Not law, and stalled in the Senate. The CLARITY Act has still not cleared the Senate floor: on September 15, 2026, the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed, 49–50, with 60 votes required, and no new vote is scheduled as of October 22, 2026. The standoff got there in stages: Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised on August 3 that a floor vote would happen before the August recess, the Senate filed a cloture motion on August 8, and then, well past that recess deadline, Senate Republicans went back to the drafting table altogether, releasing a sweeping 635-page substitute amendment on September 13, 2026, according to law firm Paul Hastings. As recently as August 4, CCN reported the Senate’s public calendar still showed zero scheduled floor votes for the bill. A cloture vote on the motion to proceed is the procedural step that limits debate and sets up a floor vote, and the September 15 failure ended the bill’s immediate path to floor debate. That was not a final passage vote, and the bill has still not been sent to the president. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act has already cleared the House, survived a contentious committee markup, picked up a fresh Republican draft on July 22, and then an even larger one in September. It stays active on the Senate calendar but procedurally stalled, and its remaining runway is thin.
Back in April we walked through the Senate showdown over the CLARITY Act as it was taking shape, and our own July 24, 2026 check-in still counted zero Senate floor votes and zero presidential signatures on H.R. 3633. Consider this the latest follow-up: what has actually happened since, what is verified versus merely reported, and what the September 15 vote means for a $2.28 trillion crypto market, per Forbes’ July 20 tally. Worth a footnote for anyone searching the name: on July 27, 2026, Canada’s Parliament saw Bill C-279 introduced to repeal a section of that country’s own, unrelated Clarity Act, a reminder the label is not unique to US crypto policy.
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A 90-Second Recap: What the CLARITY Act Does
The bill, H.R. 3633 on Congress.gov, answers the question that has haunted US crypto since 2017: which tokens are securities, and which are something else?
Its core move is to create a new legal category, the “digital commodity,” for tokens whose value derives from a functioning blockchain. Those fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Tokens sold as investment contracts, where buyers are betting on a team’s future work, stay with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A project can migrate from one bucket to the other by passing the “mature blockchain” test, essentially proving its network is functional and sufficiently decentralized, with no single party controlling it.
Two mechanical pieces matter most in practice. Provisional registration lets exchanges and brokers register with the CFTC and keep operating while final rules are written, rather than waiting years in limbo. And the maturity certification process gives token issuers a defined path out of securities treatment instead of the case-by-case enforcement roulette of the Gensler era.
| Question | SEC territory | CFTC territory |
|---|---|---|
| What is regulated? | Investment contracts, tokenized securities, fundraising sales of new tokens | Digital commodities on mature blockchains, spot markets, exchanges, brokers, dealers |
| Typical assets | Early-stage token sales, equity-like tokens | Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the 16 assets named in the March 2026 joint classification |
| Registration path | Existing securities regime plus the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets exemptions | Provisional registration for digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers |
| Exit route | Mature-blockchain certification moves an asset out | Assets can re-enter SEC scope if control recentralizes |
Where the Bill Actually Stands, October 2026
Here is the verified record. Before the floor vote, the House Rules Committee reported H.R. 3633 by an 8-4 vote on July 14, 2025, clearing the procedural path, per House Rules Committee records. Three days later the full House passed the bill on July 17, 2025, by a 294-134 vote, with 78 Democrats joining nearly all Republicans, according to the Congress.gov roll call and Latham & Watkins’ bill tracker; Crypto.news reconfirmed that same 294-134 margin, and the continued absence of any Senate floor vote, in a July 29, 2026 update. The Senate Banking Committee, after postponing a January markup, built its negotiations around a 309-page draft released in May 2026, per Galaxy Research, before advancing its own negotiated version on May 14, 2026, on a 15-9 vote, per Roll Call and DisruptionBanking, with just two Democrats in favor. Chairman Tim Scott published the negotiated bill text ahead of that markup.
Since then, the bill has sat on the Senate Legislative Calendar, formally placed under General Orders as Calendar No. 423 on June 1, 2026, per Latham & Watkins’ tracker, which made it eligible for a floor vote at any time leadership chose to schedule one. Getting from there to law still takes several steps: reconciling the Banking Committee’s text with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version, a 60-vote floor vote, reconciliation with the House-passed bill, and the president’s signature, per Latham & Watkins’ summary of the process. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters on August 3, 2026, that a floor vote would happen before the August recess, and on August 8, 2026, the Senate took the first of those remaining steps: Congress.gov recorded a cloture motion on the motion to proceed as the bill’s latest action at the time. That motion limited debate on whether to take up the bill, but it was not the last word: Senate Republicans went further still, releasing an entirely new 635-page substitute amendment on September 13, 2026, according to Paul Hastings, effectively restarting text negotiations. The Senate then voted on September 15, 2026 (Record Vote No. 234), but failed to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed, 49–50, short of the 60 votes required, so none of the remaining steps, reconciliation with the House or the president’s signature, has happened.
Movement resumed on July 22, when Senate Republicans released an updated draft, confirmed by CNBC and CoinDesk. More on its contents below.
| Date | Event | Status |
|---|---|---|
| July 17, 2025 | House passes H.R. 3633, 294-134 | Verified (Congress.gov) |
| July 18, 2025 | GENIUS Act signed into law | Verified |
| Jan 14, 2026 | Senate Banking postpones scheduled markup | Verified |
| Mar 17, 2026 | SEC-CFTC jointly classify 16 assets as digital commodities | Verified (agency release) |
| May 14, 2026 | Senate Banking advances bill, 15-9 | Verified (Roll Call) |
| June 1, 2026 | Senate text placed on Legislative Calendar as Calendar No. 423 | Verified |
| July 4, 2026 | Informal passage target missed | Verified |
| July 22, 2026 | Updated Republican draft with ethics language released | Verified (CNBC, CoinDesk) |
| Aug 3, 2026 | Thune says a floor vote is coming before the recess | Verified |
| Aug 7, 2026 | Senate’s last scheduled workday before recess | Verified (Bitcoin Foundation) |
| Aug 8, 2026 | Cloture motion filed on the motion to proceed | Verified (Congress.gov) |
| Aug 10, 2026 | Senate state work period began, and the Senate recessed in August without voting | Past |
| Fall 2026 | No new Senate vote scheduled after the failed September 15 cloture vote | Stalled |
| Mid-2027 | Earliest realistic enactment if the Senate misses its pre-recess window | Speculative |
The math is unforgiving. Advancing the bill requires 60 votes, and the September 15, 2026 cloture vote fell short at 49–50, eleven votes below the threshold, per Troutman Pepper. Four Republicans opposed cloture and all Democrats voted against it, per NPR, even though Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks had voted for the Banking Committee substitute on May 14, 2026. The bill is now stalled and effectively unlikely to advance during the remainder of the 2026 Congress. The August 8 cloture filing showed Thune following through on his August 3 pledge, but a filed motion did not change that underlying math. If you follow prediction markets, our explainer on crypto prediction markets covers how to read policy odds without getting fooled by thin liquidity.
The Three Disputes Blocking a Floor Vote
1. Ethics and presidential crypto
Nothing has complicated this bill like the president’s own portfolio. The Office of Government Ethics released President Trump’s 927-page financial disclosure on July 1, showing roughly $1.4 billion in crypto-related income during 2025, including $635 million from $TRUMP meme coin licensing and more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial token sales, per the OGE filing.
Senate Democrats, including crypto-friendly Kirsten Gillibrand, have said enforceable conflict-of-interest language is the price of their votes. Angela Alsobrooks and Ruben Gallego have pressed the same demand, per Forbes’ July 20 report. An ethics amendment from Chris Van Hollen failed 11-13 in the May committee markup, and the White House has opposed provisions reaching the president’s personal holdings.
2. DeFi and developer liability
Section 604 of the negotiated text incorporates the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, shielding non-custodial software developers from money-transmitter registration and Bank Secrecy Act obligations. Industry considers it the bill’s most important provision. Some Democrats consider it an illicit-finance loophole, and a Lummis-Grassley amendment preserving criminal liability for anyone who “knowingly” facilitates illicit transactions was the compromise that kept it alive.
3. Stablecoin yield
Banks want the GENIUS Act’s ban on interest-bearing payment stablecoins extended to close what they call the “exchange loophole,” where platforms pay rewards on stablecoin balances the issuer itself cannot. Crypto firms want the rewards preserved. Neither side has fully blinked, but the September 13, 2026 substitute amendment took a swing at a middle path, adding a stablecoin-yield “regulatory circuit breaker” provision, according to Paul Hastings, that gives regulators an emergency brake rather than settling the underlying fight outright. The dispute has bled directly into CLARITY negotiations ever since.
What Changed in the July 22 Draft
The new Republican draft is best read as an opening settlement offer on dispute number one. Per CoinDesk’s July 22 report, it would bar the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges, senior officials, and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring a digital asset “in exchange for consideration” while in office.
Two catches. The prohibition sunsets at noon on January 20, 2029, the end of the current presidential term. And it is not retroactive, so conduct before enactment carries no penalty. Democrats who wanted divestment or permanent rules have not signed off, and whether a temporary, forward-only ban can win enough of them is still open: the Senate failed to invoke cloture 49-50 on September 15, 2026.
Holdovers worth noting: the Keep Your Coins Act language protecting self-custody stays in, as do the BRCA developer protections, per CryptoSlate’s review of the text.
The Regulators Did Not Wait
While the Senate stalled, the agencies built a parallel framework, and this is arguably the bigger 2026 story.
At the SEC, Chairman Paul Atkins’ “Project Crypto” initiative, outlined in his November 2025 speech, has moved from talk to agenda. A January 28, 2026 staff statement laid out a taxonomy for tokenized securities. The agency’s 2026 regulatory agenda then teed up “Regulation Crypto,” a rulemaking package covering registration exemptions for token launches, a safe harbor for teams decentralizing away from managerial control, broker-dealer custody treatment, and trading-venue structure, per the SEC’s published agenda. The SEC then proposed “Regulation Crypto Assets” on August 18, 2026, including a proposed one-time startup exemption for offerings up to $5 million over four years and a fundraising exemption for up to $75 million in any 12-month period.
The CFTC has been even busier. Acting Chairman Caroline Pham launched a 12-month “Crypto Sprint” in August 2025, announced via a CFTC press release, that produced the first listed spot crypto trading on CFTC-regulated exchanges and steps toward onshoring perpetual futures. Michael Selig, previously chief counsel of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, has since been confirmed as CFTC chairman, putting an Atkins ally atop the agency that CLARITY would make crypto’s primary regulator.
Most consequentially, the two agencies issued a joint classification on March 17, 2026, naming 16 assets as digital commodities outside securities laws: XRP, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Avalanche, Polkadot, Stellar, Hedera, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Tezos, Bitcoin Cash, Aptos, and Algorand, per the agencies’ joint release. In effect, the regulators front-ran the statute. A caveat belongs here: agency guidance can be reversed by the next administration in a way statute cannot, which is precisely why the industry still wants CLARITY on the books.
How the Agencies Are Proceeding After the Failed Senate Vote
With the CLARITY Act not enacted, the SEC and CFTC are pursuing separate regulatory actions under existing authority. On October 1, 2026, the SEC proposed crypto-custody rules and amendments for registered investment advisers and registered funds holding crypto assets. The public-comment period on Regulation Crypto Assets closed on October 20, 2026, and final adoption has not been confirmed.
At the CFTC, Chairman Michael Selig directed staff on August 20, 2026, to explore codifying a CFTC crypto market structure using existing authorities, including a possible “crypto asset market” designation for certain exchanges. On October 5, 2026, the CFTC issued an advance notice concerning a proposed framework for retail crypto transactions. It introduced the working titles Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions (Regulation CTX) and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets (Regulation CAM).
Regulation CTX is currently a proposed or contemplated rulemaking concept, not a final rule, and it would address when retail crypto transactions are leveraged, margined, or financed and when “actual delivery” occurs under the Commodity Exchange Act. Regulation CAM is a contemplated specialized type of designated contract market for venues handling covered crypto transactions, and the framework could accommodate 24-hour trading, blockchain-based infrastructure, crypto-specific surveillance and disclosure, specialized custody, and technology-enabled compliance controls. The comment deadline for the CFTC’s advance notice is December 14, 2026.
For readers, this means the rules that touch exchanges and token launches are more likely to arrive through agency rulemaking than through statute in the near term. The open comment windows are where firms and holders can still weigh in, and the proposals remain proposals until the agencies finalize them.
What It Means If CLARITY Becomes Law
Token projects
Projects gain a defined exit from securities treatment. Certify network maturity, demonstrate decentralization, and the token trades as a commodity. Fundraising gets a lane too: the House text allows capital raises under an exemption with disclosure requirements, rather than forcing every launch offshore. Teams that cannot pass the maturity test, meaning most new launches, stay under SEC rules until they can.
Exchanges
Coinbase, Kraken, and peers would register with the CFTC as digital commodity exchanges, ending the era when a single platform faced simultaneous, contradictory claims from two regulators. Provisional registration means they keep operating during the transition. Compliance costs rise, but so does legal certainty, and dual SEC-CFTC registration would let one venue list both commodity tokens and tokenized securities.
Retail holders
For individuals, the headline changes are custody segregation rules, bankruptcy protections putting customer assets ahead of creditors (a direct response to FTX), and statutory protection for self-custody wallets. Nothing in the bill changes tax treatment, and nothing stops you from holding whatever you like. What changes is the solvency risk profile of the platforms you hold it on.
How CLARITY Fits With the GENIUS Act
Stablecoins already have their law. The GENIUS Act, signed July 18, 2025, handles payment stablecoins: who may issue them, the 1:1 reserve requirements, and the ban on issuer-paid interest. Our GENIUS Act explainer covers the framework in full.
CLARITY is the other half of the puzzle. GENIUS regulates the dollar-pegged tokens you trade with; CLARITY would regulate everything you trade against. The two interlock imperfectly, which is where the stablecoin-yield fight comes from: GENIUS bans issuers from paying interest but says nothing about exchanges paying rewards, and bank lobbies want CLARITY to close that gap. Notably, the US sequencing runs opposite to Europe’s, which shipped one unified rulebook; see our comparison of the GENIUS Act versus MiCA and our MiCA explainer for how the EU handled market structure and stablecoins in a single regulation back in 2024.
The Open Questions Nobody Has Settled
- DeFi’s final shape. Even with Section 604, front-end interfaces, DAO governance token holders, and liquidity providers sit in gray zones the bill does not fully resolve.
- Self-custody enforcement. The Keep Your Coins language protects holding your own keys, but how it interacts with Treasury’s illicit-finance authorities remains untested.
- Foreign platforms. Offshore exchanges serving US users face registration duties on paper, yet the enforcement mechanism against non-compliant venues, and whether decentralized front-ends count, is unresolved.
- The maturity test in practice. Who audits decentralization claims, and how long certification takes, will be decided in rulemaking, not statute.
- Ethics durability. A 2029 sunset invites the whole fight to restart in the next Congress.
What to Watch Through December
Watch four things. First, whether leadership schedules any new vote at all, since none is scheduled as of October 22, 2026, after the September 15 cloture failure, and whether the bill could ever clear reconciliation with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version and the House-passed text. Second, which Democrats respond publicly to the July 22 ethics language, with Gillibrand, Alsobrooks, and Gallego the bellwethers. Third, the SEC’s Regulation Crypto Assets proposal, whose public-comment period closed on October 20, 2026, and the CFTC’s advance notice, with comments due December 14, 2026. Fourth, now that the cloture vote has failed, whether leadership attaches CLARITY to must-pass year-end legislation, a route several lobbyists have floated in trade-press reporting but no senator has confirmed.
The failed September 15 vote did not kill the bill, which stays active on the Senate calendar but procedurally stalled, and it makes effective advancement during the remainder of the 2026 Congress unlikely. Multiple August 2026 reports said missing the pre-recess window would reset comprehensive crypto market-structure legislation to the next Congress, with enactment unlikely before mid-2027 at the earliest, and a possible 2027 revival remains only a forecast, not an introduced or enacted replacement bill. One analysis goes further, arguing that even if lawmakers pass a bill quickly in the next Congress, most operational provisions, registration regimes and the maturity-certification process among them, would not take effect until late 2027, given the rulemaking runway federal agencies would still need. Either way, the agency framework described above would keep carrying the load in the meantime.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has the CLARITY Act been signed into law?
No. It has passed the House (July 17, 2025, 294-134) and the Senate Banking Committee (May 14, 2026, 15-9), and it has been formally eligible for a floor vote since June 1, 2026. Majority Leader Thune said on August 3, 2026, that a vote would come before the August recess, and on August 8, 2026, the Senate filed a cloture motion on the motion to proceed. On September 15, 2026, the Senate failed to invoke cloture, 49–50, with 60 votes required, and no new vote is scheduled as of October 22, 2026. The bill still has not been reconciled with the House-passed text and has not been signed by the president.
Did the Senate vote on the CLARITY Act before the August recess?
No. The Senate recessed in August without voting, then rejected cloture on September 15, 2026. As late as late July 2026, DisruptionBanking reported zero cloture motions filed and zero floor dates set ahead of the August recess deadline, underscoring how compressed the final timeline became. The Senate’s recorded action before the break was a cloture motion on the motion to proceed, filed August 8, 2026, one day after the chamber’s last scheduled workday before its state work period began August 10. A cloture motion on the motion to proceed limits debate on whether to take up the bill. It is a step toward a floor vote, not the floor vote on passage itself, and the bill would still need to be reconciled with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s version and the House-passed text before it could reach the president.
When is the realistic deadline for a 2026 Senate vote?
August 10, 2026, when the Senate’s state work period begins, is the hard outer boundary. The Senate’s last scheduled workday before that break was August 7, and Majority Leader John Thune had said on August 3, 2026, that a vote would come before the chamber left. Instead, the Senate filed a cloture motion on the motion to proceed on August 8, 2026, still short of a final vote, and then failed to invoke cloture, 49–50, on September 15, 2026. No new vote is scheduled as of October 22, 2026, and the bill is effectively unlikely to advance during the remainder of the 2026 Congress, so the August window proved to be the practical cutoff.
Has Senate leadership committed to a floor vote?
Leadership did commit, but the effort failed. On August 3, 2026, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters the CLARITY Act would get a floor vote before the Senate leaves for its August recess. The bill had already been formally eligible for a vote since June 1, 2026, when it was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar as Calendar No. 423. On August 8, 2026, Thune filed a cloture motion on the motion to proceed, with a vote planned after the August recess. That vote came on September 15, 2026 and failed 49–50, with 60 votes required, and no new vote is scheduled as of October 22, 2026.
What happens if the Senate misses the August recess deadline?
Multiple August 2026 reports say a missed window resets the bill’s momentum rather than killing it outright. The Senate recessed in August without voting and then rejected cloture on September 15, 2026, 49–50, so the window has in effect been missed. Comprehensive crypto market-structure legislation would likely wait for the next Congress if it does not, with enactment unlikely before mid-2027 at the earliest. Even in an optimistic scenario where lawmakers revive the bill quickly, one analysis suggests most operational provisions, including registration and maturity-certification rules, would not take effect until late 2027, since regulators would still need time to write implementing rules.
Which cryptocurrencies are already classified as digital commodities?
Sixteen, under the March 17, 2026 joint SEC-CFTC classification: XRP, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Avalanche, Polkadot, Stellar, Hedera, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Tezos, Bitcoin Cash, Aptos, and Algorand. Bitcoin was already treated as a commodity. The list is agency guidance, not statute, so CLARITY would harden it into law.
Does the CLARITY Act replace the GENIUS Act?
No, they cover different ground. GENIUS, in force since July 2025, governs payment stablecoins and their issuers. CLARITY governs market structure for everything else: which tokens are commodities versus securities, and which regulator supervises exchanges, brokers, and dealers.
What happens to my crypto if the bill never passes?
Practically, the current agency-led framework continues: the joint SEC-CFTC taxonomy, the SEC’s Regulation Crypto Assets proposal, and the CFTC’s spot-listing regime. Your holdings remain legal either way. The difference is durability, since agency guidance can be reversed by a future administration while a statute cannot, and platform protections like bankruptcy priority for customer assets would stay unlegislated.
