This Tuesday (15/09), the U.S. Senate blocked the advance of the CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Clarity Act), the industry’s main bet on a federal regulatory framework for crypto. The immediate result: the market in the red — but with very different effects between bitcoin and the assets that depend most on clear rules, such as exchanges and stablecoin issuers.
What happened
The vote was procedural (cloture / motion to proceed on H.R. 3633), not final approval of the text. Sixty votes were needed for the bill to move forward to a floor debate; the result was 49 in favor and 50 against, with one senator absent. No Democrat voted in favor. Four Republicans also voted "no": Susan Collins (Maine), Josh Hawley (Missouri), Jerry Moran (Kansas) and Thom Tillis (North Carolina) — the latter on procedural grounds, to preserve the possibility of reintroducing the bill later. The majority leader, John Thune, has already filed a motion for reconsideration: the bill remains technically alive, but stalled.
Why it stalled
The impasse centered on the ethics rules. Democrats wanted tougher safeguards against conflicts of interest related to President Trump and his family’s crypto businesses, which would have generated about $1.4 billion in crypto gains in 2025—including the exchange World Liberty Financial and the token $TRUMP. Republicans introduced a revised version on Sunday, incorporating much of the Democrats’ demands, but it wasn’t enough to unlock the votes. Senator Cynthia Lummis, the bill’s chief author, blamed the Democrats for abandoning months of negotiations; on the other side, Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said it was the Republicans who ended the talks and forced the vote. A sector executive summed up the mood in a single word, telling a journalist that the bill had died.
Market reaction
Bitcoin fell about 4%, dropping below $76,000 after trading near $79–80 thousand a few hours earlier. But those most affected were the stocks directly tied to the need for regulatory clarity: Coinbase (COIN) closed the day down about 10%, and Circle (CRCL), the issuer of USDC, fell more than 10%. Other names in the sector, such as Strategy and Robinhood, also declined.
What happens next
In practice, the issue is effectively closed for 2026. The Senate goes on recess in October and only returns after the November midterm elections; the House takes a recess even earlier. The next realistic window to restart the project should only appear with the formation of a new Congress—pushing regulatory uncertainty at least to 2027. In the meantime, the SEC and CFTC continue to regulate the sector on their own, using agency rules that are faster to implement, but also easier to reverse than a law passed by Congress.
My take
It’s important to separate two things: this was a real political setback, not a structural collapse of the sector. The market had already been pricing in this risk—days earlier, prediction markets were giving the project little chance. The most relevant data point isn’t today’s drop, but the type of regulation that remains in place instead of the law: a permanent “uncertainty premium” that weighs more on exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and DeFi protocols than on bitcoin—treated, in practice, as the “safest” asset within the crypto universe itself.
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