Senate Schedules CLARITY Act Markup As Bank Hold, Democrats Mount Resistance
The Senate Banking Committee has set May 14 as the date for its long-delayed markup of the Digital Assets Clarification Act, the most significant piece of cryptocurrency legislation ever to reach this stage in Congress, as a last-minute lobbying campaign from big banks and a clash of Democratic principles threaten to derail the bill before it clears the committee.
An executive session is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. in Room 538 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, where committee members will discuss amendments and vote on whether to advance the legislation to the full Senate floor. Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) confirmed the date last week, and a live video feed of the proceedings will be available to the public.
The CLARITY Act — officially HR 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 — passed the House of Representatives on July 17, 2025, by a bipartisan vote of 294–134, with all 216 Republicans in favor and 78 Democrats opposing. Since then, the bill has stalled in the Senate through two canceled markup sessions, extended discussions about stablecoin regulation, and a fierce lobbying battle between the crypto industry and the traditional banking sector.
At its core, the legislation would draw a regulatory boundary between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, resolving years of litigation over whether digital assets are securities or commodities.
Under the bill, the CFTC would gain exclusive jurisdiction over money markets and money markets for “digital assets” — tokens linked within an active, decentralized blockchain — while the SEC would retain jurisdiction over investment contract assets and capital markets. Stablecoins are recorded as a separate category under shared supervision.
Crypto jurisdiction fight reaches US Senate
The Senate version of the bill expanded significantly beyond the House text, growing to nine titles including decentralized financial protection, illegal financing provisions, bankruptcy protections for crypto customers, and the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which provides safe harbors for software developers.
The May 14 session marks the Senate’s first formal vote on CLARITY after months of slow process. Committee Chairman Scott was aiming for a vote in September 2025, then moved the goals to the end of 2025, and recently told Fox Business that he hopes to bring the bill to the Senate floor in June or July 2026.
The calendar pressure is severe: if the bill doesn’t clear the Senate Banking Committee before the May 21 Memorial Day recess, the entire process is reset — and Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) both warned that failure before Memorial Day could push the legislation’s next effective window to 2030 or beyond.
The White House has set July 4 as its target for the president’s signature.
Democrats are threatening to repeal the CLARITY Act as the heavy hitters cry out
The bill has heavyweight support from within the Trump administration. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins publicly urged Congress on April 9 to bring CLARITY to President Trump’s desk, saying the SEC and CFTC are ready to implement the law when it is signed. Atkins mentioned a project he called “The Crypto Project” as an internal agency readiness effort.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal framing the CLARITY Act as a national security issue, warning that without US regulatory certainty, blockchain developers and crypto companies continue to migrate to Singapore and Abu Dhabi. White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt described the stablecoin yield compromise as closed.
Senator Lummis, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee on Digital Assets, sent one word to X after the Senate returned from Easter recess – “Clarity.” Speaking at the Bitcoin Summit in late April, he was direct: “We’re going to sign the CLARITY Act in May. We’re going to get to the bottom of it. We’re going to have a market structure that allows us to innovate.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are threatening to withhold support unless the bill includes ethics provisions that regulate the holding of crypto by government officials, which Republicans argue could completely undermine the law.
