Part 3 of our "Global Crypto Regulation Map" series. In Europe and Asia, the live question is which framework applies. In the United States in 2026 it is more basic: which agency, under which law — and Congress is, as of this writing, still deciding.
The US has spent years regulating crypto by enforcement rather than by statute, with the SEC and CFTC asserting overlapping and sometimes contradictory authority. 2026 is the year that began to change — one major law on stablecoins is enacted, and a market-structure bill is moving through the Senate. But the core jurisdictional question is not yet settled, and a firm operating in the US has to plan against a framework that is half-built.
What's Settled: The GENIUS Act
The GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, is the first major US law written specifically for a crypto asset. It establishes a federal framework for payment stablecoins: who may issue them, the respective roles of federal and state regulators, how reserves must be managed, and — pointedly — restrictions around paying interest or yield on stablecoin holdings. For the one corner of crypto with a finished US rulebook, the uncertainty is largely over. Stablecoin issuers serving US users now have a statute to comply with rather than an enforcement posture to guess at.
What's Unsettled: Market Structure
Everything else hinges on resolving the SEC-versus-CFTC question, and that is what the CLARITY Act (the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, H.R. 3633 — the successor to 2024's FIT21) is meant to do. As of mid-2026 it has passed the House (July 2025), cleared the Senate Banking Committee, and been placed on the Senate calendar for floor consideration — but it is not yet law. To become one it still must be reconciled with the Senate Agriculture Committee's version, survive a 60-vote floor vote, be reconciled again with the House text, and be signed.
The bill's core move is to give the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over "digital commodity" spot markets while leaving the SEC over assets that are investment contracts — an attempt to end the turf war with a statutory line. The remaining fights that have held up a floor vote are telling: stablecoin yield, DeFi oversight, and an ethics provision. Until they resolve, the boundary between a CFTC-regulated commodity and an SEC-regulated security stays partly a matter of litigation.
Plan for the constant, not the contested
A US-facing firm can't yet build its securities-versus-commodities compliance on settled law, because the line is still being drawn. What it can build on is the part that doesn't depend on the SEC/CFTC outcome: OFAC sanctions obligations, FinCEN registration and AML, and the on-chain screening both require. Those apply no matter which agency wins market structure, and they are strict-liability where sanctions are concerned. Build the constant first; layer the market-structure compliance on once the statute lands.
The Compliance Bottom Line
The US framework in 2026 is: stablecoins settled (GENIUS), market structure pending (CLARITY), and sanctions/AML fully in force throughout (OFAC, FinCEN, BSA). The first two are about which licence and disclosure regime; the third is about which funds you can touch, and it is the one that carries strict-liability fines regardless of how Congress resolves the rest.
How BA helps. Whatever the market-structure outcome, the sanctions and AML layer is unchanged — BA screens against the OFAC SDN and Non-SDN lists, the clusters behind them, and indirect exposure across 80+ chains, the control US firms need today and will still need after CLARITY passes. For the framework, see OFAC Sanctions Screening for Crypto.
Next in the series: MENA Crypto Hubs, where the regulatory question is the opposite of the US one — not too little clarity, but several confident regimes competing to host the industry.
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