The Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, which oversees the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and is actively involved in advancing the CLARITY Act, has postponed the planned markup of the sweeping U.S. crypto market structure bill to the final week of January.
Committee Chairman John Boozman said on Monday that they require more time finalize outstanding issues in the bill and gain bipartisan support before it could advance. He noted that the committee has made “meaningful progress” and had “constructive discussions” with lawmakers and lobby groups.
JUST IN: The CLARITY Act delayed until 2026, per CNBC #crypto pic.twitter.com/fGWnYcSxpj
— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDaily) December 18, 2025
Senate Agriculture Panel Delays CLARITY Act Markup to Late January
The delay leaves the outcome of those talks unresolved, with industry players concerned about how the issue of DeFi and yield-bearing stablecoins will ultimately be addressed. Stakeholders are highly anticipating the legislation to properly define the roles of the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in policing the domestic crypto market.
Sen. Boozman said in the statement,
“To finalize the remaining details and ensure the broad support this legislation requires, additional time is needed before moving to markup. The committee will mark up this legislation during the last week of January,”
JUST IN: The CLARITY Act delayed until 2026, per CNBC #crypto pic.twitter.com/fGWnYcSxpj
— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDaily) December 18, 2025
A markup for the CLARITY Act was scheduled on Thursday, January 15, aligning with the planned action of the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the SEC, on the same bill. The market structure bill under consideration in the Senate is separate from the House’s CLARITY Act due to procedural rules.
The bill was first introduced in the House of Representatives by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and was passed in May 2024. However, progress stalled in the Senate that year, with both lawmakers and lobbyists pushing to ban all stablecoin yield payments and include provisions for ethics laws.
Democratic Senators want the bill to include conflict-of-interest guardrails that prohibit public officials from maintaining any relations with crypto companies. Bank lobbyists pushed to ban third-party platforms, such as crypto exchanges, from offering stablecoin holders yields, after the GENIUS Act prohibited issuers from doing so. Meanwhile, crypto lobby groups and companies are pressing lawmakers to exclude blockchain-based software developers and non-custodial platforms from being classified as intermediaries in transactions, which would therefore subject them to finance rules.
CLARITY Act Faces Delay Until Late 2026 Amid DeFi, Stablecoin Disputes
Last week, the Wall Street trade group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), met with crypto industry leaders to narrow their disagreements over the Senate’s bill. Sources familiar with the matter said the key issues debated included the treatment of decentralized finance (DeFi) and questions surrounding yield-bearing stablecoins.
DeFi refers to applications that enable users to trade, lend, or manage digital assets directly through a software program, rather than a bank or an intermediary that handles customer funds. The dispute here is whether developers of these applications should face the same regulatory obligations as traditional financial institutions when they do not control users’ assets. Meanwhile, yield-bearing stablecoins are tokens that maintain a stable value with their peg, typically a fiat currency like the dollar or euro, while also generating passive income for holders through DeFi lending, staking, liquidity provision, or backing by real-world assets such as U.S. Treasury bills. This allows users to earn returns simply by holding the stablecoin in their wallet, without needing to move funds to separate platforms.
While the GENIUS Act set the baseline rules for stablecoin issuance in the U.S. last year, it did not specify how yield-generating assets and DeFi software should be treated, prompting unresolved questions among camps that agree and disagree.
Earlier this month, investment banking giant TD Cowen said the midterm elections in September could diminish the support that’s needed to pass the CLARITY Act, and the legislation is more likely to proceed in 2027, with final implementation expected in 2029.
Senators Propose Bill to Clarify Crypto Money Transmitter Status
At the same time, a new bipartisan Senate bill by Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden is aiming to define when and how crypto developers and infrastructure providers may be treated as money transmitters under federal law.
The proposal, dubbed the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, seeks to clarify the distinction between developers who write or maintain blockchain-related software and financial intermediaries that control customer funds. This has become a matter of serious consideration as federal regulators are increasingly targeting privacy and self-custodial software with enforcement action.
Writing code is not the same as controlling money and developers who build blockchain infrastructure without touching user funds shouldn't be treated like banks. @RonWyden and I are ensuring that won’t happen. pic.twitter.com/9zIgh07e0b
— Senator Cynthia Lummis (@SenLummis) January 12, 2026
In a statement released on Monday, Lummis said that blockchain developers who have simply written code and maintain open-source infrastructure have lived under the threat of being classified as money transmitters “for far too long.” She added that such a designation made no sense as these individuals never “touch, control, or have access” to customer funds. The bill would exclude non-controlling developers and infrastructure providers from being treated as money transmitters under federal law, provided that they have the legal right or unilateral ability to move users’ assets.
Sen. Wyden said,
“Forcing developers who write code to follow the same rules as exchanges or brokers is technologically illiterate and a recipe for violating Americans’ privacy and free speech rights,”
The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act comes as scrutiny of developer liability intensified following the Department of Justice’s prosecutions of individuals tied to privacy and self-custody software, including the case against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm and the sentencing of Samourai Wallet executives Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill last year.
