The CLARITY Act Explained: What It Does and Where It Stands

What the CLARITY Act is for

H.R. 3633 was introduced in the House on 29 May 2025 and sent to two committees, Financial Services and Agriculture, because it reaches into the territory of two regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission oversees securities. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversees commodity futures and, in narrower ways, commodity markets.

Digital assets sit awkwardly between them. Whether a token is a security has been decided under the Supreme Court's 1946 Howey test, which asks whether buyers invested money in a common enterprise expecting profits from the efforts of others. The SEC's own March 2026 interpretive release notes that the agency applied that test mostly through enforcement actions, an approach some commissioners and commentators called "regulation by enforcement".

The CLARITY Act would replace case-by-case answers with definitions written into statute, a registration regime for trading platforms, and rules for when a token stops being treated as part of a securities offering.

How the House bill splits the SEC and the CFTC

The House-passed text turns on one new term. A digital commodity is a digital asset "intrinsically linked to a blockchain system" whose value comes, or is expected to come, from use of that system. The bill does not name any coin.

The exemption comes with a clock. A project can rely on it only if its blockchain is already mature or the issuer intends it to become mature within four years. The design assumes a token starts out dependent on its developers, when securities-style protections fit, and moves toward commodity treatment as control spreads out.

The House bill also carried a sixth title, the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act. It would have barred Federal Reserve Banks from offering accounts or financial products directly to individuals and from issuing a central bank digital currency.

The House vote

The House passed H.R. 3633 by 294 to 134 on 17 July 2025 (Roll Call 199). 216 Republicans and 78 Democrats voted yes; 134 Democrats voted no. It was one of three digital asset bills the House passed that day, under a single rule:

• The GENIUS Act (S. 1582), passed 308 to 122 and signed the next day as Public Law 119-27.
• The CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633), passed 294 to 134.
• The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act (H.R. 1919), passed 219 to 210. The Senate never voted on it.

Only the stablecoin bill became law that summer. Our guide to the GENIUS Act covers what it requires of issuers.

What the Senate Banking Committee changed

The Senate received the bill on 18 September 2025 and referred it to the Banking Committee. The committee voted to report it on 14 May 2026, and Senator Tim Scott reported it to the floor on 1 June 2026 with a full substitute text (Calendar No. 423). The substitute is a different bill in several respects:

• New token categories. A network token is treated as a non-security for the securities laws. An ancillary asset is a network token whose value still depends on the managerial efforts of the person who launched it, and it carries disclosure duties.
• No CBDC title. The anti-CBDC provisions are gone. A separate CBDC ban became law on 11 July 2026 as Title XI of Public Law 119-101.
• Stablecoin rewards. Section 404 bars exchanges and other digital asset service providers, and their affiliates, from paying US customers interest or yield solely for holding payment stablecoins, or in a way equivalent to interest on a bank deposit. Rewards based on bona fide activities or transactions would remain allowed under rules to be written within a year.
• Self-custody. The Keep Your Coins Act section would stop federal agencies from prohibiting or restricting an individual's ability to hold digital assets in a self-hosted wallet and use them for any lawful purpose.
• Temporary holds. Section 305 would shield firms from private lawsuits when they voluntarily freeze a digital asset transaction they reasonably believe is illegal, or do so at law enforcement's written request.

The Banking text covers the securities side. The Senate Agriculture Committee, which oversees the CFTC, reported its own measure, S. 3755, the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act, on 2 February 2026. It has been on the Senate calendar since.

Where it stands on 28 October 2026

A motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 and a cloture motion were filed on 8 August 2026. On 15 September 2026 the Senate voted 49 to 50 on cloture, short of the 60 votes needed to end debate on the motion to proceed (Roll Call 234). One senator did not vote. Senator Thom Tillis, who voted no, then entered a motion to reconsider, which allows the Senate to vote again on the same cloture motion. Senators Jerry Moran and Martin Heinrich filed amendments the same day.

The bill status record on govinfo.gov, last updated 17 September 2026, shows no further action. For the bill to become law, the Senate would need 60 votes to proceed and then to pass a text. Because that text would differ from the House version, the House would have to agree to it before it went to the President.

Regulators have kept moving in the meantime. The SEC's interpretive release on how the securities laws apply to digital assets, issued with CFTC guidance, took effect on 23 March 2026 and sorts tokens into categories. On 13 October 2026 the CFTC published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on rules for retail transactions and markets in digital assets under its existing authority, with comments due by 14 December 2026. An interpretation or rule can be revised by a later commission. A statute can be changed only by Congress, and that durability is the main argument for legislating.

Our CBDC and stablecoin tracker records each vote and status change on H.R. 3633.

What the bill would change for savers

Most of the CLARITY Act governs firms, not households. Its effects on an individual would come through the platforms they use:

• Exchanges and brokers dealing in digital commodities would register with the CFTC or the SEC and meet custody, disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules.
• Tokens would carry a legal label, security or digital commodity, instead of waiting for an enforcement case to supply one.
• Under the Senate text, interest-like rewards on stablecoin balances held at exchanges would end, which matters to anyone treating a dollar stablecoin as a cash account. Our guide to how stablecoins work explains why issuers already cannot pay yield.
• Self-custody would gain explicit federal protection, while platforms would gain legal cover for freezing suspect transfers.

Those last two pull in opposite directions on control of money, and both are in the same Senate text. Until the Senate acts, none of it applies.