# Senate to Release Unified Crypto Market-Structure Draft With Three Weeks Left Before Recess

The merged CLARITY Act still needs about seven Democratic votes and leaves open provisions on decentralized finance, anti-money-laundering rules, and ethics, as Coinbase's chief legal officer departs July 31.

- Published: 2026-07-12T05:29:56.328Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/crypto/2026-07-12/senate-to-release-unified-crypto-market-structure-draft-with
- Publisher: Polylog (Crypto desk)
- Section: crypto
- Sources: [crypto.news](https://crypto.news/cynthia-lummis-races-to-save-clarity-act-before-2030/), [Bitcoin Magazine](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/u-s-house-urge-senate-vote-clarity-act), [crypto.news](https://crypto.news/paul-grewal-exits-coinbase-cryptos-biggest-battle/)

Senate staff are expected to release a unified draft of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act during the week of July 13, merging months of parallel work by the Banking and Agriculture committees, according to [crypto.news](https://crypto.news/cynthia-lummis-races-to-save-clarity-act-before-2030/). The bill would divide oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and set rules for when a token counts as a security.

  The vote count is tight. Republicans hold roughly 53 Senate seats, so the measure needs about seven Democratic votes to clear the 60-vote threshold, and lawmakers have around 20 working days after July 13 before the August recess. Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming has set the end of July as a firm deadline, warning that a delay into the fall would overlap with midterm campaigning. Representative French Hill has separately [urged the Senate to vote before the recess](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/u-s-house-urge-senate-vote-clarity-act) while acknowledging unresolved ethics language. Lummis has named three open items: treatment of decentralized-finance protocols, anti-money-laundering provisions, and ethics clauses.

  The timing intersects with a notable personnel change. Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal, who led the exchange's multi-year legal fight with the SEC, [notified the company on July 8 that he will resign](https://crypto.news/paul-grewal-exits-coinbase-cryptos-biggest-battle/) effective July 31, just as the industry's central legislative push reaches its decisive stage.

## What this means

Market-structure legislation would convert the industry's political spending into durable statutory rules rather than reversible agency decisions, and the beneficiaries are US-domiciled exchanges, token issuers, and custodians that gain legal certainty on the distinction between securities and commodities. The exposure is a matter of timing. If July ends without a vote, the same firms face another year under case-by-case enforcement, and the marginal cost of that uncertainty falls on projects deciding whether to launch in the United States or abroad.

## What to watch

- Whether the unified text keeps or softens the decentralized-finance and anti-money-laundering provisions, since those determine how much of on-chain activity falls inside the regulated perimeter.
- The count of Democratic senators publicly backing the bill, the single variable that decides whether it reaches the floor before August.