The U.S. Senate Banking Committee released a 309-page updated draft of the CLARITY Act this week, pushing a landmark crypto market structure bill toward a formal markup vote on May 14, 2026. The sprawling legislation is designed to draw permanent lines between the SEC and CFTC — a regulatory carve-up the crypto industry has been waiting years for.
The SEC–CFTC divide
The draft's subtitle makes the mission explicit: it creates a statutory boundary between the two agencies. No more turf wars over whether a token is a security or a commodity. The bill hands the CFTC clearer jurisdiction over digital commodities and the SEC retains authority over tokens that function like securities. Exactly where that line falls is the detail everyone is reading page by page.
What’s in the 309 pages
At that length, the draft covers a lot of ground: exchange registration, stablecoin rules, custody requirements, and disclosure standards for issuers. The committee has been working on this for months. This version reflects closed-door negotiations and public feedback. The goal is a market structure that doesn’t force every project to lawyer up just to figure out where to register.
Next step: the markup
The markup on May 14 is where committee members offer amendments and vote on whether to send the bill to the full Senate. That’s the immediate hurdle. If it clears committee, the floor fight — and likely further amendments — comes next. The timing matters: this is the most serious congressional effort to write crypto rules since the industry’s last legislative push stalled. No one expects the bill to survive untouched, but the fact that it has a markup date at all is a concrete signal of momentum.
One unresolved question: how the final definition of a “digital commodity” shakes out. That single term could determine which projects fall under SEC oversight and which don’t. The committee will hash that out in amendments next week.
