Sen. Tillis Won’t Back Crypto Bill Without Ethics Provision

Republican US Senator Thom Tillis said he won’t support the Senate’s crypto market structure bill unless it includes ethics provisions limiting how White House officials can use crypto.

“There has to be ethics language in the bill before it leaves the Senate, or I’ll go from one of the people working on negotiating it to voting against it,” Tillis told Politico on Monday.

Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego said that there is “no final bill — there is no final movement — unless there is a bipartisan agreement when it comes to the ethics provision.”

Tillis, who is retiring early next year, is a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, which is key to advancing the Senate bill. The House passed a version of it, called the CLARITY Act, in July.

Thom Tillis, pictured at a meeting in 2024, says he won’t support a crypto bill without an ethics provision. Source: City of Greenville, North Carolina

The bill carves up crypto regulation between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission and has been plagued by delays as lawmakers and lobbyists seek to add provisions on ethics and stablecoin yield payments.

Democratic lawmakers have heavily criticized the Trump family’s expanding crypto businesses and have sought to use the bill to crack down on a perceived conflict of interest.

Related: Canada advances bill to ban crypto political donations

Now, lawmakers are reportedly saying talks on the ethics provisions are moving forward, but it’s not clear what the language will be.

“We’re making progress,” Democratic Senator Adam Schiff told Politico. “We have been talking for a long time without making much progress, and now that other parts of the bill are starting to come together, we’re narrowing our differences.”

Schiff said earlier this year that Democrats want “a ban on sponsoring, endorsing or issuing digital assets that applies to all federal employees,” including the president, who has backed a memecoin and non-fungible tokens bearing his name and likeness.

Magazine: Will the CLARITY Act be good — or bad — for DeFi?

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