U.S. President Donald Trump and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig are expected to meet with executives from cryptocurrency and prediction market companies at the White House on Aug. 19. Reported by Galaxy on Friday (14).
The meeting is expected to include executives from Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, Ripple, Chainlink, Kalshi and Paradigm, as well as representatives from the Digital Chamber. Also on the guest list are Kraken, Gemini, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq. The final list of participants may change.
Falling approval odds
On Saturday, Polymarket traders gave the CLARITY Act a 19% chance of being signed into law in 2026, down from a peak of 82% on Feb. 19. The estimate is nearly double the 10% projection Galaxy Digital made for approval this year.
The legislation, called the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, establishes federal rules for crypto assets and splits oversight of the sector between the SEC and the CFTC.
Bipartisan support and Senate deadlock
The bill advanced in the Senate Banking Committee by a 15-9 vote on May 14, with two Democrats and all 13 Republicans in favor. The House approved the text 294-134 in July 2025, with 78 Democrats.
The coalition has splintered over disagreements about restrictions on officials’ crypto activities, limits on stablecoin rewards and protections against illicit finance. The biggest obstacle is the ethics dispute involving Trump’s crypto ventures.
A bipartisan group of senators sent a proposed ethical framework to the White House on July 30, with no public agreement from the administration. Galaxy Digital assessed that without a solution, there may be no viable path to the 60 votes needed in the Senate to advance the bill.
The deadlock pushed the vote to after the August recess. Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed a cloture motion before the recess. The session resumes on Sept. 14, and the schedule is expected to have about three weeks until lawmakers leave for the election campaign, around Oct. 2.
SEC and CFTC advance with their own rules
While the law is stalled, the agencies are trying to move forward under existing legislation. The SEC is developing Reg Crypto, a framework for certain crypto asset offerings, and an innovation exemption for experiments with tokenized securities. A vote on one of the proposals was scheduled for Aug. 14, but the SEC canceled the meeting the day before, with no new date set.
The CFTC scheduled the first meeting of its innovation committee for Aug. 20. Michael Selig said the agency needs to hear directly from companies building new financial products so regulators can keep pace with innovation.
On Aug. 11, the CFTC invoked emergency authority after Kalshi warned that a lawsuit brought by New York could disrupt its event contracts market. Selig ordered the exchange to continue operating under federal derivatives rules and said states cannot impose state rules over the national framework that governs markets overseen by the CFTC.
The meeting is scheduled for weeks before the Senate tests whether CLARITY still has support to move forward, while the SEC and CFTC seek to establish parts of the regulatory framework without the new law.
