CLARITY Act Fails: What the CFTC Rules Change Now

The CLARITY Act has failed in the US Senate, but the regulation of crypto markets in the United States is moving on, only by a different route. Instead of Congress, the supervisory agencies are now writing the rules: the derivatives watchdog CFTC filed two rule proposals of its own on September 17, 2026, and the securities regulator SEC opened trading in tokenised stocks on the same day. For investors in Germany nothing changes legally for now, because the EU regulation MiCA applies here. The prices of Bitcoin, XRP and other coins, however, feel the effect directly, as the past few days have shown.

The vote result, the CFTC and SEC filings and the price data are documented in this article. Where it turns to the consequences, this is a reading by our editorial team, and we mark it as such.

CLARITY Act fails in the Senate: the vote of September 15

On Tuesday, September 15, 2026, the US Senate voted on whether debate on the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act could begin. According to CNBC, 50 senators voted in favour and 49 against. Sixty votes would have been needed. That hurdle is called cloture: with 60 votes the Senate ends a minority blockade and can negotiate a bill. Without it, a proposal never reaches a vote at all.