Galaxy Research raised its CLARITY Act passage odds to 75% after the May 14 Senate Banking vote.
Summary
- Galaxy Research head Alex Thorn forecast a Trump signing the week of Aug. 3 if the Senate keeps pace on reconciliation and floor debate.
- Solana Policy Institute President Kristin Smith offered a more cautious 60% probability, citing the narrow window before August recess.
- Polymarket traders priced 2026 passage at 68%, up sharply from 46% at the start of May.
Galaxy Digital’s head of firmwide research Alex Thorn raised his estimate of the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026 to 75%, citing the Senate Banking Committee’s 15 to 9 bipartisan vote on May 14 as the breakthrough the bill needed.
Thorn posted the timeline in Galaxy Research’s weekly brief on May 16: Senate Banking and Agriculture reconciliation in early June, Senate floor consideration by mid-June, final Senate passage before the end of June, House reconciliation through July, and a potential Trump signature the week of Aug. 3.
Why 75% and not higher
The upgrade marks a sharp reversal from Galaxy’s prior position. As crypto.news reported in April, Thorn had put the odds at roughly 50/50 and warned that a markup slipping past mid-May would drop chances sharply.
Two Democrats, Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, joined all 13 committee Republicans to advance the bill. That bipartisan signal, plus the Tillis-Alsobrooks stablecoin yield compromise, removed the structural risk Thorn had flagged.
Thorn described the markup as the closest thing to “fireworks” a Senate committee vote can produce. Congress has roughly nine weeks of Senate floor time before the Aug. 10 recess, after which substantive legislation rarely advances during a midterm cycle.
Solana Policy Institute President Kristin Smith offered a more cautious read, putting passage probability at 60%. “In theory, we have everything we need,” Smith said in a Friday interview. “A lot can go wrong.”
Polymarket traders priced 2026 passage at 68% as of May 18, up from 46% at the start of the month but still below Thorn’s estimate.
What an August signing means for retail
The crypto.news coverage of the committee vote noted Senator Elizabeth Warren’s continued opposition on anti-money-laundering and ethics grounds, issues still unresolved on the Senate floor.
If Galaxy’s timeline holds, US retail will be operating inside a defined federal framework before year-end, a shift that goes beyond exchange compliance and reshapes what tools traders can legally access onshore.
Ivan Patriki, fintech marketing strategist & co-founder of QuantMap, said the timeline matters less than what fills the legal venue once it opens.
“Clarity on jurisdiction is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. The bill draws a cleaner line between the SEC and CFTC, but doesn’t address the asymmetry between retail and institutional access to data and tooling,” Patriki said.
According to him, “ If a retail trader still can’t backtest a strategy across a meaningful sample of market history, or still can’t see what a desk sees, then ‘clarity’ Is just marketing fluff. It’s a professional venue for the same old information gap.”
Andreessen Horowitz, in analysis that crypto.news documented , compared the bill’s potential impact to the Securities Act of 1933. Thorn drew the same comparison, calling CLARITY and the GENIUS Act the type of framework that “laid the foundation for 100 years of US capital markets dominance.”
The bill still needs 60 Senate floor votes, House reconciliation, and a presidential signature. The White House continues to push for July 4 as the target.
