How months of work on the Clarity Act all fell apart
Interviews with industry participants and legislative aides paint a picture of a blown bill-writing process, with sources pointing to nearly every facet of the bill's development and the debate around it as contributing factors to this month's failed vote.
The bill faced an uphill battle from launch; numerous political, policy and social factors would have needed to fall into place for it to succeed. In the end, a variety of issues combined to continually decrease the odds of its passage over the past year. Ultimately, the bill saw bipartisan opposition when it hit the Senate floor for a key make-or-break procedural vote earlier this month, and its future is now in limbo.
According to interviews conducted with more than a dozen industry participants and legislative aides over the past 10 days — some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity so they could talk candidly about this fraught process — a confluence of factors killed the Clarity Act.
The Senate ignored the House of Representatives' own Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which had passed with a massive bipartisan vote; the Senate version was constructed in a piecemeal fashion; U.S. President Donald Trump and his White House complicated the negotiations; the crypto industry conducted a scattershot engagement with lawmakers throughout the process; Democrats rejected an ethics deal they felt fell short of their demands; and time was not on lawmakers' side as they headed into a midterm election.
"I think politics was very clearly elevated over policy," said Stu Alderoty, the chief legal officer at Ripple Labs. "It was good policy, and the industry needs to get better at politics."