Crypto bill collapses on Senate floor

Por Jasper Goodman — POLITICO – TOP Stories

The Senate on Tuesday rejected a sweeping cryptocurrency bill amid opposition from Democrats and a handful of Republicans, punctuating a remarkable collapse for the measure following months of acrimonious bipartisan negotiations.

Senators voted 49-50 to reject the so-called Clarity Act, delivering a stinging defeat to the crypto industry. Democrats objected that the bill did not go far enough to address concerns about President Donald Trump’s potential conflicts of interest in the digital assets sector and some Republicans were swayed by concerns from the banking industry.

Every Democrat voted against the measure, starving it of the bipartisan support it needed to advance past a first procedural hurdle on the floor. A group of about a dozen Senate Democrats spent months negotiating the bill, but none voted for it Tuesday as they objected that it contained insufficient government ethics restrictions and consumer protections.

Democrats said new text unveiled by Republicans over the weekend didn’t do enough to crack down on Trump’s ability to profit from his family’s crypto businesses, which have been an obstacle to legislating in the crypto space since he returned to office last year. Trump earned more than $1.4 billion in income through several crypto ventures in 2025. Democrats were also pushing for policy changes to a pair of other sections of the measure, in part to address concerns raised by prosecutors about their authority to go after illicit finance.

Three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Jerry Moran of Kansas — also voted against the measure. Several GOP senators who voted in favor of advancing it on Tuesday said they would be opposed to ultimately passing it without changes to address concerns raised by the banking industry. (A fourth GOP Senator, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, switched his vote to “no” and entered a motion to reconsider — a procedural move to allow Republicans to bring it back up on the floor.)

Democrats sent a counteroffer to Republicans late Monday night laying out changes they wanted in the bill after the GOP rolled out new text the day before. But the two sides remained at odds over their outstanding issues entering the vote, and Democrats rejected calls from Republicans to advance the bill and continue negotiating on the floor.

The bill would rewrite an array of Wall Street regulations to accommodate crypto trading, divvying up oversight of digital assets between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Leading crypto companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get Congress to enact such a bill, believing it would lock in legal certainty for their businesses and help legitimize digital assets as regulated, mainstream financial products.

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories