Crypto Bill Nears Senate Test as Trump Accepts New Ethics Limits on Digital-Asset Holdings

WASHINGTON — The Senate’s long-delayed crypto market-structure bill is approaching its most consequential test yet, after President Donald Trump agreed to most of an ethics proposal designed to limit how top officials and their spouses can profit from digital assets.

Republican senators said Sunday that Trump accepted a revised package tied to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, known as the CLARITY Act. The changes are intended to answer Democratic objections that the bill would establish rules for the crypto industry without adequately addressing conflicts involving a president with extensive crypto-related business interests.

The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday, September 15, on whether to begin considering H.R. 3633. That is a procedural vote, not a final vote on the bill. Senate scheduling records show the cloture motion is set to ripen at approximately 2:15 p.m.

The arithmetic is unforgiving. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, meaning the bill would need at least seven Democratic or independent votes if the Republican conference remains united. A successful vote would open debate, but the legislation would still face amendments, final Senate passage, House action on the Senate version and the president’s signature.

The reported compromise addresses the issue that has become the bill’s political fault line: whether federal officials can benefit from crypto ventures while helping write the rules governing the industry. The updated language is expected to require covered officials to divest significant financial interests in entities that issue digital assets or place those interests in a blind trust. It would also give state attorneys general a meaningful enforcement role, an important demand from senators who argued that relying only on the Justice Department would create an obvious conflict when the president himself is covered by the rules.

The agreement is significant because an earlier version focused mainly on barring elected officials and their spouses from issuing digital assets. Critics, including Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee, said that restriction left too much room for officials to retain or profit from existing holdings and related businesses.

The latest draft reportedly includes 126 substantive changes requested by Democrats. It also reaches beyond presidential ethics, touching on stablecoin rewards, state consumer-protection authority and the regulatory responsibilities of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

That breadth explains why the bill has attracted both industry support and opposition from financial-sector and consumer advocates. Supporters say a federal framework would replace years of uncertainty over which agency regulates which digital asset. Opponents argue that broad exemptions, weak enforcement or special treatment for politically connected businesses could legitimize the industry without providing equivalent safeguards for investors.

The key uncertainty is not whether Trump agreed to the compromise. It is whether Democrats believe the language can actually be enforced. Republican lawmakers have described the proposal as a major ethics safeguard. Democratic critics have argued that previous versions contained loopholes that would still permit the president and his family to benefit from crypto holdings or related ventures.

That makes Tuesday’s vote more than a referendum on crypto regulation. It is also a test of whether Congress can impose conflict-of-interest rules on a president whose private financial interests overlap with the market being regulated. If the bill advances, that question will move from campaign rhetoric into the details of statutory enforcement. If it fails, the industry’s biggest federal legislative push will remain stalled—and the next opening may not come before the political calendar narrows further.