White House Pushes Senate to Pass CLARITY Act
The White House and President Trump urged the Senate to advance the CLARITY Act, a landmark bill that would create the first federal regulatory framework for the crypto industry. The push was reported on July 15, 2026.
Yuri Konnov
The bill's legislative history stretches back to May 29, 2025, when House Committee on Financial Services Chairman French Hill introduced the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. It passed the House on July 17, 2025, by a vote of 294 to 134. Senator Tim Scott and Subcommittee on Digital Assets Chair Cynthia Lummis then released a Senate discussion draft on July 22, 2025, for public review. According to the Senate Banking Committee's official summary, the bill draws a bright line between SEC and CFTC jurisdiction and replaces the SEC's regulation-by-enforcement model with a workable statutory framework.
Three unresolved disputes have blocked a Senate floor vote. The most contentious is an ethics provision that would restrict government officials from holding personal crypto positions — a clause made more politically charged after Trump disclosed he had earned more than $1 billion from his crypto industry involvement in 2025. Stablecoin yield language and DeFi developer liability protections are the two other open items. The bill requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, and as of mid-July only two Democrats had committed to supporting it.
On July 17, the House Financial Services Committee held a field hearing in New York titled "Building the Future of Finance: How CLARITY Act Unlocks Innovation," an unusual procedural step that underscored the urgency both chambers attached to the legislation. The Latham & Watkins US Crypto Policy Tracker notes that the Senate Banking Committee version builds on the House-passed text, preserving the core jurisdictional split while incorporating Senate-specific amendments.
For RWA infrastructure operators and tokenized-asset issuers, the stakes are concrete. The bill would replace the current regulatory gray zone with a statutory framework that assigns digital commodities to CFTC oversight and investment contract assets to the SEC. Platforms issuing tokenized real estate, private credit, or government bonds on U.S.-regulated infrastructure have operated without clear statutory authority for either regulator; the CLARITY Act would end that ambiguity. The Senate Banking Committee described the legislation as a step toward establishing the United States as the crypto capital of the world by balancing innovation with strong investor protections and tough law enforcement tools.
The August recess represents the last realistic legislative window before the end of 2026. Missing it would likely push any Senate floor vote to 2027. CoinDesk reported that the July 15 White House meeting was specifically aimed at resolving the ethics section — the provision most likely to cost Democratic votes needed to reach the 60-vote threshold.
What the White House push does not establish is a confirmed floor vote date, a resolved ethics provision, or the 60-vote coalition needed for cloture. The July 15 meeting produced no public agreement on the ethics language restricting officials' personal crypto holdings, and the stablecoin yield and DeFi provisions remained open as of the reporting date. The bill's passage into law would create a statutory framework for digital asset markets, but it would not itself launch any tokenized product, approve any specific issuer, or set the haircut and collateral rules that RWA platforms would need from regulators to operationalize on-chain settlement at scale.
