DOJ Pressured Trump Over Ulbricht Clemency, 60 CEOs Defend Clarity Act, FCA Eyes 10% Crypto ETN Cap

Crypto News

Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb has claimed that the Department of Justice warned President Donald Trump it would "go after" him if he commuted the sentence of Ross Ulbricht in the closing hours of his first term in January 2021. According to Loeb, Trump withdrew the planned commutation after the threat, leaving the founder of the Bitcoin-powered Silk Road marketplace to serve four additional years before receiving a full pardon in January 2025. The account, shared on a widely circulated podcast, remains uncorroborated, names no specific official, and rests on Loeb's personal recollection of the advocacy effort surrounding Ulbricht's clemency.

More than 60 of the most prominent chief executives and founders in the digital asset sector sent a joint letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on June 9, urging passage of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act with its developer protections intact. Signatories from Coinbase, a16z crypto, Uniswap, Solana Labs, Kraken, Paradigm, Galaxy and Ledger framed Section 604 — the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act — as a non-negotiable condition of their support. The provision shields non-controlling software developers from Bank Secrecy Act obligations, and the executives argued that without it the broader bill cannot deliver the legal certainty required to sustain blockchain innovation in the United States.

In the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority proposed allowing certain retail investment funds to hold up to 10% of their assets in cryptocurrency exchange-traded notes. The regulator's latest quarterly consultation paper extends the option to UCITS schemes and some non-UCITS retail schemes, structures comparable to U.S. mutual funds that pool retail capital into managed portfolios. The FCA said the 10% ceiling would mitigate the risk of significant impacts arising from crypto ETN exposure. The move follows the regulator's October 2025 decision to lift a retail ban that had stood since 2021, marking a further step toward mainstream acceptance of regulated crypto products.

The Clarity Act, formally H.R. 3633, has been years in the making. It cleared the House in July 2025 on a bipartisan 294-134 vote before stalling twice in the Senate, most visibly in January 2026 when the Banking Committee postponed a markup after Coinbase withdrew support over a proposed ban on stablecoin rewards. The committee ultimately advanced the bill on May 14 by a 15-9 margin, with Democrats Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks crossing the aisle. Independent research now places the odds of enactment in 2026 at roughly 60-75%, with a potential presidential signature as early as August, though architects of the bill have cautioned against premature celebration.

Investment vehicles that grant exposure to crypto without requiring users to custody assets directly have driven institutional adoption for several years, and the FCA proposal signals that the U.K. is steadily dismantling earlier barriers. Critics had warned that prolonged restrictions risked leaving the country at a competitive disadvantage relative to peers that already host spot products and listed notes. By opening regulated open-ended funds to measured DeFi-adjacent and digital-asset exposure, the regulator is aligning British retail access more closely with frameworks emerging across the European Union and North America, where exchange-traded crypto products have become a primary on-ramp for traditional capital.

The Ulbricht episode underscores how politically charged crypto's early history remains. Sentenced in 2015 to double life plus 40 years on charges including operating a continuing criminal enterprise, narcotics distribution and money laundering, Ulbricht was never prosecuted on murder-for-hire counts despite widespread public insinuation. Silk Road, which relied almost entirely on consensus-mechanism-secured Bitcoin payments, became an enduring symbol in libertarian and crypto circles. His eventual pardon transformed him into a cause célèbre, and Loeb's claim — if accurate — suggests the case generated friction at the highest levels of the federal justice apparatus.

Taken together, these developments point to a single dominant narrative this cycle: the formalization of crypto within mainstream legal and financial systems. Washington is moving toward statutory clarity that would codify developer rights, London is loosening retail access through regulated fund structures, and the Ulbricht saga marks a symbolic reconciliation between the industry's origins and state power. The throughline is institutional normalization — regulators and lawmakers increasingly treat digital assets not as fringe instruments to suppress but as a sector to define, bound and integrate. How developer protections and retail safeguards are ultimately balanced will shape whether that integration accelerates or stalls.