Senate Republicans Release a 630-Page Clarity Act Rewrite Days Before a Do-or-Die Vote

Senate Republicans released a revised, 630-page version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on September 10, 2026, setting up a make-or-break procedural vote on September 15 that will decide whether the most ambitious crypto market-structure bill in U.S. history advances, or stalls for the year.

Related reading: CLARITY Act Fails Senate Cloture Vote 49-50, Leaving Crypto Rules to Regulators · SEC Opens the Door to Tokenized Stocks With a Five-Year Exemption.

The new text was circulated by Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who chairs the Senate Banking Committee's digital assets subcommittee and has driven the bill for more than a year. It is a substitute amendment to H.R. 3633, the market-structure bill the House passed with bipartisan support in 2025, and it reflects the merged work of the Banking and Agriculture committees. The Senate is scheduled to hold a cloture vote on it at 2:15 p.m. ET on September 15, the day after lawmakers return from their August recess.

The revision is narrower than a wholesale rewrite, but it answers one of the loudest criticisms of the bill: that trading venues could escape federal supervision by dressing themselves up as decentralized.

What the new text changes

The headline addition targets what the draft calls "decentralized-in-name-only" trading protocols, platforms where an individual or a group can control or materially alter how a supposedly decentralized system operates. Under the new language, those protocols would have to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with the CFTC and the Treasury Department directed to write detailed implementing rules. The text also attaches Bank Secrecy Act obligations, the anti-money-laundering requirements that banks and money transmitters already face.

Two other changes fill out the revision:

• A narrower DeFi title. The bill's decentralized-finance provisions now apply only to spot and cash digital-commodity transactions. Lummis said the limit was meant to address tribal governments' objections to how the earlier text might reach prediction markets.
• Credit-union clarity. The draft spells out how credit unions may engage in crypto-related activity without running afoul of federal rules, a response to concerns from a sector that has watched banks wade into digital assets.

The core architecture is unchanged. The CLARITY Act would sort digital assets into categories and divide oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC, with mature, sufficiently decentralized networks treated as digital commodities under the CFTC and assets whose insiders retain control treated as securities under the SEC. It would also create a registration regime for exchanges, brokers and dealers, and (its supporters argue) clear the way for token-sale fundraising that has largely been frozen by enforcement-driven uncertainty in the United States.

Lummis called the result a "strong bipartisan product" and argued that "unlike rulemaking, legislation gives this industry a lasting solution that shields it from the whiplash of changes in the White House," in a statement reported by CoinDesk.

"We have incorporated more than 114 separate provisions at my Democrat colleagues' request, and as a result, this bill is a strong bipartisan product."

Why September 15 matters

The September 15 vote is a cloture motion, a procedural step that ends debate and allows the Senate to take up a bill. It needs 60 votes to succeed. Republicans hold 53 seats, so the bill's backers need at least seven Democrats or independents to cross over. The Senate Banking Committee advanced an earlier version 15-9 in May, with all 13 Republicans joined by two Democrats, Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland.

That math is why the revised text's reception has been so closely watched. Decrypt reported that Politico found no Senate Democrats currently support the new draft. The Defiant noted that the seven Democrats who spent a year negotiating the bill have not withdrawn the statement of opposition they issued in July. The revised text, in other words, may have answered Democratic technical requests without resolving the political dispute at the center of the fight.

How the bill got here

The CLARITY Act has had an unusually long run for a crypto bill. It cleared the House by an overwhelming 294-134 margin (a vote count that would be striking for any financial-regulation bill, let alone one touching digital assets) after the GENIUS Act, the narrower stablecoin law, was signed in July 2025. An updated Senate text drawn from the Banking and Agriculture committees landed in July 2026, and Majority Leader John Thune filed the cloture motion on August 8, the last day before recess, specifically to lock in the September 15 date. The timing was deliberate: forcing a vote as soon as senators return limits the window for opponents to organize amendments or procedural delays.

That history is why the September 15 vote has taken on such weight. No previous crypto market-structure bill has cleared the House and a Senate committee. But the same year-long negotiation has also hardened positions, and the revised text is the first attempt to convert those 114 Democratic requests into actual floor support.

Three fights that still block the bill

The obstacles are not about market structure, the part of the bill that assigns assets to the SEC or the CFTC is broadly agreed. They are about politics and money.

Ethics. Democrats want an enforceable ban on senior government officials, including the president, issuing or profiting from digital assets. The revised draft keeps ethics language that bars public officials, employees and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring digital assets, with enforcement resting with the Justice Department (not state attorneys general) and the provision expiring in January 2029. That is largely unchanged from the July text, and it remains a flashpoint because of President Donald Trump's crypto holdings. crypto.news reports that Democrats have demanded a broader firewall, and Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, has said the White House still needs to engage on a bipartisan ethics proposal.

DeFi developer liability. Section 604 of the bill would exempt non-custodial software developers who publish open-source code and never take custody of user funds from money-transmitter registration and parts of the Bank Secrecy Act. Critics call that a money-laundering loophole; supporters, including a Blockchain Association letter co-signed by 160 former national security and law enforcement officials, call it narrowly tailored and necessary to keep DeFi development in the United States. The new "decentralized-in-name-only" language is an attempt to tighten that line.

Stablecoin yield. The bill bans stablecoin yield that functions like a bank deposit's interest while permitting rewards tied to transactions, payments and liquidity provision. That distinction is worth roughly $1.35 billion a year in USDC rewards revenue to Coinbase, and traditional banks want the ban extended to exchanges and affiliates. The American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America and 77 state banking associations sent lawmakers a letter on September 10 pressing for tighter stablecoin-rewards restrictions.

The odds are grim, and they measure something bigger

The prediction markets have been telling a stark story for months. Polymarket's contract on the bill becoming law in 2026 fell from 82 percent in February to 16 percent as of September 6, with more than $14 million traded, according to crypto.news. Galaxy Research put the probability at about 10 percent. By Friday, September 11, The Defiant reported Polymarket at 18 percent on roughly $15.1 million of cumulative volume.

Those numbers can mislead if read as a forecast of the September 15 vote. They price the full path to enactment, including a House-Senate conference and a presidential signature. A bill can clear cloture and still die later; it can also fail cloture and never return. The gap between "advances" and "becomes law" is where most of the risk sits.

The stakes are not only about which regulator oversees which token. If the CLARITY Act fails, crypto regulation in the United States reverts to agency rulemaking (an SEC offering framework, CFTC commodity rules, and stablecoin regulations under the GENIUS Act signed in 2025) that a future administration can revise or revoke. Supporters argue that legislation is the only way to end the regulatory whiplash that has pushed builders offshore. Opponents argue that the bill, in its current form, protects industry and the president's own holdings more than investors.

Some prominent voices are still optimistic. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong told CNBC he expects the bill to clear the September 15 vote. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt have both urged senators to vote yes simply to keep the process alive. "I strongly urge everyone to remain at the negotiating table, agree to the motion to proceed, and continue the legislative process," Bessent wrote, warning that failing would signal America is "unwilling to lead on the future of digital assets."

Caveats and what to watch

Several things could still go wrong, and the revised text settles less than it appears to.

• No Democratic sign-on. Passing a 630-page bill on a procedural vote without a single public Democratic backer would be unusual. Two committee-stage supporters are not a floor coalition.
• The calendar. The Senate has only a few working weeks before midterm campaigning consumes the floor. A miss on September 15 likely pushes comprehensive market-structure legislation to 2027 or later.
• Amendments. Even if cloture succeeds, the ethics language, Section 604 and stablecoin yield will all be subject to floor amendments, each a potential kill shot.
• Rulemaking risk. The new CFTC and Treasury directives delegate a lot to agencies. The bill's effect on "decentralized-in-name-only" protocols depends on rules that do not yet exist.

What to watch next is straightforward. First, the September 15 cloture vote itself: a narrow miss in the high 50s would signal a bill that could return with modest changes, while a wide miss would signal deeper opposition. Second, whether any Democrat signals movement between now and then, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a longtime negotiator, is the name most often cited as a possible crossover. Third, the vote lands during the Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting and a week of inflation data, adding a layer of market volatility to an already crowded crypto calendar.

For an industry that has spent years waiting for a federal rulebook, the revised draft is both progress and a reminder of how far the bill still has to travel. A 630-page text and 114 Democratic provisions have not yet produced a single Democratic vote. On September 15, the Senate will decide whether to keep negotiating or to let the CLARITY Act wait for another Congress.

Cover: Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). Official U.S. Senate portrait by the U.S. Senate Photographic Studio, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.