Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan says the crypto industry is better off now that the CLARITY Act is dead. In the firm's weekly memo published September 30, Hougan named four corners of the market that gained from the bill's failure: stablecoins, exchanges, tokenization platforms, and tokens that run buybacks.
The bill never made it out of the Senate. A September 15 vote ended 49 to 50, well short of the 60 needed to advance. What it would have done is the reason Hougan is relieved. CLARITY would have barred platforms from paying stablecoin yield, with penalties reaching $5 million per violation.
The stablecoin carve-out that wasn't
That provision never became law, so the 2025 GENIUS Act still governs. It only stops issuers from paying interest. Platforms are free to keep doing what they were doing, and Hougan points to Coinbase as the biggest single winner. The exchange leans on stablecoin rewards to pull customers in, a perk the CLARITY Act would have wiped out.
Exchanges keep their state-by-state moat
The bill also would have created a national spot license, which would have made it easier for traditional finance firms to walk into crypto. That didn't happen either. Coinbase and Kraken still hold the advantage they built licence by licence, state by state. Hougan also notes CLARITY would have limited how firms combine exchange and broker services, a model that has been very lucrative for the big platforms. That restriction is gone too.
Tokenization got a faster answer from the SEC
Two days after the Senate vote, the SEC handed down a five-year exemption for tokenized US stocks. Hougan contrasts that with what CLARITY offered: a direction for the SEC to study tokenized securities, a process he says would have taken years. He picks Securitize, the transfer agent behind BlackRock's BUIDL fund, as the main beneficiary of the exemption.
Buyback tokens found their opening
SEC guidance dated September 25 said that a buyback announcement on a functional network does not, on its own, create a security. That gave cover to tokens that return value to holders through buybacks. NEAR Protocol, one of the tokens Hougan cites, has climbed 126.62% since the Senate vote. Bitcoin is up 10.39% over the same stretch, and Ethereum has gained 6.86%.
Hougan concedes the whole thesis rests on agency action rather than legislation. A new administration could reverse it starting in January 2029. Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo has warned that a new Congress could scrutinise agency rules if Democrats win in November.
The midterms are the test. If the four winners hold their ground, Hougan's call looks right. If not, the gains may prove shorter-lived than the memo implies.
