Can the CLARITY Act be passed before August? -- Senate's July countdown

Core Points

H.R. Bill 3633 passed the House of Representatives on July 17, 2025 by a vote of 294 to 134, with 78 Democratic members supporting it; and passed the Senate Banking Committee on May 14, 2026 by a vote of 15 to 9.

Since June 1, the bill has been placed on the Senate legislative agenda No. 423, but a motion to close debate has not yet been filed.

President Trump's financial disclosure on July 1 showed that his cryptocurrency-related revenue in 2025 was approximately $1.4 billion, reinforcing Democratic requirements for the ethics clause.

Brian Steyer, Chairman of the House Digital Assets Subcommittee, will chair an on-site hearing on the bill in New York next week.

A bill that passed all barriers but was stuck at a critical level

The CLARITY Act has passed more formal legislative review nodes than any previous bill in the history of U.S. cryptocurrency market structure legislation. A year ago, it received bipartisan support in the House; subsequently, the Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill in May with the support of Chairman Tim Scott and Democrats Ruben Gallego and Angela Asobrooks; and on June 1, the bill was placed on the Senate legislative agenda.

Being included in the agenda is not the same as being voted by the whole house. Judging from its current position, the bill still requires a closing debate motion and 60 votes to be passed; it also needs to be coordinated with the supporting text of the Senate Agriculture Committee; in addition, since the Senate version may be different from the version passed by the House, the bill needs to be sent back to the House for reconsideration. The Republican Party holds 53 seats, with Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul expected to vote against it, while Gallego and Asobrooks said their support in the committee was conditional. Actual calculations show that it is necessary to win the full house vote of 7 to 9 Democratic senators, but this support does not yet exist.

The White House's informal goal of signing on July 4 passed without any ceremony. Bryan Gardner, chief Washington policy strategist at Stifel, wrote that the bill "may need to pass the Senate before the end of July." The advocacy group Stand With Crypto has urged supporters to pressure senators to vote by August 7, viewing that date as a hard deadline.

What will the framework actually build

The bill would end the jurisdictional ambiguity inherent in enforcement-oriented cryptocurrency regulation over the past decade by dividing regulatory powers between the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Digital assets will be classified into different regulatory categories based on decentralization and maturity tests: digital commodities will be regulated by the CFTC, while assets of similar securities will remain the responsibility of the SEC. The bill also adds provisions such as intermediary registration, customer asset isolation, information disclosure requirements, and extending the scope of application of the Bank Secrecy Act to digital asset brokers, while providing approximately US$150 million to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill said on the Fox Business Channel program that the bill is the missing half of the two-part system formed with the stablecoin laws enacted in July 2025 under the GENIUS Act. "If you don't have these two parts, you can't have a well-functioning innovation market, you can't grow an economy on blockchain, and you can't use digital assets and tokenization," Hill said. It's like a phone that's not connected to the mobile network."

Hill also confirmed that the House will move the hearing to the site: "We will travel to New York next week to host an on-site hearing with our Digital Assets Subcommittee Chairman Bryan Steyer to emphasize the importance of establishing a market framework."

July 17, 2025: House passed

H.R. Bill 3633 passed the House on a bipartisan vote of 294 to 134, including support from 78 Democratic lawmakers.

May 14, 2026: The Senate committee approved

The Senate Banking Committee voted 15 - 9 to advance the bill, paving the way for full consideration.

June 1, 2026: Legislative Agenda

The bill was officially included in the Senate Legislative Agenda (No. 423).

July 13, 2026: The "final hurdle" opens

The Senate returns from recess and has three weeks to schedule a full vote before the August 7 deadline.

Three major disputes that consume schedule time

The bill's path forward in 2026 follows a fixed pattern: solving one obstacle will lead to the next. The following three friction points explain why time is consumed.

stablecoin gains: narrowed range but still controversial

The first standoff in early 2026 occurred between bank lobbying groups and centralized crypto platforms. Banks are worried about deposits flowing into profitable digital dollars; platforms oppose banning rewards for passive holding of assets. A bipartisan compromise reached in March that distinguished between unproductive passive holding of assets and productive on-chain deployments, such as lending agreements, cleared the original obstacles. The American Bankers Association continues to challenge the final text, arguing that it allows the platform to provide benefits equivalent to interest, thereby circumventing the GENIUS Act's ban on interest payments by issuers. The controversy is directly related to revenue: Coinbase earns approximately $1.35 billion annually from USDC awards.

Moral rules: The core of voting counting

On July 1, the moral battle turned from abstract to concrete. The Office of Government Ethics has released President Trump's 927-page financial disclosure showing that his cryptocurrency-related revenue in 2025 was approximately $1.4 billion, of which $635 million came from TRUMP emoji currency authorizations and more than $500 million came from World Liberty Financial token sales. For Democrats who have already called for conflicts of interest clauses, the document turns the principle of accountability into a multi-billion dollar fact. This also explains why moral language has become a threshold for obtaining a full vote, rather than just an additional amendment.

The history of negotiations is not encouraging. An ethics amendment proposed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen failed by an 11 - 13 vote in the committee. On June 9, a closed-door meeting between Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Gallego, Bernie Moreno and Cynthia Loomis broke down after Republicans and the White House withdrew the provision authorizing state attorneys general to enforce the ethics rules and instead proposed a path for enforcement through the U.S. Attorney General, which Democrats believed was a circular argument and rejected.

Hill responded directly to this concern in an interview with Fox, arguing that the framework itself is the solution: "If we passed the CLARITY Act last summer, many of the issues that people are worried about now-emoji issues, issuance, co-investment, use of exchanges-will all be under a regulatory market framework," which will help provide transparency to the Trump family's investments.

At the same time, the White House refuted its claim that nominations were delayed, saying it had requested nominations for vacant SEC and CFTC positions but had received no response. The personnel standoff further complicates the situation because CFTC Chairman Michael Selig has been the agency's sole commissioner since December.

Article 604: Developer Safe Harbor

The latest obstacle is Section 604, which excludes unmanaged software developers from the definition of a money transfer service provider. The purpose is to distinguish individuals who publish open source code from companies that control customer funds; without this distinction, developers could face compliance obligations designed for exchanges. In June, four major law enforcement groups warned that the language could create blind spots in investigations. The National Association of District Prosecutors told Senate leadership that the provision would seriously undermine criminal investigations related to cryptocurrencies.

Compromise efforts have led some opponents to change their positions. After the text was adjusted, the "National Association of Major County Sheriff's" became neutral. The White House Cryptocurrency Committee won the first endorsement of the bill by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officials. Senator Loomis refuted broader criticism, saying on social media on July 1 that the bill contained "more than 16 illegal financial safeguards, not loopholes." The core controversy over how strictly developer definitions should be defined remained unresolved before the recess.

Why Hill wants to set a full house vote date before the dispute is resolved

Hill's most eye-catching comments related to sequencing issues. "I have encouraged the Senate leadership to bring the bill to the full house," he said."If you set up a full house vote date in July, it will enable these final meetings and discussions to take place." In Congress, you have to set a deadline to get people to act and find consensus."

This logic reflects changes in negotiation methods. About 70 pages of consumer-centered provisions were reportedly added, signaling that negotiators are trying to meet Democratic concerns, but a longer draft does not amount to a final agreement. David Necky, portfolio manager at Arca, assessed after a week-long meeting with the Senate office in June that the bill was essentially 80% to 85% complete, and that the remaining gap was caused by political perceptions rather than policy differences. Unlike policy, perceptions only respond to deadlines; if a vote is not scheduled, outstanding issues may remain unresolved until the mid-term election schedule completely excludes the bill from consideration.

Competition for voting time across the hospital exacerbates the risks. Majority Leader John Thune must weigh the CLARITY Act against Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the annual Defense Authorization Act, and under standard procedures, each closing debate motion process can consume most of a week.

Signals revealing the gap between 60% and 40%

In an interview released on July 11, Summer Mursinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association, set the probability of passage of the bill at about 60%, which is much higher than the 2026 probability of passage priced in the forecast market (about 40%). "From a voting perspective, I am 99% sure we will vote," Mursinger said. As for whether it can pass, I have always been around 60%. This is partly based on my instincts that I have worked in the Senate for many years and am familiar with the legislative process."

Mursinger's 60% and the forecast market low of 40% describe the same situation but with different weights: she underestimates the risk of highly priced schedules by traders. The probability of passing in 2026 on Polymarket has dropped from 74% in early June to below 50%. Galaxy Research lowered its estimate to about 50%, pointing to schedule rather than substance as the main threat.

Which interpretation is correct may soon be verified. Bringing a closing debate motion in the weeks after July 13 will verify Mursinger's near-certainty about the vote and compress the remaining controversy before a hard deadline. If Senate leadership remains silent in late July, it will confirm the market's skepticism. Loomis warned that missing the pre-recess window could delay the next viable legislative opportunity for years. The on-site hearing in New York provided an earlier indicator of observation: It was a public pressure tool against Democratic senators (whose votes were still missing on the bill), and their participation could indicate whether it was possible to win over seven of them.