CLARITY Act's Chances Drop to Even Odds as Senate Runs Low on Time

Galaxy Digital's research division has revised its probability estimate for the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026, pulling it back to an even 50-50 — a notable drop from the 60% likelihood assigned just three weeks prior. The revision, authored by Galaxy researcher Alex Thorn, centers not on the bill's content but on a rapidly shrinking legislative window and an absence of concrete Senate scheduling commitments.

The CLARITY Act — formally known as the Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act — successfully cleared the Senate Banking Committee on May 14 with a 15-9 vote and has been sitting on the Senate Legislative Calendar as item No. 423 ever since. No floor date has been announced. No motion to proceed has been filed. Leadership has offered no public commitment to advance the bill.

At its core, the CLARITY Act is the most ambitious legislative effort to date aimed at constructing a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the United States. The bill draws clear jurisdictional boundaries between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), defines the conditions under which a digital asset qualifies as a commodity versus a security, and incorporates the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), which extends legal protections to certain blockchain developers and node operators.

Despite earning bipartisan backing in committee — a meaningful achievement in today's polarized political landscape — the bill faces serious structural obstacles. While the House passed a version of digital asset market structure legislation back in 2024, Senate action has proven far more difficult. Both the Banking and Agriculture committees hold jurisdiction over aspects of the bill, and staff-level reconciliation between their respective texts is still ongoing. No unified legislative draft has been released publicly.

The core challenge is time. For a bill requiring 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, the arithmetic is demanding. The Senate is expected to begin its August recess at the end of July, leaving a narrow window for a merged Banking-Agriculture text to be finalized, a motion to proceed to be filed, floor debate to take place, and an amendment process to conclude. After all that, the House would still need to respond to whatever the Senate produces.

Thorn noted that Senate Majority Leader John Thune would need to announce floor time by early July at the absolute latest for a July vote to remain viable. Without such an announcement, the timeline shifts to September — a period complicated by midterm election dynamics that make scheduling contentious votes politically risky.

Competing legislative priorities are crowding out available floor time. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lapsed on June 12 following Congress's failure to reauthorize it, and a Grassley-Cotton-Warner package still requires floor consideration. The FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass annual bill, also remains incomplete.

Adding further pressure, President Trump on June 24 declined to sign a widely supported bipartisan housing bill — which passed 358-32 in the House and 85-5 in the Senate — making his signature conditional on Congress first passing the SAVE Act, a proof-of-citizenship elections measure that Majority Leader Thune has acknowledged lacks sufficient votes. This move injects yet another high-stakes battle into an already congested legislative queue.

Beyond scheduling, substantive disputes remain unresolved. An ethics amendment proposed by Senator Van Hollen was rejected 11-13 in committee, yet Senators Ruben Gallego and Cory Booker continue to insist on enforceable conflict-of-interest standards as a precondition for their support. At least two Republican senators — Josh Hawley and Rand Paul — are expected to vote against the bill, making Democratic crossover votes essential rather than optional. Law enforcement-aligned senators are also pushing for changes to the developer-protection provisions within the BRCA.

Galaxy Research outlined several conditions that could push the odds back toward 60% or higher: a publicly agreed-upon combined Banking-Agriculture text, credible resolution of the ethics and BRCA disputes that secures a stable Democratic coalition, and a formal floor commitment from leadership targeting July. Continued silence past mid-July, Thorn warned, would push the odds further downward.

For now, the CLARITY Act remains parked at No. 423 on the Senate calendar — technically alive, but unscheduled, in a chamber that keeps finding more urgent business to attend to.