The Senate Banking Committee is seeking to schedule a January 15 markup for the lengthy‑mentioned CLARITY Act, reviving a complete digital asset invoice that stalled in 2025 as a result of fights over DeFi, token classification, and stablecoin yields, in accordance with senior workers briefings and the committee’s draft agenda shared with lobbyists this week.

Merchants are already positioning round a renewed regulatory push. ETH is buying and selling close to $2,965, up about 0.3% on the day and roughly 5% over the previous month; in the meantime, SOL is buying and selling round $124, up about 1.4% on the day and 0.7% over the previous month.

Key Provisions of the CLARITY Act

Staffers engaged on the CLARITY Act textual content state that the present draft retains the CFTC within the lead for non‑safety fungible tokens that meet buying and selling and decentralization exams, whereas codifying an SEC regime for tokens that depend on ongoing managerial efforts and supply yield or income‑share options.

That cut up tracks how current SEC enforcement complaints described named belongings, however for the primary time, it might place the check in statute as a substitute of case regulation and speeches.

On DeFi, lobbyists who reviewed the December redline say the invoice would deal with front-end operators, order-routing interfaces, and fee-collecting DAOs as registrants, whereas leaving a protected harbor open for immutable, fee-free good contracts with no improve keys.

Political Surroundings and Market Sentiment

Prediction markets are additionally mirroring rising expectations that lawmakers will break the impasse this cycle. On Kalshi, contracts tied to the passage of a broad federal digital asset framework by mid‑2026 are buying and selling at materially larger possibilities than in early This fall, with open curiosity growing because the markup date seems to be formally confirmed.

Merchants used these markets by 2023–2025 as a casual coverage barometer throughout failed pushes on earlier Home‑pushed payments.

Banking Committee members from each events, together with senators who beforehand backed narrower market‑construction efforts, have advised trade teams they wish to keep away from a repeat of prior cycles the place the Home passes a digital asset bundle that then dies within the Senate and not using a committee vote.

A clear markup that yields a bipartisan supervisor’s modification would arrange a path to 60 votes on the ground, however workers nonetheless anticipate aggressive amendments on DeFi custody, sanctions enforcement, and remedy of crypto‑native stablecoin rewards in retirement accounts.

“My colleagues and I within the Home and Senate share the identical purpose: to offer clear guidelines of the street for digital belongings that defend buyers, foster innovation, and maintain the way forward for digital finance anchored in America,” mentioned Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, in a July 2025 dialogue draft.

Moreover, the CLARITY Act debate doesn’t occur in isolation. ETH drew over $1.3 billion in recent staking flows from institutional automobiles in late December, in accordance with current staking information and fund disclosures, whereas Solana continues to seize high-beta flows after a yr the place its market cap rebounded sharply from 2022 ranges.

These flows value in some likelihood that the following Congress delivers a workable regime as a substitute of continued rule‑by‑enforcement.

Institutional Market Implications

For desks that run critical measurement in ETH and SOL, this markup features as a binary coverage catalyst moderately than political theater.

A bipartisan CLARITY Act draft that survives the committee with a transparent CFTC lane for sufficiently decentralized L1s, a knowable registration path for DeFi front-ends, and an express ceiling on “reward‑like” stablecoin yields reduces headline threat for Ethereum-centric yield methods and Solana liquidity provisioning, and it makes it simpler for giant U.S. venues to record and margin a broader set of tokens.

If the session breaks down into party-line votes or pushes DeFi right into a de facto unworkable regime, the commerce flips: U.S. flows migrate additional offshore, regulated venues lean into BTC plus a handful of blue chips, and the regulatory overhang low cost on something that appears like a revenue-share or staking spinoff widens once more.

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