Hill: Agency rules are easier to reverse than legislation
Hill’s concern is that agency rules are easier to change than laws passed by Congress. SEC or CFTC guidance can be revised by future regulators or challenged in court, while changing a federal statute usually requires Congress to pass another law or a court to strike it down.
That’s important because, with the CLARITY Act stalled, much of the current crypto framework is being built through agency action instead of legislation.
According to the report published by Cryptopolian, the SEC has granted an innovation exemption regarding the tokenisation of stocks, and also announced a framework in October where certain investments advisers and funds will be able to custody crypto under particular conditions.
The CFTC has submitted market regulation proposals for crypto markets to the White House, and considered overseeing crypto exchanges. Selig mentioned in August, before the Senate vote, that the agency would seek a market-structure approach, whether the bill was successful or not.
The March 17 interpretation by the SEC specified five asset classes, while the August proposal offered exemption at $5 million and $75 million. The conditional exemption for tokenized stock trading came into effect on September 17.
Both bodies are carrying out that task understaffed as seven commissioner posts remain vacant. Hester Peirce resigned from the SEC last week, leaving Atkins and Mark Uyeda. At the CFTC, Selig is chairman and the only sitting commissioner.
CLARITY Act faces a narrow lame-duck window
The window Hill is looking for is the lame duck, which stretches between the midterms and January, where the outgoing Congress convenes for the final time. There are 22 planned days of Senate session within this window period, and these are not allotted for cryptocurrency. Hill pointed out that the senators will know the results before attending this session.
The September vote was not as close as the 49-50 result might suggest. The Senate was voting on cloture to begin consideration of the bill, which required 60 votes. With only 49 senators voting yes, supporters were 11 votes short of the threshold needed to advance it.
Senator Thom Tillis voted no so he could file a motion to reconsider, keeping the measure available for another vote.
The House passed H.R. 3633 in July 2025 by 294-134, with 78 Democrats joining Republicans, underscoring the bill’s bipartisan support in the lower chamber.
Ethics remains a key sticking point
Democratic negotiators said after the vote that ethics safeguards remained unresolved. Senator Angela Alsobrooks said the limits needed to reach Trump, whoever follows him, and Congress itself, while adding that she continues to support digital asset legislation.
Republicans describe the same negotiation differently, saying their September 14 draft took on 126 Democratic requests, including the ethics language, a role for state attorneys general in enforcement, and Treasury powers over deposits moving into stablecoins.
Tim Ryan, the former Democratic congressman now on the Shyft Policy Board, said on September 24 that a lame-duck agreement was possible if both sides returned to negotiations and conceded ground.
He named ethics, consumer protection, illicit finance and stablecoin rewards as the open items, and said firms deciding where to put capital cannot rely on rules the next president can rescind.
As Cryptopolitan reported in July, Senator Ruben Gallego dismissed White House ethics language as weak within hours of receiving it, and seven Democrats later declined to back the text, including the only two who had voted it out of committee.