Grayscale’s head of research says the crypto industry doesn’t need to wait on Congress. In a note addressing the Senate’s decision to push the CLARITY Act’s procedural vote to September 15, Zach Pandl argued that the sector “will move forward without CLARITY, supported by expected rulemaking by the SEC,” pointing out that the industry has already operated for roughly 17 years without a comprehensive market-structure framework.
Pandl’s comments, reported by AMBCrypto, land as prediction markets sour on the bill’s chances. Polymarket odds for CLARITY Act passage in 2026 have fallen to 21%, down sharply from where they stood a week earlier, as traders price in the risk that a crowded September Senate calendar leaves little room for a fresh push.
What Doesn't Change Without a Bill
Pandl’s core argument is that the day-to-day mechanics of the industry aren’t hostage to the legislative calendar. Stablecoins would keep functioning as payment instruments and Bitcoin would keep serving as a store of value regardless of whether the bill clears the Senate this year, he said, since the current administration has already made headway on custody rules, banking access, staking guidance and exchange-traded products — gaps that SEC rulemaking could close on its own even without new statute.
He did flag a real cost to inaction, however: without comprehensive market-structure rules in place, a larger share of new capital and development activity could migrate overseas to jurisdictions that already have clearer frameworks.
A Deadline Both Sides Are Watching
Related: CLARITY Act Vote Slips to September as Trump Ethics Fight Bites
Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, has cast the September 15 date in starker terms, calling the further delays a political rather than procedural problem. “If they can’t get there by September 15, they never will,” Witt said, a warning that frames the coming vote as close to a last chance for the bill in its current form. Pro-crypto Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, had pushed for the extra negotiating time before the recess, and seven Democratic senators rejected the most recent draft over concerns spanning consumer protection, illicit finance and conflicts of interest.
Whether that negotiating window produces 60 votes in September remains genuinely uncertain. But Pandl’s framing suggests Grayscale, at least, isn’t treating a failed vote as an existential setback for the asset class — more a missed opportunity to formalize rules the market is already operating under in practice, a point that dovetails with the ongoing debate over whether Bitcoin has actually earned its store-of-value label in the eyes of more skeptical economists.
