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 49 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 scale of new support 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 procedures.

During the final "vote wrangling" 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 the risk of stablecoin deposit outflows, and protections for developers, and that the relevant compromises are enough to create conditions for advancing the bill on a bipartisan basis.

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 text of the bill fails to sufficiently constrain potential conflicts of interest arising 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 use the digital asset market for profit.

Warren said she supports establishing clearer regulatory rules for the crypto industry, but rulemaking should not give politicians and their families special access. She is especially concerned about 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.