⏰ Crypto’s Biggest Bill is Running Out of Time

Most anticipated crypto bill in years gets just weeks of breathing room ,the industry just gave Congress a deadline.

The CLARITY Act passed the House by a vote of 294 to 134 on July 17, 2025. A rare bipartisan vote. The legislation would provide the US with a national framework for digital assets, separating oversight between the SEC and CFTC, defining which tokens are considered securities or commodities, and establishing clear rules for exchanges, issuers and investors. Each chamber had been waiting for the other to have its say first, and all eyes were on the budget bills in the Senate.

Nine months and 285 days later, the Senate Banking Committee has yet to hold a vote.

Back on April 23, some 120 crypto organisations including Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Circle (for the second time), Uniswap Labs (for the second time) and Andreessen Horowitz and Galaxy Digital sent a joint letter to Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott.

The note was clear: settle the markup now or shift investment, jobs and innovation in digital assets overseas. So far, it's the most organized industry lobbying campaign surrounding the bill since it left the House.

How it got here

The Senate stall has been no one-off event. You have prepared for the peak of delays.

Coinbase had delayed a markup expected January 14 after it was unable to support the bill in its current form, particularly on stablecoin yield. The fortunes of yield-bearing stablecoins were in the balance, with banks lobbying ferociously that such products could siphon-off billions from deposits. The standoff lasted two months.

The stalemate was broken on March 20 with a compromise limiting passive idle yield but allowing for those that accrue through activity by Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks. That was meant to free up the calendar. By April 9, Coinbase had fully changed its opposition to support, Treasury Secretary Bessent supported the bill in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and SEC Chair Atkins even stated his agency was ready to enact it as soon as Congress acted.

Next the North Carolina Bankers Association encouraged its members to pressure Tillis' office into asking for a reopened yield compromise. Tillis urged in steering the markup back until May. The window for a date to be set in April passed.

The clock is real

Congress adjourns for the Memorial Day recess on May 21. That's left us with under four weeks. Once a markup finishes successfully, the bill still has to survive through the 60-vote Senate hurdle, reconciliation between committee versions and papered with House text on its way to the president's desk.

Last week it was Sanders with the BLUNT: Get CLARITY Act through by end of May or kiss window for midterms edge goodbye, said Sen. Bernie Moreno. On April 10, Senator Lummis was even more blunt about it. Ya know, "This is the last opportunity for us to move the CLARITY Act until we finally get it passed until at least 2030."

Polymarket sells 2026 passage at 46%, down from the 80% of early April when the White House said progress was near on both fronts. Aaron Wright, a partner at New York-based law firm Paxos and professor of blockchain technology at The Cardozo School of Law, told reporters: "If markup drops down lower than mid-May, according to Galaxy's head of research Alex Thorn it becomes 50-50 or less chance (that the bill will pass)."

Novogratz sees it differently

In a podcast with Anthony Scaramucci on Friday, Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz said the bill goes to committee in the first week of May and Trump signs it in June. 5.5 billion people are underserved from US financial products An smartphone converted a crypto wallet to all that. In fact, the CLARITY Act is what enables it at scale.

Disagreement comes from within his own firm's head of research. Contrary to common misconception, the battle for stablecoin yields is still far from over. American Bankers Association requested 60 days more of federal agency comment time on stablecoin rules by April 22. The committee still has not announced a date to mark up the proposal.

The industry has done everything it was asked. And all the big internal battles have been resolved. Backed by the White House, SEC, Treasury and more than 120 firms.

What it lacks is a date on the Senate calendar.

The US government just asked citizens to donate their personal money to help pay the national debt.

Not a joke. The Treasury Department has opened a donation portal on its official website where Americans can voluntarily send money to help pay down a national debt that just hit $39 trillion.

To put that number in context: interest payments on that debt now cost more than Medicare and more than the entire defense budget combined. The CBO projects the debt hits $54 trillion within a decade. Moody's, which stripped the US of its last AAA credit rating in May, estimates interest costs could consume 30% of all federal revenue by 2035, up from 9% today. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, per the same CBO, adds another $3.4 trillion to deficits over ten years.

The donation portal has existed in various forms for years but has rarely been promoted. The current administration is now directing attention to it.

The average American is paying record gasoline prices driven by an Iran war, dealing with tariff-inflated grocery costs, and watching rent climb. Washington's answer, at least in part, is to suggest they might also consider chipping in for the $39 trillion tab.

Economists have been warning for years that the debt path is unsustainable. Congress and the White House have responded by spending faster than ever. The donation portal is not a fiscal policy. It is a signal about how seriously the people running the policy are taking the problem.

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