Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale Investments, said he expects the CLARITY Act to act as a positive catalyst for crypto if it passes a scheduled Senate vote on September 15, but argued the rally could favor smart contract platforms over Bitcoin itself.
“I absolutely think that the Clarity Act will be a positive catalyst if it passes,” Pandl said. “It will be most positive the more bipartisanship that we see around it.”
Why Pandl Wants Crypto Treated as “a Normal Industry”
Pandl said the broader goal behind the legislation is clear, normalizing how crypto is regulated relative to other established industries.
“We want to see crypto just be treated as a normal industry,” he said. “This is just a technology that provides value to people all around the world. Essentially, every country in the world has people using crypto, blockchain, stablecoins, Bitcoin in some shape or form. It should be treated as a serious industry providing a lot of value, and I would love to see a strongly bipartisan vote.”
The Twist: Bitcoin May See Smaller Gains Than Altcoins
Pandl’s most interesting point centered on which assets stand to gain the most. He argued Bitcoin already carries the clearest regulatory status in the industry, which could limit how much additional upside the CLARITY Act delivers to it specifically.
“Paradoxically, Bitcoin, even though it’s the biggest asset, may benefit less than almost everything else,” Pandl said. “Bitcoin is the asset in our industry that has the most clarity around it in a sense. It’s very clear that it’s treated as a digital commodity. It also has a relatively more limited use case as a scarce, commodity, digital gold-like asset.”
He pointed instead to smart contract platforms and application-layer projects as better positioned to benefit from new regulatory clarity.
“Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Sui, the smart contract platform blockchains, Chainlink, that powers all of this technology, the application layers, Uniswap, I think those types of things stand to benefit even more from Clarity passing,” Pandl said. “I actually think it will be more the smart contract and application layer than Bitcoin in this particular case, although Bitcoin, of course, has other things going for it.”
Grayscale Sees Parallels to the 2022-2023 Market Bottom
Beyond the CLARITY Act, Pandl said current market conditions remind him of the period following crypto’s last major bottom.
“There’s, in my view, a lot of parallels to the late 2022, early 2023 period, where a lot of attention had left the market, but the fundamental drivers of the asset class had not changed,” Pandl said. “It just took some particular events to wake the market back up and renew the process of capital coming into the asset class.”
He said sentiment inside Grayscale currently reflects that same setup. “Look, it feels very good at Grayscale at the moment from that vantage point. We sit really at that intersection of digital assets and the capital from traditional finance. I could tell you the vibes are very positive here at the moment.”
On regulation, he said progress is likely even if the legislative path stalls. Even without the Clarity Act, some improvement is expected, either through agency rulemaking or the legislation itself, and he said he’s encouraged that regulatory clarity will still move forward.
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