Senate Republicans have circulated a new 630-page version of the CLARITY Act just days before a critical procedural vote.
The legislation is highly consequential for the broader cryptocurrency market, including Bitcoin, XRP and Ethereum.
Journalist Brendan Pedersen reported Thursday that the latest text remains a Republican proposal rather than a bipartisan agreement.
According to Pedersen, Democrats who have shown interest in crypto legislation remain skeptical, with one Democratic aide describing the unresolved ethics dispute as the “biggest stumbling block by far.”
"This latest proposal does nothing to resolve those concerns," the aide said.
That could become a decisive problem next week. The Senate’s cloture motion on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act is scheduled to ripen on Sept. 15 at 2:15 p.m. ET. This is a procedural vote to advance consideration of the legislation rather than a final vote on passage.
Key revisions
The updated draft draws a distinction between genuinely decentralized protocols and what it calls "non-decentralized finance trading protocols." Merely participating in a decentralized governance mechanism or an incident-response security council does not automatically amount to control.
At the same time, the bill retains significant protections for software developers.
The revised DeFi language also explicitly focuses parts of the regime on digital-commodity cash and spot markets.
Another notable revision strengthens language concerning credit unions. Regulators, including the National Credit Union Administration, would retain their supervisory and enforcement powers.
The bill also makes technical changes to the GENIUS Act intended to put credit-union accounts on more equal footing with bank deposits when dealing with tokenized financial products.
Sept. 15 becomes the key test
The updated draft therefore changes some of the regulatory mechanics of the CLARITY Act without resolving the political dispute most likely to decide whether the legislation can advance.
The next major test comes Sept. 15, when the Senate is expected to consider cloture on the motion to proceed.
With the current text still lacking bipartisan support, Republicans will have to persuade enough Democrats to allow debate to move forward.
U.Today Editorial Team
Dan Burgin
