Expert Explained the Main Problem with CLARITY Act

Published: August 21, 2026 – 14:48 UTC

Hermine Wong explained why she considers the CLARITY Act “anti-crypto.”
In her view, the bill benefits large crypto intermediaries.
Meanwhile, she said its focus should shift toward users and developers.

Berkeley Law lecturer Hermine Wong criticized the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act bill, saying it protects centralized crypto intermediaries more than the technology itself. Against the backdrop of the postponement of the U.S. Senate vote to September 2026, she urged lawmakers to rethink their approach to crypto market regulation so it accounts for the interests of decentralized protocol developers, users who self-custody crypto assets, and participants in P2P transactions.

CLARITY Act Is Focused on Intermediaries

According to Wong, after years of failed legislative initiatives and regulatory pressure, any comprehensive crypto law has started to be seen as progress. However, in her view, the CLARITY Act is effectively not a law about crypto technology, but about the business models of crypto intermediaries.

“For years, the crypto community endured congressional paralysis as a parade of crypto bills stalled out. […] But if we look past the name, Clarity isn’t really a bill about enabling crypto, the technology. It is a bill about enabling crypto middlemen,” the expert noted.

Wong claims that only 2-4% of the bill’s text is devoted to the underlying technology, while 44-77% covers exchanges, brokers, custodians, and other intermediaries. In her view, this approach runs counter to the original idea behind cryptocurrencies — reducing the financial system’s reliance on trusted third parties.

Crypto Regulation Needs a Different Approach

The expert also pointed to the political influence of major crypto companies. According to her data, during the 2024 election cycle, the crypto industry raised more than $200 million, with over 80% of the funds coming from Coinbase, a16z, and Ripple alone.

Wong believes new legislation should pay more attention to decentralized protocols, security, governance, and user protection, rather than focusing only on rules for large centralized companies.

“The underrepresented in this debate are everyone else: developers building decentralized protocols, people using self-custodied assets and making peer-to-peer transactions, and ordinary Americans who would benefit from technology that reduces middlemen-reliance, rather than creating a new class of crypto intermediaries,” she emphasized.

Recall that Solana Policy Institute head Miller Whitehouse-Levine previously estimated the likelihood of the bill being passed before the November elections at just 10%, while Grayscale believes the chances of the CLARITY Act being passed this year are very low.

In turn, analysts at Bitwise and Bernstein said the bill’s failure would not affect the crypto market’s дальнейший growth, but would allow the development of rules for the crypto industry to be accelerated under the Project Crypto initiative.

At the same time, US President Donald Trump urged Congress to support the initiative.

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Source: Incrypted