The CLARITY Act XRP price trade is rapidly being unwound: prediction market odds on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) being signed into law in 2026 have fallen to roughly 15–18% on Polymarket, down from a peak of 82% in February, with the market now carrying approximately $15 million in total trading volume.
XRP is absorbing the repricing. The token shed 9.3% over the past seven days, the largest weekly decline among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap, while Bitcoin fell 0.28% and Ethereum fell 0.3% over the same period. At $1.00 as of 15 August 2026, daily spot volume sits at $885 million, down from $905 million the prior session.
Senate Calendar and the 60-Vote Problem
The CLARITY Act passed the Senate Banking Committee on 14 May 2026 by a bipartisan vote of 15–9, with all 13 Republicans joined by two Democrats. The two Democratic votes came with a caveat: their committee support did not guarantee floor backing without further progress on outstanding issues, particularly an ethics provision covering government officials’ ties to the crypto industry, according to the Latham & Watkins US Crypto Policy Tracker.
The bill was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar as Calendar No. 423 on 1 June 2026. A cloture motion on the motion to proceed was then filed on 8 August 2026, per the Congressional Record (S4557). Clearing cloture requires 60 votes, per Yahoo Finance’s reporting on the legislative process. With Democratic floor support uncertain beyond those two committee votes, the path to 60 is narrow.
A procedural floor vote is now pencilled in for 15 September, but the odds have continued sliding. By 17 July, CoinDesk reported Polymarket giving the bill only a 32% chance of passing by year-end, described at the time as a record low since the prediction market launched in January 2026. The odds have since dropped further, with Business Insider reporting a 15% reading, consistent with Polymarket’s current sub-20% range.
The selling in ‘No’ contracts has been concentrated. According to Business Insider, one recently created Polymarket account purchased 1,052,873.8 ‘No’ contracts at roughly $0.78 each, totalling over $818,000, while a separate user deployed approximately $677,000 across three ‘No’ purchases in a single session. That is not passive sentiment drift; it is directional conviction.
Galaxy Research head Alex Thorn cut his own 2026 passage estimate to 60% from 75% on 5 June 2026, citing a tightening Senate calendar. Prediction markets have since moved well past that downgrade.
What the CLARITY Act Means for XRP Price
The CLARITY Act would divide regulatory jurisdiction over digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), covering assets that behave like securities, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), covering commodities operating on decentralised networks, according to the full bill text on Congress.gov. It also includes safe harbours for DeFi developers and validators, and provisions restricting Federal Reserve banks from offering certain products directly to individuals.
For XRP specifically, formal CFTC commodity classification was the anticipated catalyst for a fresh wave of institutional inflows and ETF demand. With the timeline stalled, ETF inflows have slowed, and the price action reflects that sequencing: no classification, no institutional trigger, no bid.
Spot volume is light and the intraday range has been narrowing, the classic consolidation pattern when a catalyst trade has gone cold. The token briefly lost its position as the fourth-largest digital asset by market cap during the recent drawdown.
September 15 is the next inflection point. If the procedural vote clears cloture, the ‘No’ contracts now trading at roughly $0.82 on Polymarket will reprice hard and XRP’s legislative discount unwinds. If the motion fails or is deferred again, the sell-off dynamic gets another leg. At 15–18% implied probability, the market is pricing in the second outcome far more heavily than the first.
