The CLARITY Act Has 2 Obstacles Left — And Both Come Back To Trump

With each day that passes, the window for passing the CLARITY Act this year gets smaller. Congress returns next week, the August deadline is less than a month away, and the two provisions that have dominated negotiations over the crypto market structure bill remain unresolved.

BRCA Talks Are Moving 

Eleanor Terrett of Crypto in America reported Thursday that while discussions have continued between Trump administration officials and law enforcement groups over the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), meaningful progress on the bigger obstacle — ethics — is harder to find.

The BRCA, which shields non-custodial software developers from being classified as money transmitters under federal law, has been the most actively negotiated provision this week. 

Sources close to the talks told Terrett that conversations between the White House and law enforcement groups have continued, and at least one Democrat has now stepped in publicly on the side of keeping it in the CLARITY Act. 

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon sent a letter to Senate leaders this week urging them to preserve the BRCA as passed by the Senate Banking Committee in any version of the bill that reaches the floor. 

The BRCA dispute, however, is not the primary obstacle holding the CLARITY Act from reaching a full Senate vote. Ethics remains the central sticking point, with multiple industry participants telling Terrett the same thing — get ethics resolved and the rest of the bill falls into place. 

The Clock Is Still Running For The CLARITY Act

The report further noted that what makes the ethics dispute harder to resolve now than it was a month ago is what happened in between. A compromise proposal that had been taking shape fell apart after Senate Republicans and White House officials pulled back from language that would have allowed state attorneys general to sue the Justice Department for failing to enforce conflict of interest laws. 

Trump’s financial disclosure has added another layer of difficulty to an already complicated negotiation. The document revealed more than $1 billion in crypto-related income last year — tied to the TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty Financial (WLFI)— giving Democratic senators demanding ethics language specific figures to point to rather than a theoretical concern.

The Senate returns from recess on July 13. After that, analysts have consistently identified a three-week window before the August recess as the last realistic stretch for the CLARITY Act to reach a floor vote this year. 

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