The Senate returns on Monday, August 3, with five working days before it breaks for recess until September 14, and the CLARITY Act still has no scheduled floor vote. The bill would write XRP’s (CRYPTO:XRP) commodity status into federal law, and every forecast of institutional money coming into XRP depends on it passing.
XRP trades at $1.08 today, down 43% this year. So what does the Senate’s last week before recess mean for the XRP price?
Can the CLARITY Act Pass Before the August 7 Recess?
The CLARITY Act passed the House 294-134 in July 2025, cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14, and joined the Senate’s list of bills ready for a floor vote on June 1. It has been on the queue ever since, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune has never given it floor time.
Republicans hold 53 seats and the bill needs 60 votes, which means it cannot pass without Democrats, and only two of them are publicly behind it. Senator Cynthia Lummis has said even Republican support won’t be unanimous, calling Josh Hawley “really resistant” after he declined to back the GENIUS Act last year.
There are two main bones of contention stopping the majority of Democrats from backing the bill. First off, banks want the bill’s stablecoin rules changed, arguing that letting exchanges pay people a return for holding stablecoins would pull deposits out of the banking system.
The second is that Democrats want a stronger ethics provision that would bar Trump and other senior officials from taking part in crypto projects, and the latest version of that provision went to the White House on July 30. The White House response could decide whether the Senate touches the bill at all this week.
The other reason the bill’s passage before the August recess is shaky is that Senator Thune has put nominations and a Russia sanctions bill ahead of the CLARITY Act. And he said on July 23 that he doesn’t expect a vote before the break, although he still wants to get the process started. So, the most the bill can move forward by Friday is a cloture motion filed, which would put it first in line when the Senate returns.
What a CLARITY Act Vote Would Mean for the XRP Price
XRP traded at $1.45 on the morning of May 14, and the price spiked to $1.54 a few hours after the Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill, marking a 6.6% gain on the day. But the coin gave back rhe gains over the following days, and XRP was down at $1.33 by late May.
It happened again in mid-July, when Trump agreed to the ethics provision that had been blocking negotiations. XRP climbed 3.5% intraday from around $1.11 to $1.1511 and finished third among the top 50 gainers, with roughly $2.93 million of leveraged short positions liquidated on the way up.
However, both moves faded because neither event changed anything about XRP’s legal status. A committee vote and a White House concession are only steps toward a law, and the coin remained in the same legal position the day after each one as it was the day before.
The bill’s actual passage is what would change that. The SEC and CFTC already classified XRP as a digital commodity in a joint interpretation on March 17, but an interpretation is not law, and the next set of regulators could withdraw it. The CLARITY Act would write that classification into federal statute and hand XRP’s oversight to the CFTC, whci is the agency that regulates oil, gold, and wheat.
Pension funds, asset managers, and bank trust desks have been waiting on that permanence, because they cannot hold an asset whose legal status a future administration could reverse. XRP ETFs recorded $131.94 million innflows in May, their strongest month of 2026, and that was the same stretch the bill was moving through committee. This shows institutions are just waiting for XRP’s legal status to be settled to commit at scale.
What Another Delay Would Mean for XRP
A delay would cost XRP six weeks at the very least, since the Senate does not return to legislative business until September 14. And September is the final shot the the bill has this year, because both chambers are out for nearly all of October ahead of the November 3 midterms, which is why traders on Polymarket now put the CLARITY Act’s chances of becoming law in 2026 at around 30%, down from 82% in February.
XRP has already shown what that does to its price. The coin slid to $1.06 when the Senate set the bill aside on July 27, and it has traded between $1.05 and $1.08 since, which is where the price has been since late June.
Holders would also spend another month waiting alongside the rest of the crypto market, because the CLARITY Act would set the rules for the whole industry rather than XRP alone, and passage could spark a broad rally that lifts XRP with it. That is why money still arrives in XRP ETFs every month but keeps shrinking, with the funds taking in $131.94 million in May, $59.46 million in June, and $27.29 million in July, as buyers hold back until the law is settled.
Can the CLARITY Act Still Pass in 2026?
The CLARITY Act can still become law this year, but not this week. September is the only month left with enough floor time to run a bill through cloture, debate, and a final vote, and the Senate will be dealing with government funding at the same time.
The bill also has one more step to clear after the Senate. The Senate version is not the text the House passed in July 2025, so it would have to go back to the House for another vote before it reaches Trump’s desk, and that has to happen in the same narrow September window.
So this week decides how much of that window the bill starts with. A cloture motion filed by Friday would put the CLARITY Act first in line on September 14, while another week of nothing leaves it competing for floor time all over again.
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