New Clarity Act Draft May Arrive as Soon as Next Week, Sources Say

The largest pending piece of U.S. crypto legislation could reach a new milestone within days. A merged version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act may be released as soon as the week of July 13, 2026, according to people following the effort who spoke to CoinDesk. That timing, and much of what the draft contains, rests entirely on anonymous sourcing.

Here is what the reporting establishes and what it does not. The new text combines the bills from the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committees, and one person told CoinDesk that more than 70 pages have been added to the unified version. This is described not as a simple splice of the two committee bills but as the product of renegotiation between members of both committees, with the updated bill said to put more emphasis on consumer protections.

The central obstacle has not moved. The merged text has not solidified a position on a Democrat-demanded restriction that would keep senior government officials, including the president, from maintaining business ties with the crypto sector, according to CoinDesk. Several lawmakers have said they will not vote yes on a final bill without a compromise on those ethics limits. One idea raised in the talks is letting state attorneys general sue for ethics violations. Progress on that negotiation has 'slowed to a crawl,' according to some familiar with it, and the White House has not signed off on the merged text nor engaged in the most recent negotiations, per CoinDesk.

The procedural math is the story's harder floor. The Clarity Act needs 60 votes to advance out of the Senate, which requires a significant number of Democrats. The two Democrats who voted to advance the Banking Committee's version have warned they may not approve the final bill if it does not address their concerns, including the ethics provision. The Agriculture Committee's version, by contrast, was voted out of committee earlier this year on strictly partisan lines. Beyond ethics, CoinDesk reports outstanding issues on federal preemption and on filling minority seats at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

That nomination fight surfaced this week. On Thursday, July 9, the White House sent a letter to Senators John Thune and Chuck Schumer saying Democrats had not put forward names for the minority SEC and CFTC roles. A letter from Democratic senators last month, cited by CoinDesk, accused the administration of refusing 'in almost every instance to engage' on Democratic nominees and warned the White House appeared 'set on leaving the vast majority of these critical positions open indefinitely.' Separately, in a Wednesday letter, Senator Ron Wyden said he supported how the earlier legislation handled legal protections for developers, specifically the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act section, which would keep crypto developers from being treated as money transmitters under federal rules if they do not handle customer assets.

The calendar is tight. Advocates expect the bill to reach the Senate floor as soon as the week of July 20, but only three weeks remain in July plus the first week of August before the summer break, advancing the bill could take days, and a defense spending bill may consume floor time. Even Senate passage would not settle it: the House, described as nearly paralyzed by Republican infighting, would then have to approve the Senate version, after which the bill would need President Trump's signature. CoinDesk notes the president has refused to sign another popular bipartisan measure, the housing bill. Some crypto industry insiders in Washington have privately expressed uncertainty about the Clarity Act's survival, though the effort has not yet reached its fatal deadline.