Bessent Pushes CLARITY Act to Bring Crypto Onshore and Block CBDC Plans

Scott Bessent is telling Congress to stop dragging its feet and give U.S. crypto rules some actual teeth. The Treasury Secretary says the CLARITY Act is the path to bringing digital assets back onshore, making the United States the “home” for crypto business, and ending the regulatory mess that has pushed too many firms offshore.

• CLARITY Act: pitched as a crypto market structure bill
• Bessent: wants digital assets to “come into the United States”
• Offshore platforms: described as the “wild, wild west”
• No CBDC: Trump administration rejects a U.S. central bank digital currency
• Lummis: says the bill protects consumers and crypto developers

Speaking at the White House, Bessent made the administration’s crypto position crystal clear: bring the industry home, clean up the rules, and stop pretending that chaos somehow counts as oversight. His pitch is blunt and hard to argue with if you care about real innovation rather than regulatory cosplay.

“The most important thing we can do is to make digital assets come into the United States. Make the U.S. the home.”

That push centers on the CLARITY Act, a proposed crypto market structure bill meant to sort out how digital assets are regulated in the U.S. In plain English, it tries to answer a basic question Washington has been dodging for years: which crypto assets fall under securities rules, which fall under commodities rules, and how can companies operate without getting whiplash from agencies that often seem to be reading from different playbooks?

For anyone new to the terminology, “market structure” sounds dry, but it’s the plumbing that determines whether the whole house floods. If the rules are murky, exchanges, wallets, token issuers, and developers either move offshore or spend fortunes on lawyers just to stay alive. That’s not a bug. That’s what happens when regulators treat a new financial technology like a political annoyance instead of a serious industry.

Bessent framed offshore crypto platforms as the “wild, wild west,” arguing that weak foreign oversight has helped scammers, shady operators, and general disorder thrive. That criticism is not exactly pulled out of thin air. The industry has seen plenty of exchange blowups, outright fraud, and custody failures in loosely supervised jurisdictions. When the guardrails are missing, the bad actors usually arrive before the builders do.

Still, clarity alone is not a magic wand. Clear rules can protect users and help legitimate firms scale. Bad rules can also freeze innovation in place, handcuff open-source development, or become a bureaucratic choke chain with better branding. Washington loves telling crypto it wants “certainty,” then quietly writes certainty into a tangle of legal traps. Very helpful. Truly inspiring stuff.

The CLARITY Act has already moved through the Senate Banking Committee, and the Senate Agriculture Committee advanced its version earlier in January. That’s progress, but it’s not victory. Committee approval is just one checkpoint in a long and annoying legislative marathon. The bill still needs a full Senate vote, reconciliation between House and Senate versions, and final presidential approval. In other words, it still has to survive the Capitol Hill sausage factory, where good ideas go to be negotiated into mush.

Timing is now a real issue. Polymarket currently prices the odds of the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 at around 57%, and those odds have slipped after delays tied to the Senate recess. The market is basically saying: maybe, but don’t bet the farm on Congress doing the obvious thing on schedule. There’s also pressure to get a Senate floor vote before the June 2026 window closes, because once momentum dies, legislation tends to wander off and never return the same.

That matters because the U.S. has already spent years losing crypto talent, capital, and companies to friendlier jurisdictions. “Onshore” means bringing that activity back into the United States instead of forcing firms to chase lower-friction rules overseas. If America wants tax revenue, job growth, and leadership in digital assets, it has to stop pushing builders toward places where the rulebook is at least readable, even if imperfect.

Bessent also made the administration’s position on central bank digital currencies impossible to miss.

“There will be no Central Bank Digital Currency.”

For readers unfamiliar with the term, a CBDC is a government-issued digital currency controlled by a central bank. Unlike Bitcoin, which is decentralized and not issued by a government, a CBDC would be state money in digital form. Supporters say it could improve payments and modernize finance. Critics say it could turn money into a tool of monitoring and control. That tension is why CBDCs trigger so much hostility in Bitcoin circles and among privacy-minded people generally.

“The first step toward tracking.”

That’s the administration’s concern in one line. CBDC skeptics worry that if the government can issue the money, it can also more easily surveil, limit, or condition how that money is used. Whether those fears are overblown or not depends on the implementation, but the underlying worry is not some paranoid fever dream. If money becomes software, then who writes the software matters a hell of a lot.

Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the Senate’s most vocal crypto allies, is backing the bill and trying to keep the momentum alive. She says the CLARITY Act is a “consumer protection bill” and a “safeguard for American crypto developers.” That’s a more grounded argument than the usual vapid “number go up” nonsense that clogs the air every time crypto policy comes up.

Lummis warned that unclear rules can leave exchange users trapped in bankruptcy proceedings and leave developers exposed to legal action simply for publishing code. That point deserves more attention than it usually gets. Crypto policy debates get flattened into token prices, ETF flows, and whatever nonsense a chart account is shouting about this week. But the real stakes often sit in boring places like custody, insolvency, and code liability.

If an exchange collapses, users need a clear path to recover assets rather than getting jammed into a legal sludge pit while lawyers bill by the minute. If developers can be targeted for writing or publishing open-source software, that’s a chilling effect on innovation and a direct threat to the open networks that make this space worth defending in the first place. You don’t get decentralization by suing the programmers into silence.

Lummis wants Congress to send the bipartisan bill to Trump’s desk, and that bipartisan label is important. Crypto regulation should not be treated like a partisan football when it has obvious implications for competitiveness, consumer rights, and financial sovereignty. If the U.S. keeps dithering, other countries will happily vacuum up the liquidity, talent, and companies that could have stayed here.

There is also a deeper ideological battle baked into this fight. A pro-crypto regulatory framework is not the same thing as a pro-freedom one, but the two overlap enough to matter. The best version of crypto policy protects self-custody, preserves room for open-source development, and avoids turning every wallet and developer into a legal target. The worst version simply repackages legacy financial control with a Web3 sticker slapped on top.

That is why this push matters beyond the headlines. The CLARITY Act is really about whether the U.S. wants to compete for the future of digital finance or keep stumbling around in a regulatory fog while offshore venues feast on the confusion. Bessent’s message is that America should stop punishing the industry into exile. Lummis’ message is that users and builders need legal protection, not just campaign-season soundbites.

There’s also a counterpoint worth keeping in view. Some regulators and lawmakers worry that a friendlier crypto framework could go too far in the other direction, leaving consumers exposed if oversight becomes too lax. That concern is not crazy. Crypto has earned a lot of its own distrust through bad actors, reckless leverage, and endless scammer behavior. The answer is not to handcuff the industry into oblivion, but neither is it to pretend every token project is a noble experiment in economic freedom. Some of it is just garbage with a Discord server.

The real challenge is balance: enough clarity to let legitimate businesses build in the U.S., enough consumer protection to keep the crooks from running the table, and enough respect for open networks that the law does not strangle the thing it claims to support. That’s a high bar for Congress, which is why so few bills clear it without becoming bloated, vague, or watered down into irrelevance.

For now, the Trump administration’s crypto stance is straightforward: no U.S. CBDC, more support for onshore digital asset business, and a push to make the United States the global center for crypto activity. Whether Congress can actually turn that into law is the harder question. Washington loves a good slogan. Passing a serious crypto market structure bill is where the grown-up work begins.

• What is the CLARITY Act?
  It is a proposed crypto market structure bill designed to create clearer U.S. rules for digital assets and define regulatory responsibilities more cleanly.
• Why is Scott Bessent pushing the CLARITY Act?
  He wants crypto businesses to move back onshore and sees the U.S. as the proper home for digital assets.
• Why does Bessent call offshore crypto platforms the “wild, wild west”?
  He argues that weak oversight abroad creates room for scams, disorder, and risky operators.
• What does the Trump administration think about CBDCs?
  It does not support a U.S. central bank digital currency.
• Why are CBDCs controversial?
  Critics worry they could increase surveillance and government control over how people use money.
• Why is Cynthia Lummis backing the bill?
  She says it protects consumers, helps exchange users, and shields developers from legal uncertainty.
• What happens if Congress does not pass clearer crypto rules?
  More crypto companies may keep operating offshore, users could face more uncertainty, and developers may remain exposed to legal risk.
• Will the CLARITY Act pass?
  The odds are uncertain. Prediction markets currently place passage in 2026 at around 57%, but delays have made the path less certain.