Lummis Says New Clarity Act Includes More Than 100 Changes
The revised text mainly adds broader rules for DeFi and wallet software, while banks warn about the impact on stablecoins and deposits.
Key Takeaways
- Senator Cynthia Lummis says the updated Clarity Act includes more than 100 changes requested by Democrats.
- The Senate votes Tuesday on further consideration of the bill, which now runs 630 pages and has been expanded by 14 pages.
- The revised text further limits state rules for crypto activity, while sensitive points about stablecoins and developer protections remained unchanged.
Senator Cynthia Lummis says the updated Clarity Act includes more than 100 changes requested by Democrats. According to her, Democrats should now help pass the revised text, while the Senate votes Tuesday on whether the bill can move forward to the Senate floor.
New Text Has Been Expanded Significantly
Senate Republicans released an updated version of the CLARITY Act that runs 630 pages, 14 pages more than the draft from July 22. The bill still has four parts and 103 sections, but the changes are spread across about a dozen sections, especially in the Banking and Agriculture titles.
A comparison of the two versions shows that 14 of the 103 sections were changed. Those include 104 separate edits, although only 28 of them are longer than 8 words. The biggest changes are in section 20209, the DeFi safe harbor, which grows from 285 words to about 2,200 words.
It gives validators, node operators, and creators of crypto wallet software a broad exemption from the Commodity Exchange Act. Front ends, governance systems, liquidity pools, and the maintenance of that wallet software now fall outside spot market rules only in limited cases. For protocols that appear decentralized but are not really decentralized, the CFTC must write rules on how controllers should behave.
What Changes for DeFi
Another notable change is that the text further limits the role of states. State rules for securities, commodities, and digital assets no longer apply to these activities, and that provision even applies retroactively to before the law takes effect. State powers over fraud, manipulation, and AML do remain, which shifts the debate to the line between licensing and enforcement.
The broader goal of the law is to provide more clarity on the legal status of crypto and how regulators should oversee it. Lummis has long been one of the best-known Republican advocates for crypto regulation and previously helped work on proposals for a broader digital assets framework. That wider debate over market structure and oversight also continues in the Senate's handling of the Clarity Act, where political support is still not locked in.
Political Support Remains Uncertain
Not all sensitive points were changed. The provision that bans yield on payment stablecoins is identical to the July version. The developer protections from the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act also stayed untouched. That continues to draw pushback from the American Bankers Association and dozens of other banking groups, which warn about deposit outflows at smaller banks.
For European crypto readers, this matters because the US is trying to define where crypto oversight starts and ends with the Clarity Act. If the Senate moves the text forward, it could also affect how market participants around the world view DeFi, stablecoins, and wallet software, even though the current version still says nothing about a final outcome.
