120+ Crypto Firms Urge Senate to Advance CLARITY Act as U.S. Rules Lag

More than 120 crypto firms are pressing Washington to move the CLARITY Act forward now, warning that endless delay is pushing U.S. digital asset innovation offshore and leaving the market stuck in regulatory limbo.

• 120+ crypto firms and advocacy groups want the Senate to act on the CLARITY Act
• Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Circle, Uniswap Labs, a16z, and Galaxy are among the signers
• Senate Banking Committee remains the main bottleneck
• Memorial Day recess is shrinking the legislative window fast
• Banking trade groups are fighting the stablecoin rewards provisions

The pressure campaign hit Washington on April 23, when a coalition led by the Crypto Council for Innovation and the Blockchain Association sent a joint letter to Sen. Tim Scott, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, and Sen. Ruben Gallego. The ask was direct: “notice and proceed towards a markup” of the CLARITY Act, the crypto market structure bill that many in the industry see as the best shot at finally putting a real federal framework around U.S. digital asset regulation.

If that phrase sounds like Capitol Hill soup, here’s the plain-English version: the coalition wants the Senate Banking Committee to start the formal amendment and voting process, instead of letting the bill sit in a procedural swamp while lobbyists, rival agencies, and election-year nonsense chew up the clock.

The signers are a pretty serious lineup: Coinbase, Ripple, Kraken, Circle, Uniswap Labs, Andreessen Horowitz, Galaxy Digital, Chainlink Labs, Chainalysis, OKX, and Paradigm, along with dozens more firms and advocacy groups. Getting more than 120 organizations on the same page in crypto is no small feat. This is a sector where agreement usually lasts just long enough for everyone to reload their bags.

The coalition says the U.S. cannot afford to keep muddling through a patchwork of state rules and “regulation by enforcement” — the lovely American tradition of letting agencies write the rules through lawsuits instead of actual legislation. According to the letter, Congress needs to create a “predictable federal baseline” so companies know what the hell the rules are before they hire staff, raise money, or move code and capital abroad.

The bill’s six priorities are straightforward, even if the politics are not. The coalition wants:

• clear SEC/CFTC jurisdiction boundaries
• protection for non-custodial software developers, meaning developers who write software but do not hold user funds
• stablecoin rewards tied to activity, not passive holdings
• simpler digital asset disclosure rules
• an end to a state-by-state regulatory patchwork
• a federal baseline that keeps capital and builders onshore

That first point is the big one. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have spent years overlapping, competing, and occasionally acting like two departments trying to claim the same desk. Crypto firms want to know which agency is in charge of what, because “we’ll figure it out in court” is not a regulatory strategy — it’s a hostage situation.

The non-custodial developer issue matters too. Open-source builders who never touch user funds do not want to get treated like banks, broker-dealers, or some Frankenstein financial institution invented by a lawyer in a conference room. If the law cannot clearly distinguish between writing code and holding customer assets, the people building the rails will keep getting dragged into fights they never signed up for.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already framed the bill as more than a crypto industry wishlist item. He called it a national security priority and warned that delay is actively helping rival hubs overseas.

“Every month of delay pushes digital asset innovation toward hubs like Dubai and Singapore.”

He’s not wrong. Capital does not sit around forever waiting for Washington to rediscover competence. If the U.S. keeps making it expensive and unpredictable to build, serious projects will go where the rules are clearer and the welcome mat is not nailed down by three competing regulators and a compliance panic.

Senator Bernie Moreno put a finer point on the timeline risk, warning that missing the end-of-May window could push the bill into limbo until 2030. That sounds extreme until you remember how Congress works: if a bill misses the current political slot, it can end up trapped in procedural purgatory for years while everyone pretends “next session” means something real.

The clock is brutal. Congress breaks for Memorial Day recess on May 21, leaving fewer than four weeks of legislative time to get the Senate moving. And even if the Banking Committee finally schedules a markup, that only gets the bill to the next checkpoint. After that, the CLARITY Act would still need 60 votes in the Senate, reconciliation between committee versions, reconciliation with the House text, and a presidential signature.

That’s why market participants are not exactly popping champagne. Polymarket is pricing 2026 passage at below 50%, while Galaxy Research also puts the odds at around 50-50 or worse. In other words, the market is betting that Congress may once again confuse motion with progress.

The bill has already cleared some major hurdles. It passed the House 294–134 in July 2025 and later moved through the Senate Agriculture Committee in January 2026. But the real bottleneck is still the Senate Banking Committee, which has not scheduled a markup yet. That committee is where the bill can either pick up momentum or get quietly smothered under a stack of unrelated priorities and hand-wringing.

There’s also a political wrinkle worth watching: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong shifted to support the current version of the bill in April after opposing earlier drafts. That matters because Coinbase is one of the most visible U.S. crypto companies, and its backing gives the push more credibility in Washington. It also tells you the industry is choosing imperfect clarity over the glamorous alternative of endless uncertainty.

The main resistance now comes from banking trade groups, especially over the stablecoin rewards language. Senator Moreno called the pushback

“A lot of noise in the system”

— which is a polite Capitol Hill way of saying banks are not thrilled about anything that might let crypto platforms compete on consumer incentives.

That fight is worth unpacking. Stablecoins are digital assets designed to track a reference asset, usually the U.S. dollar. Some platforms want to offer rewards or yield-like benefits tied to how users interact with those stablecoins. Banks and their trade groups argue that this starts to look too much like deposit-based banking products, and they would very much prefer not to let crypto firms eat their lunch with a better interface and lower overhead. Fair enough, from their point of view — but let’s not pretend this is only about consumer safety when old-school finance is also defending a very expensive moat.

To be fair, the critics of the bill do have a point on one thing: crypto legislation should not become a gift basket for the loudest industry players. Stablecoin rules need to be carefully designed, and disclosure standards need real teeth if lawmakers want consumer protection to mean anything. But the current mess is not consumer-friendly either. A system where innovation gets buried under selective enforcement, vague boundaries, and fifty-state chaos is just expensive dysfunction with a fancier label.

The bigger picture is simple. The crypto industry wants a single national rulebook before the United States becomes the place where every agency can sue first and ask questions never. The CLARITY Act is being positioned as the answer to the market structure problem — who regulates what, how crypto assets are classified, and how non-custodial developers are treated under federal law.

Without that clarity, the U.S. keeps bleeding time, talent, and capital. With it, the country could keep more builders onshore, give institutions a cleaner path to participate, and stop forcing every serious project to spend half its energy trying to predict the next enforcement action. That’s not some moonshot fantasy. It’s basic market hygiene.

What is the CLARITY Act?

The CLARITY Act is proposed U.S. crypto market structure legislation meant to define which regulators oversee which parts of the digital asset market, especially the SEC and CFTC.

Why are crypto firms pushing so hard right now?

They want clear federal rules before more innovation, jobs, and capital move overseas. The industry sees delay as an active threat, not a neutral pause.

Why is the Senate Banking Committee the key obstacle?

The committee has not scheduled a markup yet. That means the bill is still stuck before the formal amendment and voting process can even begin.

What does “regulation by enforcement” mean?

It means regulators shape the rules mainly through lawsuits and enforcement actions instead of clear laws passed by Congress.

Why are stablecoin rewards such a big fight?

Banking groups fear crypto platforms could offer bank-like incentives and compete directly with traditional deposit products. The debate is partly policy, partly turf war.

Why do Dubai and Singapore keep coming up?

They’re seen as jurisdictions with clearer crypto rules and more predictable policy, which makes them attractive if the U.S. keeps stalling.

Could the bill still fail even if the Senate moves it forward?

Yes. It still needs 60 votes in the Senate, final alignment between versions, House reconciliation, and a presidential signature. Washington has a talent for turning momentum into mulch.