The Clarity Act won’t be signed by the US Senate this year — and it’s all the Democrats’ fault.

Tim Scott, a Republican Senator for South Carolina and the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, made that argument in an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday.

“The Democrats have been stalling and stalling and stalling because they don’t want President Trump to make America the crypto capital of the world,” Scott said. He added that he hopes the highly anticipated crypto market structure bill can be put to a vote in the Senate early next year.

Scott has been instrumental in making crypto legislation a key priority during US President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

The setback is another blow for the Republican Senator, who first predicted the bill would be signed into law by August, and most recently vowed to get the bill passed before September 30.

The Clarity Act aims to establish a regulatory framework for crypto by defining categories of assets and assigning them to regulatory agencies.

Its main goals are to close regulatory gaps, define rules for market participants, and provide clear pathways for crypto development and trading.

It follows the Genius Act, which Trump signed into law in July. Unlike the Genius Act, which limited its scope to crypto stablecoins, the Clarity Act is more wide-reaching.

As such, it is proving more difficult for legislators to agree on its contents.

Turbulent legislation

While a crypto market structure bill has received support from both Republicans and Democrats, legislators in both parties differ on how it should look.

In October, Senate Democrats proposed classifying every decentralised finance protocol as a “digital asset intermediary,” requiring them to verify customer identities and adhere to anti-money laundering regulations.

In response, the crypto industry, backed by many Republican lawmakers, broadly slammed the proposal, saying that it would effectively kill DeFi in the US.

Some Democrats are also opposing attempts to regulate crypto assets because it would legitimise the president’s crypto ventures.

These include the Trump memecoin, DeFi protocol World Liberty Financial, and American Bitcoin, an industrial-scale mining firm recently co-founded by Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

“These bills would make Congress complicit in Trump’s unprecedented crypto scam — one that’s enriched himself, his family, and the billionaire insiders in his cabinet,” Representative Maxine Waters, a Democratic Representative, wrote in a statement.

All the while, the US government was mired in a record 43-day shutdown as Congress failed to pass appropriations legislation for the 2026 fiscal year.

‘For the American people’

Despite the setbacks, the bill is making progress, according to a White House official.

“From our office, I haven’t noticed hardly any difference,” Patrick Witt, executive director of President Donald Trump’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets, said at Ripple’s Swell conference in New York City on November 5.

Scott, too, is still confident the bill will ultimately pass. “It’s not just for President Trump, it’s for the American People,” he said.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.