Coinbase Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong on Saturday said The Wall Street Journal is preparing a story that would blame him and Coinbase for the collapse of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, better known as the CLARITY Act.
The market structure bill, which was designed to divide oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), failed a key procedural test in the United States Senate earlier this month by a 49 to 50 margin, ten votes short of the 60 needed to clear cloture.
In a post on X on September 19, 2026, Armstrong said the newspaper had been “hostile to CLARITY” and was recycling “bank lobby talking points,” even as he had spent years pushing for federal crypto legislation.
“Here we go again! The WSJ is working on a story blaming Coinbase and me personally for the CLARITY Act not passing,” Armstrong wrote.
As of Saturday morning, the Journal had not published the article that Armstrong described. His post treated the piece as still in progress rather than already in print.
Armstrong’s Account of His Role
Armstrong’s version of events is specific. He said he opposed pushing an early January draft into a Senate Banking Committee vote because the text still needed changes on four items: decentralized finance (DeFi), tokenization, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) authority, and stablecoin rewards.
At that stage, he wrote, the bill “had major issues that would have harmed crypto,” support was fractured, and the measure “wasn’t passable.” Coinbase then worked with other stakeholders on revisions. “All four of the items I called out were fixed in the draft that then went through the committee about four months later,” Armstrong wrote.
He added that he was “proud to have done it, and would do it again, because it helped create a better bill.” The final text that reached the Senate floor, he said, was “great,” and he “strongly supported it.”
That timeline aligns with the public record. On January 14, 2026, hours before a planned Senate Banking Committee markup, Armstrong wrote that Coinbase could not support the draft “as written.” Crypto Times reported in April that his opposition helped stall the bill in January and again in March, primarily over stablecoin yield restrictions, before he reversed course on April 9 after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly called for a Senate floor vote.
Some replies to Saturday’s post rejected that defense. One user wrote that Armstrong “held it up over stablecoin rewards earlier this year when there was an acceptable compromise.” Armstrong did not answer those replies in the same thread.
How the Bill Failed on the Senate Floor
The CLARITY Act, formally known as H.R. 3633, is the House-passed market structure bill that would divide digital asset oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, create a defined category for “digital commodities,” and set rules for intermediaries, tokenization, and related activity.
The House of Representatives approved the bill 294 to 134 on July 17, 2025. The Senate Banking Committee later advanced an updated version 15 to 9 on May 14, 2026.
The Senate’s first floor test was not a vote on final passage. It was a cloture vote on the motion to proceed, meaning permission to open formal debate on the bill, which required 60 votes under Senate rules.
According to CNBC’s report on the vote, voting began in the early afternoon of September 15, 2026, and by the time the roll call closed, the chamber had rejected the motion to invoke cloture on H.R. 3633 by 49 to 50. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware did not vote. Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted no.
Tillis voted no in order to preserve the option of moving to reconsider the vote at a later date. Crypto Times covered the same result in its coverage of the cloture vote falling short of 60.
Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, the bill’s leading Senate sponsor, called the measure “dead” after the vote and placed the blame on Democrats. Democrats said the final ethics language still left gaps concerning crypto-related ventures tied to public officials, including ventures linked to President Donald Trump. Hawley and Moran cited the stablecoin yield dispute.
The Sunday-before-vote substitute from Senators Lummis, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and John Boozman of Arkansas was framed as a “last, best and final” offer and, according to sponsors, included 126 Democratic-requested changes along with a White House-backed ethics package. Crypto Times reported the text the day before the vote.
Hours before the roll call, Armstrong framed the choice in stark terms on X:
“Senators pick one of two choices today: 1. vote yes on the CLARITY Act to promote innovation, protect consumers, put new ethics restrictions on elected officials, and create new law enforcement tools, or 2. vote no and let other countries lead.”
Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad had made the same case the night before, arguing that the floor text met seven Democratic “pillars” first outlined a year earlier and added the 126 changes.
The Bank Fight Armstrong Says Is Being Recycled
Armstrong’s Saturday post revives a year-long argument that large banks, and not Coinbase, were the outside force trying to shrink the bill, particularly on whether payment stablecoin issuers or platforms should be allowed to pay rewards to holders.
That fight has played out publicly. JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called stablecoin yield “regulatory arbitrage” and said of Armstrong, “If he wants to be a bank, be a bank.” Armstrong, in a Fox Business appearance ahead of the vote, predicted the September 15 cloture would clear 60 votes and dismissed Dimon’s remarks.
After the defeat, Armstrong’s diagnosis shifted away from banks. In an interview with Yahoo Finance’s Daily Wolf, he said ethics politics killed the bill, that “we let politics get in the way,” and that he would “assume it’s dead,” while pointing to the SEC and the CFTC as “another path.”
Armstrong wrote on the night of the vote:
“The CLARITY Act didn’t advance in the Senate today, which was a disappointment. While it’s possible bi-partisan conversations continue, we can’t wait on Congress anymore. The SEC and CFTC have the tools they need. So clarity is coming to crypto regardless.”
He also noted that the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, which is already law for payment stablecoins, is “even more permissive on rewards,” adding that some CLARITY concessions “were tough to swallow, so perhaps it’s for the best.”
What Happens Next
The bill remains on the Senate calendar. Tillis’s procedural no vote preserved a route to reconsideration, although Lummis has described the effort as over for this legislative window. Seven Senate Democrats, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, have said they will continue negotiations, potentially after the November midterm elections.
Federal regulators have already begun moving into the vacuum. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced a five-year “Innovation Exemption” for certain tokenized U.S. stock venues. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has sent crypto market rulemaking to the White House for review after the vote. Galaxy Research, in a note covered by Crypto Times on Saturday, said the odds of revival before the October recess are “very low,” and that attention now shifts to the agencies.
Armstrong closed his Saturday post the same way he has closed much of the year-long fight, saying he would “continue showing up for our customers and pushing for clear rules that treat crypto fairly,” even if “those who feel threatened by crypto try to plant false stories.”
Whether the Journal’s unpublished story treats Armstrong’s January hold as the reason the September cloture vote failed is the question he is trying to pre-empt. The Senate record itself shows a different immediate cause: zero Democratic yes votes, four Republican no votes, and a 60-vote threshold the bill never cleared.
Also Read: Galaxy Says Crypto Can Move On as CLARITY Act Stalls in Senate
