Anthony Scaramucci warned this week that the Clarity Act, which would define which crypto assets are securities versus commodities, may not clear the Senate until 2029. The former White House communications director blamed bank lobbying, political gridlock, and three specific fractures in Trump's coalition that have made any bill he could claim as a win toxic to Senate Democrats.
The political roadblock
Scaramucci identified four concrete obstacles. Trump's pre-inauguration meme coin launches alienated pro-crypto Democrats. Greenland annexation threats burned NATO goodwill. An unannounced Iran military campaign with a $200 billion defense request is consuming Senate bandwidth. And opposition to the President has calcified into opposition to any bill he could claim as a win — including Bitcoin regulation.
Without the Clarity Act, institutional compliance teams cannot approve allocations to asset classes lacking statutory legal classification. Layer-1 tokens such as Solana, Avalanche, and TON remain in legal limbo without jurisdictional lines between the SEC and CFTC.
What gets stuck and what doesn't
The delay concentrates institutional adoption into Bitcoin. It's achieved de facto commodity status through ETF approval, so pension funds and sovereign wealth vehicles can buy it. Everything else stays frozen out. Prolonged regulation by enforcement makes enforcement actions unpredictable, which is structurally incompatible with institutional position sizing.
Arthur Hayes has argued Bitcoin's value proposition exists outside the regulatory system. That doesn't help compliance officers who need legal classification before they can allocate.
What the timeline looks like
The Clarity Act has been in motion since 2023. It passed the House in July 2025 with a 294-134 bipartisan vote. But it lacks Senate traction. For comparison: Dodd-Frank took 14 months, the JOBS Act under 12 months. This one is already years in and stalled.
Scaramucci flagged 'extended chop' as the likely price regime through the remainder of Trump's term without passage of the Act. The next concrete milestone? Nobody on the Hill is publicly predicting a vote before the 2028 election.
