The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act was always doomed to fail.

The bill faced an uphill battle from launch; numerous political, policy and social factors would have needed to fall into place for it to succeed. In the end, a variety of issues combined to continually decrease the odds of its passage over the past year. Ultimately, the bill saw bipartisan opposition when it hit the Senate floor for a key make-or-break procedural vote earlier this month, and its future is now in limbo.

There had been warning signs for months.

According to interviews conducted with more than a dozen industry participants and legislative aides over the past 10 days — some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity so they could talk candidly about this fraught process — a confluence of factors killed the Clarity Act.

The Senate ignored the House of Representatives’ own Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which had passed with a massive bipartisan vote; the Senate version was constructed in a piecemeal fashion; U.S. President Donald Trump and his White House complicated the negotiations; the crypto industry conducted a scattershot engagement with lawmakers throughout the process; Democrats rejected an ethics deal they felt fell short of their demands; and time was not on lawmakers’ side as they headed into a midterm election.

The result is that, despite a massive campaign and lobbying operation that resulted in «the most pro-crypto Congress in history» after the 2024 election and the passage of a key stablecoin bill last year, the crypto industry’s top priority for legislation — market structure reform — remains out of reach.

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act was aimed at clearly defining how the industry’s two main regulators, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, would oversee the roughly $3 trillion and growing crypto sector. While last year’s Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (GENIUS) outlined how federal regulators should oversee stablecoins specifically, this broader market structure bill has long been desired by the industry for a few reasons.

For one thing, crypto spot markets currently exist in a sort of federal regulatory gray zone. The CFTC does not have spot market authority over these markets outside of outright fraud and related derivatives products. For another, the SEC had never previously issued formal rulemakings outlining how it would oversee crypto-related securities products, and many leaders in the sector were panicked by former Chair Gary Gensler’s effort to corral crypto spot trading platforms into an existing securities regulation framework. There is also no explicit authority delineating where the SEC’s authority ends and the CFTC’s authority begins.

In the absence of this legislation, the agencies began to lay out how they view the crypto markets in joint advisories published earlier this year, but a crypto market structure bill could sort out all of these issues in a much more legally tangible — not to mention durable — way.

The ethics provision

It’s difficult to say whether the Clarity Act vote failed solely due to the controversial section that sought to limit senior government officials — namely, Trump — from personal crypto ties, but ethics concerns hung over the bill throughout its conception and development and remain one of the dominant talking points around this entire debate.

Democrat concerns about President Donald Trump’s crypto business ties stretch back to 2025. In May of last year, Sen. Ruben Gallego and eight other Democrats said they would not vote for the GENIUS Act because of how Trump was profiting off the sector. Ultimately, those lawmakers did vote for the bill with marginal changes, but it was always clear that the Trump family’s crypto dealings — which include World Liberty Financial, the $TRUMP memecoin and mining firm American Bitcoin — would weigh on future market structure discussions. At the time, Trump told «Meet the Press» that he was «not profiting from anything … I want crypto because a lot of people, you know millions of people want it.» More recently, in his June financial disclosure, he admitted to making $1.4 billion from his various crypto ventures during his first year back in office — more than half of the $2.2 billion total he raked in in 2025.

The goal for Democrats was to restrain Trump from so blatantly profiting off of the crypto sector, which had in turn poured millions into the president’s 2024 campaign, inaugural balls, a ballroom to replace the demolished White House East Wing, a military parade and his political action committee.

While the goal of the ethics provision has been described as generically applying to all present and future presidents and senior government officials, it’s specifically Trump’s crypto business ties that have alarmed Democrats. These concerns have been consistent since Trump’s return to office last year, multiple people said, with one person saying the Democrats writ large «actually care about this stuff.»

The crypto industry should not have been surprised by the conviction Democrats had on the ethics piece, this person said.

In May, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a longtime crypto champion who has cosponsored multiple bills addressing the sector, told CoinDesk’s Consensus 2026 attendees that the bill would not advance without an ethics provision. Similarly, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, who voted for the bill during a hearing in the Senate Banking Committee, said at the time that she would not vote for further advancement without additional work.

Even industry participants expected a clear deal on the ethics provision before a floor vote — so-called because it takes place on the Senate floor, with all 100 senators expected to participate. Cody Carbone, head of the Digital Chamber, told reporters after the Banking Committee advanced the bill in May that he expected «the deal will be completed before this goes to the floor, because they’ll want to only bring it to the floor if they feel confident they’ve got 60» votes.

Lawmakers from the two parties ultimately did not agree to any such deal. The White House and Senate Republicans published a few proposals; Senate Democrats sent counteroffers; and Sens. Thom Tillis and Gallego even pitched a bipartisan counterproposal earlier in the year. The three parties were unable to reach a consensus agreement prior to this month’s floor vote.

Multiple people pointed to Trump’s June financial disclosure as the event that really supercharged these concerns by giving politicians an easy-to-grasp headline figure in their push to force Trump to sell off his crypto holdings.

Those concerns only strengthened as the November election drew nearer.

«I think politics was very clearly elevated over policy,» said Stu Alderoty, the chief legal officer at Ripple Labs. «It was good policy, and the industry needs to get better at politics.»

Ron Hammond, the head of policy and advocacy at Wintermute, pointed to the fact that both Gallego and Alsobrooks ultimately voted against the bill on the floor as a sign of just how near the election is, and how that’s overshadowing everything else. Still others noted that Gillibrand, likewise, had voted against the procedural motion. Even sympathetic Democrats couldn’t risk being seen as soft on Trump’s corruption with an election around the corner.

Speaking at CoinDesk’s Policy & Regulation event last week, Rep. Ritchie Torres put the blame on Trump’s crypto activity.

«My personal opinion … even though the failure of Clarity had multiple causes, I am convinced that if it were not for Donald Trump, we likely could have seen both Democrats and Republicans get to yes,» he said. «Once the president issued his personal memecoin, that created a political problem for Democrats.»

Coinbase and the January delay

The industry’s involvement in the legislative process has also been under scrutiny. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that industry insiders laid some portion of the blame for the failed vote on Coinbase and its CEO Brian Armstrong, after Armstrong publicly withdrew support for the Senate Banking Committee’s version of the bill ahead of a key vote in January.

One of the key issues, Armstrong said, was that the version of the bill was problematic with how it treated stablecoin yield and rewards. The delay kicked off a months-long fight between the crypto and banking industries, while lawmakers sought to find a compromise. It’s not clear that other outstanding issues were debated much during the yield fight.

Industry figures and Sen. Cynthia Lummis rallied to Coinbase’s defense after the Journal’s report came out, but industry participants told CoinDesk they saw Armstrong’s tweet and the subsequent months-long fight over stablecoin yield and rewards as being harmful to the overall cause of getting Clarity passed.

One individual involved in crypto lobbying said if the ethics proposal released earlier this month had come out in the spring, it would have likely raised the odds of a successful vote.

Alderoty, the Ripple CLO, said in a phone call that there was «an opportunity in January» without the midterms to make further progress.

«The January timeframe would have given more airspace for negotiations without the midterms breathing down their necks,» Alderoty said.

Charley Cooper, the president and COO at Ava Labs, similarly told CoinDesk that the fact that the floor vote was held less than two months prior to election day made it difficult to see success.

The crypto industry felt a renewed sense of optimism after an ethics proposal was published earlier this month, which raised hopes that the overall bill could pass, he said. But, «we’re six weeks before election day in a heated midterm with a very divided electorate, very partisan fighting going on.»

To be clear: Nobody guaranteed that an earlier vote would have been successful. Many of the individuals who spoke to CoinDesk praised Armstrong and Coinbase generally for their involvement in the bill’s development. And, despite industry claims that the banking industry should have negotiated stablecoin yield issues during the GENIUS Act passage, one individual said that the Senate Banking Committee’s July 2025 discussion draft for market structure invited the debate by asking, «How should legislation address interest or yield-bearing digital assets, including stablecoins.»

If the ethics proposal released by Senate Republicans in early September had instead been released in the spring, the back-and-forth over the details may have been more fruitful, three people said, though others weren’t so sure, suggesting the political weight of the ethics debate was destined to hang over everything else — including the stablecoin yield question, disagreements over the risks of decentralized finance and others.

But the timing was bad.

Right after the Senate Banking Committee postponed its initial January hearing, the U.S. started its conflict with Iran, which caused fuel prices to spike and fanned the flames of an increasingly wonky global financial situation. Americans’ frustration over Trump’s foreign policy and the economy has seen Trump’s poll numbers sliding downward over the last few months. Meanwhile, progressive challengers won primary contests in Democrat elections, and the Democratic party as a whole is more afraid of alienating its base than the possible political fallout from voting for a crypto bill, multiple people said.

«Neither side was going to take a leap and do something big that could be claimed as a victory for the other side,» Cooper said. «So it doesn’t surprise me at all that it failed.»

The House bill

The timing problem is a byproduct of another thing multiple people took issue with: The fact that the Senate was working on its own homegrown bill to begin with. The House of Representatives passed its version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act with a massive 294-134 vote in July 2025; 78 Democrats supported the bill. The Senate largely ignored it to work on its own bill, originally named the Responsible Financial Innovation Act. (The Senate adopted the Clarity Act moniker later in the process.)

The Senate did something similar with the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act — while the House had a bill, the Senate started its own version of the legislation, and that is the text that ultimately became law. Congressmen expressed their desire to see the Senate take up their version of the Clarity Act over the past year, but that didn’t happen.

“Clarity’s chances really faced an uphill battle when it came to the Senate decision not to take up the Clarity Act that passed the House as-is and [instead] just worked on their own,» Wintermute’s Hammond said.

A lot of the issues that bogged down the Senate bill in recent months just weren’t major considerations last year, he told CoinDesk in a phone call. The banking industry was not lobbying on stablecoin yield issues in the same way it had through most of 2026; political concerns were not as strong, and many of the interest groups had not had time to mobilize last fall.

Two other individuals said the House likely never expected the Senate to take up its bill, but the House had to pass it anyway. And when it drew more than two thirds support in the House, it showed the Senate there was plenty of bipartisan energy.

Rep. French Hill, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, told CoinDesk in April that the Senate version of the bill did adapt some of the work the House did on its version of the Clarity Act and its predecessor, the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act.

Still, a further risk with the Senate launching its own version of Clarity is that the bill would have to go back to the House after successful Senate passage, and it’s unclear what would have happened at that point.

The House announced it would leave almost immediately after the Senate returned earlier this month, meaning that even if there had been a successful series of votes on Clarity, the House wouldn’t have voted on it until the lame duck session after the election. And even then, the House wouldn’t necessarily vote on the Senate bill as-is, one former House aide told CoinDesk.

Tim Ryan, a former Congressman who now advises a number of crypto companies, told CoinDesk through a spokesperson that the House would first need to understand how the Senate bill would impact its own version.

«A strong Senate agreement could have created real momentum for the House to act,» he said. «The deciding factors would have been the substance and whether House leaders could assemble the votes. The goal should be a workable law that gives people the confidence to build here.»

Negotiating tactics

Several individuals took issue with the negotiating process itself. While in years past, legislation may have been written by legislative staffers from both parties cramming into a room, this did not seem to happen.

Industry sources told CoinDesk that instead, Republican legislative staffers would draft something and share it with their Democrat counterparts. The Democrats would then share feedback, which could get incorporated into the next Republican draft. This would then be presented as a bipartisan effort.

But sometimes Republicans would include concessions on their own in the hopes of getting Democrats to say yes, two industry sources said, pointing to changes to the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act as one example.

A Democrat aide said that at times, negotiators would agree to some provisions, but their Republican counterparts would later backpedal.

And earlier this year, after Senate Republicans and the White House agreed to the first draft of an ethics provision, negotiators briefed the crypto industry on the details and began aggressively selling the language before sharing the proposal with Senate Democrats.

«I think Republican staffers f***** up the negotiation by not including Democratic staffers in the process,» one person said, adding that it gave Democrats leverage in the negotiations. «If you don’t say ‘we agree to this concession’ then you have the power in negotiations.»

Another person pointed to the announcement of the revised ethics proposal, which came from Sen. Lummis’s office, as a second example, saying it was «odd» that the press release was only signed by Republicans if it was meant to champion a bipartisan effort.

Punchbowl News reported details about the negotiations last week.

Multiple people also pointed to White House adviser Patrick Witt, who they all said seemed to want the bill to pass but didn’t necessarily have the experience needed to coordinate a bill as complex as Clarity. One person said Witt’s posts on X, suggesting breakthroughs or successful passage, were unhelpful, as they may have changed industry expectations. Witt declined to speak with CoinDesk at a Georgetown event last week.

Two legislative aides and an industry participant told CoinDesk that a final, last-ditch negotiation spearheaded by Sen. Tillis, as the procedural vote began on Sept. 15 led to the idea of allowing the entire Senate to vote on the Tillis-Gallego ethics proposal as an amendment to the bill. One Democrat aide said the party was at the «one-yard line» on a successful procedural vote when the negotiation was shut down.

It was abruptly ended by a staffer for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, several people told CoinDesk. Sens. Gallego and Chuck Schumer said in press statements that there was a bipartisan deal in the works but it was «killed.»

Crypto in America’s Eleanor Terrett first reported that a staffer for Scott ended negotiations.

A source familiar with the discussions told CoinDesk that the staffer had specifically told his own team to leave the negotiation, and the White House and Senate Agriculture Committee Republican staff were not present at this meeting. Republicans had already rejected the previous counterproposal sent by Senate Democrats late the night before, and formal talks had already ended. The staffer didn’t see the talking as an active negotiation because the process had already been closed, and he disputed that he halted progress at that point, the source said.

An industry participant said during the vote that Tillis and the Republican staffers negotiating were doing so without the support of their leadership. Another person, the Democrat aide, said Republican leadership had undermined Tillis and Lummis after the two had essentially secured a deal. The industry participant said that the parties had reached an agreement on some provisions but needed details on paper.

The industry’s own approach to negotiations likewise drew scrutiny; one person said the Clarity fight did eventually see the majority of the crypto industry align on at least the crypto-specific portions of the bill. But there were steps the overall industry could have taken that would have better served its cause, another person said, such as getting better at providing real-world use cases for merchants or other constituents. The industry just focused on hypotheticals, at least in Washington.

Industry leaders could have done more to encourage bipartisan negotiations, one aide said.

The upcoming midterm

2026 is a midterm election. Earlier this year, the general consensus was that the House of Representatives would likely flip control from Republicans to Democrats, while the Senate would remain under Republican control.

Many people said this means Democrats could not give Trump «a win» ahead of the election, particularly when, as noted, progressives tend not to vote for crypto.

Sen. Bill Hagerty told audiences at a Georgetown University event last Wednesday that he had warned his colleagues that the closer the negotiations got to Nov. 3, the lower the chances of any sort of passage, though he said the Senate could take up the legislation again after the election.

«It’s sad, but it’s the political reality,» he said. He told CoinDesk that there may be room for continuing negotiations on some of the provisions.

«My Democratic colleagues, this close to the election, couldn’t resist playing politics,» he said. «Is there room to do more fine-tuning? Perhaps.»

The future of Fairshake

One major question raised by the failure of the vote: What will happen to the crypto political action committees? Fairshake, the biggest crypto super PAC, has already announced a $30 million spend against former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is challenging Ohio Sen. John Husted in a bid to return to the Senate. Brown, who chaired the Senate Banking Committee when he was last in the Senate, had criticized the crypto sector and opposed bringing any legislation for a committee hearing when he was in office, but hadn’t said much about crypto during this most recent campaign.

Neither party saw much political risk in failing to pass Clarity, said Wisdomtree Chief Legal Officer Ryan Louvar.

Whether Fairshake or the other PACs can even affect the overall trajectory of the 2026 election is a mystery. Recent polls suggest that Democrats will pick up a number of seats in the House of Representatives, and several Senate races are likewise competitive. The PACs throwing in with the Republican party exclusively, were that to happen, would reflect badly on the crypto industry if Democrats do regain power in at least one chamber of Congress, or if they win the presidency in 2028.

Fairshake was not built for a «wave» election, one person said. And the PAC has already had two high-profile misfires. Fairshake opposed Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton’s Senate bid to the tune of $10 million; Stratton won anyway and is almost certainly going to win the general election.

And the PACs have to maintain a delicate balance, this person said. They cannot risk a complete break from Democrats.

Another person said it was unclear whether the threat of Fairshake was ineffective in getting Clarity done or if Democrats just chose to run out the clock on 2026 in a strategic effort to avoid facing multimillion-dollar ad spends against them.

The elusive crypto voter

A Democrat aide said the crypto industry cannot just assume that a future administration or legislature would be fully bipartisan and on board with crypto bills, rather than the political pendulum swinging away from complete Republican control following the current term. For the PACs to essentially do what Republicans hope and direct funds against Democrats because of this month’s vote would risk alienating necessary political allies.

Another issue with the PACs like Fairshake is the lack of supporting infrastructure in Washington, D.C., a former legislative staffer said.

The industry can tell lawmakers that tens of millions of Americans own crypto, but without constituents demonstrating why this matters for them, elected officials won’t care, this person said. Even worse, lawmakers may question these claims if they go back to their home districts and don’t hear any of their constituents discuss crypto.

Alderoty, who also heads up the Ripple-backed National Cryptocurrency Association, said the organization estimated that some 67 million Americans held crypto, but his organization could not convince any senators to sit down with holders to talk about their use cases.

And it’s true that crypto just isn’t a major issue for voters. In a CoinDesk-commissioned survey of 1,000 registered voters across the country, just 1% described crypto as a top concern. The cost of living, jobs, the economy, Social Security and Medicare were all more important issues, respondents said.

And Democrat voters — both those who described themselves as leaning Democrat or as being strongly Democrat — had a more unfavorable view of crypto than a favorable one, further disincentivizing senators from acting on crypto. Independent voters also had a more unfavorable view of the sector.

Also, 62% of respondents said they did not trust Trump’s administration to oversee crypto.

Lessons

The future of the Clarity Act is unclear. Several individuals said that there are hopes of reviving the bill before the end of the year; however the election goes, a new Congress will be sworn into office in January, and any legislative process will have to start anew.

One industry participant said that it’s likely Democrats will come up with their own version of a crypto market structure bill, which will, at least, give the party a starting point to work from, even if that bill does not go anywhere on its own.

WisdomTree’s Louvar said it is helpful that crypto products are continuing to become more tangible. What’s even more helpful are tokenization or other blockchain-based products that aren’t strictly crypto. Even if lawmakers have a negative perception about cryptocurrencies, divorcing crypto from the underlying blockchain technology could demonstrate its use, he said.

In the absence of legislation, the SEC and CFTC are pushing out guidance and taking steps to try and fill in what gaps they can. However, the SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said repeatedly that a market structure bill is still needed to ensure that any missing authorities are granted.

«The crypto bill transformed into an ethics bill, and that was really unfortunate,» Ripple’s Alderoty said. «We lost a really good opportunity.»