--- title: "What Is the CLARITY Act?" term: "CLARITY Act" type: glossary_term canonical: https://www.moonwire.org/insights/glossary/clarity-act.html --- # What Is the CLARITY Act? > The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) is proposed US legislation that would divide market-structure oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC. It passed the House in July 2025 and had not passed the full Senate as of mid-September 2026. The **CLARITY Act** — formally the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, H.R. 3633 — is proposed United States legislation that tries to settle one question: when is a digital asset supervised by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and when does it fall to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission instead? ## Why the question matters Assets whose treatment is already settled in practice gain little from a market-structure statute. The ones that would gain are those still sitting in securities limbo, where the exchange listing them, the custodian holding them and the fund wrapping them each have to make their own judgement about which rulebook applies. That is why the bill is usually described as being about everything other than Bitcoin. ## Where it stands - Passed the House of Representatives 294–134 on 17 July 2025. - Cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15–9 on 14 May 2026. - A Senate procedural vote was scheduled for 15 September 2026; the bill had not passed the full Senate as of that date. ## A cloture vote is not passage Cloture ends debate so that a measure can proceed. It requires 60 votes in the Senate and it does not make anything law. After cloture come floor debate, amendments, an actual passage vote, reconciliation with the House text, and a presidential signature. A headline reporting a cloture result is reporting one of several remaining steps, not the outcome. ## How MoonWire covers it See [Treasury Sanctioned Two Exchanges the Day the Senate Punted the Crypto Bill](/insights/treasury-iran-exchange-sanctions-senate-clarity-delay.html) and the [crypto regulation topic hub](/insights/topics/crypto-regulation.html). The pattern our coverage keeps finding is that while a statute waits, agencies, sanctions lists, courts and exchanges keep acting under authority they already hold — so a stalled bill is not the same thing as a stalled regulatory year. ## What the CLARITY Act is not It is not a licence, a ban, or a ruling about any particular token, and it is not the GENIUS Act, which addresses payment stablecoins. It is also not a market event in itself: whether a vote advances or fails, the descriptive question afterwards is which rulebook a given asset is filed under, and by whom. ## Further reading - [GovTrack: H.R. 3633 - Digital Asset Market Clarity Act](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr3633) - [Wikipedia: Digital Asset Market Clarity Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Asset_Market_Clarity_Act) - [Wikipedia: Cloture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloture) ## Where this appears in MoonWire analysis - [The Bitcoin Argument Moved From Direction to the Calendar](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/market-pulse-2026-09-20.md) — Sep 20, 2026 - [The Fed Hiked and the Bill Failed. The Argument Turned to Whether It Matters](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/market-pulse-2026-09-18.md) — Sep 18, 2026 - [The Senate Blocked the Clarity Act 49-50. The Venues Kept Building Anyway.](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/market-pulse-2026-09-17.md) — Sep 17, 2026 - [Treasury Proposed Stablecoin Rules the Day MiCA Issued Its First Penalty](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/treasury-stablecoin-rules-first-mica-penalty.md) — Aug 17, 2026 - [Coin Bureau Spent the Week on What Stands Between a Holder and the Asset](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/source-spotlight-coin-bureau-2026-08-11.md) — Aug 11, 2026 - [Bitcoin's Breakaway Chain Has Mined the Same Two Blocks Since Saturday](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/market-pulse-2026-08-09.md) — Aug 9, 2026 - [Week-ahead read: a thin news window, a choppy tape, and four calls that all landed](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/prognosis-daily-2026-08-09.md) — Aug 9, 2026 - [Treasury Sanctioned Two Exchanges the Day the Senate Punted the Crypto Bill](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/treasury-iran-exchange-sanctions-senate-clarity-delay.md) — Aug 8, 2026 - [Four Governments Acted on Crypto in One Day. Three of Them Aimed at the Venues.](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/crypto-rules-target-venues-russia-japan-nigeria.md) — Aug 7, 2026 - [Circle Named 11 Founding Validators for Arc. Four of Them Are BlackRock, Visa, Mastercard and DTCC.](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/circle-arc-founding-validators-blackrock-visa-dtcc.md) — Aug 6, 2026 - [Market Pulse - August 2: Bitcoin's Active Address Count Jumped Toward a Million, and the Coldcard Fix Looks Exactly Like a Panic On-Chain](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/market-pulse-2026-08-02.md) — Aug 3, 2026 - [Market Pulse - July 29: Cash Has Out-Earned Crypto's Carry Trade for 157 Days. The Fed Just Left the Cash Leg Where It Was.](https://www.moonwire.org/insights/market-pulse-2026-07-29.md) — Jul 29, 2026 --- *MoonWire surfaces and summarizes public crypto news.* **General information only — not financial advice.** MoonWire Ltd. is not licensed by ASIC and holds no AFSL. 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