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The Clarity Act failed to clear a Senate cloture vote on Tuesday, falling well short of the 60 votes needed to advance the digital-asset market-structure bill to floor debate. Unofficial tallies put the result at roughly 46 in favor to 43 against, according to Coingape's live coverage of the vote, a day after US President Donald Trump agreed to the stricter ethics provisions that were meant to secure the support of Democratic negotiators.
The defeat came despite that concession. Seven Democrats who had helped negotiate the bill's terms, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner, Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Ruben Gallego, Angela Alsobrooks and Catherine Cortez Masto, voted against advancing it, according to Crowdfund Insider. Republican senators Josh Hawley, Susan Collins and Jerry Moran also opposed cloture, and Thom Tillis switched his position from yes to no at the last minute. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a longtime opponent of the bill, said it would decimate the guardrails put in place after the Great Depression, according to TheStreet.
Other Democrats pointed specifically to the ethics language Trump had just agreed to. Senator Elissa Slotkin, who also voted no, wrote on X that the ethics provisions in the bill are "simply too thin," citing crypto dealings by Trump, his family and members of his Cabinet as a reason she could not support it.
Today, I voted no on the Clarity Act, legislation meant to regulate cryptocurrency in America.
— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) September 15, 2026
The ethics provisions in this bill are simply too thin. President Trump, his children, and his Cabinet are making billions of dollars in the crypto space, in part from bilking everyday…
The failed vote does not kill the Clarity Act outright. Tillis preserved the right to force another cloture vote within two days by changing his position on a related motion to recommit.
Crypto Council for Innovation chief executive Ji Hun Kim called Tuesday's outcome "disappointing" but said "it is not the end."
Absent a successful revote, industry lobbyists expect the bill would need to be redrafted and reintroduced in a future Congress, while the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are expected to keep pursuing rulemaking independently of the legislation, according to Crowdfund Insider.
Market reaction
The market reaction was immediate. Bitcoin fell to $75,730, down 2.9% over 24 hours and 3.7% over the past week, while total crypto market capitalization dropped 3% to $2.67 trillion, per CoinGecko's market data. The decline was sharper across crypto-linked equities. Coinbase (COIN) closed down 10.1% at $172.11 on heavy volume. Robinhood (HOOD) fell 3.4% to $110.45, and Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), one of the larger corporate holders of ether, dropped 6% to $24.21. BitGo (BTGO), the crypto custodian that listed on the NYSE in January, fell as much as 7% intraday, trading between $12.82 and $14.25 against a prior close of $13.77, according to Yahoo Finance.
Ahead of the vote, Bernstein had projected a potential Bitcoin correction of 10% to 25% if cloture failed, with altcoins facing steeper drawdowns of 15% to 30%, a scenario that has so far proven milder than forecast. Independent research analyst Brian Vieten argued before the vote that the market may be overweighting its significance, since a failed cloture motion delays rather than eliminates the product launches and tokenization efforts a market-structure law would unlock, according to CoinDesk's live coverage of the vote. Whether that assessment holds will depend on how quickly, if at all, Senate leadership brings the bill back for another attempt.
