Current Affairs Security

Big Finance Backs the Clarity Act. Problem: The Senate Still Can't Get There

2026-07-29

BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Goldman Sachs and SoFi have publicly endorsed the Clarity Act in recent days. That's not a small thing. These five firms alone manage north of $30 trillion in assets, and they're all saying the same thing: Wall Street wants crypto's regulatory gray zone to end. Now.

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act would establish a new regulatory framework for U.S. crypto and overhaul how the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversee the sector. The timing matters. Senate negotiators released updated legislative text on July 22, merging proposals from both chambers and, crucially, addressing one of the bill's thorniest problems: ethics restrictions on senior government officials involved with crypto.

The financial industry's reasoning is straightforward. Clear rules protect investors. Clear rules give companies certainty. Clear rules help the U.S. stay competitive as digital assets go mainstream. Fidelity, which oversees roughly $7.1 trillion, argued that a consistent national regulatory framework would encourage responsible innovation while providing greater certainty for market participants. You hear this a lot from institutional players now. They're not anti-regulation. They want rules. Predictable ones.

But here's the thing: Wall Street's unified voice masks something messier underneath. JPMorgan backs changes that Coinbase and the broader crypto industry vigorously oppose. The dispute is over stablecoin yield restrictions. JPMorgan wants them. Coinbase, which derives roughly one-fifth of its revenue from stablecoin rewards, does not. This disagreement has become a critical obstacle to Senate passage.

The timeline is evaporating. The Senate faces a shrinking window before its August recess. The House passed the bill in July 2025. It cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May. Since then? Stalled. It needs 60 votes to pass, which means roughly seven to ten Democrats must cross over. As of this week, none had publicly committed.

The updated text attempts to address Democratic concerns about President Trump's crypto business interests. The bill bars the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges, senior officials and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring a digital asset "in exchange for consideration" while in office. The prohibition sunsets at noon on January 20, 2029—the end of the current presidential term. It's not retroactive, so earlier conduct carries no penalty.

Endorsements from major institutions, regulators, and now much of Wall Street have actually accumulated. CFTC Chair Michael Selig has publicly backed the legislation. Senator Dave McCormick urged leadership to bring it to the floor and let every senator go on the record. Industry has endorsed it. Regulators have endorsed it.

What hasn't materialised is Democratic votes. That's the real bottleneck. You can have all the institutional support in the world, but in an increasingly polarized Senate with a shrinking legislative window, that doesn't automatically convert to passage. The Clarity Act is losing oxygen. Wall Street is already in the room. The question now is whether the Senate will show up.

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