Gillibrand: Senate could vote on CLARITY Act by Aug. 10

At the Consensus conference in Miami, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand listed three conditions for a Senate vote on the CLARITY Act before the Aug. 10 recess: consumer-protection measures, stronger illicit-finance rules and explicit ethics language. She also urged combining the market-structure draft with the version approved by the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Gillibrand warned lawmakers that an ethics provision is nonnegotiable: “There will be no one voting for this bill if we don’t have an ethics provision. We cannot allow members of Congress, senior administration officials, presidents or vice presidents, to get rich off of these industries because of their insider status. It is the worst form of pay for play.”

She did not name President Donald Trump, but her remarks come amid scrutiny of his ties to the crypto industry, including a memecoin launch and family involvement in a related business. The ethics language she proposes would bar elected and senior administration officials from using insider access to profit from digital-asset markets.

The market-structure bill has been unsettled since the Senate Banking Committee postponed a markup in January. Senators last week reached a separate agreement on stablecoin yield that could remove a key obstacle, but that deal did not address conflict-of-interest language. Gillibrand said resolving the three items would allow a consolidated bill to be ready for committee action and a floor vote.

At the conference, industry leaders pushed for quick movement. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said lawmakers likely need to act in the next two weeks to keep the bill from being overtaken by other election-year issues. Summer Mersinger, former Commodity Futures Trading Commission commissioner and CEO of the Blockchain Association, said there is a limited window to act but warned it could close quickly. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong opposed the legislation as written when the markup was delayed earlier this year. Exchanges and other industry groups have raised concerns about provisions covering decentralized finance, stablecoins and tokenized equities.

Prediction markets show mixed odds for passage. Traders on one platform placed the probability of the CLARITY Act becoming law by the end of 2026 at about 65%. Another platform estimates roughly a 49% chance the bill will pass before the August recess.

The CLARITY Act aims to establish a regulatory framework for digital assets, including rules for stablecoins and tokenized products. Lawmakers must reconcile competing drafts, agree on enforcement and ethics language, and schedule a Senate Banking Committee markup before the bill can proceed to a full Senate vote.