The Senate Banking Committee is days from marking up the CLARITY Act, the House-passed market structure bill that cleared 294-134 in July 2025. The most recent publicly circulated Senate Banking draft we’ve seen is dated January 12, 2026 and runs 278 pages; the markup text may differ. Polymarket has been pricing CLARITY’s 2026 passage in a 38 to 48% range in recent weeks, off a higher peak earlier this year. Galaxy Digital research has called it roughly 50-50. The vote-math piece pre-markup whip watchers are tracking: Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) is publicly withholding support, which drops the effective GOP base from 53 to 52 and means around eight Democrats are needed for 60-vote cloture rather than the seven the bill’s sponsors prefer to cite.
We sat down with Kevin Wysocki, Head of Policy at Anchorage Digital, in the week before the markup. Anchorage’s read on what CLARITY changes is unusually direct because of what the bank already does. Anchorage is the issuer of record for Western Union’s USDPT stablecoin, which launched on Solana on May 4, 2026. The bank is a regulated U.S. issuer for Tether’s domestic stablecoin and for Ethena, and a named custodian for BlackRock’s BUIDL (the largest single tokenized treasury fund) and for T. Rowe Price’s pending TKNZ ETF. The OCC consent order it operated under since April 2022 was lifted on August 21, 2025, after what CEO Nathan McCauley described as “tens of millions” in remediation spend.
Wysocki joined Anchorage as Head of Policy in January 2025, after a stint at Meta and earlier years on House Financial Services Committee staff under Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) and as senior legislative aide to Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN). He co-chairs the Blockchain Association’s Stablecoin Working Group. What follows is structured around his answers, with the regulatory mechanics filled in where they need to be. Quotes are lightly edited for clarity. The interview took place ahead of the Senate Banking markup; specific vote counts, named hold-outs, and timing are point-in-time and will move.
On the Markup: Bipartisan, Qualified
Wysocki expects at least a few Democrats on Senate Banking to vote for the bill at markup, but with a qualifier attached: support now, more work needed before a full Senate vote. The main hold-out variable he named is ethics language, which he does not expect to be finalized in time for the committee vote.
Three named Democratic members of Senate Banking are sitting on the swing line:
- Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) co-architected the Tillis-Alsobrooks stablecoin yield compromise finalized May 1, 2026, which bans bank-deposit-equivalent yield on bare stablecoin holdings but permits “bona fide” activity-linked rewards. She has publicly said that ethics and illicit-finance provisions still need work before a yes from her.
- Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is ranking member on the Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment, and has been heavily involved in negotiations.
- Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) is ranking member on the Subcommittee on Digital Assets.
The vote math behind Wysocki’s “qualified yes” expectation is straightforward. With Kennedy withholding, Republicans are at 52 in the optimistic count, so the Democratic floor is roughly eight. Polymarket has compressed materially from a recent peak, which is consistent with the market pricing a slip in timing rather than a directional turn against the bill.
His longer argument on Democratic movement is more interesting than the industry-money trope. He frames it as a multi-year progression. Roughly a third of Democrats voted for the House market structure bill (FIT21) at the tail end of the Biden administration. About a fifth of Senate Democrats voted to repeal SAB 121 around the same period. The GENIUS Act then passed under this Congress with substantial Democratic support. House CLARITY itself passed 294-134 in July 2025.
“There’s been a gradual progression where crypto has gotten more and more bipartisan because people believe in the benefits of it,” Wysocki said. He named faster settlement and counterparty-risk reduction as the substantive draws, plus more affordable financial services.
On the Bigger Jurisdictional Question
The headlines on CLARITY focus on SEC versus CFTC jurisdiction. Wysocki’s reframe is that the substantive question is whether agency authority gets codified in statute on top of guidance the agencies have already issued. Which agency wins which battle is a downstream question.
He pointed at the SEC and CFTC’s joint interpretive release on crypto assets (Release 33-11412), which published in March 2026 with a five-bucket token taxonomy and a named list of 16 digital commodities. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig shared the stage with SEC Chairman Paul Atkins at the announcement. That release, in Wysocki’s framing, is the belt. CLARITY adds the suspenders by codifying agency authority in statute and creating the registration pathways the guidance already assumes.
The section-level mechanics worth knowing, based on the publicly circulated draft (numbering and deadlines could shift in markup):
- Section 304 gives the SEC jurisdiction over digital commodity activities by SEC-registered broker-dealers and national securities exchanges.
- Section 401 gives the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over digital commodity spot and cash markets via new CFTC-registered Digital Commodity Exchanges, Dealers, and Brokers.
- Section 105 sets a 270-day deadline for joint SEC/CFTC rulemakings on definitions.
- Section 106 is the provisional registration framework. It is the de facto self-executing safe harbor. Provisionally registered entities can keep operating with previously listed assets until the joint rulemaking on definitions in Section 105(a) becomes effective. SEC and CFTC retain joint delisting authority during the interim window.
Section 106 is what makes the bill operationally meaningful even before final rules. It also makes the “two-year clock” framing the industry uses somewhat loose. Per the draft text, the timing is 360 days for individual rulemakings and 270 days for joint definitional rulemakings, not a flat 24 months. Whether the version that emerges from markup contains a hard 24-month sunset is one of the specifics worth re-reading the moment the marked-up text drops.
On the Rulemaking Clock and CRA Risk
The operative deadline is not the end of the current administration. It is the Congressional Review Act lookback window before the next Congress.
“It would be best to pass it sooner rather than later,” Wysocki said, “because if you’re in that last quarter or so, you could run into Congressional Review Act triggers where a new Congress could potentially try to rewrite some of the rules. So it’s best to pass this before the August recess after it’s signed into law.”
That recess he is referring to is August 2026. If CLARITY clears markup in mid-May and is signed into law by mid-summer, the agencies have a usable window from late 2026 through roughly mid-2028 to finalize rules outside the CRA’s 60-legislative-day lookback. Slip the bill past August 2026 and the implementation envelope compresses. Slip it into 2027 and a chunk of the rulemaking starts running directly into the window where a 2029 Congress could pass disapproval resolutions.
Polymarket’s compression from the recent peak appears to be pricing exactly this slippage risk. The directional question (does it pass?) and the timing question (does it pass in time?) have started to decouple in the market.
On What Changes for Anchorage Day One
This is the section where Anchorage’s seat in the market makes Wysocki’s answer concrete instead of abstract. Anchorage already holds a federal OCC trust charter, so CLARITY does not change its regulatory status. What it changes is the population of counterparties willing to transact at production scale rather than in pilot.
Wysocki anchored his day-one answer in the GENIUS template. He framed CLARITY as “a huge unlock for industry and for Anchorage,” then pointed at what GENIUS already did: “we were able to onshore Tether. We were able to onshore Ethena. I think we’re going to see a lot of TradFi invest even more in this space.”
Anchorage’s institutional issuance and custody footprint since the GENIUS Act signing reads like the proof set for that thesis. Tether’s U.S. stablecoin and Ethena were both onshored under the new regime. Western Union’s USDPT launched on Solana on May 4, 2026 with Anchorage as issuer of record. Anchorage is custodian for BlackRock’s BUIDL, the largest single tokenized treasury fund.
The most recent additions are operational rather than custodial. Wysocki described a JPMorgan-and-Solana arrangement enabling just-in-time stablecoin redemptions and what he called “cashless” stablecoin reserves, framing it as efficiencies and liquidity that don’t exist on current rails. A U.S. Bank deal addresses the fiat side of reserve custody. A partnership with M^0 extends Anchorage’s regulated issuance posture into a DeFi-native protocol layer. The shape across these is consistent: Anchorage is positioning as the regulated bridge between TradFi balance sheets, crypto-native protocols, and the chains they need to settle on.
GENIUS produced the first round of those deals. Wysocki’s read on CLARITY’s role is that it determines whether the next round is multiples larger, and that the institutions everyone says are “waiting on legislation” have, in his view, already started:
“They’re anticipating that this is a more favorable regulatory environment with the agencies. They know whoever is going to be the next president of the United States is probably going to be at least neutral to pro-crypto. So even if market structure doesn’t happen, businesses are already investing. But if you get that crystal clear clarity of having a federal law on the books, you’re going to see multiples of the investment we’re seeing now.”
The honest counter to that framing is that “they’re already moving” can quietly become an argument against urgency. The current run rate is institutional pilots and named partnerships. Production-scale balance-sheet allocations from pensions, insurers, and the largest asset managers are not yet in the data, and that gap is what the “multiples” language is reaching toward.
On What’s Still Missing After CLARITY Passes
This was the question that mattered most. If CLARITY clears markup, the floor, and the President’s desk, what does institutional crypto infrastructure still lack? Wysocki named five gaps.
- Fed master accounts. Anchorage has applied; Kraken already holds one, per Wysocki, and he expects more crypto-natives to follow over the next couple of years. The master account question is mechanically separate from CLARITY but practically the gating constraint on tier-one banking integration.
- Financial privacy legislation. A separate fight. It becomes more urgent as on-chain volume scales and as agency surveillance capabilities expand.
- Agentic payments legislation. Specific rules for AI agent-initiated payments. The forward-looking item on Wysocki’s list and a signal of where Anchorage thinks the institutional roadmap goes after stablecoins.
- Tokenization legislation. Federal rules for tokenized securities and real-world assets and the operational mechanics around them. CLARITY’s Section 304 covers a narrow slice. Broader tokenization rules sit outside the bill.
- A crypto-specific tax bill. Wash-sale rules, broker reporting, treatment of staking rewards and DeFi income.
The list reads like a two-year lobbying roadmap for a regulated crypto bank. CLARITY is the immediate fight. None of the five items above are inside it.
On MiCA and GENIUS Reciprocity
Asked about jurisdictional flight to MiCA, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai, Wysocki’s answer was less competitive than the trope. He said he was “just happy” the other jurisdictions had established rules of the road and expected harmonization over time, pointing at the GENIUS Act’s authorization for Treasury to negotiate reciprocity with foreign stablecoin regimes, likely starting with the EU and extending to G20 countries. That mechanism is the under-discussed path by which a U.S.-domiciled issuer operates in MiCA markets under equivalence, and vice versa. Anchorage’s regulated U.S. issuer role for what was historically an offshore-domiciled operator (Tether) is the live test case.
What We’re Watching from Here
Five concrete signals after the Senate Banking markup.
The first is whether Alsobrooks votes yes. Her authorship of the stablecoin yield compromise makes her the most likely Democratic yes on Banking. If her vote at markup is conditional on ethics language she has signaled is not yet ready, the qualifying-yes pattern Wysocki described will be the operative one.
The second is whether the ethics language firms up between markup and floor vote. Wysocki expects it does not in time for committee. Chair Tim Scott has signaled a June or July target for the floor vote. That gap is where the bill either gathers Democratic momentum or stalls.
The third is CRA exposure if the bill slips past the August 2026 recess. Wysocki’s two-year framing implies the final rules need to clear sometime around mid-2028 to sit safely outside Congressional disapproval risk. A late-2026 signing pushes the implementation envelope. A 2027 signing puts core rulemakings inside the window.
The fourth is Section 106 uptake. If CLARITY passes, the provisional registration mechanism is the operational reality that determines how many crypto-native exchanges register and continue operating before the joint rulemakings finalize. The shape of the provisional registrant list will tell you who plans to live inside the new regime.
The fifth is which of Wysocki’s five post-CLARITY gaps moves first. Fed master accounts are the most mechanically actionable. Financial privacy and agentic payments are the most politically loaded. Tokenization legislation is the most consequential for the next institutional wave. A crypto-specific tax bill is the one that quietly determines unit economics for every retail and institutional participant downstream.
CLARITY is the headline. Wysocki’s view, read against Anchorage’s actual counterparty list, is that the bill being short of perfect is acceptable because the operational mechanics it codifies are already in motion. The institutional flywheel has started. CLARITY decides how fast it spins. The direction was set by deals already on the table.
