USA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Dario de Martino and Susan Gault-Brown, A&O Shearman
tor regarded as an attack on decentralised protocols. The repeal drew bipartisan support in both chambers. The larger prize is market structure. The Financial Inno- vation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), first introduced in 2023 and passed by the House in May 2024, supplied the template: a division of authority between the SEC and CFTC keyed to the maturity and decentralisation of a network. Its successor, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (the “CLARITY Act”), passed the House in 2025 and, on 14 May 2026, was advanced by the Senate Banking Committee in a bipar- tisan 15-9 vote. Broadly, the bill would assign the CFTC authority over digital commodity spot markets while leaving investment-contract assets with the SEC, and it addresses illicit finance, decentralised finance, limits on stablecoin yield, custody and customer-property pro- tections. The bill has progressed further in the Senate than prior comprehensive market structure proposals, but additional committee, floor and House-Senate rec- onciliation steps remain before anything reaches the President’s desk. State activity continues alongside the federal effort. California’s Digital Financial Assets Law took effect on 1 July 2025, with its licensing requirement phasing in from 1 July 2026, making California the most signifi- cant state to follow New York’s “BitLicense” model; dozens of other states have introduced legislation of their own. As New York’s experience has shown, such regimes can create areas of the country where virtual currency businesses must obtain a licence – a famously demanding exercise – or else fence out activity and customers. The Entry (and Return) of Digital Asset Businesses to the United States Reduced enforcement risk, a liberalised banking environment and vocal support from the executive branch have combined to draw digital asset compa- nies back to the US market. Firms that had previously withdrawn are again offering products and services to US consumers and institutional investors, and the arrival of a statutory framework for stablecoins – with market structure legislation advancing – has made those commitments easier to justify to boards and investors. In this respect the country is reverting to the pro-innovation posture that allowed it to capture the
benefits of earlier transformative technologies, such as the internet. One area remains materially unsettled, and it continues to weigh on builders of decentralised and privacy-pre- serving software: the criminal exposure of developers. In August 2025, a jury convicted Tornado Cash co- founder Roman Storm of conspiracy to operate an unli- censed money-transmitting business, but did not reach a verdict on the more serious conspiracy counts relat- ing to money laundering and sanctions; in March 2026, prosecutors asked the court to schedule a retrial on those deadlocked counts, proposed for October 2026, while Storm’s post-trial motions remained pending. In late 2025, the founders of the Samourai Wallet mix- ing service, Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill, were sentenced (in November 2025) to five and four years’ imprisonment respectively after pleading guilty to operating a money-transmitting business that handled criminal proceeds. These cases leave the Department of Justice’s “money transmitter” theory hanging over non-custodial software, and the lack of clarity in Fin- CEN’s guidance on liability for merely deploying code remains a genuine impediment. Until those questions are resolved – whether by the courts, by FinCEN, or by the developer protections contained in the pending market structure legislation – activity such as deploying DeFi protocols, launching DAOs and distributing tokens may continue to gravitate offshore. Conclusion The shift in the US regulatory approach has been rapid, but it is also incomplete. The United States now has its first federal crypto statute, a more coher- ent agency approach to classifying digital assets, banking regulators that permit rather than discour- age participation, and a market structure bill that has advanced further in the Senate than any predecessor. The remaining agenda is substantial – finalising the GENIUS Act rules, completing the SEC’s “Regula- tion Crypto” package, moving market structure leg- islation across the Senate floor and into a reconciled law, and resolving the developer-liability questions that still trouble the decentralised sector. The authors expect 2026 and 2027 to be defined less by whether the United States will build a credible framework for digital assets than by how well, and how durably, it finishes the one now taking shape.
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