Scott Bessent Urges Senate To Pass CLARITY Act, Says U.S. Bitcoin Reserve Moves Deliberately

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Senate lawmakers at a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the department is “proceeding with all deliberate speed” on President Donald Trump’s 2025 order to establish Bitcoin and digital asset reserves.

“Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told senators on Wednesday that the U”

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Bessent said the administration is also urging Congress to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, which he framed as “very necessary to bring US best practices onshore.”

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The U.S. currently holds 328,372 BTC in its reserves, worth about $215 billion at the time of publication, and the reserve has been filled with crypto seized by the government.

Lawmakers have sought to codify Trump’s order into law, while individual jurisdictions like Texas have already passed legislation creating state-controlled crypto reserves.

Bessent did not comment on whether the $1 billion in digital assets seized from Iran since the US-Israel war against the country began in February was included in the crypto reserves.

The Clarity Act draft has stalled in the Senate Banking Committee after legislators backed away ahead of a planned vote, with the conflict described as a “guerra abierta” between big banks and the crypto industry in the United States.

The draft would restrict the payment of interest on “stablecoins,” a move that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said he could not accept, insisting “Preferimos no tener ningún proyecto de ley a tener uno malo.”

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The dispute is tied to how stablecoin rules interact with the Genius Act, which the source says prohibits stablecoin issuers from paying interests to users just for holding the assets but does not address intermediaries and brokerage channels.

The banking industry has warned that stablecoin competition could drain bank deposits and reduce credit capacity for families and companies, while a U.S. Treasury report estimated in April that the stablecoin boom could lead to a $6,6 billones outflow of deposits.

In response to the stalemate, legislators extended the possibility of paying yields to intermediaries, leaving only the possibility of paying rewards for use as a means of payment, which the crypto sector described as a “línea roja.”

Bessent told senators he expects the CLARITY Act could pass this summer, while the Senate still needs to consolidate versions passed by the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees before any full-chamber vote.

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The source says Bessent urged lawmakers to get behind CLARITY, and that the bill would create rules for digital assets and define when crypto tokens fall under securities or commodities oversight.

At the same time, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is being treated as a pillar of national fiscal policy, with the executive order signed on March 6, 2025 barring Treasury from selling the coins and directing officials to explore “budget-neutral” ways to add more BTC.

The reserve currently holds an estimated 328,372 BTC, and the BITCOIN Act sponsored by Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming would authorize Treasury to buy 200,000 BTC each year for five years, totaling one million bitcoin, with the government required to hold it for at least 20 years.

The combined push—reserve expansion and the CLARITY Act—sets the immediate stakes for U.S. crypto policy, with Bessent telling the committee he “looks forward to the Clarity Act being passed this summer.”