Crypto prices fall as Clarity Act fails to advance in Senate

The global crypto market declines nearly 3% on Tuesday after the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act failed to gather the required 60 votes needed to invoke cloture in the Senate.

Cloture is the formal Senate procedure used to break legislative gridlock and force a final vote on a bill.

The measure received 49 YEA and 50 NAY votes, falling short of the 60 threshold by 11 despite a series of negotiations from Republican lawmakers and a push from President Donald Trump.

Lawmakers react after CLARITY failed to progress

Crypto America host Eleanor Terrett noted that several Democrats who spent months negotiating the bill voted NO, with some blaming their Republican colleagues for not including stricter rules.

The bill's chief author, Senator Cynthia Lummis, blasted Democrats in an X post after the vote ended.

Regardless, Democrats and Republican Senators agree that the bill isn't dead yet, but it will have to wait.

In a bid to gather support, Senate Republicans released an updated version of the bill over the weekend, including concessions to Democrats on stronger crypto ethics rules and a circuit breaker on stablecoin yields. However, the latest additions were not enough to move the needle.

In a Monday letter to the Senate Banking Committee, 18 attorneys general, led by Letitia James of New York, urged Congress to oppose the bill, arguing that it could weaken states' ability to pursue crypto fraud and investor protection cases.

Several banking trade groups had also warned that the deposit flight "circuit breaker" added to prevent stablecoin rewards from causing deposit flight from banks does not provide any safeguard.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had earlier signaled that it will issue rules that address some of the issues in the Clarity Act if Congress fails to advance the bill.

Following the vote, Bitcoin (BTC) fell 4% to $76,000, while Ethereum (ETH) dropped 5% to $2,400. Other top altcoins, XRP, Solana (SOL), Zcash (ZEC) and Hyperliquid (HYPE), fell 12%, 5%, 6% and 5%, respectively.

The move has sparked roughly $770 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass data. Bitcoin and Ethereum longs led the liquidations, with $191.4 million and $203.5 million, respectively.