Grayscale: Who Sets Bitcoin (BTC) Rules If the CLARITY Act Fails Its 60-Vote Test?

A 60-Vote Gate on Sept. 15

Grayscale Research has stepped into the question now gripping Washington's digital asset agenda: if Congress stalls, who actually gets to set Bitcoin (BTC) market rules? In a report dated Sept. 10, Zach Pandl, the firm's head of research, argued that the CLARITY Act is “no longer the only means” of steering US crypto regulation — while the same document insists Congress remains the only body able to comprehensively and durably divide authority between the SEC and the CFTC. Those two positions, recorded side by side, frame the immediate contest. The bill's first procedural gate falls on Sept. 15, when the Senate must clear a cloture vote — a step requiring at least 60 votes in favor — merely to begin floor consideration; it is not a final-passage vote, only a decision on whether debate proceeds. Grayscale's assessment is blunt: if the vote collapses, the probability of enacting the market-structure bill this year shrinks materially, though lawmakers could revive negotiations in the session that follows the elections. Pandl's core claim is that the American digital asset framework is concretizing regardless, spanning stablecoins, token issuance, tokenized securities and perpetual futures. The opposing position, held within the same report, does not dismiss the legislation: the CLARITY Act still matters, Grayscale writes, precisely because statute — not agency rulemaking — is the only instrument that can permanently allocate jurisdiction between the securities and derivatives regulators. Pandl added that failure to pass the bill in 2026 would not stop the regulatory work already in motion. The CLARITY Act, by contrast with the finished stablecoin law, would set how digital asset markets and intermediaries are supervised — the broad market-structure layer that statute deliberately left untouched. With Bitcoin (BTC) changing hands near $77K at the time of writing, the dispute is jurisdictional rather than immediately price-moving, but it determines which regulator writes the rulebook for the market's largest asset.

Three Rulebooks Moving in Parallel

Grayscale's argument rests on the fact that three rulebooks are already advancing without the CLARITY Act. The first is law: President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2025, creating a federal regime for payment stablecoins — dollar-pegged instruments built for payments and transfers. Under the statute, issuers must back stablecoins in full with reserve assets and disclose reserve composition monthly, with bans on marketing stablecoins as federally insured, government-guaranteed or legal currency. The second track sits at the SEC, which proposed “Regulation Crypto Assets” in August: qualified issuers could raise up to $5 million over four years, or as much as $75 million within 12 months, under disclosure duties and anti-fraud and anti-manipulation rules — a formalized pathway far removed from the initial DEX offering route many early projects took. The proposal also contains a conditional safe harbor, judged mainly on whether an issuer has completed or permanently halted the core activities it promised buyers, and it specifies the conditions under which an investment-contract digital asset may fall outside securities regulation. Both the fundraising exemption and the safe harbor remain proposals; the comment window closes Oct. 20. Alongside them, the SEC's transfer agent proposal would accept blockchain-based ownership records — a step reaching well beyond non-fungible token use cases — while a reviewed innovation exemption could support some on-chain securities trading. The third track is the CFTC, which is opening regulated routes for perpetual futures through Kalshi and Coinbase; Pandl flagged that products linked to platforms such as Hyperliquid, a decentralized application derivatives venue, could follow. Once finalized, these frameworks bind issuers and trading venues through any bear market — a scope visible across the venues surveyed in our Best Crypto Exchanges coverage. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

Congress or the Agencies

The dispute ultimately turns on where authority sits, and the primary documents answer part of it themselves. The GENIUS Act is signed federal law — it binds payment stablecoin issuers now, with no dependency on the CLARITY Act's 60-vote test. The SEC's “Regulation Crypto Assets,” by contrast, is a proposal only: until a final rule is adopted, it binds no one. COINOTAG's reading is that Grayscale has the mechanics right and the limits right too — Congress alone can permanently settle the SEC–CFTC boundary, but the agencies are writing the operative rulebook either way, one filing at a time.