The Senate’s crypto market structure bill is moving into what may be its last viable window for 2026, with advocates expecting a new draft of the Clarity Act as soon as next week.

The updated text would merge work from the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees, bringing together the two tracks that have shaped the chamber’s approach to digital asset regulation. The bill is expected to reflect additional negotiations and place more emphasis on consumer protections, according to a CoinDesk report.

The timing is tight. Senate backers are aiming for possible floor action as soon as the week of July 20, but the chamber has only a few weeks left before the summer break and before attention shifts toward the fall midterm cycle. The process itself could take several days, leaving little margin for delay.

The Clarity Act is meant to create a federal framework for digital asset markets, including how authority is divided between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The House passed its version in 2025 with bipartisan support, but the Senate version has been harder to land.

The Senate Banking Committee released its own version in May, with CoinDesk reporting at the time that the bill was designed to move crypto market structure legislation through Congress and address long running disputes over stablecoin yield and decentralized finance.

The main obstacle now is Democratic support. The bill will need 60 votes to clear the Senate, which means Republicans need a meaningful number of Democrats to back the final package. So far, that support is not locked in.

The biggest unresolved fight is an ethics provision sought by Democrats. The demand would restrict senior government officials, including the president, from maintaining business ties with the crypto sector. Several lawmakers have said they cannot support a final bill without a compromise on those limits.

That fight has become one of the clearest political risks for the legislation. CoinDesk reported in June that even if lawmakers solved the ethics dispute, the bill still faced other negotiations around Senate Agriculture Committee concerns, law enforcement worries over protections for DeFi developers, and stablecoin yield.

The latest merged draft is also expected to revisit federal preemption, one of the core questions in any federal crypto framework. The issue determines how much state level authority would remain once national market rules are in place.

Another open issue is staffing at the SEC and CFTC. The White House has pressed Senate leaders over Democratic nominees for minority seats at the commissions, while Democratic senators have separately criticized the administration and Senate Republican leadership over the process for filling vacancies at independent agencies.

The DeFi industry is also watching the fate of the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, a provision that would protect developers from being treated as money transmitters when they do not control customer assets. Senator Ron Wyden’s support for that language gave advocates a small sign of momentum this week.

The Senate draft is not expected to be a simple merger of earlier committee bills. The updated version is said to include more than 70 pages of new material and more emphasis on consumer protections.

Still, the bill remains unfinished. It has not secured the Democratic votes needed to move through the Senate, and the White House has not signed off on the merged text or participated in the latest talks, according to the report.

Even if it clears the Senate, the House would still need to approve the revised version before it could reach President Donald Trump’s desk, leaving the Clarity Act with little time and several hurdles still ahead.