CLARITY Act stalls in Senate: What crypto uncertainty means for CIOs
A failed Senate cloture vote stalled the CLARITY Act, leaving CIOs to make digital-asset vendor, custody and contract decisions without a broader market-structure framework.
The U.S. Senate failed Tuesday to advance a revised version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, commonly known as the CLARITY Act, after a procedural cloture vote was rejected 49-50, short of the 60 votes required.
The House passed H.R. 3633 in July 2025. Senate sponsors released revised substitute text Sept. 14 aimed at creating a federal digital-asset market-structure framework and clarifying the respective roles of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The Senate's Sept. 15 vote did not decide final passage; it blocked the measure from advancing at that point.
The vote followed months of disagreement over issues beyond SEC-CFTC jurisdiction. Critics had sought stronger anti-money-laundering safeguards and broader state enforcement powers, while banks warned that stablecoin rewards could pull deposits from traditional lenders. The final Senate text added new ethics language and Treasury authority aimed at potential deposit flight, but the changes did not secure enough votes to advance the measure.
For now, broader digital-asset market-structure questions remain unresolved. That leaves CIOs and technology leaders managing stablecoin projects, crypto custody and vendor relationships without the federal digital-asset market-structure framework they were watching for.
"If adopted in its current form, it would be a great catalyst for institutional investors to pour more money into the space," Felix Shipkevich, a fintech regulatory attorney and special professor of law at Hofstra University Maurice A. Deane School of Law, told TechTarget on Wednesday. "As a result of the bill not getting enough procedural votes yesterday, the entire CLARITY Act is in limbo. I would not be surprised if we have to wait until after elections to see if there's going to be another vote on it."
What's already required, with or without CLARITY
Though the CLARITY Act would have addressed some regulatory uncertainty and removed some friction, organizations already have rules they must follow.
"Nothing changes today for the companies already using crypto," Ali Tager, vice president of external affairs at the National Cryptocurrency Association, an industry group launched with a $50 million grant from Ripple, told TechTarget on Wednesday. "What stays unsettled is the bigger question of which rules apply and who enforces them."
There are, however, already federal requirements in place. The GENIUS ACT became law in 2025 and established a framework for payment stablecoins, including an at-least-1:1 reserve requirement using permitted assets such as U.S. dollars and short-term Treasuries.
"While Clarity not passing the cloture vote means we won't yet have a comprehensive federal law for crypto, the SEC and CFTC are working quickly and aggressively to fill that gap by pressing forward with crypto rulemaking on their own," Tager said.
Utkarsh Ahuja, founder and managing partner of Moon Pursuit Capital, which describes itself as a crypto hedge fund, said after Tuesday's vote that companies should be more sensitive to how much risk they take on.
"I don't think today's vote suddenly changes the economics of a project that already made sense yesterday, but it does mean companies have to be a little more careful about how much they commit and how difficult that decision would be to unwind," Ahuja told TechTarget.
For a custody or treasury decision, Ahuja said organizations should be clear on how each asset is treated, who holds it, whether assets are properly segregated, what exposure limits apply and how quickly they could move to another provider if the regulatory environment changes.
Where CIOs face harder vendor and custody calls
Without CLARITY in place, CIOs still need to evaluate digital-asset vendors against existing requirements and their own risk standards.
"Any evaluation underway currently should be scoped against existing federal requirements, state-by-state obligations and their organization's own risk standards," Scott Bickley, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, told TechTarget.
Organizations can continue under existing requirements, but the absence of a single federal market-structure framework can still carry a cost.
Bickley characterized the CLARITY Act as a "one-stop shop rulebook for digital asset management at the national level." Without it, he said, enterprises may need more modular architectures that can flex across differing requirements by jurisdiction and accommodate new ones as they emerge.
How CIOs should structure contracts and rollouts now
With the legislative timeline unresolved, Bickley said the discipline shifts from the product itself to the terms around it. Those decisions should involve legal, compliance and procurement teams as well as IT.
"Enterprises should require regulatory change clauses, rights to suspend activity or exit without any penalty, and disclosure of material control changes or subcontractors, as well as tested continuity plans in the event of a loss of license, banking access or other chain access," he said.
That same caution applies to how projects get scoped, not just how contracts get written.
"Current pilots should follow narrowly defined use cases that cap exposure while preserving conventional payment or treasury fallback rails, while avoiding building a critical path business process around any assumption that future legislation will settle the many unresolved questions that exist today," Bickley said.
If you've been waiting for CLARITY before making a decision, you now have to ask yourself how long you're actually prepared to wait.
Utkarsh AhujaFounder at Moon Pursuit Capital
Ahuja said the calculus has also shifted for firms that had been waiting on CLARITY before committing capital.
"If you've been waiting for CLARITY before making a decision, you now have to ask yourself how long you're actually prepared to wait," he said. "There still isn't a dependable timeline for legislation, and companies can't keep putting every digital-asset decision on hold indefinitely."
Rather than staying on the sidelines, Ahuja expects more firms to phase their way in.
"I think we'll see more firms start small with custody, payments or settlement projects, learn from those deployments and then decide where it makes sense to put more capital behind them," he noted. "I'd keep the technology and compliance side flexible because the rules can still change, but there's a lot of value in building that operating experience now rather than sitting on the sidelines waiting for a regulatory framework that may take considerably longer to arrive."
Sean Michael Kerner is an IT consultant, technology enthusiast and tinkerer. He has pulled Token Ring, configured NetWare and been known to compile his own Linux kernel. He consults with industry and media organizations on technology issues.
