Senate blocks sweeping crypto regulation bill
The Senate on September 15, 2026, blocked a sweeping bill that would create the first comprehensive federal framework for regulating cryptocurrency, falling short on a procedural vote that leaves the measure stalled but not dead.
The bill, H.R. 3633, is known as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, or CLARITY Act. It would establish a regulatory framework for digital commodities — digital assets that rely on a blockchain for their value — and would generally put the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in charge of overseeing trading in those assets, along with the exchanges, brokers, and dealers that handle them. The bill would give the CFTC exclusive regulatory jurisdiction over digital commodity transactions and require digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers to register with the agency. It would also exempt certain digital commodities from Securities and Exchange Commission registration requirements when annual sales fall below a set amount and other conditions are met, and would subject digital commodity businesses to the Bank Secrecy Act's anti-money-laundering rules. The bill would additionally ban the creation of a central bank digital currency — a "digital dollar" issued by the Federal Reserve. The House passed the CLARITY Act on July 17, 2025.
The vote did not decide the bill's fate directly. It was a procedural step — a cloture vote on the motion to proceed — that required 60 votes to succeed. The motion failed 49 to 50, well short of the three-fifths majority the rules require. One senator, Chris Coons of Delaware, was absent.
The bill's chief sponsor, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, urged colleagues to move it forward. She called it one of the most consequential financial services bills in a generation and said Democrats had secured 126 separate concessions and written more than half of its more than 630 pages. Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio also pressed for passage, arguing that advancing the bill would open the door to extended debate rather than settle the matter.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts led the opposition. She said she came to the floor to oppose Republicans' efforts to "jam through" the bill, arguing it posed a massive risk to families, the economy, and national security, and that it would "turbocharge Donald Trump's unprecedented corruption." In her remarks she also argued that the bill would make it easier for terrorist organizations, drug cartels, and rogue states to move money using crypto, and would let companies with nothing to do with crypto "throw their assets on a blockchain to escape the investor protections that apply to traditional securities." She urged colleagues to reject the bill and negotiate a bipartisan alternative.
The measure may not be finished. Immediately after the vote, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina entered a motion to reconsider — a step that preserves the possibility the Senate could take up the question again.
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