the clarity act isn't what you think it is

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Listen, American people want to have access to what the rest of the world has access to. The only way to do that is to have rules of the road. So getting this legislation done is historic. It puts America back in the driving seat for the future, the foreseeable future. Having Cynthia Lumis and Mark Warner work together on anything is a blessing. It's like Peter walking on the water. It's something you don't see every day. And so this is good news. But more importantly, having Senator also Brooks and Senator Ggo come along with every single Republican on the committee to do what's in America's best interest long term.

[00:00:39]>> In the United States, there is a lot of talk about digital assets from many different dimensions. You've got blockchain, crypto, tokenization, all starting to take over the conversation.

[00:00:56]And in particular right now, one of the things that is happening is this Clarity Act making its way through Congress and eventually to the president's desk.

[00:01:06]Earlier uh this week, we had the president actually come out and make a statement on Truth Social talking about uh crypto and how he is basically making sure that uh the crypto people do not end up being left behind and that he has not forgotten about them in any way. and pointing back to the Gary Gensler era.

[00:01:28]And a lot of people looked at that and said, well, I mean, technically during the Gary Gensler era, at least the prices were up. But I want to talk about this because the truth of the matter is that although prices in the crypto market are down and people are losing their minds about that left and right, we see it everywhere. There are meaningful steps being taken that will change what this technology will look like in the future. And in particular, one of the things that is front and center is the Clarity Act, which is the major legislation that's going to lay out what the market infrastructure will look like for the future of finance in terms of blockchain and distributed ledger technology. And a lot of people, I think, are excited about what's happening with the Clarity Act, but I think also a lot of people are a little bit confused about what's happening with the Clarity Act. I wanted to take a moment to break down a little bit of what's in the Clarity Act as it stands today and we'll also continue to track the changes and things that happen as uh this continues to work its way through Congress. So, let's break down a little bit of what's in the Clarity Act as it stands today. What is this actually going to mean for crypto down the line and what might that possibly mean for you and your money? One of the things that will come out of the clarity act in whatever form is passed is a core classification system. Right now uh in the United States especially before this current administration there was a lot of debate around uh what is a security what is not and unfortunately there wasn't a clear path to finding the answer to that question and in fact the SEC during the Gary Gendler administration was regulating through enforcement. So if there was ever anything that was unclear uh or that the SEC didn't like, they would just go after the company, they would sue them essentially and take them to court. And then uh whatever the answer to that court case was, whatever the result was would be the precedent that was set for how to look at these types of events moving forward, which technically works, but it's not an ideal way of going about that because what happens is is if I'm an innovator, well, I'm afraid to even try anything because it means that I might be susceptible to be sued by the SEC uh depending upon how they want to interpret the unclear rules that are laid out when you try to apply these things to blockchain and distributed ledger technology. So one of the first things that will come from the clarity act is actually forcing the regulators the SEC and the CFTC to define very clearly what is a security and what is a commodity in the realm of digital assets in particular. There are different forms of what this has looked like inside the clarity act. uh but regardless what we've seen is that there will need to be clarity that is created but we've seen uh this concept of digital commodities being one section of things which would obviously be regulated by the CFTC rather than the SEC and then you have investment contract assets which could come in the tokenized form such as tokenized securities as an example and that would be regulated by the SEC. Now there's also been uh different versions of a sort of mature blockchain test or some sort of a test to once again really fully define uh which of these types of crypto assets are particularly securities or not. And there's a lot of criteria around like how much of the total ownership of the token is in the hands of the creators of the token versus external parties as an example.

[00:05:01]And the goal there is to try to create a a metric for looking at the decentralization of a project or of a crypto asset. And then there's this aspect of the protection that developers are going to have over the things that they create or that they're contributing to creating.

[00:05:23]Because the problem with blockchain and distributed ledger technology is that you're dealing with open-source software. And so the question becomes, if someone is a developer who's contributing to an open-source codebase, are they susceptible to legal challenges that may arise when people are using this platform to do things that are nefarious? And a lot of this kind of reminds me of section 230 and the phenomenon that occurred there uh in 1996 where essentially you had a legal battle that took place that established that a platform such as imagine you know Instagram, Facebook or whatever a marketplace even uh is not necessarily responsible for the activity of the users of that platform. So if I'm eBay and someone decides to sell some illicit substances on eBay, am I responsible as eBay for the activity of these users? Am I now facilitating illicit trade? Right?

[00:06:17]And the answer to that has been in legal precedent that no, not necessarily the platform is not responsible for that. So it kind of reminds me of that sort of an argument as well, but in this case particularly for financial transactions that are taking place on these blockchains. Is the platform actually responsible? uh is the developer who's creating the rules and rather the the code that people are going to be using, are they the ones responsible for whatever people use that code to do? If people were laundering money or doing some sort of uh terrorism financing, would that developer then be susceptible to being charged or brought to justice for the activities of someone else? And so the reason that's also kind of confusing is because well this one developer might have contributed what 10% of the code base or or or a specific feature and then is that person responsible or is the guy who was running a node somewhere else right who just isn't even necessarily contributing to the codebase but just running the node. If you run a node are you now susceptible to being charged for whatever someone does on that network somewhere in Malaysia if you're in the United States. So things like that right that need to be established. I think this bill is it's been a major piece of contention with the bill is are we actually moving in a direction where it seems fair where these people are protected and are not someone that the government can go after or uh do they have some level of responsibility and I think that this is something that will be hashed out in the clarity act. Now another major issue we've talked about this quite a bit on the channel is the concept of stable coin yield. Uh we've talked about it over and over. Banks take your money, they use that money and they issue loans and when they do that they earn uh obviously interest on the loans and then they pay you a little tiny bit fraction of that. But banks also have large businesses. They do all these other types of activities. They have debit cards, credit cards and all the stuff that they do. And um so their overhead is a lot higher. their entire business is not just that net interest margin where whatever they make on the loans and then whatever they give out to you that net interest margin is not their uh only way of making money but it's probably one of the more profitable things that they could be doing. So if they've got all these other business lines that are not necessarily as profitable, then if stable coins come into the picture and can basically uh take deposits from users lightly speaking and go and invest directly into treasuries, uh the stable coin issuer is going to be able to pay a much higher yield on the treasuries or the loans that they're making essentially to the US government. uh a much higher percentage of that can go to the customer or the user of the stable coin if they are legally allowed to do it, which they haven't been allowed to do it really so far. And the Clarity Act is going to be determining whether or not they can do that as well. And also whether or not these crypto platforms in general can not only pay yield, but if they can pay yield based on just having the deposit versus also uh or being able to pay based upon rewards and things of that for using something within the ecosystem. For instance, if you hold your funds on Coinbase, uh you can then get access to higher yields on uh this and that product or service or your staking yields get higher, for instance, if you do that. So, look, these are some of the major issues that are being discussed and uh worked through within the Clarity Act, but it does seem that there's progress being made and uh these politicians seem to be pretty confident that by the end of this year, something will get signed into law. And the thing is is that Trump has shown his support for the Clarity Act and for getting something done. Even JD Vance has come out and said things here and there about it. Scott Bessant, Treasury Secretary of the United States has come out in in support of making this happen. And the Clarity Act is now up on the hill and I think it has bipartisan support and the most important thing we can do is to make digital assets come into the United States. make the US the home, our regulation, our best practices are what will ensure good standards for these.

[00:10:09]When you look at digital assets, all the nonsense that happens, all the things you read about, that's because it's the wild wild west offshore. So, we got to bring it on shore. So, I would encourage the House and the Senate to get clarity done.

[00:10:23]>> Jack, and uh as soon as the bill gets to the president's desk, it seems that it will be signed. Uh there's a lot going on right now. We've got the strategic Bitcoin reserve starting to come up a little bit more. It seems like there's there's activity that's going to be announced recently or soon about what they're doing there. Uh we also had the president signed an executive order about fintech, trying to get fintech companies access to the Federal Reserve's payment system recently. and just little things here and there that are moving the United States in the direction of integrating really uh both traditional finance with uh crypto blockchain distributed ledger technology. And as uh it was said with Stuart Alderati, the chief legal officer of Ripple on a conversation with the New York Stock Exchange, >> crypto is no longer a niche product. I think it is creeping more into the mainstream. It's not an eitheror. It's not where you either use crypto or use traditional financial services. I think we are now in a world where using both and both are becoming interchangeable and interoperable. And that's what we're starting to see.

[00:11:32]>> It seems that we are moving into a world where the lines between these two things will be completely blurred. And when we pass the Clarity Act, I think that that will be even more of the case where we won't even really necessarily notice or think about these things, but instead all of a sudden, we'll just have access to 24/7 trading in our stock brokerage apps. We'll just have access to fractionalized shares and ownership of everything. We'll just have more streamlined processes for signing up for these different types of services. And we'll notice that the cash balances and the ability for us to come in and out of transactions throughout the day will be much smoother. And just little things like that. We might also find it easier to be able to just send our stocks to someone and that could be a very interesting thing too. But the question is okay the clarity act gets passed and then what right does everything just change from there? Is are are prices going to go off to the moon? I think that that part of it is questionable. uh generally uh 360 days after the enactment of uh the law uh there's going to be some provisions for rule making and things of that nature, but that's when all of the actual things that have been laid out in the Clarity Act are very likely to go through. Now, that number can change, but imagine it's going to take probably about a year before this bill is even passed for the rules to actually be in effect. Now in the meantime though what this does enable is for businesses to prepare for all of that and basically forces them to prepare for that moment. So it doesn't mean that nothing can happen you know before that year passes but it does mean that you cannot necessarily mandate or expect anything to happen before that time period. For instance, if businesses realize that this is the direction for sure that the world is headed in and that there are clear rules that will be defined, they can start to invest more heavily into that space and prepare and create products around it. And in fact, that is how things have already been going. We've already been seeing this.

[00:13:24]Uh when we look at the largest bank starting to talk about offering crypto services, we saw Franklin Templeton come out the other day and say that not blockchain but crypto is here to stay.

[00:13:34]And we just continue to see this rhetoric uh around what the largest financial institutions in the world are doing whether it's with stable coins or tokenized securities. They're all moving in the direction of this becoming a part of the standard of how finance is conducted around the world. And so in my eyes I do kind of see a potential for there being a moment of like well a lot of the preparation has been done and a lot of the infrastructure has been built. Uh, think about it. The DTCC is going live with tokenized securities in the second half of this year. That means that they've been testing this stuff for years and that's absolutely the case.

[00:14:10]And so, we're well past the point of like is this going to be a thing? The question is which exact platforms are going to be responsible? We saw uh Stellar being a part of uh the conversation and and the the the the release of actual tokenized securities trading that's going to be happening within the DTCC.

[00:14:28]We know that chain link is obviously a part of getting uh us closer to having real- time collateral management happening uh in securities transactions as well. And what that means is look, you've got uh loans that people are taking off of uh their assets in order to go out and make transactions. And so uh if you could have a way to in real time measure the value of your collateral by using for instance chain link as a provider of the data of the prices of all the different assets then you might have the ability to as prices of your assets go up borrow more money or as it goes down uh automatically like pay down loans for instance as an example. So uh anyways those are just some of the things that are starting to brew up and very clear players that are participating in what's happening. So my point is this. Look, a lot of the groundwork has actually been done. So does that mean that when the Clarity Act passes, you're just going to see some, you know, crazy green candles and the industry is going to go crazy high and everything's going to be, you know, a fantastic massive party? Like I don't necessarily think that that has to be the case, but I also don't think that that's necessarily something that can be completely ruled out as a way that this might be interpreted. Um, I I don't actually expect the law to be passed and the price to go up, but I do think that it might not take more than six to 18 months from that time for everything to turn around. And when I say that, I mean, look, we're in the middle of a bare market the way that I see it. Uh, some people are saying it won't be as extended as it may have been in the past, and maybe that's true. But for sure, there are legitimate things that are changing in the background, which are these laws and regulations that are governing the space. That is something that you cannot ignore. And there's a lot of people who are still sitting on the sidelines. There's a lot of people who still think this is a scam. There's a lot of people who aren't trying to understand the technology and what it actually means. And unfortunately, I personally think that that means that people are going to simply be left out.

[00:16:25]I am not a financial adviser. None of this is financial advice. I highly recommend that you do not take financial advice from a random guy sitting in a chair talking to a wall. The funny thing about all of that is that this time right now, in my eyes, is the best time to be positioning yourself for what is here to come. I do think that everything that we're seeing happen before the Clarity Act gets passed will certainly contribute to what happens after and how fast things change after the Clarity Act is actually passed. And with that said, if you have not already, I highly recommend that you check out Caleb and Brown. They are a fullervice crypto brokerage where you can actually speak to someone when you're making decisions about what you want to do with digital assets. My contact at Caleb and Brown is Jim Bazani and his email is in the description of this video. So, if you want to chat to someone also before to really figure out exactly whether or not Caleb and Brown is a service that you'd want to use, I highly recommend that you reach out to him by clicking the link in the description of this video uh to sign up for your account and then if you have the need for any further questions or any assistance, then you can reach out to uh Jim and say, "Hey, Keith D sent me just want to hear more about the platform." I also just partnered up with iTrust Capital and iTrust Capital is a fantastic service where you can actually get access to crypto in your retirement accounts which comes with massive tax advantages. So, I highly recommend that if you have not already started to go through that process of learning about uh retirement accounts and why you would put crypto in a retirement account.

[00:18:01]Check out the link in the description, sign up for iTrust Capital, and then start to walk through their process and learn their docs. I'm also going to make a video breaking down ITR Capital and really more retirement accounts and why they're so important. If you're interested in that, let me know. Drop a comment in the description down below.

[00:18:16]But with all that said, I'm Keith D here to talk everything money and markets.

[00:18:19]And if you got anything from this at all whatsoever, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe. And until next time, peace.