Galaxy Raises CLARITY Act 2026 Passage Odds to 75% After Bipartisan Senate Banking Vote

Headline: Galaxy lifts CLARITY Act odds to 75% after bipartisan Senate Banking vote Galaxy Digital’s head of research, Alex Thorn, has raised his estimate that the CLARITY Act will become law in 2026 to 75% following a pivotal 15–9 bipartisan vote in the Senate Banking Committee on May 14. Thorn called the committee markup the “breakthrough” the bill needed and laid out a compressed timeline that would put a finished federal crypto framework within reach this summer. Galaxy Research’s timeline, published in the firm’s weekly brief on May 16, forecasts: - Early June: reconciliation between Senate Banking and Agriculture provisions - Mid-June: Senate floor consideration - Before end of June: final Senate passage - July: House reconciliation - Week of Aug. 3: potential presidential signature That projection is a sharp upward revision from Galaxy’s April view, when Thorn considered the bill roughly a 50/50 prospect and warned that any delay past mid-May would significantly lower the odds. The committee vote included two Democrats—Reps. Ruben Gallego (AZ) and Angela Alsobrooks (MD)—joining all 13 Republicans, and Thorn pointed to the bipartisan support and the Tillis–Alsobrooks compromise on stablecoin yield rules as the factors that removed the structural risks he had been most concerned about. He described the markup as the closest thing to “fireworks” a Senate committee vote can produce. Not everyone is as sanguine. Kristin Smith, president of the Solana Policy Institute, put passage probability at about 60%, saying “in theory, we have everything we need” but adding “a lot can go wrong.” Traders on prediction market Polymarket priced the bill’s 2026 passage at about 68% as of May 18—up from 46% at the start of May but still below Thorn’s 75% assessment. Key hurdles remain. The bill must still win 60 votes on the Senate floor, get reconciled with the House version, and be signed by the president. Senator Elizabeth Warren continues to oppose the measure on anti-money‑laundering and ethics grounds—issues that could resurface during floor debate. Congress also has only about nine weeks of Senate floor time before an Aug. 10 recess, a window that matters because substantive legislation rarely advances during a midterm election cycle. The White House has pushed to hit an early July target for progress. Industry reaction highlights the stakes beyond simple regulatory clarity. If the timeline holds, U.S. retail traders could be operating under a defined federal framework before year-end—a change that could reshape what onshore trading tools and products are legal. But some market participants caution that clarity of jurisdiction is only the start. Ivan Patriki, co-founder of QuantMap, said the bill’s reallocation of SEC and CFTC authority “is necessary, but it’s not sufficient,” arguing that unless retail users gain parity in access to historical data and tooling, “clarity is just marketing fluff.” Advocates have framed the package as transformational: Andreessen Horowitz compared CLARITY’s potential market impact to the Securities Act of 1933, a point Thorn echoed when he linked the CLARITY and GENIUS Acts to the kind of framework that “laid the foundation for 100 years of U.S. capital markets dominance.” Bottom line: the Senate Banking vote significantly increased the odds that Congress can finish a bipartisan crypto framework this summer, but final passage still faces procedural votes, House reconciliation and a presidential signature—any of which could delay or derail the timetable.