Senate Banking Committee Clears Crypto Clarity Act in 13-11 Vote

The Senate Banking Committee voted 13-11 along party lines on Thursday to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (HR 3633), ending a more than nine-month bipartisan drafting effort and clearing the chamber's first procedural hurdle for a comprehensive US crypto market-structure framework. Chairman Tim Scott opened the markup by framing the bill as a consumer-protection, innovation, and national-security package that finally writes clear rules of the road after years of SEC and CFTC enforcement-by-press-release.

Why it matters

The bill carves a formal jurisdictional split between the SEC and the CFTC for digital assets, writes AML and BSA-style obligations into Titles II and III for brokers, dealers, exchanges, and stablecoin issuers, sets risk-based exam standards, expands Treasury's special-measure authority against foreign money-laundering, requires recurring Treasury reports on offshore stablecoins, and creates a federal floor for crypto-kiosk operators. Ranking member Elizabeth Warren spent her opening statement arguing the opposite — that the bill blows holes in 1929-era securities law, pre-empts state consumer-fraud statutes, lets banks load up on DeFi exposure, and leaves Trump family crypto profits untouched — and the markup's amendment queue turned into a vehicle for that critique. The National Sheriff's Association, the National Association of Assistant US Attorneys, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the major-county sheriffs wrote opposing language around the developer-protection sections; Cortez Masto's amendment to narrow the section-301 definition of a non-controlling developer failed 11-13, as did a Reid amendment to give Treasury extraterritorial blocking power over dollar stablecoins, a Van Holland amendment to bar the president and members of Congress from issuing crypto, and Smith/Durbin's no-bailout amendment. Rounds' AI-sandbox amendment was the only Democratic-opposed measure to clear, passing 15-9.

Market impact

The real fight now shifts to the Senate floor, where the bill needs 60 votes to beat a filibuster. Republicans hold 53 seats, so leadership has to peel off at least seven Democrats — and the post-markup read from the five pro-crypto Banking Democrats is that ethics and law-enforcement concerns, not the BRCA yield compromise, are now the central sticking point. Prediction markets had the bill's full-Senate odds in the 60-70% range going into the markup; whether that re-rates on Friday will be the first tape-check on whether the committee drama changed anything. Watch Cortez Masto's section-301 deal and any future Van Holland conflict-of-interest amendment as the two pressure points that decide whether floor votes materialise, with a target signing window reportedly aimed at July 4.