The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — known as the CLARITY Act — cleared the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday with a 15-9 bipartisan vote. The bill's advance sent XRP and Dogecoin up 5% and pushed Bitcoin past $81,000, even as broader risk assets came under pressure from fresh geopolitical headwinds.
The vote and the market reaction
The committee's vote was closely watched after months of negotiations. The 15-9 tally shows the legislation has bipartisan legs, though it's still got a long path to the floor. Crypto markets liked what they saw: Bitcoin crossed $81,000 within hours, and both XRP and Dogecoin added 5% in the same window. The moves suggest traders are pricing in at least a credible shot at regulatory clarity for digital assets.
What's in the bill
The CLARITY Act aims to define which digital assets are securities and which are commodities, handing primary oversight to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for most tokens. It also sets a process for secondary-market transactions to be treated as commodity sales if certain conditions are met. The text hasn't been made public in final form yet, but previous drafts gave the SEC a more limited role. That's been a key sticking point for some Democrats on the committee, which likely explains the nine no votes.
Geopolitical counterweight
The crypto rally didn't happen in a vacuum. Earlier in the day, former President Trump said the U.S. does not need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, an offhand comment that rattled oil markets and spilled over into broader risk assets. Equities and industrial commodities sold off, but crypto — particularly Bitcoin and the altcoins that got a regulatory boost — held onto gains. The divergence is notable: usually digital assets trade in sync with risk-on moves, but Thursday they broke the correlation.
What comes next
The bill now heads to the full Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not yet scheduled a vote. The House Financial Services Committee has a parallel version in markup. If both chambers pass their own bills, a conference committee would reconcile differences. The timeline is tight with the November midterms approaching. No one on the committee staff would say whether a floor vote could happen before the August recess.
