Four separate negotiations still need to close before the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act hits the Senate floor, and the ethics provision that touches Donald Trump's own crypto holdings is the stickiest of them all.
Senate Democrats Ruben Gallego and Kirsten Gillibrand are running three-party talks with Republicans and the White House over a provision that would limit senior government officials from maintaining business ties with crypto. White House adviser Patrick Witt said the intent is to affect a wide swath of officials, not target the president directly. But nobody has publicly described what the actual limitations would look like, and Trump has a complex web of involvement including World Liberty Financial, Truth Social's crypto elements, and his namesake memecoin.
The Other Three Fights That Could Kill the Bill
Even if the ethics knot gets cut, three more issues remain. Senate Agriculture Committee Democrats want assurances on filling the two vacant Democratic seats on the five-member CFTC. Law enforcement groups are pushing back hard on the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA) section, which shields DeFi developers from liability for how others use their code. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto keeps demanding more changes to those protections. And U.S. bankers are still grumbling about stablecoin yield, arguing the latest compromise doesn't protect their deposit-taking business enough.
Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, told CoinDesk that "no one has given up." His group is flying 50 members from firms including Hyperliquid, Elliptic, and Anchorage Digital into Washington Tuesday to visit as many as 30 lawmakers' offices. The target: senators outside the core negotiations, to build momentum for a floor vote.
The Clock Runs to July 13
Senator Cynthia Lummis has been posting steadily on X, urging her colleagues to hurry. "Software developers should not need an army of lawyers to know if their code is legal," she wrote. "The Clarity Act ends that absurdity."
The math is tight: if the bill is to hit the Senate floor the week of July 13, the negotiators have roughly 13 working days plus weekends to resolve all four issues and revise the bill into final form. Crypto's most important policy effort hangs on whether those talks produce text everyone can stomach before the summer break and midterm election season swallows the calendar.
Source: In Clarity Act's final weeks, its path through U.S. Senate not getting much clearer
Domain: coindesk.com
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