Clarity Act Enters Four-Week Window as CFTC's Selig Presses Senate Before August Recess

The United States Senate returns to Washington with about 20 working days to decide whether the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act becomes law this summer or faces further delay. The bill, the most advanced crypto market-structure measure in Congress, would divide oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), settling years of jurisdictional ambiguity over which tokens are securities and which are commodities.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, a Trump appointee confirmed in December, told Fox Business that lawmakers are "so close" and framed passage as a matter of national competitiveness, according to Bitcoin Magazine. The House passed the bill in July 2025 by 294 to 134, and the Senate Banking Committee advanced it 15 to 9, but no full floor vote has been scheduled and Congress already missed a self-imposed July 4 target.

The obstacle is not the technical design but the politics around it. Several Democrats are pressing for ethics provisions addressing President Trump, his family, and their crypto ventures, which Selig characterized as a distraction from a bipartisan opportunity. Separately, Senator Ron Wyden has asked Senate leaders to preserve the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act's language, as passed by the Banking Committee, in any floor version, Cointelegraph reported. That provision would shield non-custodial software developers and validators from money-transmitter liability, a long-standing demand of builders who do not hold user funds.