Ethereum braces for CLARITY vote as bulls defend crucial support

Ethereum traders are bracing for a U.S. Senate procedural vote on the CLARITY Act after the token rose 1.8% to $1,845 on July 18, 2026, according to crypto.news. The gain followed comments from Rep. Bryan Steil, who chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Digital Assets, telling FOX Business that the bill could reach the Senate floor in the coming week. Spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $105 million in weekly inflows, their highest since April, per SoSoValue data cited by crypto.news. On Polymarket, the probability of the bill becoming law in 2026 rose to 39% from 30% on July 17. However, sources disagree sharply on timing and outcome: bitcoinfoundation.org and investinglive.com describe a September 15 cloture vote, while coindesk.com reports the bill later failed 49-50, and cryptorank.io cites a weekend price dump ahead of the vote.

Background

The CLARITY Act is a market-structure bill that would create federal definitions for digital assets, place oversight of digital commodity spot markets with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and reaffirm SEC jurisdiction over digital assets offered and sold as securities, according to bitcoinfoundation.org. That source says Senate Republicans introduced an updated 630-page version a week before a procedural vote, with a final Senate vote likely on Sept. 15. investinglive.com reports Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called Senate Democrats into a closed-door caucus meeting on Sunday evening ahead of a cloture vote scheduled for Tuesday, September 15 at 2:15pm ET, with about a dozen Democratic senators having negotiated for months. The main sticking point, per investinglive.com, is an ethics provision aimed at limiting President Trump's ability to profit from his family's crypto ventures, an issue that has held up the bill since it cleared the House by a wide margin in 2025. A bipartisan compromise from Senators Thom Tillis and Ruben Gallego, which would bar federal officials and judges from issuing or sponsoring digital assets and require divestment or a blind trust, has been sitting with the White House since late July without a public response, that source says. bitcoinfoundation.org notes the draft retains some ethical restrictions set to expire in January 2029, and that stablecoin rewards remain another unresolved issue, with banking groups worried rewards could draw deposits from insured banks.

What happened

crypto.news reports that Ethereum rose 1.8% to $1,845 after Rep. Bryan Steil raised hopes for a Senate vote on the CLARITY Act next week. Steil told FOX Business the bill could reach the Senate floor in the coming week, and during a July 17 hearing urged lawmakers to complete the legislation, stating “Let’s pass CLARITY,” according to remarks published by the House Financial Services Committee. Polymarket traders raised the probability of the bill becoming law in 2026 to 39% from 30% on July 17, though unresolved disputes over ethics rules and stablecoin yields kept odds below 50%. bitcoinfoundation.org reports Senate Republicans introduced an updated 630-page Clarity Act a week before a procedural vote, with the Senate likely to vote on Sept. 15. Senator Cynthia Lummis said the bill retained more than 114 requests from Democratic colleagues and called it a bipartisan product, but no Democratic senators had publicly committed to supporting the revised bill when it was announced. investinglive.com reports Schumer called Senate Democrats into a closed-door caucus meeting on Sunday evening ahead of a cloture vote scheduled for Tuesday, September 15 at 2:15pm ET, with about a dozen Democratic senators having negotiated for months. coindesk.com reports the bill failed to get the 60 votes needed to advance, with a 49-50 vote that did not even win a majority. cryptorank.io reports Bitcoin fell 0.8% to $76,827 and Ether dropped 1.3% to $2,484.54 during thin weekend trading ahead of the vote.

Market impact

crypto.news reports Ethereum at $1,845, up 1.8%, with spot Ethereum ETFs attracting $105 million between July 13 and July 17, their strongest weekly inflow since April, per SoSoValue. DeFiLlama placed Ethereum’s total value locked at about $40.5 billion, up from roughly $36 billion at the start of July, and the network processed $978.9 million in decentralized exchange volume and 2.46 million transactions over the past 24 hours. On the daily chart, crypto.news describes a double-bottom structure formed around $1,511 with the neckline near $1,847, overlapping the 0.786 Fibonacci retracement at $1,853.82. A daily close above $1,854 would place the recent $1,947 high and the 100-day exponential moving average near $1,939 back in play. The double-bottom measured target is near $2,180, while analyst Michaël van de Poppe expects $2,200 to $2,400 if the $1,780 support remains intact. The MACD line stands at 35.57 above the 21.69 signal line, with the positive histogram contracting to 13.88, and the relative strength index sits at 57.15. On the 4-hour chart, the lower boundary of an ascending channel and previous Supertrend support meet around $1,830, while the upper boundary extends toward $2,040. Chaikin Money Flow remains positive at 0.07, but Supertrend resistance at $1,908 must fall before buyers can retest the July high. CoinGlass’ 48-hour liquidation heatmap places the nearest dense leverage cluster between $1,860 and $1,870, with more positions around $1,900 and downside liquidity near $1,810 and $1,790. cryptorank.io separately reports Ether dropped 1.3% to $2,484.54 before recovering toward $2,490, and Bitcoin fell 0.8% to $76,827.

Why it matters

crypto.news reports that passage of the CLARITY Act could place ETH under a digital commodity framework and establish federal rules for its trading and oversight. That source also notes that failure to resolve the bill’s ethics and stablecoin provisions could delay a Senate vote and remove the immediate catalyst. investinglive.com emphasizes that the vote is procedural, not a vote on the bill itself: cloture requires 60 votes just to open debate, and with Republicans holding 53 seats and at least two expected to defect on procedural grounds, supporters need close to nine Democratic votes. That source adds that a pass on Tuesday starts debate but does not deliver a law, and that White House adviser Patrick Witt warned a failed vote could effectively close the legislative window for crypto market structure this year given how little floor time remains before the November midterms. coindesk.com reports that in the absence of market-structure law, the industry will focus on federal regulators including the SEC and CFTC, which are already at work on crypto rules. The SEC recently proposed its first major crypto rule, Regulation Crypto Assets, or Reg Crypto, to clear a path for crypto projects to raise money, and the agency is poised to start approving a narrow version of securities tokenization, according to coindesk.com. However, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has said the new crypto rules and exemptions won’t be durable without a law underpinning them, and much of the agency’s crypto policy has been in easy-to-reverse guidance.