The US Senate is set for a procedural vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15. Lawmakers need 60 votes to move the bill forward for further debate. A fresh draft of the bill just dropped today, featuring new tweaks. This isn’t the final passage—if the bill doesn’t clear this procedural hurdle, it’ll likely stall out.

What’s Changed

Protocols that aren’t fully decentralized would now have to register with the CFTC. The Treasury and CFTC are tasked with drawing up tailored rules for these projects.

The DeFi section now only covers regular spot trades with digital commodities—so prediction markets are off the hook. The bill also clarifies how credit unions can interact with digital assets.

What Stayed the Same

Ethics rules for officials are still in: government employees can’t launch or promote tokens, with oversight from the Justice Department. This ban runs through January 2029. Developer protections are unchanged—if you’re just writing code or maintaining open-source protocols and not holding user funds, you’re not a payment processor.

No changes to regulator authority splits, the stablecoin section (still no interest for just holding stablecoins), exchange and intermediary requirements, or AML and financial intelligence funding provisions.

What the September 15 Vote Means

This is just a procedural step—not the final fate of the CLARITY Act. They’ll need 60 senators to back it; without that, the bill is probably dead in the water for now.