On September 14, 2026, U.S. Senate offices posted a “final draft” of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. The file they attached is an amendment in the nature of a substitute for H.R. 3633, labeled EHF26724. It is text that would be offered if cloture on the motion to proceed is invoked on Tuesday afternoon. It is not a signed law, and it is not a live Securities and Exchange Commission or Commodity Futures Trading Commission rulebook.
Bitcoin (BTC) traded at $77,576 on the site CoinGecko snapshot fetched at 2026-09-14T07:00:29+00:00, up 0.67% over 24 hours. Coinbase’s BTC-USD session stats at the same hour showed a last print of $77,607.39 and a high of $77,862.41, still under $80,000. That tape does not confirm a range break, and it does not price in a finished market-structure statute.
What happened
Senate Banking Digital Assets Subcommittee Chair Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-AR), and Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-SC) released the package on Lummis’s site. The press note says the draft reflects more than a year of talks and “126 substantive changes made at the request of Democrats.” The same note is explicit about procedure: if cloture is invoked on the motion to proceed on Tuesday afternoon, this text would be offered as a substitute amendment.
The PDF is not a one-page talking sheet. The header is “Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute” for H.R. 3633 in the 119th Congress, 2d Session. Short title in section 1: “Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.” The table of contents splits the bill into Division A (Banking), Division B (digital commodity intermediaries at the CFTC), Division C (ethics), and Division D (effective date).
Three pieces of that substitute matter for desks that trade liquidity rather than slogans.
First, Division C would add a new subchapter to title 5 of the U.S. Code. Covered individuals (public officials and employees, certified but not yet sworn presidents, vice presidents, and members of Congress, and their spouses) would be banned from issuing or sponsoring a digital asset for consideration, and from holding a “significant financial interest” of $15,000 or more (inflation-adjusted) in a business that took a plurality of revenue from issuing or sponsoring digital assets, other than tokenized traditional assets, in any of the prior three years. Divestiture or a qualified blind trust is the off-ramp. Civil money penalties for knowing, willful issuance or sponsorship: 20 percent of consideration received or $500,000 (inflation-adjusted), whichever is greater. State attorneys general get a federal-court path when they allege harm to the state or its residents. Section 30104 delays the ethics division until the earlier of 360 days after enactment or 60 days after the Federal Register publishes the final rule under section 10102(b). The issuance and sponsorship bans apply only to assets issued or sponsored on or after that date.
Second, section 10404 would bar “covered parties” (digital asset service providers and affiliates, excluding certain permitted or foreign payment stablecoin issuers) from paying interest or yield to U.S. customers solely for holding payment stablecoins, or in a way that is economically or functionally equivalent to interest on a bank deposit. Activity-based or transaction-based rewards can survive if they are not that equivalent. Joint SEC, CFTC, and Treasury rules are due within one year of enactment. A separate circuit-breaker lasts 18 months after enactment: if Treasury writes that community banks (under $10 billion in assets) saw a substantial, detrimental shift of interest-bearing deposits into payment stablecoins because of the activities this section regulates, it must, after notice and comment and with the OCC, FDIC, and Fed Board, tighten those yield payments. Section 10404 cites GENIUS Act section 2 (12 U.S.C. 5901). Treasury’s GENIUS proposed rule is a separate file. It does not enact 10404.
Third, section 10604 (Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act) says a “non-controlling” blockchain developer or distributed-ledger service provider shall not, solely for publishing software, hardware for a customer’s own custody, or infrastructure support, be treated as a money transmitting business, a money transmitter, or certain Bank Secrecy Act financial institutions. The construction rules keep other conduct in scope. Section 10605 (Keep Your Coins Act) would stop a federal agency from banning lawful self-custody by a covered U.S. user, with a construction clause that preserves existing agency enforcement tools.
Division D, section 40101, is the clock most traders will skip. Except where the Act says otherwise, the statute and its amendments take effect 360 days after enactment. If a provision needs a rule, it takes effect on the later of that 360-day mark or 60 days after the implementing final rule hits the Federal Register.
Context
H.R. 3633 already moved once. On May 14, 2026, the Senate Banking Committee advanced the House-passed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act by a 15-9 vote, according to the committee majority press office. That was a markup, not a floor enactment. August 8, 2026 cloture on the motion to proceed is the vehicle this week’s offices are still talking about. A substitute draft dated September 14 does not rewrite that calendar by itself.
U.S. crypto news has treated “Clarity” as a binary for months: either the Senate “does crypto” or the file is dead. That is a poor market structure map. Spot bitcoin products, venue listings, and bitcoin’s own cycle already exist under today’s statutes. A floor substitute can change who registers as a digital commodity intermediary, how ancillary-asset disclosures work, and whether yield on payment stablecoin balances is a marketing fight or a Treasury circuit-breaker. None of that prints until cloture, adoption, a House-Senate match, and a signature, then the delayed effective dates.
If you only read the press quotes, you will hear asset managers and law-enforcement groups as if they were co-sponsors. Those names are in the Lummis release as claimed supporters. They are not in the enacting clause. For a primer on not treating a press list as a statute, see our guide on how to follow crypto news without getting played.
The GENIUS stack is the other trap. Section 10404 borrows GENIUS defined terms. It does not finish Treasury’s still-open work on who may issue a U.S. payment stablecoin. Treasury posted that GENIUS section 3 notice as its own file. We already walked the notice in Treasury’s GENIUS NPRM. Do not collapse the two files into one “Washington did stablecoins today” headline.
Our read
This is a cloture substitute, not live market structure. Tuesday afternoon is a motion to proceed. Even a “yes” on cloture is not a final vote on EHF26724, and it is not an effective date. Anyone marking up bitcoin, ether, or listed crypto names as if the SEC and CFTC already split the perimeter under this PDF is trading a press release.
The ethics title is real text, and it is also delayed. Covered-person bans do not, on the face of section 30104 and 30101(b), attach to tokens issued or sponsored before the ethics division’s own effective date. That is a narrower clock than “Washington banned the memecoin this week.”
The yield section is the part that can actually move product design if the bill becomes law. It is not a blanket ban on every reward point. It is a ban on hold-to-earn that looks like a deposit, plus a Treasury tripwire for community-bank deposit flight. Issuers that already live inside GENIUS definitions still have to wait for joint rules. That is months, not a Tuesday print.
Falsifiable claim: by 2026-09-16 23:59 UTC, if the Congressional Record or an official Senate clerk notice shows cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 was invoked and the substitute then offered is not the EHF26724 text Lummis posted on September 14, the “this is the vehicle” half of the read is wrong. If, by the same deadline, H.R. 3633 is signed into law, the “this is still pre-vote paper” half is wrong.
What to watch
Tuesday’s cloture result on the motion to proceed, in the Senate’s own record, not in a headline that says “Senate votes on crypto.” If cloture fails, EHF26724 stays a posted draft. If cloture is invoked, watch whether this substitute is actually the amendment that is offered, and whether Democrats who asked for the 126 listed changes still vote no.
If a substitute is adopted, the next tells are a House-Senate match and the 360-day / 60-days-after-final-rule clocks in sections 30104 and 40101. Until those dates, intermediaries should not assume new CFTC registration, ancillary-asset certification, or stablecoin-yield rules are in force.
For product desks: map any “stablecoin yield” campaign against section 10404’s hold-versus-activity split, and keep GENIUS issuer work on a separate checklist. For protocol teams: 10604 is a classification shield for non-controlling publishers, not a free pass for operating a custodial pool. For traders: keep using the bitcoin range you can measure. A $77,800 Coinbase high is not a law.