The United States Senate has blocked the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act from advancing, with a 49-50 procedural vote falling well short of the 60 supporters required to move the bill forward. The cloture vote failed to reach the threshold needed to move the bill to formal debate, marking a significant defeat for the cryptocurrency industry, which had spent years and considerable resources pushing for a federal regulatory framework covering digital assets. While the vote represents the furthest such legislation has progressed to date, the failure to secure even a simple majority, with several Republicans voting against the measure, leaves the effort in a difficult position heading into the remainder of the congressional session.
The bill had been positioned as the most significant piece of cryptocurrency legislation to reach the Senate floor, intended to establish clear rules dividing regulatory authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over digital assets. Republican leaders had released a revised version of the bill on Sunday, adding new ethics restrictions aimed at addressing Democratic concerns about public officials profiting from crypto ventures, but those changes proved insufficient to overcome remaining opposition. Senators Mark Warner and Adam Schiff said the revised text still did not resolve the central issue, noting the bill barred new issuance of digital assets by public officials and their spouses but did not require divestment from existing revenue-sharing arrangements.Several Democrats who had spent months negotiating on the bill, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner, Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Ruben Gallego, Angela Alsobrooks, and Catherine Cortez Masto, ultimately voted against advancing it.
Senator Cynthia Lummis, who announced in December 2025 that she would not seek reelection, had described the final package as the end of what Republicans could offer, saying there was nothing left to give, while Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott framed the substitute as incorporating everything Democrats had requested across fifteen months of negotiations. Lummis had warned ahead of the vote that a failed cloture motion could effectively end the push for the bill after more than a year of talks.
Markets reacted negatively as the outcome became clear, with Bitcoin slipping back to around 76,000 dollars and crypto-linked companies including Circle, Bullish, and Coinbase extending earlier losses. The failure essentially ends market structure legislative work in the Senate for 2026, and with Congress expected to be under split party control next year, it remains unclear when lawmakers might return to the issue. Grayscale acknowledged the result as not the outcome it had hoped for, saying the industry continues to make progress through ongoing work by regulators such as the SEC and CFTC, and reaffirming its intention to keep working with policymakers as US crypto policy develops.
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