The Senate rejected the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act 49-50 on September 15, falling short of the 60 votes needed to advance. Coinbase and Circle shares fell sharply on the news, and the crypto industry now heads into the midterms without a regulatory framework.
The Senate voted down the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on September 15, rejecting the legislation 49-50, well short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance. Months of lobbying and a bipartisan coalition were not enough to push the bill through.
Markets reacted fast. Coinbase shares fell 12% and Circle dropped 13%. Bitcoin slid more than 5% intraday.
What the bill would have changed
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act would have handed primary oversight of digital asset markets to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission. Beyond that jurisdictional shift, it aimed to set frameworks for stablecoins, lay out protections for decentralized finance protocols, and create clearer categories for how tokens should be treated under US law.
The bill had shown promise earlier this year. It cleared the Senate Banking Committee with a bipartisan 15-9 vote back in May, which gave advocates reason to expect the full Senate would follow.
An unusual coalition sank it
Democrats with ethics concerns about the Trump administration's ties to crypto profits joined banking industry allies who had their own, separate grievances. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who had co-authored earlier crypto regulatory proposals, was among the Democrats who reversed course. The central objection involved ethics provisions tied to President Trump's reported $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency gains during 2025.
Banks, meanwhile, had quietly worked against provisions that would have let stablecoin issuers offer yield-bearing products, seeing them as a threat to their deposit base. The crypto lobby, which has spent an estimated $100 million to $225 million across recent election cycles, could not outmuscle both fronts at once.
What comes next
With midterms weeks away, the legislation has effectively zero chance of revival in the current Congress. The SEC keeps its current enforcement posture, and crypto companies remain without clear rules on what is legal.
The stablecoin provisions may be the most consequential loss. Without clear rules on who can issue them and what they can offer, the US risks ceding ground to jurisdictions that have already moved, most notably the EU with its Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation and various Asian financial centers.
A 15-9 committee vote in May becoming a 49-50 floor defeat in September suggests the coalition backing the bill was fragile from the start.
Source: Crypto Briefing
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