The CLARITY Act Senate Countdown: How the Market Structure Bill Affects XRP, RLUSD, and Digital Asset Classification

With Senate Banking Committee approval secured and a stablecoin yield compromise in place, Garlinghouse's warning of a two-week window before midterms kill the bill puts a hard deadline on crypto's most consequential regulatory moment in years.

The Senate Banking Committee approved the CLARITY Act this week, according to reporting from U.Today and CoinTelegraph. The bill, which would establish a formal market structure framework for digital assets — including classification rules that distinguish commodities from securities — is now on the Senate floor calendar. Whether it gets a vote before Congress breaks for midterm campaigning is an open question, and not a small one.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said at Consensus Miami that the bill is not a "done deal" despite the committee progress, and put the practical window at roughly two weeks before campaign season effectively kills legislative activity until after the midterms. That framing — legislation now or wait until 2027 — defines the stakes.

What the Bill Actually Does

The CLARITY Act attempts to resolve the central ambiguity that has defined U.S. crypto regulation for the better part of a decade: whether a given digital asset is a commodity under CFTC jurisdiction or a security under SEC jurisdiction. Under the bill's framework:

• Digital assets with sufficiently decentralized networks would fall under CFTC oversight as commodities.
• Assets tied to an active investment contract or dependent on a centralized issuer's efforts would remain under SEC jurisdiction.
• Stablecoins would be addressed in parallel legislation — a compromise between Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks resolved the earlier sticking point over whether stablecoins could pay yield.

The stablecoin yield compromise matters for RLUSD specifically. Ripple's dollar-pegged stablecoin is designed for cross-border payments and institutional settlement. Clarity on whether yield-bearing stablecoins are legal under U.S. law directly affects RLUSD's product roadmap.

Where XRP Fits

XRP's status under the CLARITY Act framework is a judgment call based on the bill's language — not something the bill resolves explicitly by name. The SEC's lawsuit against Ripple was dismissed in March 2025, and the March 2026 SEC/CFTC memorandum of understanding established clearer inter-agency coordination. Those developments provide meaningful context, but the CLARITY Act would provide the statutory footing that the MOU and the lawsuit dismissal do not.

Under the bill's commodity/decentralization test, XRP's classification would depend on an assessment of the network's degree of decentralization — a standard that Ripple has argued XRP meets. Whether regulators applying the new framework would agree is not predetermined, but the current momentum suggests XRP would fare better under a CLARITY Act framework than it has under the pre-2025 enforcement environment.

The Midterm Clock

Garlinghouse's two-week framing reflects a real legislative dynamic. Once members shift into campaign mode, floor time for complex financial legislation shrinks to near zero. A bill that doesn't move to a floor vote before that window closes doesn't disappear — but it resets to the next Congress, which means a potential 12-to-18 month delay.

The practical effect for digital asset market participants is that the next two weeks carry outsized weight relative to any comparable period in recent regulatory history. Watch for Senate floor scheduling announcements as the indicator of whether this window closes with the bill intact.