House passed 294-134, committee 15-9. Polymarket odds for 2026 CLARITY Act passage are 58.5%. Lummis warns a missed window extends crypto uncertainty to 2030.
Alpha Score of 49 reflects weak overall profile with moderate momentum, poor value, moderate quality, moderate sentiment.
Senator Cynthia Lummis has warned that unless Congress passes the CLARITY Act this session, the next viable legislative window for crypto regulation may not open until 2030. The statement reframes the timeline for digital asset rules from an open question into a concrete deadline.
The warning lands against a backdrop of unusual bipartisan progress. The CLARITY Act passed the House by a 294-134 vote. The Senate Banking Committee approved an updated version 15-9 in a bipartisan vote. That momentum, however, collides with the 2026 midterm elections. Lummis argued that the elections would effectively reset the legislative calendar if the bill does not clear both chambers before the current session ends.
Lummis did not frame a delay as a procedural inconvenience. She described it as a four-year setback that would leave crypto developers without clear legal protections while denying regulators modern tools to address fraud, market manipulation, and emerging risks in digital asset markets.
The mechanism is straightforward. If the CLARITY Act does not pass in this Congress, the bill dies and must be reintroduced in the next one. A new Congress means a new committee process, new hearings, and new votes. The 2030 timeline accounts for the probability that a post-2026 Congress with a different political composition may deprioritize crypto legislation.
Political uncertainty reinforces that timeline. Some analysts expect Republicans could lose seats in the midterms, shifting committee priorities and reducing the bandwidth for crypto-specific bills. Even if the bill stays alive, a narrower majority would make the 60-vote threshold in the Senate harder to reach.
The current Congress may be the crypto industry's best chance to pass the long-awaited CLARITY Act. The bill has already received strong bipartisan support. The Senate Banking Committee approved it in a 15-9 bipartisan vote, bringing it one step closer to becoming law. Lummis warns that with the 2026 midterm elections approaching, the time to act is very limited. If the bill fails to pass both chambers before the current term ends, the legislative process would effectively restart.
Delaying the CLARITY Act to 2030 would have three direct consequences for crypto markets.
Lummis stated that delaying action would leave crypto developers without clear legal protections. Developers face the risk of enforcement actions for activities that may later be deemed compliant under a proper regulatory framework. Without the CLARITY Act, the SEC and CFTC continue to operate under existing authorities, which Lummis described as insufficient for the digital asset ecosystem.
At the same time, regulators and law enforcement agencies would lack modern tools to address fraud, market manipulation, and emerging risks in digital asset markets. The CLARITY Act would provide explicit authority for the CFTC to oversee spot markets and for the SEC to classify tokens. Without it, enforcement remains reactive and fragmented across states.
Institutional investors typically require federal clarity before committing significant capital to crypto infrastructure, lending, or custody. A four-year delay would extend the current wait-and-see posture among pension funds, endowments, and asset managers. Custodians and exchanges also face regulatory ambiguity that limits their ability to offer certain products.
Prediction market Polymarket currently estimates a 58.5% chance that the CLARITY Act will be signed into law in 2026. That number is not a forecast of passage. It is a snapshot of what the market thinks the political path looks today – and it implies a 41.5% chance of the 2030 outcome Lummis described.
The simple read is that odds are above 50%, so passage is more likely than not. The better market read is that Polymarket contracts are binary and sensitive to news flow. A single procedural hurdle – a failed cloture vote, a filibuster threat, a scheduling conflict – can shift the odds double digits in a day. The current 58.5% level reflects optimism after the committee vote, not a resolution of the underlying political risk.
Contract pricing on prediction markets aggregates retail and professional capital, yet it does not weight for conviction. A 58.5% probability on a political contract often compresses to near 100% or near 0% as the deadline approaches. The open question is which direction the compression runs.
The following factors would shift the Polymarket odds materially:
SEC Chair Paul Atkins pushed back on the delay narrative in a Fox Business interview. He expressed confidence that Congress would adopt the CLARITY Act and that President Trump would sign it into law.
“I have confidence that Congress will adopt the CLARITY Act and that the President will be able to sign it.”
Atkins argued that the legislation would provide clear regulatory foundations for digital assets while keeping crypto innovation and investment inside the United States.
The divergence between Lummis and Atkins reflects a real strategic disagreement. Lummis sees the legislative clock as the binding constraint. Atkins sees political will and presidential support as sufficient to overcome procedural obstacles. Neither is wrong in isolation. The conflict is between a senator who counts votes and a chair who counts public commitments.
The risk of a 2030 delay declines if any of the following occur.
Conversely, the 2030 scenario becomes the base case if any of the following materialize.
The CLARITY Act is not a fringe proposal. It passed the House by a margin that exceeds typical party-line votes. Yet legislative progress is not the same as legislative certainty. The gap between a committee approval and a presidential signature is wide, and Lummis just told the market exactly how wide.
For related coverage, see our analysis of how the CLARITY Act passage could reshape crypto regulatory certainty and the opposition from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.