Galaxy Research Cuts CLARITY Act Passage Odds to 50-50 as Senate Clock Winds Down
Galaxy Digital's research arm has downgraded its probability estimate for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act passing in 2026 to even odds, citing a shrinking Senate calendar and a collapse in bipartisan negotiations rather than any fundamental problem with the bill itself.
Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital, issued a note on June 26 cutting the firm's passage odds for the CLARITY Act to 50%, completing a sharp three-step descent from 75% earlier this year to 60% in early June and now to a coin-flip. "The downgrade is primarily related to the calendar, not the substance of the bill," Thorn wrote. "The absence of news is itself the news." Prediction market platform Polymarket echoed the pessimism, placing passage odds at roughly 48% on June 29, down from 74% on May 29.
What the CLARITY Act Would Do
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) is the most significant U.S. crypto market-structure bill to date.
It draws a formal jurisdictional line between the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees securities, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which would gain primary authority over digital assets classified as commodities. The bill establishes a process for tokens to transition between those two categories, creates registration pathways for exchanges and issuers, addresses liability protections for decentralized finance developers, and sets rules around stablecoin yield. The House passed it by a 294-134 bipartisan vote in July 2025. The Senate Banking Committee advanced its own version 15-9 on May 14, 2026, and the bill was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1.
The Calendar Problem
Despite that progress, the Senate has produced no merged committee text, no scheduled floor vote, no motion to proceed, and no public leadership commitment to bring the bill forward.
The chamber has roughly eight weeks of floor time before its August recess, a window widely treated as the last practical opportunity for 2026 passage. That time is already claimed by competing priorities including a FISA extension (which contains a disputed provision to temporarily ban central bank digital currencies), immigration enforcement funding, the Farm Bill (which creates direct committee overlap with the CLARITY Act because the CFTC's existing agriculture oversight responsibilities place both bills in competing contention for the same committee bandwidth), the Defense Authorization Act, and a war powers resolution on Iran.
Bipartisan talks suffered a significant blow on June 9 when Republicans and the White House withdrew a proposed ethics provision tied specifically to President Trump's crypto business interests. Democrats had demanded that the provision restrict government officials, including the President, from holding crypto assets, and had treated that restriction as a prerequisite for their support. The withdrawal carries particular political weight because President Trump has publicly championed the legislation. "Under my Leadership, we will codify a FUTURE-PROOF Digital Asset Market Structure," Trump declared. The gap between that public endorsement and the White House's role in removing the ethics compromise leaves the administration's position on the bill's final shape notably ambiguous.
Two other sticking points remain unresolved: banking industry opposition to yield-bearing stablecoins and an ongoing dispute over how broadly to protect DeFi protocol developers from securities enforcement.
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), one of the bill's primary Senate sponsors, has publicly warned that a failure in 2026 effectively delays meaningful U.S. crypto regulation until 2030. "We are closer to a functioning digital asset market structure than we have ever been," she said. "Now is not the time to flinch." She has also framed the stakes in geopolitical terms: "If the United States doesn't establish the global standard for digital asset regulation, someone else will."
Senator Lummis has reportedly indicated a July 4 target for releasing final Senate text for public review ahead of possible floor consideration later in the month.
More than 100 crypto firms have publicly urged Senate leadership to move forward.
What Delay Means Beyond U.S. Borders
For crypto users, developers, and exchanges operating in Africa and South Asia, the CLARITY Act's uncertain fate carries direct operational consequences.
Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC are the primary instruments for remittances and cross-border trade across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
The CLARITY Act contains stablecoin classification and yield provisions that would shape how U.S.-domiciled issuers structure their global products.
A parallel bill, the GENIUS Act, requires federal regulators to issue stablecoin implementing rules by July 18, 2026, making that the more immediate regulatory event for corridor markets regardless of CLARITY's fate.
DeFi developers in India, Nigeria, Kenya, and elsewhere also face direct exposure to U.S. securities enforcement if their protocols serve American users. The CLARITY Act's liability shield provision was designed to reduce that risk. Without it, the ambiguity persists.
Africa's crypto markets are not marginal participants waiting on Washington. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded more than 205 billion dollars in on-chain transaction value in the year through June 2025, a 52% increase year-on-year.
Nigeria ranks sixth globally in the 2025 Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index; Ethiopia ranks twelfth.
South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria have each advanced their own domestic digital asset frameworks in the past two years.
Those frameworks, however, still calibrate cross-border compliance requirements around U.S. dollar assets and FATF obligations that are directly influenced by American regulatory standards.
CoinShares data cited by Analytics Insight links approximately one billion dollars in crypto market outflows to CLARITY Act legislative uncertainty.
Continued stalling would likely accelerate capital flows toward jurisdictions with existing frameworks: the EU under MiCA, Singapore, and Dubai.
What Comes Next
Senator Lummis's reported July 4 target for releasing final Senate text is the most immediate milestone to watch.
If merged text does not emerge in early July, the eight-week recess window closes to a point where scheduling a floor vote becomes logistically improbable. Merged text must precede Congressional Budget Office scoring, which must in turn precede floor scheduling, leaving almost no margin if the process is not set in motion immediately.
Should the bill fail this session, Senator Lummis and analysts tracking the legislation project that the next realistic legislative window would not open until 2030. The 2026 midterm election calendar and subsequent congressional transition dynamics would compress available floor time to near zero, and a newly seated Congress would need to rebuild the committee work from scratch.