The distortion of the Clarity Act: a power performance that exposes the core of American politics

This round of cryptocurrency regulation in the United States (the CLARITY Act) began with a pure and pragmatic intent: to clearly define the SEC’s and CFTC’s respective regulatory responsibilities, and to establish a transparent, stable, and implementable compliance framework for the Bitcoin and digital asset industry—putting an end to years of regulatory ambiguity and market chaos. The draft started out with only around sixty pages, focusing on industry governance, avoiding financial risks, and filling institutional gaps. It was a typical legislative attempt centered on public governance.

But this supposed “clear” piece of legislation was ultimately thoroughly distorted through successive rounds of tug-of-war in Congress. After repeatedly stacking hundreds of amendments, engaging in the utmost partisan standoff, and allowing deep penetration by financial lobbying forces, the streamlined draft ballooned to more than 600 pages. What began as a single industry regulatory issue was forcibly tied up with all kinds of vested interests, factional bargaining chips, and political transactions—completely departing from its original governance purpose. Instead of becoming a tool to regulate and standardize the market, the bill turned into a political stage for all to watch, where multiple parties pursue profit.

This seemingly isolated legislative event precisely punctures the core illness of the American legislative system: beneath the veneer of a mature institutional process, the central demand of public legislation is no longer to serve the public interest. It has long been about enabling politicians’ political bargaining and interest arbitrage. The refinement of rules is only a facade. The real main line—power jockeying, capital collusion, and the gilding of personal political credentials—lies hidden behind the bill’s text.

Throughout the entire legislative review process, no effective consensus was formed around “how to regulate scientifically.” All participants took advantage of the highly attention-grabbing issue of “Bitcoin compliance” to maximize the resources they could secure for themselves. Lawmakers from traditional finance factions brandished the banner of financial security and the need to prevent money-laundering risks. Tightening and adding harsh regulatory provisions, in essence, builds walls for traditional financial institutions and squeezes the survival space of the crypto industry—paying back the lobbying capital behind it. Lawmakers aligned with innovation factions, by contrast, pushed hard to loosen entry requirements and weaken regulatory constraints. Using “financial innovation” as a slogan, they paved the way for capital to enter, trading for industry resources and political donations.

What’s also worth deeper reflection is the prevailing culture in Congress: many lawmakers introduce a large number of irrelevant amendments—not because they want the provisions to be reasonable or workable, but because they want to generate media-hot-button issues and shape a public image of being tough, bold, and ready to fight. In this warped logic of bargaining, doing practical work is never the optimal solution. High-profile confrontation, sky-high demands, and manufacturing contradictions are the shortcut to political success. The more adept a politician is at extracting benefits, the more willing they are to stonewall, and the more they love performing, the more easily they get molded by public opinion into a dominant, promising core figure—becoming the focal winner of the entire game.

In sharp, almost painfully ironic contrast are those pragmatic participants who stick to the original purpose of legislation. Some lawmakers discard partisan hostility and break free from the constraints of vested interests. Throughout the entire process, they focus on the bill itself, balancing financial security and industry innovation with a rational, restrained approach. They try to craft a fair, balanced, implementable set of regulatory rules. They don’t hype up topics, don’t deliberately build momentum, and don’t tie up private interests. They only aim to improve public institutions, reduce market risks, and ensure that both industry and public rights and interests are considered.

But this genuine sense of responsibility and duty has no competitive edge in Washington’s political ecosystem. Here, it is taken for granted that everyone follows a set of cold unspoken rules: if you don’t perform, you won’t get exposure; if you don’t engage in bargaining, you won’t have leverage; if you don’t demand, you won’t get returns. A low-key, pragmatic way of working—seeking consensus, exercising restraint and making concessions—cannot generate media buzz, cannot secure factional interests, and cannot accumulate political accomplishments. In the end, the people who truly do the work are completely marginalized, reduced to inconsequential shadows in the spectacle of politics—quietly contributing but acknowledged by no one.

What’s even more unsettling is the cognitive bias of ordinary voters. The public lacks the professional ability to study hundreds of pages of legislation and to dissect the deeper interest battles, so they cannot identify the true essence of politicians’ actions. They can only judge competence by media volume and outward gestures. Politicians who stage high-profile disputes, engage in fierce confrontation, and fight for advantages everywhere are seen as bold, capable strongmen who can secure benefits for the people. Meanwhile, practitioners who are steady and pragmatic—who work quietly, focus on hard problem-solving, and strive for win-win outcomes—are labeled as weak, mediocre, and ineffective. The silence of doers is misconstrued as incompetence; the loudness of opportunists is packaged as achievement. This is the norm of public opinion, and also an inherent paradox of American politics.

It needs to be made clear that this is not a random chaos caused by a single piece of legislation; it is a normalized snapshot of over two centuries of America’s political ecosystem. From livelihood-oriented lawmaking to industry regulation, from public policy to institutional amendments, the underlying logic of “those who perform benefit, those who are practical are sidelined” has never changed. Even seemingly well-designed checks and balances, parliamentary lawmaking, and public oversight mechanisms have not prevented private interests from seeping in. Instead, they have formed a mature political arbitrage system.

In this system, legislation is no longer a tool to solve social problems; it is a bargaining chip in factional transactions. Lawmaking is no longer a duty of public service; it is a means for personal advancement. Congressional negotiation is no longer about seeking social consensus; it is a process of mutual extortion and dividing up the spoils. Every piece of public legislation, in essence, is a split of interests around power and capital, with the public interest merely a byproduct of the game—or even a sacrifice.

For this reason, dissecting the terms of this encrypted-asset bill—their pros and cons, the tightness or looseness of regulation, and which party wins or loses—ultimately amounts to futile surface-level work. When legislators no longer place the public good at the core, and when institutional revisions serve as fodder for a private-interest bargaining game, all the drafting, compromise, and tug-of-war over wording, as well as the debates in public opinion, are just meaningless internal consumption. The enormous text of the bill does not stack up rigorous rules—it stacks up complicated interest compromises. The lengthy deliberation process does not advance social progress—it manufactures a refined performance of power.

The initial pursuit was a “clear” regulatory bill, but it ultimately became obscure and bloated, riddled with loopholes—nothing more than a mismatched patchwork. There is no absolute fairness, no best possible rules. What exists is only the delicate balance achieved after all factions pull and tug at each other. Ordinary people can’t make sense of complex textual provisions; they can only see endless opposition, performances, and profit-seeking. In the end, they are left only with fatigue and bewilderment toward the system.

This is the truest underlying hue of American politics: it has the most refined institutional framework, the most complete legislative procedures, and the most open public opinion arena, yet it lacks the初心 and bottom line that are most essential to public governance. For more than two hundred years, this system has kept repeating similar plays: using standardized procedures to package crude private interests; using the cloak of democracy to conceal deliberate bargaining; and using public pretexts to complete the arbitrage of capital and power.

A host of elite politicians spend vast public resources and spend months locked in stalemates and tug-of-wars. In the end, what they polish is not a well-crafted law that benefits the people, but a hollow and clumsy political show. The whole process is dramatic and loud, but at its core it is cold, empty, and devoid of warmth. After watching too many such games, one no longer worries about right versus wrong or good versus bad; only deep exhaustion remains. What’s most terrifying is not the loopholes in the system—it is the moment absurdity becomes normal, when rent-seeking becomes a rule, and all one’s principles and pragmatism end up as awkward, unnecessary extras.