U.S. CLARITY Act Passes Senate Banking Committee... "Tokenized Securities Should Be Regulated the Same as Underlying Securities" [Crypto Briefing]

[Financial News] The United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs has passed the CLARITY Act, a digital asset market structure bill, moving efforts to bring virtual assets, security token offerings (STOs), and real-world asset tokenization (RWA) into the regulatory framework into full swing. The CLARITY Act defines the respective jurisdictions of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), while also setting out rules for stablecoin reward systems and tokenized securities. However, given the remaining steps, including conflict-of-interest rules for senior officials and a vote in the full Senate, a smooth path to final passage appears unlikely.
According to foreign media and industry sources on the 18th, the core of the CLARITY Act is its principles for handling tokenized securities. The bill states that even if existing financial assets are issued on a blockchain network in distributed ledger form through tokenization, they are not exempt from existing regulatory frameworks such as securities law. In effect, the law codifies the principle that tokenized securities are subject to the same regulations as the underlying securities, regardless of their technical form.
The bill also includes a provision requiring the SEC to conduct additional research on how securities using distributed ledger technology should be regulated and on the transparency of market infrastructure.
It also introduced a fundraising exemption to ease SEC registration burdens for small and venture companies, with an annual cap of $50 million, lowering the barrier to market participation. At the same time, it formally imposes Anti-Money Laundering (AML) obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act on all digital commodity exchanges and brokerage firms to ensure transaction transparency.
There are still many hurdles before the CLARITY Act can take full effect. In particular, the Democratic Party of Korea is calling for stronger regulatory provisions, arguing that pushing through large-scale deregulation while senior officials and family members of the Trump administration are directly profiting from certain virtual asset businesses raises serious conflict-of-interest concerns. The White House, however, has rejected those demands, viewing them as a political attack on the president, and the standoff continues.
In addition, since it typically takes one to two years for the SEC and CFTC to establish joint implementing rules, it is expected to take considerable time before the measures are applied in the field.
The U.S. legislative push is expected to serve as an important benchmark for the detailed rulemaking process of the Joint Public-Private Council for Tokenized Securities led by Korea's financial authorities. As South Korea is reviewing investor limits for individuals, qualification requirements for issuers and account management institutions, valuation of underlying assets, and licensing standards for over-the-counter trading platforms, it is likely to closely monitor the detailed implementation standards of the U.S. bill in order to align global regulatory consistency.
A financial investment industry official said, "The U.S. legislative stance has once again confirmed that regulatory arbitrage will not be allowed from the perspective of tokenized securities, and that the same rules will apply based on the essence of the asset." The official added, "Going forward, competitiveness will depend less on the technology used to tokenize assets and more on product structuring capabilities, legal rights design, and investor protection measures."
elikim@fnnews.com Kim Mi-hee Reporter