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Technology|Crypto Bill Mired in Debate Over Rules to Stop President From Selling Coins
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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/technology/crypto-bill-trump.html
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A sweeping cryptocurrency bill is approaching a final vote in the Senate this summer, with support from Republicans and some Democrats — and backed by an industry that has spent tens of millions of dollars to shape it.
But lately a major sticking point has emerged: the $1.4 billion in crypto revenue that President Trump disclosed in June, after a year of astonishing moneymaking by his family’s network of crypto businesses.
Now as the landmark legislation, known as the Clarity Act, inches toward passage, Senate Democrats are pushing for strict language in the bill that would bar public officials from selling digital currencies. On Wednesday, Republican senators released a new draft of the bill that contained a version of those restrictions, including language making it illegal for the president and other U.S. officials to issue or sponsor a cryptocurrency.
Democrats and progressive advocacy groups immediately fired back, arguing that the draft did not go far enough to stop Mr. Trump from using crypto to enrich himself. With the midterm elections approaching, the debate is threatening to engulf the Clarity Act, showing how Mr. Trump’s crypto dealings have rippled through Washington.
The ethics issue has “become the linchpin of whether this gets bipartisan support,” said Cody Carbone, the chief executive of the Digital Chamber, a crypto trade group. “Democrats have made this the most important issue for them.”
Passage of the Clarity Act is a top priority for the crypto industry. Under the Biden administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission pursued an aggressive enforcement campaign against crypto firms, filing lawsuits that argued that digital coins should be regulated like stocks and bonds. The Trump administration reversed course and dropped almost all of those suits.
The act, which passed the House of Representatives last year, would effectively lock that policy position into law so that crypto companies can operate freely in the United States without fear of a regulatory crackdown from a future administration.
Democrats have voiced concerns about the bill for months, pointing out that it would give authority over the industry to a short-staffed federal agency that has limited enforcement capacity.
But no issue has attracted more scrutiny than Mr. Trump’s crypto ventures. Last month, the president issued his mandatory financial disclosure report, which showed that he had made more than $2 billion during the first year of his second term, most of it from crypto.
Those gains came at the expense of ordinary investors, who lost a total of $3.8 billion after buying Mr. Trump’s so-called memecoin, a novelty cryptocurrency known for its volatility.
Nothing in the latest draft of the Clarity Act would prevent Mr. Trump from continuing to profit from his memecoin or other crypto ventures, according to Democratic staff and other industry experts who reviewed the language.
“The Senate majority released a bill that would do effectively nothing to stop the main ways he made that money — or could keep making it,” Scott Greytak, deputy executive director of the advocacy group Transparency International U.S., said in a statement. “It would leave the underlying businesses, revenue streams and family arrangements largely untouched.”
The Clarity Act is the result of years of lobbying by the crypto industry. During the 2024 election, a network of pro-crypto super PACs spent more than $130 million to elect industry-friendly legislators. That spending has paid off. Last July, Mr. Trump signed a pro-crypto bill known as the GENIUS Act, which governs a type of digital currency called a stablecoin. The same month, the House voted to pass a version of the Clarity Act.
The bill soon ran into obstacles in the Senate, including pushback from the banking industry. But in May, a bipartisan group of senators voted to advance it from the Senate Banking Committee, a crucial step.
Now the legislation awaits a vote in the full Senate, with only weeks to go until the August recess, which is widely seen as the deadline for Congress to act on the bill before the midterm elections.
The politics are complicated. Republicans hold a thin majority in the Senate, meaning the Clarity Act will require at least some Democratic votes to pass. And Mr. Trump’s crypto dealmaking has prompted even industry-friendly Democrats to dig in.
The ethics language unveiled on Wednesday emerged from discussions between Senate Republicans and the White House, which has supported the bill. In a statement, a White House official called it “the most comprehensive and wide-ranging ethics provision in history” and said the administration had “bent over backward” to find a solution.
But critics soon pointed out apparent loopholes, which one former regulator called “ laughable.” The bill would bar public officials from issuing or sponsoring digital currencies while they were in government. The rule also applies to spouses — but not to children.
The proposed restrictions appear unlikely to curb Mr. Trump’s moneymaking. His two largest crypto ventures were started shortly before he became president — in one case, a mere 72 hours before his inauguration.
And the rule would stay in effect only until January 2029, meaning that a future Justice Department would be unable to prosecute Mr. Trump for potential violations, experts said.
Still, Senate Republicans praised the language as a historic compromise that addressed concerns from Democrats.
“History will remember this as the moment a president chose a higher standard of ethics than the law required of him,” Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, said on Wednesday.
David Yaffe-Bellany writes about the crypto industry for The Times from New York. He can be reached at davidyb@nytimes.com.
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