06-09-2026 
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Crypto optimism is in short supply as the United States Senate drags its feet on bringing digital asset market structure legislation to the floor for what could prove a highly uncertain vote.
- CLARITY pessimism reigns as unresolved issues remain
- Jamie Dimon vows to fight Brian Armstrong on Senate floor
- CLARITY’s illicit finance language is perfectly (in)adequate
- Crypto PACs ramp up activity as midterm races tighten
Crypto hearts were all-a-flutter last week on reports that the Senate’s digital asset market structure bill (CLARITY Act) had been added to the official Senate legislative calendar. The public perception, spurred by crypto hype accounts, was that the Senate had scheduled the CLARITY floor vote that the sector had been anxiously awaiting since the bill was approved by the Senate Banking Committee last month.
However, less excitable types soon burst this bubble, noting that this was a simple procedural move that represented the Senate’s formal acknowledgment of all the CLARITY amendments approved during last month’s Banking markup.
In other words, CLARITY must still be blended with the version approved by the Senate Agriculture Committee in January, then approved by at least 60 Senators during the floor vote, then sent to the House of Representatives for its approval. Should the House tweak the bill to better reflect the version the House approved last year (or for any other reason), CLARITY would need to return to the Senate for another successful 60+ vote before finally being sent to President Trump’s desk for signing into law.
Meanwhile, the calendar is counting down to Congress taking its traditional month-long August recess, after which most of D.C.’s focus will shift to November’s midterm elections. It doesn’t help that Trump continues to provide major political distractions, including the war with Iran messing with the economy, his always controversial personnel picks, and a whole lot more.
Late last month, TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg suggested the worsening political environment meant finding the support of the minimum seven Democrats needed to join every single Republican senator in voting “aye” on CLARITY was getting harder. Seiberg said TD Cowen “remain pessimistic that Clarity will become law this year.”
A particularly tough hurdle left to clear to secure sufficient Dem support is CLARITY’s lack of an “ethics” provision, aka language that would limit or prohibit elected officials—including Trump—and their families from profiting off crypto ventures.
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), who led the fight to achieve a bipartisan compromise on CLARITY’s treatment of the stablecoin-focused “yield/rewards” issue, said last week that CLARITY won’t get her vote unless language addressing both ethics and illicit finance (the latter mostly involving decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms) is included in the bill’s final text.
On June 5, Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ: GLXY) issued a research note that lowered CLARITY’s odds of passage this year from 75% to 60%. Galaxy cited the shrinking timeline and the lack of evidence that progress was being made on either the ethics or illicit finance fronts.
Galaxy’s head of research, Alex Thorn, suggested at least two GOP senators (Missouri’s Josh Hawley and Kentucky’s Rand Paul) will vote “no” on CLARITY, upping the number of required Dem votes to nine.
Galaxy warned that its 60% estimate “still describes a bill that is more likely than not to become law this year … but the gap between being on the calendar and being on the floor is measured in days the Senate does not obviously have.”
On June 2, Bitwise’s chief investment officer, Matt Hougan, issued a blog post “on the unusual state of the crypto market” that included the claim that CLARITY “will probably fail.” Hougan cited conversations with two “D.C. insiders,” one from each party, who put CLARITY’s odds of passage at 5% (the Dem) and 30% (the GOP’er). Hougan warned that “crypto can survive Clarity failing or rally if Clarity passes. But it can’t thrive in the in-between.”
Banks not done protesting stablecoin rewards
CLARITY’s stablecoin rewards compromise was deemed acceptable to the crypto sector, in part due to the vagueness of the language surrounding the user “activities” that will still qualify for rewards. But CLARITY advanced over the objections of the banking sector, particularly banks with large numbers of retail clients who could ditch banks for the greater rewards offered by crypto platforms.
The banks have since indicated that their fight isn’t over. Jamie Dimon, CEO of banking titan JPMorgan Chase (NASDAQ: JPM), declared late last month that “the banks will not accept” the approved compromise as written. Dimon stressed that the pushback in the Senate will involve the entire banking sector, “not just the big guys.”
Dimon singled out Brian Armstrong, CEO of the Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) digital asset exchange, as the engine behind the crypto sector’s stablecoin rewards push. Dimon claimed that “no one’s gonna bow down to this guy, or that company … [Armstrong’s] the only one and he’s spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Washington on this thing.”
When Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo attempted to push back on Dimon’s claim that Armstrong was a lone actor in this fight, Dimon cut her off, saying Armstrong is “full of shit.” The interview wrapped quickly thereafter.
Dimon’s outburst may have been provoked by a recent Armstrong tweet promoting Coinbase’s new “direct deposit” option and the ability of customers to “earn up to 4% on every purchase” of their Coinbase One Card. As Amanda Fischer of consumer watchdog group Better Markets observed, this promo ran counter to how Coinbase “lawyers & lobbyists constantly post about how stablecoins won’t supplant traditional banking & stablecoins are narrow banks with no maturity transformation.”
Following Dimon’s public attack, Armstrong tweeted (without additional comment) an AI-generated image of himself and Dimon as the stars of the Heated Rivalry television series. Other users quickly mocked up their own images, including one of Armstrong and Dimon locking lips in a more fitting homage to the homoerotic series.
Also wading into the CLARITY arena was Trump, who has sparred with the JPM CEO on a number of occasions, going as far as to sue both Dimon and JPM this January. Trump’s suit accused JPM/Dimon of “debanking” the president and his companies in the wake of the January 6, 2021, invasion of the Capitol building by Trump’s supporters.
Despite not having posted anything online about crypto in several months, Trump used his Truth Social platform on May 27 to post his claim that he’d “SAVED” the “American Crypto Industry.” Trump added that under his leadership, “we will codify a FUTURE-PROOF Digital Asset Market Structure that cannot be undone by the Crypto haters.”Lack of CLARITY on the illicit finance issue
As for CLARITY’s “illicit finance” language, the Blockchain Association (BA) sent a letter this month to Senate leaders on behalf of a number of “former national security, intelligence, and law enforcement officials.” The letter urges swift passage of CLARITY to “support a framework that strengthens both law enforcement capabilities and our national security.”
The BA claims passing CLARITY will ensure a “clear federal framework [that] strengthens U.S. national security by bringing more activity into regulated channels, improving visibility for law enforcement, and giving investigators and prosecutors stronger tools to combat financial crime.”
The letter further claims “nothing in the Clarity Act limits the ability of prosecutors or investigators to pursue fraud, money laundering, sanctions evasion, terrorism financing, trafficking, or other criminal activity involving digital assets.”
But that’s not the view of many current law enforcement types, including the National Sheriffs’ Association and the National District Attorneys Association, both of which have expressed opposition to CLARITY due to their belief that it will “materially limit” their ability to track digital assets involved in criminal activity.
Regardless, White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt tweeted his support of the BA’s letter on June 2, calling CLARITY “the most pro-law enforcement crypto bill ever considered by Congress. Fact.” (Word broke late Monday that the White House will host law enforcement groups on Wednesday in a bid to address their CLARITY concerns.)
Witt followed up on Monday by retweeting a different letter signed by “over 200” pro-crypto groups urging Senate leaders to schedule a CLARITY floor vote “without delay.”
Witt’s tweet alerted the crypto masses to a “big week ahead” for the legislation. Witt said “work has continued in earnest behind the scenes” since the Banking markup, adding that “the issue set has narrowed, and good faith offers are being put forward to close the gap. But time is of the essence.”
Crypto PACs to politicians: Look on our works, ye Mighty, and despair!
The DeFi sector also wants CLARITY to pass ASAP, without any further revisions to the language, offering DeFi developers protection from legal blowback when the noncustodial platforms they design are used by bad actors to launder the proceeds of crime.
Enter a new political action committee (PAC) focused on ensuring favorable treatment for DeFi developers. The Defend Developers PAC made its official debut last week with support from key members of the Solana Policy Institute, Uniswap Labs, and the DeFi Education Fund.
Defend Developers calls itself “the first hybrid PAC focused on championing American crypto developers, DeFi builders, and technologists.” To stretch its as-yet unquantified financial clout, the PAC will support “only incumbent members” of Congress “who actively champion developer protections, decentralized technology, and permissionless blockchain infrastructure.”
Crypto-friendly PACs posted an impressive record in recent GOP and Dem primary races, including a six-for-six tally in Texas runoff votes. Chief among these was the $6.5 million spent by Fairshake, the leading crypto PAC, to defeat Congressional mainstay Rep. Al Green.
Green was in a fight against fellow Dem Christian Menefee after Texas redrew its electoral maps to gerrymander the pair’s two districts into one. Green’s defeat will not only rid Congress of a vocal crypto skeptic, it marks the first incumbent scalp claimed by Fairshake in the current electoral cycle. Flush with victory, Fairshake appears eager for other incumbents to get the message.
Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter issued a gloating statement following Green’s defeat, saying it “proves that anti-crypto hostility carries real electoral consequences.” Vetter claimed Fairshake “was the difference-maker in this race, and we will continue to aggressively back leaders like Rep. Menefee across the country.”
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) may find himself in Fairshake’s sights after the longtime House veteran won his primary race last week. Fairshake spent $2.8 million successfully boosting other California primary candidates but appears to have left Sherman alone. That restraint might not last now that Sherman’s booked his ticket to face GOP nominee Larry Thompson in November.
Or not. Sherman easily defeated Thompson in the 2024 election despite the latter enjoying the crypto sector’s financial support. And despite the industry’s lack of effort to oppose Sherman’s primary campaign, Sherman nonetheless issued three separate mailers directly targeting the “corrupt crypto industry” and its efforts to tip the electoral scales.
Green’s defeat prompted Axios to run an article titled How AI, crypto and AIPAC are ending political careers. The article quoted Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) saying “people want to campaign on” these PACs spending against them, but “quite frankly, I don’t think that many people are … moved by it.” (Veasey may feel a lot more cavalier about the issue given that he’s not seeking re-election this November.)
As was the case during the 2024 election, none of the ads currently supporting pro-crypto candidates or tearing down crypto foes mention digital assets or blockchain. As a left-wing organizer told Axios: “You don’t have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars if your candidates or policies are popular.”
June 23 will see Democrats in Maryland’s 5th District vote for their nominee to replace outgoing Rep. Steny Hoyer. Fairshake’s Dem-focused offshoot Protect Progress has already spent $3 million backing their preferred candidate, Adrian Boafo, a former Hoyer aide.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) criticized this spending last week, saying groups like Protect Progress “are not investing in this race out of charity. They are spending because they believe the beneficiary of their spending … will be a dependable vote in support of their special interests.” Van Hollen added that “voters need to be aware of the fact that these outside groups do not have the voters’ interests at heart.”
As CoinDesk recently observed, while Fairshake claims to support pro-crypto candidates regardless of their party affiliation, some other PACs have made no effort to disguise their exclusively pro-GOP positions. But with the GOP projected to lose the House in November and facing an uphill battle to retain control of the Senate, that partisan stance could prove problematic come January when the next Congress takes its seats.
Watch | Blockchain Futurist 2025 (Part 2): From hype to real use cases
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