After a series of monumental wins last year, the crypto industry has hit a roadblock to start 2026 after the Senate Banking Committee postponed a key vote on the Clarity Act, a long-sought piece of legislation that would establish regulation for blockchain technology. But in the latest edition of Fortune’s Crypto Playbook podcast—available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube—longtime blockchain lobbyist Ron Hammond says that the bill is still “churning along.”
“This has momentum,” he told Fortune. “And in politics, it’s everything.”
The Clarity Act represents a potential sea change for the crypto industry, which has spent most of its short history at odds with the U.S. government. The legislation, however, would create clear rules of the road for the issuance and regulation of cryptocurrencies, helping provide legitimacy to the often renegade sector.
While the House of Representatives pushed the bill forward over the summer, it has remained in a logjam in the Senate, largely due to disagreements over how to handle the treatment of yields earned off stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies such as USDC backed by the dollar.
A bipartisan group of Senators has sided with the banking lobby, which argues that it would be dangerous to allow crypto companies like Coinbase to offer yields to customers holding stablecoins, as it could lead to a deposit flight. That led Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to post on X that he was pulling his support for a draft from the Senate Banking Committee, which itself decided to delay a crucial vote on the bill.
Hammond said that he is more optimistic than many of his colleagues on the bill’s chances, putting its likelihood of passage at 40%. “The question is, how far can they bend this bill before it breaks?” he asked.
Also in this week’s episode, the digital asset treasury company BitMine is backing Mr. Beast’s crypto venture, and a debate over how soon tokenized stocks will disrupt the financial system.
