Senate’s Latest Clarity Act Draft Curbs Trump Crypto Ties Through 2029
The near-final market-structure bill shields non-custodial developers and installs an ethics ban that expires January 20, 2029, with enforcement left to the Justice Department.
WYOMING — A near-final draft of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act would bar Donald J. Trump and other senior officials from crypto ventures, but only until 2029.
The circulating text confirms an ethics provision that sunsets in 2029 and requires regulators to implement the limits within a year of enactment, CoinDesk reported after reviewing the draft posted at Punchbowl News. The conflict-of-interest section blocks the president, officials and their spouses from issuing or sponsoring digital assets while in office. It leaves the Department of Justice as the sole enforcer of related complaints, according to decrypt.co.
“Today’s draft is a meaningful step toward the Senate vote on the Clarity Act we’ve been calling for,” said Digital Chamber CEO Cody Carbone in a statement to CoinDesk. “We’re encouraged, and we’re ready to keep working until the bill reaches the president’s desk.”
The bill lands as the Senate sets up its last major push before summer recess. The chamber needs at least 10 Democrats to reach the 60 votes required for passage. Many Democrats have criticized the ethics section as too weak, especially after Trump’s financial disclosures showed he earned more than $1 billion from crypto interests last year. Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican and lead negotiator, thanked Democrats for their input and voiced “my commitment to reaching a deal in the coming days,” she said in a statement.
The stakes run in two directions. Software developers gain the most concrete win. The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act survives intact, meaning developers who do not control users’ assets escape treatment as “money transmitters” and the compliance load that label carries, according to coindesk. Democratic critics warn the industry’s growing Washington influence tilts the bill toward companies, while a temporary ban expiring January 20, 2029, offers Trump only a limited constraint, according to decrypt.co.
A White House official told CoinDesk on July 22, 2026 that Trump had “agreed to the most comprehensive and wide-ranging ethics provision in history” after Republican senators met with him. The draft also adds federal preemption language, provisional registration procedures and rules for commodity pool operators, according to coindesk. Miller Whitehouse-Levine, CEO of the Solana Policy Institute, said the bill would set clear treatment for tokens, regulate exchanges and direct agencies to build a pathway for tokenized securities.
Crypto markets have tracked the bill’s odds closely. XRP, the Ripple-linked token, jumped 3.25% to $1.1485 after reports that Trump accepted the ethics provision pushed Polymarket’s estimated passage odds from 32% to 43%, according to decrypt.co.
Regulatory pressure is building on a separate front. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce warned on July 22, 2026 that crypto vaults and onchain lending strategies may fall under federal securities laws depending on structure. “If you do headstands, backflips and other gymnastics to read the law so that it does not apply to crypto assets and activities that are well within the scope of the federal securities laws, you will have a painful fall,” she said, according to coindesk. Vaults hold $8.6 billion across 788 curated products, and Morpho’s token fell roughly 5% after her remarks.
This kind of legislative brinkmanship has surfaced before. The GENIUS Act, the stablecoin framework that preceded Clarity, moved through months of similar Democratic-Republican wrangling before reaching the president’s desk. Majority Leader John Thune intends to move floor action in the coming days, though the Senate has not set a firm vote date.
Money has long tested the line between public office and private gain. In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton chartered the First Bank of the United States, and critics accused speculators with inside ties of using government credit to enrich themselves during the Panic of 1792. William Duer, a former Treasury official, defaulted on massive speculative debts that year and landed in jail, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. The scandal hardened public suspicion of financiers close to power, a distrust that shadowed U.S. banking policy for decades.