CLARITY Act Eyes Unified Tokenized Asset Framework

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee released the full text of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on May 11, 2026, setting the stage for a formal markup hearing two days later and pushing prediction-market odds for the bill's passage to their highest level yet. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Subcommittee on Digital Assets Chair Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), and Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) released the market structure bill text that will serve as the basis for the Committee's markup of the CLARITY Act, according to the Senate Banking Committee official statement.

The Senate Banking Committee met on Thursday, May 14, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., to consider the bill. Polymarket traders assigned a 73% probability to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act being signed into law in 2026, a sharp rise from 46% at the start of May, according to BeInCrypto's analysis of prediction market data.

H.R. 3633, the CLARITY Act, was introduced on May 29, 2025, by Chairman French Hill (R-AR). The legislation, as analyzed by CBIZ's digital asset regulatory framework analysis, outlines three primary asset categories: digital commodities, investment contract assets, and payment stablecoins. Under the framework, digital commodities — tokens linked to established, decentralized blockchains — fall under CFTC oversight, while tokens representing equity, debt, or similar rights remain under SEC jurisdiction as securities or investment contract assets.

The SEC's own published guidance on tokenized securities defines them as financial instruments enumerated under federal securities laws that are formatted as or represented by a crypto asset, where the record of ownership is maintained in whole or in part on or through one or more crypto networks. The agency further classifies tokenized securities into two categories: those tokenized by or on behalf of the issuers themselves, and those tokenized by third parties unaffiliated with the issuers, according to the SEC statement on tokenized securities. The CLARITY Act's framework would codify these distinctions into statute, replacing the current patchwork of enforcement-driven interpretations.

On the operational side, the House Financial Services Committee section-by-section analysis specifies that Section 106 requires the CFTC to provide an expedited registration process for digital commodity brokers, digital commodity dealers, and digital commodity exchanges within 180 days of enactment. Once that process is finalized, market participants must register with the CFTC no later than 90 days after the expedited registration process is completed. For tokenized real estate and other RWA platforms that operate across both commodity and securities categories, the dual-registration requirement under the bill would require compliance with both CFTC and SEC regimes depending on the nature of the underlying asset.

The Senate version of the bill carries unresolved provisions that complicated its path earlier this year. In January, the day before the Senate Banking Committee was originally set to hold a vote on the CLARITY Act, Coinbase walked away from the bill, citing concerns that banks might get their desired stablecoin yield restrictions added to the bill, according to CryptoNews. The latest text released by the Senate Banking Committee includes still-contentious language on stablecoin yield and maintains legal protections for decentralized finance developers, as reported by CoinDesk's coverage of the Senate Banking Committee release.

The bill's text does not resolve several material questions for market participants. The released draft does not specify how the SEC and CFTC will coordinate enforcement in cases where a tokenized asset's classification is disputed, nor does it establish the precise criteria that would determine whether a given real estate token constitutes a digital commodity or an investment contract asset. The legislation does not address secondary-market liquidity requirements for tokenized securities, custody standards specific to real estate tokens, or the treatment of fractional ownership structures common in property tokenization. The timeline for any joint SEC-CFTC rulemaking following enactment also remains unspecified in the available text.

The immediate effect of the May 11 text release is that the Senate Banking Committee now has a formal legislative basis for markup, with registration timelines for CFTC-regulated entities set at 180 days for rule adoption and 90 days thereafter for market participant compliance. What the release does not establish is a final enacted law, a reconciled Senate floor text, or confirmed Democratic support sufficient to reach the 60-vote threshold required for passage — all of which remain outstanding before the CLARITY Act could take legal effect.