President Donald Trump’s financial disclosure came at a bad time for the crypto industry—depending on who you ask. Last week, documents revealed that crypto business entities associated with Trump and his family raked in
$1.4 billion in income in 2025, pushing Democrats in Congress to respond with alarm. In a post on social media, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
alleged that the commander-in-chief was “blatantly profiteering off the presidency.”
(“Neither the president nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, told
Fortune.)
Schiff and his colleagues, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), weren’t railing against Trump purely because they saw an opportunity to take political shots. (That, of course, was likely one motivation.) They were also using the moment to highlight an ongoing demand as the Senate hashes out the CLARITY Act, a key piece of legislation that would regulate digital assets.
CLARITY is arguably even more important to the industry than
GENIUS, the bill signed into law in 2025 that established a regulatory framework for stablecoins, or tokens pegged to real-world assets like the U.S. dollar. CLARITY’s remit is broader, defining when, for example, regulators should consider a cryptocurrency a security and when they should consider a token a commodity.
The House of Representatives passed a version of the bill in 2025, and CLARITY has now passed
markup in two key Senate bodies: the Agriculture and Banking committees. But, as proponents of the bill try to whip up the 60 bipartisan votes needed to pass the legislation, Democrats are pushing for an ethics provision that would prevent the president, his family, and his associates from profiting off of crypto businesses.
That’s been a repeated stumbling block throughout the negotiations, and Trump’s recent financial disclosure gives Senate Democrats more ammunition to harp on a clause forbidding the president from participating in the industry.
“I think [the disclosure] can have an effect in the sense that it emphasizes the Democrats’ argument for the need for there to be an ethics deal,” said one source close to crypto policy discussions on Capitol Hill, who asked for anonymity to speak frankly.
But that same source said that talks are ongoing between staffers and the bill is inching forward, even as Congress is currently in recess. Another source close to discussions on the Hill told me that “nothing suggests the president’s financial disclosures have affected or changed the discussions,” adding that ethics provisions were always going to be addressed near the end of negotiations.
Still, as the midterms approach, and the GOP’s stranglehold on Congress appears fragile, the desire for a bill remains. “The remaining three weeks in July,” said the second source, “are critical.”
Ben Weiss benjamin.weiss@fortune.com
@bdanweiss
