Coinbase's chief policy officer, Faryar Shirzad, described the CLARITY Act as "a very bipartisan comprehensive package," saying the crypto market structure bill now carries hundreds of Democratic amendments and a presidential ethics commitment. The comment, posted by CoinMarketCap on August 11, 2026, reframes a bill that spent most of its life stuck on party lines.
The framing matters more than any single provision. Market structure legislation has been the industry's top legislative ask for three years, and its progress has repeatedly stalled over whether it was a Republican project or a genuine cross-party effort. Shirzad, whose employer stands to gain directly from clearer rules, is arguing the second case: that the current text reflects Democratic input at scale rather than token concessions.
The bill that splits crypto oversight
The CLARITY Act sets out to answer the question that has driven most US crypto enforcement: when a token is a security under SEC jurisdiction and when it is a commodity under the CFTC. The bill draws that line and hands the CFTC expanded authority over digital commodity spot markets, while giving projects a path to register and disclose without treating every token sale as an unregistered securities offering.
For anyone holding, trading, or building on crypto in the United States, that boundary decides which agency writes the rules, how tokens can be distributed, and what disclosures issuers owe. It also shapes whether exchanges, custodians, and card issuers can operate with a fixed rulebook instead of case-by-case enforcement.
Hundreds of amendments, one ethics pledge
Shirzad's specific claims are that the package absorbed hundreds of Democratic amendments and that it includes a presidential ethics commitment. The amendment count is the substance. A bill that quietly took on that volume of minority-party edits is structurally different from one passed on a straight majority vote, because the changes are what let members from both caucuses claim ownership.
The ethics commitment addresses a separate and persistent objection. Democratic critics have tied their opposition to conflict-of-interest concerns around the president's own crypto ventures, and several have said no market structure bill should advance without guardrails on that front. A pledge on that point, if it holds in the final text, removes one of the louder reasons cited for withholding support.
Neither claim is independently confirmed line by line in the announcement itself. Shirzad is a named industry source describing the state of negotiations, not a neutral scorekeeper, so the amendment figure and the exact shape of the ethics language are worth watching against the published bill text as it moves.
Timing against a stalled clock
The optimism lands after a run of setbacks. The Senate delayed its CLARITY Act vote until after the summer recess, and reporting has pointed to community banking groups, rather than the crypto lobby, as a source of resistance over deposit and custody questions. Former defense secretary Mark Esper has separately argued the bill carries national security weight, framing clear rules as a way to keep digital-asset activity onshore and supervised.
Against that backdrop, a "bipartisan comprehensive package" description is a signal that negotiators think the votes are closer than the delays suggest. It is not a schedule. No floor date accompanied the comment, and a bill can be bipartisan in text and still sit unscheduled for months while unrelated priorities take the calendar.
The market did not treat the update as a catalyst. Bitcoin traded near $64,200, down 1.2% on the day as of August 11, 2026, with Ether around $1,884 and XRP at $1.00, and the Fear and Greed Index sat at 38, in "Fear" territory. Regulatory process news rarely moves price on its own until a vote is actually scheduled.
Overview
Coinbase's top policy voice is calling the CLARITY Act a bipartisan package built on hundreds of Democratic amendments plus a presidential ethics commitment. If accurate, that closes two of the gaps that stalled the bill: the perception it was a one-party effort, and the conflict-of-interest objection. The open items are verification against the final text and, more importantly, a floor vote that still has no date. For US crypto users, businesses, and card issuers, the payoff is a fixed SEC-CFTC boundary, but only once the bill actually passes.
