Senate Republicans released an updated version of the Clarity Act on Wednesday, a draft that for the first time carries a crypto ethics agreement barring the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges, and other covered officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets.
The new Clarity Act text, posted after morning briefing calls with stakeholders, adds a section titled “Ban on certain digital asset transactions.” It states that a covered individual “shall not, in exchange for consideration,” issue or sponsor a digital asset, a prohibition that reaches public officials and employees during their service, and their spouses.
A companion clause bars the listing of any digital asset found to be issued or sponsored by a covered individual in violation of the ban.
The bill offers a safe harbor. A covered individual would avoid violation by placing a direct interest in a digital asset in a qualified blind trust, divesting it, or both, along procedures that track the ethics-agreement rules under section 208 of title 18.
A separate carve-out protects continued use of a covered individual’s name, image, or likeness when an issuer or intermediary used it before the person entered covered status.
The ethics package carries an expiration date. Under the draft, the provisions have no force after noon on January 20, 2029, and no person faces penalty after that sunset for conduct on or before it. The timing lines up with the end of the current presidential term.
Clarity Act dispute over President Trump’s crypto efforts
The ethics language answers a months-long Clarity Act dispute over President Trump’s crypto ventures, which a July financial disclosure tied to about $1.4 billion in 2025 income through the $TRUMP token and World Liberty Financial.
Eleanor Terrett reported the package was negotiated between the White House and Republican Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno, and that it does not carry Democratic sign-off.
Democrats on the Banking Committee had pressed for enforceable conflict-of-interest rules, and an amendment to bar officials from crypto ties failed during the May markup of the Clarity Act.
Beyond ethics, industry sources say the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act stays intact from the committee version. The BRCA holds that non-custodial developers and infrastructure providers are not money transmitters for building or maintaining decentralized networks, a protection the industry has pushed to preserve.
Further amendment details
The Lummis-Grassley amendment keeps criminal liability for anyone who “knowingly” facilitates illicit transactions, and the Keep Your Coins Act preserves the right to self-custody.
The stablecoin-yield section holds the Tillis-Alsobrooks compromise: a ban on interest paid on idle payment-stablecoin balances, with room for rewards tied to activity such as transactions or staking, as long as those rewards do not function as interest on a bank deposit.
A new section of the Clarity Act builds out law enforcement tools. It raises funding for state and local crypto investigations and blockchain analytics, sets up training for police and prosecutors, creates a “cyber center” against nation-state actors such as North Korea and Iran, and forms a public-private task force on fraud.
It also requires stablecoin issuers to comply with lawful orders to freeze, seize, burn, and reissue tokens.
The text carries bankruptcy protections that treat customer digital assets as property of the customer rather than part of a failed company’s estate, a rule meant to head off another FTX-style loss.
The 616-page draft came from Republicans, and it lacks Democratic support for the moment.
Senator Lummis thanked her “Democratic colleagues for their important contributions” and voiced a commitment to “reaching a deal in the coming days that will allow this legislation to become law.” Majority Leader John Thune plans a floor vote in the coming weeks.
The release caps a stretch of pressure to move the Clarity Act. The House passed its version in July 2025 on a 294-134 vote, and the measure has waited in the Senate since.
The Senate Banking Committee advanced its text in a 15-9 vote in May. Coinbase and other firms have pushed for passage before the August recess, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put the effort at the “1-yard line,” and Trump has pressed the chamber to act.
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