SEC Chair Paul Atkins Predicts Clarity Act Passage This Month for Bitcoin (BTC)

Senate Vote Set for September 15

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins expects the Clarity Act to reach a Senate vote on September 15 and, if lawmakers approve it, to land on the President's desk before the month is out. Speaking to Fox Business on Tuesday, the country's top securities regulator confirmed that his agency is pressing ahead with crypto rules even though the bill's timeline slipped past the August recess that pro-crypto lawmakers had originally targeted.

The Clarity Act passed the House of Representatives last year but has sat in a deadlock for most of 2026. The measure would establish the first statutory framework for sorting digital assets into securities, commodities or stablecoins — a distinction that decides which regulator supervises a token and what disclosure duties attach to it. Progress stalled after the banking lobby clashed with lawmakers and crypto businesses over one question in particular: whether platforms such as Coinbase should be allowed to pay customers yield on their digital asset balances. A rival draft that began circulating in July would bar government officials from promoting or profiting from crypto, and while some senators have sought further changes to the ethics language, several pro-crypto Republicans have accused Democrats of deliberately playing politics with the delay.

Atkins made clear the SEC is not waiting on the Senate. In remarks posted to X on Tuesday, he described the agency's newly unveiled Regulation Crypto Assets proposal as its “most historic step yet” toward making the United States the world's crypto capital, and said regulators are modernizing legacy rules for the blockchain era. The chairman also confirmed that the SEC sent a proposal to the White House last week intended to clarify the custody framework for crypto assets held by investment advisers and companies — an area where registered advisers currently operate under guidance written long before digital assets existed.

Blockchain as the Ownership Record

In a parallel move on Tuesday, the SEC proposed the first major overhaul of its transfer agent rules since they were adopted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Transfer agents are the firms that maintain the official record of who owns a company's shares, and the draft would write blockchain-based recordkeeping into that framework for the first time, allowing a layer-1 blockchain to serve as the authoritative ownership record.

The proposal modernizes definitions to cover electronic records, blockchain-based records and uncertificated securities, while imposing written risk management policies, a separate bank account for issuer and securing holder funds, a business continuity plan and turnaround standards aligned with the current settlement cycle. It would also rescind one existing rule and add two new ones. Comments are due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

The crypto industry has a direct stake in the rewrite. Tokenized equities — a token representing a real registered share — require a transfer agent to keep the authoritative ownership record, which is why Securitize and Plume hold transfer agent registration today. Rules written for paper certificates pushed that work into structural workarounds, and the draft removes that obstacle. Jamie Selway, director of the SEC's Division of Trading and Markets, framed the rewrite as part of Chairman Atkins' broader effort to modernize legacy regulation under Project Crypto, the initiative to move U.S. markets onchain. The agency unveiled its Regulation Crypto Assets framework, covering how crypto projects can raise funds, just last week. Separately on Tuesday, the SEC released the agenda for a September 17 roundtable on 24-hour trading, with panelists from NYSE, Nasdaq, DTCC, Citadel Securities, State Street, BlackRock, Robinhood and FINRA. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

September 15 and the Rulemaking Clock

Read together, the two tracks tell one story: the SEC is advancing the market-structure agenda whether or not Congress does. Our reading of the official proposal text: it is a proposal, not a final rule — once finalized, it binds registered transfer agents such as Securitize and Plume, with the comment window open for 60 days after Federal Register publication. The Clarity Act, by contrast, remains a bill: nothing binds any market participant until the Senate votes on September 15 and the President signs. For Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), whose commodity-versus-security status sits at the heart of both efforts, the outcome will shape everything from spot crypto ETF oversight to tokenized share records — shifting a debate long framed by Bitcoin maximalism into the hands of regulators.