The Senate's 49-50 cloture failure on Sept. 15 ended any near-term path to the Clarity Act. On Oct. 7, Rep. French Hill told Fox Business that the gap left behind cannot be closed by the SEC or CFTC acting alone.

Hill, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said agency actions by SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Mike Selig "have taken steps to use their regulatory power, their exemptive relief, to give definition to digital assets and digital commodities." He then drew a line: "In my judgement, these regulatory policies fall short of what we have to do, which is have a legislative solution."

What durability problem is Hill flagging?

Hill's core objection is administrative reversibility. An SEC exemption or CFTC rulemaking can be challenged in court or rescinded by a future administration. A statute persists. The congressman authored FIT21 in the prior Congress and the Clarity Act in this one to make the digital-asset split permanent.

"We need that permanent law change to make sure America is number one in digital assets and blockchain technology," Hill said.

What have the two agencies actually proposed?

The agencies have moved through a sequence of orders and comment dockets. They include:

• SEC March 17 interpretive release sorting crypto assets into five categories.
• SEC August proposal for crypto offering exemptions at $5 million and $75 million thresholds.
• SEC Sept. 17 conditional exemption letting tokenized securities venues trade tokenized National Market System equities outside the definition of "exchange."
• SEC Oct. 1 custody proposal permitting self-custody under certain conditions and allowing state trust companies to serve as custodians for investment advisers and funds.

The CFTC published an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with a 60-day comment window from Federal Register publication. The notice floats a designated contract market subcategory for crypto asset markets, codifies 28-day delivery to non-custodial wallets as an exception to on-exchange trading, and names Bitcoin and XRP among covered digital assets.

Selig has framed the effort as folding crypto asset transactions into the CFTC's national market framework. He has not positioned it as a finished rulebook.

What gap would a market structure bill still have to close?

Spot venue registration is the open question, and the CFTC chair named it himself. "Only Congress has the authority to mandate that all crypto asset exchanges register with the Commission," Selig said.

The current ladder leaves ordinary spot crypto exchanges on the lowest rung: subject to the CFTC's anti-fraud and anti-manipulation authority, otherwise regulated under state money-transmission law. Federal retail-leverage oversight applies further up.

Selig confirmed the limit on the record. "Unlike the Clarity Act, these regulations wouldn't require crypto assets to trade on CFTC-registered platforms," he said. "We don't have the authority to impose such a requirement without congressional action."

Under the proposed CLARITY framework, qualifying digital commodities would default to the CFTC while securities-related activity stays with the SEC. That allocation is the part only a statute can lock in.

What do the agency exemptions leave out?

The Sept. 17 tokenized-stock exemption expires five years after publication and caps both the symbols and volume that may trade. It covers only fully fungible tokenized listed equities, excluding private and pre-IPO shares and synthetics.

The SEC's own analysis calls the order "an agency order of limited duration and scope, not a comprehensive allocation of jurisdiction or a substitute for legislation or rulemaking." Atkins described the framework as "a bridge toward durable rulemaking."

Tokenized securities venues carry no fair-access obligation. Their public notice must disclose that access denials are not subject to SEC review. The order sets no custody standard and grants no relief from existing custody requirements on registered intermediaries.

Where does the bill stand, and who is left to write it?

The Senate's Sept. 15 cloture motion drew 49 votes in favor and 50 against, with one senator absent, leaving supporters 11 short of the 60 needed to proceed. The House passed H.R. 3633 in July 2025 by 294 to 134, with 78 Democrats in support.

Selig's frustration is on the record. He told CNBC on Oct. 6 that he was "absolutely disappointed in Congress" for failing to deliver crypto market legislation.

Both commissions are also understaffed. Seven commissioner vacancies remained across the SEC and CFTC as of Oct. 7. Hester Peirce resigned from the SEC the week before, leaving Atkins and Commissioner Mark Uyeda. Selig is both CFTC chair and its sole sitting commissioner.

The question a market structure bill would still have to settle is whether the spot venue holding retail tokens has to register with any federal agency. On the CFTC's own account, it does not today.