The Senate Banking Committee has set May 14 as the long-delayed date for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the most important piece of cryptocurrency legislation ever to reach Congress, as a last-minute push for big banks and Democratic dissent threatens to derail the bill before it clears the committee.
The executive session is to be prepared to 10:30 am in Room 538 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, where committee members will discuss amendments and vote on whether to advance the legislation to the full Senate. Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) confirmed the date last week, and video footage of the proceedings will be made available to the public.
The CLARITY Act – HR 3633, Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 – it has passed House of Representatives on July 17, 2025, with a bipartisan vote of 294-134, with all 216 Republicans in favor and 78 Democrats across the aisle. Since then, the bill has stalled in the Senate until two to be terminated markup parameters, distanced conversations on stablecoin regulations, and the increasing lobbying battle between crypto companies and traditional banks.
At its core, the bill will establish boundaries between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, ending years of litigation over whether digital assets are securities or commodities.
Under the billThe CFTC will have sole jurisdiction over the property and financial markets for “digital assets” – tokens intrinsically linked to the work, decentralized blockchain – while the SEC retains jurisdiction over the assets of mutual funds and capital markets. Stablecoins are created as a separate entity under shared management.
Crypto governance fight reaches the US Senate
The Senate version of the bill was much larger than the House version, growth to nine positions on financial security, non-financial regulations, bankruptcy protection for crypto customers, and the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which provides safe harbors for software developers.
The May 14 session will be the Senate committee’s first vote on CLARITY after months of transition. Committee Chairman Scott initially targeted September 2025 for a Senate vote, then moved the goal to late 2025, and sooner. he said Fox Business hopes to bring the bill to the Senate by June or July 2026.
The pressure on the calendar is dire: if the bill does not clear the Senate Banking Committee before Memorial Day on May 21, the whole process starts again – with Senators Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) all have warned that failure before Memorial Day could push the next legislative window to 2030 or beyond.
The White House has set July 4 as its target for the President’s signature.
Democrats are threatening to repeal the CLARITY Act as veterans step in
The bill carries heavy support from within the Trump administration. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins publicly he encouraged Congress on April 9 moved CLARITY to President Trump’s desk, saying that both the SEC and the CFTC are ready to implement the law once it is signed. Atkins has referred to a project he calls “Project Crypto” as an internal organizational planning project.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent printed op-ed in the Wall Street Journal framing the CLARITY Act as a matter of national security, warning that without US legal certainty, blockchain developers and crypto companies continue to move to Singapore and Abu Dhabi. White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt has described the stability of stablecoin yields as closed.
Senator Lummis, who is the chairman of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Digital Assets, wrote one word on X when the Senate returned from the Easter break – “Clarity.” Speaking at a Bitcoin conference at the end of April, he said directly: “We will introduce the CLARITY Act in May. We will reach the end. We will have a market that allows us to innovate.”
Meanwhile, the Democrats are threatening stop it support unless the bill includes ethical standards targeting cryptocurrencies and government officials, which Republicans argue could undermine the law.
