Bitcoin Magazine
Senate Schedules CLARITY Act Markup as Banking Lobby, Democrats Mount Resistance
The Senate Banking Committee has set May 14 as the date for its long-delayed markup of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the most consequential piece of cryptocurrency legislation ever to reach this stage in Congress, as a last-minute lobbying blitz from major banks and a Democratic ethics standoff threaten to derail the bill before it clears committee.
The executive session is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at Room 538 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., where committee members will debate amendments and vote on whether to advance the legislation to the full Senate floor. Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) confirmed the date last week, and live video feed of the proceedings will be available to the public.
The CLARITY Act — formally H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 — passed the House of Representatives on July 17, 2025, by a 294–134 bipartisan vote, with all 216 Republicans in support and 78 Democrats crossing the aisle. Since then, the bill has stalled in the Senate through two cancelled markup sessions, extended negotiations over stablecoin regulation, and an intensifying lobbying fight between the crypto industry and the traditional banking sector.
At its core, the legislation would draw a regulatory boundary between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, settling years of jurisdictional litigation over whether digital assets are securities or commodities.
Under the bill, the CFTC would receive exclusive jurisdiction over spot and cash markets for “digital commodities” — tokens intrinsically linked to a functioning, decentralized blockchain — while the SEC retains authority over investment contract assets and primary market fundraising. Stablecoins are carved out as a separate category under shared oversight.
Crypto jurisdiction fight reaches the U.S. Senate
The Senate version of the bill expanded well beyond the House text, growing to nine titles covering decentralized finance protections, illicit finance provisions, bankruptcy safeguards for crypto customers, and the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which provides safe harbors for software developers.
The May 14 session marks the Senate’s first formal committee vote on CLARITY after months of procedural slippage. Committee Chairman Scott had originally targeted September 2025 for a Senate floor vote, then moved the goalposts to the end of 2025, and most recently told Fox Business he hoped to bring the bill to the Senate floor by June or July 2026.
The calendar pressure is severe: if the bill does not clear the Senate Banking Committee before the May 21 Memorial Day recess, the entire process resets — and Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) have both warned that failure before Memorial Day could push the next viable legislative window to
