US senators move to advance CLARITY Act

TLDR

US senators are pushing the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY) into a key committee markup, reviving a long stalled effort to create a clear federal crypto rulebook in the US.

1. The Senate Banking Committee has scheduled a May 14 markup on CLARITY, the first real Senate step after earlier House and Agriculture Committee approvals.
2. The bill would split SEC/CFTC oversight and impose strict limits on stablecoin yields, drawing heavy lobbying from both banks and crypto firms.
3. The outcome of this markup will shape whether CLARITY can pass before elections or slip into years of further uncertainty.

Deep Dive

1. What Senators Just Did

The Senate Banking Committee will hold an executive session and markup on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 on 14 May at 10:30 a.m. in Washington, D.C., a move confirmed by multiple reports from Capitol Hill and industry media. The markup allows senators to debate, amend and vote the bill out of committee toward the full Senate, after it already passed the House in 2025 and the Senate Agriculture Committee in early 2026.

Commentators describe this as the critical first gate for comprehensive US crypto market structure reform, since the bill has repeatedly stalled in Banking until now. Industry groups have widely welcomed the scheduled vote as a significant step toward regulatory certainty for exchanges and token issuers.

2. What CLARITY Would Change

Substantively, CLARITY aims to define when a crypto asset is treated as a security versus a commodity and to formally divide oversight between the SEC and CFTC, giving digital asset firms clearer primary regulators and rules for listing, trading and disclosures. Analyses of the draft text highlight that tokens functioning like investment contracts would stay under the SEC, while more decentralized or non security assets would fall to the CFTC.

A central fight is over stablecoin yields. A compromise backed by senators Thom Tillis and Angela Alsobrooks would ban yield on idle, deposit like stablecoin balances but still allow rewards tied to active use such as payments or liquidity provision. Major banking trade groups argue this still resembles deposit interest and could pull funding out of insured banks, while crypto firms say banks are trying to shut down competition and that the compromise already goes far. Ethics provisions on officials holding crypto while regulating the sector are another open issue.

3. Timelines, Risks, Next Steps

Even with the markup scheduled, passage is not guaranteed. The bill still needs to clear Banking, be merged with Agricultures version, win 60 votes on the Senate floor, be reconciled with the House text and then be signed by the president. The White House has floated a July 4 target for a signing, but several sources warn that the legislative window around the August recess and election season is tight, and failure this year could mean no comprehensive framework until near 2030.

Polling shows majority voter support for getting crypto rules in place, and prediction markets currently assign a moderate chance of CLARITY becoming law in 2026. At the same time, coordinated banking opposition, Democratic concerns on anti money laundering and ethics, and the complexity of SEC/CFTC boundaries all remain real risk factors.

Conclusion

Senators advancing the CLARITY Act into a May 14 markup signals the strongest momentum yet for a unified US crypto market structure law, centered on clearer token classification and constrained stablecoin yields. Whether that momentum survives bank lobbying, intra party disputes and a tight election year calendar will dictate if US based crypto activity gains durable regulatory clarity soon or faces another multi year delay.