# CLARITY Act The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) is the crypto industry's main prize: the **market-structure** bill that would decide who regulates crypto at all. Where the [[GENIUS Act]] legalized stablecoins, CLARITY would hand the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over "digital commodity" spot markets and shrink the SEC to policing "investment contract assets" — with a decentralization / "mature blockchain" test deciding which side of the line a token falls on. Critics call it an SEC-gutting machine; the industry calls it certainty. Together with the GENIUS Act it forms the two pillars of the Trump-era crypto legislative agenda that [[David Sacks]] championed as AI/Crypto Czar. > [!abstract] The through-line > **The machine is jamming on its own conflict of interest.** The industry bought a Congress, captured the agencies, and passed the stablecoin half of the agenda — and the market-structure half is stalled *because the president disclosed more than $1 billion in crypto income*, which makes any bill deregulating crypto legible as self-enrichment. The ethics clause is the price of Democratic votes. The White House will not pay it. ## Status (as of 26 August 2026) | Stage | Result | Date | |---|---|---| | House passage | **294–134**, ~78 Democrats in support, during "Crypto Week" | 2025-07-17 | | Senate Agriculture | advanced **12–11**, party lines | 2026-01-29 | | Senate Banking | advanced **15–9**, two Democrats | 2026-05-14 | | Senate calendar | placed, No. 423 | early June 2026 | | Floor consideration | first stage opened | 2026-08-08 | | August floor vote | **did not happen** — Thune punts to September | 2026-08-06 | | First procedural vote | expected **September 15 or 16**; needs 60 | scheduled | **The blockage is bipartisan in structure, though not in motive.** Seven Democrats will not vote for the current draft's ethics provision (below). Republicans **Jerry Moran** and [[Josh Hawley]] are on record against over banking-industry concerns, with John Curtis hesitant — JPMorgan, the American Bankers Association, and the Community Bankers Association are lobbying against the stablecoin-yield provisions, Jamie Dimon objecting that the bill "allows cryptocurrency firms to effectively pay interest on deposits... without the protection that they should have." Thune's line: *"we're getting that queued up first thing when we come back."* As of the August recess, cloture had not been filed and the whip count reportedly had not reached 50, let alone 60. ## The ethics fight — the load-bearing obstacle The sticking point is fittingly self-referential. Senator Chris Van Hollen's amendment barring the president, VP, members of Congress, and their families from owning crypto businesses was rejected **13–11** in Banking markup. [[Elizabeth Warren]]'s parallel push targeted [[World Liberty Financial]]'s bank-charter ambitions. On **22 July 2026**, [[Cynthia Lummis]] released a revised **616-page text** containing an ethics provision negotiated directly with Trump. Democrats read its engineering as the tell: - it reaches only ***new*** digital-asset issuances, leaving the family's existing $1B+ income stream untouched; - enforcement goes **exclusively to the Trump-appointed DOJ**, with state attorneys general explicitly barred from acting; - it **sunsets at noon on 20 January 2029**, and prosecution is prohibited after that date *even for conduct committed while the provision was in force* — retroactive immunity the moment Trump leaves office. Senator Angela Alsobrooks called the DOJ-only enforcement "wild and unserious." [[Thom Tillis]] and [[Ruben Gallego]] drafted a counter-proposal and sent it to the White House in late July. White House Crypto Council director Patrick Witt has been negotiating the language directly — with roughly $2.3B in Trump-family crypto interests (see [[Trump Crypto Ventures]]) sitting at the center of the bill that would regulate them. > [!note] What to watch in September > Which ethics text survives: the Lummis–Trump version, the Tillis/Gallego counter-proposal, or a clause drafted to expire before it binds anyone. This is the single highest-signal item on the bill. ## The developer-liability fight A floated developer-liability standard drew the industry's sharpest public intervention: on **1 August 2026**, [[Marc Andreessen]] and Chris Dixon used their own podcast to call it "a kill shot to the industry." This is not an abstraction. The Senate Banking substitute advanced on 14 May 2026 carries a **separate DeFi title** — protocol registration, disclosures, recordkeeping, supervision, BSA and sanctions compliance — alongside protections for "noncontrolling software developers and providers." That language exists because of [[Tornado Cash]]: [[Roman Storm]] was convicted in August 2025 under a money-transmitting theory the DOJ itself disclaimed fifteen days later, and the separate H.R. 7732 (Fitzgerald, Cline, Lofgren, February 2026) would amend 18 U.S.C. § 1960 to reach only services that control customer assets. CLARITY's DeFi title is the industry's attempt to get that protection into the market-structure bill rather than wait for a standalone fix. ## The money behind it The industry entered the 2026 cycle with a ~$200M war chest. [[Fairshake PAC]] reported $193M on hand — later reported at ~$130M unspent two months from election day — fueled by [[Coinbase]], [[Ripple]], and [[Andreessen Horowitz]]. On **24 August 2026** the Daily Caller News Foundation published a per-candidate dollar map tying contributions directly to positions on this specific bill, and [[Stand With Crypto]] endorsed 32 House candidates the same day. That makes CLARITY the most heavily lobbied financial bill of the cycle and the [[Crypto-Political Machine]]'s central test: **whether purchased regulatory certainty survives contact with the president's own conflicts.** Fairshake's cash has been sitting idle for want of a roll call; the September cloture vote would finally produce one. ## Secondary fights, unresolved - **Agriculture Committee jurisdiction** — the Senate Agriculture version (Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act) still needs reconciling with Banking's, then with the House text. - **Stablecoin yields and rewards** — bank lobby versus non-bank issuers. The sleeper fight inside market structure, and the reason two Republicans are opposed. - **Illicit-finance provisions** — including how the DeFi title interacts with the Bank Secrecy Act. - **Post-midterm fallback** — if September fails, does it move in a lame-duck session or die until the next Congress? Prediction markets put roughly 39% odds on a 2026 signature, with analysts floating slippage into 2027. ## See also - [[GENIUS Act]] — the stablecoin companion, already law - [[Tornado Cash]] — why the DeFi title's developer protections exist - [[Crypto-Political Machine]] · [[Fairshake PAC]] · [[Crypto Super PACs]] · [[Stand With Crypto]] - [[Trump Crypto Ventures]] · [[World Liberty Financial]] · [[Paul Atkins]] - [[Cryptocurrency Sector]] · [[Cryptocurrency Ecosystem]] — sector context - [[David Sacks News Log]] · [[Crypto-Political Machine News Log]] · [[Trump Corruption News Log]] — the running record