Senate Majority Leader John Thune told colleagues the CLARITY Act won't get a vote before the August break as lawmakers haggle over ethics restrictions on crypto holdings.
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Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Republican colleagues this week that floor time is too tight for the CLARITY Act before the August recess, two aides said. The bill, formally H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, would set federal rules for digital asset trading platforms, custodians, and issuers.
The holdup is a dispute over ethics provisions. Democrats on the Banking Committee have pushed for language that would bar public officials from holding or trading digital assets. Some drafts also cover immediate family members, the aides said. Republicans argue the restrictions go beyond existing ethics rules and would be difficult to administer.
A senior committee staffer said the two sides have not found a compromise since talks stalled in early June. The core question is how broad the prohibition should be and who it would cover.
For crypto firms that have waited years for clearer rules, the scheduling slip matters. Without the CLARITY Act, the industry remains under a patchwork of state money transmitter licenses, SEC enforcement actions, and CFTC oversight of derivatives markets. Each agency interprets its mandate differently. Court cases have produced conflicting answers on questions as basic as whether a token is a security or a commodity.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has publicly backed the bill, calling it a step toward regulatory certainty that would allow banks to expand digital asset services. The endorsement gave the bill momentum earlier this year. It has not changed the Senate arithmetic.
The ethics fight is a political speed bump the industry had hoped to avoid. For years crypto advocates argued the technology was neutral and that rules should focus on markets, not personal holdings. The debate now is precisely about whether lawmakers who sit on committees overseeing crypto should be allowed to own it.
No resolution is expected before the recess. Staffers said the two sides will try to narrow the language over August, with a goal of presenting a compromise when senators return after Labor Day. If that deadline slips, the bill could remain stalled into the winter.
Lobbyists for several crypto exchanges said they still expect the bill to pass eventually. They acknowledged the timeline has shifted into the fall at the earliest. If the ethics fight drags into September, the legislation could be folded into a year-end omnibus package or military authorization bill. That path carries risks. Attaching a crypto bill to must-pass legislation often invites amendments that slow the process further, a House Financial Services aide noted.
The House passed the CLARITY Act in a 293-127 vote in April. The Senate version never got a markup.
Thune said this week he still supports market structure legislation and wants to bring it to the floor. With the calendar closing fast, the CLARITY Act will not be law before summer ends.
A delay does not kill the bill. It pushes the moment of regulatory clarity further out, which means firms keep operating under current uncertainty. That uncertainty has real costs: legal bills for compliance, product launches postponed, talent moving to jurisdictions with more predictable rules.
Crypto's Washington problem has always been bigger than any single bill. The SEC continues to argue most tokens are securities. The CFTC maintains that bitcoin and ether are commodities. The Treasury and banking regulators have their own views on custody and stablecoins. No single piece of legislation can resolve every overlap. The CLARITY Act was designed to at least define which agency has primary authority over spot trading platforms, a question that has gone unanswered for years.
The ethics dispute is the latest reminder that crypto’s move from the political fringe to the center brings complications. More people care, more committees get involved, and more unrelated concerns attach themselves to the bill.
Read: Goldman CEO backs CLARITY Act as banks fight stablecoin rewards
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