Standing tracker. Checked against the congressional record on 19 August 2026. The bill is H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. It has passed the House and is on the Senate calendar. It is not law, and nothing below assumes it will be.
Where it stands right now
| Status | Passed House. Reported out of Senate Banking. Awaiting a cloture vote on the motion to proceed. |
| Next scheduled event | Tuesday 15 September 2026, 2:15 p.m. ET — cloture vote on the motion to proceed. |
| What that vote decides | Whether the Senate takes the bill up at all. It is not passage. |
| Threshold | 60 votes. |
| Has a deal been announced? | No. As of 19 August 2026 the disputes that kept the bill off the floor before the recess are unresolved in public. |
The legislative record
Every date here comes from the bill’s own page on congress.gov. That matters more than usual on this bill: secondary accounts have placed the Senate Banking Committee vote in January, in May and in June 2026, and they cannot all be right. The record shows the committee met on 14 May 2026 and the bill was reported to the Senate on 1 June 2026.
| Date | Action |
|---|---|
| 29 May 2025 | Introduced in the House by Rep. French Hill (R-AR-2). Referred to Financial Services and to Agriculture. |
| 17 July 2025 | Passed the House, 294–134 (Roll no. 199). |
| 18 September 2025 | Received in the Senate, read twice, referred to Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. |
| 14 May 2026 | Senate Banking Committee meeting on the bill. |
| 1 June 2026 | Reported by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) with an amendment in the nature of a substitute — the entire House text struck and replaced. Reported without written report. |
| 6 August 2026 | Senate leadership confirms there will be no floor vote before the August recess. |
| 8 August 2026 | Majority Leader John Thune files cloture on the motion to proceed, logged by the Senate Press Gallery at 4:52 a.m. ET at the end of an overnight session. |
| 14 September 2026 | Senate reconvenes for legislative business. |
| 15 September 2026 | Cloture motion ripens at 2:15 p.m. ET. |
The substitute matters and is routinely skipped in coverage. The text the Senate would take up is not the text the House passed 294–134 in July 2025. Any Senate-passed version would have to go back to the House.
The arithmetic
Cloture needs 60. Republicans hold 53 seats. Senator Josh Hawley has said publicly he will not support the bill until it addresses deposit flight, and Senator Rand Paul is also counted against it, which puts the Republican column at 51 and the Democratic votes needed at eight or nine. Two Democrats voted for the bill in committee, on a 15–9 report. The gap between two and eight is the whole negotiation, and it has not visibly closed.
One qualification that cuts the other way: a cloture vote on the motion to proceed is a lower-cost vote than passage. A senator can vote to begin debate without committing to the bill. That is why a successful cloture vote would not settle much, and why a failed one would settle almost everything.
What is actually being argued about
| Dispute | Who is pushing, and what they want |
|---|---|
| Ethics provisions | Senate Democrats want language restricting officials and their families from issuing or profiting from digital assets in office. Reporting in August described a bipartisan addendum under discussion that would require the President to divest from certain crypto businesses. Nothing has been introduced publicly. |
| Stablecoin rewards | Banking industry groups want the bill’s crypto rewards provisions tightened, citing deposit flight. Exchanges that pay rewards on stablecoin balances are on the other side; this is a revenue question for them, not a drafting one. |
| DeFi and developer protection | How protocol developers and non-custodial software are classified. The industry treats broad developer liability as a red line. |
| The Agriculture title | How the Senate Agriculture Committee’s text — the commodities half of the jurisdiction split — is folded into the Banking substitute. A procedural question with substantive consequences for CFTC authority. |
| Illicit finance | Raised by Senate Democrats alongside the ethics language. |
The calendar, which is the real constraint
The Senate returns on 14 September. Under the chamber’s 2026 calendar it is out of session for nearly all of October and the first week of November, with midterm elections on 3 November. That leaves roughly 14 scheduled session days before the pre-election break and about 36 before the end of the year.
For scale: the GENIUS Act, a narrower stablecoin bill, consumed 11 days of floor time. The CLARITY Act substitute is a 309-page market-structure bill with at least four contested provisions. Even supporters describe the window as tight; Galaxy Digital’s 14 August note named the calendar, rather than the politics, as its main reason for cutting the odds.
What the odds are being quoted at
| Source | Probability | Of what, exactly |
|---|---|---|
| Polymarket | ~20% | Becomes law by 31 December 2026. Volume above 7.2m dollars. |
| Kalshi | ~23% (18 Aug) | Down from roughly 50% a month earlier. |
| Galaxy Digital | 10% (14 Aug) | Firm estimate, calendar-driven. |
| Solana Policy Institute CEO | 10% (18 Aug) | Becomes law before the November midterms — a shorter window than the market contracts, which is part of why the number is lower. |
These are not the same question and should not be averaged. A personal estimate covering a window that ends on 3 November is structurally lower than a contract that runs to 31 December, because the latter includes a possible post-election session. Prediction market prices are also thin enough to move on single trades.
The useful signal is not the level but the direction in the days before 15 September. A sharp move up would mean a deal exists before it is announced. Flat pricing into the vote would mean the vote is theatre.
What happens if cloture fails
Nothing procedurally fatal — leadership can file again — but practically, a failed cloture vote on 15 September removes most of the remaining 2026 path, because the days it would consume are the days the bill does not have. Attention then moves to the agencies, which have already said they are not waiting.
- The SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets on 18 August 2026, including two exemptions for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets — offerings up to 5 million dollars over four years, and up to 75 million dollars in any 12-month period. These are proposals, not final rules.
- CFTC Chairman Michael Selig has said the agency has digital-asset rule proposals prepared and will proceed whether or not CLARITY is enacted, with the aim of finalising them before the end of the current administration.
- SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said in July that the agency was ready to issue rules if Congress did not act.
Agency rulemaking is not a substitute for the statute. It cannot allocate jurisdiction between two agencies the way legislation can, it is reversible by a later commission, and it is exposed to court review. But it is what exists if the bill does not pass.
Questions we get asked
Is the Senate voting on the CLARITY Act today?
No. The only scheduled vote is the cloture motion on the motion to proceed, which ripens at 2:15 p.m. ET on 15 September 2026. The Senate is in recess until 14 September. If that changes we update this page, and the date at the top tells you when we last checked.
What is the CLARITY Act status?
Passed the House on 17 July 2025 by 294–134. Reported out of Senate Banking on 1 June 2026 with a substitute amendment. Awaiting a cloture vote on the motion to proceed. It is not law.
Why was the CLARITY Act postponed?
The Senate did not have the votes before the August recess and had competing floor business — a continuing resolution, a sanctions bill and a block of nominations, all of which had time agreements while CLARITY did not. Underneath that, five disputes remained open: ethics provisions, stablecoin rewards, DeFi and developer classification, the Agriculture title, and illicit finance.
How many votes does the CLARITY Act need?
Sixty to invoke cloture. Republicans hold 53 seats and at least two Republican senators are counted against, so roughly eight Democrats would need to cross. Two did so at committee stage.
Does the cloture vote mean the bill passes?
No. Cloture on a motion to proceed only ends debate on whether to take the bill up. Passage would still require floor debate, amendments and a final vote — and because the Senate text is a substitute, any Senate-passed version would go back to the House.
What does the CLARITY Act do?
It sets out a federal market-structure regime for digital assets: when an asset is treated as a security and when as a digital commodity, how oversight is divided between the SEC and the CFTC, and registration pathways for exchanges, brokers and custodians. The House-passed text also amends the Federal Reserve Act to bar Federal Reserve banks from offering certain products directly to individuals and to prohibit the use of a central bank digital currency for monetary policy.
If it fails, does crypto stay unregulated in the US?
No. It means the rules come from agency rulemaking rather than statute — the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets and the CFTC’s prepared proposals. That is a weaker and more reversible settlement than legislation, not an absence of one.
What we have reported
This page is the standing record. The reporting that sits behind it:
- Ripple’s Alderoty Calls Sept. 15 a Bellwether Date for Clarity Act’s Senate Fate
- Galaxy Cuts Odds of CLARITY Act Passage to 10%
- Solana Policy Institute CEO Puts Clarity Act’s Pre-Midterm Odds at Just 10%
- SEC Unveils Crypto Rulebook Proposal as Clarity Act Stalls in Congress
- Trump-Era SEC and CFTC to Draft Crypto Rules as CLARITY Act Stalls in Senate
- Reports Disagree on Who Leads Senate in CLARITY Act Vote
- CLARITY Act Digital Asset Rules Gain Push from Trump for Congressional Passage
Continuing coverage sits in Regulation, and agency reporting under SEC and CFTC.
Sources
- H.R.3633, 119th Congress — sponsor, committee referrals, roll call, reporting action, bill text.
- Senate Press Gallery floor log, 8 August 2026 — the cloture filing and its timestamp.
- Paul Hastings Crypto Policy Tracker — the 15 September scheduling agreement and the list of open issues.
- CoinDesk, 6 August 2026 — confirmation that no pre-recess vote would occur, and the competing floor business.
- Cointelegraph, 8 and 11 August 2026 — the cloture filing and the session-day count.
- crypto.news, 18 and 19 August 2026 — the prediction-market and analyst estimates, and the SEC proposal.
How this page is maintained
This one moves. We re-check it against congress.gov and the Senate floor schedule whenever the bill takes an action, and at minimum weekly while it is live. The date at the top is the last time a person read this against the record. If it is stale, treat it as stale — that is what the date is for.