Senate Republicans sweeten crypto bill with new Trump-backed ethics rules ahead of crunch vote

US Senate Republicans released a revised draft of the sweeping Clarity Act cryptocurrency legislation on Monday, adding new ethics language that President Donald Trump has signed off on, according to a statement from the senators reported by Reuters.

The updated text arrives a day before a critical procedural vote that will decide whether the bill advances in the Senate.

What changed in the new draft?


The final text of the Clarity Act now includes ethics language reflecting conflict-of-interest rules put forward by Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, according to a statement from Senators Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott cited by Reuters.

Lummis, the bill's lead author, said Trump had voluntarily agreed to unprecedented ethics restrictions, calling them among the toughest such rules ever applied to a sitting president, federally elected officials, judges and their spouses.

Separately, the White House said in a statement that the administration had already agreed to what it called the most comprehensive and wide-ranging ethics provision in history.

Why has the ethics language been so contentious?

Reuters reported that Democrats and some Republicans had previously warned the bill lacked sufficient safeguards and risked destabilising the banking system.

Ethics negotiations between Tillis and Gallego stretched over several months this year, with Gallego warning in August that rushing the bill to a vote before a deal was finalised could derail the process altogether.

The sticking point traced back to concerns over Trump's expanding crypto-related business interests, including a memecoin launched before his inauguration and his family's involvement in the venture World Liberty Financial.

Senate Banking Committee Democrats have separately estimated Trump earned more than $1.4 billion from crypto-related ventures in 2025, a figure Republicans have not confirmed, which they cited as the reason for pushing tougher safeguards.

What does the new draft actually include?

The revised text gives consumers new guardrails on affiliate trading, clarifies how state consumer protection laws apply and adds protections for software developers, the Republican senators said, according to Reuters.

It also incorporates a key Democratic demand allowing state attorneys general to enforce ethics requirements on federal officials, addressing one of the main gaps Democrats had flagged in earlier drafts.

What happens next?

The Senate has scheduled a procedural cloture vote on Tuesday on the motion to proceed to the bill, formally known as H.R. 3633, which will require 60 votes to advance, Reuters reported.

The crypto industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars campaigning for the Clarity Act, arguing it would give crypto companies a clear legal footing to operate in the United States, while both the crypto industry and the banking sector have mounted a final lobbying push in senators' home states ahead of the vote.

Banking industry groups have separately said the bill's restrictions on stablecoin interest and yield payments need to be strengthened further to protect community bank deposits and local lending, an issue the updated draft does not appear to fully resolve.