The US Congress has renewed its push for passage of the Clarity Act, according to Elliptic's "Crypto regulatory affairs" briefing. Elliptic's regulatory tracker places the digital asset market structure bill as the central item on the Hill's near-term crypto agenda, and the publication's headline language indicates Capitol Hill leadership is allocating procedural time to advance the text.

What is the Clarity Act?

The Clarity Act is the legislative vehicle through which Congress would formally divide jurisdictional authority over digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Versions of the text considered in recent Congresses have proposed assigning most non-security tokens to CFTC oversight while preserving SEC authority over offerings that satisfy the Howey test at issuance.

Core provisions typically include:

• A statutory framework for distinguishing digital commodities from securities at issuance
• Registration pathways for trading platforms handling non-security tokens
• Disclosure obligations for token issuers selling into US capital markets
• Customer protection and segregation standards for custodial intermediaries
• Federal preemption of state money transmitter regimes where federal oversight applies

The framework also carves out payment stablecoins, which fall under the federal licensing regime Congress approved in 2025, leaving the Clarity Act focused on non-stablecoin token markets and on broker-dealer, exchange, and adviser activities touching those assets.

What does the legislative push mean for market structure?

Market participants have identified jurisdictional clarity as their top Washington priority. Without a statutory framework, exchanges and brokerages face an unresolved registration question: file with the SEC as an alternative trading system, register with the CFTC under existing digital asset guidance, or continue operating without a settled regulatory home. The ambiguity has shaped product roadmaps at major US venues, broker-dealers, and custodians, several of which have publicly committed to dual registration or to withdrawing certain services until a federal pathway is defined.

Enforcement-led regulation has produced multiple Wells notices, settled actions, and consent decrees against trading venues, custodians, and token issuers in recent years. The compliance overhead has pushed some products offshore and constrained institutional participation in primary US venues. Industry filings with the SEC and CFTC, plus public comments to both agencies, trace a consistent line: market participants want a defined category of "digital commodity" with a defined federal supervisor.

A statutory framework would replace enforcement discretion with defined categories. Trading platforms could pursue a known registration path; issuers could structure offerings against a defined legal test; custodians could align operations with a single federal supervisor rather than a patchwork of state money transmitter rules and federal guidance letters.

Where do procedural negotiations stand?

Procedural milestones that would indicate forward progress:

• Committee markups in the Senate Agriculture Committee and the House Financial Services Committee
• Floor scheduling in each chamber
• Conference committee reconciliation if House and Senate texts diverge
• A signature and effective date following final passage

The House passed a narrower digital asset market structure package in 2024, and the Senate has since used that text, alongside Senate Agriculture Committee drafts, as the working baseline. Without broad bipartisan co-sponsorship in the Senate, the bill would need 60 votes to overcome a procedural filibuster. Open negotiation points include residual SEC authority over token sales, the treatment of decentralized finance protocols that lack a traditional issuer, and the precise mechanism for preemption of state money transmission rules.

Elliptic's briefing, by its title, signals that leadership has begun devoting floor time and committee attention to clearing those gaps, though the publication's tracking summary stops short of naming a target passage date.

What to watch next?

Industry trade groups have signaled continued engagement on the digital commodity definition, while SEC staff have separately indicated ongoing work on tokenized securities guidance that would interact with, but not replace, the Clarity Act framework. CFTC reauthorization and stablecoin implementation rules under the 2025 law will run on parallel tracks, and any committee markup scheduled before the next congressional recess window will be the next concrete signal of legislative momentum.