On-chain Finance Should Come Home
The Clarity Act decides whose rules govern on-chain finance
By Asheesh Birla, Chief Executive Officer, Evernorth
The conversation around the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, which cleared markup before the Senate Banking Committee on May 14, has largely focused on whether the bill resolves the SEC/CFTC jurisdictional divide. It does, and that clarification matters. But the more important outcome will be whether on-chain finance gets built under American rules or someone else’s.
For years, regulatory ambiguity in the United States has not stopped the development of digital asset markets. It has only relocated them. Builders moved. Liquidity moved. Custody moved. Institutional product development moved. The United States has spent the last cycle litigating on-chain finance while other jurisdictions have been writing the rules to host it.
The CLARITY Act is the most credible legislative effort yet to reverse that.
What we exported
When a US founder routes a company through Switzerland, Singapore or the UAE, they are choosing against US legal uncertainty, not necessarily against US capital markets. When an institutional desk decides to offer digital asset exposure through an offshore vehicle, it is not because the offshore product is inherently superior. It is because the domestic product was not allowed to exist.
According to Electric Capital’s 2024 Developer Report, 81% of crypto developers now work outside the United States. North America’s share of the global total has fallen from 44% to 24% over the past decade. AIMA’s 2025 Global Crypto Hedge Fund Report found 58% of crypto hedge funds are domiciled in the Cayman Islands, compared with just 13% in the United States. Abu Dhabi’s financial free zone, now home to firms including Binance and Plume, reported 67% year-over-year increase in new licenses in the first quarter of 2025.
Each of those decisions has the same effect. The activity continues. The risk continues. But neither sits within the regulatory perimeter that US institutions, courts and regulators are built to govern. American investors end up holding products designed under another jurisdiction’s rules. What may look like regulatory victory is really just a transfer of authority.
What CLARITY brings home
The Act’s market structure and custody provisions are where American rules actually meet on-chain markets. It requires the SEC to permit digital commodities and permitted payment stablecoins to be brokered, traded or custodied by broker-dealers, through alternative trading systems, and on national securities exchanges. It directs rulemaking on written disclosures by broker-dealers regarding the treatment of customer digital assets in the event of insolvency, resolution, or liquidation..
In plain terms, the bill answers the question every US financial institution has been waiting on: who can do what, and under what supervisory regime?
The answer is one institutions can build against. Banks, broker-dealers, custodians, and exchanges get a defined role in on-chain markets. The framework that already governs the rest of US capital markets is extended.
The importance of this framework reaches well beyond digital assets themselves. The rules CLARITY establishes for digital commodities could set the template for how tokenized treasuries, money market funds, equities, and other traditional assets are regulated as they move on-chain. Tokenization is the next layer, and this bill lays the groundwork for how that conversation develops.
The leadership question
The United States is the world’s largest economy, home to the deepest capital markets and most credible financial supervisory infrastructure. Why should the modernization of those markets happen anywhere else?
US innovation isn’t asking for a subsidy. It wants a rulebook. The CLARITY Act provides one. It does not predetermine what will be built on top of it, and it does not answer every question about how on-chain finance will evolve. But it doesn’t need to. What it establishes is that those answers will be developed inside the US regulatory perimeter rather than outside it.
The market has already shown what regulatory certainty does for this category. Since the GENIUS Act became law in July 2025, the stablecoin market has grown to more than $300 billion in market cap, with annual transaction volumes rivaling Visa and Paypal’s. Major banks, asset managers and exchanges have moved more aggressively into on-chain product development since. The impact of the CLARITY Act could be larger still because the category it governs is much bigger. There are trillions of dollars of equities, treasuries, funds and other traditional assets that institutions are positioning to issue and settle on-chain.
A markup is not the finish line. But it is the clearest signal yet that the United States intends to lead on-chain finance rather than concede it.
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or digital assets. Certain statements in this post may constitute forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks and uncertainties, including the possibility that pending legislation may not be enacted or may be enacted in a materially different form. Evernorth undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Digital assets are speculative and involve a high degree of risk, including the potential for total loss of principal. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Learn more about Evernorth: https://www.evernorth.xyz/blog-post-03-18-2026