The final Clarity Act text drops the ethics sunset and the developers' criminal shield

What happened

Senators Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott published what they call the final text of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on the evening of 13 September 2026 in Washington, timestamped 02:01 UTC on 14 September on the senator's site. It is an amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 3633, printed as EHF26724 and running to 635 pages, and it replaces EHF26718, the 630 page substitute published on 10 September that this desk read four days ago. The release says the text reflects 'over a year of bipartisan negotiations and 126 substantive changes made at the request of Democrats', and that 'If cloture is invoked on the motion to proceed on Tuesday afternoon, this legislative text would be offered as an Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute'. Lummis said 'After a year of intense daily bipartisan negotiations, this bill is ready', that 'President Trump voluntarily agreed to unprecedented ethics restrictions, holding every federally elected official, judge, and their spouses to some of the toughest ethics restrictions in U.S. history', and that 'Democrats got what they wanted; now they need to take yes for an answer'. Boozman, who led the Agriculture Committee portion, said 'We cannot afford to wait any longer'. Scott said the final text 'further empowers law enforcement and gives the Treasury Secretary the tools to protect community banks, farmers, and rural Americans'. Four documents were published beside the bill and all four were read: a one page note headed 'What's New in the Final Clarity Act Text?', a seven page list titled '126 Democratic Wins in the Clarity Act', a section-by-section summary and a myth-versus-fact sheet. The what's-new note lists four areas. On ethics: state attorney general enforcement of the bans on issuing or sponsoring a digital asset, on maintaining a significant financial interest and on an exchange listing an asset issued in violation of the ban; a clear requirement to divest or use a qualified blind trust; civil penalties of 20 per cent of the consideration or $500,000, whichever is greater; and an effective date 360 days after enactment or 60 days after the final rule under section 10102, whichever is sooner. On stablecoins: if the Treasury Secretary makes a written determination that deposit flight from community banks is occurring on a substantial scale, the Secretary is directed to write rules restricting stablecoin rewards, and 'This authority expires 18 months after date of enactment'. On the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act: it 'Preserves protections for developers from registration as a money transmitter or being engaged in money transmitting business or otherwise classified as a financial institution under the Bank Secrecy Act, while removing references to 18 U.S.C. 1960 in the text', and 'Extends protections to miners and validators previously not covered'. On the Agriculture division: stronger guardrails on affiliate trading and conflicts, clarified application of state consumer protection laws, and developer protections that do not create derivatives exemptions or affect tribal gaming. The procedural vote is set for the afternoon of 15 September and requires sixty. Republicans hold 53 seats.

Why it matters

The useful thing about a final text published four days after a near-final one is that it can be read against its predecessor, and four differences matter more than the count of 126. The first is the ethics sunset, which is gone. The 10 September text carried a section 30105 headed SUNSET, under which the ethics provisions 'shall have no force and effect on and after noon on January 20, 2029', with a second subsection saying that after that date 'no person shall be subject to any penalty, forfeiture, or liability' for conduct before it. That section is not in the final text. Division C now ends at section 30104, and the ban instead runs, under a new applicable-period subsection, during a covered individual's term of service, with a separate window for someone elected but not yet sworn in that begins at certification. A ban that expired on the last minute of a presidential term has become a ban that runs with the office, which is the single largest concession in the document and is not in any report. The second difference cuts the other way and offsets part of it: section 30104(b) now says the prohibitions on issuing and sponsoring 'shall only apply to digital assets that are issued or sponsored on or after the effective date of this division', where the old text applied the division to conduct on or after that date. A token that already exists is outside the two prohibitions that carry the disgorgement remedy. The third is the developer shield, and it is the change most likely to matter in a courtroom. The 10 September version protected a non-controlling developer from being treated as 'engaged in money transmitting, as defined in section 1960 of title 18, United States Code', and carried a clarification preserving 1960(b)(1)(C) against anyone acting with specific intent to move known criminal proceeds. The final text has no reference to section 1960 anywhere in it, and replaces the shield with three civil classifications: a money transmitting business under 31 U.S.C. 5330, a money transmitter under the FinCEN regulation at 31 CFR 1010.100(ff)(5), and a financial institution under 31 U.S.C. 5312(a)(2)(R) or (Y). Section 1960 is the statute under which wallet and mixer developers have actually been prosecuted in the United States. Removing the reference to it while describing the result as preserving protections and adding 'a strong civil safe harbor' is accurate on its own terms and a narrowing in substance, and the two rules of construction added beside it, preserving state laws 'consistent with this section' and barring causes of action under inconsistent ones, do not reach criminal exposure either. The fourth is the circuit-breaker. What the sponsors describe as protection for community banks is a power that the Secretary of the Treasury must exercise 'not later than 18 months after the date of enactment', on a written determination that depositors at institutions with under $10bn in consolidated assets have moved interest-bearing deposits into payment stablecoins with substantially detrimental effect 'due specifically to the activities regulated under this section', with a required finding that rules are necessary to prevent further transfer, after notice and comment and in consultation with the OCC, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve. It is a fuse with a shelf life, and the deposit flight would have to be attributable to stablecoin rewards specifically rather than to stablecoins generally.

What is not settled

Whether cloture is invoked on 15 September is the first question and the desk has no view; sixty votes are needed and Republicans hold 53. Everything below assumes the text becomes law in this form. The state attorney general right of action created by the ethics division is narrower than the sponsors' description of it. A state attorney general alleging that a covered individual has issued or sponsored a digital asset has standing 'to bring an action against the Attorney General' of the United States for injunctive relief only, and the procedure is unusual: the district court enters findings of fact and refers the case 'for conclusions of law and entry of judgment to the en banc court of appeals', which reviews the facts de novo. Against an intermediary that lists a banned asset the state can also seek the $250,000 per day penalty. But no action lies at all if the supervising ethics office provides 'a legal opinion that an activity is not prohibited', or publishes notice that the interest has been divested or placed in a blind trust, so an executive branch ethics office can extinguish a state's right of action by writing an opinion. Nothing in the text says what happens if two supervising ethics offices disagree, or whether an opinion may be withdrawn. The definition of 'significant financial interest' is a further limit nobody has noticed: $15,000 or more of an equity interest in a business entity that drew a plurality of its revenue from issuing or sponsoring digital assets in any of the preceding three calendar years, with tokenized traditional assets carved out. That is a test about owning part of an issuer, not about holding tokens, and the plurality-of-revenue condition is a question of fact about somebody else's accounts. The ban reaches a public official or employee, a person elected but not yet sworn, and spouses; children are not mentioned, which The Block also notes. On the developer provisions, nothing states whether removing the section 1960 reference was intended to leave criminal exposure untouched or to concede it, and the section-by-section summary does not address it. One drafting defect survives into the final text and will need a technical correction: section 10302(d)(2)(B) excludes 'non-controlling developers or providers as defined in section 10604(b)(3)', and section 10604(b)(3) now defines 'non-controlling blockchain developer or provider', so the cross-reference names a term the bill no longer contains. The claim that protections are extended to miners and validators is not visible in the text either: neither word appears in section 10604 in either version, and the definition of 'distributed ledger service' is unchanged. Finally, the preemption machinery this desk described on 11 September is untouched. Sections 10301 and 20209 still carry no deadline for the rules that decide which protocols must register, and section 10108(e) and (f) are identical in both versions, which is the subject of the letter eighteen attorneys general sent the same morning.