Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon used a recent a16z crypto interview to argue that the CLARITY Act is needed precisely because the crypto industry has spent years operating without a stable federal rulebook. Speaking with host Robert Hackett, the two said the larger danger is not overregulation, but regulatory uncertainty.
The conversation focused on the market structure bill now under review in the U.S. Senate. Hackett said the legislation had already passed the House last year with bipartisan support and has continued moving through the Senate process since then. The discussion ranged well beyond the bill’s text, covering the cost of maintaining the status quo and what a formal framework could mean for the U.S., financial markets, and future users of the technology.
From Bitcoin to a full industry
Hackett opened by looking back at Andreessen’s January 2014 New York Times essay, “Why Bitcoin Matters.” At the time, taking a public pro-crypto stance was still highly controversial.
Andreessen said he remains proud of the piece and believes much of it still holds up. The main revision, in his view, is that many places where he wrote “Bitcoin” in 2014 would now need to read “crypto.” He said the early vision was that Bitcoin would keep evolving while also supporting ideas such as tokenized real-world assets and NFT-style virtual assets, but the industry developed along a different path. New blockchains and crypto platforms emerged, Ethereum and other public chains arrived, and what began as a single technology became a broader sector.
Dixon described a similar shift from the participant side. Early crypto, he said, was largely a niche subculture made up of enthusiasts and true believers. Now, he said, major banks and fintech firms are regularly announcing platforms built around stablecoins, tokenized stocks, and digital assets.
Stablecoins, cheap transfers, and better infrastructure
Dixon described stablecoins as digital dollars onchain. He said their transaction volume is now comparable to the Visa network, with quarterly volume reaching trillions of dollars. In his telling, a user can open WhatsApp and send money almost anywhere in the world at close to zero cost, with an experience closer to sending a text message than making a bank transfer.
He also pointed to infrastructure improvements. Three years ago, he said, a transfer of that kind could cost several dollars or even tens of dollars in fees. Today, on chains such as Solana and Ethereum, transactions can settle in under a second and cost less than $0.01.
Andreessen put that change in historical terms, saying early internet builders had long hoped that money would move as freely as information. The difference now, he said, is that the underlying crypto infrastructure has matured enough to make that vision more realistic.
Why they say CLARITY is needed now
Hackett noted that BlackRock, JPMorgan, Visa, Fidelity, and Mastercard are all active in the space, even though the sector still lacks a complete and explicit federal framework.
Dixon said the regulatory debate has effectively split into two tracks: stablecoins and everything else in digital assets. According to him, the GENIUS Act was passed by Congress last year and signed by the president, creating a full framework for stablecoins. He said it is no coincidence that stablecoins have also been one of the fastest-growing parts of crypto over the past year.
For retail users, Dixon said, someone using USDC or another stablecoin compliant with the GENIUS Act can have confidence that each token is backed by $1 held in a bank. For institutions, he added, banks and firms such as Stripe and PayPal need predictable rules before they will commit to products that must remain compliant not only next year, but over the next 10 years.
His larger point was that stablecoins run on blockchain networks, yet the networks themselves, along with the rest of digital asset markets, still do not have a full federal structure. He compared that mismatch to writing rules for smartphones while leaving cell towers unregulated. Agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, have issued some guidance, he said, but an industry cannot rely indefinitely on agency interpretation when what it needs is legislation.
Exchanges, federal oversight, and the FTX example
Andreessen said the industry is not asking for subsidies, trade protection, or special treatment. What it wants, he said, is a durable framework that lets firms operate legally and with confidence.
Dixon made the point more concretely. He said the U.S. still has no federal regulator specifically responsible for crypto exchanges, while traditional market venues such as the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq operate under federal oversight. A major piece of the CLARITY Act, he said, is to close that gap by giving the SEC and CFTC authority over the market, while adding disclosure requirements, anti-fraud rules, and insider trading restrictions.
He cited FTX as a clear illustration of what can happen when an exchange operates without standard audit and oversight requirements. Under the structure he described, a federally registered crypto exchange would be subject to standardized audits, and agencies would have full enforcement authority. A platform that cannot meet U.S. compliance requirements would not be allowed to operate in the country.
Dixon added that the bill has been worked on through bipartisan cooperation for years. He said some of the people involved have been pushing the CLARITY Act for more than seven years, that more than a year has passed since the House approved the bill text, and that the Senate has spent roughly a year reviewing and revising it. He also said the bill would apply anti-money laundering and Treasury-related rules to crypto intermediaries in the same way they apply to traditional financial firms, and noted that the Fraternal Order of Police has publicly backed the measure.
The cost of a gray zone
On illicit finance, Dixon argued that blurry legal boundaries create a race to the bottom.
He said he previously served on Coinbase’s board and that Andreessen still serves as a Coinbase director. In his view, companies such as Coinbase that prioritize compliance bear heavy costs and often move more slowly, while offshore platforms can save on compliance spending, charge lower fees, and roll out products faster. The result, he said, is that regulatory ambiguity tends to reward speculators and bad actors rather than compliant operators.
That is one of the reasons he sees the CLARITY Act as important. If a company functions as a financial intermediary and holds customer funds, he said, it should follow the same rules as firms such as Stripe and PayPal. The point is not to create a special system for crypto, but to make the boundaries explicit.
Sanctions evasion, privacy, and traceability
Hackett raised a common criticism of the bill: that it could make sanctions evasion easier.
Andreessen rejected that claim. He said many people he has spoken with in national security do not share the concern and argued that onchain transactions leave a full trail, unlike many traditional methods used to move illicit funds. He also pushed back on the idea that crypto is inherently anonymous and impossible to trace, saying that view reflects a misunderstanding of how the technology works.
Dixon added that many teams are building privacy tools precisely because most public blockchain activity is already visible. He said privacy has legitimate uses and should not be collapsed into concealment or criminal intent. Medical payments and financial services both involve routine privacy needs, he said, and the existence of those needs is no different from what exists in traditional finance.
Netscape, SSL, and an older policy fight over encryption
The conversation then moved to the early internet. Dixon brought up HTTPS and asked Andreessen whether Netscape’s team had helped launch SSL. Andreessen said yes.
Dixon said the debate sounds familiar because early internet policy circles also questioned why ordinary people would need encrypted communications in the first place. Some criminals might misuse encryption, he said, but over time it became obvious that encryption was essential for ordinary, lawful activity, including online banking.
Andreessen then recalled that the fight over encryption policy lasted four years. Netscape’s browser, he said, was one of the first consumer software products to spread public-key encryption at scale. At the time, however, encryption technology was controlled under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, and treated like munitions. As a result, Netscape could sell a strong-encryption version in the U.S., but export versions had to be intentionally weakened. He said the overseas product packaging effectively warned customers not to trust the lower-strength encryption.
That put the company at a disadvantage abroad. Foreign competitors copied the browser and shipped full encryption, while users outside the U.S. moved away from Netscape’s product. After years of lobbying and education in Washington, Andreessen said, the rules were changed. The world did not descend into disorder, and U.S. companies retained a leading role in the global internet economy.
Ethics rules for public officials
Another criticism discussed in the interview involved public ethics. Hackett noted arguments that if a president or family members hold stakes in crypto-related businesses, supporters of the bill could benefit from the law’s passage.
Dixon said ethics standards for public officials make sense, but should not be written as if crypto were the only asset class that raises the issue. In his view, stocks and other financial assets should also be covered by public ethics rules.
He also argued that even setting that question aside, the CLARITY Act itself would impose new constraints on market participants, including disclosure requirements tied to crypto asset risks and holdings, as well as lock-up provisions. Those constraints, he said, would apply broadly, including to public officials.
Andreessen added that the restrictions the bill places on public officials using crypto are stricter than the rules that apply to stock trading. Dixon then made a broader point: many people still view crypto mainly through the lens of trading and speculation, but stablecoins and related applications are also turning it into everyday financial infrastructure. In his view, lawmakers should distinguish between speculative asset activity and ordinary use of technology. Hackett summarized that point by saying ethics provisions are already in the draft, but ethics policy should still be treated as a separate issue from building a market structure framework. Dixon said the relevant language remains under negotiation and that he hopes a consensus can be reached.
The fight over interest on stablecoins
Hackett returned to stablecoins and said one of the sharpest areas of disagreement has involved whether stablecoin balances should be allowed to pay interest. He said banking lobby groups have strongly opposed the idea, with JPMorgan standing out in the debate, because banks worry depositors would pull money from commercial banks if stablecoin wallets offered yield.
Dixon said the final bill text largely accepted the banking industry’s position and bars direct interest on stablecoin balances. As he described it, anything that is functionally and economically equivalent to a bank deposit cannot pay interest.
Still, he said, the rule leaves some room around rewards. If a user makes purchases with a stablecoin wallet at a retailer such as Walmart, a rewards system could be structured in a way that does not count as paying interest on a stored balance. Hackett compared that to credit card points or spending rewards, and Dixon agreed. He added that if the rules became much tighter, loyalty systems such as Starbucks rewards could also be affected. The compromise, he said, took a long negotiation and was not an easy outcome for the crypto industry, but he and Andreessen still support the broader bill.
Hackett also mentioned the public sparring between Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, while noting that JPMorgan itself has a large blockchain team and has already launched tokenized deposit products onchain.
Dixon said many large banks are building in the space. If CLARITY passes, he said, a large number of bank blockchain projects could move into broader deployment. He said many products are already in pilot mode and could expand once regulatory certainty is in place. He also cited public support for the bill from Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, as well as involvement from Fidelity, BlackRock, and fintech firms such as Stripe.
Open-source liability and the risk to developers
Late in the discussion, Hackett raised another contentious issue: whether software developers should bear more legal responsibility for the code they write. He referenced concerns from former White House cybersecurity official Carole House, who has argued that failing to create accountability could set a dangerous precedent for other technologies, including artificial intelligence.
Andreessen was blunt. He said that approach would amount to a death sentence for the industry. In his view, software developers cannot predict every future use of their code. He compared the argument to holding a hotel operator criminally liable if a guest uses a hotel room to plan a crime, or treating a car engineer as an accomplice if a vehicle is used in a robbery. If product creators are responsible for every downstream misuse, he said, the sector cannot function.
Dixon drew a line between intentional wrongdoing and ordinary open-source development. If a developer actively encourages someone to use software for crime, he said, that is already illegal. But that is not the same as building open-source software, AI models, or blockchain infrastructure for legitimate use and publishing the code. If open-source developers face unlimited civil and criminal exposure, he said, most of them will stop building. Small teams and garage startups do not have the resources to absorb that kind of legal risk.
Andreessen said the same tension now appears in AI policy. If strict liability rules are adopted, he said, open-source technology will disappear. The damage would not stop with startups. Academic research depends heavily on open-source software, and venture capital would pull back from the sector if the legal risk became impossible to price.
Would CLARITY weaken securities law?
The last major issue was whether the bill would allow companies to evade securities law by putting assets onchain.
Dixon said no. If a stock is tokenized, he said, it remains a security and remains subject to SEC oversight and U.S. securities law. The bill does not create an exemption for tokenized stocks.
What the bill does, he said, is spell out how native blockchain tokens such as BTC and ETH should be regulated at different stages of a network’s development. In the early stage, a project is inherently more centralized. Founders control the network, and insiders can possess nonpublic information. Under that framework, Dixon said, the token should fall under the SEC and be subject to securities-style rules, including lock-ups and mandatory disclosure.
As the network matures and reaches a level of decentralization defined by the bill, oversight can shift to the CFTC, which would treat the asset more like a commodity. Hackett compared that to markets for gold, other precious metals, crude oil, and wheat, and Dixon agreed. He added that a previous administration had also said BTC and ETH were decentralized enough to be treated as commodities, and that regulators from both parties, along with multiple court cases over the past decade, have broadly operated with that logic in mind.
In Dixon’s framing, CLARITY would put long-standing market assumptions into law and spare participants from having to resolve the question through years of litigation. He said the current system lacks a unified disclosure regime for new token launches, and also lacks insider-trading controls and founder lock-up mechanisms. If the bill becomes law, he said, founders and venture firms would face lock-up rules before a project reaches the decentralization threshold.
If the bill fails
Asked what happens if the Senate does not pass the bill, Dixon said the push for legislation would continue. The SEC, CFTC, and Treasury Department could still issue rules within their administrative authority, he said, but agency action is less durable than a federal statute.
That distinction matters because building products often takes years. If the regulatory environment keeps changing, founders will be less willing to commit large amounts of time and capital to long-term plans. For Dixon, the biggest cost of failure is straightforward: the market would remain in a gray zone for longer. Even so, he said he remains optimistic that the bill could pass soon and that the effort will continue either way.
Andreessen’s final argument: U.S. technology leadership
Hackett ended by asking why the bill matters at the national level and what it has to do with U.S. leadership in technology.
Andreessen said the issue comes down to whether the U.S. wants to keep leading global innovation. First, when a new technology appears, does the country choose to embrace it or reject it? Second, once the direction of a technology is hard to reverse, does the U.S. want the industry built at home or elsewhere?
He argued that Americans, regardless of party, should support continued U.S. leadership in technology because that lead turns into economic gains, higher national wealth, and support for public spending. He also said it has implications for national security and argued that having the crypto industry rooted in the U.S. would be a net positive for law enforcement and security interests.
Hackett closed by saying it remains to be seen whether policymakers will accept that argument or move with the urgency the speakers believe is required. But the underlying question, he suggested, is simple: the countries that set the standards first are often the ones that capture the long-term benefits.