The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. Senator Cynthia Lummis’s office said the Sept. 10 draft incorporates more than 114 bipartisan amendments. The Senate measure combines earlier Banking and Agriculture Committee work and follows the House’s July 2025 passage of a version that would divide digital-asset oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to Lummis’s office and Sumsub.
The reported ethics terms
The latest public account of the negotiations comes from WBAL and WISN, which attributed it to a senior Republican aide who briefed reporters anonymously. The aide said President Trump had accepted about 80% of an ethics proposal developed by Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, and Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona. The report said the proposed language would require officials to divest a significant financial interest in a cryptocurrency issuer or place it in a blind trust.
The same report said Trump accepted language allowing a state attorney general to sue a cryptocurrency exchange that lists a digital asset barred under the bill. The White House had opposed giving state attorneys general an enforcement role, the report said, citing concerns that officials of either party could use the authority against political opponents. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to WBAL and WISN. These reported terms should be distinguished from provisions independently confirmed in the released Senate text.
Why the restrictions became a condition of support
An earlier draft barred federally elected officials and their spouses, along with federal judges, from issuing digital assets. Democrats and Tillis argued that the language did not adequately address conflicts involving Trump’s crypto holdings. Tillis warned in April that he could oppose the bill without binding ethics rules covering White House officials, according to Invezz.
Federal law leaves a separate gap at the presidential level. Under 18 U.S.C. § 208, executive-branch employees can face criminal penalties for participating in matters affecting their personal finances, but the statute exempts the president and vice president. The Stock Act of 2012 contains disclosure rules.
The financial stakes
Trump’s annual financial disclosure, released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics on June 30, reported more than $1.2 billion in 2025 revenue from cryptocurrency businesses, according to the Associated Press. The filing does not establish how much of that amount was profit. World Liberty Financial materials were also cited in the reporting.
Remaining obstacles
The ethics negotiations are not the bill’s only hurdle. Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul were identified as expected opponents on substantive grounds, leaving Republican leaders short of the 60 votes needed for cloture without Democratic support, according to Sumsub. The unresolved issues include the portion of the ethics proposal Trump reportedly did not accept, the reach of state attorney-general enforcement and rules governing stablecoin yield.
The supplied materials do not establish the final wording of the ethics provisions or independently verify the anonymous aide’s account. As a result, the reported 80% agreement and the proposed enforcement and financial-interest requirements remain negotiation claims rather than confirmed descriptions of the enacted law.
