The Digital Chamber, along with multiple crypto trade groups and dozens of individual firms, addressed the letter to Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The message was direct: more than 270 days have passed since the House of Representatives approved the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act with a 294-to-134 vote in July 2025, and the Senate has yet to hold a single committee markup on the bill.

With August recess and midterm campaign season set to consume the back half of 2026, the window to pass meaningful legislation is narrowing fast.

"Doing so is critical to delivering the clarity that the more than 70 million Americans who have embraced digital assets deserve, while reinforcing the United States' leadership in responsible innovation and next-generation financial technology," said Cody Carbone, CEO of The Digital Chamber, in the letter to the committee.

A Bill Stalled by Competing Priorities and One Unresolved Fight

The CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633) is the most comprehensive crypto market structure legislation to clear any chamber of Congress. It traces its roots to the FIT21 Act, which the House passed in May 2024, and was repackaged and expanded in the 119th Congress. It divides digital assets into three categories: digital commodities regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, investment contract assets regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and permitted payment stablecoins. That three-way split is designed to settle a years-long jurisdictional standoff between the two agencies, which has left developers and platforms operating in legal gray zones.

The Senate Banking Committee originally scheduled a markup for January 15, 2026, but pulled back after 137 amendments were filed ahead of the session.

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), a key negotiator on the bill, confirmed this month that an April markup would not happen. The next realistic opening is May 2026.

The core sticking point has been stablecoin yield programs. Traditional banks argue that allowing platforms to offer rewards on stablecoins resembles deposit interest and threatens their business model.

Negotiations have reportedly moved toward framing qualifying rewards as credit-card-style incentives rather than interest, while banning yield on products backed by deposit insurance. White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt has publicly dismissed the banking industry's continued resistance, calling it driven by "greed or ignorance." A March 1, 2026 deadline the White House set for resolving the stablecoin yield question passed without a deal.

One area that is largely settled: protections for decentralized finance developers. Earlier drafts of the bill drew criticism for potentially exposing software developers to liability. The current text includes explicit carve-outs for protocol-level activities such as transaction validation, node operation, and network consensus. Legal ambiguity around these activities had already pushed a wave of US-based DeFi builders toward more permissive jurisdictions including Dubai and Singapore.

The Senate Agriculture Committee did advance a companion bill, the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, on a 12-to-11 party-line vote in January 2026. That was the first time any crypto market structure bill cleared a Senate committee, but the close vote illustrated how thin the political margins remain.

Galaxy Digital, an investment firm, has put the odds of the CLARITY Act becoming law at roughly 50-to-50, and possibly lower, according to a recent internal analysis from the firm.

The Senate faces a packed calendar that includes Homeland Security funding, Iran war debates, voter identification legislation, and Federal Reserve nominations, leaving only around a dozen legislative weeks before the August recess.

What the Senate's Decision Means Beyond US Borders

The stakes extend well past Washington. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded more than $205 billion in on-chain transaction value in the most recent 12-month period for which full data are available, covering July 2024 through June 2025, a 52 percent year-over-year increase, according to data from Ripple and Chainalysis.

Stablecoins are central to that activity, used for cross-border trade settlement, remittances, and treasury management in markets where local currencies carry high volatility. The outcome of the stablecoin yield debate in the US Senate will partly determine which stablecoin product designs can legally flow through US-regulated platforms into those corridors. According to Elliptic's 2026 Regulatory Outlook, US legislation has already accelerated global momentum for stablecoin policy development, and passage of the CLARITY Act would intensify pressure on other governments to keep pace.

Eight African countries now have formal crypto regulatory frameworks in place, with more in development. Nigeria recognized digital assets as securities under its Investments and Securities Act 2025. Kenya's Virtual Asset Service Providers Act took effect in October 2025. South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority had approved 300 crypto licenses by December 2025. Each of those jurisdictions is calibrating its own rules in partial reference to what the US ultimately decides.

In South Asia, India maintains a 30 percent tax on virtual digital asset gains with no comprehensive legal framework yet in place, while Pakistan moved faster, launching a formal regulatory sandbox under its new Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority in February 2026.

The South Asia Blockchain Forum, which coordinates regulatory dialogue across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, is actively tracking CLARITY Act developments, according to TRM Labs research.

What Comes Next

If the Senate Banking Committee does not hold a markup in May, the path to a Senate floor vote before the August recess becomes extremely narrow.

Bitcoin was trading near $78,000 on April 23, with spot BTC ETFs logging five consecutive days of net inflows and $238 million in net flows, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Whether that changes depends on whether Senate negotiators can close the stablecoin yield gap before the calendar runs out.