The U.S. Senate's 49-50 vote last month killed the Clarity Act, and House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill now says the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission cannot finish the job Congress left undone. The Arkansas Republican told Fox Business on Wednesday that agency rulemaking "fall[s] short of what we have to do, which is have a legislative solution."

Hill credited SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Mike Selig for filling the gap with exemptive relief. "They have taken steps to use their regulatory power, their exemptive relief, to give definition to digital assets and digital commodities, so we can have a functional system here in the U.S. for this innovative form of finance," he said.

The vote's failure prompted both agencies to press ahead with their own initiatives and led many in the industry to conclude that crypto had stopped waiting on Congress and learned to lean on the regulators instead.

What did the Clarity Act aim to do?

The bill would have set the rules of the road for the majority of crypto activity in the United States and drawn the jurisdictional lines between the CFTC and the SEC on digital assets. Its defeat left those questions unresolved in statute. Market participants have since recalibrated around what the agencies will or will not do.

What have the SEC and CFTC done in the interim?

Both agencies moved quickly. The SEC rolled out an "innovation exemption" for tokenized stocks and proposed new rules governing how investment advisers and funds custody digital assets. The CFTC sent crypto-markets rulemakings to the White House and floated a plan to bring crypto exchanges under federal oversight.

Together, the steps amount to the only form of clarity regulators can offer while Congress remains sidelined on market structure. Hill's argument is that this clarity is fragile by design.

Why does Hill consider agency rules fragile?

Exemptions and guidance can be challenged in court or unwound by a future administration. A statute is durable in ways that regulatory dispensation is not. A longtime crypto advocate tapped to lead the committee because of his digital-asset focus, Hill authored FIT21 in the prior Congress and the Clarity Act in this one. He frames durable legislation as the industry's only path to lasting certainty.

He made the political case bluntly. "We need that permanent law change to make sure America is number one in digital assets and blockchain technology," Hill said.

Can the bill return in the lame-duck?

Hill said he still holds out hope the Clarity Act can pass during the lame-duck session. The window is narrow and the math has not changed since last month's vote. A measure that failed to clear the Senate weeks ago faces long odds before year's end, though Hill has not conceded the field to the agencies.

Hill's interview cuts against the post-collapse narrative. He wants the statute, and he wants it on the books before the next administration can unwind the scaffolding the agencies have built in the interim.