The CLARITY Act Fight Is Really About Which Tokens Can Trade

## The CLARITY Act fight is really about which tokens can trade  According to [Cointelegraph](https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-companies-law-risky-tokens-manipulation), Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini reportedly pressed US senators on May 8 to remove a clause from the market-structure bill that would have required platforms to trade only digital assets "not readily susceptible to manipulation." That is not a cosmetic tweak. In a bill like the CLARITY Act, a sentence about manipulable tokens is a sentence about who gets to enter the market and on what terms. > "old news" > — Faryar Shirzad, Coinbase chief policy officer Congress.gov says [H.R. 3633, the CLARITY Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3633) would generally place digital commodities under CFTC oversight and add reporting, trade monitoring and recordkeeping requirements. That is why the exchange pushback matters: the bill is not just drawing agency boundaries, it is also sketching the rules for market admission. ## Why the wording matters more than the headline ### A manipulation screen can become a market-access screen A phrase like "not readily susceptible to manipulation" sounds narrow, but inside a market-structure bill it can work like a listing filter. For larger assets with deeper liquidity, that screen may look routine. For smaller tokens, it can determine whether a platform can list them at all. That is the deeper policy choice. Congress can write a bill that tells exchanges to police manipulation, or it can write one that turns manipulation risk into a gating condition for access. Those are not the same. The first sets conduct rules. The second shapes the product set itself.  ## The committee calendar already turned this into a bargaining fight The timing is doing as much work as the text. The Senate Banking Committee announced on [January 9, 2026](https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/majority/chairman-scott-announces-digital-asset-market-structure-markup?mod=livecoverage_web) that it would hold a markup on January 15. The Senate Agriculture Committee later announced on [January 13, 2026](https://www.agriculture.senate.gov/newsroom/rep/press/release/chairman-boozman-announces-timeline-for-crypto-market-structure-legislation) that its own markup would follow on January 27. Congress.gov also shows the House passed the CLARITY Act on July 17, 2025. Once a bill is on that kind of clock, every clause becomes negotiable currency. That is why the report matters even if Coinbase treats it as stale. A live markup calendar gives exchanges leverage because language can be traded for speed, and speed is often what committees want most. ## What would settle the read If the token-manipulation clause comes back in revised text, the dispute is not about whether Congress wants a strong rule but about where the boundary should sit. If it disappears, lawmakers may be choosing faster progress over a harder listing standard. If the bill advances while the CFTC keeps taking the lead on digital commodities, the eventual framework will say a lot about whether Congress wants a broad oversight model or a tighter admission test. The useful conclusion is narrower than the headline. This is not just three exchanges resisting regulation. It is a fight over whether market-structure legislation becomes a real rulebook for listings, or only a framework that leaves the hardest choices to regulators later. --- Author: [Alex Chen](https://x.com/AlexC0in) Source: [cointelegraph.com](https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-companies-law-risky-tokens-manipulation)