Bitcoin Magazine
New Clarity Act Draft Would Bar Trump and Officials From Issuing Crypto, With a 2029 Sunset
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.
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— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 22, 2026Senate Republicans release updated Clarity Act text that bans the President and covered officials from issuing digital assets and requires them to sell their crypto holdings or put them in a blind trust. pic.twitter.com/v7UDXGI45B
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.
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.
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.
This post New Clarity Act Draft Would Bar Trump and Officials From Issuing Crypto, With a 2029 Sunset first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
Bitcoin Magazine
Winklevoss Twins Donated $10 Million From Bitcoin Sale to Trump Super PAC
Crypto entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss donated over $10 million after liquidating Bitcoin to American super PAC MAGA Inc., which supports President Donald Trump.
A Tuesday filing shows each twin — the founders of the public crypto exchange, Gemini — donated over $5 million each.
The donation comes about one month after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission asked a judge to vacate the agency’s $5 million penalty against Gemini.
The twins back in 2024 announced that they had donated 30.94 Bitcoin, valued at over $2 million at the time, to President Trump’s campaign, claiming it would “put an end to the Biden Administration’s war on crypto.”
During the Biden Administration, regulators cracked down hard on crypto exchanges — including Gemini — but since President Trump took office, a number of lawsuits have been scrapped.
MAGA Inc. has raised over $400 million in fresh cash ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The Winklevoss Twins — who claimed they played a part in the creation of Facebook — founded crypto exchange Gemini in 2014 after being early Bitcoin backers.
Crypto industry observers have long speculated that the twins are two of the biggest Bitcoin holders in the space.
The twins have long praised President Trump’s pro-Bitcoin and pro-business stance, claiming it’s crucial for the future of the crypto industry in the country.
Tyler in particular emphasized the need for a political shift to prevent further harm to the industry and to restore an environment conducive to innovation and economic growth.
“President Donald J. Trump is the pro-Bitcoin, pro-crypto, and pro-business choice,” he said back in 2024. “This is not even remotely open for debate. Anyone who tells you otherwise is severely misinformed, delusional, or not telling the truth.”
Back in May, Gemini shares jumped over 20% in after-hours trading after the Winklevoss twins announced a $100 million Bitcoin-funded investment in the company alongside Q1 earnings showing 42% year-over-year revenue growth.
The quarter’s results included a narrowed net loss of $109 million and a sharp rise in services and credit card revenue, though trading volumes had fallen from a year earlier following Bitcoin’s crash from its October peak.
The rally followed months of turmoil for Gemini, including layoffs, executive departures, shareholder lawsuits, and a stock price that had dropped more than 89% from its IPO high, partly offset by a CFTC derivatives license granted in April.
This post Winklevoss Twins Donated $10 Million From Bitcoin Sale to Trump Super PAC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
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Bitcoin Magazine
White House Presses Senate Democrats To Accept Trump Ethics Deal On Clarity Act
The White House is pushing Senate Democrats to accept a conflict-of-interest agreement that President Donald Trump worked out with Republicans, a move that negotiators hope will settle the last major dispute in the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CoinDesk that Trump “has agreed to the most comprehensive and wide-ranging ethics provision in history.”
No details have emerged on what crypto restrictions Trump has consented to, and Democrats have been kept out of the loop on the provision.
The ethics section would restrict senior government officials from personal business ties to the crypto industry, including Trump, whose family holdings have generated more than $2 billion in new wealth since he returned to office, according to Reuters. Release of the final draft has stalled for several days as negotiators work through the language.
Democratic lawmakers have not received a briefing on the concession, though Republicans and the crypto industry have begun a sales campaign that casts Democrats as the obstacle.
“If Senate Democrats block this historic legislation after the administration has bent over backward to accommodate their concerns, stakeholders should make no mistake: It is the Democrats who are blocking this legislation because they were never serious about a legislative outcome,” the White House official said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has added his voice to the push, saying that lawmakers stood at the “1-yard line” on the Clarity Act and urging Congress to pass the bill before the recess.
Democratic negotiators such as Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks have not seen details of the agreement with Trump, who met with Republican senators at the White House last week.
Many of the Democrats have drawn a line that the ethics provision needs to be strong. Trump has pressed the Senate to pass the Clarity Act, and his disclosure that he made more than $1 billion from crypto in 2025 has given critics fresh ammunition.
The Clarity Act’s text cleared the Senate Banking Committee in a 15-9 vote, with Gallego and Alsobrooks joining Republicans to advance it.
Both said in May they would not back the final passage without an ethics provision. During the committee markup, an amendment from Senator Chris Van Hollen to bar the president, vice president and members of Congress from crypto business ties failed 11-13.
The industry expects full circulation of the legislative text this week, according to CoinDesk.
The Senate has fewer than three weeks to finish the bill and clear a floor vote before Majority Leader John Thune’s August 7 deadline, when lawmakers break for their reelection campaigns and enter a narrow stretch to finish the bill.
Galaxy Research puts the odds of passage at 50-50.
This post White House Presses Senate Democrats To Accept Trump Ethics Deal On Clarity Act first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
Bitcoin Magazine
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.
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.”
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 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.
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Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump agree on almost nothing. But they do agree that the public should own a piece of the AI industry.
The Vermont senator and the president disagree on both the structure and stake of public ownership, but the idea is being discussed at the highest levels of government. Even OpenAI and Anthropic back versions of the idea, though Anthropic’s is a tax rather than a stake. Let’s tune in.
The table below summarizes preliminary proposals and shows how far apart they stand, from a voluntary sliver to an outright seizure. After taking a stake in Intel, the president said he wanted “many more cases like it.” Treasury paid $8.9 billion for 9.9% of Intel in August 2025; by the following spring the stake was worth roughly $36 billion, increasing the appetite for such deals. The Pentagon has already taken 15% of a rare-earth miner. This is a pattern, not a one-off.
The argument for these proposals is a public-finance argument, and a strong one. The science under AI grew out of decades of federally funded research. The training data came from the writing, code, and art of millions of people who were never asked and never paid.
Sanders puts the principle plainly: “When a public resource generates wealth, the public should share in that wealth.”
The cleanest versions cost the taxpayer nothing up front, because the equity is contributed rather than bought. That is not the Intel model, which Washington bought for cash; it is the AI version now on the table, where the shares would be donated. If the bubble bursts, the public is out nothing. If it holds, the public owns a slice. A bet with no ante is a rare thing in public finance.
| Source | Stake | Structure |
|---|---|---|
| Bernie Sanders | Roughly 50% government position (reported figures vary) | Federal sovereign wealth fund; government holds voting shares; ~$1,000-per-person dividend |
| Trump administration | Case-by-case equity stakes; 9.9% of Intel (now ~$36B) | Direct federal ownership; framed as a taxpayer “windfall” |
| OpenAI | ~5% of equity (~$42.6B) contributed voluntarily | “Public Wealth Fund” modeled on Alaska’s; returns distributed to citizens |
| Anthropic | No equity | Taxes on AI firms to fund worker support, possibly UBI |
Proposals as of July 2026; talks remain preliminary and any federal version would require an act of Congress.
There’s a real danger, though, in what the government becomes when it owns a piece of the industry it is supposed to regulate. A public stake in AI can be a dividend or a trap, and the whole difference lives in the fine print.
Three things separate the dividend from the trap. The first is the size of the stake. The second is a wall between the government as owner and the government as referee, so the hand that banks the dividend never writes the safety rules. The third is a fence around the money: proceeds earmarked for the workers the technology displaces, not swept into the general fund. None of the three enforces itself.
Here’s a loose historical precedent. In 1998, 46 states settled with the tobacco industry for about $206 billion, paid out over 25 years. The states came to lean on the yearly checks, which quietly made them partners in the survival of the product they were supposed to fight. And the money drifted: today states spend only about three cents of every tobacco dollar on the anti-smoking programs the settlement was meant to fund.
A stake with no end date makes the government a permanent co-owner of the industry it regulates, and permanence is one thing that turned a tobacco settlement into a tobacco dependency. The answer is a fixed end date. The same law that creates the stake should set the year it must end. This is known as a sunset clause.
If Uncle Sam owns a stake, he should collect the dividend through the buildout years, then sell it down on a fixed, published schedule until the position is gone. Ten or 15 years. Economists can pick the number. The deadline should be set in law from the start, so a future Congress cannot quietly extend it.
Temporary co-ownership lets the public bank the upside of the boom without leaving the referee holding shares in the game for good. Sanders and Trump, from opposite ends of the political spectrum, have seized on a real grievance and reached for the permanent version of the remedy, which is the version most likely to curdle. Of course, sunset clauses are not etched in stone either.
Another challenge is that the moment Washington owns pieces of its AI champions, other capitals follow — Beijing, Brussels, the Gulf — each taking a stake in its own, and the claim that American platforms answer to no government gets harder to make. A vendor with the state on its cap table is not a neutral one. No wall and no expiration date solves this problem.
A stake also puts the government in the business of picking winners. Own a piece of OpenAI or Anthropic and Washington acquires a financial interest in their business, and a reason to favor them when it writes the next rule or signs the next contract. The startup is forced to compete against incumbents favored by the feds. And in the fast-moving AI field, the players change rapidly.
AI’s economic challenges are real and the grievance underneath these proposals is legitimate, but government ownership is the wrong remedy. The conflict of interest is real, the precedents are bad, and it’s hard to imagine that a referee with money on the game will be neutral.
Still, the momentum is real, too. Sanders, Trump, and the labs are all pushing versions of the same idea, and one of them may pass. If it does, the temporary version with guardrails beats the permanent one: price it honestly, wall it off, aim the money at the damage, give it a hard end date. None of that is a reason to take the stake. It is only what keeps a bad idea from calcifying into a worse one.
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