JPMorgan Says CLARITY Act Is Closer Than We Think

JPMorgan thinks the United States is closer to a federal crypto rulebook than most people realize. In a client note dated April 15, the bank's analysts said Senate negotiations on the CLARITY Act have narrowed to just 2-3 unresolved issues, down from more than a dozen a few weeks ago.

That is a concrete shift, not vibes. And it lands right as the industry was starting to write off 2026.

What JPMorgan Actually Said

The bank's research note, first reported by CoinDesk and picked up across financial media, frames the bill as "close to completion." A senior policy source told the bank that the fight over stablecoin rewards, which has stalled talks for months, is now "in a good place." A Senate staffer described the current draft as "very close."

The remaining sticking points are DeFi oversight and token classification. Those are not small items, but they look workable compared to the mess of 12-plus open questions the bill carried into early 2026.

JPMorgan sees passage of the CLARITY Act as a potential positive catalyst for digital asset markets in the second half of 2026, especially for institutional flows that have been waiting on legal certainty.

What Is the CLARITY Act?

The Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act of 2025, filed as H.R. 3633, is the most ambitious U.S. crypto framework ever to reach this stage. It does a few things at once:

• Splits jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC, handing the CFTC primary oversight of "digital commodities" on mature, decentralized networks
• Keeps the SEC in charge of securities-like offerings but carves out new exemptions for digital-asset fundraising
• Builds a federal framework for permitted payment stablecoins, DeFi platforms, and token classification
• Adds consumer protections and illicit-finance rules, and blocks the Fed from offering certain CBDC products directly to individuals

If enacted, it replaces the regulation-by-enforcement era with actual statutory rules. That is the whole point.

How Did We Get Here?

The bill has moved faster than most crypto watchers expected. House Financial Services Chairman French Hill introduced it on May 29, 2025. The House passed it 294-134 in July 2025, with real bipartisan support. It landed in the Senate Banking Committee in September 2025. An earlier markup attempt in January 2026 was shelved after industry pushback, shifting the action to closed-door negotiations.

JPMorgan's note is the clearest public signal yet that those private talks have gone somewhere.

No final text is public. No floor vote is scheduled. But the shape of the compromise is coming into view.

Why the Stablecoin Fight Matters

Stablecoin rewards have been the biggest single obstacle. Banks argued that yield-bearing stablecoins, and the rewards programs exchanges like Coinbase run on top of them, would let crypto platforms function as unregulated deposit-takers, pulling funds out of the banking system. Crypto firms argued the opposite, that restricting rewards would kill one of the most useful consumer features on-chain.

The current Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise text bans passive yield on stablecoin balances but allows activity-based rewards tied to transactions or platform use. That is the version banks can live with. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rejected the bill twice this year, including a January withdrawal that forced the Senate Banking Committee to cancel its scheduled markup, with stablecoin yield worth roughly $1.35 billion in 2025 revenue to the exchange. On April 10 he reversed course and publicly backed the bill, posting "It's time to pass the Clarity Act" after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's Wall Street Journal op-ed and a White House Council of Economic Advisers report challenged the banking industry's numbers on deposit flight. That swing from the industry's loudest holdout to a public endorser is part of what JPMorgan is reading as momentum.

The GENIUS Act, signed in 2025, licensed dollar-pegged payment stablecoins but left the yield question open. CLARITY is supposed to close it.

What Could Still Go Wrong?

The calendar. The Senate Banking Committee released its schedule for the week of April 20 without the CLARITY Act on it. The only item on the agenda is a nomination hearing for Fed Chair candidate Kevin Warsh. Chairman Tim Scott has still not set a markup date.

Paradigm's Justin Slaughter has estimated the bill needs to clear the committee by mid-May to have any chance of a floor vote before the calendar closes. JPMorgan flagged the political risk directly: if Democrats retake the House in November, crypto legislation drops down the priority list.

Senator Cynthia Lummis put it more bluntly on April 10: "This is our last chance to pass the Clarity Act until at least 2030."

Polymarket prices passage of the act in 2026 at around 60%, down from 82% earlier this year. The odds are still in the bill's favor, but barely.

What It Means for the Market

The news has already moved some tokens. $XRP and other assets with clear regulatory overhang saw pops on the April 16 reporting. Beyond that, passage would give institutions what they have asked for: rules they can underwrite against.

For DeFi, the stakes are higher. Token classification will decide which protocols can serve U.S. users openly and which stay in the gray zone. JPMorgan's note does not spell out where that line lands, and that is probably because the line is still being drawn.

A policy advisor quoted in the reporting put it plainly: "there is no such thing as a perfect bill." That pretty much sums up the mood in Washington right now. Get something workable across the finish line before the election cycle eats the oxygen.

Closer than we think, maybe. But the clock is louder than the note.

Sources:

• CoinDesk - Original scoop on the JPMorgan client note, including the 12-to-2-or-3 issue reduction and "in a good place" stablecoin quote
• FinTech Weekly - Tillis-Alsobrooks yield compromise text and Coinbase position shift
• Congress.gov - Official H.R. 3633 bill text, French Hill sponsorship, and legislative actions
• U.S. House Committee on Financial Services - Confirmation of Chairman French Hill as sponsor and House passage vote