US Senator Cynthia Lummis has warned that Congress could lose its next realistic opportunity to pass comprehensive crypto market-structure legislation until 2030 if the CLARITY Act fails during the current session.

The Wyoming Republican is urging lawmakers to complete work on the bill as the Senate prepares for a key procedural vote on September 15. The legislation is intended to establish clearer rules for digital assets and define the responsibilities of federal regulators.

Key Takeaways

• Cynthia Lummis says failure to pass the CLARITY Act could push crypto market-structure legislation to 2030.
• The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the bill on September 15.
• The measure needs 60 votes to advance in the Senate.
• The CLARITY Act seeks to clarify SEC and CFTC oversight of digital assets and strengthen customer protections.
• Lummis warns that another delay could cost the US jobs, investment and tax revenue.

Lummis Warns Congress Could Lose Years of Progress

Lummis said the current Congress represents an important opportunity to establish a federal framework for the cryptocurrency industry.

“If the Clarity Act doesn’t pass this Congress, the next real opportunity to bring market structure legislation back up is 2030,” she said.

The senator argued that waiting several more years could have economic consequences, particularly if businesses and investors continue operating under a fragmented regulatory system.

The warning comes as lawmakers approach the September 15 Senate vote. The procedural step requires 60 votes to move the legislation forward, meaning Republicans will need support from Democrats and independents.

Clarity Act Faces a Tight Legislative Schedule

Meanwhile, the bill has already cleared several major stages in Congress. The House passed its version in July 2025, while the Senate Banking Committee approved the Senate version by a 15-9 vote in May 2026.

However, the legislation still faces disagreements over issues including stablecoin rewards, decentralized finance and the limits of federal oversight.

The timing has also become a concern. The House has canceled some September sessions, leaving lawmakers with fewer opportunities to consider the legislation if it eventually returns from the Senate.

A successful Senate procedural vote would not make the CLARITY Act law. The bill would still have to clear the remaining legislative hurdles before reaching President Donald Trump.

What the Clarity Act Would Change

Notably, the proposed legislation would establish clearer boundaries between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission when regulating digital assets.

It also contains provisions aimed at protecting customers when cryptocurrency companies fail.

Lummis has argued that digital assets held for customers should receive stronger legal protection if an exchange enters bankruptcy. Under the proposed framework, certain digital commodities would be treated as customer property rather than assets available to satisfy an exchange’s creditors.

That could reduce uncertainty for both cryptocurrency businesses and their customers.

2030 Could Become the Next Major Window

That said, Lummis’s warning is tied partly to the upcoming US elections, which could change the makeup of Congress and alter the priorities of lawmakers and committee leaders.

If the CLARITY Act fails now, supporters could have to rebuild bipartisan support and restart negotiations under a new Congress.

Other lawmakers and industry executives have also called for the legislation to move forward, but disagreements remain over several provisions.

For the crypto industry, the September 15 vote is therefore only one step in a much longer process. If Congress cannot complete the legislation this year, Lummis believes the next serious opportunity may not arrive until 2030.

The House killed eight voting days, Polymarket odds crashed from 82% to 16%, and the ethics clause nobody can agree on may bury the most important crypto bill in a generation.

The CLARITY Act was supposed to be the easy one. After the GENIUS Act cleared both chambers and became law in July 2025, the crypto industry expected the market structure companion bill to follow within months. Fourteen months later, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act sits in a procedural limbo that would have been unimaginable when prediction markets gave it an 82% chance of passage in February.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed just before the August 7 recess, setting up a procedural vote for Tuesday, September 15. That vote requires 60 senators to agree to even begin debating the bill. It is not a vote on the legislation itself. And between the filing and the return, the House went and blew a hole in the calendar that may have made the Senate vote irrelevant.

On September 3, House Republican leaders announced they were removing the weeks of September 21 and September 28 from the voting schedule. Eight days, gone. Representatives will return after Labor Day on September 14, work four days, and leave Washington on September 17. They will not come back until after the midterm elections on November 3. For a bill that still needs floor time in both chambers, that is not a scheduling inconvenience. It is a death sentence on the timeline.

The 60-vote math that does not work

The Senate cloture threshold has always been the CLARITY Act’s central obstacle. Republicans hold 53 seats, meaning Thune needs at least seven Democrats to cross over. In the Banking Committee markup, only two did. The gap between two and seven might look manageable on paper. In practice, it represents a chasm that five months of negotiation have failed to bridge.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has said she supports federal crypto legislation in principle but firmly opposes the current bill, arguing it fails to address corruption, consumer protection, and national security. Senators Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen, and Jeff Merkley have taken similar public positions. That is four confirmed Democratic no votes already eating into the margin.

The math gets worse when you consider what those seven crossover votes would require. Every Democrat who votes yes will face attack ads accusing them of supporting a bill that benefits President Trump’s crypto portfolio. In a midterm year, that is not abstract political risk. It is a concrete calculation that every campaign manager in a competitive district is making right now.

Republicans, meanwhile, are dealing with their own fragility. Galaxy Digital’s August analysis noted that the party expects to lose Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul on procedural grounds, bringing the effective Republican count closer to 51. If even one additional Republican defects, Thune would need nine Democratic votes instead of seven.

The ethics clause that broke the coalition

If the CLARITY Act fails, the cause of death will almost certainly be Section 13152.

The ethics provision, added to the July 22 draft, bans the president, vice president, and members of Congress from issuing or sponsoring digital assets while in office. Their spouses are covered too. The Department of Justice would enforce the restriction with fines of up to $250,000 per day. On its face, it reads like a reasonable safeguard. In practice, it has become the provision that three different constituencies can each find a reason to reject.

XRP futures volume surged to a six-month high in August. Binance, Bybit, and OKX together processed $64.6 billion in XRP contracts. The rally pushed XRP up nearly 30% for the month.

Binance Leads Record XRP Futures Volume

Binance processed roughly $37 billion in XRP futures during August. That figure represents about 57% of total volume across three exchanges. Bybit followed with $14.54 billion, while OKX cleared $12.88 billion.

Price action fueled much of the surge in XRP trading. XRP climbed from $1.06 early in August to $1.50 by August 24. The token then settled near $1.35 as the month closed.

Spot markets mirrored the futures rally and confirmed the trend. Spot XRP volume also hit a six-month high across major exchanges. Binance again led spot activity, followed by Upbit and Bithumb.

Institutional Interest Shifts Toward Regulated XRP Venues

CME overtook Binance as the largest venue for XRP open interest. CME open interest reached near $530 million, compared with Binance at $510 million. Offshore exchanges, however, still dominate raw XRP trading volume.

Institutional players continued to build positions in XRP-linked products. Citadel expanded its bullish XRP ETF holdings during the second quarter. Goldman Sachs also reclaimed its spot as a top XRP ETF holder.

Combined spot XRP ETF assets stood near $1.48 billion by month-end. Cumulative inflows into XRP ETFs approached $1.7 billion during the period. These flows gave trading desks reason to hedge and warehouse inventory.

Crowded Positioning Raises Risk for XRP Traders

Rising volume alone does not confirm a bullish direction for XRP. Analysts note that turnover can reflect covering, new shorts, or hedging activity. Traders must therefore separate raw volume data from actual positioning.

XRP’s leverage ratio on Binance reached 0.213, a seven-month high. Open interest grew crowded near $3.4 billion to $3.5 billion in size. That concentration adds risk ahead of a key regulatory vote.

Ripple re-locked 700 million XRP after its scheduled monthly unlock event. This escrow move reduced near-term sell pressure on XRP supply. Meanwhile, the XRPL 3.3.0 upgrade advances toward mid-September activation.

The US Treasury’s planned $22 billion debt buyback added a macro tailwind. Broader crypto markets turned bullish alongside the XRP derivatives buildup. The Senate’s CLARITY Act cloture vote on September 15 looms next.

Robinhood has agreed to take equity stakes in Crypto.com and its newly spun-off prediction markets platform, OG.com, in a multi-year arrangement designed to bolster Robinhood’s event-contract infrastructure in the United States. The move links Robinhood’s expanding prediction markets business to OG.com’s CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse.

As part of the deal, Robinhood will route retail event contracts through OG.com’s infrastructure. A rollout is set to begin Tuesday for eligible US customers, according to Robinhood’s announcement carried by PR Newswire.

Key takeaways

• Robinhood will use OG.com’s CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse to process retail event contracts.
• Robinhood is taking equity stakes in both Crypto.com and OG.com, but the companies did not disclose the size or value of the holdings.
• The equity stakes are priced using valuations established by an earlier Citadel Securities investment in the platforms.
• The agreement arrives shortly after OG.com’s spin-off from Crypto.com and follows recent reporting that Robinhood was exploring ways to expand prediction markets.

Robinhood’s event-contract routing shifts to OG.com

The core operational change is straightforward: Robinhood plans to route retail event contracts through OG.com’s CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange and clearinghouse. In the PR Newswire announcement, Robinhood described OG.com as its infrastructure partner for prediction market event contracts, with the initial rollout beginning Tuesday for eligible customers in the US.

This matters for participants because event-contract trading depends not only on market access and product availability, but also on the plumbing—exchange execution, clearing, and regulatory oversight. By centering that plumbing on OG.com’s CFTC-regulated setup, Robinhood is effectively tightening the link between its prediction-market offering and a regulated derivatives framework.

Equity stakes accompany the infrastructure deal

In addition to becoming a customer of OG.com’s infrastructure, Robinhood will receive initial equity stakes in both Crypto.com and OG.com under the multi-year agreement. The announcement states that the stakes are priced at the valuations set by an earlier investment from Citadel Securities. However, neither Robinhood nor the counterparties disclosed how much Robinhood will receive or the dollar value of the holdings.

The equity component is a notable feature of the arrangement. Many infrastructure partnerships are structured around service fees rather than ownership participation. Here, ownership ties can align long-term incentives for both product expansion and operational reliability—especially for a business area where regulatory permissions and market structure are central to scalability.

OG.com independence—and a broader push into derivatives

OG.com recently spun off from Crypto.com at a $5 billion valuation, and Robinhood’s agreement arrives less than two months after reports that Robinhood had been in talks with Crypto.com to expand its prediction markets offering.

OG.com will operate independently from the crypto exchange. CEO Kris Marszalek said the company plans to expand beyond prediction markets into futures and perpetual contracts. That direction is consistent with the idea that regulated event-contract infrastructure can serve as a stepping stone toward more generalized derivatives products, though the specific pace and regulatory pathway for futures and perps would still depend on applicable jurisdictional requirements.

Why prediction markets remain a legal flashpoint

Robinhood’s expansion efforts are happening in parallel with a widening legal dispute about how US states should be allowed to regulate event contracts—particularly sports-related ones.

Robinhood launched its prediction markets hub in March 2025 with CFTC-regulated exchange Kalshi, later expanding its prediction market infrastructure. Cointelegraph previously reported on developments in this space, including partnerships and platform expansion plans. The business has also grown quickly: Robinhood said event contracts generated $156 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2026, up more than tenfold from a year earlier. In the same reporting cycle, Robinhood indicated that its equities transaction revenue was $129 million and that crypto contributed $100 million—figures from the company’s investor relations release.

Analyst estimates cited in the original reporting add another layer to the stakes: Bernstein analysts projected in July that Robinhood’s revenue, including prediction markets, could reach $1.7 billion by 2028. At the same time, those projections sit against uncertainty driven by regulatory and court fights.

Several legal challenges have targeted the classification of prediction-market event contracts. In April, a Nevada judge extended a ban preventing Kalshi from offering event contracts in the state without a gaming license, ruling that the products were effectively indistinguishable from traditional betting. The decision rejected Kalshi’s position that the contracts should be treated as swaps governed exclusively by CFTC oversight.

The dispute has escalated further. Last week, New Jersey petitioned the US Supreme Court to consider whether states can regulate sports contracts offered on CFTC-regulated prediction markets. In a post tied to the move, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said companies such as Kalshi argue they can offer legal sports betting nationwide while refusing to comply with state gambling laws, and she urged the Supreme Court to resolve the jurisdictional conflict.

For investors and traders, these cases are more than abstract legal drama. Platform operators often rely on regulators and courts to define the product boundaries—whether a state can apply gambling rules to event contracts even when the market structure is built within CFTC-regulated derivatives frameworks. Any shift in legal interpretation could affect product listings, market access, and compliance costs.

What to watch next as infrastructure and regulation converge

With Robinhood routing retail event contracts through OG.com’s CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse beginning Tuesday, the immediate operational question is how quickly eligible customers can access the expanded flow. Just as important, the next watch item is the broader legal trajectory around state authority over sports-related event contracts—because the infrastructure build-out may face constraints or redesigns depending on how courts ultimately define the regulatory boundaries.

Kalshi has lost an emergency injunction request at the 10th Circuit, leaving Utah free to enforce its gambling laws while the prediction market operator pursues its appeal.

Utah can enforce its gambling laws against Kalshi

Legal analyst Daniel Wallach said in an X post that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had denied Kalshi’s emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal.

Kalshi sought temporary protection after a federal judge allowed Utah to apply its gambling restrictions to the platform’s sports event contracts. The requested order would have stopped the state from bringing civil or criminal proceedings while the appeal remained before the 10th Circuit.

With the request denied, Wallach said Utah may enforce its laws during the appeal. The appellate court’s decision does not settle Kalshi’s challenge to the earlier ruling, but it removes the temporary protection the company sought against state action.

Kalshi initially sued Utah earlier in 2026 as the state prepared to tighten its restrictions on prediction markets. The company argued that Utah could not regulate contracts listed on an exchange registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

In August, U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby rejected Kalshi’s request to prevent enforcement. According to the Associated Press, Shelby found that the federal law cited by the platform did not stop Utah from applying its gambling rules.

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown said after the district court ruling that his office intended to enforce state law, although officials were still considering their available options. Utah’s rules prohibit proposition betting on events within a game, a category that accounts for an important part of the sports products offered by prediction markets.

Kalshi disagreed with Shelby’s decision and moved the dispute to the 10th Circuit. Its emergency filing sought protection during that process, rather than a final appellate ruling on whether federal derivatives law overrides Utah’s restrictions.

Kalshi argues that sports contracts fall under CFTC control

Kalshi’s legal position rests on its status as a CFTC-regulated designated contract market. The company classifies its sports products as event contracts or swaps governed by the federal Commodity Exchange Act, rather than wagers controlled by individual states.

State regulators dispute that description. Their lawsuits and enforcement actions generally argue that contracts tied to game results, player performance, and other sporting events function as sports bets, requiring operators to follow state licensing, age-limit, and consumer-protection rules.

The distinction determines whether Kalshi can provide the same sports markets across the United States or must change its products according to local gambling laws. State victories could require geofencing, product removals, or licensing in jurisdictions that classify the contracts as wagers.

For American users, the unresolved issue means access may depend on where they live. As crypto.news previously reported, 38 active prediction-market cases were pending across 21 states as of Sep. 8, while exchanges had received cease-and-desist letters in at least 10 jurisdictions, according to Casino.org’s Prediction Market Litigation Tracker.

Court orders have already produced different rules among states. Washington directed Kalshi to restrict contracts covering sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, technology, and science, while allowing markets tied to commodities, climate, economics, and finance to remain available.

In Michigan, a preliminary injunction required Kalshi to keep sports contracts unavailable to residents. The Michigan court order exposed the platform to possible fines of $500,000 for every day a court found it out of compliance.

States extend their winning run in federal courts

Wallach said the Utah order extended a run of 12 consecutive federal court decisions favoring states over prediction market operators since a Minnesota ruling had gone the other way.

In the Minnesota case, a federal judge granted preliminary relief that blocked the state’s proposed prediction-market ban shortly before it was due to take effect. Later decisions, however, have increasingly allowed regulators to apply state gambling laws while the underlying cases proceed.

One of the most important rulings came from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 28. A unanimous panel concluded at the preliminary stage that Kalshi’s sports products were likely bets rather than swaps, allowing Nevada regulators to enforce their gaming requirements.

“The CFTC is not a national gambling regulator,” Circuit Judge Ryan Nelson wrote in the 9th Circuit opinion.

The Nevada appellate decision conflicted with an April ruling from the 3rd Circuit in Kalshi’s case against New Jersey. In that dispute, a divided panel kept an injunction in place and found that Kalshi had shown a reasonable likelihood of proving that its sports event contracts qualify as swaps under federal law.

According to Wallach, states have prevailed in 35 of 41 rulings involving requests for preliminary injunctions, temporary restraining orders, stays, or injunctions pending appeal. The figure represents an 85% success rate for states in those procedural contests.

Such orders do not always decide the full legal merits of a case. Courts considering emergency or preliminary relief assess factors including the applicant’s likelihood of success, possible irreparable harm and the public interest before the underlying litigation is complete.

Supreme Court petition could settle the jurisdiction dispute

New Jersey has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 3rd Circuit decision that favored Kalshi. Filed on Sep. 2, the state’s petition asks whether the Commodity Exchange Act prevents states from applying sports-gambling laws to contracts offered through a CFTC-registered market.

The Supreme Court petition argues that Congress did not clearly remove state authority over sports wagering when it passed the Dodd-Frank Act. New Jersey also disputes the 3rd Circuit’s finding that the contracts may qualify as swaps covered by the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction.

Kalshi has maintained that federal oversight preempts conflicting state restrictions. Addressing New Jersey’s filing in a statement previously shared with Front Office Sports, the company said it remained confident in the lower courts’ rulings and that the petition had not changed its position.

The Supreme Court has not agreed to hear the case. Kalshi may respond to the petition before the justices decide whether to grant review, a step that requires support from at least four members of the court.

Polymarket traders were assigning a 31% probability that the Supreme Court would accept a sports event contract case by the end of 2026, according to market data cited in the original report. A prediction-market price represents participants’ trading positions rather than a judicial forecast or confirmation that the court will act.