Senate Majority Leader Thune said the bill likely lacks time before August recess. White House adviser Witt called out banks for opposing a stablecoin ban they demanded.
The Senate has this week to start the cloture process on the CLARITY Act or the bill almost certainly dies before the August recess, Majority Leader John Thune said.
Thune told Fox News the Senate will probably vote on the bill but acknowledged it depends on whether Democrats show up. “We’ll see if the Democrats give us the votes to get on the bill,” he said. Each day without a motion narrows the path. Thune himself said the bill almost certainly lacks time to finish before the August break.
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt on Wednesday called out banks for lobbying against a stablecoin yield ban they originally demanded. Witt posted on X that the American Bankers Association spent months demanding a ban on stablecoin interest payments to protect community bank deposits. The CLARITY Act included exactly that ban. Banks then turned around and said the bill must be stopped because it would destroy community bank lending, he wrote. “Make it make sense,” Witt said.
ABA president Rob Nichols told CNBC the banking industry supports crypto regulation but said the current bill leaves a gap. Stablecoin issuers could route yield payments through affiliates and exchanges rather than paying them directly, effectively bypassing the ban Congress intended. Nichols said fixing that requires just two paragraphs of edits to the 600-page bill.
Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) finalized a new ethics compromise, according to CoinDesk, though no details have emerged publicly. The revised language needs White House approval and enough Democratic buy-in to clear 60 votes in the Senate.
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) expressed exhaustion on X. “After nearly 11 months of giving almost everything asked of us, I genuinely don’t know what else my Democrat colleagues need before we act,” she wrote.
If the CLARITY Act fails in September, a lame duck session passage looks unlikely, and a Democratic House win in November could send the bill back to the drawing board entirely, lobbyists said. Industry hopes are quietly shifting to September if the bill does not start moving by the end of this week, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said earlier, calling the bill at the one-yard line.
Bitcoin spot volume fell to its lowest since 2019 as Treasury yields beat crypto carry returns and institutional demand dried up.
Drafted by a large language model from the source reporting linked above, then screened by automated publishing checks. It is not read by a journalist before publication. Some articles cite our Alpha Score. Verify prices and figures against the original source. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.