The CLARITY Act Is Advancing in the Senate: Sen. Bernie Moreno

Senator Bernie Moreno thinks America’s crypto moment should arrive on the same date the country celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding.

“If we can get a July 4th pro-innovation crypto bill done, I think that’s appropriate,” Moreno told Coinage during an interview with Solana Policy Institute President Kristin Smith at the Accelerate conference in Miami. Sen. Moreno shared his confidence by predicting the CLARITY Act should get marked up in the Senate Banking Committee next week.

The Republican senator from Ohio has quickly emerged as one of the louder pro-crypto voices in Washington as Congress races to finalize legislation that could reshape the digital asset industry in the United States. After the passage of the GENIUS Act earlier this year, lawmakers are now turning their attention to market structure legislation that would define how crypto assets, exchanges, developers and tokenized securities operate under U.S. law.

Moreno says the goal is ambitious but achievable: get a final crypto market structure bill through the Senate, passed by the House, and signed by President Donald Trump before Independence Day.

“Next week we get the market structure, get that passed in the Senate, get the House to clear what we pass and the president signs the market structure bill by July 4th,” Moreno said. For Moreno, the push is deeply ideological as much as it is economic.

“It’s financial freedom. It’s decentralization. It’s about personal accountability and responsibility. Less government, not more government,” he said. “This is going to be a financial revolution that happens on the edge of our 250th anniversary of our actual revolution.”

Moreno’s crypto roots go back far earlier than most lawmakers currently debating the technology in Washington. He says he attended his first crypto conference 14 years ago, long before digital assets became a mainstream political issue.

“In 2016 with a partner, I started a company that uses blockchain as the underlying technology to make car titles digital,” Moreno said. “The company’s absolutely killing it.”

Moreno said he sold both his crypto holdings and his stake in the blockchain company before running for Senate in order to avoid conflicts of interest.

The legislative momentum marks a dramatic shift from the regulatory climate under former SEC Chair Gary Gensler and the Biden administration, which many crypto executives viewed as hostile toward the industry. Moreno credits the Trump administration with helping accelerate the policy shift.

“Europe is now where they were maybe a little ahead of us, now way, way behind us,” Moreno said. “President Trump signed that in August. So imagine from January to August, we got that passed.”

Still, major sticking points remain in the market structure debate.

One of the most contentious fights has centered around whether stablecoin issuers should be allowed to offer yield or rewards products that could compete directly with bank deposits. Banks have argued that allowing yield-bearing stablecoins could trigger large-scale deposit flight out of the traditional banking system.

Moreno dismissed those concerns.

“The core argument, which is that we'd have deposit flight, has been proven to be false,” Moreno said. “We've actually seen more deposits in banks since the GENIUS Act passed.” Instead, Moreno believes banks will eventually adapt by embracing tokenization themselves.

“I think you'll probably see tokenized deposits first,” he said. “And I think they'll compete with the crypto industry.”

Another major focus of the legislation is protecting software developers building open-source blockchain infrastructure. Moreno argued developers should not automatically be liable for how decentralized software is later used by third parties.

“It'd be like holding a car company responsible because somebody kidnapped somebody in a car,” Moreno said. “The developer of the car had no idea that somebody would use it that way.”

The broader vision, Moreno says, extends far beyond stablecoins or Bitcoin itself. Lawmakers are increasingly focused on creating legal pathways for securities, derivatives and other financial assets to move on-chain.

“What comes next is the exciting stuff,” Moreno said. “Government will set the guard rails, the regulatory clarity so people can build and develop. But now go create, go imagine what seemed to be unimaginable.”

That future increasingly overlaps with another technology race dominating Washington: artificial intelligence.

Moreno warned that the U.S. cannot afford fragmented state-by-state AI regulation if it hopes to compete globally.

“We can’t have 50 here in America,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll lose the AI race to China and that’s unacceptable.”

For Moreno, both crypto and AI now represent part of the same geopolitical and economic battle: ensuring the next generation of financial and technological infrastructure gets built in the United States instead of overseas.

“We just need it to happen here in America,” he said.

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