Andrew Cuomo (앤드루 쿠오모), a former New York governor, urged the U.S. Congress to speed up passage of the Clarity bill, a cryptocurrency regulation measure.

On Aug. 6, local time, blockchain media outlet Bitcoin Magazine reported that Cuomo said U.S. regulatory work is being delayed as the two parties face off over ethics provisions for public officials.

Cuomo also serves as a director of cryptocurrency exchange OKX. In a CNBC interview about the Clarity bill, he said, "We need clarity." He added, "Tell me what the rules are and where the lines are. I want to compete fairly, but first there have to be standards." He argued the core of the bill is to set regulatory standards across the industry.

The Clarity bill includes provisions to codify the U.S. cryptocurrency regulatory framework into law. In Congress, some have said the bill should be processed before the August recess, but issues remain. The bill passed the House last year but did not reach final enactment.

The biggest obstacle now is the ethics provision. Cuomo said Democrats and Republicans are mainly clashing on that point. He mentioned that Democrats are trying to keep raising the issue of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency profits during the election season, repeatedly putting the ethics issue in the spotlight.

A new draft circulated recently includes a ban on public officials promoting cryptocurrency or earning profits through it. Some Democratic lawmakers have raised the possibility of a conflict of interest over claims that President Trump’s family earned profits through a memecoin and the DeFi protocol World Liberty Financial (WLFI). The White House, however, has maintained that there was no conflict of interest.

The bill’s language is also being revised. A new bipartisan wording is known to add changes to the ethics provision, and the White House is reviewing it this week. That has increased the likelihood that whether the bill can be processed before the recess will depend on how much the ethics provision is adjusted.

Cuomo also voiced concern that the ethics dispute is turning into a political issue alone. He said, "If you want to talk about conflicts of interest, Democrats who buy stocks while having inside information should be careful, too." The comment is read as pointing to the risk that momentum to pass the bill could weaken if the debate appears to target only one side.

Cuomo argued that regulatory delays are also weighing on the competitiveness of the U.S. market. He said, "The world is surpassing the United States again," stressing that OKX is rapidly expanding its business in Europe and that the backdrop is regulatory passage and technological progress. He added, "If you pass regulation and allow innovation to develop, the market grows quickly," and said that is happening around the world but not in the United States because the Clarity bill is being blocked.

In this situation, debate over the Clarity bill is spreading beyond a simple effort to refine industry regulation, becoming an issue where political ethics standards in the United States intersect with the direction of fostering the cryptocurrency industry. Whether Congress can craft a compromise before the August recess, and what decision the White House makes on the revised ethics provision, are the next points to watch.