The crypto industry’s effort to secure comprehensive market-structure legislation suffered a major setback when the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act in a 49-50 procedural vote, below the 60 votes required. The House passed the bill in 2025, but negotiations stalled over ethics provisions linked to President Trump’s crypto ventures. Democrats opposed the measure, joined by three Republicans, while Rep. Ritchie Torres attributed the outcome to multiple factors and identified President Trump’s role as decisive. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, described as the bill’s lead architect, called the effort effectively dead for the year. Within 48 hours, the SEC, CFTC, Federal Reserve and OCC advanced separate initiatives under existing authority and the GENIUS Act. The SEC introduced an innovation exemption for qualifying venues trading tokenized U.S. stocks on-chain without registering as national securities exchanges. The CFTC issued a no-action position for passive software providers, including crypto wallet applications, and sent a broader crypto-markets rulemaking plan to the White House for review. The Federal Reserve proposed stablecoin requirements covering safe, liquid reserves and operational-risk capital, while the OCC is working to finalize related rules by November. The shift leaves crypto policy more dependent on agency rulemaking, which can be slower to develop, more vulnerable to court challenges and easier for a future administration to reverse than legislation. Market pricing indicates reduced odds that the CLARITY Act will become law in 2026, while industry participants monitor President Trump, Senate figures including Tim Scott and Cynthia Lummis, and further White House announcements.