Amid the complex scenario of financial regulation in the United States, the markup session (review and amendments) of the Digital Asset Market Transparency Act (CLARITY Act) scheduled by the Senate Banking Committee on January 15, 2026 at 10 am has been officially postponed. The announcement was made by the committee’s chairman, Tim Scott, after assessing the feasibility of a vote and during bipartisan negotiations that continued into the previous night.
A public message from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, released hours before the official decision, served as an important catalyst. Armstrong withdraws Coinbase support for Draftargued that the situation would be “significantly worse than the current situation.”
Their specific objections state that: Prohibited This is effective for tokenizing actions that impose requirements that are strict enough to actually discourage this innovation without explicitly prohibiting it.
He is also concerned about restrictions on decentralized finance (DeFi), which give governments virtually unlimited access to financial records and violate privacy. and proposed amendments that would eliminate rewards for stablecoins (such as those offered in USDC), benefiting traditional banks and limiting competition.
Furthermore, he pointed out the imbalance of jurisdiction. It would erode the authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (CFTC) supported the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an organization with a tense relationship with the industry.
Cryptocurrency must be treated on the same terms as other financial services so that we can safely and securely build this industry in the United States.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase.
The main document in which companies vetoed legislation regulating cryptocurrencies is from Coinbase. However, Ryan Rasmussen, head of research at Bitwise Asset Management, also said he opposes the bill because he thinks it should be improved.
Not everyone is saying no to the draft law regulating cryptocurrencies
In any case, opinions in the cryptocurrency sector are far from unanimous. Once Coinbase leaves the table, others in the industry see the law as a life raft. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said: He was positioned on the opposite sidewalk in qualifying. Drafting is a necessary tool to prevent sector success from ending in a coin flip.
“Ripple knows firsthand that clarity trumps confusion,” Garlinghouse posted. The company has been embroiled in legal battles with regulators for years. For Ripple, an imperfect but workable framework is preferable to the current paralysis that depletes court resources.
This stagnation raises recent ghosts, such as the FIT21 project, which ended up frozen in a Senate drawer after being approved by the House in 2024.
However, on the other hand Washington gets lost in a labyrinth of amendments and vetoesEurope continues to make progress under MiCA regulations, while the US lags behind on the regulatory front.
The background to this conflict, as always, is economic. As reported by CriptoNoticias, in the third quarter of 2025 alone, Coinbase reported $355 million in revenue related to stablecoins, a line that the CLARITY Act seeks to reform by eliminating holding fees.
All of this is at stake in the United States at the moment. An industry taking steps to become a pillar of decisive influence It affects the financial stability of the world’s largest economy.