The 49-vote dilemma: the CLARITY Act's life-and-death game with morality

According to Woofun AI, the CLARITY bill suffered a procedural blow in the Senate, but it was not completely finished. Republican Senator Thom Tillis submitted a motion for reconsideration through a strategic vote reversal, reserving a key channel for the bill to resume and end the debate during the current congressional session.

The current legislative process is facing a severe time pressure. The Senate is scheduled to adjourn on October 2 and will not resume until after the midterm elections are over, and the House of Representatives has already entered the recess period, making it extremely difficult to complete the entire process between the two houses before the end of the year. Democratic Representative Shri Thanedar pointed out that with only 20 legislative working days left in the current Congress and all scheduled after the midterm elections, the probability of reaching a compromise within 2026 is extremely low.

However, historical precedent provides a faint reference: the GENIUS stablecoin bill was defeated by a narrow margin of 48:49 in May 2025, but only 11 days later, the second vote passed by an overwhelming margin of 66:32, and officially landed in the Senate the following month. Kyle Chassé, founder of crypto investment agency MV Global, warned that a quick turnaround of the GENIUS Act presupposes that all parties have reached an agreement, while the CLARITY Act currently only has time pressure and lacks sufficient support from votes. If we miss the January 3rd of next year, everything will have to start from scratch in 2027. At that time, the House of Representatives is likely to be controlled by the Democratic Party, and the legislative environment will be fundamentally reversed.

According to data compiled by Woofun AI, the voting results for the final debate on Tuesday were 49 votes in favor and 50 votes against, and there is still a significant gap between the 60 votes required to pass the bill. The 49 affirmative votes all came from the Republican Party, and none of the Democratic lawmakers supported opening the debate.

Although the situation seems deadlocked, the Democratic Party has not completely given up. On Wednesday, seven Democratic senators, including Angela Alsobrooks, who voted against on Tuesday, said they are still committed to pushing for legislation to be implemented. Alsobrooks supported the bill out of the Banking Committee in May of this year, but turned against it in this final debate. She stressed that now is a critical time to establish rules for the regulation of digital assets and is willing to continue negotiations around ethical provisions. She criticized the Republican leadership for stopping negotiations at the last minute when the bill was expected to be passed, leading to a failure to reach an agreement. Tillis, on the other hand, hopes to use this procedure to persuade the Democratic Party to join the support camp and pressure it to assume legislative responsibility, believing that the market lacks supervision and must establish protective rules.

The core contradictions of the legislative impasse have moved from the policy text itself to President Trump's moral provisions and his crypto asset holdings. Chassé pointed out that in the six weeks before the election, the essence of the vote had evolved into a referendum on the president's crypto assets, making it difficult to pass existing regulations. Prior to Tuesday's vote, the Republican Party had completed 126 substantive revisions in line with Democratic demands, including tightening restrictions on public officials profiting from crypto projects and authorizing state attorneys general to enforce some moral provisions.

Despite these concessions, Thanedar advocated further restrictions on the president's use of his official status for personal gain. Citing at least $1.4 billion in crypto asset earnings declared by Trump in his 2025 annual financial disclosure documents, he believes that establishing a restraining mechanism can both monitor the president and maintain the long-term health of the digital asset market. The point of disagreement is no longer whether to enact legislation, but whether the current text can garner sufficient cross-party support. Thanedar acknowledged that losing the vote on Tuesday showed that if a bipartisan joint drafting model is adopted, it is more likely to form a cross-party absolute majority coalition to push for formal legislation on the bill.

If the rescue law requires major changes, the industry's bottom line and compromise strategy become key variables. Chassé believes the industry should not dwell on the single focus of moral provisions. In terms of stablecoin earnings, setting an upper limit or fusing mechanism for earnings is likely to be necessary in exchange for the support of banking senators and a large number of Democratic lawmakers. At the same time, regulations relating to illegal finance and state-level enforcement need to be strengthened.

However, self-hosting and developer protection clauses are the bottom line that the crypto industry should stick to. Throughout the negotiations, lawmakers and industry groups fiercely debated the extent to which the bill should protect unmanaged software developers from financial and anti-money laundering compliance obligations. MV Global's view is that while ensuring developers' protection and self-hosting rights, concessions in other areas may be necessary tactical sacrifices to pass legislation.

Even if the CLARITY Act continues to stall at the congressional level, the advance of US crypto regulation will not stop as a result. Ryan Eagan, head of US federal affairs at the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI), said that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are continuing to work to reduce industry uncertainty through regulatory guidelines, rulemaking, inaction letters, and exemptions. CCI anticipates that regardless of where the CLARITY Act ultimately takes, the regulators' crypto-related agendas will be vigorously promoted.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Finance and banking regulators are still implementing the GENIUS Act in conjunction with its implementation. MicroStrategy (MSTR.US) Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor also pointed out that the SEC, CFTC, and the Treasury can continue to introduce regulatory rules based on existing laws, and regulatory progress does not have to wait for congressional legislation.

However, regulatory guidelines at the executive level may be overturned as the government changes, and it is extremely difficult to revise national legislations. Although the CLARITY bill has a weak vitality, it is still unknown whether lawmakers will be able to gather 60 votes in favor without making major changes to the core content.