Michael Saylor said the crypto industry should keep moving under innovation-friendly rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Treasury Department, and banking regulators, rather than accept the restrictions in the final compromise version of the CLARITY text.
He argued that the U.S. government is willing to modernize financial markets and that the next two years should be used to get better financial products into the hands of more people. The safest path forward, he wrote, is to build products that users actually find useful and distribute them widely. Lower costs, lower barriers to use, more useful services, and stronger control over funds would let users feel the value of innovation directly and give them a direct reason to defend it. In his view, the strongest support base the industry can build is the public that benefits from those products in practice.
What Saylor objects to in the CLARITY compromise text
Saylor wrote that stable and clear legal rules matter, but so does freedom to compete. Law can lock in a right for the long term, and it can also lock in a restriction for the long term. Before celebrating durable certainty, he said, the industry should first look closely at what exactly is being fixed in place.
He said the September version of the CLARITY compromise text would restrict service providers from giving rewards to customers. If a customer is only holding a payment stablecoin, a provider could not pay rewards on that basis alone, except for qualifying activity-based rewards. The proposal would also allow certain reward mechanisms to be restricted if the Treasury Department determines that community banks are facing large-scale deposit outflows that are adverse to them.
He drew a distinction between protecting banks from liquidity crises and protecting banks from being replaced by more competitive service providers, calling them two different goals. Financial stability requires sound regulation, he wrote, while competition requires customers to be free to choose better services. If technology lowers the cost of providing financial services, consumers should share in those savings.
Saylor also noted that the GENIUS Act already includes restrictions on stablecoin issuers paying interest or yield, though the exact application depends on its effective-date provisions. If CLARITY stalls, those restrictions would still remain in place. The question now, he said, is whether more limits should be layered onto service providers and reward mechanisms.
Even the innovation sandbox in CLARITY, he wrote, would limit participating companies to 25 employees and cap the number of projects each regulatory committee could approve at 20 per year. Those limits apply only to the sandbox itself, but he said they show how legislation can set the scale and boundaries of experimentation before the market has had a chance to show what is possible.
The regulatory path he favors
Saylor said the goal should be a free market for financial innovation: clear rules, open entry for new participants, real competition, and customer choice. Property rights should be protected, honest disclosure should be required, and fraud should be punished. Inside those boundaries, entrepreneurs should be able to test better technology and business models, and successful products should be allowed to grow.
He said the U.S. government is already opening that path.
On Sept. 17, the SEC used its existing authority to provide conditional regulatory relief for onchain trading in certain tokenized stocks. That does not mean the activity is no longer regulated, he wrote. Investor protections and the anti-fraud provisions of securities law still apply.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins described that approach as a gradual process: let the market develop first, learn from how it operates, and then write long-term rules after temporary relief measures.
CFTC Chair Michael Selig supports advancing CLARITY, according to Saylor, but has also said that if the bill does not move forward, the agency will use existing authority to keep working. Selig has asked staff to study rules for leveraged or margined crypto trading through regulated markets and to work with developers to explore lawful, compliant onchain finance.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, he wrote, has tied the implementation of stablecoin rules to innovation, U.S. economic growth, and the global role of the dollar. Workable rules can turn those goals into payment, commerce, and financial services that people actually use.
Saylor added that the CLARITY text itself preserves the SEC’s existing exemptive authority. That, he said, is the key point: current law already leaves substantial room for development. The industry can keep pursuing those opportunities without treating new statutory restrictions as the price of progress. As suitable rules and compliant market infrastructure take shape, he said, the benefits can spread across the broader digital asset economy.
Bitcoin, STRC, MSTR, Coinbase, and USDC as examples
Digital capital: Bitcoin (BTC)
Saylor said the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has already lowered regulatory barriers for banks that want to provide crypto-asset custody. If workable custody rules are built on top of that and lending services are offered with prudent risk controls, Bitcoin would become easier to hold, finance, and use as collateral. More institutions competing to serve Bitcoin holders could widen participation and improve liquidity.
Digital credit: Stretch (STRC)
He described Strategy’s flagship digital credit product, STRC, as a preferred stock that connects the company’s Bitcoin treasury management business with yield-seeking investors. Rules that support innovation could open the way for broader issuance and distribution, tokenized ownership interests, and easier trading, while preserving the rights shareholders have under the law.
He added that compliant lending arrangements could also make STRC more suitable for use as collateral, provided the terms are clear and risk disclosures are adequate.
Digital equity: Strategy (MSTR)
For digital equity, Saylor said more compliant trading venues, simpler transfer processes, and longer trading hours could broaden participation in Strategy common stock and improve market liquidity. More efficient access to equity capital could help Bitcoin treasury companies finance growth and develop new financial products. Modernized market infrastructure, he wrote, can benefit both issuers and shareholders.
Digital exchanges: Coinbase (COIN)
He said platforms such as Coinbase can combine crypto assets, securities, custody, payments, and financing into a more complete and more usable customer experience. Rules that support innovation would help properly regulated firms launch and integrate new products.
Broader market participation would create business opportunities for exchanges and give customers more competition on price and service.
Digital currency: Circle (USDC)
Saylor wrote that USDC is a regulated dollar stablecoin issued by U.S.-based Circle through its affiliates, linking digital finance to everyday payments and global commerce.
Rules that support innovation could help Circle and its partners expand the use of digital dollars through faster settlement, programmable payments, and integration with financial institutions. That would allow U.S. businesses to reach new markets and make the dollar more useful globally.
How these categories reinforce each other
Saylor said these categories strengthen one another. Capital supports credit, equity finances companies, exchanges connect investors and issuers, and digital currency moves value between them. Developers can combine those capabilities to build products that are more useful than any single component on its own. Open competition allows more people to build, more ideas to be tested by the market, and more value to reach customers.
He said banks should be part of that future. They can compete around digital assets in custody, payments, product distribution, and credit backed by digital assets. Incumbents and new entrants alike should win customers by offering better products and services. That, he wrote, is how financial innovation improves the financial system.
Speed matters, in his view, because innovation compounds. The earlier products are launched, the earlier feedback arrives. Better products attract customers, distribution, and investment, which then support the next round of improvement. Every year of delay means one less year of real benefits for users and one less year of practical experience for U.S. companies.
He said the gains extend beyond finance. Lower payment and financing costs can free up resources for investment, hiring, and expansion. Faster settlement lets capital be put back to work sooner. Broader access to financial participation can connect savers with entrepreneurs. If U.S. companies have enough room to develop these products and services and take them overseas, they can create global value while strengthening the U.S. economy.
Why he says the industry needs 50 million users
Saylor said one major argument for supporting CLARITY is that the industry needs a law that protects it from future governments that may be unfriendly to digital assets.
But he argued that while durable law can protect rights and some changes do require Congress, no law can remove politics from regulation entirely. Future administrations will still make important decisions in rule implementation and enforcement. For that reason, he said, the industry also needs a public support base large enough to raise the political cost of hostile policy.
He asked readers to imagine 50 million American voters using digital financial products that improve their lives: cheaper ways to pay, easier access to Bitcoin, securities products that are genuinely useful, yield products with transparent terms, and credit with more competitive pricing and conditions.
Those voters would then have something concrete to defend. Restricting a technology that has not yet spread widely is politically different from taking away services used by millions of people, he wrote. A future government would have to explain why those customers should lose benefits they already have.
His stated goal is 50 million genuinely satisfied users with a direct incentive to defend freedom of financial choice. The larger the user base, the higher the political cost of policy reversal. Sound rulemaking can strengthen the legal foundation, he said, but both tasks matter.
He also wrote that before products exist, there are no customers to speak for them. Once products are widely used, households, businesses, advisers, developers, and banks can say what they want preserved. Real value already validated by the public strengthens the industry’s position in legislation more than promises about what might be built in the future.
User support has to be earned through products, he said. Products should be useful, understandable, and reliable in both favorable and unfavorable markets. Transparent terms, honest risk disclosure, easy user experience, and the right to switch providers all help build trust. Wide deployment can then turn that trust into durable support.
Saylor said the industry should use 2027 and 2028 to scale products that are genuinely useful, convert temporary relief into long-term rules, and pursue targeted legislation where additional authority or protection is truly needed. Success, he wrote, should be measured by how much value is created for customers and the economy.
He ended by calling for the digital asset industry to innovate quickly in a free market and create as much value as possible for the U.S. and global economies. The task, in his view, is to build products people want to use and benefit from, distribute them widely, and give millions of people a reason to defend the competitive and innovative freedom that makes those products possible. Only when more people actually use digital innovation and benefit from it, he wrote, can the industry gain broad public support and more durable protection.