This alert was originally sent directly to clients of Galaxy Trading and Galaxy Asset Management on June 5, 2026. Trade or invest with Galaxy to receive the most timely research directly in your inbox.
Introduction
On May 22, we raised our estimate of the probability that the CLARITY Act becomes law in 2026 to 75%, up from the 55% we published the morning of May 14’s Senate Banking markup. We are now lowering that estimate to 60%.
Our concern is less about the substance of the bill, which cleared committee 15 to 9 with bipartisan support and was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1, than about the number of days left to act on it.
Timing is the binding constraint
We continue to believe the bill needs to pass the Senate (and probably the House) before the August recess, which is now scheduled to begin at the end of July. After that, the window effectively closes. Little serious legislation moves in the fall of a midterm election year. Members are home campaigning, and floor time is scarce and contested. That leaves a narrow runway. For a 60-vote bill that still needs floor debate, an amendment process, reconciliation with the Senate Agriculture text, and then House action on the changes, Majority Leader Thune realistically needs to schedule floor time at some point in July. Anything later and the procedural steps do not fit before the recess.
That runway is already shorter than it was two weeks ago. The Senate lost a week to the fight over the administration’s anti-weaponization fund, which consumed floor time as the chamber worked through the ICE and Border Patrol funding package. And in the early hours of this morning, the Senate failed to advance reauthorization of Section 702 of FISA, with the procedural vote falling 47 to 52 after several Republicans joined nearly every Democrat in opposition. Section 702 lapses on June 12, which means much of next week’s floor time and Senators’ attention is likely to be absorbed by the scramble to reauthorize it rather than by any meaningful work on market structure. Each of these is individually minor, but together they tell the story: there are only a handful of usable weeks left, and other priorities keep claiming them.
The substance has not visibly moved
The second reason is related, and we will keep it brief. No meaningful headlines emerged this week suggesting the bill, or the negotiations around it, have advanced. The issues we flagged in our May 12 analysis mostly remain open. Ethics provisions, which Senate Democrats led by Gallego have said are a precondition for their votes, are still unresolved, and the committee deferred the question to the floor. While the Lummis compromise amendments from the Senate Banking markup did move the needle slightly on BRCA, the illicit finance hawks continue to seek further changes and there was no published evidence that a middle ground has been reached. These are solvable, and we expect at least some of them to be solved, but they are not visibly solved yet.
The interaction between the two reasons is what drives the downgrade. Floor time is a function of two things: whether the calendar allows it, and whether leadership believes the bill can actually reach 60 votes when it is called. With the calendar this compressed, Thune has little incentive to spend a week of floor time on a bill whose Democratic votes are not yet locked. If the open issues are not resolved, he is unlikely to schedule it. If he does not schedule it in the next few weeks, the timing problem above does the rest.
What would move us
We would revise the estimate back up on a credible floor commitment from leadership for early-mid July, paired with public signs that the ethics and remaining illicit-finance questions have been bridged in a way that delivers the a solid block of 9+ Democratic votes the bill needs on the floor (we expect 2 no votes from Republicans Josh Hawley and Rand Paul, both of whom voted against GENIUS last year). News that the Banking and Agriculture Committees have merged their texts and a package is ready for the floor would also help. Absent those signals in the next two to three weeks, the realistic path narrows to a post-recess effort in September, which runs directly into the midterm dynamics that make us cautious about the fall.
In our view, 60% still describes a bill that is more likely than not to become law this year. The committee vote was real, the administration remains engaged, and the bill is formally on the calendar. But the gap between being on the calendar and being on the floor is measured in days the Senate does not obviously have, and this week’s events widened that gap. We will update again once leadership signals its intentions on floor scheduling.
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