Crypto's Bill Finally Has a Vote Date. The Banks Still Want One Line Rewritten.
Jane Fraser wants the CLARITY Act to pass — she also wants Section 404's stablecoin-reward language rewritten before the Senate's September 15 cloture vote.
Crypto’s biggest regulatory bill finally has a date on the calendar. The bank that says it wants that bill to pass more than almost anyone is also the one still trying to rewrite what’s in it. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told Fox Business on Thursday she’s “not given up” on changing the CLARITY Act’s stablecoin-reward language — a month before the Senate’s cloture vote to open debate on the bill.
What’s Happening
Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on the CLARITY Act right before the August recess, locking in a procedural vote for Tuesday, September 15. It needs 60 votes to advance; Republicans expect all 53 of their own, which means seven Democrats have to cross over. Polymarket traders this morning put the odds of CLARITY becoming law in 2026 at just 20%, on $43,000 traded — a real-money numbers check on how thin that math is.
The specific fight is over Section 404, the piece of the bill that governs whether crypto platforms can pay you anything for holding a stablecoin. A Senate compromise struck in May already bans rewards for simply parking your money in one, while allowing rewards tied to actual transactions and payments. That was supposed to settle it. It hasn’t: the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and 76 state banking associations sent Thune and Schumer a joint letter arguing Section 404’s language is still loose enough that stablecoins could function as deposit substitutes and pull money out of community banks. Fraser’s Thursday interview shows that pressure campaign is still live right up against the vote — she wants the bill passed, and she wants that one section changed first.
Why It Matters for Your Portfolio
This isn’t a fringe complaint from one CEO. JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon has taken a harder line for months, and Politico reported this week that Republican senators are now genuinely torn — Utah’s John Curtis says he likes crypto but also likes his banks, and South Dakota’s Mike Rounds has his own banking-industry ties to weigh. That split inside the GOP threatens to shrink Republicans’ own 53 votes even further — making the seven-Democrat bar even harder to clear. And Section 404 was written for the Senate version only — the Blockchain Association’s own CEO has said the House bill never addressed stablecoin yield at all, so even a clean Senate win could reopen this same fight on the other side of the Capitol.
The bottom line: the September 15 vote isn’t the finish line for crypto’s bill — it’s the moment that decides whether the stablecoin-rewards fight even gets a shot at being settled in the Senate, or drags unresolved into a second chamber with even less time left on the clock.
My read: Fraser saying “I want this to pass, but change this first” is the most honest thing anyone’s said about this bill in months — and it’s also the tell that it isn’t close to done. When the industry’s own supporters are still negotiating a month before the vote, that’s not a bill headed for a clean signature; it’s a bill headed for a squeaker, or a second round in the House.
A bank that says it wants your bill to pass while it’s still trying to rewrite a line in it doesn’t actually think the fight is over — and neither should you.
I’ve been telling you September 15 was crypto’s last real shot at 2026. It still is. I just didn’t expect the industry’s own allies to be the ones still negotiating terms this close to the deadline.
The Quick Takes
Anthropic reportedly signed a 20-year, $9.1 billion deal with Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms for 191 megawatts of AI data-center capacity at its Rockdale, Texas site — Riot disclosed the deal Aug. 11 without naming the customer, and Bloomberg identified Anthropic; RIOT stock jumped over 20% that day before giving some of it back since.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs just posted their first back-to-back outflow days since late July, including an Aug. 13 outflow that trackers put anywhere from $131M to $223M depending on the source — while BTC sits about 3% below where it started the week, near $62,900.
Gemini posted a $107.7 million Q2 net loss, its fourth straight quarterly loss — but revenue rose 37% to $45.5 million even as assets on the platform fell 54% to $8.4 billion.
Watch today: SEI unlocks 1.42% of its supply (~$3.7M) and STRK unlocks 3.61% (~$3.2M) — minor, but it’s sell-pressure on a week that doesn’t have much room for more.
Resource of the Day
Farside Investors’ free daily ETF flow tracker (farside.co.uk/btc) — the actual primary data behind every “ETF outflow” headline you’ll read this week, updated same-day, no login required. Check it yourself before you trust anyone’s rounded-off number, including mine.
From the Workshop
If you want the full blueprint for using AI to build side income, I wrote the book on it — literally. The Cowork Money Machine is on Amazon → amazon.com
That’s it for today. If this was useful, forward it to one person who holds crypto — that’s how this thing grows. — Chris