White House Hasn't Signed Off on Ethics Rule, Stalling CLARITY Act

The CLARITY Act is stuck, and the holdup sits at the White House. The administration still hasn't signed off on an ethics provision, the single biggest obstacle between the crypto market structure bill and a Senate floor vote before the August recess. Prediction market Polymarket now puts the odds of President Trump signing it into law this year at 31%, a new low for the bill.

The ethics holdup

The provision exists to curb Trump's own involvement in crypto. His latest financial disclosure showed he earned up to $1.4 billion in crypto income last year, and Democrats want ethics guardrails written into the bill before it moves an inch further. According to a Crypto In America report, the White House has not made clear which ethical parameters it would actually support. That silence is the bottleneck. Without a signal from the administration, there is no updated bill text to vote on, and every day of delay eats into a schedule that was already tight.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has asked for the president's updated financial disclosure, which she called vital to the ethics deliberations. Democrats also say they are being frozen out of the process. Republicans have largely left them out of recent negotiations over the provision, including last week's meeting between Trump and Republican senators, even as they insist the bill needs bipartisan support to pass.

The DeFi fight

The other sticking point is the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, folded into the same package. It shields developers of decentralized platforms from liability for what users do on them, and it draws a line saying those developers are not money transmitters. Law enforcement groups argue that would make cracking down on illicit finance harder. Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger expects the provision to survive in the Senate's updated text, and she predicted a floor vote could come as soon as this week.

Racing the recess

Senate Majority Leader Thune has said he wants a floor vote before August, but acknowledged there is no bipartisan agreement yet. The window is closing. The Senate breaks for recess in a matter of weeks, and the updated text that everything hinges on still hasn't appeared. Mersinger is betting on a vote within days. Polymarket is betting against the whole thing. Those two numbers can't both be right for long.