The crypto industry scored a key win on Thursday after a Senate committee approved the Clarity Act, which would be the first law defining regulatory authority over digital assets.
The vote was largely along party lines, with two Democrats (Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks) joining all Republicans in voting in favor of the bill. The final vote was 15-9. It now has to pass both the Senate and the House and be signed into law by President Donald Trump. The White House has supported the bill.
CNBC detailed that members of both parties committed to continue working to remedy disagreements, including ethics language regarding elected officials profiting from crypto.
Committee chair Tim Scott said the development was important to provide guidance to the industry. "Developers, entrepreneurs and investors were left with uncertainty. They faced confusion and enforcement actions, when instead, the government should have been crafting clear rules of the road."
The CLARITY Act is being positioned by its supporters as an attempt to reduce long-standing uncertainty over how digital assets are regulated in the U.S.. Lawmakers have been working through definitions that determine whether certain tokens fall under securities law or commodities oversight, an issue that has shaped enforcement actions involving major crypto firms in recent years.
Legal commentary published in Lexology outlined that the bill reflects a broader attempt to modernize U.S. financial regulation in response to the rapid expansion of blockchain-based financial services. It also emphasized that jurisdictional clarity between federal agencies remains one of the central issues in the legislative text.
Thomson Reuters Practical Law described the legislation as part of a broader effort to standardize digital asset regulation, particularly in relation to investor protection rules and supervisory authority. The material pointed to ongoing discussions about how regulatory boundaries would function in practice across different types of crypto activity.
Earlier IBT coverage detailed how negotiations over stablecoin provisions helped move the legislation forward after earlier deadlocks in talks between lawmakers and stakeholders. That compromise helped clear procedural hurdles that allowed the bill to advance to the current Senate stage.
Originally published on IBTimes
