The token jumped 5% after a Senate committee moved the market-structure bill forward, reviving hopes that legal clarity can pull deeper institutional money into XRP products. May 16, 2026, 11:30 a.m. 3 min readMake preferred on XRP traders got the regulatory headline they had been waiting for on Thursday after the Senate Banking Committee advanced the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act in a 15-9 vote, moving one of Washington’s main crypto market-structure bills closer to a full Senate fight. XRP traded zoomed above $1.5 after the vote, adding 5% over a 24-hour period and 7.6% on the week, making it one of the stronger performers among major tokens such as bitcoin and ether, which have added under 3% for the week.The outsized reaction came as few large crypto assets have been shaped as directly by U.S. regulatory uncertainty as XRP.The SEC sued Ripple in December 2020, setting off years of exchange suspensions, institutional hesitation and legal noise around whether XRP could trade freely in U.S. markets. A 2023 ruling from Judge Analisa Torres helped clear secondary-market XRP trading from being treated as securities transactions, but the broader market never got what large allocators usually want - federal legislation that is harder for a future regulator to reinterpret.The CLARITY bill would put more digital assets under a defined market-structure regime and give institutions a cleaner framework for custody, trading, market making and ETF allocation.Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called the committee vote “the moment” in a post on X, saying the industry deserves “the same rules and protections as every other asset class.”The Senate Banking Committee is putting in the work as it moves the Clarity Act forward… incredible leadership!Millions of Americans are already in this market. Ripple stands behind this bill because they deserve the same rules and protections as every other asset class. If… https://t.co/orvdQHDbEz— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) May 13, 2026