The US Senate blocked a crypto bill. Such bills usually passed within three months.
On 15 September the US Senate fell short, 49 to 50, of the 60 votes needed to start debate on a bill setting rules for crypto markets.
What happened
The US Senate failed on to advance a sweeping bill setting federal rules for cryptocurrency markets, a blow to the crypto industry.
Starting debate needed 60 votes, and the bill got 49. The Senate voted 49 to 50 on H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Four Republicans, Jerry Moran, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley and Thom Tillis, voted with the Democrats against it. Tillis switched his vote to no so that he can ask the Senate to vote again later, and he filed that request the same day.
The bill would set the first full federal rules for trading digital assets such as crypto. The House passed it on by 294 votes to 134, with 78 Democrats in favour, and the Senate Banking Committee approved its own version on . Senate Republicans released new text, with new ethics rules, the day before the vote.
Limits on President Donald Trump’s crypto businesses were among the biggest obstacles. Community banks also opposed rewards paid to people who hold stablecoins, crypto coins tied to a currency such as the dollar.
Congress is due to leave Washington this month to campaign. The midterm elections are on , and Republicans defend their majorities in both houses. The two stopgap funding bills passed this summer run out in December, so the session after the election must also settle government funding. The current Congress ends on , and any bill not passed by then must start again.
Sources: Reuters (2), Congress.gov, Al Jazeera, House Clerk, The Guardian (2), Constitution Annotated, 20th Amendment
The Pattern
We looked at every major bill since 2009 that failed its first Senate vote to start debate, after winning at least a quarter of the other party’s votes at an earlier stage. Major here means a bill that sets national rules for a whole sector or programme and had already passed the House or a Senate committee. Spending bills and yearly defence bills are left out. We found eight, and checked how many passed the Senate within 31 days and within 90 days.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
History says bills with support from both parties usually come back fast after this kind of defeat. Five of the eight passed within 20 days. The closest case is the 2025 stablecoin bill from the same Senate committee. Democrats first blocked it, and it passed 40 days later while their concerns about Donald Trump’s crypto interests were still unresolved.
The calendar is different this time. In every case that came back, the Senate was sitting in the weeks after the failed vote. This time Congress is leaving to campaign, and the one case that failed just before a long break in an election year, the 2024 tax bill, never got a second vote. Support is also thinner than the House vote suggests. The House passed the bill with 78 Democratic votes, but in the Senate no Democrat voted to start debate and four Republicans voted against.
The prediction fails if party leaders agree a deal on ethics and stablecoin rewards before the election break, or bring the bill back after the election. A deal that moves the text into a funding bill would change the law but would not count for the first market, which follows H.R. 3633 itself.
Disclaimer
Hunch works only from sources that are publicly available, and publishes on the basis of analysis of that material. We do not form an editorial opinion or take sides, we give a simpler and wider view of news that already exists. If information in a source we used was inaccurate, distorted, or later disputed but had already entered our analysis, Hunch accepts no liability for that. Predictions are not advice. Phase 1 markets use Hunch Points, not money.
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