The Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act of 2025: What U.S. Market-Structure Reform Means for APAC

At the BIF25 APAC Regulatory Roundtable during Korea Blockchain Week, I presented on the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act of 2025 — the companion to the GENIUS Act that defines how the United States classifies digital assets as securities or commodities and how that classification allocates oversight between the SEC and CFTC. The roundtable brought together regulators, legal experts, and industry leaders from APAC, the EU, and the U.S. to compare emerging market-structure frameworks.

My session, paired with David Lee of Kim & Chang (who covered the GENIUS Act), walked APAC regulators through the CLARITY Act's taxonomy and through the practical questions it leaves open for cross-border operators: how to think about the maturity-based transition between SEC and CFTC authority, what qualifies as a "digital commodity" versus an "investment contract asset," and how U.S. issuers can structure offerings to anticipate eventual decentralization without triggering securities exposure at launch. The broader conversation — informed by Peter Kerstens's work on MiCA passporting — centered on whether APAC should pursue mutual-recognition mechanisms modeled on the EU, or build region-specific frameworks that address APAC's particular mix of capital markets and on-chain adoption.