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On May 14th, 2026, the <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">CLARITY Act</a> moved out of the <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Senate Banking Committee</a> and headed to the floor for a full Senate vote. This news came over 300 days after the House had passed it back in July of 2025. If successfully passed in the Senate, it will likely head back to the House before being sent to the White House for <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">President Trump’s</a> signature.
Miller Whitehouse-Levine, president of the Solana Policy Institute, sat down with TheStreet <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Roundtable</a> at Solana Accelerate to discuss the implications of this bill finally becoming law.
<a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/policy/a16z-cryptos-head-of-policy-sees-a-2029-cliff-if-congress-drops-clarity-now" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Related: The window for crypto legislation may be now or 2029</a>
<h2 id="rewriting-100-years-of-american-financial-legislation">Rewriting 100 years of American financial legislation</h2>
The CLARITY Act will primarily impact three other pieces of <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">legislation</a>: the Securities Act of 1933, The Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936.
The Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 were written in the wake of the Great Depression to regulate stock markets that operated via paper ledgers and telegraph. The Commodity Exchange Act is older still. The CLARITY Act is, in part, an attempt to make those frameworks function in a world of programmable money and permissionless networks.
Whitehouse-Levine noted that the industry is not just getting new crypto rules. It is updating the foundational legal architecture of American financial markets for the first time in a generation.
<blockquote>
 "This bill is amending the 1933 and 1934 acts and the Commodity Exchange Act, which is even older. That one's actually 100 years old. So this in and of itself is in a way an update of 100 year old statutes. We can of course do that again in the future and I definitely expect that to happen,” he said.
</blockquote>
He is supportive of the current legislation, but not an uncritical one. His case for the bill rests on two specific provisions he considers non-negotiable wins, and he was candid about the compromises that had to be made to get there.
<h2 id="the-two-provisions-that-matter-most">The two provisions that matter most</h2>
The first is the inclusion of the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act within the broader CLARITY Act. This provision gives software developers explicit legal protection, shielding them from liability simply for writing code.
<blockquote>
 Whitehouse-Levine explained that, “ensuring developers have the certainty they need to build any of this stuff without fear of going to jail, the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act being in this bill is a total game changer for the day to day decision making of developers. That's amazing."
</blockquote>
The second is how the bill handles <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">decentralized finance (DeFi)</a>.
<blockquote>
 Whitehouse-Levine told TheStreet, "it treats DeFi properly. It defines decentralization or a lack of control in a coherent way."
</blockquote>
Separate analysis from industry legal experts has also <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/policy/1inch-legal-chief-says-clarity-act-is-very-defi-friendly" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">called the bill</a> "very DeFi-friendly."
<h3 id="more-news">More news:</h3>
<ul>
 <li><a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/markets/xrp-futures-top-63-billion-since-cme-debut" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">XRP futures hit $63 billion since CME debut</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/innovation/you-will-soon-be-able-to-vote-in-amazon-shareholder-meetings-from-a-crypto-wallet" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">You will soon be able to vote in Amazon shareholder meetings from a crypto wallet</a></li>
 <li><a href="https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/markets/robinhood-cfo-sells-company-shares-worth-420500" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Robinhood CFO sells company shares worth $420,500</a></li>
</ul>
<h2 id="questions-still-unanswered-by-clarity">Questions still unanswered by CLARITY</h2>
Whitehouse-Levine was candid that the CLARITY Act will likely need to continue to be amended over the next several years. The area he pointed to most directly is <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">stablecoin</a> yields, where significant compromise was required between banks, crypto protocols, and lawmakers.
But he frames those imperfections as a feature of how legislation works, not a failure. His argument is that the industry needs to be realistic about what is achievable in this Congress and prioritize the foundational wins over a perfect outcome.
<blockquote>
 "We have to be realistic about where we are as an industry and getting those foundational wins into statutes such that folks can have the confidence to invest and build is what's most important. That’s more important than getting everything we want on other issues at the moment,” he said.
</blockquote>
Whitehouse-Levine's case for the CLARITY Act is not that it solves everything. It is that it solves the right things first. Developer certainty and a coherent legal definition of decentralization are the most important issues the industry is facing today. Everything else can be addressed in subsequent legislation once the foundation is in place.
A legal environment where builders can write code without fear of prosecution is what enables the next generation of crypto applications to be built in the U.S. rather than offshore. The quality of what gets built in the next five years depends heavily on whether that certainty exists.

Crypto’s biggest regulatory win isn’t perfect, and that’s okay, says Solana Policy Institute CEO

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TheStreet Roundtable

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