Senate Delays CLARITY Act Markup, Extending U.S. Crypto Rule Uncertainty Into Late January

This article was first published on The Bit Journal.

The U.S. Senate’s push to draw clearer lines for crypto regulation hit a speed bump this week, as lawmakers postponed a planned committee markup of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, often referred to as the CLARITY Act. The delay matters because markup is where broad policy ideas finally get converted into real legislative text that can survive votes, amendments, and the rough-and-tumble of Washington dealmaking.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman said the committee will now take up the bill in the last week of January 2026, pointing to ongoing bipartisan talks that need more time to settle remaining details. In his statement, Boozman said discussions had made “meaningful progress” over the weekend, but emphasized that additional time was needed to finalize details and secure broad support before moving forward.

Why did the delay happen now

On paper, this was supposed to be a coordinated moment as the markup had been expected on Thursday, January 15, in step with related Senate activity on market structure. The postponement signals that negotiators are still working through political and technical fault lines that are not easy to paper over, especially when the bill’s impact would ripple across exchanges, brokers, token issuers, stablecoin programs, and decentralized finance.

Behind the scenes, the most sensitive issues tend to cluster around who gets regulated, by whom, and under what definitions. When a bill tries to redraw the SEC and CFTC map, every comma becomes a boundary marker. That is why delays often show up right before markup, at the exact moment members need confidence that the votes are there.

What the CLARITY Act is trying to change

At its core, the CLARITY Act aims to create a federal framework for how digital assets are regulated in the United States, including how certain tokens are treated and how platforms register and operate. The bill text lays out definitions, a rulemaking timeline, and an expedited registration pathway for certain digital commodity intermediaries, alongside other structural provisions.

The legislation already cleared a major hurdle in the House, passing on July 17, 2025, and then moving to the Senate. That trajectory is exactly why this Senate delay is being watched so closely. Market structure bills do not get many clean windows in an election-heavy calendar, and every slip increases the odds that the debate becomes more political than practical.

The pressure points: stablecoin rewards and DeFi

Even without naming every disputed clause, one theme has become hard to ignore: yield and rewards. Industry stakeholders have been lobbying hard over whether stablecoin rewards should be limited, treated like securities-like products, or boxed into specific disclosures. A major U.S. exchange has privately warned it could reconsider support for the bill if negotiations go beyond disclosure-focused approaches on rewards, according to reporting that cited a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

Decentralized finance is the other live wire. The unresolved question is familiar: when software enables trading or lending without a traditional intermediary holding customer funds, which entities, if any, should be regulated like intermediaries. That debate becomes even sharper when lawmakers try to write rules that capture real risks without treating open-source developers as financial institutions.

Political crosswinds are rising

The delay also lands amid a broader fight over investor protection and the role of the SEC. On January 12, 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, urged SEC Chairman Paul Atkins to explain how the agency would protect investors after an executive order tied to retirement account exposure to crypto assets. The Banking Committee release said she raised concerns about valuation, manipulation, and disclosure, and requested responses by January 27, 2026.

That matters for crypto markets because regulatory narratives shape risk appetite. When Washington signals tighter guardrails, volatility can shift from token charts to policy headlines, and traders price uncertainty the way commuters price traffic: not because the destination changes, but because the arrival time becomes harder to predict.

Conclusion

For now, the CLARITY Act delay does not kill the bill, but it does extend the gray zone that firms have been operating in for years. The last week of January is now the next real checkpoint. If negotiators use the extra time to narrow disputes on stablecoin rewards, DeFi responsibility, and agency jurisdiction, markup could still become a turning point. If not, 2026 may start looking less like the year of clarity and more like another year of arguments about who gets to write the rules.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a committee markup, and why does it matter?
A markup is when senators debate, amend, and vote on the text of a bill in committee, which is usually the step that determines whether legislation can advance to the full Senate.

What changed in the Senate timeline for the CLARITY Act?
The Agriculture Committee chairman said the markup will occur in the last week of January 2026, after negotiators asked for more time to finalize details and secure broad support.

Why are stablecoin rewards controversial in this bill?
Reward programs raise questions about whether returns resemble interest-like products, how disclosures should work, and whether restrictions would tilt competition between crypto platforms and traditional finance.

Why does DeFi keep showing up in market structure debates?
Because DeFi tools can deliver financial activity without a central operator, lawmakers have to decide how to address risk, accountability, and consumer protection without mislabeling software creators as intermediaries.

Glossary of Key Terms

CLARITY Act: A proposed U.S. market structure bill designed to define how digital assets are regulated and how certain intermediaries register and operate.

Markup: A committee session where lawmakers edit bill language, propose amendments, and vote to advance legislation.

Market structure: The set of rules governing how assets are issued, traded, cleared, and supervised, including who regulates which parts of the ecosystem.

Stablecoin rewards: Programs that offer benefits or yield-like returns to holders of dollar-pegged tokens, often tied to reserve income or platform incentives.

DeFi (Decentralized Finance): Blockchain-based applications that enable activities like trading, lending, or borrowing through code, often without a traditional intermediary holding customer funds.

References

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