The US Senate rejected the CLARITY Act 49-50 on September 15, well short of the 60 votes the bill needed to advance, reportedly, and with it crypto’s flagship market-structure push is effectively dead in this Congress.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act would have handed primary oversight of digital asset markets to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission instead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a restructuring the industry had spent years pushing. It cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 in May with bipartisan support, which is what makes the floor defeat such a sharp reversal.
The spending did not convert. Crypto’s lobby has put an estimated $100 million to $225 million into recent election cycles, and for that outlay it secured a committee win, cross-party goodwill in the spring, and then a one-vote loss on the floor in September. The committee tally suggested momentum; the final count showed the swing votes were never actually secured.
Opposition ran on two tracks that rarely align. Democratic objections centered on ethics provisions, specifically concerns tied to President Trump’s reported $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency gains during 2025, a figure that is reported rather than verified and remains politically charged. Banking groups, meanwhile, fought provisions that would have let stablecoin issuers offer yield-bearing products, which they saw as a direct threat to their deposit base. A coalition built on those two complaints was never going to be talked out of position by lobbying dollars alone.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who co-authored earlier crypto regulatory proposals, was among those who reversed course and voted against the bill she had once been expected to champion.
Markets repriced within hours of the vote: Coinbase shares fell 12% on September 15, Circle dropped 13%, and Bitcoin slid more than 5% intraday. Whether those declines held the next day is not yet clear.
With the November midterms weeks away, there is effectively zero chance of the bill being revived in the current Congress, and supporters have not said whether they will reintroduce it after the election.
