The CLARITY Act failed to pass, and there remains significant resistance to advancing it in the short term.

BlockBeats news, September 16 — The U.S. Senate held a key procedural vote early this morning on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (the CLARITY Act) to decide whether to end debate on the motion to proceed to consideration of the bill, with a threshold of 60 votes.

The vote ultimately ended 50 in favor and 50 against. This means the CLARITY Act cannot enter formal Senate consideration in the near term. The bill still has a foundation of support in principle, but the current version failed to form a sufficiently broad bipartisan coalition.

The outcome means that in the next vote, at least 10 senators who voted against would need to switch sides, or an equivalent number of new supporters would need to be secured after renegotiation. In bipartisan Senate legislation, a 10-vote gap already represents significant resistance for the bill. Even if 60 votes are secured in the future, the bill would still need to go through amendments, a possible second cloture vote, and final passage.

In the final whip-count phase before the vote, Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis, a leading driver of U.S. crypto legislation, said the revised bill has added more ethics constraints, a mechanism for state attorneys general to participate in enforcement, authority to address stablecoin deposit outflow risks, and protections for developers, and that the relevant compromises are enough to create conditions for bipartisan advancement of the bill.

She also described this procedural vote as a key window, saying that if the bill cannot even clear the 60-vote threshold to enter formal consideration, the room for subsequent negotiations will narrow markedly, and continued delay will leave the United States behind other countries in the competition over digital asset regulation and financial innovation.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren also spoke before the vote, warning that the current bill text fails to sufficiently constrain potential conflicts of interest from the president and senior officials participating in crypto businesses, and that without stricter ethics and consumer protection provisions, the legislation would leave room for politicians to profit from the digital asset market.

Warren said she supports establishing clearer regulatory rules for the crypto industry, but rulemaking should not give politicians and their families special access. She focused in particular on the Trump family's continuously expanding crypto business, arguing that as Congress advances a market structure bill, it must also address conflicts of interest involving public officials' own ventures, token issuance, and stablecoin businesses.