The real change in the crypto regulatory fight didn’t come from the Senate scheduling a vote on the Clarity Act for Tuesday, September 15. It came when President Trump agreed to a tougher set of ethics rules, which had become the main barrier to moving the bill forward. Trump signed off on about 80% of a bipartisan ethics package, according to Yahoo Finance, citing a senior Republican aide.
The updated draft now requires any official with significant crypto-related financial stakes to either divest those holdings entirely, or put them in a blind trust. That means an officeholder couldn’t manage or even track their crypto portfolio while in office. On top of that, the language gives state attorneys general, not just the federal Justice Department, the authority to enforce those ethics rules. That had become a central point of dispute, especially given worries about limiting their power to pursue online fraud or crypto-tied scams.
The pivotal move wasn’t partisan bluster, it was enforceable ethics language: divestiture, blind trusts, and state-level enforcement. The vote this Tuesday is a cloture vote, just to advance debate, not final passage. Tighter ethics requirements became the price of Senate progress on the Clarity Act. The full regulatory fight is still in play, but that is what changed the terms of the debate.