Goldman backs the CLARITY Act as stablecoin rules become the bill’s decisive fault line

Goldman Sachs has given the CLARITY Act an important new vote of confidence just as Washington’s crypto market-structure debate turns into a more specific fight over dollar-like products. David Solomon said he supports moving the bill forward even though it is imperfect, a notable intervention because large-bank criticism has increasingly centered on the stablecoin sections rather than on the idea of digital-asset legislation itself. With Republican senators circulating updated text ahead of a possible floor push, Goldman’s position adds weight to the argument that at least part of Wall Street now wants rules in place more than it wants continued delay.

At a high level, the CLARITY Act is designed to draw jurisdictional lines between the SEC and the CFTC and establish a federal framework for digital-asset market activity. The measure has already cleared the House, and the version now under Senate consideration was reported by the Senate Banking Committee this year. That legislative posture matters for RWA and stablecoin markets because the bill is no longer a conceptual proposal on the edge of policy debate. It is close enough to a floor process that firms across banking, payments, exchanges and tokenization infrastructure are now arguing over specific drafting choices that could shape product design.

The most interesting part of Goldman’s endorsement is what it says about the split inside traditional finance. Some bank executives have warned that the bill could let crypto-native firms replicate parts of deposit gathering without taking on the same prudential obligations as insured banks. Solomon took a different line, emphasizing the value of predictable market structure and the need to let innovation move under an articulated regulatory perimeter. That does not make Goldman an outlier on every detail, but it does suggest the industry is fragmenting into two camps: incumbents focused primarily on competitive leakage from deposits, and institutions more willing to accept new tokenized payment rails if the rules are explicit.

That split is clearest in the debate around stablecoin rewards and other bank-like incentives. The Senate committee version includes a Section 404 devoted to prohibiting interest and yield on payment stablecoins, signaling that lawmakers understand the core policy concern. Even so, banking trade groups have continued to press for tighter drafting. In mid-July, the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America and state banking associations urged senators to strengthen the bill’s stablecoin-yield language, arguing that ambiguities could still allow payment tokens to function as practical substitutes for deposits. In other words, the argument in Washington is no longer about whether tokenized dollars belong inside federal law; it is about where to draw the line between a payment instrument and a shadow bank account.

That distinction is highly relevant to the broader RWA stack. Stablecoins increasingly sit beside tokenized Treasury funds, onchain cash-management products and settlement layers for secondary trading in private credit or fund interests. If lawmakers permit nonbank issuers to attach quasi-deposit economics to payment tokens, the result could accelerate migration of transactional balances onto blockchain-based rails. If they clamp down too hard, issuers may still expand, but more of the yield-bearing activity could move into separately structured tokenized securities or Treasury-backed products rather than into everyday payment coins. For market participants, the legal boundary between a spendable dollar token and a yield-bearing digital cash instrument is becoming one of the most commercially important design questions in the sector.

The immediate consequence is that passage of any market-structure bill will not be the end of the policy fight; it will be the beginning of the implementation race. Exchanges, wallets, fintechs and issuers will look for the fastest compliant route to package tokenized dollars, collateral products and brokerage-adjacent services for users. Banks, meanwhile, will keep pushing for regulatory parity, especially where consumer funds, cash sweeps and reward mechanics start to resemble familiar deposit products. That tension should influence not only stablecoin issuance, but also how tokenized money-market funds, Treasury wrappers and onchain prime-brokerage style services are distributed.

For RWA markets, Goldman’s support is therefore meaningful less as a political headline than as a signal about institutional readiness. A major global bank is effectively saying that imperfect rules are now preferable to policy drift, even while the hardest questions around stablecoin economics remain unresolved. If the bill advances, the next phase of tokenized finance in the United States will hinge on whether lawmakers and regulators can preserve room for programmable dollar infrastructure without allowing the payment layer to become an under-regulated substitute for the banking system.