The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act passed the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday in a 15 to 9 vote, sending the crypto market structure bill toward a full Senate floor vote and immediately resetting risk profiles for several major altcoins. XRP responded most sharply, gaining nearly 7% to trade at $1.51, as the bill's grandfather clause provides a direct path to commodity status for tokens with approved or pending ETF products — sidestepping the full mature-blockchain decentralization test and eliminating the SEC secondary-market scrutiny that has historically shadowed XRP. Hyperliquid's HYPE posted the strongest single-day gain, up approximately 12% to $43.86, reflecting the market's assessment that its fully on-chain perpetuals exchange architecture maps directly onto the bill's DeFi safe-harbor provisions protecting non-custodial protocols from broker and dealer registration requirements. Solana gained a more modest 1.68% to $92.70, qualifying as a mature blockchain under the bill's decentralization thresholds while also benefiting from DeFi safe harbors that shield validators, liquidity providers, and non-custodial developers from registration obligations.

The price reactions reflect each token's specific exposure to the legislation rather than a uniform altcoin sentiment boost. XRP's move is driven by the resolution of a specific legal overhang that has suppressed institutional adoption for years. HYPE's move reflects the legitimization of the on-chain DeFi infrastructure category that Hyperliquid represents. Solana's more muted response reflects that its regulatory risk was already lower than XRP's before the bill, making the marginal improvement less dramatic even though the structural benefit is real. The bill still requires reconciliation with the House version and a 60-vote Senate floor passage — thresholds that are not guaranteed — which is why price moves are meaningful but not yet the full rerating that final passage would produce.