The Clarity Act needs 60 votes when the Senate returns from its recess next week. Republicans circulated a fresh draft on Thursday ahead of the vote.
- Senate Republicans circulated a fresh draft of the Clarity Act on Thursday, offering changes to decentralized finance and credit union provisions.
- The Senate returns from its August recess next week, and is scheduled to hold its first Clarity Act vote on Tuesday.
- It’s unclear whether Democrats’ major demand — a bipartisan ethics provision for senior government officials including the president — will reach an agreement, or if there’s 60 votes for the bill at this time.
A new version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity offers tweaks to how the key crypto legislation would address activities by decentralized finance firms and some traditional finance firms engaging in crypto activities, but it isn’t expected to represent a final compromise that will win sufficient support from Democrats.
The new text, circulated by Republican lawmakers on Thursday, features certain new requirements for decentralized finance entities. The bulk of the text, which aims to reshape how federal regulators oversee cryptocurrency activities in the U.S., seems to largely resemble previous versions of the bill.
Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis, one of the bill’s chief negotiators, argued for forging ahead on the bill rather than leaving crypto regulations up to sitting federal regulators, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.»We have incorporated more than 114 separate provisions at my Democrat colleagues’ request, and as a result, this bill is a strong bipartisan product,» said Lummis, who was among those still working on the bill during the August Senate recess, in a statement. «Unlike rulemaking, legislation gives this industry a lasting solution that shields it from the whiplash of changes in the White House. Since the CFTC and SEC will write rules on digital assets with or without the Clarity Act, I believe a lasting, bipartisan compromise is the best route for America’s future.
Lummis said that this latest aspirational draft of the bill includes provisions on when DeFi projects would need to register with the CFTC and get Bank Secrecy Act requirements, makes clear that the DeFi language is only meant to target spot-market and cash transactions in digital commodities (and not prediction markets) and gives credit unions more clarity on their rule with digital assets.
It’s unclear whether the bill has the votes to advance beyond even next week’s first procedural vote. The cloture vote, scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 15, will require 60 Senators to support the bill to succeed, meaning both Democrats and Republicans will need to sign on.
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Democrats have continued to express concern about the lack of a bipartisan ethics agreement restraining President Donald Trump and other senior government officials from profiting from crypto businesses. Earlier this week, Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, told Semafor that the White House still needed to engage on a bipartisan proposal.
In the absence of a bipartisan deal on the ethics section — with a sign-off from Trump — key Democrats have said that they won’t support the bill. But some Republicans have also been wary of other elements in the legislation.
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said of next week’s planned Clarity Act voting, «All Senators, Republican and Democrat, should vote on Tuesday to get on the bill and allow the legislative process to continue,» he wrote in a post on social media site X, though the White House didn’t immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment on the current draft.
Like Witt, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called for lawmakers to clear the first hurdle in order to keep the process alive.
«I strongly urge everyone to remain at the negotiating table, agree to the motion to proceed, and continue the legislative process,» Bessent wrote in his own Wednesday posting on X. «Failing to do so would send a troubling signal to our allies and adversaries alike that America is unwilling to lead on the future of digital assets and willing to forgo enhanced national security tools to combat their misuse.»
Some lawmakers also expressed concerns about how the bill addresses stablecoin yield and rewards in the weeks leading up to the Senate’s summer recess. On Thursday, the American Bankers Association, Independent Community Bankers of America and 77 state banking associations sent an open letter to lawmakers calling for greater restrictions on the rewards stablecoin companies can provide.
«This draft reflects years of bipartisan negotiation,» said Cody Carbone, who leads the Digital Chamber, one of several crypto organizations that have long worked on the legislation that’s seen as a necessary step in the maturing of the industry, in a statement.
«The Senate must act now or risk ceding U.S. leadership in digital asset and blockchain innovation to the rest of the world.»
CoinDesk is holding its annual Policy and Regulation summit, featuring key lawmakers working on the Clarity Act, on Sept. 22 in Washington, D.C. Register here.
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