‘The bill is dead’: Crypto legislation collapses on Senate floor
Democrats said the legislation didn’t do enough to crack down on President Donald Trump’s potential conflicts of interest.
The Senate on Tuesday rejected a sweeping cryptocurrency bill amid opposition from Democrats and a handful of Republicans, likely killing any effort to pass the legislation through the Senate prior to the midterm elections.
Senators voted 49-50 to reject the so-called Clarity Act, delivering a stinging defeat to the crypto industry. Democrats objected that the bill did not go far enough to address concerns about President Donald Trump’s potential conflicts of interest in the digital assets sector and some Republicans were swayed by concerns from the banking industry.
Summary
A major effort to establish a comprehensive federal framework for cryptocurrency collapsed in the Senate after the Clarity Act failed on a 49–50 procedural vote. The bill would have divided oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, giving cryptocurrency companies clearer rules and helping bring digital assets more fully into the regulated financial system.
Every Senate Democrat opposed advancing the legislation, arguing that it lacked adequate consumer protections, enforcement provisions against illicit finance, and meaningful restrictions preventing President Trump from benefiting from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses. Three Republicans also voted against it, while others warned that they would withhold final support unless concerns raised by banks were addressed.
The defeat is a serious setback for the cryptocurrency industry, which spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for federal legislation. It does not outlaw cryptocurrency or immediately change the legal status of existing digital assets. Instead, it leaves the industry operating under the same fragmented and uncertain regulatory structure—and makes passage of a comprehensive bill before the midterm elections unlikely.
