CONGRESS FAILED TUESDAY — THE SEC EXEMPTED IT THURSDAY UNDER A LAW FROM 1996 — AND CAPPED THE WHOLE THING AT 2.5% OF DAILY VOLUME

The Senate refused to open debate on the CLARITY Act on Tuesday, forty-nine to fifty. Congress went home Wednesday. On Thursday the SEC did a piece of it by order.

Order 34-106402, effective September 17, 2026 until September 17, 2031. It exempts a Tokenized Securities Venue from the definition of “exchange” and the firms feeding its pools from the definition of “dealer.”

The power is section 36 of the Exchange Act, which lets the Commission “exempt any person, security, or transaction… from any provision” of the Act. Congress handed that over in 1996. Thirty years later it is the tool for doing what the 2026 bill could not.

Atkins says why in his first line: “Earlier this week, Congress was unsuccessful in advancing the CLARITY Act despite the tireless efforts of many.”

The size is buried on page 58. Tier one gets seventy-five symbols and a quarter of one percent of the prior month’s average daily volume. Tier two gets two hundred fifty symbols and two and a half percent. That is the whole opening.

The contracts must sit on a “public, permissionless distributed ledger.” The pools on top are for permissioned participants, and the order names who asked: “certain market participants have expressed the desire to provide access to trading… on a permissioned basis.” Public rails, private guest list. That is the deal.

For the definition of a distributed ledger, the order cites the GENIUS Act. The stablecoin law that passed is holding up the order that stands in for the one that did not.