ICYMI: Club for Growth President McIntosh: “Lawmakers Must Keep Blockchain Innovation in America”
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is an opportunity for Congress to replace uncertainty with durable law.
Washington, D.C. – In case you missed it, Club for Growth President David McIntosh published an op-ed in Newsweek urging Senators to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. McIntosh, a former Member of Congress and former Executive Director of the President’s Council on Competitiveness, argues that without Congressional action on digital assets, bureaucratic agencies will fill the void and threaten innovation in America.
Click here to read the full piece in Newsweek.
EXCERPTS:
Throughout American history, many of the technologies that transformed the world economy were commercialized, scaled and brought to their greatest potential here. Not because government picked the winners or required innovators to seek permission before building, but because America provided entrepreneurs with something more valuable: clear, fair and limited rules that punish fraud, protect consumers, uphold property and freedom-of-contract rights, and otherwise leave room for innovation.
Railroads. Aviation. The internet. Artificial intelligence.
Each became an American success story because innovators knew the rules of the road. Today, blockchain technology deserves the same opportunity.
For years, America has produced many of the world’s most talented blockchain entrepreneurs, investors and engineers. Yet too many have been forced to build amid regulatory uncertainty. Rather than clear laws enacted by Congress, the industry has often faced shifting interpretations, overlapping jurisdictions and regulation through enforcement.
As a former member of Congress and executive director of the President’s Council on Competitiveness, I saw firsthand how quickly regulation can fall behind a changing economy. When Congress fails to act, agencies fill the vacuum. With digital assets, years of hesitation have produced uncertainty because lawmakers have not provided the clarity only Congress can deliver.
That uncertainty carries real consequences.
When businesses cannot determine which rules apply or even which regulator has authority, investment slows and innovation moves elsewhere. We are already seeing jurisdictions such as the European Union establish comprehensive digital asset frameworks while the United States continues debating basic questions of market structure. The technology, however, is not waiting.
Blockchain has evolved far beyond speculative trading. Stablecoins are strengthening the digital use of the U.S. dollar. More than $30 billion in real-world assets are already represented on blockchain networks, including roughly $15 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasuries. Financial institutions increasingly recognize that tokenization can modernize capital markets through faster settlement, greater transparency, and broader access to investment opportunities.
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The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is an opportunity for Congress to replace uncertainty with durable law. Rather than asking regulators to stretch decades-old statutes to fit entirely new technologies, the legislation establishes a modern, light-touch market structure, clarifies regulatory responsibilities, creates predictable compliance pathways, strengthens disclosure requirements and reinforces protections against fraud, market manipulation and illicit finance.
Critics sometimes frame this as a choice between innovation and regulation. It is a false choice.
Well-designed, light-touch regulation makes innovation stronger because it gives honest businesses confidence to invest while allowing regulators to focus their resources on actual misconduct. The goal should be straightforward: police fraud, theft, manipulation and illicit finance while preserving property rights, freedom of contract and the space for lawful innovation. Clear rules protect consumers. They strengthen markets and reward compliance. Just as importantly, they preserve competition.
That same principle must extend to the people who build the underlying technology. Developers who do not take custody of or exercise control over customer assets should not be treated as financial intermediaries. Technical talent is highly mobile. If American law exposes builders to rules designed for institutions that actually hold or move customer funds, many will simply build elsewhere—and investment will follow them.
New technologies often challenge existing business models, and the role of government has never been to protect incumbents from competition or give regulators the power to preapprove innovation. It has been to ensure that competition occurs on fair, transparent and lawful terms.
American-founded companies such as Coinbase, Circle, Lumia and many others should be building and hiring under clear American laws. They should not be designing their businesses around regulatory uncertainty or considering whether innovation would be easier somewhere else.
This debate is about much more than one industry. Financial infrastructure is becoming a strategic national asset. The standards adopted today will influence how capital moves, how assets are issued and how global markets operate for decades to come. America must lead that transformation.
I look to the future with cautious optimism. The House passed the CLARITY Act with broad bipartisan support, and the Senate Banking Committee has advanced its own version. That reflects a growing recognition that regulatory certainty is not a partisan issue. It is an economic imperative.
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America became the world’s innovation leader because we consistently chose freedom over constraint, competition over protectionism and clear laws over arbitrary discretion. Those principles built the internet economy. A similarly light-touch approach can secure America’s leadership in digital finance as well.
The choice in front of the Senate is not complicated: watch the next generation of finance—and the developers, entrepreneurs and investment behind it—move outside the United States, or pass the CLARITY Act and keep innovation in America.