Senate Republicans Unveil Final 635-Page CLARITY Act Text for Bitcoin (BTC) Market Rules

Final 635-Page Substitute Published

Senate Republicans released the completed text of the CLARITY Act on Sunday, closing out the negotiating cycle that has defined US crypto market-structure legislation through 2026. The substitute — docketed as EHF26724 — stretches to 635 pages, five pages longer than the September 10 working draft, and was published by Senators Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott after what their offices describe as more than a year of daily bipartisan talks. By the sponsors' count, the final language absorbs 126 substantive edits that Democrats asked for. Attention now shifts to Tuesday afternoon, when the chamber will test cloture on the motion to proceed — a 60-vote threshold that leaves the Republican side still short by roughly seven members. The rewritten official draft text rebuilds the ethics division from the ground up. It bans covered officials from holding a “significant financial interest,” defined as $15,000 or more of equity in any business that drew a plurality of its revenue from issuing or sponsoring tokens in any of the past three years, with mandatory divestment or placement into a qualified blind trust. Coverage extends to presidents-elect, vice presidents-elect and members-elect before they are sworn in, though it stops at spouses and does not reach dependent children. The draft deletes the 2029 sunset along with the severability clause, flips penalties from a 10% cap to a 20% floor with inflation adjustment, and grants state attorneys general standing to sue — a class the earlier draft barred by name. President Donald Trump met advisers on Friday to discuss the ethics language, and Lummis is framing Tuesday as a test of whether Democrats accept the deal they helped negotiate.

Ethics Penalties, Developer Shields, Stablecoin Yield

Outside the ethics title, the bill tightens exchange conduct. The own-account rule is retitled a prohibition on proprietary trading, and its exceptions narrow from activities “in support of the business” to a stricter test of what is “necessary,” subject to rules the CFTC must write. Exchanges and wallet providers — not issuers — face a new circuit-breaker on rewards: if the Treasury Secretary finds within 18 months that community-bank deposits are migrating into stablecoins on a substantial scale, the department must draft rules reaching yield merely “similar to” bank interest, a lower bar that could sweep exchange rewards programs together with interest-style products such as Savings Dai. The definition of a “network token” widens from a digital commodity to a digital asset — a category broad enough to reach assets beyond Layer 1 blockchain protocols — while CFTC exemptions must now run through the Commodity Exchange Act's Section 4(c) process. The revised Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act retains shields against treating developers as money transmitters or financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act, extends them to miners and validators who were previously excluded, and removes references to 18 U.S.C. § 1960 on unlicensed money transmitting. Software developers — including teams building on an alternative virtual machine — gain protection from BSA registration but lose the express shield against criminal money-transmitting liability the earlier draft carried. Civil violations of the ethics rules carry penalties of $500,000 or 20% of the prohibited transaction's value, whichever is greater, with the ethics title taking effect 360 days after enactment, or sooner if implementing regulations finish first, per the statement issued by Lummis's office. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

Tuesday Cloture Vote in Focus

Our reading of the bill text itself — not secondhand summaries — underlines one point: this is a proposal, not a final rule, and nothing binds any entity until both chambers pass it and it is signed. If enacted, the ethics title would bind federal officials, judges, their spouses, and exchanges and issuers that list assets in violation of its bans, with enforcement opening 360 days later. Whether the package buys the seven Democratic votes Republicans still needs becomes clear on Tuesday at 2:15pm ET. Markets are not waiting: Bitcoin trades near $78,000 as of writing, and the $77,000–$78,000 zone now reads as the nearest support and resistance band into the vote.