CoinFund’s Perkins: Crypto Fine Without CLARITY Act
Chris Perkins, Managing Partner at CoinFund, publicly argued this week that the crypto industry does not require passage of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act to maintain its operational and investment trajectory, a position that cuts directly against the prevailing industry posture of treating legislative certainty as a prerequisite for sustained institutional engagement. Perkins cited the joint interpretation released in March 2026 by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig on the application of federal securities laws to crypto assets as evidence that agency-level guidance is already providing the taxonomic and structural clarity the market has long demanded.
“These guys are creating policy and precedent every single day,” Perkins said, adding that if the CLARITY Act fails to advance, “we’re going to be just fine.”
We suspect Perkins’ public positioning also serves a secondary function, signaling to CoinFund’s limited partners and prospective portfolio companies that the fund’s investment activity will not be contingent on legislative outcomes that remain uncertain in both timing and form.
Photo: Chris Perkins
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CLARITY Act Legislative Landscape: Where the Bill Stands and What It Would Establish
The Digital Asset Policy debate in Washington has centered for more than two years on the question of how to demarcate jurisdictional authority between the SEC and the CFTC over digital assets, a question that agency-level guidance has addressed in part but that statutory law has not yet resolved.
The CLARITY Act, in its current form, would establish a formal framework for classifying digital assets as either securities or commodities, assign primary regulatory jurisdiction accordingly, and create compliance pathways for issuers and exchanges that do not currently exist under either the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 or the Commodity Exchange Act. The bill would also address DeFi protocol treatment, yield-bearing arrangements, and the conditions under which a digital asset transitions from security to commodity status as a network decentralizes.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott had signaled the bill was approaching a committee markup in May 2026, describing it as “in the red zone,” but unified Republican support within the committee has not been guaranteed, and the broader legislative timeline remains contingent on competing fiscal priorities.
Provisions addressing DeFi token treatment and yield ring-fencing have drawn specific scrutiny from members who view the bill’s scope as either too broad or insufficiently protective of retail participants. The mechanism functions as follows: absent statutory demarcation, the SEC and CFTC are each operating under their existing enabling legislation, with the March 2026 joint interpretation providing inter-agency coordination on classification questions but offering no binding legal safe harbor to issuers or platforms.
🇺🇸 NOW: Polymarket gives the CLARITY Act a 63% chance of being signed into law in 2026. pic.twitter.com/k3COsRDphX
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) May 4, 2026
Notably, Coinbase declined to support an earlier draft of the CLARITY Act, citing concerns about specific provisions – a signal that even major domestic crypto infrastructure players have reservations about the bill’s current architecture. Perkins’ position, while distinct in its framing, is not without company in the institutional segment of the industry.
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