Post-Move CLARITY
Friday July 24th, 2026 - Issue # 139
(Any views expressed below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)
This week’s letter is coming from a different desk - well, not a desk, actually. More like a makeshift desk. Okay, it’s a cardboard box propping up my laptop while I sit on a pillow in the middle of my new living room.
After many months of planning, paperwork and packing more luggage than any two people and an eleven-pound dog should reasonably own, Sam, Leo and I officially moved from Toronto to Florida over the weekend.
The planning, paperwork and immigration process was difficult and pretty stressful. Selling our house, deciding what to bring and selling, giving away or donating almost everything else was a mission. Strangely, though, the part I was dreading most was the travel day itself…
But honestly, that turned out to be the easy part. Leo was great, and we had some incredible help from porters and drivers. Getting settled has been much harder than I expected: a mattress on the floor, no Wi-Fi, furniture delays, a television that arrived with a completely smashed screen, an endless stream of Amazon orders and the humbling realization that furniture does not, in fact, arrive assembled. I have a lot of respect for everyone who has made a move like this, and even more for anyone who has done it with kids. I can’t even imagine.
I moved to Florida to lead Satstreet’s expansion into the US, which is something Jon and I have been working toward for a long time. Satstreet was founded in Canada just over six years ago, and nearly everything we are now bringing south - the tech, infrastructure, operating discipline and, most importantly, the way we look after clients - was built and refined there. Our Canadian business remains the foundation of the company. The opportunity in front of us now is to take what we have built and extend it into the largest capital market in the world.
It is a meaningful personal change, but it does not feel like I am starting over. I am still working with the same team, speaking with many of the same clients and waking up every morning thinking about the same problems. Sure, it is much hotter, the golf is better, there are gators and our morning walks now include the beach. Leo will have to get used to chasing iguanas instead of squirrels, and we’ll probably be a few shades darker when we come back to visit. But the job itself is not that different, it is simply bigger, and the opportunity is incredibly exciting.
The timing also feels almost too appropriate. A few weeks after Satstreet received its Restricted Dealer registration in Canada, I arrived in Florida just as Washington moved materially closer to passing the most consequential piece of digital-asset legislation the US has considered to date.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act) has been moving through Congress for more than a year. The House passed its version last July by a vote of 294–134, with 78 Democrats joining Republicans. In May, the Senate Banking Committee advanced its version 15–9, including support from two Democrats. This week, lawmakers released a new 616-page consolidated draft that combines the work of the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees and attempts to address some of the political issues standing between the bill and a full Senate vote.
I’ve been following the bill since it was introduced and, honestly, remained skeptical that Congress would ever get it across the finish line. It is difficult to overstate how significant this would be: the largest capital market in the world is preparing to build an explicit regulatory structure around our magic internet money. That still feels a little surreal, but here we are.
Nothing in Washington is finished until it is signed, and CLARITY still needs 60 votes in the Senate. There are real disagreements remaining, particularly around ethics provisions governing elected officials and their involvement in crypto businesses. But this has moved well beyond the stage of a crypto wish list that will never make it out of committee. The House has passed it. Both relevant Senate committees have done their work. Negotiators are now fighting over the terms of a final package, and the White House has made passage a priority.
For the first time, the question no longer seems to be whether the US will eventually create a proper market structure for digital assets. It is whether Congress can close the remaining political gaps quickly enough to do it this year.
I think it has a serious chance. More importantly, I think the market is underestimating what it would mean for Bitcoin if it passes.
CLARITY Act for Dummies
For years, the US crypto industry has been stuck between two regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has argued that many digital assets should be treated as securities, while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversees commodities like bitcoin but has limited authority over the exchanges where they trade. CLARITY attempts to draw an actual line between the two. In simple terms, the SEC would oversee fundraising and disclosures where a company or identifiable group is raising money around a token, while the CFTC would oversee spot trading in digital commodities. Exchanges, brokers, dealers and custodians would finally have federal registration paths designed for what they actually do, along with rules covering customer assets, disclosures, market conduct and anti-money-laundering obligations. The bill also protects self-custody and software development, clarifies how customer property should be treated in bankruptcy and explicitly allows banks to participate in activities such as digital-asset custody, payments, lending and trading. It does not remove regulation from crypto. It replaces years of ambiguity and regulation by enforcement with rules that companies can understand before they build.
All of this incredibly positive regulatory progress was critical to our decision to finally enter the US market.
Why this could be bullish for the ecosystem
The bullish part is not that Congress is removing regulation or declaring every token safe. It is that legitimate businesses would finally have a clear path to operate in the US. Years of uncertainty have pushed companies offshore, discouraged banks from participating and made lawyers and compliance departments the final obstacle even when institutions wanted exposure. CLARITY would make it easier for exchanges, custodians, lenders and other financial firms to build around digital assets without worrying that the rules could be reinterpreted after the fact.
It would not force a pension fund, insurance company, bank or family office to own crypto, but it would make participation much easier to approve and defend. That should attract capital, improve custody and trading infrastructure, and create a clearer separation between serious regulated businesses and the offshore casinos that have damaged the industry’s reputation.
Why Bitcoin could be the biggest winner
At first glance, BTC might appear to have the least to gain because it is already widely treated as a commodity and can be accessed through regulated ETFs. But the remaining uncertainty is not really attached to BTC itself, it is attached to the system surrounding it. Institutions still need clarity on who can custody it, where it can trade, how client assets are protected and whether banks can lend against it. The ETFs showed what can happen when just one of those barriers is removed: they did not change bitcoin, but they made it accessible through a structure institutions already understood. CLARITY could do something similar for the infrastructure underneath it.
The bill could also make Bitcoin’s differences from the rest of crypto more obvious. Most tokens have an issuer, foundation, management team, treasury, insider allocation or identifiable group whose work influences the asset’s value. Bitcoin has none of those things. It has no issuer, no management team, no insider unlocks and no one for a regulator to call. The more seriously Washington attempts to classify digital assets, the stronger Bitcoin’s position as the cleanest and most institutionally defensible asset in the ecosystem becomes.
Here’s a good podcast for more info on the CLARITY Act from an expert if you want to go deeper:
The final bill still has hurdles, but the direction is becoming difficult to ignore. The US is moving from debating whether digital assets belong in its financial system to deciding how they will operate within it.
The timing of that shift is not lost on me. After six years of building Satstreet in Canada, I have moved to Florida to help take what we built into a much larger market just as that market appears ready to establish serious rules for the industry. Sitting in a half-furnished apartment surrounded by boxes, it is obvious that we are at the beginning of something. But with the team, infrastructure and relationships we have already built, we are not beginning from zero.
A little more CLARITY could open a very large door.