CLARITY Act goes viral

The CLARITY Act is not law, and as of April 19, 2026, Congress still shows the bill sitting in the Senate after passing the House last year. (congress.gov) The House passed H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, by a 294-134 vote on July 17, 2025. Congress.gov lists the latest formal action as September 18, 2025, when the Senate received the bill and referred it to the Banking Committee. (congress.gov) The bill would split crypto oversight between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, create registration rules for digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers, and set disclosure standards for some token issuers. Congress.gov’s summary also says those intermediaries would remain subject to Bank Secrecy Act anti-money-laundering rules. (congress.gov) That is different from saying banks can now freely partner with crypto firms. The public bill text is a market-structure measure for digital assets, not a final bank-partnership statute that has already taken effect. (congress.gov) Senate Republicans have been working on their own version, and the Banking Committee published a fact sheet on January 13, 2026 saying its draft would draw a “bright line” between Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority. The same release said the bill was headed for committee markup, but that process did not finish in January. (banking.senate.gov) A Senate Banking Committee executive session to consider H.R. 3633 was scheduled for January 15, 2026, then marked “POSTPONED” on the committee’s website. That postponement is one reason claims that the law is effectively complete run ahead of the public record. (banking.senate.gov) Since then, senators and industry groups have been negotiating one of the biggest sticking points: whether stablecoin firms or related platforms can offer yield, or rewards, to users. The Block reported on March 18 that Sen. Cynthia Lummis said the committee aimed to mark up the bill before the end of April after those talks stalled earlier this year. (theblock.co) The same report said banks warned that yield-bearing stablecoins could pull deposits from traditional lenders, while crypto firms argued that tighter limits would choke off product design. Another March report from The Block said Senate Majority Leader John Thune did not expect the bill to clear the Banking Committee before April because those talks were still deadlocked. (theblock.co 1) (theblock.co 2) The White House has signaled support for the House bill’s overall direction, but not that the process is over. In a July 15, 2025 statement of administration policy, the White House said senior advisers would recommend signing H.R. 3633 if it reached the president in its then-current form, while also saying the House and Senate still needed to “build consensus” on a joint product. (whitehouse.gov) Recent market chatter has focused on what passage could do later in 2026, not on a law that already exists. CoinDesk reported on April 15 that JPMorgan analysts viewed the negotiations as nearing a “final breakthrough,” which is much closer to “still being negotiated” than to “done deal.” (coindesk.com) So the clean version is this: the CLARITY Act has passed the House, stalled and restarted in the Senate, and remains under negotiation in April 2026. Any bank-crypto expansion tied to it still depends on Senate action, final legislative text, and a bill that actually reaches the president’s desk. (congress.gov) (banking.senate.gov)