The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 — the most comprehensive crypto market-structure bill ever to pass a chamber of the U.S. Congress — missed its April markup window in the Senate Banking Committee. Chairman Tim Scott allowed the month to close without scheduling a vote, after the Kevin...
"If we don't get the Clarity Act passed by May, digital asset legislation will not pass for the foreseeable future." — Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), DC Blockchain Summit, March 2026
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 — the most comprehensive crypto market-structure bill ever to pass a chamber of the U.S. Congress — missed its April markup window in the Senate Banking Committee. Chairman Tim Scott allowed the month to close without scheduling a vote, after the Kevin Warsh Federal Reserve confirmation consumed the committee's calendar for three consecutive weeks.
The bill now faces a compressed four-week window before the Memorial Day recess on May 21. Five sequential legislative hurdles remain: a Banking Committee markup, a 60-vote Senate floor threshold, reconciliation between the Banking and Agriculture Committee texts, reconciliation with the House-passed version, and a presidential signature. Polymarket prices passage at 46% as of April 27, down from 82% earlier in 2026. Galaxy Research assigns roughly 50-50 odds, noting probability drops sharply if the markup slips past mid-May.
The stakes are material. Without a federal framework, the $317 billion stablecoin market, crypto exchanges serving tens of millions of U.S. users, and an estimated $2.3 trillion in global digital-asset market capitalization continue to operate under a patchwork of enforcement actions, staff bulletins, and state-level rules that vary by jurisdiction.
H.R. 3633 passed the House on July 17, 2025, by a 294-134 vote, with 78 Democrats crossing the aisle. The bill establishes the first statutory framework dividing crypto-asset oversight between the SEC and CFTC by sorting tokens into three buckets:
The bill also codifies protections for non-custodial software developers, who are explicitly excluded from financial-intermediary classification if they do not control customer funds. It prohibits the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail central bank digital currency. And it includes what the Senate Banking Committee describes as the "strongest illicit finance framework Congress has ever considered for digital assets," extending AML and sanctions-compliance requirements to registered digital-asset intermediaries.
On the regulatory side, the bill replaces the SEC's 2019 "Framework for Investment Contract Analysis of Digital Assets" with a statutory test. On March 17, 2026, the SEC and CFTC issued a joint 68-page interpretive release that already restructures how federal securities laws apply to crypto assets — a staff-level action that anticipated the bill's framework but lacks the permanence of legislation.
The Senate Banking Committee's April calendar was dominated by a single competing obligation: the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve Chair. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) had blocked the nomination, and the resulting standoff consumed committee bandwidth. Tillis lifted his hold on April 26, and the committee scheduled a Warsh confirmation vote for April 30.
That cleared the calendar conflict, but not in time. Chairman Tim Scott named three remaining issues on Fox Business on April 14: stablecoin yield language, DeFi provisions, and Republican unity on the committee. Scott estimated two weeks to resolve each of the first two issues. That timeline expired before the April window closed.
The result: the bill entered May without a markup date, without a formal notice from the chairman, and with the full legislative path ahead of it.
The sharpest disagreement between the banking lobby and the crypto industry centers on whether stablecoin issuers can pay yield to holders. The American Bankers Association argues that yield-bearing stablecoins compete directly with bank deposits and threaten the funding model of the traditional banking system. The White House Council of Economic Advisers published a report arguing that the deposit-flight risk is overstated; the ABA responded with a formal rebuttal.
The compromise text that emerged from Senate negotiations prohibits passive yield on stablecoin balances — digital-asset service providers cannot offer interest or yield for simply holding tokens. However, activity-based rewards tied to payments, transfers, loyalty programs, promotions, subscriptions, and platform usage remain permitted.
Coinbase reportedly rejected an earlier March 23 draft of the yield provisions. On April 16, Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad told Fox Business that negotiations were progressing and predicted a Banking Committee markup "this month" with a floor vote in May. That markup did not materialize.
"The three-bucket approach is the only viable path forward," Shirzad said. "It gives digital commodity markets the CFTC oversight they need while keeping securities regulation where it belongs."
The bill's path from the Senate Banking Committee to a presidential signature requires five sequential steps, each with its own procedural timeline:
Congress breaks for Memorial Day recess on May 21. That leaves approximately 15 working days from the start of May. Analysts at Galaxy Research have warned that if the markup slips past mid-May, the probability of 2026 enactment "drops sharply."
After the recess, the midterm election cycle compresses the legislative calendar further. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) has warned that missing this window could mean waiting until at least 2030 for a new Congress to restart the process.
On April 23, the Crypto Council for Innovation and the Blockchain Association coordinated a joint letter signed by more than 120 companies — including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Circle, and a16z — demanding the Senate Banking Committee schedule an immediate markup.
The letter identifies six priorities the coalition wants resolved in the final text:
The letter is notable for its breadth. The 120-plus signatories span exchanges, venture firms, stablecoin issuers, DeFi protocols, and custody providers — entities that normally compete and occasionally litigate against each other. The unified front reflects the industry's assessment that the legislative window is genuinely closing.
Polymarket's CLARITY Act contract has traced a pronounced decline in 2026:
| Date | Polymarket Odds | |------|----------------| | Early 2026 (peak) | 82–85% | | April 18 | 64% | | April 23 (post-delay) | 43% | | April 27 (current) | 46% |
The 36-point decline from peak reflects each successive delay eroding confidence in the legislative calendar. The slight bounce from 43% to 46% followed Senator Moreno's April 22 public statement reaffirming the end-of-May deadline and Tillis lifting his hold on the Warsh nomination on April 26.
Galaxy Research assigns roughly 50-50 odds, noting the uncertainty stems "not from any single issue but from the number of unresolved questions that must be settled, in sequence, under severe time pressure." Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz has been publicly more optimistic than his own research team.
If the CLARITY Act does not reach the president's desk before the 119th Congress adjourns, the consequences are structural rather than theoretical:
The bill would need to be reintroduced in the 120th Congress, starting the committee process from zero. With a new congressional cycle beginning in January 2027 and midterm dynamics reshaping committee composition, passage timelines extend to 2028 at the earliest, and more realistically 2029–2030 according to Senator Lummis.
The CLARITY Act's fate now rests on approximately 15 working days. The policy substance is largely resolved — three-bucket classification, SEC-CFTC jurisdiction split, developer protections, AML framework. What remains is procedural: a chairman who has not scheduled a markup, a 60-vote threshold that requires bipartisan cooperation, and a reconciliation process with two other legislative texts.
The bill passed the House with 294 votes nine months ago. The SEC and CFTC have already issued joint guidance that mirrors the bill's framework. The White House supports it. Over 120 companies have publicly demanded action. The economic rationale — replacing enforcement-derived rules with a predictable statutory baseline — is well-documented and bipartisan.
None of that matters if the markup does not happen by mid-May. The calendar is the constraint, and the calendar does not negotiate.