Trump Accepts 80% of CLARITY Act Ethics Terms in Boost for Bitcoin (BTC)

Trump Backs 80% of Ethics Draft

President Donald Trump has broadly accepted the conflict-of-interest provisions attached to the CLARITY Act, the sweeping United States crypto market-structure bill. Republican senators disclosed on September 13 that the president agreed to roughly 80% of the bipartisan ethics framework put forward by Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, with a senior Republican aide confirming the figure ahead of a Senate procedural vote scheduled for September 15. The concession addresses the bill's central sticking point: Trump both shapes digital-asset exchange policy and holds personal crypto business interests. Senate Republicans had released a revised draft on September 10, but the conflict rules were left largely unchanged, and Democratic support remained in doubt.

Divestiture or Blind Trust

Under the amended text, officials holding a significant financial stake in a digital-asset issuer would be required to divest those holdings or transfer them into a blind trust — an arrangement in which an independent manager controls the assets and the official never sees the specific positions. The original ethics clause was narrower: it barred federal elected officials, their spouses and federal judges from issuing digital assets, a level several Democrats and Tillis judged insufficient given the scale of the president's crypto ventures. White House digital assets adviser Patrick Witt had said earlier that the administration and Senate Republicans had engaged with Democratic policy goals across more than a year of negotiations, and that the moment had arrived to pass a bipartisan bill.

State Attorneys General Gain Standing

Trump also signed off on a provision expanding enforcement beyond the Department of Justice: state attorneys general would be empowered to sue an exchange that lists a digital asset whose issuance or trading the bill prohibits. The White House had initially resisted granting states that authority, arguing that attorneys general of the opposing party could target a president — or be targeted in retaliation — for political ends. Accepting the clause removes one of the last substantive objections Democrats raised, though the administration has not detailed how state-level enforcement would coordinate with federal regulators.

The Trump Family Crypto Footprint

The ethics fight stems directly from the president's own crypto footprint. Trump's official memecoin continues to trade, and he and his family are involved in World Liberty Financial, a digital-asset venture tied to the Trump brand. That positioning places the official who ultimately signs or vetoes market-structure rules in a position to profit from the very industry those rules govern — a dynamic critics long flagged, and one that, given the sums at stake, was never mere FUD. The conflict-of-interest provisions were designed specifically to prevent policy judgments from being swayed by personal or family financial interests.

Senate Timeline Since May

The bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee on May 14, with several Democratic lawmakers backing it, but party leadership conditioned further support on stronger conflict-of-interest rules for senior government officials. Senate Republicans published a revised version on September 10 that reworked the treatment of decentralized finance activity while leaving the ethics provisions largely intact — a gap Democrats refused to accept. The president huddled with advisers on September 11 to settle his response, and the concession disclosed two days later emerged from that review.

September 15 Vote Threshold

Passage now hinges on a procedural vote in the Senate on September 15. Advancing the bill to full debate requires 60 votes, a threshold Republicans cannot reach alone, so Democratic backing remains the deciding variable. Whether the strengthened ethics regime wins over enough holdout Democrats — and whether the full chamber then passes the market-structure framework dividing oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — will determine whether the United States finally enacts a comprehensive crypto statute this session. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

Proposal, Not Law — Yet

COINOTAG's reading of the legislative record: nothing here binds anyone yet. The version the Senate Banking Committee adopted on May 14 remains a proposal; the ethics amendment is language attached to a bill awaiting a cloture vote, and it takes legal effect only if the full Senate, the House and the president enact it. If enacted, it would bind federal officeholders, their spouses and federal judges, and hand state attorneys general standing against exchanges listing barred assets. For Bitcoin (BTC) and the wider market, pairing jurisdictional clarity with enforceable ethics guardrails clears what had been the framework's final procedural obstacle — the 80% acceptance signals both parties see a path to 60 votes.