Polymarket sees January US gov’t shutdown odds surge to 77%

Polymarket betters are pricing in a 77% chance that the US government will shut down again before the end of January, marking a 67% increase over the past 24 hours.

It comes as the CLARITY Act, a significant crypto bill aimed at providing more clarity around regulations, is still making its way through Congress, with previous delays largely blamed on the record 43-day US government shutdown in October and November.

Political commentator Collin Rugg highlighted the surging Polymarket odds in an X post on Saturday, noting that it came shortly after US Senator Chuck Schumer announced that Senate Democrats would not “provide the votes to proceed” to the appropriations bill if funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is included.

“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling —and unacceptable in any American city,” Schumer said in a statement.

On Saturday morning, reports emerged that US federal agents shot and killed a 37-year-old man in Minneapolis. 

Trump didn’t rule out shutdown in the future

Schumer said that the DHS bill is “woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no.”

US President Donald Trump didn’t rule out the chances of another government shutdown at some point, telling Fox Business on Thursday: “I think we have a problem, because I think we’re probably going to end up in another Democrat shutdown.”

It adds uncertainty around the CLARITY Act’s timeline, which has recently received a mixed response from the crypto industry after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and other executives withdrew support.

“This version would be materially worse than the current status quo. We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill. Hopefully we can all get to a better draft,” Armstrong said on Jan. 15.

CLARITY Act timeline remains unclear

Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn echoed industry concerns in a report on Thursday that there is still uncertainty around stablecoin yields, which the US banking lobby argues would undermine the banking sector’s competitiveness. 

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“There aren’t yet any significant indications that the two sides have identified a compromise that can rejuvenate the bill’s prospects,” he said, adding that “the additional 4-6 weeks until a second attempt at markup should give the parties more time to work on that.”

Thorn said one of the “big questions” is whether “the gridlocked negotiations over stablecoin rewards can advance in the interim to raise the odds that such a markup is a bipartisan success.”

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