Galaxy Research head of firmwide research Alex Thorn lowered his estimate for the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026 to 60%, citing a Senate calendar that is running short on floor time. The update came via a June 6 post from WuBlockchain summarizing Thorn's note, and it marks a step down from the more confident tone that surrounded the bill earlier this spring.
The number itself is the news. A 60% read is still better than a coin flip, but it is a notable retreat from the assumption among many in the industry that crypto market-structure legislation was close to a done deal for this Congress. Thorn ties the downgrade to scheduling rather than substance: the Senate has a crowded docket, and the window to move a complex bill through committee, the floor, and reconciliation with the House is closing.
The bill that defines the rules
The CLARITY Act is the leading attempt to settle the question that has shadowed US crypto for a decade: which regulator is in charge. The bill would draw a line between digital assets that trade as commodities, falling under the CFTC, and those treated as securities under the SEC. That single distinction governs how tokens are issued, how exchanges register, and what disclosures projects owe investors.
For the United States, the absence of that line has pushed product launches offshore and left domestic firms guessing at their own legal status. A passed CLARITY Act would give exchanges, issuers, and custodians a federal framework instead of a patchwork of enforcement actions and state rules.
The House passed its version in 2025. The Senate has been the bottleneck, and Thorn's revised odds are a comment on the Senate's bandwidth, not on whether the votes exist.
A counterweight to the July 4 target
The downgrade lands against a more optimistic marker set earlier. Senator Cynthia Lummis had pointed to July 4 as a target for getting a market-structure bill to the Senate floor, a date that became a rallying point for advocates who wanted a 2026 finish. Thorn's 60% read does not contradict that goal so much as price in the risk that a floor target slips when the broader calendar fills up with unrelated priorities.
Galaxy Research is a market participant, so its probability estimate is a house view, not an official whip count. Treat it as one informed signal among several. Still, the firm tracks Washington closely, and a public cut from near-certainty to 60% is the kind of revision that moves expectations among traders and builders who had penciled in a 2026 resolution.
The cost of a slip into 2027
Pushing market-structure law into 2027 would not freeze the industry, but it would extend the limbo. Exchanges would keep operating under the current mix of SEC and CFTC posture, with token listings still exposed to the securities question. Stablecoin rules, which moved on a separate track, would remain the clearest piece of US crypto law while the broader framework waits.
For anyone spending or holding crypto in the US, the practical stakes sit upstream of the crypto cards themselves. The legal status of the assets funding a card, and of the exchanges and issuers behind it, depends on whether tokens are commodities or securities. A clearer framework tends to pull more regulated on-ramps, custodians, and stablecoin spending products into the domestic market. A delay keeps US providers cautious and slows the rollout of mainstream financial products tied to digital assets.
There is also a midterm dimension. The further a bill drifts toward late 2026, the more it competes with election-year politics, which historically narrows the space for bipartisan legislation. Thorn's note frames 2026 as the realistic window; a miss raises the odds the effort carries into a new Congress with different math.
Reading the 60%
A 60% estimate is a hedge, not a forecast of failure. The bill has House passage behind it, bipartisan interest, and an administration that has signaled support for clearer crypto rules. The constraint Thorn flags is time, and time can be found if leadership prioritizes it. The signal worth tracking now is not the headline odds but the Senate floor schedule itself: whether market structure gets a dedicated slot, and when.
For traders, the downgrade is a reminder that the regulatory tailwind many priced in is not guaranteed on this timeline. For builders, it is a prompt to plan for a framework that may not arrive until 2027. Either way, the next data point is procedural, a calendar entry rather than a vote, and that is what to watch.
Overview
Galaxy Research's Alex Thorn cut the odds of the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 to 60%, citing a tightening Senate calendar rather than any loss of support. The bill would split digital assets between CFTC commodity oversight and SEC securities rules, the central unresolved question for US crypto. The House passed its version in 2025; the Senate is the bottleneck. A slip into 2027 would extend the regulatory limbo for US exchanges, issuers, and the on-ramps behind crypto spending products, and would push the fight closer to election-year politics. The figure is a house estimate from a market participant, so weigh it as one informed signal.
