Senate vote ended: 49:50.
The bill fell far short of the 60-vote threshold. In theory, with 53 Republican seats, a little bipartisan effort should have passed it.
But throughout the entire vote, the real sticking point wasn’t the technical details of crypto regulation.
The sticking point was one person—Trump.
First, look at some numbers.
In 2025, Trump declared over $1.4 billion in income from crypto businesses.
What does that mean? It’s more than the revenue of any publicly listed crypto company in the U.S. last year.
How did he make it?
Trump Coin: sold about $635 million
World Freedom Financial: took nearly $800 million, including over $520 million from crypto token sales and over $250 million from business equity sales
And this World Freedom Financial is run by his two sons, Donald Jr. and Eric.
The president personally pushes policies, and his two sons personally collect the money.
Then before the vote, the Republicans came up with a "final compromise plan."
Core content: The president must transfer "large" crypto assets into a blind trust and is prohibited from issuing or promoting digital assets while in office.
Trump agreed.
Sounds tough? Look at the exemption clauses and you won’t be laughing.
The restrictions cover the president, vice president, members of Congress—and their spouses.
But not their children.
To translate: Trump has to put his crypto assets in a blind trust. But World Freedom Financial, held by his two sons, doesn’t have to move a muscle—and this company already got a banking license earlier this year.
The bill’s ethics clause restricts the president but not the president’s sons. This is the essence of Washington-style compromise: it looks like something is done, but actually nothing is done.
It’s not just people in the crypto community who are angry.
Warren directly called this ethics clause a "weak fig leaf" before the vote.
She was even harsher—this clause seems to ban the president from issuing coins, but the enforcement switch is controlled by the attorney general appointed by the president himself. State attorneys general have no authority over the president, vice president, members of Congress, or federal judges.
Having the president’s people enforce laws that constrain the president.
This design itself is already dark humor.
Warren added another jab: Trump and his family profit $1.4 billion from crypto in 2025, while buyers of his crypto projects lost tens of billions—meme coin buyers alone lost nearly $4 billion.
Who makes money and who loses—it’s crystal clear.
Even law enforcement isn’t buying it.
The day before the vote, the New York Attorney General led a coalition of 17 states and the District of Columbia attorneys general to jointly send a letter to the Senate, explicitly opposing the CLARITY Act in its current text.
Reason: The bill would weaken states’ enforcement power against crypto fraud, preventing states from continuing to serve as the first line of defense against crypto scams.
The letter cited numbers: crypto-related fraud losses reached $11.4 billion in 2025, a 22% year-over-year increase.
Crypto scammers are harvesting profits, and the bill is about to loosen the reins around their necks.
After the vote failed, the market voted with its feet.
Bitcoin plunged as much as 5.3%, falling below $75,000; Ethereum dropped over 8%, both marking the largest single-day declines since June. Coinbase plummeted 10%, Circle crashed over 11%.
Globally, 115,716 people were liquidated within 24 hours.
The "regulatory clarity" the industry spent years pushing was paused by a single exemption clause.
What’s the most ironic?
Before the vote, Trump said he agreed to the concession because "this will be the strongest arrangement in federal ethics law."
The strongest arrangement—the clause doesn’t cover his sons, enforcement power is in his appointee’s hands, and it expires on January 20, 2029.
Just coincidentally, it ends on the last day of his term.
A person who made $1.4 billion from crypto in 2025 rolled out a "regulatory framework." The core ethics clause of this framework precisely avoids the actual operators of his family’s crypto business.
Then the Senate said: No.
The 49 senators present upheld a basic common sense: you can’t be the referee, the player, and have the goalposts in your own backyard.
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