Crypto markets are sliding, but one of Japan’s most influential financial executives says the selloff has nothing to do with the health of the industry and everything to do with what is coming next in traditional finance.
Yoshitaka Kitao, Chairman, President and CEO of SBI Holdings, one of Japan’s largest financial conglomerates and a major strategic partner of Ripple, said this week that the current crypto decline is being driven by institutional investors liquidating positions to raise capital for three of the most anticipated IPOs in recent memory: SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI.
“From a fundamental perspective, there are no concerns whatsoever,” Kitao said, adding that he is convinced the crypto market, including Ripple, remains structurally sound.
The Clarity Act: Now or Never
Kitao’s confidence rests in part on what is happening in Washington right now. The CLARITY Act, widely considered the most important piece of crypto legislation in U.S. history, has been formally placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar after clearing the Senate Banking Committee on May 14 with a 15 to 9 bipartisan vote. It is now queued for a full Senate floor vote.
If passed, the bill would for the first time draw clear legal boundaries between the SEC and the CFTC over jurisdiction of digital assets, ending years of regulatory ambiguity that has held institutional capital on the sidelines and allowed manipulation to operate in the grey zones between the two agencies.
Senator Cynthia Lummis appeared on CNBC this week making clear the final push is underway. “We need to get to the point where Senator Haggerty is standing on the floor of the Senate and needs 60 votes for cloture,” she said, signalling that leadership is now focused on securing the supermajority threshold required to advance the bill to a final vote.
The urgency behind the push is not just political. The Blockchain Association this week delivered a letter to Senate leaders signed by 160 former national security, intelligence and law enforcement officials urging passage of the bill, a show of cross-sector support that goes well beyond the crypto industry itself.
What It Means for Ripple and the Broader Market
Kitao was open about the implications. “I am convinced that if the Clarity Act is enacted in the United States, it will bring a positive impact to the cryptocurrency market, including Ripple,” he said.
For Ripple specifically, regulatory clarity in the U.S. removes one of the last remaining overhangs that has complicated its relationships with American financial institutions. For the broader market, a defined legal framework would open the door for institutional allocations that have been structurally blocked by the absence of clear rules.
The current selloff, in Kitao’s reading, is not a crisis. It is a reallocation. When that liquidity comes back, the regulatory environment it returns to could look very different from the one it left.
