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WASHINGTON — The cryptocurrency industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars on campaigns over the past two years, ending the careers of crypto skeptics and sending a strong message that “digital assets” had better be respected on Capitol Hill.
And with President Donald Trump in the White House, crypto had a chance to capitalize on its investment. But the president’s embrace of digital assets — and the billion dollars he made in crypto last year — wound up killing the industry’s highest priority: a bill that would have enshrined its place in the financial system.
In other words, Trump’s otherworldly levels of corruption made it impossible for standard methods of Washington influence-peddling to work their magic.
“Donald Trump has enriched himself at such a grotesque level, it’s hard to see the sun around that,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told HuffPost.
A dozen Democrats had provided significant input for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, and had supported a narrower bill benefiting the crypto industry last year, but they all voted against the Clarity Act on Tuesday, seemingly killing its prospects for good.
The bill would give the crypto industry a favorable regulatory and legal footing after industry players faced dozens of lawsuits during the Biden administration for failing to comply with corporate transparency laws. And Republicans included a provision on presidential ethics in order to win over Democrats, but the proposal still left ethics enforcement up to the U.S. attorney general, meaning the Trump administration would be allowed to police itself.
In statements, several of these Democrats pointed to Trump’s personal crypto profiteering, and Republicans’ refusal to crack down on such behavior, as their main objection to the bill.
“After more than a year of intensive negotiations with my Senate Democratic colleagues, Republican counterparts and the White House, the administration has made clear it is not willing to reach a deal that would put an end to the president’s profiteering through digital assets,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said.
“I think this was primarily about Democrat hatred for President Trump.”
– Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)
“We got close to resolving some of the toughest outstanding issues around law enforcement and national security, but ultimately, the failure to address this fundamental conflict of interest made it impossible for me to support moving forward,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), another crypto sympathizer, said Congress “cannot pass landmark legislation governing this industry while allowing the president of the United States to personally profit from it.”
As both the top Democrat on the banking committee and a leading progressive, Warren was the bill’s chief antagonist. In recent weeks, she especially highlighted the Trump administration greenlighting a bank charter for an entity connected to World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto enterprise.
“He has added his own bank now to his crypto undertakings, and refused any ethics provisions that would put the slightest crimp on his sucking up one more crypto dollar. That all adds up to a place that it’s hard to talk about, ’And what else?” Warren said, when asked what other factors besides Trump’s apparent conflict of interest sank the bill.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
To be sure, the Clarity Act faced other obstacles, especially opposition from the banking industry over a provision that would allow digital asset service providers to pay rewards to certain holders of “stablecoins,” or fixed-value digital assets. Banks worried the provision would siphon deposits from traditional savings accounts, and several Republicans highlighted those concerns.
But Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), crypto’s biggest champion on Capitol Hill and a lead author of the Clarity Act, said it was Trump — or more specifically, antipathy toward Trump — that sank the bill.
“I think this was primarily about Democrat hatred for President Trump, and that’s what it came down to,” Lummis told HuffPost. (In 2024, before Trump had been elected, Lummis told HuffPost Trump’s embrace of crypto made her “a little bit uncomfortable” and that he should put his assets in a blind trust.)
“The Democrat Party has become very anti-business, very anti-free enterprise. The socialists are taking over their party,” Lummis said Wednesday. “It’s very much pointed specifically at the president as the target for their wrath, but they also have disdain for the profit motive, and they’re in a dangerous place as a political party.”