SEC, CFTC and Treasury may shape crypto policy as CLARITY stalls

The CFTC submitted a crypto market regulatory plan for White House review on Sept. 17. The move came two days after the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act.

Voting is underway in the US midterms. Control of Congress is at stake. Maylea Ma, deputy general counsel at 1inch, expects federal agencies to drive US digital-asset policy. She expects real movement over the next few years, regardless of the election result.

Ma named the SEC, CFTC and Treasury. She said each is increasingly engaging with crypto projects. That gives projects more access to regulators. It does not provide the legal certainty the industry sought from Congress.

Ma put the reason for that gap plainly: “The long-term goal, of course, remains a statute that cannot be reversed every time a government changes.” Agency guidance can be reversed by a future administration. A statute offers a more durable rule.

The SEC's recent work shows the shift. In August, the agency proposed a framework for crypto fundraising. It included exemptions for certain token offerings. It also proposed a safe harbor from treatment as investment contracts. Those elements address how selected token sales may be classified.

In September, the SEC updated its staff guidance. It covered token buybacks, crypto networks and staking receipt tokens. Each area sits inside a recurring operating workflow. Projects need to know how buybacks, network structures and staking receipts are treated.

For issuers and product teams, agency attention can shape compliance decisions. It can also shape product design. Yet Ma said agency engagement does not provide the stability the industry had hoped to secure through legislation.

Michael Ho sees a direct funding consequence. Ho is co-founder of D3, the team behind Doma Protocol. He said the stalled market structure bill leaves US crypto policy resting on reversible guidance. Serious capital is waiting because of that uncertainty.

Ho said: “Whatever the result, clear rules written into law are what will bring institutional capital into tokenized real-world assets.” His standard does not depend on the election result. It depends on whether rules become law.

What does this change for institutional capital?

For institutions considering tokenized real-world assets, the immediate result is continued uncertainty. Congress has not completed the market structure framework. Agencies continue to shape parts of it through proposals and guidance. Capital still waits for durable rules.

The election can reshape Congress's path. It does not remove the need for legislation, according to Ma and Ho. Agencies may move first while the CLARITY Act remains stalled.

For crypto projects, the near-term operating change is a more active relationship with regulators. They may gain clearer agency positions on fundraising, buybacks, networks and staking receipts. They remain exposed to policy changes under a future administration.

For institutional allocators, the hurdle is different. Serious capital waits for rules written into law. That threshold matters because tokenized real-world assets need an investable framework, not only agency-level guidance.

The next checkpoints are concrete. They include the election result, any renewed Senate effort to advance the CLARITY Act, and White House review of the CFTC's Sept. 17 regulatory plan. If Congress remains stalled, US crypto policy will keep relying on guidance a future administration can reverse.