My petition to Congress to revive, amend, and pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act

The event

On Tuesday, 15 September 2026, the United States Senate voted on a motion to proceed to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Sixty votes were required. The motion failed.

I took these tallies from contemporaneous press accounts and will conform them to the Senate Clerk's official roll call when posted. The Clerk, not the newspaper, is the controlling exhibit.

Why I filed this

I opened this file the next morning. A 49–50 vote is a failure to obtain sixty votes. It is not a merits judgment on whether the United States needs a market-structure statute.

Market participants, counsel like me, and retail holders are left where we were: no enacted market-structure law, continued dual-agency uncertainty between the SEC and the CFTC, and a congressional calendar compressed by the midterm elections. Public reporting places the loss of votes on ethics language, not on the existence of bitcoin, ether, or solana markets. I read that as a drafting and negotiation failure, not a reason to abandon the field.

I am asking Congress not to treat the failed motion as the end of the file.

Relief sought

I respectfully request that Congress:

1. Treat the 15 September motion to proceed as interlocutory, not terminal. A procedural loss is not a national referendum on digital assets.
2. Reopen bicameral negotiations immediately on a vehicle that can command sixty votes in this Congress or, failing that, be pre-filed for the next.
3. Separate, in drafting, market-structure rules from ethics and conflict rules. Both belong in law. Collapsing them into a single kill-switch served neither retail holders nor the public-integrity interest.
4. Preserve a coherent allocation between the CFTC and the SEC, with a statutory definition of digital commodities versus securities that a district court can apply without a new enforcement theory every quarter.
5. Protect retail access, including self-custody, on-chain settlement, and lawful secondary trading, rather than writing a statute only large intermediaries can survive.
6. Direct the agencies, pending enactment, to publish a joint interpretive timetable so the failure of cloture is not treated as a green light for regulation by enforcement.

I set out the grounds at length in my Memorandum of Legislative Audit.

What this petition is not

I am not asking anyone to buy or sell any digital asset. I do not endorse any token, protocol, or campaign. I am not waving away the ethics concerns; I am asking that they be written as enforceable ethics law, not used as an excuse to leave markets without a statute.

How to join

1. Read my operative petition.
2. Read my audit memorandum.
3. Record your support by starring the docket repository, or by sending me a short written statement of support: your name, city, and whether you write as a constituent, counsel, or market participant.

If you star the repository or send me a statement, you are a signatory to a political petition, not my client. No attorney-client relationship arises.

Documents · exhibit index

• Ex. AOperative petition
• Ex. BLegislative audit memorandum
• Ex. CVote and procedure sheet
• Ex. DDonation and administration addresses
• Ex. EScope and ethics notice

I will add further exhibits (the Clerk's roll-call print, Congressional Record pages, committee prints) to the docket as PDFs if and when I obtain them from official sources.

Help me cover the petition's costs

Voluntary contributions help me pay for this petition's costs: public-record hosting, noticing, printing of official exhibits when available, and my own uncompensated time on the file.

Please send only what you can afford. Do not send private keys. Copy each address exactly.

Use Ethereum mainnet unless you have confirmed that a specific L2 credit will be recognized. Keep a memo in your own records (date, amount, transaction hash). On-chain receipts are the acknowledgement; if you need a letter for your file, write to me with the hash. I am not giving tax advice. Most petition-cost gifts are not deductible as charitable contributions unless a qualified 501(c)(3) is later designated in writing on this docket. Full terms: DONATIONS.md.

Notice

1. Not a law-firm website. This is a public petition and audit file that I maintain in my individual capacity.
2. No attorney-client relationship with me arises from starring the repository, reading these papers, or sending assets to the donation addresses.
3. Not legal advice. I am not advising any particular holder, exchange, or issuer on the status of any token.
4. Not an offer. I am not offering to sell securities or commodities.
5. Political speech. I am asking Congress to legislate. I am not coordinating expenditures with any candidate.
6. Accuracy. I took the vote tallies from press accounts and will conform them to the Senate Clerk's official roll call when it is available.
7. Conflicts. My professional biography includes prior public service and prior work in the digital-asset industry. That is why I wrote this file in plain lawyer's English, and why I publish the donation addresses in the open.

Respectfully submitted,
Bill Hughes, Esq.
Washington, D.C. · Petitioner of record · 16 September 2026