NV senators voted against it, but Trump’s flagrant self-enrichment is what killed the crypto bill

Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen joined the rest of their Democratic Senate colleagues Tuesday, along with a handful of Republicans, in killing a cryptocurrency bill the industry really, really wanted.

The industry believed that if the Clarity Act, which the House passed last year, was enacted into law, the legislation would bestow upon cryptocurrency something it is not widely identified with — intrinsic value and purpose; the product would be legitimized, its “use cases” stamped for approval by none other than the United States government. 

That, so the industry’s thinking went, would allow crypto to creep into all sorts of corners of the U.S. financial system — including your moderate-risk plain-vanilla indexed retirement fund. Whether you like it or not.

Or as the folks at the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) put it Tuesday following the Senate’s rejection of the bill: “This is a major victory for retirees and all working people who want to retire with dignity. The so-called CLARITY Act would have allowed Wall Street to gamble with workers’ pensions and 401(k)s by making it easier to invest their retirement savings in cryptocurrency. Working people do not want to see their hard-earned money put into an unregulated, unpredictable crypto casino.”