On May 14, 2026, an invisible line connected two events: in the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, lawmakers debated the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act), attempting to outline a clearer regulatory framework for the digital asset market and redistribute responsibilities between the SEC and CFTC; meanwhile, in the on-chain world, CoinList, established in 2017, announced the launch of an on-chain capital market infrastructure called Passage, positioning itself as an "access layer" for tokenized assets. During the hearing, several senators candidly admitted that the bill has not yet gained sufficient bipartisan support, and key provisions still require negotiation, indicating that this legislation, which is expected to "set the tone" for the industry, still has an uncertain journey ahead before a vote. At the same time offline, Passage provided answers for tokenized scenarios involving stocks, funds, income products, and Pre-IPO assets, not by waiting for legislative clarity but by building compliant issuance, capital acquisition, and distribution infrastructure during this regulatory gray period, attempting to carve out a feasible path for future on-chain assets before the policy game has concluded. This difference in pace itself is a microcosm of the current self-rescue pathways in the industry.
Senate Hearing Stalemate: Bipartisan Consensus Still Unreached
At the Senate Banking Committee hearing on May 14, the CLARITY Act was repeatedly emphasized as a key text "to give the market a clear statement"—it aims to establish a more explicit regulatory framework for the digital asset market and delineate clearer boundaries of responsibility among federal agencies such as the SEC and CFTC. However, the reality is that despite ongoing negotiations around the text, several senators publicly acknowledged that the draft is still far from achieving sufficient bipartisan consensus. Some supporters attempted to downplay the differences, claiming that only "a few provisions" remain to be finalized, while the opposing or cautious side reminded that key issues have not been genuinely aligned, and recklessly advancing towards a vote at this stage would only push the contradictions outside the legislative hall.
The disagreements quickly overflowed into details. Regarding whether to add DeFi-related provisions to the CLARITY Act, some senators advocated for strengthening anti-money laundering compliance requirements, while Cynthia Lummis explicitly opposed adding new DeFi amendments, viewing them as unnecessary burdens, and warned that if the U.S. continues to lag in digital asset legislation, the industry may simply turn to more regulatory-friendly jurisdictions. Reportedly, in the same proceedings, Elizabeth Warren again leveraged an amendment related to Jeffrey Epstein's banking regulatory records to criticize the use of crypto assets for illegal payments, and denounced traditional financial institutions for their compliance failures. What appeared to be a technical legislative hearing was, in fact, a complex tug-of-war over regulatory intensity, financial crime prevention, and innovation space intricately layered within a single draft. The lack of consensus resulted in on-chain and off-chain participants continuing to navigate the "gray period" with undefined rules.
DeFi Becomes the Core of Regulatory Tug-of-War
Just as Warren pointed her arrows at the narrative of "illegal payments," another underlying debate in the hearing room was whether to directly write DeFi into CLARITY. Some senators advocated for strengthening money laundering compliance requirements in the decentralized finance sector, hoping to bring DeFi under stricter regulatory pathways through additional clauses; meanwhile, according to some interpretations, the bill was seen as an attempt to provide a legal path for economic activities based on decentralized trading platforms, though whether these interpretations align with the text itself remains to be verified in the future.
Cynthia Lummis chose to hit the brakes in this tug-of-war. She clearly stated that it is unnecessary to add DeFi provisions to the CLARITY Act, arguing that locking down an evolving field with a still-undefined regulatory framework would only push innovation to other jurisdictions. She also warned that if the U.S. continues to fall behind in digital asset legislation, the industry will vote with its feet. For domestic DeFi projects, this is not just a matter of adding or removing a few clauses; it concerns whether they choose to explore compliance pathways locally or simply shift their products, teams, and on-chain deployments to markets with clearer regulatory stances.
Warren Leverages Epstein Case to Pressure Wall Street
As Lummis firmly anchored her position on the DeFi provisions, Elizabeth Warren opted to steer the hearing back to the traditional financial battlefield that she knows well. During the same proceedings, she proposed an amendment calling for the public disclosure of banking regulatory records related to Jeffrey Epstein, targeting the question of who allowed oversight to slip in past regulatory processes. The amendment was once again voted down, but this procedural setback highlighted that when Warren attempts to tighten the regulatory reins around Wall Street further, she faces considerable resistance, even within her own committee.
According to media reports, while commenting on this amendment, Warren criticized the use of crypto assets in illegal payments and specifically named the major Wall Street banks that continued to provide financial services to Epstein even after his conviction for sex crimes in 2008, emphasizing that regulation cannot focus solely on the emerging crypto industry while neglecting the failures of the traditional financial system. To her, the CLARITY Act struggle has never been about "whether to regulate," but rather about the priority dispute within the broader financial system regarding whether to place the burden of risk on crypto assets first or to acknowledge that the issues left by Wall Street also require being addressed at the same hearing table.
CoinList Launches Passage
Just as the debate over how to regulate the CLARITY Act continued in Washington, CoinList, established in 2017 and focused on digital asset issuance and distribution, offered its own answer within the same timeframe: the launch of Passage, an on-chain capital market infrastructure. Rather than being merely a new product, CoinList aims to make Passage the "access layer" for tokenized assets, not competing as a trading terminal but standing at an earlier link, focusing on compliant issuance and distribution capabilities rather than simply recording a string of asset certificates on-chain.
CoinList has clearly set the target audience for Passage beyond traditional "token projects": stocks, funds, income-based products, and Pre-IPO assets are all within its support scope, aiming to provide compliant issuance, capital acquisition, distribution, and infrastructure support for these tokenized assets. In their narrative, "asset tokenization does not equal effective distribution," as fragmentation between issuers, blockchain, and compliance rules makes it difficult for many assets to genuinely reach investors, even if they have been successfully recorded on-chain. Given the lack of bipartisan consensus on the CLARITY Act and the unresolved regulatory path, Passage resembles a strategy of "first paving the track on-chain, then waiting for regulations to catch up," reserving a usable but borderless technological and compliance channel for project parties and asset issuers that want to connect with on-chain infrastructure in the future.
Regulatory Window and the Future of On-Chain Capital
Following the Senate Banking Committee hearing, the CLARITY Act still lacked sufficient bipartisan support and was forced to continue its stalemate, while at the same time, CoinList brought Passage to the forefront, creating a classic image of "regulatory delays, infrastructure leading": the regulatory rules have yet to be finalized, but the track for on-chain capital markets has already begun to be laid. If the U.S. were to pass legislation similar to CLARITY in the future, clearly defining the boundaries of agencies like the SEC and CFTC, tokenization "access layers" like Passage would have the opportunity to become a bridge between traditional stocks, funds, income products, Pre-IPO assets, DeFi, or broader on-chain finance; conversely, if legislation lingers amid bipartisan disputes and DeFi clause controversies over the long term, the risk that Lummis warned about in the hearing—"the industry migrating to more regulatory-friendly jurisdictions"—will continue to accumulate. For the on-chain capital market, the key variables to watch moving forward include whether the CLARITY negotiations can substantially garner bipartisan support, how DeFi anti-money laundering and other additional clauses will ultimately be incorporated into the bill, and the adoption speed of infrastructure like Passage in real tokenization projects; for crypto project teams and institutions, this is not only a risk period characterized by unclear compliance pathways but also a critical window to make early moves in the on-chain capital market using tools like Passage, preserving space for the regulatory framework that may arrive in the future.
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