Author: Haotian
The market is currently underestimating the CLARITY Act, just as it initially underestimated the GENIUS Act. Fortunately, one year after its enactment, the GENIUS Act has already delivered tangible results. We can now extrapolate what the passage of the CLARITY Act might bring.
-- Actual changes observed one year after the GENIUS Act.
The GENIUS Act brought stablecoins out of regulatory ambiguity and into a formal oversight framework, directly catalyzing two major shifts:
First, the issuer landscape has evolved from a 'duopoly' to a diversified ecosystem. Tether launched the compliant USAT to address its gap in the U.S. market, $Circle (CRCL.US)$ , Paxos, Ripple, $BitGo Holdings (BTGO.US)$ and others have received federal charters from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC); SoFi and Revolut have launched white-label stablecoins, $Visa (V.US)$ 、 $MasterCard (MA.US)$ , Stripe, and over 140 other institutions jointly launched the Open USD Alliance, while USD1—a project linked to the Trump family—rapidly scaled to several billion dollars in size.
Second, both scale and transaction volume have grown substantially. The total market capitalization of stablecoins rose from approximately $211 billion at the beginning of 2025 to a record high of $322 billion by June 2026. $Tether (USDT.CC)$ 、 $USD Coin (USDC.CC)$ continues to expand its market share, while emerging stablecoins such as USDS, USD1, USDe, USDG, PYUSD, and RLUSD are also growing rapidly. Total annual transaction volumes have already reached trillions of dollars, with real-world payments, cross-border settlements, and real-world asset (RWA) use cases accounting for an increasing share.
These are quantifiable and observable changes, demonstrating that regulatory clarity can swiftly translate into market growth and institutional adoption.
-- What the crypto industry could look like one year after the CLARITY Act’s passage.
The CLARITY Act is a broader digital asset market structure bill compared to the GENIUS Act. Its core provisions clarify the classification of digital commodities versus securities, delineate regulatory responsibilities between the CFTC and SEC, and provide safeguards for exchanges and DeFi protocols. It complements the GENIUS Act: one governs stablecoin issuance, while the other establishes overarching market rules.
If enacted in 2026, the following changes are expected to emerge within one year:
1) The scale of stablecoins continues to expand at an accelerating pace. Building on the GENIUS framework, greater market certainty will further incentivize institutional adoption. By 2027, the total market capitalization of stablecoins—currently at USD 320 billion—is expected to reach a new milestone, potentially surpassing USD 1 trillion in an optimistic scenario. New issuers continue to emerge, and the share of real-world use cases such as RWA settlement and on-chain payments is increasing, driving transaction volumes to new highs.
2) Major assets such as BTC, ETH, and SOL gain statutory commodity status
The CLEAR Act explicitly classifies these assets as digital commodities and permits banks to treat related activities as 'financial in nature.' Banks can now hold $Bitcoin (BTC.CC)$ 、 $Ethereum (ETH.CC)$ 、 $Solana (SOL.CC)$ such assets directly on their balance sheets rather than solely through ETFs. Mechanisms like ETH staking can also be more smoothly and legally implemented, paving the way for large-scale institutional capital inflows.
3) Perpetual DEXs and RWA/DeFi enter a new growth phase
Perpetual DEXs such as Hyperliquid and Lighter are gaining regulatory clarity, accelerating the development of innovative products like RWA perpetual swaps. Meanwhile, reduced barriers to tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs) will catalyze a second wave of DeFi growth, fostering deeper integration between traditional finance and on-chain ecosystems and unlocking new liquidity and use cases.
In summary, the performance one year after the enactment of the GENIUS Act has already demonstrated that once the CLEAR Act passes, its impact will be far broader—exceeding many people’s expectations. At present, the market is underestimating the transformative potential of the CLEAR Act, but this precisely creates a strategic window of opportunity for us to position ourselves for the future, doesn’t it?