Galaxy Digital head of firmwide research Alex Thorn has assessed the CLARITY Act’s chances of being signed into law in 2026 at roughly 50-50, and possibly lower, in a research note being published this week, warning that the bill faces more unresolved questions than most of Washington appreciates and that time pressure is now its biggest enemy.
Summary
- Galaxy Research puts the CLARITY Act’s odds of becoming law in 2026 at approximately 50-50 or lower, with Thorn warning that a markup slipping past mid-May would drop chances sharply.
- Polymarket traders are pricing the bill’s passage at approximately 43%, down from 82% earlier in the year, reflecting the compounding delays and calendar pressure.
- Galaxy identifies the core risk as not any single issue but the sequential nature of the bill’s remaining hurdles under severe time pressure.
Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy Digital, warned in a note shared with DL News that “if the markup slips past mid-May, the probability of enactment in 2026 will drop sharply.” The firm’s overall assessment is blunt: “In our view, the odds of CLARITY being signed into law in 2026 are roughly 50-50, and possibly lower. The uncertainty stems not from any single issue but from the sheer number of unresolved questions that must be settled in sequence under severe time pressure.”
CLARITY Act Galaxy Research Note Highlights Sequential Risk as the Core Threat
Thorn’s analysis identifies several individual flashpoints that each carry veto power over the bill’s progress. Beyond the stablecoin yield dispute that has dominated coverage, the note flags the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act provision embedded in the Senate draft, which clarifies that non-custodial software developers who write code but do not control user funds are not money transmitters. Crypto advocates view this as essential to keeping open-source development onshore, but it has drawn pushback from some regulatory quarters. Polymarket traders, whose prediction market on the CLARITY Act has generated over $557,000 in trading volume since January, currently price the bill’s passage at approximately 43%, down sharply from 82% earlier in the year. As crypto.news has tracked, the bill faces a four-way standoff among crypto firms, banks, the SEC, and structural critics, with each faction holding effective veto power over a different provision.
What Would Need to Go Right for the Bill to Pass
For the CLARITY Act to become law in 2026, five sequential steps must succeed in rapid succession: a Senate Banking Committee markup, a 60-vote Senate floor threshold, reconciliation of the Banking and Agriculture Committee versions, reconciliation with the House-passed text from July 2025, and a presidential signature. Each of those steps is a potential point of failure. As crypto.news reported, the White House has described the stablecoin yield compromise as holding firm, and White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said the deal is a “must-have” for unlocking the remaining issues. If that compromise breaks down again, it would trigger another delay that Galaxy’s timeline math suggests the bill cannot survive.
What Passage Would Mean for Crypto Markets
JPMorgan analysts have publicly described CLARITY Act passage by midyear as a positive catalyst for digital assets, a view that reflects how much institutional deployment in crypto is currently gated behind regulatory clarity. As crypto.news documented, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong reversed his company’s earlier opposition and backed the current bill version in April, and approximately 65% of institutional investors surveyed by Coinbase and EY-Parthenon have cited regulatory clarity as the condition holding them back from serious XRP and broader digital asset deployment. Galaxy’s 50-50 assessment is not a call to give up on the bill but a warning that the path is narrower than the most optimistic forecasters in Washington and the crypto industry have been projecting.
A lame duck session of Congress following the November midterms has been mentioned as a last-resort option by some insiders, though Galaxy describes that scenario as low probability given the compressed legislative dynamics.
