Senate Republicans revise Clarity Act ahead of Tuesday cloture vote
DeFi & Yields ·
New text narrows crypto banking protections, adds stablecoin circuit-breaker and ethics compromise as GOP calls it a final offer to Democrats.
Senate Republicans have circulated an updated version of the Clarity Act, describing it as their final proposal before a scheduled cloture vote on Tuesday, according to reporting shared on X. The rewrite touches four core areas of the bill: the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act provision, ethics rules tied to President Trump, stablecoin yield safeguards, and agricultural-title language governing digital commodity markets.
The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act section has been scaled back to cover only the Bank Secrecy Act and civil enforcement actions, with earlier language shielding developers from criminal prosecution, including under Section 1960, stripped out. On ethics, a GOP aide said Trump has signed onto roughly 80% of the Tillis-Gallego proposal, which would require him to divest substantial crypto holdings or place them in a blind trust and would let state attorneys general help enforce the rules, a role the White House had resisted earlier in negotiations, per The Block.
The stablecoin section now includes circuit-breaker language, an idea Senator Tillis floated in July, giving federal regulators authority to step in if deposits move out of community banks and into stablecoins at scale. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would be the official responsible for making that determination. The agricultural title has also been tightened, adding restrictions on vertical integration and affiliate trading among digital commodity exchanges, brokers and dealers, while confirming that state consumer-protection statutes remain in force and that developer protections do not exempt firms from derivatives law or apply to prediction markets.
The changes come as Senate Democrats held an emergency meeting to weigh the revised draft, with a floor vote expected around September 15, according to CryptoPotato. Coverage of the release, including translation and summary by WuBlockchain, notes the bill now folds in Department of Justice and state-level enforcement powers alongside the stablecoin safeguard, part of the broader push to win Democratic votes.
What remains unsettled is whether the concessions are enough to secure the needed Democratic support for cloture, and how the narrowed criminal-liability protections under BRCA will be received by industry advocates who had pushed for broader coverage. The outcome of Tuesday's vote will determine whether this text becomes the operative framework or requires further negotiation.