Senate Banking Committee advances crypto market structure bill as CLARITY Act text is revised
The Senate Banking Committee released its version of the CLARITY Act on 11 May 2026 and advanced the crypto market structure bill out of committee that month. A further revision was reported in July 2026 as negotiators worked toward a bipartisan compromise.
What happened
The Senate Banking Committee published its text of the CLARITY Act on 11 May 2026 ahead of a hearing, and advanced the crypto market structure legislation out of committee during May. The bill runs to several hundred pages and addresses the division of jurisdiction between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over digital assets, disclosure obligations for token issuers, and the treatment of decentralised systems. Reporting in July 2026 indicated that a further version of the text was being prepared, and that the remaining disagreements concerned the scope of the CFTC's spot market authority, the treatment of decentralised finance and provisions touching stablecoin yield. The GENIUS Act, enacted earlier, covers payment stablecoins but left market structure unaddressed. As of 25 July 2026 the bill had not passed the Senate.
Why it matters
Market structure legislation determines which regulator supervises spot trading of digital assets in the United States and on what disclosure basis tokens may be offered. Without it, the perimeter is set by SEC interpretations, exemptive relief and no-action letters, which is the mechanism currently supporting tokenized equity trading and the DTCC pilot. For issuers and exchanges the practical stake is whether a statutory path exists to list tokens without securities registration, and whether decentralised protocols receive a defined status rather than case-by-case treatment.
What is not settled
No Senate floor vote had been scheduled as of 25 July 2026, and the final allocation of authority between the SEC and CFTC is not settled.
Institutions in this story
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United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Legislature
Standing Senate committee whose jurisdiction covers banks and banking, money and credit and the Federal Reserve System, and the Senate gate for digital-asset legislation: it voted 15-9 on 14 May 2026 to send the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act to the floor.
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US Securities and Exchange Commission
Regulator
The federal securities regulator created in 1934, which stated on 28 January 2026 that the format in which a security is issued and the method by which holders are recorded do not change how the federal securities laws apply.
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Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Regulator
The federal regulator of US derivatives markets, created by statute in 1974, which on 4 December 2025 used its existing authority to permit listed spot cryptocurrency products to trade on registered futures exchanges for the first time.