CLARITY Act Fails in Senate: SEC Approves Tokenized Stocks, ARB 70X Forecast

The US Senate's Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act failed a cloture vote on September 20, 2026, falling short with 49 votes in favor and 50 against — well below the 60 votes required to advance the bill. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina confirmed his "no" vote was a procedural tactic, signaling potential for a future re-vote, similar to how the GENIUS bill passed 11 days after its initial cloture failure. Congressman Shri Thanedar, a Democrat who supported CLARITY in the House, called the timeline a "major barrier," noting only 20 legislative days remain in the current Congress — all falling after midterms — making a 2026 compromise unlikely. Seven Democratic senators who voted against the bill stated they "remain committed" to passing it in a future session.

In the absence of comprehensive federal legislation, the US Securities and Exchange Commission moved quickly, announcing a five-year Innovation Exemption just two days after the failed vote. The rule permits limited trading of tokenized US stocks on decentralized public blockchains via automated market makers, exempting them from securities exchange registration. Notably, the exemption does not cover tokenized stocks that fail to grant holders identical rights to traditional shares — a distinction that threatens products issued by platforms like xStocks and Robinhood. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse predicted US regulators will "continue to work hard to issue rules to fill the legislative gap," and the SEC's rapid action appears to validate that expectation.

Adding to the regulatory momentum, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission stepped in with its own proposed crypto rules following the CLARITY collapse. NEAR Protocol chief legal officer Abhishek Vaidyanathan noted that the House had already cancelled two sitting weeks and that the Senate's state work period began October 5, making the next Congress the realistic window for federal crypto market structure legislation. Meanwhile, Standard Chartered projected that Arbitrum (ARB) could see a 70x price increase by 2030, citing the Ethereum layer-2 network's growing role in real-world asset tokenization and decentralized finance — a forecast that gained credibility from the same regulatory tailwinds now driving tokenized stock adoption.