U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins said he expects the long-awaited Clarity Act to pass this month, adding that the country is on track to become the "crypto capital of the world."
Speaking to Fox Business on Tuesday, Atkins said the SEC is continuing to push ahead with rules meant to help the crypto industry. He said the Senate will vote on the Clarity Act on September 15 and added, "I anticipate and hope that it will be passed by the Senate and sent ultimately to the President's desk for a signature."
The Clarity Act would create a framework for distinguishing which digital assets are securities, commodities, or stablecoins. Pro-crypto lawmakers had hoped to pass the bill before Congress left for its August recess, but the vote was pushed back to September.
Atkins also said, "We're changing the past approaches to try to update [rules], modernize them in the age of blockchain and crypto assets."
In a September 2 post, Bitcoin Magazine quoted Atkins as saying: "The Regulation Crypto Assets proposal is our most historic step yet to cement America as the Crypto Capital of the World."
Even though the Clarity Act vote was delayed, regulators including the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, have said they will keep working to shape crypto policy. The report said that last week, the SEC sent a proposal to the White House aimed at clarifying the framework for the custody of crypto assets by investment advisers and companies.
The House of Representatives passed the Clarity Act last year, but the bill has remained deadlocked for most of this year. According to the report, one major point of conflict involved the banking lobby, lawmakers, and crypto businesses debating whether platforms such as Coinbase should be allowed to pay customers yield.
Some lawmakers have also sought to revise wording in the bill tied to ethics, and a new bill began circulating in July. That draft would ban government officials from promoting crypto and making money from it.
Other Democratic lawmakers said the draft still did not go far enough. At the same time, a number of pro-crypto Republicans accused Democrats of deliberately politicizing the issue and delaying the bill.
This report first appeared in Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Mathew Di Salvo.