On Crypto, Congress Has a Moment of Clarity

By Virginia Canter and Christopher Swartz

The president’s marquee cryptocurrency legislation, the so-called CLARITY Act, failed 50-49 to advance past a key procedural vote last Tuesday. The key sticking point? The president’s refusal to separate his personal financial interests from his responsibility to the American public.

For more than a year, we and other ethics experts have warned that the president’s immense financial stake in the cryptocurrency industry makes it impossible to trust that this White House-endorsed crypto legislation is aimed at protecting the public interest. As reported on his recent financial disclosure report, Trump made over $1.4 billion from crypto alone last year. The simple solution to this conflict of interest would be for the president to divest his cryptocurrency holdings; when the House voted on this bill in July last year it could have required that. It did not. Instead, the House passed the CLARITY Act without any ethics safeguards at all.

Senate leaders could have easily fixed that omission. They did not. Instead, the White House and Senate Republicans pushed off discussion of ethics provisions for months, returning in July of this year with a version of the law that added ethics provisions that were more permission than restriction.