As a former financial regulator, I understand that no law can prevent all market failures or stop all bad actors. Fraud exists in all markets, at all scales, but strict regulations can mitigate the worst outcomes. They give visibility to regulators, establish obligations for companies before consumers interact with their products, and require companies to operate with basic and enforceable responsibility. The bill is often described as crypto market structure legislation. That description is accurate, but it doesn’t capture the full scale. Market structure is the legal architecture that determines who must register with which agency, who oversees the market, what companies owe their customers, how assets are protected, what disclosures must be made, and what happens when something goes wrong.
Today, millions of Americans already use digital asset exchanges, brokers, dealers, and custodians. They open accounts, buy and sell assets, rely on platforms to execute transactions, and often rely on brokers to hold their holdings. If those companies are going to serve American consumers, they should operate under clear federal rules.
The Clarity Act would create those rules. Digital asset intermediaries would have to register, comply with capital and risk management standards, maintain records, disclose material information to retail clients, monitor markets, address conflicts of interest and follow rules of conduct covering fraud, manipulation, marketing, oversight and fair pricing. Those are basic safeguards in mature financial markets. They should apply here too.
