The US Senate voted 50 to 49 on September 15, 2026 to block a motion to proceed on the CLARITY Act, falling ten votes short of the 60 needed for cloture and leaving federal crypto oversight split across agencies that have rewritten the rules twice since 2023.

Senator Ruben Gallego said the ethics compromise Republican leaders added to address Democratic concerns about President Trump and his family's crypto ventures "did not buy enough Democratic votes." The procedural defeat erased, for now, a bill that would have divided digital-asset supervision between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, set registration terms and tightened anti-money-laundering obligations.

For a Bitcoin holder the closer question is whether a US bank can hold or settle the asset on a public network at all. Federal regulators have answered that question differently in every administration since 2017.

Why the bank-custody track keeps moving

The Congressional Research Service has documented an "ad hoc, piecemeal and inconsistent" US approach in which presidential appointments, not statute, set the boundary. Trump appointees approved specified bank crypto activities case by case. Biden appointees required supervisory sign-off before a bank could engage in any crypto activity, according to the CRS report R48430.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency narrowed that boundary further in March 2025. Interpretive Letter 1183 withdrew the Biden-era non-objection requirement for several digital-asset services, loosening one layer of federal approval. The OCC's move did not produce a uniform national policy because the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation never rescinded their January 2023 joint statement governing state-chartered banks. That statement's language made it "highly unlikely," in the CRS's reading, that a state-chartered bank could issue, hold or transfer crypto on an open, public blockchain. Regulators stopped short of calling the language a prohibition. The practical effect was close to one.

The result is that bank access to Bitcoin today can depend on which agency supervises the institution, which service is requested and which leadership-era statement applies.

SAB 121 to SAB 122: the accounting hinge

A bank can be permitted to custody Bitcoin and still find the business uneconomic. The CRS has written that the SEC's Staff Accounting Bulletin 121, if applied, would have triggered capital charges likely to make crypto custody infeasible for publicly listed banks through its one-to-one asset-to-liability treatment. The SEC rescinded SAB 121 in January 2025 through Staff Accounting Bulletin 122, removing the requirement for customer-held crypto but leaving each bank to weigh its own balance-sheet exposure.

That is the variable most investors underestimate, according to the CRS framing: a bank willing to custody BTC has limited use for the service if accounting rules make it uneconomic to offer.

What the SEC has on the table

The SEC opened a separate track in October 2026 with a custody proposal that would permit registered investment advisers to hold certain client and fund crypto when no qualified custodian is available, while admitting state-chartered trust companies in some circumstances. The proposal is not a final rule and does not specifically resolve bank access to Bitcoin custody on public networks.

What a durable statute would need to do

The CRS argues legislation could lock the level of bank involvement into law, from a total ban to open access, and remove the post-election swings. A lasting framework would need to:

• Decide what authority banks receive to hold and transfer crypto on public networks.
• Set accounting and capital obligations that leave permitted services economically viable.
• Survive leadership turnover at the OCC, the Fed, the FDIC and the SEC.

None of those conditions are present today. Bitcoin fell 3% on September 15, 2026 as the broader sell-off hit risk assets; Coinbase shares dropped 8% and Circle shares slid 10% the same session.

The SEC's custody comment window and any re-introduction of the CLARITY Act in the lame-duck session are the next dates that can move the picture. Until Congress codifies the boundary, US bank custody of Bitcoin will remain a permission that one administration can grant and the next can narrow.