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U.S. Senator: Clarity Act is ‘Almost There,’ Treasury Secretary Puts It at the ‘1-Yard Line’

Senator Kevin Cramer said the Senate has moved close to a deal on the Clarity Act, the crypto market-structure bill, with a fresh set of amendments on ethics and enforcement before Democrats for review.

The North Dakota Republican, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, told Fox Business on Tuesday that the bill grows “clearer” as “each issue gets dealt with,” and that “we’re almost there.” He said the largest holdup is Democrats reading the new amendments, “some of them relevant to the ethics piece.”

The central compromise Cramer described concerns who enforces the law. He said there appears to be “some agreement that the Department of Justice would be the prevailing enforcer,” a structure he backed as the source of uniform rules. Democrats, he said, had preferred a role for state attorneys general, an approach he argued would create “too disparate a situation” for the clarity the industry seeks.

Ethics fight over President Trump

That enforcement question sits at the heart of a months-long ethics fight over President Trump’s crypto ventures. 

Senator Cynthia Lummis, who chairs the Banking Committee’s digital assets subcommittee, had floated language that would let state attorneys general sue exchanges that list tokens issued by public officials, a provision aimed at holdings tied to the president and his family. 

Democrats on the committee have pressed for enforceable conflict-of-interest rules, and an amendment to bar the president, vice president, and members of Congress from crypto business ties failed on a party-line vote during the committee markup. 

Trump has met with senators over the ethics dispute as the White House and negotiators work toward terms. The shift Cramer outlined would route that enforcement to federal prosecutors rather than to fifty separate state offices, a change that narrows the paths available to challenge a listed token but centralizes the decision to act in the Justice Department.

Cramer said the Senate has “a couple more weeks” before the August recess, and echoed Lummis in the push for passage before the break. 

“We have to get this done,” he said about the Clarity Act. 

Lummis, in an interview last week, said the bill was “ready” and that it was “very important” to move it across the finish line before the recess, so that markets could see “the stability that will be provided to them if they remain on shore in the United States.”

Cramer flagged one more sticking point beyond enforcement: the definition of securities intermediaries. “The industry doesn’t like that,” he said, and noted a preference for a definition built around decentralization. He cast the remaining gaps as matters of “small details.”

Lots of clarity about the Clarity Act

The Clarity Act would split oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, set disclosure rules for certain tokens, and extend anti-money-laundering and sanctions rules to crypto exchanges. The House passed its version a year ago, and the measure has waited in the Senate since. 

The Senate Banking Committee advanced its version of the Clarity Act in a 15-9 vote this spring, with two Democrats crossing over.

The timeline is tight. Majority Leader John Thune has aimed to bring the bill to the floor before the work period ends in early August, and House members have urged the Senate to act within the window. 

The CFTC chair called the bill “so close”, while Galaxy Research cut its passage odds to 50-50 as the clock ran down. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen: Clarity Act on ‘1-yard line’

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent added his voice to the push, telling Bloomberg that lawmakers stood at the “1-yard line” on the Clarity Act and urging Congress to pass the bill before the recess.

The bill competes for floor time with a continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown at the end of September and a reconciliation package, priorities Cramer ranked ahead of other items in the same interview. President Trump has pressed the chamber to pass the crypto measure, a message he has paired with warnings about competition from China.

For all the optimism, Cramer stopped short of a firm date. “I don’t know that we get to it this week,” he said, a caveat that leaves the bill’s fate to the narrow stretch of Senate days before lawmakers leave Washington.

This post U.S. Senator: Clarity Act is ‘Almost There,’ Treasury Secretary Puts It at the ‘1-Yard Line’ first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

U.S. Treasury Freezes $130 Million Iran-Linked IRGC Crypto Wallet, Tracks Ayatollah’s Assets

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox News on Tuesday that the United States froze a crypto wallet linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps worth $130 million, part of a campaign to track the assets of Iran’s supreme leader around the world.

“We are tracking these accounts all over the world,” Bessent said, in remarks that framed the Treasury work as one prong of an “economic fury” push against Tehran alongside a blockade. “We froze a crypto wallet linked to the IRGC the other day.”

He said investigators had “found the money man for the Ayatollah” and were tracing the holdings of Ali Khamenei, including properties he valued at more than $100 million. Bessent said the Treasury hopes to publish the addresses of those properties. He cast the seizures as a transfer of value to the American people and a squeeze on the regime.

Iran’s economy in ‘freefall’

Bessent also described a collapse in Iran’s economy. He said the rial sits at an all-time low against the dollar and called it in “freefall,” with an inflation rate he put “upwards of 180%.” His account tracks the rial slide that has pushed some Iranians toward bitcoin.

The comments extend a Treasury campaign that has run through the war between Iran, Israel, and the United States. The department has sanctioned Iran’s largest crypto exchange and said the U.S. has seized $1 billion of Iran’s crypto. Blockchain analysts have tied billions in on-chain flows to IRGC-linked wallets, with such wallets receiving more than $3 billion in 2025, a rise from over $2 billion the year before. 

In a separate move, the stablecoin issuer Tether froze $344 million in USDT across two blockchain addresses tied to the IRGC, one of the largest single actions in the sequence.

Bitcoin’s design draws both sides of the fight. It settles without a correspondent bank or a reserve-currency issuer, a trait that lets Iran monetize oil access outside the dollar system and lets Treasury trace and freeze value on a public ledger.

The conflict has reshaped how crypto figures into the region. Since U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began, bitcoin use inside the country has surged as residents moved value out of the banking system. 

Tehran, for its part, reportedly moved to accept bitcoin from tankers seeking passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a $1-per-barrel toll that turns its grip on the chokepoint into settlement revenue. The strait carries a fifth of the world’s oil.

The war has repriced bitcoin as well. 

Treasury has not published documentation of the $130 million wallet freeze or the property addresses Bessent referenced. The inflation and currency figures came from his remarks rather than from Iranian data.

This post U.S. Treasury Freezes $130 Million Iran-Linked IRGC Crypto Wallet, Tracks Ayatollah’s Assets first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.