A crucial vote on U.S. President Donald Trump’s landmark digital asset legislation, the Clarity Act, resulted in a crushing defeat for the cryptocurrency industry today.
Earlier today, the Senate voted 50-49 against passing the Clarity Act, which aimed to regulate crypto assets at the federal level, as part of Trump’s push to establish the U.S. as a leader in digital asset innovation.
The defeat left crypto industry leaders stunned and extremely disappointed. “This one stings,” said Ripple Labs Inc. Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse in a post on X. “A post mortem needs to be done on why this failed. The politics of the democrats (the anti-crypto army) was elevated over good policy.”
Lawmakers have been trying to push the bill through the Senate for months, but the Act has faced numerous hurdles, with banks voicing opposition over stablecoin rewards, arguments over enforcement, and concerns about Trump’s ethics and vast crypto wealth.
Democratic lawmakers strongly opposed the passage of the heavily revised bill, with many pointing to the fact that Trump has benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to the success of his crypto firm World Liberty Financial, which is run by his sons. Trump emerged as a big supporter of crypto during his 2024 Presidential election campaign, and has also made millions of dollars from a memecoin he’s associated with, called $TRUMP. While the president generated massive profits from the initial sale of $TRUMP coins, many investors have lost a fortune because of its declining value over the last year.
Many Democrats have argued that the Clarity Act would enable Trump to manipulate crypto regulations and further profit from digital assets. Republicans have tried to assuage those fears, and lawmakers have gone back and forth for months on the ethics language in the bill. However, key issues remain to be settled, such as whether U.S. states should have the power to file criminal charges against public officials who manipulate crypto for profit.
Senator Sen. Elissa Slotkin said she voted against the bill because of a lack of ethics provisions:
Today, I voted no on the Clarity Act, legislation meant to regulate cryptocurrency in America.
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…
— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) September 15, 2026
Sen. Ruben Gallego told the Washington Post he will never support any legislation that enables Trump to amass yet more riches at the expense of regular Americans.
“This legislation failed squarely because Republicans refuse to say no to the president,” he said in an interview. “It takes 60 votes to pass a bill, and instead of spending their time twisting themselves in knots to appease President Trump, Republicans should have worked more closely with Senate Democrats to craft a bill that could pass with strong ethics provisions.”
Some lawmakers, such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, voted against the Clarity Act despite trying to encourage other Democrats to support it, Politico reported.
Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who was one of the main architects of the Clarity Act, criticized those who voted against it. “This afternoon, Senate Democrats proved they were never truly serious about protecting consumers and preserving American leadership,” she said. “I sat at the table with Senate Democrats working in good faith to get this done while they played games.”
Trump’s crypto adviser Patrick Witt, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets at the White House, said on X that the result of the vote was a “major disappointment.”
There’s no sense in sugarcoating it: today’s vote was a major disappointment—and, I believe, a failure of American leadership. The full cost of today’s result may not be known for years to come, but this much is clear: it increases the risk that the standards that global…
— Patrick Witt (@patrickjwitt) September 15, 2026
What’s next for crypto’s regulatory push?
Despite the defeat, those who advocate for pro-crypto government regulation insist that the Clarity Act could still ultimately be pushed through. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who was involved in discussions relating to how the Act should treat stablecoin rewards and its ethics provisions, surprisingly voted against the legislation, before entering a motion to reconsider the vote. It means that the bill can be refined and sent back to the Senate for a second vote in future.
“This is not the end of the Clarity Act,” Tillis said in a post on X. “We’ve made substantial bipartisan progress in large part because of the White House. This procedural motion allows us to continue working towards a positive outcome.”
The crypto industry advocacy group Stand With Crypto, which is backed by U.S. crypto giants such as Coinbase Global Inc., warned that crypto-owning voters could very well punish lawmakers that rejected the bill at the midterm elections in November. Stand With Crypto and other crypto industry advocates are believed to have had an influential role in Trump’s 2024 Presidential election win after donating tens of millions of dollars in support of his campaign.
“The results of today’s vote make it clear which officials are with our community and which are against us – and we’ll make sure our advocates are ready to cast their ballots accordingly in this and future elections,” Stand With Crypto said in a statement.
