SEC and CFTC Move Swiftly After CLARITY Act's Demise

The CLARITY Act's demise on September 15 did not deter the SEC and CFTC from publishing rules just two days later. The Senate had voted down the bill with a margin of 11 votes, but the agencies had been working on their documents for months.

According to the source, Commissioner Atkins had promised an Innovation Exemption in his CNBC appearance on December 2, 2025, and expected it to be live before the end of January. However, it took nine months for the exemption to arrive.

The rules have significant implications for XRP, Bitcoin, and Solana holders. The SEC's Innovation Exemption grants five-year conditional relief to tokenized securities venues, allowing them to trade tokenized shares without registering as exchanges. This is particularly beneficial to Solana, which already carries $465 million of tokenized stocks.

The CFTC has also issued a letter extending a framework for Phantom Technologies, a wallet built for the Solana ecosystem. The SEC had previously named SOL a core ETF asset on September 5.