CLARITY Act Senate Vote Expected Next Week, Mersinger Says

“Crypto gave up a lot in that yield agreement,” she noted. “It was not a win for crypto.”

Mersinger dismissed claims that stablecoins would trigger widespread deposit flight from traditional banks. “The argument of deposit flight just makes no sense at all,” she said. Community banks serve different customers, and stablecoin reserves would remain within the banking system, she argued.

Delaying the CLARITY Act beyond the August recess could make passage much harder, Mersinger warned. “It does get a lot harder going into the election season,” she said. A lame-duck Congress and shifting political priorities could derail the bill if it slips.

“This window is … probably all the stars are aligned and this is the time to do it,” she said.

Beyond the CLARITY Act, Mersinger identified crypto tax reform as the next key legislative priority. “We kind of view it as a three-legged stool,” she said. “Stablecoins was the first, CLARITY is the second, and then tax reform.”

Updating tax rules for digital assets is “critically important” because the existing U.S. tax code “was not written for digital assets,” she said.

Passage of the CLARITY Act would give the CFTC primary oversight of digital asset spot markets, a shift from the current patchwork of state and SEC rules. Failure to clear the 60-vote threshold would leave the industry under the existing regulatory ambiguity, with the SEC still claiming jurisdiction over most tokens. The stablecoin yield debate, which Mersinger said crypto “gave up a lot” on, has already shaped the bill’s final language. Banks won concessions on yield-bearing stablecoins, limiting how much interest issuers can pass to holders. That compromise has held, Mersinger said, because lawmakers believe banks already had their chance to shape the text.

“People really aren’t interested in reopening that agreement,” she said.