FTX's Law-Bound Parts Survived. That's the Case for the CLARITY Act

CoinDesk published an opinion piece on Aug 7, 2026, making the case for the CLARITY Act. The author, Bullish's Randi Abernethy, points out that the parts of FTX bound by law survived the exchange's collapse. She argues that mainstream finance is now converging with digital assets, and the law built to protect that convergence in the same way is the one the U.S. Senate did not pass this week. That law is the CLARITY Act. The article treats FTX's collapse as evidence that legal constraints matter: the pieces of FTX that operated within legal protections lived on. For Abernethy, the lesson is not that digital assets should be kept apart from the traditional system. Instead, digital assets need the same kind of legal framework that protects mainstream finance. The Senate's failure to pass the CLARITY Act this week, in her view, leaves digital assets without that protection. The article is bylined to Randi Abernethy and Tram Doman, with editing by Cheyenne Ligon. It takes about four minutes to read and was published under CoinDesk's Opinion section on Aug 7, 2026.