Sen. Cynthia Lummis has warned that failure to pass U.S. crypto market-structure legislation in the current Congress could push the next realistic opportunity for such a law back to 2030, according to a report by CoinGape.

The warning centers on the CLARITY Act, a bill that would establish a regulatory framework for digital asset markets in the United States. The legislation faces a shrinking window in which to advance before the current congressional session ends. Under U.S. legislative procedure, any bill that has not been enacted by the end of a two-year Congress expires and must be reintroduced from scratch in the following session, which is the basis for Lummis's timeline concern.

Sen. Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, has been one of the most prominent crypto advocates in the U.S. Senate. She previously co-sponsored the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, an earlier bill that sought to clarify how digital assets should be classified and regulated, and has continued to push for legislation that defines the roles of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in overseeing crypto markets.

The CLARITY Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives in July 2025 with bipartisan support, but its path through the Senate has been slower. Lawmakers have continued to negotiate over the bill's provisions, including how to divide regulatory jurisdiction between the SEC and the CFTC and how to treat decentralized finance (DeFi). That jurisdictional question has long been the central fault line in U.S. crypto policy: the SEC regulates securities under a disclosure-based regime, while the CFTC oversees commodities and derivatives markets, and digital assets have often straddled both frameworks. For crypto firms operating in the United States, the ambiguity over which agency governs which activities has been a recurring compliance challenge, which is why a statutory delineation has been a top industry lobbying priority alongside stablecoin legislation.

If the bill does not clear Congress before the session ends, legislative work would have to restart in the next Congress, meaning a new introduction, new committee consideration, and renewed floor votes — a process Lummis suggests could delay a market-structure law until 2030. The next Congress would also bring a changed composition following the November 2026 midterm elections, adding further uncertainty to any re-run of the legislative process.

Source: CoinGape