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Clarity Act stalls in Senate
Senators released new text for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act by merging drafts advanced by the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committees, and the bill still has not reached the finish line.
“Senators released new text for the Clarity Act, merging two versions and addressing for the first time what an ethics provision might look like”
The new draft adds an ethics provision that would bar senior government officials from sponsoring or issuing their own cryptocurrencies in response to President Donald Trump.
CoinDesk’s State of Crypto says the ethics provision would essentially give Trump a year to divest or put his businesses into a blind trust and directs the Department of Justice to enforce the provision.
CoinDesk also frames the timing as tightening, noting that the bill must clear the Senate before the August recess, with the question of bipartisan agreement on a key provision keeping the timeline “really tight indeed.”
Ethics fight and political money
Senate Democrats object that they do not trust the Department of Justice to go after Trump while he is in office and that the ethics provision sunsets when the next president is inaugurated, while also barring future administrations from retroactively going after Trump.
In an interview, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said, “There’s no secret that what they’re up to is trying to use their hundreds of millions of dollars to buy influence and buy the result they want,” linking crypto spending to the legislative fight.
The American Prospect reports that crypto super PAC Fairshake had almost $127 million cash on hand at the end of June and that the industry spent $189 million on House and Senate races this year.
The American Prospect also quotes Van Hollen on the ethics provision, calling it “woefully inadequate … It would allow President Trump to continue doing exactly what he’s doing, and he’s been engaged in crypto corruption in many ways,” as the CLARITY Act remains stalled in the Senate with only a week left before its chances drop precipitously.
Wall Street backs, Warren resists
iProUP says the Law Clarity continues gaining support among major financial actors in the United States, citing Charles Schwab’s view that the initiative is a “pieza decisiva” to provide clear rules for a crypto market in accelerated growth.
iProUP reports that Senate Republican leader John Thune anticipated the bill would “difícilmente será sometido a votación antes del receso legislativo de agosto” due to disagreements over ethical and technical aspects.
The American Prospect adds that the CLARITY Act made it out of the House but is still stalled in the Senate, with only a week left before its chances of survival drop precipitously.
Cryptonews.net says Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong urged the Senate to hold the final vote and that the ex-SEC chief of staff Amanda Fischer argued the new ethics provisions “apenas modifican la situación actual del presidente,” including that Trump can continue obtaining benefits from crypto companies he already owns.
