Result: Cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 was rejected 49–50 on Tuesday 2026-09-15 at 2:19 PM ET (18:19 UTC), per Senate Roll Call vote #234 (60 votes were required to invoke). See the 2026-09-15 timeline row below for the primary-source URL.
Next Senate action: no revote is scheduled, but Sen. Tillis's motion to reconsider (made 2026-09-15 at 3:01 PM ET, ~42 minutes after the failed cloture) preserves the option to bring the cloture motion back to the floor without filing a new motion to proceed. The bill remains at the motion-to-proceed stage on the Senate Calendar under General Orders (Cal. No. 423). This page will update when the Senate schedules the reconsideration or takes further action.
What has NOT happened: A cloture vote on the motion to proceed was taken Tuesday, Sept 15 and rejected 49–50 (Roll Call #234); a motion to reconsider was made the same day at 3:01 PM ET and remains pending. No Senate floor vote on the bill itself has been held; the bill remains at the motion-to-proceed stage; no revote is scheduled. The House passed 294–134 on 2025-07-17 and Senate Banking reported it 15–9 on 2026-05-14; every step is verifiable from primary sources in the timeline below.
Pre-vote text (2026-09-13): Senate Republicans released a revised bill text with strengthened, White-House-backed ethics language addressing prior Democratic objections — see the 2026-09-13 timeline row below for citations. Not enacted; this was the draft that went to the Sept 15 cloture vote.
The CLARITY Act (formally H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025) is the biggest piece of crypto market-structure legislation Congress has taken up. It has passed the House and is sitting in the Senate. This page explains what it actually does, what it doesn't, where it is today, and what's still being fought over — using primary sources, without taking a side.
Most coverage of crypto legislation is either cheerleading or panic. This page is neither. Legislative facts link to a bill action, roll call vote, committee record, or official statement; news reporting is cited only where developments are not yet in the official record. If you disagree with a number here, this is where you find out why.
CLARITY is a market-structure bill. That means it sets rules for how digital assets are traded, who registers as an exchange, and which federal agency oversees which token. It is not a legalization bill (crypto is already legal in the U.S.), it does not decide which specific tokens are securities, and it does not set a price for anything.
The formal name is the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, introduced as H.R. 3633 in the 119th Congress. It was drafted by the House Financial Services and House Agriculture Committees jointly — the pairing matters, because it's the same jurisdictional split the bill itself creates.
Source: Congress.gov bill page
(all dates verifiable against primary records)
| Date | Action | Where to verify |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-07-17 | House passed 294–134 (Roll Call #199) | clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025199 |
| 2025-09-18 | Received in Senate; referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs | Congress.gov actions list |
| 2026-05-14 | Senate Banking Committee ordered reported with amendment in the nature of a substitute, favorable, 15–9 | banking.senate.gov |
| 2026-06-01 | Reported by Sen. Scott (R-SC); placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders, Calendar No. 423 | Congress.gov actions list |
| 2026-07-22 | New combined draft released by Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), merging Banking and Agriculture Committee work | lummis.senate.gov |
| 2026-08-03 | Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) stated the Senate would hold an initial floor vote on H.R. 3633 before the August recess | Bloomberg Government (news report) |
| 2026-08-06 | Thune reversed course; with the ethics-provision impasse unresolved, the pre-recess vote was pulled. Thune: "We're getting that queued up first thing when we come back." | The Block 2026-08-06 (news report) |
| 2026-08-08 | Senate Majority Leader Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 (Calendar No. 423) before recess. This is a procedural first step, not passage; under the Senate floor schedule the cloture motion ripens on Tuesday, Sept 15, 2:15 PM ET (18:15 UTC). Cloture requires 60 votes to invoke. No floor vote on the bill itself has yet been held. | Congress.gov actions list; CoinDesk 2026-08-08 (news report) |
| 2026-09-13 | Senate Republicans released a revised CLARITY Act text (approximately 635 pages) on Sunday night with roughly 126 changes reflecting Democratic requests. The White House agreed to strengthened ethics language barring the President, Vice President, senior executive-branch officials, members of Congress, and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring digital assets while in office, with a divestment-or-blind-trust requirement for substantial crypto-related interests and — as reported by the Washington Post, The Hill and The Block — a provision allowing state attorneys general to sue if federal officials violate the ethics rules (the ethics one-pager published by Sen. Lummis's office assigns civil enforcement to the U.S. Attorney General; we have not located the state-AG clause in primary text). At the time of release, Republican sponsors described the revised text as a "last, best and final" offer ahead of the cloture vote. Not enacted law — this was the negotiated draft that went to the Sept 15 cloture vote. | Washington Post 2026-09-14; The Hill 2026-09-14; The Block 2026-09-14 |
| 2026-09-15 | Cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 REJECTED, 49–50, on Tuesday 2026-09-15 at 2:19 PM ET (18:19 UTC). Senate Roll Call vote #234; 3/5 majority (60 votes) was required and not reached. The bill remains at the motion-to-proceed stage on the Senate Calendar under General Orders (Cal. No. 423); no motion-to-proceed agreement, no subsequent floor vote on the bill itself. Same day, 3:01 PM ET (19:01 UTC): Sen. Tillis made a motion to reconsider H.R. 3633 (per the Senate's own daily-press record). Under Senate Rule XXII this preserves the option to bring the cloture motion back to the floor for a second vote without filing a new motion to proceed; it is a procedural hold-open, not a scheduled revote. The motion to reconsider is recorded as a Congress.gov action on the same date. |
Senate.gov Roll Call vote #234 (primary source); Senate Daily Press, Tue 2026-09-15 3:01 PM entry (primary source for the motion to reconsider); Congress.gov actions list for H.R. 3633 |
| 2026-09-17 | SEC issued an "Innovation Exemption" for Tokenized NMS Stock (Release 2026-90; SEC Release No. 34-106402, File No. 4-927) — a time-limited exemption from the Exchange Act "exchange" and "dealer" definitions for the use of certain distributed-ledger trading venues to trade tokenized NMS stocks. Chain-agnostic — the release does not name a specific blockchain; venues choose. This is an SEC exemptive order alongside a request for comment, not statute; unrelated to H.R. 3633's status. | SEC 2026-90 press release (primary source); SEC Release No. 34-106402 (PDF, primary source) |
| 2026-09-27 | News analysis, not a primary source: CoinDesk's post-mortem reports that the bill saw bipartisan opposition at the Sept 15 procedural vote and describes its future as "in limbo." | CoinDesk 2026-09-27 (analysis) |
| 2026-09-25 | Context, not bill status: SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce announced her resignation, effective 2026-10-02 (letter dated Sept 21, posted Sept 25). Agency-side change; H.R. 3633 status unchanged. | CoinDesk 2026-09-25 (news report) |
Every crypto bill for the last five years has been arguing about the same thing: which federal agency regulates which digital asset. CLARITY is Congress's answer.
The current situation (no CLARITY): The SEC has claimed most tokens are unregistered securities. The CFTC has claimed the biggest ones (Bitcoin, Ether) are commodities. Neither has a formal statutory line, so enforcement has run through court cases, one company at a time.
Under CLARITY: the bill creates a new statutory category — "digital commodity" — that would move qualifying tokens into CFTC jurisdiction. Tokens that don't qualify would stay with the SEC as securities or fall into a narrower "ancillary asset" category the Senate Banking draft addresses separately.
The rough test (as reported): a digital asset is a "digital commodity" when it is intrinsically linked to a blockchain system and its value comes from the use of that blockchain — not from a claim on the issuer's revenue, profits, assets, or debts.
What this changes in practice (if the bill passes as-drafted):
What this does NOT decide: which specific existing tokens are commodities and which are securities. That determination happens after enactment, through the joint SEC-CFTC rulemaking process.
(the most useful section on this page)
The provisions below describe the Senate discussion draft released July 22; none are enacted law. Each position below is stated as its own advocates state it. No editorial "sides."
The July 22 combined draft includes a ban on the President, Vice President, senior executive-branch officials, and members of Congress from issuing or sponsoring digital assets. The Department of Justice enforces it, with civil penalties up to $250,000 per day per violation (CNBC 2026-07-22).
"This is another step in my years-long journey to ensure the U.S. leads the way on digital assets… likely the last real chance we will have for years to get this right."
"This DOJ enforcing an ethics provision? That's an unserious offer, and I wouldn't support the bill if that's the language."
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has said the bill cannot move without an acceptable ethics provision.
The specific point of contention: Democrats argue state attorneys general should also have enforcement authority, not only DOJ. The July 22 combined draft, as reported, preempts most state enforcement of these provisions (CNBC 2026-07-22; not verified against bill text).
The ethics section is reported to sunset on 2029-01-20, which some Democrats characterize as inadequate and some Republicans characterize as a reasonable review point (CoinDesk 2026-07-22; date corroborated by Decrypt, The Block, and coindoo 2026-07-22).
The combined draft includes provisions from the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA). These clarify that non-custodial developers, node operators, and validators — parties that never take control of user funds — are not "money transmitters" and therefore not subject to that regulatory regime.
Position for: developers argue the current legal ambiguity has driven talent offshore.
Position against: some Democratic senators and consumer advocates argue the language is broader than needed and could shield actors who effectively control user funds through code.
Consumer Reports opposed the House-passed bill, per Programs Director Chuck Bell:
"This bill prioritizes regulatory certainty for the crypto industry at the expense of consumer protection."
Their specific list of missing protections (Consumer Reports advocacy statement):
Position for the bill: industry and Republican sponsors argue federal preemption is necessary to avoid a 50-state regulatory patchwork.
Position against: Democrats and consumer advocates argue the preemption strips protections that don't exist at the federal level.
Related to (5a) and (5c). The bill broadly preempts state laws regulating the offer or sale of digital assets for federally registered firms, with a carve-out for general antifraud statutes. Democrats argue state AGs should retain enforcement authority; the July 22 combined draft, as reported, largely centralizes enforcement federally (news reporting; not verified against bill text).
The Senate began its August recess on 2026-08-10 and was scheduled to return on 2026-09-14 (2026 Senate calendar, published November 2025). The Senate was in session on 2026-09-14 and took the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 on 2026-09-15 — rejected 49–50, Roll Call #234 (Senate Daily Press 2026-09-14; Roll Call #234).
As of 2026-09-30: cloture on the motion to proceed failed on 2026-09-15; Sen. Tillis's motion to reconsider, made the same day at 3:01 PM ET, remains pending; no further Senate roll-call vote on H.R. 3633 has been recorded (roll calls through #252, 2026-09-29; Senate roll-call list). We have no floor-schedule source either way on a revote. The November 2026 midterm election compresses whatever floor time follows.
None of that is a prediction. It's arithmetic against a published calendar.
Whatever Washington decides, the XRP Ledger keeps producing blocks every three-to-four seconds. If you want to check that yourself:
Congress moves at its own pace. The ledger doesn't wait, and neither does this site's evidence trail.