Yeliz Akmaca 
A critical phase is starting for the crypto market in the United States. The Senate Banking Committee is bringing the CLARITY Act back to the table on January 15, reopening a regulatory process that stalled throughout 2025. The timing suggests the long-blocked digital asset framework may finally begin to move again.
The signal is not subtle. Draft agendas have been shared with lobbyists this week, and the same date has surfaced in senior staff briefings. This is no longer background noise. It is an institutional step that indicates real procedural momentum.
Markets Are Positioning Before the Text Is Final
Price action began before any vote. Ethereum rose roughly 0.3% intraday, extending its monthly gain to nearly 5% as it traded around $2,965. Solana advanced about 1.4% on the day, with modest monthly gains, holding near $124.
These moves could be read as technical. Still, the underlying driver appears more political than chart-based. Markets are beginning to price the direction of regulatory pressure, even without clarity on the final language. Even before the final text is released, the crypto market is beginning to price in a potential shift in regulatory pressure.
What the CLARITY Act Is Trying to Do
Under the current draft, the bill draws a clear regulatory line. Fungible tokens that are sufficiently decentralized and not classified as securities would fall primarily under the CFTC’s authority. Tokens tied to ongoing governance efforts, or offering yield or revenue-sharing features, would sit firmly within the SEC’s regime.
This distinction is not new. It largely mirrors how recent SEC enforcement actions have treated digital assets. The difference now is structural. What was previously enforced through interpretation is being written directly into statute, narrowing gray areas while creating new points of tension.
A Narrow Safe Zone for DeFi
Lobbyists who reviewed the December draft say the bill takes a targeted approach to DeFi. Front-end operators, order-routing interfaces, and fee-collecting DAOs would be treated as registrable entities. Immutable, non-upgradable, and non-fee-generating smart contracts would be left a limited safe harbor.
The result is not a free pass for DeFi. Instead, the framework targets control points—interfaces and economic leverage—rather than protocol code itself. That design choice explains why uncertainty remains around how flexible the regime would be in practice.
Political Momentum, Still Fragile
Prediction markets suggest rising confidence that lawmakers could break the deadlock this cycle. On Kalshi, contracts tied to the adoption of a comprehensive federal digital asset framework by mid-2026 are trading at meaningfully higher probabilities than earlier in the year.
Still, these markets have been wrong before. Between 2023 and 2025, House-led crypto initiatives repeatedly stalled after reaching the Senate, leaving unfinished legislation in their wake.
The 60-Vote Reality
Even if the CLARITY Act clears the Banking Committee, the hardest hurdle remains. Sixty votes on the Senate floor are required. Without bipartisan support, that threshold is difficult to reach.
Committee members have privately signaled they want to avoid repeating prior cycles, where House-approved digital asset packages quietly died in the Senate. Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott summarized the stated goal in a July 2025 discussion draft: protecting investors, supporting innovation, and keeping the future of digital finance anchored in the US. Few dispute the objective. The disagreement lies in the details.
What Institutional Flows Are Signaling
Capital has not waited for legal certainty. Data from late December shows Ethereum attracting more than $1.3 billion in new institutional staking inflows. Solana, after a sharp recovery from its 2022 lows, continues to draw capital seeking higher beta exposure.
These flows suggest markets are not ruling out a shift away from enforcement-driven oversight toward a more functional regulatory regime. Still, expectation is not assurance.
Why It Matters
A CLARITY Act that clears committee could establish a clear CFTC path for sufficiently decentralized Layer 1 networks. It could also define a workable registration framework for DeFi front ends and place explicit limits on reward-like stablecoin yields. Together, those changes would reduce headline risk for Ethereum-based yield strategies and Solana liquidity, while making it easier for large US platforms to list and collateralize a broader range of tokens.
January 15 is not just another committee date; for the crypto market, it represents a directional test with consequences that may extend well beyond this cycle.
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