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Landmark crypto bill stalls in US Senate despite $225mn spending push
Lobby struggles to pass top priority in Congress as lawmakers spar over legislation
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Landmark crypto bill stalls in US Senate despite $225mn spending push on x (opens in a new window)
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Landmark crypto bill stalls in US Senate despite $225mn spending push on x (opens in a new window)
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Alex Rogers in Washington and Michael Taffe in New York
PublishedAugust 8 2026
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A landmark digital assets bill has stalled in the Senate despite the industry spending more than $225mn to build its influence in Washington since the start of Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025.
US senators will soon leave Washington without voting on the Clarity Act, a first-of-its-kind regulatory framework for digital assets, after months of negotiations and repeated promises from lawmakers.
The bill is critical to the crypto sector since it will establish ground rules for firms. Industry participants also hope it will stave off the types of crackdowns launched by Joe Biden’s Wall Street watchdog Gary Gensler.
Trump’s administration has taken a far more welcoming posture at a time when the president and his family are engaged in lucrative crypto projects.
“If Clarity fails . . . we’re now looking at a real risk in two years of the potential for Gensler 2.0,” said Joshua Riezman, chief legal and strategy officer at crypto market maker GSR.
John Thune, the Senate Republican leader, said the Senate would vote on the bill in September, setting up another round of furious lobbying by bank and crypto interests.
The Republican-led House passed its version of the bill last year. But some Republican senators oppose the legislation, citing US banks’ fears that their customers will flee to take advantage of higher yields or rewards offered by crypto accounts.
After months of negotiations, hundreds of pages added to the bill and endless promises of a vote, some Republican senators are leaving town on a sour note.
“Death by 1,000 cuts is just as fatal as a bullet,” Cynthia Lummis, the pro-crypto Wyoming Republican senator, posted on X.
Democratic senators have also used the bill as leverage to try to force Trump to divest from his crypto businesses. The US president earned more than $1bn from crypto companies in 2025, including his $TRUMP memecoin, and World Liberty Financial stablecoin and digital token.
The president’s trust also holds more than $1bn worth of shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, which has substantial bitcoin holdings.
Democrats have been in an uproar over the president’s profits from his family’s crypto companies and have called for stronger ethics provisions that would bar federal officials — including Trump — from issuing or promoting digital assets for compensation while in office.
Senators Thom Tillis, a retiring Republican, and Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, are also seeking to strike a deal that would force public officials such as Trump to divest their crypto holdings while allowing them to defer paying capital gains tax on the transactions.
“They want to do a bill, and in the bill they want me to be different than everybody else,” Trump told Punchbowl News this week. “I don’t mind putting it in a blind trust . . . I let my kids run it.”
The crypto lobby has quickly become one of the most well-funded in Washington. After the Biden administration threatened its business, many of the industry’s top companies and billionaire founders swung behind Trump in 2024.
The crypto sector has now become one of the top donors in the 2026 election cycle, spending more than $185mn between January 2025 and June of this year, according to an FT analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. It also spent more than $40mn on lobbying Washington.
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Fairshake, a pro-crypto Super Pac, has raised nearly $140mn through June, boosted by digital asset groups Ripple Labs and Coinbase, and billionaires Marc Andreessen and Benjamin Horowitz, federal filings show.
Digital asset exchange Crypto.com, through its US entity Foris DAX, has contributed $35mn to Maga Inc, the pro-Trump Super Pac. Meanwhile, Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and their investment firm Winklevoss Capital Fund have donated $21.3mn worth of bitcoin to the pro-crypto Digital Freedom Fund and more than $10mn to Maga Inc.
Trade groups — such as the Blockchain Association, the Solana Policy Institute and the Digital Chamber — have also increased their engagement with Congress.
“The Senate has had CLARITY for a year. ... At this point, the only thing left isn’t negotiation—it’s whether some group will try to stall or block legislation that already has broad bipartisan support,” Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong posted this week on X. “Millions of Americans own crypto and are watching. It’s time to call the vote.”
Additional reporting by Ian Hodgson and Jill R Shah
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