According to the external press review, one year ago, the “encrypted week” that was considered a breakthrough in United States encryption legislation, left only an incomplete report card. The House of Representatives then passed three consecutive Digital Assets Bills, but a year later only one of the ones that actually landed along the same path was still in the Senate.

The results of the three bills are divided.

In July 2025, the United States House of Representatives passed successively the CLARITY Bill, the GENIUS Bill and the Anti-CBDC Bill. Among them, the GENIUS Act was signed into law on 18 July 2025, establishing the first federal regulatory framework for the payment of a stable currency in the United States, and will be the first important rule-making point on 18 July 2026.

According to the article, the key to the successful landing of GENIUS is not that it is the most breakthrough, but the least resistance. Banks want clear rules for the stabilization currency, regulators require reserve restraint and regular disclosure, and industry wants legitimacy. Within this framework, there is a relative convergence of interests, and the bill is considerably less difficult to move forward than other encryption issues.

Another anti-CBDC bill has taken a more distorted path. The bill initially won the House of Representatives by 219 votes to 217, and then stalled. In the end, the clause prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency by 2030 was passed upon incorporation into a housing bill.

According to the text, the President had not signed the housing bill, which contained that provision, but that did not prevent it from coming into force after the expiry of the statutory period. According to this article, the encryption policy does not pass on its own, but through other legislative vehicles.

Clarity's stuck in ethics.

In contrast, the stagnation of the Clarity Act is of greater concern. The bill was passed by 294 votes to 134 in the House of Representatives on 17 July 2025, and more than 70 Democrats voted in favour. According to the article, this is the strongest cross-party support the United States Congress has ever had for digital asset legislation.

However, the bill has been delayed in the Senate to vote in its entirety. It is mentioned in the text that while CLARITY voted through the Senate Banking Commission on 14 May 2026 and was on the Senate ' s legislative agenda on 1 June, it could theoretically be arranged at any time, the Senate leadership has not yet given time.

The article notes that, prima facie, the problem is the lack of sufficient votes. The Senate usually needs 60 votes to close the debate and move the vote forward. Republican seats are not enough to move forward on their own, and support from at least a few Democrat parliamentarians remains to be secured.

However, it was observed that the deeper obstacles were ethical disputes. The Democrats linked the conditions of support to provisions that limited the profits of government officials from their regulated sectors, which were not included in the draft Senate merger, published on 14 July. On the same day, three Democratic senators publicly expressed their opposition to the bill.

The White House and Senate window narrow.

The article also mentioned that the Senate majority leader, John Thune, had promised to move the vote forward before the August recess and that the week of July 20 was considered a possible window. However, both the House of Representatives and the Senate will soon be in recess, leaving little time for the coordination of bills.

Meanwhile, the White House has been involved in the negotiations. According to the paper, the White House held a high-level meeting on 15 July to discuss arrangements for ethical provisions, in the presence of the President himself. At the market level, the probabilistic valuation of the Act, adopted in 2026, has been significantly lower than in the year, and some researchers have lowered their expectations.

The central judgement of the article is that the United States Congress does not depend solely on industry support or cross-party votes for encryption legislation. It is easier to move forward with a narrower bill, with clear interests and a lack of personal conflicts of interest; the legislative process will be significantly slowed when issues of segregation of powers or official interests are involved. The Clarity Bill is currently facing the latter.