CLARITY Act deadline turns into Congress’s last real shot at crypto rules

Senator Bernie Moreno’s end‑of‑May ultimatum has turned the CLARITY Act into Congress’s last credible chance this cycle to set U.S. crypto market‑structure rules before politics and bank lobbying slam the window shut.

At a Washington event on April 22, Senator Bernie Moreno (R‑Ohio) dropped the optimism and set a hard line: the CLARITY Act must clear Congress by the end of May or U.S. crypto market structure legislation is effectively dead for this cycle. “I think we’re going to get it done by the end of May,” he said, but he has also warned that if the bill isn’t passed by then, digital asset legislation “will likely be impossible” to advance for the foreseeable future as the midterm calendar takes over.

Moreno’s ultimatum comes as the Senate Banking Committee still hasn’t held a single formal vote on the package, even though the House approved its version 294–134 in July 2025 and the Senate Agriculture Committee cleared its own text back in January. As Disruption Banking and Galaxy Research have both mapped out, the bill must now run a five‑step gauntlet in a matter of weeks: a Banking Committee markup, a 60‑vote Senate floor passage, reconciliation with the Agriculture version, reconciliation with the House bill, and finally President Donald Trump’s signature.

Bank noise, DeFi text, and a shrinking calendar

If Moreno is playing bad cop on timing, he is even blunter on bank pushback around stablecoin yield. At the DC Blockchain Summit he dismissed the backlash outright: “There’s a lot of noise in the market, but most of it is fake,” he said, arguing that banks “also need to innovate” instead of trying to kill yield‑bearing stablecoin products in committee. His comments landed just as reports emerged that the North Carolina Bankers Association was urging member banks to call Senator Thom Tillis’s office to oppose a hard‑won stablecoin yield compromise.

On April 20, industry lobby group the Digital Chamber sent a formal letter to Senate leadership pressing for an immediate markup, warning that further delay would turn the CLARITY Act into another lost opportunity for market‑structure reform. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R‑Wyo) has said DeFi provisions in the bill are already finalized and called this “our last chance,” while Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad has publicly projected an April markup and a May floor vote if leadership moves.

“The US Senate Banking Committee is unlikely to consider the CLARITY Act, a bill to regulate the crypto market, in April. Discussion of the document may be postponed until May,” says Yuliya Barabash, founder and managing partner at the law firm SBSB Fintech Lawyers.

The main obstacle remains the regulation on rewards for storing stablecoins. Banking industry representatives fear that high returns from stablecoins will lead to an outflow of deposits from traditional institutions. This could undermine the financial stability of smaller institutions. According to Tillis, negotiators need more time to find a compromise between banks and crypto companies.

-Yulia Barabash

That schedule now runs head‑on into another priority: the nomination of Kevin Warsh as Trump’s pick to replace Jerome Powell as Fed chair, a process that is already burning Banking Committee time in late April. Every day the Warsh hearing occupies the agenda is a day the markup does not happen, and Congress is due to leave town for Memorial Day recess on May 21, leaving roughly three working weeks in May to get Democratic votes and clear a 60‑vote threshold on the floor.

Prediction markets flash amber as capital looks abroad

For traders, the legislative clock is now a tradable variable. On Polymarket, odds that the CLARITY Act is signed into law in 2026 climbed from around 38% to the mid‑40s after Moreno’s April 22 remarks, but remain far from a confident yes. One recent update pegged the “yes” probability at roughly 44%, even after earlier spikes above 80% when White House adviser Patrick Witt signaled that remaining hurdles were “toppling fast.” Finbold noted this week that expectations for 2026 passage have been “slashed” by about a third in just five days amid Senate delay.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly warned that every month of U.S. dithering pushes digital asset innovation toward hubs like Dubai and Singapore, which are actively courting American crypto capital with clearer licensing, tax, and tokenization regimes. That warning is backed by hard numbers: Q1 2026 saw a record $297 billion in global venture funding, with growing slices aimed at crypto and AI‑adjacent infrastructure, while Y Combinator made its first stablecoin investment this April.

With or without the CLARITY Act, that capital is going to move. The difference, as Moreno and industry advocates keep stressing, is whether it moves under a U.S. legal framework that offers institutional guardrails and SEC‑CFTC clarity — or whether Washington runs out the clock and watches its last real shot at shaping the next decade of crypto market structure vanish with the May recess gavel.