Even if Clarity fails, Wall Street’s crypto push is unlikely to stop

Wall Street may finally get a clearer crypto rulebook it has spent years waiting for when Washington passes a market structure bill on Tuesday. But even if it doesn’t, financial institutions are unlikely to stop building in the digital assets business.

The Senate’s expected vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY) could give banks, brokers and asset managers more certainty about how they can trade and build products around digital assets. While passage could accelerate that work and bring more traditional firms into the market, failure may be less of a roadblock than it once would have been.

“It would be hugely helpful and beneficial to Wall Street adoption of the technology, but it is by no means a necessary predicate,” said Chris Crawford, a digital-assets partner at law firm Fenwick.

Traditional financial firms have already pushed into crypto through exchange-traded funds, tokenization platforms and other digital-asset products despite years of uncertainty over how securities and commodities laws apply. CLARITY could make those decisions easier, but it would not be starting Wall Street’s adoption from zero.

Crawford said the bill could give firms clearer boundaries on which digital assets are commodities and how they can be traded. Defining that perimeter could also give firms more certainty about what constitutes digital security when brokers and trading platforms handle these assets.

“You would kind of have much easier processes internally, at any shop that touches crypto in whatever form it is, to understand what is the regulatory framework that applies to us,” Crawford said.

Wall Street isn't waiting

So what happens if the Clarity Act doesn’t get the vote it needs on Tuesday?

Brian Vieten, senior research analyst at Siebert Financial, said passage could effectively give U.S. financial firms a “green light” to accelerate blockchain investment, launch tokenized products and pursue acquisitions to gain a foothold in digital assets.

But failure could create a more counterintuitive incentive: move faster.

“We think U.S. firms already have an economic incentive to accelerate product launches and tokenization activity into 2027-28 while today’s more favorable regulatory environment remains in place,” Vieten said. “In that scenario, failure to pass CLARITY could actually pull some activity forward rather than eliminate it.”

“Either way, we think Wall Street’s buildout of digital asset infrastructure continues,” he added.

The idea is that firms already see commercial opportunities in tokenization and digital assets. If Congress fails to lock the new regulatory direction into law, some companies may prefer to launch products while the near-term environment remains relatively favorable rather than wait for a future administration or regulator to change course.