The Commodity Futures Trading Commission will move ahead with writing rules for the crypto industry using its existing statutory authorities, after the long-awaited Clarity Act was blocked in Congress.

CFTC Chair Mike Selig said in a Wednesday statement released on X that the regulator would still help U.S. President Trump "get the job done," despite the legislation being stalled.

Lawmakers blocked the Clarity Act on Tuesday in a procedural vote, with the bill failing to reach the 60 votes needed to advance — the threshold required under Senate rules to cut off debate and move a bill forward. The legislation aims to formally divide oversight between regulators, distinguishing which digital assets should be classified as securities, commodities, or stablecoins, and in turn which regulator each asset and platform answers to. With the bill stalled, those classification questions remain governed by existing statutes rather than a single congressional framework.

"Americans deserve regulatory clarity, legal certainty, and consumer protections in crypto asset markets," Selig wrote. "President Trump promised to deliver a future-proof crypto asset regulatory market structure one way or the other, and we will help him get the job done using our existing statutory authorities."

He added: "The U.S. is and will remain the crypto capital of the world. The CFTC is locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance."

President Donald Trump urged lawmakers last month to pass the Clarity Act, calling the legislation "very powerful" — though Republicans said Democrats were deliberately holding it back.

U.S. regulators have become more crypto-friendly since President Trump took office and appointed new leadership to the agencies, and they are widely expected to keep pushing rules seen as favorable to the crypto space. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, proposed its own framework for crypto asset offerings last month, pressing ahead even as the vote on the Clarity Act stalled. With both agencies now moving on their own frameworks, the industry's market-structure rules are being shaped through agency processes while Congress remains deadlocked.

Although the Clarity Act passed the House of Representatives last year, it has been in a deadlock for most of this year after the banking lobby clashed with lawmakers and crypto businesses over whether platforms like Coinbase should be allowed to pay customers yield.

Some lawmakers have sought to change the bill's wording on ethics, and a new draft began circulating in July. That draft would ban government officials from promoting crypto or making money from it. Other Democratic lawmakers, however, said it still fell short, while a number of pro-crypto Republicans accused Democrats of deliberately playing politics and delaying the bill.

Attention now turns to whether the CFTC publishes formal proposed rules under its existing authorities, and whether the Clarity Act's backers can gather enough support for another attempt on the floor.

This article first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Mathew Di Salvo.