Galaxy cuts CLARITY Act odds to 10%

Galaxy Digital has cut its odds of the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act passing in 2026 down to 10%, a steep drop from the 75% it assigned back in May. The firm's head of research, Alex Thorn, laid out the math on Friday: the Senate returns September 14 with only two to three weeks before the window closes, and that's only if a motion to proceed happens the moment lawmakers walk back in.

The odds keep sliding

Galaxy's estimate has fallen four times this year. It started at 75% on May 22, dropped to 60% on June 6, fell again to 50% on June 26, and now sits at 10%. That's a 65-point collapse in under three months, tracking a bill that already cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May but has since stalled on unresolved fights over ethics rules for government officials' crypto holdings and bank pushback on stablecoin yield provisions. Over 200 crypto companies and organizations signed a letter through Stand With Crypto in early June urging the Senate to move, according to Cointelegraph. The letter hasn't moved the needle.

Thorn's framing is blunt: passage now requires the bill to "dominate basically the entire working session" once the Senate reconvenes. That's not a description of momentum. It's a description of a bill competing for floor time against everything else Congress has stacked up for a short fall session.

A narrow window closing on its own terms

The read here is simple. This isn't a bill that died from opposition strong enough to kill it outright. It's a bill that's running out of legislative clock while the underlying disagreements, bank yield rules and ethics carve-outs among them, stay exactly where they were in May. Banks still don't want crypto firms offering stablecoin yields without bank-style oversight. Democrats on the Banking Committee still object to the ethics language. None of that has been resolved since spring, and three months of drift compressed a real shot at passage into a long-shot.

For an industry that spent early summer lobbying hard for this exact bill, the odds swing matters because it resets expectations for the rest of the year. Crypto firms built plans around getting a federal market structure framework in place before 2027. A 10% chance means most of those plans now assume it doesn't happen this Congress, and firms have to keep operating under the current patchwork of state licensing and SEC/CFTC turf disputes for at least another year.

The other point worth naming: Galaxy's estimate isn't a prediction market price, it's one research shop's read on legislative mechanics. But the direction of travel across four updates in three months tells its own story regardless of the exact number. Bills don't usually gain momentum by losing three-quarters of their odds inside a single summer.

What to watch

The tell is whether the Senate holds a motion to proceed vote in the first days after returning September 14. If that vote happens immediately and clears, the 10% figure will look too pessimistic within a week. If the floor calendar fills up with other priorities first, CLARITY likely slides into 2027 discussions, and Galaxy's number will have called it early.