CLARITY Act Sets Crypto Rules, but Infrastructure Decides Ownership

The U.S. CLARITY Act will settle the debate over who regulates digital assets once and for all.

It’s a good thing because it provides much-needed legal certainty for the crypto industry. 

But it does nothing to answer a much more pressing question: Who will own the last mile of crypto commerce? And ultimately perhaps, all commerce? 

That question centers on infrastructure, not legal definitions, and competition around it is only beginning.

Infrastructure Gap Across Crypto Payments

Back in 2020, sitting across the table from one of Italy’s largest hotel groups, which operates over 5,000 properties across the EU, it became crystal clear: Hotels wanted crypto.

They were seeing real user demand and they were ready to accept crypto payments, but we couldn’t get it over the line.

We failed not because of the lack of a regulatory framework. The stumbling block was that not a single hotel owner wanted to deal with the volatility of crypto itself.

Hoteliers simply could not afford to take the chance that the digital assets they accept as payment might lose 20% or more of their value in the span of a couple of hours. 

Hotel Use Case Highlights Payment Risk

The risk is real. During the March 2020 COVID-19 crash, Bitcoin (BTC) lost around half its value in just two days. 

Such volatility is unacceptable for hoteliers. What’s more, they rejected the idea of a completely new payment system disrupting their business, confusing their employees, and causing chaos. 

For hotels to feel comfortable with crypto, we’re going to need to connect it to the payment systems they’re using now. That would be Visa and Mastercard and familiar fiat currencies. 

Unfortunately, the infrastructure to bridge crypto with existing merchant rails simply didn’t exist at the time. The opportunity was killed by the “infrastructure gap” rather than the lack of a legal environment. 

Why Infrastructure Shapes Regulation in Crypto

Infrastructure has been the lubricant of every major modern payments breakthrough. Innovations like credit cards, PayPal, Stripe and QR codes were only made possible because someone built the underlying infrastructure layer to enable them. 

PayPal and Stripe built their own networks to enable online commerce and banks developed the systems needed to facilitate card payments, alongside the point-of-sale terminals needed to scan the physical cards. Smartphones became an essential tool for QR payments. 

In every case, it wasn’t regulation that set the pace of innovation. The infrastructure came first, and regulations followed in its wake. 

What the regulation did was formalize what had already been built, accelerating its adoption. 

The EU’s MiCA framework only came into effect after people had already begun building bridges between crypto and fiat.

It was a reactionary move that only became necessary once the technology was in place. But since its introduction, the pace of innovation has only gotten faster. 

Data shows that more than 65% of EU-based crypto businesses had achieved MiCA compliance by the first quarter of 2025.

In turn, those compliant companies saw an average 45% increase in institutional investments, compared to their non-compliant counterparts. This shows that clear rules inspire greater confidence among traditional financial organizations. 

Missing Link in Crypto Payments

The CLARITY Act is another example of how regulation follows the infra. It was introduced by U.S. lawmakers because of the growing popularity of crypto. 

According to the U.S. National Cryptocurrency Association, 21% of Americans owned digital assets in 2025.

However, they’re unable to spend those funds at more than a handful of stores, because hardly any businesses want to deal with the risk. It’s the same problem our Italian friends face.

The CLARITY Act does not fix this fundamental obstacle to crypto’s widespread adoption. Only infrastructure can do this.  

That’s why the future of crypto payments, and perhaps every kind of payment, won’t be dominated by the banks and card issuers in future, because they’re not the ones building this infrastructure.

Rather, it will be controlled by whoever owns the execution layers that allow crypto to become “money” that everyone can spend. In other words, whoever controls the “last mile.”

Why Wallets Will Control Crypto Commerce

Some have argued that the established players are building this execution layer. Visa and Mastercard have shown a lot of interest in crypto and a willingness to integrate digital assets with fiat.

There’s a good chance that others, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, may follow. But these companies aren’t in complete control.

Visa might own the cards and the supporting transaction rails that allow value to be transferred, but that’s ultimately meaningless. It’s not the card, nor the network that matters, but the wallet. 

The wallet is everything. It’s the gateway to spending, and it’s the place where crypto’s bridge to fiat is being built.

We’re moving towards a digital world where the wallet becomes someone’s financial identity, as the place that holds their wealth and executes their transactions directly. 

Who Controls the Future of Payments

In this world, plastic cards will ultimately share the same fate as cash payments and slowly but surely fade into obscurity. The digital wallet is replacing them both. 

Evidence suggests this shift is already underway. As of 2026, the total value of the world’s stablecoins nears $300 billion. Sure, it’s still a small number in the great scheme of things, yet it’s substantial enough that it cannot be ignored.

It accounts for a huge amount of transactional value that’s already flowing outside of legacy payment rails, and there’s nothing the banks can do to stop it. 

Crypto is rapidly becoming a force to be reckoned with, but it’s got nothing to do with the lawmakers. The CLARITY Act is simply their reaction to it.

Regulation is an accelerant, but it’s the infrastructure that’s the real force driving crypto’s progress and whoever owns this layer will be the one controlling it.