Prediction market traders are now betting the CLARITY Act won't become law until next year. John Thune, Senate Majority Leader, skipped filing cloture on the crypto market structure bill Tuesday night, then filed it Wednesday morning on unrelated measures instead. The signal was clear enough. Money fled 2026 odds fast.
On Kalshi, the contract for a crypto market structure bill passing before January 1, 2027 dropped to 22 cents from 30 cents. The Polymarket "Clarity Act signed into law in 2026?" bet fell harder, hitting 15.5 cents, down 8.5 points in a single day and 32.5 points over the past month. That market has seen $4.76 million in total volume, with nearly $900,000 trading in the previous 24 hours alone.
What's telling is where traders moved the money. They didn't abandon the trade. Instead they pushed bets forward. The before-September 2026 contract cratered to 2 cents from 4 cents, but the before-October 2027 contract climbed to 58 cents from 55 cents. The before-January 2028 contract rose to 65 cents from 64 cents. The gap between 2027 and 2028 strikes suggests traders now see roughly 43 cents of probability the bill passes sometime next year, nearly double the 22 cents they assign to getting it done before year-end.
Thune told reporters he still wants a procedural vote on the bill, just not this week. "We're sequencing it but there are some things still out there that we want to do," he said. He plans to gauge cooperation and interest over the next day or two. Journalist Eleanor Terrett noted that Wednesday's cloture filing on a college sports bill instead signals there remains no bipartisan agreement on CLARITY. Procedural issues tied to the ongoing continuing resolution factored in Tuesday's non-filing, she added, along with a lack of votes and unresolved major issues.
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