Senate Blocks Clarity Act, Regulatory Hurdles Ahead

The US Senate has failed to pass the CLARITY Act, a bill aimed at regulating the crypto market. The motion to proceed was rejected by a vote of 49-50 on September 15, 2026, falling short of the required 60 votes needed to open floor debate.

The deciding factor in this vote was an unresolved ethics language covering President Trump's and his family's crypto holdings rather than the bill's core market-structure framework. Republicans had made over 126 concessions across a revised 630-page text, but Democrats rejected the ethics section as inadequate, arguing it didn't effectively restrict the president and his family from profiting off crypto policy.

The CLARITY Act's failure means that comprehensive US crypto market-structure legislation is now stalled until at least after the November midterms. The SEC and CFTC have signaled their intention to act using existing statutory authority rather than wait for Congress, with SEC Chair Paul Atkins stating that the agency will move forward 'with or without' legislation.