GRAYSCALE: THE RULES COME WITHOUT CLARITY — BITCOIN IS IN NONE
The document behind this one is SEC release 2026-76, August 18: proposed Regulation Crypto Assets. Two offering exemptions, “offerings of up to $5 million during a four-year period” and “offerings of up to $75 million during each 12-month period,” a “conditional safe harbor from the term ‘investment contract,’” and preemption of state securities law for covered offerings. Comments close 60 days after Federal Register publication, which was August 21, so October 20. Chairman Atkins: “Regulation Crypto Assets seeks to provide crypto asset entrepreneurs and market participants with clear pathways to raise capital under the federal securities laws.” The release does not contain the word bitcoin.
That proposal is one of four fronts Grayscale’s research desk listed on September 10, in a note bitcoin.com carried Saturday night. Grayscale’s words: “CLARITY is no longer the only source of regulatory direction. The US framework is becoming clearer across stablecoins, token issuance, tokenized securities, and perpetual futures even without the CLARITY Act.” Stablecoins got theirs when GENIUS was signed on July 18, 2025. Token issuance is the SEC proposal above. The other two are agency work in progress.
Grayscale keeps the door open for Congress: “CLARITY remains important because only Congress can establish a comprehensive and durable division of SEC and CFTC authority. But failure in 2026 would not stop regulatory progress already underway.” And: “its passage is not determinative.”
Read it as a filing. The largest crypto asset manager in the country, whose products live on exactly the rules being written, is telling its clients two days before a cloture vote that it does not need the vote. The paperwork arrives either way. What Congress alone can hand out is the thing Grayscale names, the line between two regulators, and the two things this desk found the vote is actually about: who may pay interest on a stablecoin, and whether officials may issue tokens. No agency can grant either one.
Who profits: issuers and exchanges, whichever way Tuesday goes, because the rulemaking calendar does not stop for a failed motion. What it costs: the lobby that put $191 million on hand to win a vote Grayscale just called non-determinative.
Look at the four fronts again. Stablecoins, token issuance, tokenized securities, perpetual futures. Bitcoin is in none of them, because bitcoin is not issued, not a contract, not a token on someone’s ledger and not a future. It had clarity before the hearing and it will have it after. The bill is about the wrappers, and the wrapper company just said so.
At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $77,188 at 10:51 AM ET on Crypto.com.