CLARITY Act: what the US crypto law would do and where it stands in the Senate

The CLARITY Act, in full the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633), is a US bill that would split oversight of crypto-assets between the securities regulator SEC and the derivatives regulator CFTC and require crypto exchanges to register at federal level. The House of Representatives passed it on July 17, 2025 by 294 votes to 134. In the Senate, the motion to open debate failed on September 15, 2026 by 49 votes to 50; 60 would have been needed. The CLARITY Act is therefore not law, and as of October 22, 2026 no new vote is scheduled. What is documented on this page are the bill text, the votes and the regulators' steps; how we rate the chances of a second attempt appears further down and is marked as our assessment.

What the day of the vote set in motion is covered in our report on the CLARITY Act's failure and the CFTC taking over.

CLARITY Act: the key facts in brief

• Introduced on May 29, 2025: the bill from Republican French Hill splits crypto oversight between the CFTC and the SEC and requires exchanges, brokers and dealers to register with the CFTC.
• 294 to 134 in the House: on July 17, 2025 all 216 voting Republicans and 78 Democrats backed the CLARITY Act.
• 49 to 50 in the Senate: on September 15, 2026 it fell eleven votes short of the 60 required. No Democrat voted yes, and four Republicans voted no.
• Deadline of January 3, 2027: that is when the 119th Congress ends and bills not passed expire. Until then the Senate can repeat the vote; after that, a new attempt starts from scratch.
• Regulators are acting without a law: since March 2026 the SEC has listed Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and Solana, among others, as digital commodities, and the CFTC is collecting comments on its own crypto rules until December 14, 2026.
• Stablecoins are already covered: the GENIUS Act has been law since July 18, 2025 and takes effect by January 18, 2027 at the latest. In the EU, the MiCA regulation has applied in full since December 30, 2024.

What is the CLARITY Act?

The CLARITY Act is the planned market-structure law for crypto-assets in the United States. It sets out which agency is responsible for which token and which rules apply to exchanges, brokers and projects that sell tokens. At its core sits the term "digital commodity": a token firmly tied to a blockchain whose value derives from the use of that blockchain, per the definition in the bill text passed by the House.

Until now it has mainly been courts in the United States deciding whether a token is a security, using the Howey test of 1946. The CLARITY Act would replace that with fixed categories. Besides oversight, it governs the segregated custody of client assets, anti-money-laundering duties for exchanges, and an exemption for token sales of up to $50 million in any twelve months. A separate part, the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, bars the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital central bank dollar.

SEC or CFTC: how the CLARITY Act divides oversight

The basic idea is a division of labour along the life of a token. At the first sale, when a project raises money, the SEC stays responsible. Once the token trades on a mature blockchain that nobody controls alone, trading moves to the CFTC. For that transition the House version introduces the term "mature blockchain system". The Senate version works instead with "ancillary assets": tokens whose value still depends on the work of a founding team and which carry their own disclosure duties with the SEC.

For exchanges that would be the biggest change: a single federal authorisation for spot trading instead of licences from individual states and the risk of an SEC lawsuit.

CLARITY Act and GENIUS Act: stablecoins are already covered

The CLARITY Act and the GENIUS Act are often confused. The GENIUS Act covers only stablecoins, meaning tokens designed to hold a fixed value in dollars. It has been law since July 18, 2025 (Public Law 119-27), after the Senate adopted it on June 17, 2025 by 68 votes to 30 and the House on July 17, 2025 by 308 to 122. It takes effect by January 18, 2027 at the latest, eighteen months after signature, or as early as 120 days after the regulators' final implementing rules. Issuers will then need a licence, must back their tokens fully with reserves and may not pay holders interest.

The CLARITY Act covers the rest: Bitcoin, Ether, altcoins and the platforms they trade on. On stablecoins the Senate version goes further. Its section 404 also bars exchanges and other service providers from paying customers interest or interest-like rewards purely for holding stablecoins; rewards for genuine use remain permitted. It was precisely that line banks and crypto exchanges fought over for months.

The CLARITY Act's path: timeline from the House to the Senate

The main stages according to the official congressional action list for H.R. 3633:

Almost eight months passed between the bill's arrival in the Senate and the first committee vote, during which the text grew from 300 to more than 600 pages, in the words of Republican Senator Bernie Moreno. How Coinbase stopped the deliberations in January is covered in our report on Brian Armstrong and the CLARITY Act, and the situation shortly before the vote in our preview of the Senate vote.

The CLARITY Act in the Senate: eleven votes short on September 15

The vote on September 15, 2026 was not on the law itself, but on whether the Senate would take up the debate at all. That requires 60 of 100 votes; otherwise the minority can hold up any measure by extended speech, the filibuster. According to the Congressional Record, 49 senators voted in favour and 50 against (vote number 234).

Even with all 53 Republicans, seven votes from the other side would still have been missing. Who said no is notable: Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks had still voted for the bill in the Banking Committee in May, as CNBC reported. Thom Tillis, co-author of the Senate version, voted no on procedural grounds: under the rules, only a senator on the winning side may move to reconsider the vote. He filed that motion the same day.

The final fight was over ethics rules. Elizabeth Warren, ranking Democrat on the Banking Committee, justified her no vote on the floor by saying the ethics rules tabled shortly before the vote did not effectively limit the crypto businesses of the President and his family, and that enforcement would rest solely with the Attorney General (speech in full). Bernie Moreno countered in the same record that the Senate should argue about the ethics rules in exactly the debate the no vote prevented.

Our assessment: a failed procedural vote need not be the end. With the GENIUS Act the same step failed on May 8, 2025 by 48 votes to 49, and barely six weeks later the law cleared the Senate 68 to 30. Back then the dispute was over details, and more than a year remained. With the CLARITY Act not a single Democrat voted yes, the dispute turns on the President's crypto businesses and therefore on a political question, and around ten weeks remain until the end of the legislative term. We therefore consider passage in 2026 unlikely. The rules for the US crypto market are more likely to come from the SEC and the CFTC in the coming months.

CLARITY Act 2.0: what happens after the Senate vote

Formally the CLARITY Act lives on. H.R. 3633 sits on the Senate's legislative calendar, and the Tillis motion allows the failed vote to be rescheduled. "CLARITY Act 2.0" is not an official name but the label used in industry reports for this second attempt. Its basis would be the substitute text that Senator Cynthia Lummis published in revised form before the vote, merging the Banking and Agriculture committee parts. What changed in it is covered in our report on CLARITY Act 2.0 and the road ahead for crypto regulation.

The calendar is tight. On November 3, 2026 the United States elects the House and around a third of the Senate. After that the lame-duck session runs until the 119th Congress ends on January 3, 2027. The Senate would have to pass the law by then, and because its version differs, both chambers would have to agree on a common text. Otherwise the bill expires and the new Congress starts over. Lummis is not standing for re-election and announced on October 8, according to TokenPost, that she would campaign for the law until she leaves.

Without the CLARITY Act: what the SEC and CFTC already regulate

While the Senate is stuck, the regulators are moving with the tools they have. On March 17, 2026 the SEC, supplemented by CFTC guidance, issued an interpretation of securities law that sorts crypto-assets into five groups. Digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools and stablecoins are not securities under it. As examples of digital commodities the SEC names 16 coins, among them Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Dogecoin and Chainlink. What remains a security is anything that is a classic security in token form.

The gap shows up in the detail. The CFTC bases its consultation of October 5 on an existing provision for commodity transactions involving leverage or financing, section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act. A plain purchase of Bitcoin without leverage it cannot bring under a registration requirement without a new law; there the state licences remain decisive. That federal competence for the spot market is exactly what the CLARITY Act would have delivered. There is also the question of durability: a future agency leadership can change an interpretation, whereas only Congress can change a law. CFTC chief Michael Selig calls the consultation a first step towards building a market structure with existing powers, on the instruction of President Trump.

Supporters and opponents of the CLARITY Act

• In favour: the Republican majority in both chambers, led in the Senate by Banking Committee chair Tim Scott and Cynthia Lummis, plus 78 Democrats in the House. The crypto industry backs the goal, not every detail. Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong withdrew his support on January 14, 2026, partly because planned changes would have prevented rewards on stablecoins.
• Against the current version: the Democrats in the Senate, among them Elizabeth Warren, chiefly over the ethics rules and anti-money-laundering supervision. The banking association ABA is calling for a stricter ban on interest-like rewards on stablecoins, according to a report in its Banking Journal.
• Against individual sections: an alliance of Catholic religious orders around the Alliance to End Human Trafficking wrote to the Senate floor leaders on June 23, 2026. It criticises the protection for software developers in section 604, arguing it could make it harder to trace money flows from human trafficking. More on that in our report on the letter from Catholic leaders.

Which coins the CLARITY Act affects most

The coins most exposed to the CLARITY Act are those whose classification was long disputed. Bitcoin is not among them; XRP is, because that was exactly the question in the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple. CoinMarketCap's daily prices around the Senate vote show the difference:

All times in UTC. XRP lost almost ten percent on the day of the vote, more than the three other large coins; how the chart developed afterwards is shown in our report on the XRP price slide after the Senate vote, and longer-term scenarios are set out in our XRP price prediction. Since March the SEC has expressly listed XRP as a digital commodity in its interpretation. That removes part of the uncertainty, but it remains an interpretation that a future SEC can change.

Among the exchanges, Coinbase is the best-known case. The Nasdaq-listed US exchange would have to register as a "digital commodity exchange" with the CFTC, and in return the uncertainty over SEC jurisdiction would fall away. For rewards on stablecoin balances, section 404 of the Senate version would be decisive. Fees and offerings of the large platforms are set out in our crypto exchange comparison.

The CLARITY Act and MiCA: what applies to investors in Europe

Legally the CLARITY Act changes nothing for investors in Germany. What applies here is the EU regulation MiCA, which already answers many of the questions in the US bill. The differences at a glance:

What is decided in Washington therefore moves prices above all. Your rights against an exchange hang on its MiCA authorisation, which every provider in the EU has needed since the last transition period ended on July 1, 2026. Whether a provider holds one is listed in ESMA's MiCA register; licensed platforms and their terms are compared in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges. On tax, too, the CLARITY Act changes nothing: gains on crypto-assets fall under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act in Germany and are tax-free under current law after a holding period of one year. Whether that one-year threshold falls for purchases from 2027 will be decided in Berlin; our article on the crypto holding period keeps the state of play current. What is due on a shorter holding period can be worked out with the CryptoTicker tax calculator.

How to follow the CLARITY Act

These official sources show the real state of play:

• Congress.gov: the action list for H.R. 3633 records every step with its date. A new entry reading "Cloture motion presented" shows that a Senate vote is being prepared.
• Congressional Record: the daily record of the Senate and the House appears on GovInfo, with the names of all senators in roll-call votes.
• Senate Banking and Agriculture committees: new drafts and hearing dates appear first on the pages of the committees and the senators involved.
• SEC and CFTC: new interpretations, exemptions and proposals are announced in the CFTC's press releases and the SEC's before they appear in the Federal Register. The next fixed deadline is December 14, 2026, when the CFTC consultation closes.

CLARITY Act: the window stays open until January 3, 2027

The CLARITY Act has come a long way: passed in the House, approved by two Senate committees. What has tripped it up so far is not the division between the SEC and the CFTC, but above all the ethics question. Until January 3, 2027 the Senate can repeat the vote; after that a new Congress would have to start over. Until then the SEC and the CFTC set the rules, and for investors in Europe MiCA remains the benchmark. We update this page with every new vote.