If the CLARITY Act does not clear the Senate Banking Committee before the Memorial Day recess on May 21, the bill could be delayed until 2030, since the current three-way consensus between the House, Senate, and White House on cryptocurrency legislation is uniquely fragile, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said at XRP Las Vegas on April 30.
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- The bill has more than 120 corporate backers including Coinbase, Kraken, Circle, and Andreessen Horowitz and has public support from the White House, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, and Treasury Secretary Bescent.
- Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno have independently said that failure to pass the CLARITY Act in 2026 means the next window will not open before 2030.
- The CLARITY Act would still have to clear the Banking Committee’s markup, the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, reconcile the Banking and Agriculture Committee versions, reconcile the July 2025 House text, and be signed by Trump.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse framed May 21 as a hard cap for XRP Las Vegas, warning that the political conditions enabling the CLARITY Act are rare in Washington and may not survive the midterm election realignment. 247 Wall Street analysis It notes that XRP has spent most of 2026 waiting for this one catalyst, and that failure before May 21 effectively removes the biggest institutional adoption driver of the year. Senator Tillis confirmed that he will ask Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott to set a date for the interest rate increase when the Senate returns on May 11.
Such as crypto.news I mentionedthe April rate increase deadline was missed because Kevin Warsh’s confirmation consumed the Banking Committee’s calendar throughout April, and the Commission broke off its weeklong recess before any notice of the rate increase was published. This delay compresses the remaining window to approximately eight working days between May 11 and 21. The five steps that must occur in sequence include committee markup, committee vote, 60-vote Senate vote, reconciliation of the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committee versions, and a second reconciliation with the House text in July 2025. Each step takes days that the calendar no longer needs to provide.
Such as crypto.news NotarizedSenator Lummis made the political fragility argument explicit at the Bitcoin 2026 conference on April 27, saying that the current simultaneous consensus between the House, Senate, and White House on cryptocurrency legislation is “rare in Washington and may not last.” She chairs the banking subcommittee on digital assets and is not seeking re-election, making her one of the few senators with no electoral incentive to delay. Such as crypto.news trackingNovogratz said on a podcast this week that the bill “will likely be done in May,” but Galaxy Research puts the overall 2026 odds of passage at 50-50 or lower and Polymarket prices it at about 46%.
