Lummis Presses CLARITY Act to Senate Floor After 10 Months of Drafting

CLARITY-ACT News

Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming is pressing Congress to pass the CLARITY Act, the crypto market-structure bill, before the Senate breaks for its August recess. Speaking on July 15, Lummis argued that clearing the legislation is critical to signal market stability to companies operating in the United States. She said she has worked on the bill every single day for the past ten months and expects to formally introduce the text within days. Whether the measure reaches the Senate floor in the fourth week of July, she added, ultimately rests with Majority Leader John Thune, who controls the chamber's calendar and its crowded legislative agenda.

The bill's path narrowed on July 14 when three Democratic senators — Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland — declared they will not support the CLARITY Act unless ethics provisions are added. At a Capitol Hill press conference, the trio said any bill must eliminate conflicts of interest tied to President Donald Trump's family crypto ventures. With a floor vote possible as early as the week of July 20, the measure needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Republicans cannot reach that threshold alone, leaving at least seven Democratic votes as the decisive factor in the outcome.

At the same event, Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin delivered the sharpest criticism, arguing the legislation contains no language preventing the president or his family from profiting. Citing the latest financial disclosures, Levin said Trump earned more than $1 billion in crypto-related revenue over the past year, calling it “not a loophole but a business model.” He warned that passing CLARITY without ethics guardrails would repeat the pattern set by the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin framework enacted without such provisions. The press conference was co-hosted by advocacy groups Indivisible and Americans for Financial Reform, with actor and author Ben McKenzie also appearing to press the case.

Van Hollen detailed how amendments he offered to bar the president, lawmakers and their families from profiting off crypto ventures were rejected by Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee during both the GENIUS and CLARITY deliberations. Murphy said he could not back the bill unless it fully removes the Trump family's conflicts, while Merkley set the same ban as his minimum condition. Americans for Financial Reform co-director Erica Taylor charged that the CLARITY Act was “built by crypto industry billionaires, for billionaires.” McKenzie noted the industry poured $240 million into the 2024 federal elections, arguing that money is now shaping policy in Washington.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig offered a measured read, acknowledging the bill is nearing passage while conceding that the fight over ethics language is complicating any bipartisan agreement. Scheduling work toward bringing the measure to the Senate floor continues to center on an August 6 milestone. Analysts tracking the process warn that if deliberations drag beyond that window, final passage could slip past the November midterm elections, resetting the political math entirely. The compressed timeline places heavy pressure on negotiators to resolve the ethics dispute quickly, since the calendar — not the underlying policy — may ultimately decide whether the CLARITY Act becomes law this year.

Lummis pushed back firmly on the Democratic objections, rejecting the ethics framing as unworkable. “We cannot write a law that targets a single person,” she said, adding that Trump built wealth from digital assets before taking office and that private citizens earning money is a basic principle of American capitalism. She also dismissed concerns that the July 11 death of former Senator Lindsey Graham would derail the timeline, suggesting the loss could instead galvanize Republican senators to advance the wider altcoin and digital-asset market framework. Lummis reiterated that her finished text is ready and will be introduced within days, keeping the August deadline firmly in play.

From COINOTAG's desk, the CLARITY Act is legislation rather than a traded asset, so our proprietary 42-indicator composite support-and-resistance scoring engine returns no spot price, no support or resistance levels and no derivatives positioning to grade — there is no order book to read here. What our aggregate market data does show is a cautious backdrop: the Fear & Greed Index sits at 25/100 in Extreme Fear, Bitcoin dominance is elevated at 69.6%, and the total crypto market capitalization stands near $1.86 trillion, still far below its all-time high. The bullish case is that a clear US market-structure framework lifts sentiment out of Extreme Fear; the bearish case is a delay past the midterms that keeps risk appetite in bear-market territory.