Trump to meet Coinbase, Ripple and crypto leaders as CLARITY Act odds collapse to 10%

CLARITY entered the summer with something few major crypto bills have managed to secure: substantial bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress.

That coalition has since fractured under disputes that have less to do with the architecture of crypto regulation than with the politics surrounding it.

The Senate Banking Committee advanced the legislation 15-9 on May 14, with Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks joining all 13 Republicans. The House had already approved H.R. 3633 by a 294-134 vote in July 2025, with 78 Democrats backing the measure.

But negotiations deteriorated over restrictions on crypto activities by senior government officials, limits on stablecoin rewards and protections against illicit finance. Banks have also pressed lawmakers to restrict rewards offered by stablecoin platforms, warning that yield-bearing products could pull deposits away from the traditional banking system.

The biggest obstacle now is the ethics dispute surrounding Trump's crypto ventures.

Galaxy Digital said the legislation has effectively shifted from a policy negotiation into a political one. A bipartisan group of senators sent the White House a proposed ethics framework on July 30, but the administration has not publicly agreed to it.

Without a compromise, Galaxy said supporters may have no viable path to the 60 Senate votes needed to advance the bill.

That stalemate pushed CLARITY past the Senate's August recess without a floor vote.

Nevertheless, Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed before lawmakers left Washington, setting up an early test when the Senate returns Sept. 14.

However, the calendar leaves little margin for another breakdown. The Senate is expected to spend only about three weeks in session before lawmakers leave Washington around Oct. 2 for midterm election campaigning.

Galaxy estimates that CLARITY would need to begin moving almost immediately and consume a substantial portion of that period to have a realistic chance of clearing the chamber this year.

That makes Wednesday's White House gathering more consequential. Executives from some of the companies that have spent years lobbying for federal crypto legislation will meet administration officials just weeks before the Senate determines whether CLARITY still has enough political support to move forward.

SEC and CFTC push ahead on crypto regulations

As CLARITY Act runs into political and scheduling constraints in the Senate, the SEC and CFTC are already testing how much of Washington’s crypto agenda can be advanced under existing law.

The SEC has been developing two major initiatives under Chair Atkins, including Reg Crypto, a tailored framework for certain crypto offerings, and an Innovation Exemption that would allow limited experimentation with tokenized securities and onchain trading.

However, progress has been uneven. The commission had scheduled an Aug. 14 vote on the crypto-offering proposal before canceling the meeting a day earlier without setting a new date. The separate Innovation Exemption has also faced delays amid resistance from parts of the traditional securities industry.

Both initiatives address questions that CLARITY is intended to settle more permanently, including how digital assets can be issued and traded and which federal rules should apply. But their stop-start rollout reflects the limits regulators face in trying to move ahead while Congress remains divided.

The CFTC, meanwhile, is moving more aggressively.

Chair Selig said the agency needs to hear directly from the companies building new financial products if regulators are to keep pace with innovation.

The CFTC will convene its inaugural Innovation Advisory Committee meeting on Aug. 20, bringing together executives, entrepreneurs and market participants to discuss the future of financial regulation.

The meeting builds on the agency's increasingly assertive approach to prediction markets.

On Aug. 11, the CFTC invoked emergency authority after Kalshi warned that a lawsuit brought by New York could disrupt its federally regulated event-contract market nationwide.

Selig ordered the exchange to continue operating under federal derivatives rules and has argued that states cannot override the national framework governing CFTC-regulated markets.

That dispute is part of a broader fight between the commission and several states over whether prediction contracts should primarily be governed by federal derivatives law or state gambling rules.

The SEC and CFTC cannot replicate the full scope or permanence of CLARITY through exemptions, rulemaking and interpretations of existing law. But both agencies are already attempting to establish parts of the regulatory framework Congress has yet to enact.

That tension will carry into the White House gathering, where Atkins and Selig are expected to meet executives whose businesses sit directly at the center of both the stalled legislation and the regulators' efforts to move without it.