Coinbase Links CLARITY Act Passage to Institutional Capital

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said U.S. crypto regulatory clarity is likely to arrive, whether or not the Senate advances the CLARITY Act in its scheduled Sept. 15 vote. He also frames the legislation as one of two possible paths to the same destination. Passage would unlock institutional capital and support future products such as tokenized equities, he said.

Armstrong told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia the bill appeared close to the support it needs, with the senators he’s spoken to on board. Securing 60 votes remains the immediate hurdle, and as we have reported on the cloture vote, ethics provisions are among the details still being negotiated.

He said SEC and CFTC rulemaking could deliver an alternative route to clarity if Congress fails to act. Separately, Coinbase reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $1.2 billion, down from $1.5 billion a year earlier, with a $359.5 million net loss versus a $1.43 billion profit in the year-ago period.

The CLARITY Act seeks to establish a federal framework for digital assets, dividing oversight between the SEC and CFTC. Coinbase has been one of its most vocal backers, and Armstrong reiterated that stance ahead of the Sept. 15 Senate vote, where clearing the 60-vote threshold is the key procedural test.

Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona has said getting to 60 votes requires resolving ethics provisions alongside other outstanding issues. Armstrong said those details were still being negotiated but appeared very close to a solution ahead of the vote.

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He described the bill’s potential passage as a regulatory checkbox that could unlock institutional capital and pave the way for products like tokenized equities in the U.S., calling it a big milestone if it happens, without committing Coinbase to a specific product timeline.

That regulatory push comes as Coinbase leans harder into diversification. Crypto spot trading, which Armstrong said has been down for the last year and still accounts for roughly half of revenue, has dragged on results now for three straight quarters against Wall Street expectations.

Coinbase has expanded its trading business into stocks, commodities, and foreign exchange, while building out non-trading revenue through stablecoins and institutional custody. It is a mix that connects to broader questions about how regulatory clarity feeds into digital-asset pricing.

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Armstrong’s tokenized-equities framing runs into a distinction worth keeping straight: putting a stock on a blockchain doesn’t remove it from securities regulation. The SEC said in a January 2026 statement that a tokenized security is still a security under federal law regardless of whether it’s formatted as a crypto asset.

That statement also outlined that tokenized securities can be issued directly by companies or created by unaffiliated third parties, layering a crypto asset on top of an existing security. The CLARITY Act’s relevance to Coinbase’s ambitions, then, may lie less in redefining what a tokenized stock legally is and more in clarifying which agency governs the trading venues and market infrastructure around it.

The Senate’s Sept. 15 vote is the immediate checkpoint, with 60 votes and outstanding ethics language the deciding factors. If the bill stalls, Armstrong’s fallback case rests on the SEC and CFTC moving forward with rulemaking of their own, a scenario he expects but that regulators have not put on a confirmed public schedule.

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