Three Democratic U.S. senators have publicly opposed the Clarity Act, a digital asset market structure bill. They said pushing the bill without provisions to block crypto profits for President Donald Trump and his family would end up protecting the president’s private interests.

On July 14 local time, blockchain outlet Cryptopolitan reported that Chris Murphy (크리스 머피), Chris Van Hollen (크리스 밴홀런) and Jeff Merkley (제프 머클리) urged fellow lawmakers at a congressional news conference to oppose the bill.

The opposition is significant given the structure of Senate voting. The Clarity Act needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, meaning at least 7 Democratic votes must be added. With the summer recess just weeks away, growing disagreements within the party have also made the legislative timeline uncertain.

A key issue is an ethics provision that would bar senior officials and the president himself from private interests in the crypto market. A new draft was discussed as possibly being released on July 14, but the provision was said to remain unsettled. Democratic senators who had backed the bill in the Senate Banking Committee and negotiators also signaled they would find it difficult to accept a final version that omits the provision.

Van Hollen called the bill a "corrupt bill that will do a lot of harm." Murphy said, "This bill is useless if it cannot stop Trump from corrupting the entire industry." He said the Clarity Act protects Trump’s position in an industry where the president exercises regulatory authority, and said he found it difficult to understand how the bill had advanced this far without provisions separating the Trump family from crypto businesses.

The pushback has been fueled by Trump’s personal financial disclosure. According to the disclosure, crypto added about 1.4 billion dollars to Trump’s wealth in 2025. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (커스틴 질리브랜드), who has participated in work on the bill, said Trump’s largest single source of income last year was a meme coin bearing his name, totaling 636 million dollars. Gillibrand said she tried to introduce rules to make issuing digital assets illegal while in office, and said limits should prevent members of Congress, the president and spouses from using their positions for profit.

Murphy escalated his criticism at the news conference. He claimed, "Trump created the biggest bribery scheme in White House history through crypto tokens, and built the largest corruption structure in this country’s history."

The Democratic position did not fully unify. Moderates who, like Gillibrand, see a need for a regulatory framework are pushing to pass the bill on the condition of amendments. By contrast, Better Markets CEO Dennis Kelleher (데니스 켈러허) criticized forces promoting pro-crypto legislation for pushing the industry’s special-interest agenda. He claimed the goal of such lobbying is to legalize the crypto market under the "weakest possible law." Another point raised was that a significant portion of this year’s election-related corporate spending is coming from the crypto industry.

In the market, passage of the bill is seen as a turning point for capital inflows. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (브라이언 암스트롱) said in a recent earnings call that broad institutional capital would flow in if the bill passes. That is why the industry reacts sensitively to market structure legislation.

Republicans are speeding up the process. Senator Cynthia Lummis (신시아 루미스) said the Senate wants to produce Clarity Act text within days and pass it before the Aug. 7 recess. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (존 튠) was reported to be planning to put it to a vote regardless of the bill’s form. Trump also demanded that Congress pass the bill in a weekend social media post, and White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt (패트릭 위트) called this week an "important week."

As a result, the core of Senate negotiations is shifting from the regulatory framework itself to how far conflict-of-interest safeguards can go. No compromise has yet emerged that satisfies the White House, Republicans and Democrats at the same time.