Ripple’s fight with the SEC left XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) untradeable on U.S. exchanges for years, until a 2023 court ruling found that XRP sold on exchanges was not a security and the platforms relisted it. Then in March this year, the SEC and CFTC jointly classified XRP as a digital commodity.
However, regulators can withdraw that classification whenever they choose, which is why XRP holders have been waiting on the CLARITY Act to write it into federal law. The Senate spent this week on other business and never filed the motion needed to bring the bill to a vote before its recess.
Traders on Polymarket now give the bill a 14% chance of passing this year, down from 82% in February, and XRP has dropped 4.5% this month to $1.04.
Why Traders Once Gave the CLARITY Act 82% Odds
The House passed the CLARITY Act by 294-134 in July 2025, and 78 Democrats voted for it alongside nearly every Republican. Traders read that as the hardest part being done, since the Senate needs 60 votes to pass anything and Republicans only hold 53 seats, so Democrats would have to cross over for that to be possible.
The odds of the bill becoming law this year hit 82% in February, when the White House started running the negotiations directly. Trump’s team brought crypto executives, bank representatives and lawmakers into repeated meetings and set March 1 as the deadline for a deal on stablecoin yield. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also publicly urged the Senate to vote quickly, pointing at the midterms as the reason to hurry.
The Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill 15-9 on May 14, with all 13 Republicans and two Democrats voting yes. XRP was trading at $1.45 that morning and hit $1.54 within hours of the vote, a 6.6% gain on the day.
On June 1 the bill went onto the Senate Legislative Calendar, which meant leadership could bring it to the floor on any day it chose. So, the CLARITY Act has been ready for the floor for more than two months without leadership calling it. That’s why the odds have dropped so much to just 14% today.
Why the Senate Never Called a Vote on the CLARITY Act
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on August 3 that the CLARITY Act would get a floor vote before the recess, then hedged it in the same breath, saying that whether the Senate can get on the bill remains to be seen.
Any vote has to start with a cloture motion, which is the filing that ends debate and sets the clock running, and Thune never made one on the bill. Tuesday came and went with nothing. On Wednesday he filed cloture on other measures and left the CLARITY Act out, which closed the ordinary route to a Friday vote. By Thursday the Senate was not discussing the bill at all, and spent the day on a government funding bill, a block of nominations, the Protect College Sports Act and the confirmation of Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche.
Filing was never going to help while the votes were missing. A cloture motion that fails puts every senator on record voting against the bill, which hands opponents a defeat they can point at for the rest of the year, so leadership would rather leave a bill waiting than lose it in public.
Democrats have stayed away over ethics, and Trump’s own finances are at the center of that fight. His financial disclosure, released on July 1, showed roughly $1.4 billion in crypto income for 2025, including $635 million from licensing the $TRUMP meme coin and more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial token sales.
Republicans wrote an ethics provision to answer that, and Democrats say it changes nothing in practice. It reportedly stops certain officials from issuing or sponsoring new digital assets, but it leaves the Trump family’s existing holdings untouched, hands enforcement to Trump’s own Justice Department, and expires the moment he leaves office.
Senator Elizabeth Warren said the bill still has not solved corruption, consumer protection or national security, and that she cannot see anyone moving forward until it does. Senator Thom Tillis, who has been negotiating the ethics language with Ruben Gallego, admitted that negotiators are not quite there, and the White House was still reviewing their proposal this week. And Illicit finance and agriculture provisions are also unresolved.
What Happens to the CLARITY Act and XRP Now?
No cloture motion means no countdown, so the CLARITY Act now waits until the Senate returns on September 14. Senator Cynthia Lummis says she expects the chamber to sit past Friday and into the weekend, and Senate Banking Chairman Tim Scott says a first vote is still possible if the Senate delays its recess, but Thune would have to file the motion first.
September is the bill’s last real chance this year. The Senate has only 14 working days in session across September and October before senators leave to campaign for the midterms. The Senate’s version is also not the text the House passed in July 2025, so the bill would have to go back to the House for another vote before it reaches Trump’s desk, and both of those have to happen inside those 14 days.
Traders have not written the bill off completely. On Kalshi, where the bet runs to mid-2027 rather than December, the odds of the CLARITY Act taking effect are 41%.
XRP holders lose nothing if the bill stalls, since the joint SEC-CFTC rule from March classified XRP among 16 major assets as digital commodities and it stays in force. What the bill would add is permanence, and that is what institutions want before they commit money, since an agency can rewrite its own rule and a future administration can reverse it.
The XRP price remains pinned near $1 and is barely holding that support, with nothing on the calendar to lift it before the Senate returns.
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