Michael Saylor calls for the US digital-asset industry to adopt usage under existing US regulatory authority after the Senate declined to advance the CLARITY Act and expects 50 million American users before another push to Congress.
On September 15, a cloture motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 was defeated on a 49-50 vote. In either case, three-fifths of the Senate must agree to invoke cloture before it may proceed to consideration of the bill or to its final passage. Later, Sen. Thom Tillis entered a motion to reconsider the vote.
In a Strategy essay published Sep. 19, Saylor wrote that crypto companies should work to provide products that comply with 2027 & 2028 rules from the SEC, CFTC, Treasury and banking regulators. Saylor said legislation is still a possibility where needed, but that the immediate goal should be providing compliant products to the marketplace.
Saylor identified Bitcoin custody and access, digital credit, securities products, and dollar-based digital payment systems as areas in which they could benefit. He stated a goal of 50 million happy American customers who would have a direct interest in the preservation of these services for themselves and others. This is not an official government forecast, but Saylor’s policy goal.
His proposal follows the Senate’s failure to advance CLARITY, a draft bill intended to bring federal structure to a digital commodities marketplace and clarify the relationship between the SEC and CFTC.
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Among other issues, Saylor objected to provisions of the Senate compromise that would restrict rewards for stablecoin users and limit sandbox use by certain SEC and CFTC affiliates.
Covered digital-asset service providers would be prohibited from providing interest or yield to the holder of a payment stablecoin solely for holding the payment stablecoin or through arrangements similar to interest-bearing bank deposits.
Activity-based yields or incentives related to the use of a payment stablecoin as a payment, transfer, liquidity, collateral, governance, and staking would still be permitted.
Saylor, along with other firms, opposed other proposed eligibility criteria for companies to participate in the sandbox, including criteria based on business size, revenue, and customer, investor, or counterparty funds put at-risk, and the number of projects each commission would be able to approve in a year.
Federal agencies are continuing their digital asset regulation efforts under existing authorities, but Saylor believes that regulation can accommodate compliant products while Congress considers narrower amendments.
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He has also indicated that wide adoption would give future policymakers a larger pool of consumers and businesses that can explain what they want preserved. For him, scale is a policy asset.
The failed cloture vote did not end consideration of H.R. 3633 in the Senate, because Tillis had moved to reconsider the cloture vote, keeping the bill alive in the Senate.
There was no new cloture vote announced in the official documents as of Sept. 21. Saylor’s roadmap for now is clear: adopt first, legislate later.
