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Senate Sets January Markup On The CLARITY Act – Traders Brace for DeFi Amendments

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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 because of fights over DeFi, token classification, and stablecoin yields, based on senior workers briefings and the committee’s draft agenda shared with lobbyists this week.

Traders are already positioning round a renewed regulatory push. ETH is trading near $2,965, up about 0.3% on the day and roughly 5% over the previous month; in the meantime, SOL is trading around $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 could place the take a look at in statute as a substitute of case legislation 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 sensible contracts with no improve keys.

Political Environment 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 greater possibilities than in early This fall, with open curiosity growing because the markup date appears to be formally confirmed.

Traders used these markets by way of 2023–2025 as a casual coverage barometer throughout failed pushes on earlier House‑pushed payments.

Banking Committee members from each events, together with senators who beforehand backed narrower market‑construction efforts, have informed business teams they need to keep away from a repeat of prior cycles the place the House passes a digital asset bundle that then dies within the Senate with no 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 therapy of crypto‑native stablecoin rewards in retirement accounts.

“My colleagues and I within the House and Senate share the identical objective: to offer clear guidelines of the highway for digital belongings that shield traders, foster innovation, and preserve the way forward for digital finance anchored in America,” mentioned Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, in a July 2025 discussion draft.

Additionally, 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, based on 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.

Those flows value in some chance 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 relatively 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 danger for Ethereum-centric yield methods and Solana liquidity provisioning, and it makes it simpler for massive U.S. venues to listing 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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