CLARITY Act Heads to Senate Vote as BlackRock Files Tokenized Funds

The U.S. Senate Banking Committee meets Wednesday for a long-awaited markup of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the most sweeping crypto market structure bill ever to reach this stage in Congress. 

The session arrives the same week that BlackRock filed paperwork for two tokenized money market funds, a convergence that puts regulatory and institutional momentum in the same frame at the same moment.

How The CLARITY Act Reached Committee

The bill, formally H.R. 3633, passed the House on July 17, 2025, by a 294-134 bipartisan vote, with all 216 Republicans in support and 78 Democrats crossing the aisle.

The Senate Banking Committee released a 278-page draft in January 2026, which prohibits digital asset service providers from offering interest or yield to users simply for holding stablecoin balances, but allows for stablecoin rewards or activity-linked incentives.

The newly released 309-page text includes the patch of policy ground over which lobbyists spent months fighting: the question of what type of yield would be acceptable for stablecoins. 

“This bill reflects serious, good-faith work across the committee and delivers the certainty, safeguards, and accountability Americans deserve,” committee Chairman Tim Scott said in a statement.

What The Committee Vote Decides

The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee vote on Thursday would end years of regulatory ambiguity over who governs the digital asset market. 

The bill would divide jurisdiction over digital commodities between the SEC and the CFTC, potentially reshaping how trillions of dollars in crypto assets are traded, regulated, and taxed in the United States.

The Senate version expanded well beyond the House text, growing to nine titles covering decentralized finance protections, illicit finance provisions, bankruptcy safeguards for crypto customers, and the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which provides safe harbors for software developers.

Opposition is organized and well-funded. The crypto industry has spent more than $21 million lobbying on H.R. 3633 and related legislation in the past year. 

On the other side, the American Bankers Association has urged senators to close a loophole it says would allow digital asset exchanges to bypass the GENIUS Act’s ban on paying interest or yield on payment stablecoins. 

The ABA said the proposed compromise does not adequately prevent crypto companies from offering interest-like rewards.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the committee’s ranking Democrat, has been sharp in her objections. 

“This bill puts investors, our national security and our entire financial system at risk,” she said in a statement, adding that the bill “stunningly includes zero provisions” to address crypto-linked conflicts of interest involving the president.

The calendar pressure is significant. Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno have both warned that failure before Memorial Day could push the next viable legislative window to 2030 or beyond.

How BlackRock’s SEC Filings Fit The Moment

One day before the markup was publicly confirmed, BlackRock moved on a related front. 

In a Friday filing with the SEC, the asset manager proposed launching the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle, a new fund investing in cash, short-term U.S. Treasury securities, and overnight repurchase agreements backed by Treasuries. 

Separately, BlackRock filed paperwork to create an on-chain share class for its BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund, a money-market fund with nearly $7 billion in assets.

That second filing outlined how transfer agent BNY Mellon Investment Servicing would maintain official ownership records on Ethereum using ERC-20 token standards. Investors face a $3 million minimum investment.

The filing lands in the same week as the CLARITY Act markup and the White House push to have the bill signed before July 4, a convergence that turns BlackRock’s SEC submission into more than a routine product launch.

The tokenized real-world asset market has grown more than 200% over the past year and now exceeds $30 billion in value, according to industry tracker rwa.xyz. 

BlackRock’s existing BUIDL fund, launched in 2024, is ranked among the largest tokenized funds globally, with an estimated value of over $2.4 billion.

What Comes Next

• May 14, 2026: Senate Banking Committee markup, 10:30 a.m., Room 538, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. Live video will be publicly available.
• May 21, 2026: Memorial Day recess begins. If the bill does not clear committee before this date, the entire process resets.
• The White House has set a July 4 target for CLARITY Act passage.
• If approved by the Banking Committee, the bill still needs to be merged with a version cleared earlier by the Senate Agriculture Committee, and a conflict-of-interest provision must be resolved before a full Senate floor vote, where 60 yes votes will be required.