Senate Republicans on Thursday released a revised, 630-page draft of the Clarity Act, the long-debated bill meant to give the United States a federal rulebook for digital assets, just days before a scheduled procedural vote on September 15, 2026. The update tightens language around decentralized finance platforms that are, in practice, run by identifiable people rather than code, requiring those “decentralized-in-name-only” protocols to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The stakes are high. As this site reported earlier this week, the September 15 vote is widely seen as a make-or-break moment for market-structure legislation that has stalled in Congress for years. If it fails, crypto firms operating in the US will remain in the same legal gray zone that has defined the industry since the SEC and CFTC began fighting over jurisdiction nearly a decade ago.
Why market structure has become the industry’s top priority
The Clarity Act is designed to answer a question that has dogged regulators, courts and crypto companies alike: which federal agency actually oversees which digital assets? Today, the SEC and CFTC each claim jurisdiction over overlapping parts of the market, and enforcement actions have often substituted for clear rules. A bill that draws firm jurisdictional lines would, in theory, let exchanges, token issuers and DeFi projects know in advance which regulator they answer to and what obligations they carry.
That clarity matters beyond Washington. Backers argue the bill would legalize most crypto activity currently operating in legal ambiguity and reopen the door to token-sale fundraising for startups, a route that has been largely dormant in the US since the SEC’s aggressive enforcement posture in the early 2020s. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has personally pushed the Senate to revive the effort, according to separate reporting on his lobbying, underscoring that this is not purely a industry-driven push but one with backing at the top levels of the administration.
What changed — and what didn’t
The revised draft reflects more than 100 changes made in response to requests from Senate Democrats, according to the facts disclosed alongside the bill’s release. Yet despite that volume of concessions, Politico reports that no Democrats currently support the revised text — a gap that raises real questions about whether the changes address the substance of Democratic objections or merely their number.
Three elements of the redraft stand out:
- DeFi protocols that are decentralized in name only — meaning they are actually controlled by identifiable individuals or groups — would now have to register with the CFTC, closing what regulators and some Democrats viewed as an obvious loophole.
- DeFi-specific provisions in the bill are now limited to spot and cash transactions, narrowing the scope of activity that gets more permissive treatment under the decentralized-finance carve-outs.
- Ethics restrictions on public officials remain largely intact, continuing language from the July draft that bars officials, government employees and their spouses from issuing or promoting digital assets — a provision Democrats have pushed to toughen given ongoing scrutiny of President Trump’s crypto business interests.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), one of the bill’s chief Republican champions, has also floated $150 million in proposed funding for the CFTC, a figure meant to address longstanding complaints that the agency lacks the staff and resources to police a market as large and fast-moving as digital assets. Whether that funding survives in any final version, or gets bundled into separate appropriations, remains an open question.
What comes next
The immediate marker to watch is the September 15 procedural vote itself. A procedural vote is not final passage — it determines whether the bill can move forward for debate and amendment — but a failure to advance would effectively stall the legislation again, this time with an election cycle looming that could make future negotiations even harder.
Beyond the vote count, several fights are still live. Community bankers and industry group Stand With Crypto have been lobbying hard over stablecoin yield terms, a dispute that pits crypto firms wanting to offer interest-like returns on stablecoins against banks worried about deposit flight. Stand With Crypto reported nearly 50,000 contacts to members of Congress in August alone, a sign of how much grassroots pressure is being applied on both sides of the aisle. That fight over stablecoin economics runs alongside a broader institutional buildout already underway — asset managers such as BlackRock have rolled out tokenized cash products designed to back stablecoin reserves, and payment firms like MoneyGram have begun issuing stablecoin-linked payment cards in international markets, moves that only heighten the urgency for Congress to settle the underlying rules.
Readers should also watch whether Senate Democrats’ near-unanimous non-support hardens into a party-line vote or softens as the bill moves closer to the floor. The ethics provisions concerning public officials’ crypto holdings, and the treatment of DeFi protocols that blur the line between decentralized code and centralized control, are likely to remain the two most contentious fronts in any further negotiation.
Source: Decrypt
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
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