Goldman CEO Backs CLARITY Act as Senate Faces August Deadline

Goldman's David Solomon breaks from JPMorgan's Dimon in a split that tells you exactly who wins and who loses under the current bill text.

Key takeaways

• Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon publicly endorsed the CLARITY Act in a Politico interview on July 23, calling it "not perfect" but necessary to "create a level playing field to enhance market stability."
• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon opposes the bill, specifically its stablecoin yield provisions, saying "Banks will not accept it that way," a position rooted in JPMorgan's massive retail deposit franchise, which Goldman does not have.
• Senate Republicans released updated merged bill text on July 22, but no floor vote is scheduled; the bill needs 60 votes (the cloture threshold) before the Senate leaves for recess around August 7.

Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon told Politico on July 23 that he supports the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, making him one of the few major financial institution heads to publicly back the legislation. The Senate is racing a hard deadline: 60 votes needed, recess around August 7.

"I'm very supportive of moving the CLARITY Act forward, so we can get some market structure in place and start to move the innovation process along," Solomon told Politico, adding that the bill "creates a level playing field to enhance market stability and allow these markets to develop appropriately."

The Goldman-JPMorgan Fault Line

Solomon's endorsement lands directly against JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who has publicly opposed CLARITY's stablecoin yield provisions. Dimon's position: "Banks will not accept it that way."

The split is structural, not ideological. Goldman is an investment bank without a large retail deposit book, so stablecoin yield products that threaten to pull deposits out of commercial banks are not Goldman's problem. Solomon even flagged what Goldman actually wants: the bill contains "language that will allow regulated institutions that have been on the sidelines to participate more actively." Tokenized bond desks, digital custody products, and blockchain infrastructure plays are Goldman's upside. Dimon's upside is a protected deposit franchise. Those interests point in opposite directions, and both men are acting accordingly.

Solomon's framing, "We believe strongly that we need one system where everybody can participate", sounds open and fair. Read it against Goldman's actual business and it means something more specific: Goldman wants into the perimeter. The CLARITY Act builds a regulatory perimeter around digital assets. Goldman is optimizing for access inside it.

Where the Bill Stands and What's Still Unresolved

Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Cynthia Lummis, released updated merged bill text on July 22, combining versions from the Banking and Agriculture Committees. Per a Lummis press release, that text is not final. Ethics and illicit finance provisions remain under negotiation.

The ethics fight is consuming bipartisan oxygen. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has said the bill fails to adequately protect consumers and raises concerns about protecting the President's crypto interests. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks called the current text "not enough." Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he wants to bring the bill to the floor "soon," but as of July 23 no vote is scheduled.

The bill, H.R. 3633, passed the House on July 17, 2025 by a 294-134 margin (Congress.gov) and cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 on May 14, 2026. The cloture math means Republicans need Democratic crossover. The ethics provisions are the primary sticking point for those votes.

What is getting less attention: developer liability and self-custody intermediary definitions are still being negotiated. The bill does contain developer protections, Section 604 is the live battleground, but the ethics fight is crowding out that language in the final stretch. Rushed passage under deadline pressure is precisely when carve-outs get locked in or quietly dropped. The commodity-pool definitions that could affect Bitcoin treasury companies are in the same category of under-scrutinized text.

What to Watch Before August 7

Lummis has made this her signature legislative priority, and she will push for passage on whatever terms can clear 60 votes. That political reality makes the next two weeks decisive: either the bill moves before recess or, per Lummis herself, "the coming weeks are likely the last real chance we will have for years to get this right."

The Goldman endorsement gives the bill institutional cover it needed from the financial establishment. Whether the final text earns broader Democratic support on ethics, and whether developer safe harbors survive the floor process intact, are the variables that determine whether CLARITY is a net positive for open digital asset infrastructure or primarily a moat for regulated custodians.

The thesis that Goldman's backing reflects institutional capture rather than genuine openness holds unless the final bill text includes meaningful developer safe harbors, limits custodial intermediary mandates on self-custody, and does not entrench stablecoin yield exclusively for licensed custodians. Watch the enrolled text, not the press releases.

Update, July 24, 2026

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Thursday that he does not expect the CLARITY Act to pass before the August recess. His words: "I don't think we'll be able to get them done. I would like to at least get Clarity started. We'll see where the votes are."

White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt quickly pushed back, telling CoinDesk he still thinks the first week of August has potential. Senate leadership and the White House are not coordinating messaging with ten days left on the clock. Getting floor debate rolling before recess could put the bill in play for the brief window of floor time available in September, though election politics will be looming and other priorities will battle for lawmakers' time.

The vote math problem is concrete. Seven Senate Democrats whose votes are considered necessary to reach the 60-vote cloture threshold issued a joint statement saying the latest Republican draft falls short on ethics rules, consumer protection, illicit finance, conflicts of interest, and market integrity. The senators are Alsobrooks, Booker, Cortez Masto, Gallego, Hickenlooper, Warner, and Warnock. They said they remain committed to negotiations, which keeps the bill in active talks rather than outright opposition, but that framing does not solve the floor-time problem. Thune's staff indicated the Senate's next immediate floor priority will be a bipartisan sanctions and tariffs bill, further compressing whatever runway CLARITY has left. Prediction markets on Polymarket put the bill's odds of passing this year at roughly 37%, down sharply from over 80% earlier in 2026. Stifel analyst Brian Gardner had written that the bill "probably needs to get through the Senate by the end of July" and that failure would cause its "prospects to deteriorate materially." Senator Lummis has argued that failure in 2026 pushes comprehensive federal digital asset regulation to 2030 or beyond, into a Congress of unknown composition following November's midterms.

Into that deteriorating window stepped Fidelity. The $7.1 trillion investment giant officially endorsed the Senate passage of the CLARITY Act, with its Public Policy account on X urging the Senate to pass the bill.

The firm said "the time is now for clear rules of the road that are essential to strengthening investor confidence, providing certainty for market participants, and reinforcing U.S. leadership in global digital asset markets."

Fidelity was joined by the Crypto Council for Innovation, the Blockchain Association, the Digital Chamber, and the National Fraternal Order of Police. This is not a crypto-native advocacy coalition padding a letter. Fidelity is the largest independent financial services firm in the United States by assets under management, historically cautious on crypto-adjacent political fights, now putting its name on a Senate lobbying push in the final days before the August deadline.

Fidelity is interested in the bill as the firm manages Bitcoin and other digital asset exchange-traded funds, products which give American investors exposure to crypto via shares that trade on stock exchanges. The strategic logic is identical to Goldman's: a statutory regulatory perimeter is worth more to incumbents with existing digital asset exposure than the status quo of reversible administrative guidance. The SEC and CFTC's March 17, 2026 joint interpretive guidance classifying 16 digital assets under a five-category taxonomy can be rescinded overnight by any future administration without a congressional vote. Only a statute survives a change of administration intact. Fidelity knows this. The question is whether seven Senate Democrats will resolve enough of the ethics dispute in the next two weeks to give Thune the votes he currently says he does not have.

Update, July 30, 2026

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stepped up pressure on Senate holdouts this week, telling Bloomberg that lawmakers are at the "1-yard line" on the Clarity Act and urging Congress to pass the bill before the recess. That framing lands directly against Thune's "I don't think we'll get it done" posture from last Thursday, putting the executive branch on record disagreeing with the Senate's own leadership about what is achievable in the next week.

Bessent also published a Wall Street Journal op-ed taking direct aim at crypto-industry opponents of the bill. He wrote that "a growing share of crypto development has relocated to places with clear rules, such as Abu Dhabi and Singapore" and dismissed internal resistance, writing that "though industry nihilists may argue otherwise, there is one way to give developers and entrepreneurs the comfort to reshore: durable law." Calling reluctant industry actors nihilists is not a diplomatic posture. The Treasury Secretary is publicly shaming crypto firms that have pulled support as a legislative tactic in the final days before recess.

On the Senate floor itself, Senator Kevin Cramer said the chamber has moved close to a deal, with a fresh set of amendments on ethics and enforcement now before Democrats for review. The CFTC chair called the bill "so close," while Galaxy Research cut its passage odds to 50-50 as the clock runs out. The gap between executive-branch confidence and Senate leadership's stated pessimism is now the central tension in the bill's final stretch.

Sources

• H.R. 3633, Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, bill text
• Sen. Lummis press release: Updated CLARITY Act text, July 22, 2026
• Senate Banking Committee, CLARITY Act fact sheet
• David Solomon quotes first reported by Politico, July 23, 2026