Strategy founder and chairman Michael Saylor, a pioneer of the bitcoin treasury company model, has argued that the collapse of the Clarity Act is actually a win for the digital asset space, saying that legislation can make restrictions permanent just as easily as rights.

Writing on X on Saturday, Saylor weighed in after lawmakers this week blocked the long-awaited crypto legislation, the Clarity Act, which aims to formally divide oversight between regulators. The digital asset industry had long called for such rules to be put in place.

— Michael Saylor (@saylor) September 19, 2026

Despite the legislative setback, regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are pressing ahead with rulemaking. With the bill blocked, those agencies are positioned to take the leading role in shaping crypto rules in the near term.

“We have an administration willing to modernize financial markets. We should use the next two years to put better financial products into people’s hands,” Saylor wrote. He continued: “Let the Digital Assets industry innovate rapidly in a free market and create the greatest possible value for the U.S. and global economy.”

Saylor, whose company Strategy started buying bitcoin in 2020, argued that watchdogs moving forward with rules anyway — such as the SEC’s conditional relief for onchain trading of certain tokenized stocks, blockchain-based representations of equities, and the CFTC chairman’s stated willingness to act without the bill — would give crypto companies the regulation they need.

He went on to argue that proposals contained in the act — such as limits on paying customers for holding payment stablecoins — would not benefit the crypto space anyway.

Senators on Tuesday mostly voted against advancing the legislation, with 49 votes in favor and 50 against, in a setback for the digital asset industry, which has long called for the measure. The bill aims to formally divide oversight between regulators, distinguishing which digital assets are securities, commodities, or stablecoins — securities falling under the SEC, commodities under the CFTC, and stablecoins being tokens designed to hold a steady value, typically pegged to the U.S. dollar. The failed vote leaves those classification questions without a legislative answer for now.

President Donald Trump last month urged lawmakers to pass the bill, helping spur a bitcoin rally. Republicans, however, had warned for months that Democrats were deliberately holding the legislation back.

Crypto industry executives had long demanded clear rules after regulators under the Biden administration penalized companies in the digital asset space with fines for allegedly selling unregistered securities — enforcement that unfolded without a dedicated market structure law in place, the gap the legislation was designed to address.

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