Senate Banking Committee draft of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (also called the CLARITY Act, H. R. 3633).
Section 604 is the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), and Section 605 is the Keep Your Coins Act. These provisions are in Title VI of the bill (focused on developer protections and innovation safeguards).
What Section 604 Actually Does
It creates a safe harbor for “non-controlling” blockchain developers and providers:
A “developer or provider” is anyone who creates or publishes software to facilitate the creation or maintenance of a distributed ledger (or a service associated with one).
A “non-controlling” one is defined as someone who, in the regular course of operations, does not have:
The legal right or unilateral ability to control, initiate upon demand, or effectuate transactions involving digital assets without the approval, consent, or direction of a third party.
Key protections (directly from the text you posted):
Such non-controlling developers/providers shall not be treated as:
A money transmitting business under 31 U. S. C. § 5330 (FinCEN registration).
Engaged in money transmitting under 18 U. S. C. § 1960 (the main federal criminal money transmission statute).
They are also shielded from substantially similar state registration requirements solely on the basis of creating/publishing software, providing hardware/software for self-custody, or providing infrastructure support for a distributed ledger.
Important limitations (the bill is explicit about this):
It does not protect anyone who acts with intent to transfer funds they know are derived from a criminal offense or intended to promote/support unlawful activity (this is subsection (d), which preserves 18 U. S. C. § 1960(b)(1)(C)).
Rules of construction make clear it doesn’t override other federal/state laws based on conduct outside this safe harbor, doesn’t affect intellectual property laws, doesn’t stop states from enforcing consistent laws, and doesn’t create new private causes of action.
In plain English: Writing and publishing open-source blockchain code, building/maintaining non-custodial wallets or self-custody tools, or running nodes/infrastructure — without controlling user funds — is not money transmission. This has been a major source of legal uncertainty and fear for developers for years.
Section 605: Keep Your Coins Act
This explicitly prohibits federal agencies from prohibiting, restricting, or impairing an individual’s ability to use a self-hosted wallet to custody their own digital assets (while preserving all existing authorities to enforce AML, sanctions, fraud, etc.).
Current Status (as of May 12, 2026)
The House passed its version of the CLARITY Act in July 2025 with strong bipartisan support (294-134).
The Senate Banking Committee is holding its markup on this exact draft tomorrow — Thursday, May 14, 2026, at 10:30 a.m. ET.
This is the most advanced comprehensive crypto market-structure bill has ever been in Congress.
Is This a “Massive Win for Ripple & XRP”?
It is a significant positive development for the entire industry, including Ripple and the XRP ecosystem:
The XRP Ledger is designed as a decentralized public blockchain. Ripple develops and publishes open-source software for it, provides tools/infrastructure, and supports validators/nodes — but does not control user funds or unilaterally initiate transactions on the ledger.
This provision directly reduces legal risk for that kind of activity (software publishing, self-custody tools, node operation, etc.).
It benefits any project with truly non-custodial, decentralized architecture (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, etc.).
The enthusiastic post you shared is directionally correct in substance (this is indeed a major clarity win for open-source developers and self-custody), though the “buried on page 230 of the 309-page bill” framing is typical hype — it’s a prominent, dedicated section (604) in a major bill, not hidden in fine print.
