The Senate delays its crypto market-structure bill to September

Photo: Sebastian Schuster / Unsplash

We've covered the SEC's push toward crypto rulemaking and Coinbase's state-level legal fights this summer. This story is a third track entirely: Congress.

What happened

The CLARITY Act, legislation that would set custody and registration rules for crypto exchanges directly, won't get a vote before the Senate's summer recess. Majority Leader Thune filed for cloture but conceded the votes weren't there yet. A procedural vote is now scheduled for September 15, with Democrats pushing for added ethics and enforcement provisions before they'll support it.

Why it's a different track from what we've covered

The SEC's rulemaking proposals are agency action, rules a regulator can issue within its existing authority. CLARITY is a law Congress would have to actually pass, a higher bar and a slower process, but one that would settle questions the SEC alone can't, like which parts of crypto trading fall under the SEC versus the CFTC in the first place. Delaying it doesn't undo the SEC's separate work, but it keeps the bigger structural question open for at least another month.

Why this matters if you use Cresori

Coinbase and Binance are both brokers Cresori connects to directly, and both operate in the regulatory gap this bill is meant to close. Nothing changes for your account today, but the pace of this bill is one of the clearer signals of how soon (or not) crypto exchanges get a stable, well-defined rulebook to operate under in the US.

Sources: CoinDesk, August 6.