were authorized under the prior administration, stand up in court and have a commission interpretation be issued that is a 180-degree change from what they’d been arguing for that court,” said the commissioner. “I think that hurts [our] credibility as an agency.”
SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda. Source: Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy
Under Uyeda, who was acting SEC chair from January to April 2025, the commission dropped cases filed against Kraken, Ripple Labs, Coinbase and others in what many critics characterized as payback for the industry’s support of President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. Trump had promised to fire former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, under whom many of the cases were filed, “on day one” if elected. Gensler resigned the day Trump took office.
Uyeda has been a commissioner at the SEC since 2022 and currently serves at the agency’s leadership alongside Atkins and Commissioner Hester Peirce. With Peirce’s departure expected in November, the agency will have only two of its five members on its leadership panel, and Trump has not announced any nominations for potential replacements.
Related: SEC grants temporary exemption for tokenized US stock trading
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The Trump administration is reportedly considering an initiative to promote the use of dollar-backed stablecoins overseas as part of an effort to reinforce the US dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency.
Citing people familiar with the plans, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the US government could support stablecoin projects by creating joint ventures with private-sector firms. The effort could involve several federal agencies, including the Treasury Department, State Department and the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
The initiative would seek to expand the international use of dollar-denominated stablecoins while potentially boosting demand for US Treasurys, a common reserve asset for dollar-backed stablecoins.
The potential overseas push also comes as other nations are developing their own digital payment infrastructure. China’s digital yuan is among the central bank digital currencies used in Project mBridge, a platform for cross-border CBDC transactions, while the European Central Bank is preparing a 12-month digital euro pilot expected to begin in the second half of 2027.
Cointelegraph reached out to the US Treasury, the DFC and several US-based stablecoin companies for comment, but did not receive a response before publication.
US ties stablecoin growth to dollar dominance
Senior US officials repeatedly linked the growth of dollar-backed stablecoins to maintaining the dollar’s global role and increasing demand for US government debt.
In February 2025, venture capitalist David Sacks, who served as the White House crypto and AI czar at the time, said stablecoins could “extend the dollar’s dominance internationally” and potentially generate trillions of dollars in additional demand for US government debt.
Related: CFTC chair pushes tokenization as SEC opens door to onchain stocks
In July 2025, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the GENIUS Act, which established a federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, could strengthen the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, expand access to the dollar economy and increase demand for US Treasurys.
The Treasury also continued implementing the GENIUS Act. On Aug. 17, it issued a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking public comment on provisions governing the issuance, offering and sale of payment stablecoins. Bessent said the rules would help “cement” the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.
Magazine: Winners and losers of the SEC’s new tokenized stocks rules
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
“Tokenization is coming to America,” said Robinhood chief executive Vlad Tenev after the SEC announced its Innovation Exemption last week — and it seems the markets looked kindly on the development.
BTC and ETH soared over 10%, and Uniswap’s UNI token — a protocol that looks as it if could become prime real estate for tokenized stock trading — gained more than 30% in the days that followed.
While the Securities and Exchange Commission has indeed greenlit tokenized stocks in America, most of the existing stock tokens fall outside of the new rules.
The commission’s new five-year Innovation Exemption creates a path for certain venues to trade tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks onchain without registering as a securities exchange, and for third parties to tokenize stocks — but only under a specific set of conditions.
Tokens must give holders the same “rights and privileges” as the underlying shares and trading venues need to permission users and pools.
Related: Kraken brings DeFi yield to tokenized stocks and ETFs
Not all tokenized stocks are created equal. A token can look like a share and track the price of a share without providing the shareholder rights of a share. Under the new rules that’s classified as a synthetic stock and it’s not compliant.
UNI gained over 30% after the SEC announcement. Source: Coingecko
That means some of the industry’s biggest players may already have a head start, while others will have to play catch-up. As Ondo Finance’s head of global regulatory affairs, Peter Curley, tells Magazine:
“Not everything we do will fit, and that’s fine. What matters is that the SEC acted instead of waiting on Congress to finish the job.”
The SEC’s tokenization lane is narrow
The SEC’s Sept. 17 order gives certain venues temporary relief from having to register as exchanges when they trade tokenized NMS stocks through permissioned AMM liquidity pools.
In other words, the agency has opened a lane for onchain stock trading, but it’s a fairly specific one, and the token itself becomes just as important as the venue.
To qualify, a tokenized stock must give holders the same dividends and voting rights as the underlying security.
While a third party can tokenize a stock without being affiliated with the issuer, the issuer gets a chance to nix the token before it can be traded.
That rules out synthetic exposure which is bad news for Robinhood’s Stock Tokens and Kraken’s xStocks in their current forms.
Commissioner Hester Peirce stressed that the exemption covers one particular model rather than every possible way of trading tokenized securities, although she said the SEC is open to other models outside the TSV structure.
The products closest to the SEC’s model
Coinbase’s stock tokens are in the ballpark.
On Sept. 14, chief executive Brian Armstrong said the company had “set the standard” with its tokenized stocks, as they are not synthetic or debt instruments, but are “real fully-backed securities, redeemable for the underlying shares, with dividends integrated,” and voting rights “coming soon.”
Related: Robinhood chain to generate $160M in annual fees by 2028: Bernstein
However, Coinbase’s current tokenized stock offering is for non-US customers, and its exchange infrastructure is built around a central limit order book. The SEC’s exemption is built around TSVs providing permissioned AMM liquidity pools. Coinbase operates the Base network however, so it has options in that regard.
Ondo launched tokenized US securities in June, with the underlying shares held in traditional custody and the token representing the investor’s entitlement onchain.
SEC issues Innovation Exemption. Source: SEC
It also acquired Oasis Pro, which includes an SEC-registered broker-dealer, ATS and transfer agent, with infrastructure across the traditional and onchain sides of the market.
Curley says the SEC’s exemption favors “exactly the model we’ve already proven out: custodial, entitlement-based, with real shareholder rights and corporate actions passing through to the holder.” However, he adds, “we’re not assuming anything clears automatically.”
Both Coinbase and Ondo have pieces of the infrastructure the SEC seems to want. Neither can assume its existing setup qualifies without some finessing, but they may have less to rebuild.
Uniswap’s permissioned pools could open the door
The SEC exemption is specifically designed around permissioned AMM liquidity pools, which looks like being good news for Uniswap.
The protocol introduced Permissioned Pools for v4 in July, allowing regulated assets to trade through AMMs with compliance enforced directly onchain.
While that doesn’t make Uniswap itself a TSV, its v4 infrastructure could be used by operators building one, as Permissioned Pools let issuers control who can trade or provide liquidity, which is consistent with the SEC’s requirements.
Permissioned access requires Know Your Customer (KYC) verification, record keeping, public notices and transaction transparency.
If that infrastructure can be connected to the shareholder rights and regulatory infrastructure required for US securities trading, Uniswap potentially has a framework that could be adapted to the SEC’s model.
Robinhood has the users, but not the right product
Robinhood already has around 200 stock tokens trading on Robinhood Chain, which Tenev has described as one-to-one backed and fully DeFi composable.
But the head of research at Four Pillars, Jaewon Kim, pointed out that the SEC’s order excludes synthetic exposure, which rules out products like Stock Tokens and Kraken’s xStocks.
Robinhood’s Stock Tokens are tokenized debt securities issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey) Limited. That means they provide economic exposure to the underlying stocks but don’t give holders legal or beneficial rights. They’re also not registered under US securities laws and not available to US persons.
Chairman Paul Atkins says the period will allow the market to “develop.” Source: SEC
But while Robinhood’s existing product doesn’t fit the SEC’s rules, its distribution and blockchain infrastructure could give it a big advantage if it can adapt its model to the new requirements.
Kraken’s xStocks are fully backed by underlying equities but they also don’t give holders the same rights as conventional shares. And being backed by shares is not enough to qualify for this exemption.
Bryan Choe, head of research and operations at RWA.xyz, a market intelligence platform for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), says most existing tokenized equity products are currently third-party sponsored, but he expects that to change in the next 12 months.
He tells Magazine, “We expect most of the products to shift to issuer-sponsored models.” He says the exemption “aligns the token issuers with the stock issuers,” and could bring more balance between different issuance models.
Five years to prove tokenized stocks are actually better
The SEC describes the exemption as temporary, and chairman Paul Atkins says the five-year-long period will allow the market to “develop” while the commission “evaluates future rulemaking.”
Beyond which company gets the first compliant venue, the real test is whether tokenized stocks will take off in the first place.
As Curley says, investors need to end up with something “faster, cheaper, or more useful than a conventional brokerage position.” Questions have already been raised over whether the fragmented liquidity for stock tokens will provide good prices or a decent user experience.
The exemption could enable 24/7 trading, fractional ownership, faster settlement, onchain composability and shareholder rights. But at the end of the day, those advantages only matter if investors actually care.
Related: Is there any chance left to save the CLARITY Act?
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The Hashgraph Group is expanding into enterprise AI infrastructure by making its Hedera-based IDTrust identity platform available through IBM Cloud Catalog, giving companies another way to verify autonomous software acting on their behalf.
IBM lists IDTrust as a third-party self-sovereign identity product for AI agents, connected devices and people. The listing gives enterprises an established cloud procurement channel for buying and deploying THG’s identity infrastructure.
THG also said it has qualified for IBM Silver Partner status and signed a global Embedded Solution Agreement covering IBM cloud and AI technology. Such agreements allow technology providers to integrate IBM software into their own products and commercialize the combined offering.
The timing reflects a growing security challenge as companies give AI agents more authority to access applications, handle information and execute transactions.
“Enterprises are deploying AI agents at scale that can negotiate contracts, process sensitive data, and execute financial transactions autonomously,” THG Chief Executive Stefan Deiss said in a statement shared with AlexaBlockchain.
“The question everyone is now asking and worried about is: how do I know this agent is authorised to act on my behalf? We have solved that problem with our IDTrust solution,” Deiss added.
Gartner forecasts that 40% of enterprise applications will include task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025. That shift creates a need to determine which agent performed an action, who authorized it and what permissions it was given.
More From AlexaBlockchain
Giving AI Agents Verifiable Identities
IDTrust uses decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials to assign cryptographic identities to AI agents, devices and people.
THG says credentials can establish an agent’s identity and authorization while allowing organizations to verify them without relying solely on a centralized identity provider. Identity records can be anchored to Hedera to create a tamper-evident audit trail.
The platform uses W3C decentralized-identity standards and is designed to support Europe’s eIDAS 2.0 framework. THG also says it includes infrastructure allowing AI agents connected to systems such as IBM watsonx Orchestrate to obtain identity credentials.
IBM itself is building tools for orchestrating AI agents and managing credentials used to access external systems. Watsonx Orchestrate supports credential management as agents interact with third-party applications and tools.
IDTrust is intended to add another layer: a portable identity that can establish not only what an agent can access, but which agent is taking the action.
AI Agent Identity Is Becoming Competitive
THG is entering an increasingly active market.
Microsoft has introduced Entra Agent ID, which gives AI agents dedicated enterprise identities and allows companies to apply authentication, permissions, governance and lifecycle controls. Agents can also be linked to accountable human sponsors.
Akamai introduced its own “Know Your Agent” framework in June, designed to establish an agent’s identity, origin and intent. The company is working with Visa on agent authentication for transactions and with Experian and Skyfire on identity verification.
The competing approaches differ technically, but they address the same problem: enterprises increasingly need identity and authorization systems for autonomous software comparable to those already used for employees, applications and machines.
For THG, IBM distribution may therefore matter as much as the underlying blockchain architecture.
IBM has been a member of the Hedera Governing Council since 2019.
THG has also been extending Hedera-based infrastructure into other enterprise use cases. It has worked with Merck and PwC Germany on cocoa traceability and digital product passports, while a separate project with Southeast Asian logistics company Teleport is developing AI-assisted digital customs documentation.
IDTrust has also been deployed for verified caller identity with a European telecom operator, according to THG. The company has not publicly identified the operator.
The IBM Cloud listing does not determine which identity model will dominate the emerging agent economy.
But it gives THG access to an established enterprise distribution channel as businesses confront a basic question created by autonomous AI: not just what an agent can do, but whether it can be trusted to act at all.
Read Also: This is the First U.S.-Chartered Depository Bank to Offer Stablecoin Invoicing
Disclaimer: The information provided on AlexaBlockchain is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Read complete disclaimer here.
US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig said financial markets should prepare for “mass tokenization” as regulators adapt existing frameworks for blockchain, artificial intelligence and onchain markets.
In remarks delivered Tuesday at the US Treasury Market Conference, Selig said tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) could become the foundation of a more efficient financial system, enabling near-instant settlement and real-time collateral movement between clearinghouses, intermediaries and users.
“Just as the transition from hand signals to electronic trading advanced our financial system, I believe tokenization can do the same for all asset classes,” Selig said, adding that the CFTC would pursue principles-based rules as tokenization and onchain finance evolve.
Selig said in August that the CFTC would move ahead with crypto rules under its existing authority if Congress did not pass the CLARITY Act. The Senate failed to advance the bill on Sept. 15.
Related: CFTC issues warning over risky prediction market ‘mention’ contracts
On Sept. 17, the CFTC submitted a regulatory action covering crypto asset transactions and markets for White House review. The filing is still at the “prerule” stage and does not detail the planned regulations.
SEC also moves to bring markets onchain
Officials at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have also promoted the development of tokenized markets.
In a Bloomberg TV interview, the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets Director Jamie Selway said that tokenization and crypto have recently become politicized but are “not naturally a politicized function.”
Selway said US success in developing the markets should receive bipartisan support.
On Sept. 17, the SEC granted a temporary “Innovation Exemption” for tokenized US stock trading.
The exemption lets certain platforms trade digital versions of US-listed stocks under certain conditions.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins said in February that such an exemption could facilitate onchain trading while regulators developed longer-term rules.
Magazine: Who needs CLARITY anyway? ARB could see 70X increase: Hodler’s Digest
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
The US commodities regulator has warned that prediction market contracts tied to what a person says or does carry a heightened risk of manipulation, putting exchanges on notice as the industry faces increasing scrutiny over market integrity.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Division of Market Oversight on Tuesday said it issued an advisory to some of its regulated entities, advising that there are only “limited circumstances” in which “mention markets” — event contracts based on whether an individual will say certain words, attend or appear at an event or interact with another person — can be listed consistently with the Commodity Exchange Act.
“These contract types present a heightened risk of manipulation because their settlement turns on the discrete conduct of a person that may be neither independently generated nor externally verifiable,” the regulator said.
The warning follows several cases involving traders accused of exploiting privileged information on prediction markets, including a former White House teleprompter operator who was ordered last month to return $107,539 in profits and pay a $65,000 civil penalty for trading contracts tied to US President Donald Trump’s speeches.
Related: Kalshi US visits soar 1,500% as regulatory pressure mounts
According to CNBC, the CFTC letter said exchanges listing mention markets should consider four factors: whether there are adequate oversight measures in place to detect manipulation, whether the words or actions used for settlement are independently verifiable, external pressure that could influence the subject’s conduct, and what outside obligations the subject of the mention market may have.
CFTC Chair Mike Selig welcomed the guidance in an X post on Tuesday, saying that “regulatory clarity drives sound markets.”
“Pleased to see staff provide guidance on the potential risks and unique considerations associated with the listing of mention markets on CFTC-regulated exchanges and remind DCMs of their obligation to list only contracts not readily susceptible to manipulation.”
Cointelegraph reached out to the CFTC for comment.
The CFTC had reportedly already begun examining mention markets before Tuesday’s advisory.
CNBC and NPR reported in August that the regulator had opened a review into the contracts over manipulation concerns, with Kalshi removing mention markets tied to sporting events “until further notice” as the regulator conducted its inquiry.
Prediction market Kalshi faces fresh scrutiny
Separately, unusual trading activity on Kalshi has drawn fresh scrutiny over potential market manipulation.
In August, nearly one million trades worth more than $5 billion were made in a single market tied to the price of Ether, with more than a third occurring in nearly identical amounts of around $5,500, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
The activity has caught the attention of federal regulators and traders, according to the Journal, though Kalshi has rejected suggestions that the transactions amounted to wash trading.
Magazine: How to fix suspected insider trading on Polymarket and Kalshi
Senator John Curtis, a Republican representing Utah, sent a letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee calling for an investigation into US President Donald Trump’s and former President Joe Biden’s sons, citing the former’s involvement in the crypto industry.
In a Monday letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dick Durbin, Curtis said that the body should probe “the use of presidential family relationships for private financial benefit, preferential treatment, or access by domestic and foreign interest.” He also asked for subpoenas for Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.
The Utah lawmaker specifically called out Donald Trump Jr. for accepting gifts from Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev as part of his wedding, his “active promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency ventures” and advisory roles with prediction market platforms, as the companies are under the regulatory purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The president said last week that his son had paid Kremlev back for what Donald Trump Jr. and his wife called a “generous wedding gift.“
Curtis also called for a similar probe into Hunter Biden for “substantial business with foreign entities” and instances in which either man’s relationship to the presidency was “invoked or understood to provide value.” President Biden issued a pardon for his son in December 2024 for crimes he “committed or may have committed or taken part in over the last decade,” and Curtis noted that Hunter had “denied involving his father in his business dealings.“
“The purpose of such an inquiry should be straightforward: establish the facts, determine whether existing ethics, disclosure, or anti-corruption laws apply, and identify reforms necessary to prevent the presidency from becoming a vehicle for private enrichment by those closest to it,” said Curtis.
Source: Senator John Curtis
The call for an investigation into the Trump family’s ties to the crypto industry is nothing new for the current session of Congress, but it has largely come from House and Senate Democrats. Lawmakers have asked authorities to probe potential conflicts of interest surrounding Trump’s memecoin, his family’s World Liberty Financial business and a $500 million deal tied to Abu Dhabi’s royal family.
Curtis is serving his first term in the Senate and will not be up for reelection until 2030.
CLARITY still in limbo in US Senate as midterm elections approach
The call for an investigation into Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden came a week after Senate Republicans failed to secure enough support from Democrats to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a bill expected to establish market structure rules for the crypto industry.
One of the sticking points for not supporting the bill, according to some Democrats, was Trump “using crypto to turn the presidency into a profit generating machine.” The president disclosed that he had earned $1.4 billion from ventures tied to digital assets in 2025.
Republicans said the president had agreed to stronger ethics provisions in the bill affecting his crypto investments before the vote, but many Democrats argued that the measures did not go far enough to prevent corruption.
Magazine: Big Questions: Does Satoshi actually own 1.1 million Bitcoin?
[Updated 15:33 UTC, Sept. 22 with comment from Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino in final paragraph.]
The European Central Bank (ECB) and EU central banks want to replace mandatory bank-deposit thresholds for stablecoin reserves with new liquidity requirements, arguing that large stablecoin deposits could create liquidity risks for banks.
The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) called for removing rules requiring at least 30% of reserves, or 60% for significant stablecoins, to be held as bank deposits. The proposal came in the ESCB’s response, published Tuesday, to the European Commission’s review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
Instead of the existing bank-deposit rules, the ESCB backed minimum liquidity thresholds for reserve assets maturing within one and five working days. It separately pointed to overnight reverse repurchase agreements (repos) and short-term sovereign bonds as alternative instruments issuers could use to achieve liquidity.
The new proposal echoes concerns previously raised by the stablecoin industry, including Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino, who has warned since at least 2024 that MiCA’s bank-deposit requirements could create systemic risks for both banks and stablecoin issuers.
EU central banks favor liquidity buckets
The ESCB said the existing requirement “creates a direct link between issuers and credit institutions” and could expose banks to liquidity problems if a stablecoin run forces an issuer to rapidly withdraw deposits.
The central banks cited draft rules published by the European Banking Authority in 2024, requiring significant stablecoins to hold at least 40% of reserves in assets maturing within one working day and 60% within five working days. For non-significant tokens, the thresholds are 20% and 30%, respectively.
Beyond stablecoin reserves, the ESCB also warned of “material challenges” in enforcing MiCA, saying non-compliant crypto companies can still access EU customers.
Tether raised similar bank-risk concerns in 2024
In an October 2024 Cointelegraph interview, Tether CEO Ardoino illustrated the risk with a hypothetical stablecoin holding 10 billion euros in reserves, 6 billion euros of which would have to be kept in bank deposits.
If a bank lent out 90% of those funds, he said, only 600 million euros would remain available, potentially creating a liquidity crunch if the issuer suddenly needed billions to meet redemptions, Ardoino said.
Related: ECB launches Pontes to settle tokenized assets without stablecoins
Flash forward almost two years and the ESCB now points to a similar risk, saying a stablecoin run could force an issuer to rapidly withdraw deposits and create liquidity problems for a bank, particularly if stablecoin reserves account for a significant share of its funding.
The central banks on Tuesday said risks can also flow in the opposite direction, citing the March 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which triggered a run on Circle’s USDC stablecoin after Circle disclosed that $3.3 billion of its reserves were held at the bank.
Following the ECB announcement, Tether’s Ardoino weighed in on X, posting: “Europe’s central banks want Brussels to delete a MiCA rule on stablecoin reserves. It forces large issuers to keep 60% of that money in commercial banks. Tether refused an EU license over the same clause.”
Magazine: MiCA cracks down on USDT in Europe… but no one else cares
Last week’s US Senate failure to advance a digital asset market structure bill could light a fire under cryptocurrency industry groups seeking to sway key congressional races in the 2026 US midterm election that‘s just 42 days away.
Senators on Sept. 15 voted 49 in favor and 50 against advancing the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, significantly reducing the chances of Congress passing the legislation with limited days in session before 2027.
While some crypto advocates haven’t ruled out the possibility of CLARITY coming up for another vote before the next session of Congress, at least one of the industry’s political action committees (PACs) isn’t taking any chances.
One PAC backed by Coinbase and Ripple Labs, Fairshake, now plans to pour $30 million into opposing Sherrod Brown in Ohio’s Senate race. Brown chaired the Senate Banking Committee when Democrats were in the majority and espoused many policies against crypto, making his potential return a challenge to another vote.
“[If Brown] wins, he might well be the deciding vote or one of the two deciding votes in a Democratic majority in the Senate,“ wrote economist Paul Krugman in a Tuesday Substack post. “And we now know that the Democratic Party is not clean as the driven snow. It is not immune to financial influence. It’s not even immune to de facto bribery from crypto.“
Steve Gannon, a partner at law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, told Cointelegraph that the CLARITY vote “provided the industry with a very clear picture of who are long-term reliable supporters and who are not,“ adding:
“It will be difficult for those who voted against Clarity to make the case that the industry should support them financially in the midterms.“
Related: CLARITY Act could get another shot during lame-duck session, policy advocate says
The former Ohio senator lost his 2024 reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno after Fairshake spent about $41 million opposing the Democrat. The PAC also spent more than $130 million on ads in the 2024 election cycle, offering a preview for how it might respond when faced with the threat of CLARITY not passing before the midterms.
Cointelegraph requested comments from Brown’s campaign but did not receive an immediate response.
How will the crypto industry react to CLARITY votes in the midterms?
Stand With Crypto, an initiative launched by Coinbase in 2023, warned that lawmakers who failed to advance the CLARITY Act in Congress last week could face “consequences” in the 2026 midterms based on their votes.
The organization responsible for rating politicians based on their positions on crypto could have a significant impact on the elections and on how PACs aligned with the industry use funds to target certain candidates, potentially influencing voters in an election year that could shake up control of the Senate and House of Representatives and give the market structure bill another chance of passing.
“The results of [the CLARITY Act] vote make it clear which officials are with our community, and which are against us — and we’ll make sure our advocates are ready to cast their ballots accordingly in this and future elections,” said Stand With Crypto executive director Mason Lynaugh.
As of Monday, Fairshake and its affiliate PACs Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress had not disclosed any expenditures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) following the CLARITY vote.
FEC filings also showed no post-CLARITY spending by Fellowship, another crypto-aligned PAC funded by Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage Digital, or the Digital Freedom Fund, a group backed by Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
Magazine: Is there any chance left to save the CLARITY Act?
