The Clarity Act may not reach a Senate floor vote before senators leave for a five-week break, with Democrats objecting to its ethics provisions. SEC chairman Paul Atkins says his agency is prepared to write crypto rules itself if Congress stalls, while arguing that only a statute keeps a framework from shifting with each administration.
The Senate could fall short of passing the Clarity Act before senators begin a five-week break, stalling a bill that aims to establish a clearer regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. It passed the House 294-134 in July last year and cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 in May, but has not reached a floor vote, where it would need 60 votes.
Bitcoin reached a roughly six-month high above $80,000 in the first half of May, with some help coming from the Banking Committee's vote to advance the measure. The original cryptocurrency now trades around the $64,000 mark, with the full Senate not doing all that much to provide a lift.
Ethics provisions and bank objections hold up the vote
MarketWatch points to two obstacles: Trump's crypto ventures and banks' objections. The president recently disclosed that he earned $1.4 billion in crypto ventures in 2025, raising ethics concerns that could help doom the Clarity Act.
Senate Democrats have also come out against the latest version, objecting to its proposed ethics provisions covering officials' crypto dealings as not good enough. Whether stablecoins can pay yield also remains unsettled. Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled late last week that the bill would likely not clear the chamber before the August recess, and the Senate has since shelved it.
What the chamber is sitting on is a jurisdictional shift. The bill would hand the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over spot markets in digital commodities, moving most tokens outside the SEC's reach.
Atkins says the SEC can write the rules instead
Atkins told CNBC on Monday that the agency is ready to come out with rules covering the same ground should the bill not clear the Senate. He said the market needs the certainty of a statute so the framework does not shift with each administration — "Statute is the way to future-proof something", he said.
Much of the alternative is already built. Atkins's Project Crypto, announced in November, produced a Regulation Crypto rulemaking package on the agency's 2026 agenda covering token registration exemptions, a safe harbor for decentralizing projects, broker-dealer custody and trading venues.
The limits of that route are the point he is making. The SEC and CFTC's March guidance classifying 16 tokens as digital commodities, Bitcoin and Ethereum among them, is administrative, and can be withdrawn by a future administration without a vote in Congress.
Sources: MarketWatch (snippet-based), Decrypt
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