The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is back on our radars, as the Senate prepares to return from its August recess. There's a vote scheduled for Tuesday. No one knows how it'll go, but folks are worried.

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Really hard to say

The narrative

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act has a new draft and is 47 hours and 45 minutes from its first cloture vote, probably. And no one can say with certainty if there's 60 votes for it.

Why it matters

This is almost the Clarity Act's last chance in 2026. The Senate only has so much floor time before the election, and it's got other issues to address. If the bill fails this week, or can't make it past the Senate this month, that all but assures that the bill won't become law this year.

Breaking it down

CoinDesk's Jesse Hamilton walks through the analysis on what may happen with Clarity (click here) so no need to revisit that. This newsletter will instead be informed by vibes.

And the vibes aren't great. A new text came out last week with changes sought by Democrats. But the key issue — ethics — remains in limbo. The cloture vote will take place seven weeks before the midterm election. As this newsletter has noted before, the issues remaining seem resolvable. The real key issue is politics, as has been the case for much of this summer. The closer lawmakers get to this election, the less likely they are to play nicely on this type of issue.

According to industry participants this past week, the rough consensus is that anything can happen, really. There should be a vote on Tuesday, but it may get pushed if there's a last-minute breakthrough in negotiations. There are, as of Friday afternoon, not 60 votes for the bill but negotiations are expected to stretch through the weekend and that may change.

But overall, industry participants seem pessimistic that the bill will advance.

The newer, growing narrative is that the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission can fill some of the regulatory gaps with rulemaking. But this too, may be fraught with risk.

The key issue is that interest groups will almost certainly sue the agencies, regardless of what they do, and that litigation can stretch out any rulemaking process out for months. The litigation doesn't even need to be successful — it just needs to drag out through Jan. 20, 2029, when the next president will be inaugurated.