May 4th, the White House stated that it hopes Congress will send the Clarity Act to the President’s desk before July 4th. This crypto market structure bill was passed by the House of Representatives with a vote of 294 to 134 in July 2025, but has been stuck in the Senate for nearly a year.
The Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Tim Scott, has scheduled the markup to be completed within May, aiming to push it to a full Senate vote in June or July. The obstacle is the “ethics clause” demanded by Democratic lawmakers, which bans senior government officials from profiting personally from crypto assets during their tenure. The target of this clause is the President himself.
Two days later, on May 6th, Morgan Stanley’s subsidiary E*Trade opened spot trading for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana to 8.6M retail investors, with a fee rate of 0.50%, the lowest retail crypto fee rate among mainstream Wall Street brokers currently. The bill isn’t even passed yet, but traditional giants have already taken the first step.
Whether Congress waits for the bill or not, Wall Street has already given its answer.
Wall Street has already taken the first step
Before the bill is passed, traditional brokers have already entered the market intensively in April and May 2026, pushing retail investor fee rates to a new low.
The timeline is as follows. On February 22, 2018, Robinhood was the first to add crypto trading to retail online brokers, launching commission-free (including spreads). That same year, Coinbase launched its retail app, with retail fees ranging from 0.99% to 2.99% plus a 0.5% spread. In 2022, Coinbase introduced Advanced Trade, reducing retail fees to 0.40% to 0.60%. In 2023, Fidelity Crypto launched with a 1% fee. Then came two blank years.
In early April 2026, Charles Schwab launched Schwab Crypto, gradually opening Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading to retail investors, with a fee of 0.75%. One month later, on May 6th, Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade followed suit, with a fee of 0.50%, covering Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. According to BeInCrypto, this is currently the lowest fee rate for retail crypto trading among traditional banks.
A comparison of the fee structures reveals the pressure. Coinbase’s standard retail application charges 0.99%-2.99% plus a 0.5% spread, effectively paying 1.5%-3.5%. E*Trade’s 0.5% cuts this number to one-third. Fidelity’s 1% is now the most expensive among peers. Coinbase Advanced Trade remains competitive, but it’s a professional interface aimed at high-frequency and high-net-worth users, not the retail choice for ordinary investors.
Why did they all open in April-May 2026? Two key points. One is the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin legal framework, which was signed into law in July 2025, providing a clear regulatory basis for traditional financial institutions to custody and clear stablecoins. The other is the upcoming markup of the Clarity Act in the Senate. Regardless of the final outcome, the outline of the mainstream market structure is clear, and traditional banks no longer worry about being retrospectively regulated after entering. Wall Street is making decisions based on the probability that “the Clarity Act will likely pass,” rather than waiting for the bill to be signed.
“Ethics clause” aims to block the President
The ethics clause demanded by Democratic lawmakers has been repeatedly submitted to the White House since 2025 and repeatedly rejected. The reason is not abstract. According to Bloomberg’s January 2026 report, about one-fifth of Trump’s family’s $6.8 billion wealth directly comes from crypto projects.
Looking more specifically at these projects, the realized cash flow is about $1.47 billion, mainly from four products. The largest is the token sale of World Liberty Financial (WLFI). By December 2025, the Trump family had profited about $1 billion from this DeFi project, including $550 million raised through a public offering.
$TRUMP Meme coin launched three days before the inauguration in January 2025, bringing in $362 million in fees and trading profits for the family. Melania’s $MELANIA meme coin followed shortly after, contributing about $65 million. The reserve interest for USD1 stablecoin is $42 million.
The unrealized holdings are valued at about $2.8 billion. WLFI still has $1.5 billion worth of unsold tokens on the books, but this part is highly affected by WLFI’s price fluctuations. Trump Media’s Bitcoin reserves are estimated by FinanceFeeds to be between 9,500 and 11,500 coins, worth about $840 million at current Bitcoin prices. The valuation of USD1 business and equity in American Bitcoin Mining and others totals about $460 million.
Adding realized and unrealized assets together, the total is about $4.3 billion. This is the actual figure behind the ethics clause. The version pushed by Senator Elizabeth Warren and others explicitly states “prohibit current senior officials from profiting personally from crypto assets during their tenure,” and the compromised version was rejected again by the White House. Whether the bill will include this clause for a full Senate vote essentially asks each senator: Are you willing to cast a face-to-face vote to publicly cut the Trump family’s $4.3 billion cake?
Will CLARITY pass this year?
The Clarity Act forcibly categorizes all digital assets into three pools. The first pool is “digital commodities,” regulated by the CFTC, corresponding to tokens operating on “mature blockchain systems.” The bill has two strict standards for “maturity”: one is full network functionality capable of reaching consensus, and the other is full decentralization, with no single entity able to unilaterally modify the protocol or governance.
The second pool is “investment contract assets,” regulated by the SEC, corresponding to tokens representing equity, debt, or similar rights, such as tokenized stocks, on-chain distributed traditional securities, and RWA (real estate, notes, accounts receivable). The third pool is payment stablecoins, overseen by banking regulators, requiring capital, custody, and anti-manipulation compliance.
Compared to the FIT21 bill that died in the Senate in 2024, the Clarity Act has three upgrades. The classification of stablecoins has shifted from “unspecified” to “distributed by trading venue,” with stablecoins on CFTC platforms regulated by the CFTC, and those on SEC platforms regulated by the SEC, though the SEC retains only anti-fraud authority.
DeFi exemptions have shifted from a principle-based safe harbor to a list of specific activities, such as custody front-end, node operation, and code deployment, which will not trigger registration obligations. Exchange registration has changed from “cross-agency coordination” to mandatory dual registration for intermediaries handling digital commodities, even if they are already SEC-licensed broker-dealers.
The bill’s logic is clear: to codify the biggest uncertainty in the crypto industry over the past few years—“who actually regulates this stuff”—once and for all.
The position of the Clarity Act is currently quite isolated.
According to a public statement from Congressman French Hill’s office, over 40 crypto and blockchain-related bills were introduced in the 116th Congress (2019-2020). None of these bills were ultimately passed. The 118th Congress (2023-2024) saw the introduction of FIT21, which passed the House in May 2024. It was the first crypto market structure bill to pass the full House vote, but it also died in the Senate.
On July 18, 2025, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, establishing a legal framework for payment stablecoins. This is the first and so far the only federal crypto-related law signed into law in six years. On July 17, the House passed the Clarity Act with 294 votes to 134. In theory, the Clarity Act has now reached the same stage as FIT21 in that year—passed the House, awaiting Senate vote.
The difference lies in the political environment. During FIT21, the Democrats controlled the White House, and there was no top-level momentum for crypto legislation. Now, the Trump administration is openly pushing for it. However, the compromised version of the ethics clause was rejected by the White House, and core Democratic lawmakers remain unconvinced. If they miss the first week of August, the Senate will recess until September 14. Considering the November 3 midterm elections, whether it can be signed into law in 2026 is no longer solely up to the White House’s willingness.
In historical terms, 6 years, 50+ bills, 1 law signed. Whether the Clarity Act will be the second remains to be seen in the next two months.
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