Charles Schwab Calls CLARITY Act a ‘Fundamental Catalyst’ as White House and Thune Clash Over Timing
Key Takeaways
Asset manager Charles Schwab called the CLARITY Act a much needed fundamental catalyst for the market.Senate Majority Leader John Thune says the bill will likely miss its pre-recess window.White House adviser Patrick Witt is banking on a Senate vote during the first week of August.
Wall Street’s $13 Trillion Endorsement
Charles Schwab, the brokerage giant overseeing roughly $13 trillion in client assets, says the CLARITY Act is a “really important fundamental catalyst” for the crypto industry and “needs to pass.”
The endorsement lands as Schwab itself has become a direct participant in the market, with the firm rolling out Schwab Crypto this year, letting clients buy bitcoin and ether directly at a cost of 75 basis points per trade (with the rollout expanding in stages from employees to waitlisted clients and eventually all eligible accounts across 48 states).
That expansion gives Schwab a tangible stake in how Washington resolves crypto market structure. The Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, which would split oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), already passed the Senate Banking Committee by a 15-9 vote on May 14.
A White House-Senate Split on Timing
Schwab’s confidence isn’t universally shared inside Washington, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters this week that the CLARITY Act is expected to miss its window before Congress’s summer break. “I would like to at least get Clarity started. We’ll see where the votes are,” Thune said, a notably more hedged tone than the bill’s advocates have used in public.
Patrick Witt, executive director of the White House Crypto Council, pushed back on that pessimism, calling himself “slightly more optimistic” than Thune. “There’s that first week of August that the Senate is in session,” Witt said, arguing a floor vote could still happen before lawmakers leave town.
Witt has been personally invested in the outcome as he reportedly deferred his Army National Guard training obligations to remain at the White House as negotiations over the bill’s ethics provisions dragged on.
The Unresolved Sticking Points
The gap between Thune’s and Witt’s read on the calendar traces back to a handful of unresolved fights. Chief among them are government ethics provisions that would limit senior officials’ personal crypto holdings, along with disagreements over how stablecoin yield should be treated under the new framework.
Senator Cynthia Lummis has indicated those sections remain open for revision in ways that could still win Democratic support, but the Senate’s floor calendar isn’t helping with leadership prioritizing a bipartisan Russia sanctions and tariffs package for next week, pushing CLARITY further down the queue.
The White House did manage one breakthrough though, with officials agreeing on an ethics deal and sharing its terms with Senate Republicans on July 20-21. Thune had committed to bringing the bill to the floor before recess with the week of July 20 as an active target, a deadline that, as of Thune’s latest comments, appears to have already slipped.
Lawmakers were urged to vote before the recess when they returned from a prior break on July 13. That said, if Thune can’t find floor time this week, the bill’s next realistic shot is September’s three-week Senate session, a delay that would extend the CLARITY Act’s now year-plus wait for a floor vote despite broad institutional backing from firms like Schwab and near-constant White House engagement from Witt’s team.
