Bessent Says Crypto Firms Are Sabotaging Best Chance for Rules

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday (Feb. 13) that the crypto industry should support the CLARITY Act and help get it passed as soon as possible.

During an interview on CNBC, Bessent said the crypto market structure bill has bipartisan support in Congress, but if it is delayed, it could be defeated if the Democrats take control of the House in November.

Bessent also said that comments some crypto companies have made about not supporting the bill have contributed to the current volatility of bitcoin. While bitcoin is always volatile, those comments have made the current volatility “self-induced.”

“There has been a bipartisan working group, and there is a group of Democrats that want to work with Republicans on getting a market structure bill, it’s called the CLARITY bill, but there are a group of crypto firms who have been blocking it,” Bessent said. “They said, ‘Well, we’d rather have no legislation than this legislation,’ and that doesn’t seem to have been good for the overall crypto community. So, at a time when we are having one of these historically volatile sell-offs, I think some clarity on the CLARITY bill would give great comfort to the market, and we could move forward from there.”

Bessent added that if the Democrats were to take the House, the prospects of a deal on a crypto market structure bill would “fall apart.” He said that under the Biden administration, Democrats’ treatment of crypto led to “almost an extinction event.”

President Donald Trump, on the other hand, has worked to make the United States the “digital asset capital of the world,” Bessent said.

“There’s a lot of innovation that goes on adjacent to crypto, in the blockchain, in DeFi, so I think it’s important to get this CLARITY bill done as soon as possible and on the president’s desk this spring,” Bessent said.

On Thursday (Feb. 12), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul S. Atkins said legislation like the CLARITY Act is the best way to provide long-term certainty for crypto markets.

Speaking at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Atkins said: “There is no action we can take that future-proofs our rulebook more formidably than nonpartisan market structure legislation.”