Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini reportedly lobbied US senators to remove anti-manipulation language from the CLARITY Act over concerns about token listings

Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini have been reported to have lobbied US senators to soften or remove proposed anti‑manipulation token‑listing language from the CLARITY Act, a major crypto market‑structure bill moving through the Senate. The dispute centers on a provision that would limit exchange listings to tokens that are “not readily susceptible to manipulation,” a standard borrowed from derivatives regulation that critics say could effectively lock many smaller or thinly traded assets out of US venues. According to Politico and subsequent crypto press coverage, the three exchanges submitted edits earlier in 2026 to members of the Senate Agriculture Committee and Senate Banking Committee asking that the restrictive listing clause be deleted or significantly revised. The contested language is modeled on Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rules in futures and swaps markets, where exchanges must demonstrate that listed contracts are not easily manipulated; lawmakers sought to extend a similar safeguard to spot crypto markets in response to longstanding concerns about wash trading, spoofing and pump‑and‑dump schemes. Industry advocates and some investor‑protection voices see the provision as a key consumer‑protection tool, while the exchanges argue that applying a futures‑style standard to spot tokens is ill‑suited to crypto market structure and would make it very difficult to list early‑stage or low‑liquidity assets. In their comments, the exchanges framed their push as an attempt to recalibrate, not weaken, oversight, saying they support robust manipulation standards in derivatives but want a regime tailored to spot trading that does not “inadvertently hamstring” the CFTC, the industry, or consumers. Policy staff at Coinbase have described a “chicken‑and‑egg” problem: many tokens cannot demonstrate they are not readily susceptible to manipulation until they achieve scale, but they cannot achieve that scale without exchange access. The controversy highlights a central tension in US crypto regulation: how to design investor protections and anti‑manipulation rules that address documented abuses in token markets without closing US exchanges to most new or smaller projects, potentially pushing that activity offshore.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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