The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the most significant piece of crypto market structure legislation attempted in U.S. history — faces a hard deadline. Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) stated on April 22 that the bill must clear Congress by end of May or effectively die for this legislative cycle...
"We're very close to closing them out. All of these issues felt intractable and unsolvable at one point in time. So the fact that we've been able to close out a lot of them gives me confidence that we can close out these other ones, too." — Patrick Witt, Executive Director, President's Council of Advisors for Digital Assets
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — the most significant piece of crypto market structure legislation attempted in U.S. history — faces a hard deadline. Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) stated on April 22 that the bill must clear Congress by end of May or effectively die for this legislative cycle. The Senate Banking Committee has not yet scheduled a markup. Polymarket odds of passage in 2026 sit at 47%, down from 72% in mid-March. Galaxy Digital estimates the probability at roughly 50-50 "and possibly lower."
The bill's core function is straightforward: divide regulatory authority between the SEC and CFTC, classify digital assets into three categories, and end the enforcement-by-ambiguity regime that has defined U.S. crypto regulation since 2017. Its passage would affect jurisdictional claims over a market currently valued above $3 trillion. Its failure would leave the status quo intact through at least 2030, given Congressional calendar constraints. The single largest remaining obstacle is a dispute between banks and crypto firms over whether stablecoin issuers can offer yield — a question the White House Council of Economic Advisers quantified as affecting 0.02% of total bank lending.
The CLARITY Act passed the House of Representatives on July 17, 2025, with a 294-134 vote — a bipartisan margin that included dozens of crossover Democrats. The Senate Agriculture Committee advanced its companion bill, the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, on January 29, 2026, by a narrow 12-11 vote. As of April 26, 2026, the Senate Banking Committee has not scheduled a markup.
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), a key negotiator, stated in late April that he does not expect the Banking Committee markup to occur in April as originally targeted. This pushed the earliest realistic markup window to early-to-mid May. Congress breaks for Memorial Day recess on May 21. The November 2026 midterm elections impose a hard political deadline: once campaign season begins in earnest, complex financial legislation loses floor time.
Senator Moreno, speaking at a Washington event on April 22, issued what amounts to an ultimatum: complete the bill by end of May or wait until 2030. The remark reflects a calendar reality. If the bill does not advance before summer, it dies with the 119th Congress.
The CLARITY Act establishes a three-category classification system for digital assets:
Digital commodities. Tokens linked to established, decentralized blockchains. These fall under CFTC oversight. The CFTC would gain exclusive jurisdiction over anti-fraud and anti-manipulation enforcement in digital commodity markets, including cash and spot transactions. Intermediaries — exchanges, brokers, dealers — handling these assets would register with the CFTC.
Investment contract assets. Tokens representing equity, debt, or similar rights. These remain under SEC jurisdiction, subject to existing securities law.
Permitted payment stablecoins. Governed primarily by the GENIUS Act, which was signed into law in July 2025. The GENIUS Act established a federal framework requiring issuers above $10 billion in total issuance to operate under direct federal oversight from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Smaller issuers may opt into substantially similar state regimes. The CLARITY Act is designed to complement, not replace, this framework.
The bill's practical consequence is ending what the industry has described as "regulation by enforcement." Since 2017, the SEC and CFTC have both claimed overlapping jurisdiction over various digital assets without a statutory boundary. The CLARITY Act draws that line. The bill also includes protections for non-custodial software developers from broker registration requirements and simplified digital asset disclosure rules.
The single issue most responsible for the Senate delay is whether crypto platforms can offer yield on stablecoin holdings. The dispute has consumed months of negotiation and split two powerful lobbies: banks and crypto firms.
The March 23 compromise. Senators Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) produced draft text that prohibits passive yield on stablecoin balances — interest-like returns for simply holding dollar-pegged stablecoins — while permitting narrowly defined activity-based rewards tied to payments, transfers, or platform usage. The SEC, CFTC, and Treasury would have 12 months to define what qualifies as permissible.
The bank position. The American Bankers Association and allied bank lobbyists argue that stablecoin yield programs amount to deposit-like products that could trigger capital flight from traditional savings accounts, reducing bank lending capacity. They have drawn enough senatorial support to sustain their objection.
The crypto industry position. Coinbase told Senate staff it cannot accept the March 23 draft. Stripe has also objected. Both view the language as effectively banning a core product feature. On April 1, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal said a deal was "very close." By April 16, Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad stated negotiators were resolving the issue, projecting a markup "as early as this month" and a floor vote in May. Neither timeline has held.
The White House intervention. On April 8, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report quantifying the impact of stablecoin yield on bank lending. The CEA's model estimated that prohibiting yield would increase total bank lending by $2.1 billion — 0.02% of the total. For community banks specifically, the effect was 0.026%, or roughly $500 million. The report concluded: "A yield prohibition would do very little to protect bank lending, while forgoing the consumer benefits of competitive returns on stablecoin holdings." The ABA responded that the CEA "studied the wrong question," arguing the relevant concern is not a prohibition's effect on lending, but the consequences of allowing yield. White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt was more direct, stating that continued bank lobbying on the issue is "motivated by anything other than greed or ignorance."
On April 23, a coalition of more than 120 crypto firms sent a letter to the Senate Banking Committee demanding a markup of the CLARITY Act. The letter was organized by the Crypto Council for Innovation and the Blockchain Association. Signatories included Coinbase, Circle, Kraken, Ripple, Uniswap Labs, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Chainlink Labs, Chainalysis, OKX, Paradigm, and Galaxy Digital.
The letter outlined six legislative priorities:
The coalition warned that absent federal legislation, the U.S. risks losing crypto firms, capital, and jobs to jurisdictions with established regulatory frameworks — notably the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which has been operational since 2024, and Hong Kong's stablecoin licensing regime, which issued its first licenses in April 2025.
Quantitative sentiment on the CLARITY Act's prospects has deteriorated through April:
| Date | Source | Probability of 2026 Passage | |------|--------|-----------------------------| | Mid-March 2026 | Polymarket | 72% | | January 2026 | Polymarket (Cointelegraph report) | 54% | | April 18, 2026 | Polymarket | 64% | | April 23, 2026 | Polymarket | 43% | | April 22, 2026 (post-Moreno) | Polymarket | 46% | | Current (April 26) | Polymarket | 47% | | April 2026 | Galaxy Digital Research | ~50% ("possibly lower") |
The 21-point Polymarket drop between April 18 and April 23 — from 64% to 43% — was triggered by Senator Tillis's statement that the April markup would not occur. The partial recovery to 47% followed Moreno's public ultimatum. Total volume on the Polymarket contract stands at $563,800.
An academic paper published on SSRN (Krause, 2026) has already examined the econometric relationship between CLARITY Act Polymarket odds and Bitcoin price sensitivity, suggesting the market views passage as a material catalyst.
Even if negotiations resolve this week, the CLARITY Act faces five procedural steps, each with potential for failure:
Senate Banking Committee markup. Not yet scheduled. Requires resolving the stablecoin yield language to Chairman Tim Scott's satisfaction. The committee has jurisdiction over the securities-side provisions.
Full Senate floor vote. Requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. The January Agriculture Committee vote was 12-11, with zero Democratic support. Floor passage would require at least some Democratic crossover — a prospect complicated by unresolved "gryfto" provisions, the term some Democrats use for anti-corruption rules targeting digital asset holdings by the president and senior officials.
Reconciliation with Senate Agriculture Committee version. The Agriculture Committee passed the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act separately in January. The two Senate texts must be merged.
Conference reconciliation with the House. The House-passed CLARITY Act from July 2025 differs from both Senate versions. A conference committee or informal reconciliation process is required.
Presidential signature. The White House has signaled support, with adviser Witt actively involved in negotiations. This step is considered the least uncertain.
Galaxy Digital's assessment that odds are "50-50 and possibly lower" reflects not skepticism about any single hurdle, but the multiplicative nature of five sequential low-certainty events.
If the CLARITY Act does not advance past the Senate Banking Committee by mid-May, the practical consequence, according to multiple lobbyists and congressional aides cited in CoinDesk and Disruption Banking reporting, is that comprehensive U.S. crypto market structure legislation is dead until at least 2029 or 2030. The reasoning: the 119th Congress expires in January 2027, no significant financial legislation will move during the lame-duck session post-midterms, and the 120th Congress would need to restart the process from scratch.
In this scenario, the regulatory status quo persists: the SEC and CFTC continue to claim overlapping jurisdiction, enforcement actions remain the primary regulatory mechanism, and the GENIUS Act governs stablecoins as the sole piece of enacted crypto-specific federal legislation. Firms operating in the U.S. would continue to face uncertainty over whether their tokens are securities or commodities — a question with significant implications for registration, disclosure, and capital requirements.
The CLARITY Act represents a straightforward regulatory classification exercise — dividing digital assets into three buckets and assigning agency jurisdiction — that has become entangled in a narrow dispute over stablecoin yield. The White House's own economists quantified the dispute's economic stakes at 0.02% of bank lending. The political stakes are larger: whether the U.S. establishes a statutory framework for a multi-trillion-dollar asset class before its legislative window closes.
The data does not support a confident prediction in either direction. The bill has broad industry support, White House backing, and a House supermajority behind it. It also has no scheduled markup, a 12-11 party-line committee vote in the Agriculture Committee, unresolved compromise text, and five sequential procedural steps to clear before Memorial Day recess. Polymarket and Galaxy Digital both place odds near coin-flip territory. The next 30 days will determine whether U.S. crypto market structure law arrives in 2026 or is deferred to the next decade.