The Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act on Thursday, moving a major Bitcoin and crypto market bill to the full Senate after 10 months of delay and a vote that split largely along party lines. Arizona Democrat Ruben Gallego was the lone Democrat to join Republicans in support.
The bill would shift most crypto tokens into the digital commodities category under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, while a smaller group of tokens treated as securities would remain under the Securities and Exchange Commission. It would also require crypto exchanges to follow the same anti-money laundering rules that banks do, a core demand from lawmakers who say the market cannot keep growing without tougher guardrails.
The committee action comes after the House of Representatives passed its own version of the bill in July 2025, only for the measure to sit untouched in the Senate for nearly a year. The industry had made the CLARITY Act its top legislative priority after months of negotiations and gridlock, hoping to settle the turf war between the SEC and the CFTC over who should police crypto.
That push nearly fell apart in January, when Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong pulled the industry's support over the bill's language on stablecoins. By Thursday, the version approved by the committee had changed enough to regain momentum. It bars crypto companies from paying interest to customers simply for holding stablecoins, but allows rewards tied to actual activity, such as making payments or using the platform.
Armstrong called the bill "strong" and said it "will benefit the American people by making the US financial system faster, cheaper and more accessible." His endorsement matters because support from the industry had been fractured, and the Senate cannot send the measure to the president without clearing a much harder hurdle on the floor.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said she and other Democrats will not back a final bill unless it includes a conflict-of-interest provision that would bar government officials, including the Trump family, from profiting off the crypto industry. White House officials have already said they will not accept legislation that targets the president, putting that demand on a collision course with the support Democrats say they need.
A full Senate vote will require at least 60 votes, which means Republicans would need help from at least seven Democrats if all of their members stay together. The committee's 9% to 8% style split in the public debate is not the real test; the real test is whether the Senate can turn a hard-won committee compromise into floor votes without reopening the fight over who gets protected and who gets regulated.
The question now is whether the compromise that unlocked Thursday's markup can survive the broader politics of the Senate, where stablecoins, conflict-of-interest language and the president's name are all tied together in a bill that was supposed to be about regulation, not power.
