Bessent: Treasury Will Use SEC and CFTC Actions to Advance Crypto Rules After CLARITY Stalls

October 28, 2026 MM Crypto Team

The United States Treasury Secretary has signalled a change of approach on crypto regulation, after Congress failed to pass the market-structure bill that the industry had been waiting for. Speaking at the Ripple Swell conference on October 27, alongside Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse, Scott Bessent said it was disappointing that Congress had not passed the CLARITY Act. He then made clear that the Treasury would not simply wait for another attempt at legislation, and would instead work with the country’s two main financial regulators to advance a crypto framework through regulatory action.

Bessent said the Treasury has significant authority and convening power to work with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission through regulatory actions to advance a crypto regulatory framework, calling both agencies excellent partners. That message matters because it suggests the next phase of American crypto policy will be shaped less by new laws passed in Congress and more by the rules, guidance and enforcement choices made by the agencies that already oversee financial markets. For an industry that has spent years asking for clarity, the shift from legislation to agency action is a major development, and it raises as many questions as it answers.

Bessent also returned to the issue of debanking, the practice of banks cutting off crypto firms, saying the CLARITY Act could have prevented a recurrence of that problem, but that regulatory best practices and protective measures can still help prevent it. He added that stablecoins will increase demand for the United States dollar and for United States Treasuries, becoming an important funding source for the Treasury. More than ninety percent of stablecoins are backed by dollars, and issuers often hold Treasury securities as reserves. Bessent said the United States would win in digital assets and further fortify the dollar. Taken together, his remarks paint a picture of a Treasury that sees crypto not as a threat to the dollar but as a tool that can strengthen it, if the rules are set correctly.

What The CLARITY Act Was Meant To Do

The CLARITY Act was designed to answer one of the oldest and most difficult questions in American crypto policy, which is who regulates what. For years, crypto firms have operated in a grey area between the SEC, which oversees securities, and the CFTC, which oversees commodities and derivatives. A token, a trading platform or a decentralised protocol could plausibly fall under either agency, or under both, or under neither, depending on how it was structured and how it was used. That uncertainty has made it hard for firms to know which rules apply to them, and hard for investors to know which protections they have.

The CLARITY Act was meant to draw those lines more clearly. It would have set out which digital assets count as securities and which count as commodities, which agency has jurisdiction over spot markets for digital commodities, and what obligations apply to exchanges, brokers and other intermediaries. It would also have addressed the question of when a token issued to raise funds stops being an investment contract and becomes a commodity in its own right, a transition that matters enormously to projects that start centralised and become more decentralised over time. For many in the industry, the bill was the closest Congress had come to a comprehensive answer to those questions.

That the bill stalled is therefore a disappointment not only for the Treasury but for much of the industry as well. Without a new law, the old questions remain. Firms still have to work out for themselves whether their token or their platform is a security, a commodity, or something else entirely. They still have to deal with two agencies that have different mandates, different cultures and different approaches to enforcement. And they still face the risk that a court case or an enforcement action will suddenly change the rules for everyone. Bessent’s admission that it was disappointing Congress failed to pass the bill is an acknowledgement of that reality, and his promise to press ahead through agency action is an attempt to offer a different path to the same destination.

How Agency Action Can Fill The Gap

Bessent’s plan relies on the idea that the Treasury, the SEC and the CFTC can do a great deal even without a new law. The Treasury, as he described it, has significant authority and convening power. That means it can bring agencies together, coordinate their work, and use its own powers over financial stability, sanctions, tax and the issuance of government debt to shape the environment in which crypto operates. The SEC and the CFTC, for their part, can issue rules, publish guidance, grant exemptions, approve new products and set enforcement priorities. Together, those tools can create a clearer framework even if Congress does not pass a new statute.

Calling both agencies excellent partners is also a deliberate choice of language. In the past, the relationship between the SEC and the CFTC on crypto has sometimes looked like a turf dispute, with each agency claiming jurisdiction over the same activity. Bessent’s framing suggests a more cooperative approach, in which the two agencies work together under the Treasury’s coordination rather than competing with each other. If that cooperation is real, it could reduce the uncertainty that comes from conflicting signals. A firm that hears the same message from both agencies is in a much better position than one that hears different messages from each.

But agency action also has limits, and those limits matter. An agency can only act within the authority that Congress has already given it. It cannot create new jurisdiction for itself, it cannot rewrite the laws that define what counts as a security or a commodity, and it cannot guarantee that the next administration will keep the same policies. A rule issued by one administration can be changed or reversed by the next, and guidance can be withdrawn. Legislation, by contrast, is harder to reverse and provides a more durable foundation. That is why the CLARITY Act mattered so much, and why its failure to pass leaves a gap that agency action can narrow but cannot fully close.

Stablecoins, Treasuries And The Dollar

Bessent’s remarks on stablecoins were among the most confident in his appearance. He said stablecoins will increase demand for the United States dollar and for United States Treasuries, becoming an important funding source for the Treasury. That is a striking claim, because it frames stablecoins not as a competitor to the dollar but as an extension of it. A stablecoin that is backed by dollars and Treasury securities is, in effect, a digital dollar that can move around the world instantly. Every dollar held in reserve to back such a coin is a dollar that supports demand for Treasury debt.

That approach also helps explain why the GENIUS Act stablecoin framework was able to pass when the CLARITY Act could not. Stablecoins, when they are backed by dollars and Treasuries, align the interests of the crypto industry with the interests of the government. The industry gets a clear legal framework for issuing stablecoins, and the government gets a new source of demand for its debt and a new tool for extending the dollar’s influence. Market structure, by contrast, involves harder trade-offs between agencies, between incumbents and newcomers, and between different views of how markets should be regulated. Those trade-offs are harder to resolve, which is why the CLARITY Act stalled.

What Agency-Led Rulemaking Can And Cannot Achieve

The central question raised by Bessent’s remarks is how far agency-led rulemaking can go without Congress. The answer is that it can go a long way, but not all the way. Agencies have real power. They can write rules, issue guidance, approve products, bring enforcement actions and set priorities. When they act together, and when they are coordinated by the Treasury, they can create a much clearer environment than the one that exists today. They can reduce the risk that a firm will be punished for doing something that another agency had suggested was permitted. They can give exchanges, custodians and issuers a clearer path to compliance. And they can do all of that relatively quickly, without waiting for the slow process of passing a new law.

But there are things that agencies cannot do on their own. They cannot change the definition of a security. They cannot grant the CFTC jurisdiction over spot markets that Congress has not given it. They cannot create a new registration regime for crypto exchanges that goes beyond what existing law allows. And they cannot bind future administrations to the same policies. A framework built entirely on agency action is therefore more fragile than one built on legislation. It can be changed, it can be challenged in court, and it can be reversed. That fragility matters to firms making long-term investment decisions, because they need to know that the rules they follow today will still be the rules tomorrow.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the CLARITY Act?

The CLARITY Act is a market-structure bill that was meant to clarify whether digital assets are securities or commodities, which agency regulates them, and what rules apply to exchanges and other intermediaries. Congress has not passed it.

What did Bessent say the Treasury will do instead?

Bessent said the Treasury has significant authority and convening power to work with the SEC and CFTC through regulatory actions to advance a crypto regulatory framework, calling both agencies excellent partners.

What is debanking and why does it matter?

Debanking is when banks cut off crypto firms, closing accounts or refusing to open them. Bessent said the CLARITY Act could have prevented a recurrence, but regulatory best practices and protective measures can still help prevent it.

How do stablecoins support the dollar?

More than ninety percent of stablecoins are backed by dollars, and issuers often hold Treasury securities as reserves. Bessent said stablecoins will increase demand for the dollar and Treasuries, becoming an important funding source for the Treasury.

Source: CoinDesk

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