Today, House Agriculture Subcommittee on Commodity Markets, Digital Assets, and Rural Development Ranking Member Don Davis (NC-01) delivered the following opening statement before the House Rules Committee. Watch the full hearing here..

Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member McGovern, thank you for the opportunity to testify. While I still believe improvements can be made to this legislation, I believe  H.R. 3633, Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, or the CLARITY Act, is a good first step in regulating digital assets. 

This legislation impacts the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which is under the House Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction, so most of my remarks will be limited to those parts of the bill.

Millions of Americans are holding cryptocurrency, exchanging it in financial transactions or using other digital tokens as part of new innovative technologies and services.

Currently, there is no market structure in place to protect consumers or establish rules of the road for businesses and innovators seeking to work in this space. In other words, “It’s the wild west.”

The CFTC is hamstrung in its ability to protect consumers. While the CFTC already has been effectively and robustly policing derivative markets that trade futures in digital assets, its authority in the spot markets for many of these digital assets is limited to only policing for fraud and manipulation.

Digital assets are here. We cannot put this back in Pandora’s box. Nobody is waiting on us before forging ahead into this new digital frontier. Congress, once again, is playing catch-up.

The question is: How and when are we going to begin to regulate the sector?

The CLARITY Act gives Congress an opportunity to provide protection to customers who trade and hold these digital assets. Further, it provides clarity to innovators of this technology.

One of my concerns around this legislation is the lack of conflict-of-interest guardrails for those in the Executive Branch. Regardless of who the President is, we need to have standards in place so that no person in any administration is using their office to personally benefit from crypto.

There are several good ideas and amendments that deal with this conflict of interest standard, and this Committee can either incorporate those ideas in the bill or at least make the amendments in order to allow the House to work its will.

We must focus on the millions of Americans – customers, investors, and businesses – that should be the focus of our debate.

That is why we need a market structure. That is why further delay would only hurt U.S. customers and innovators.

I am supporting this legislation because Congress has a responsibility to the millions of Americans investing, using, and trading cryptocurrencies. American customers deserve consumer protections today.

We have the opportunity to bring the United States to center stage and be the world leader on digital asset market structure.

The longer we wait, the greater the risk to this key industry of going abroad and setting up shop in foreign nations, rather than right here in the U.S., where they want to be.

Doing nothing leaves American businesses, customers, the CFTC, and the SEC with the status quo: a lack of clarity, a lack of security, and a lack of accountability. The risk of inaction is too significant. And at a minimum, with this legislation,  any President’s activities come under this regulation.

Is the CLARITY Act without shortcomings, no. Is there room for improvement, absolutely. Nevertheless, I still believe this bill is a step forward and deserving of support.

Thank you.