Senator Lummis Presses CLARITY Act Holdouts To Name Remaining Objections: 'Tell Me The Section Number'

Senator Lummis said lawmakers added more than 100 Democratic-backed changes over 11 months of negotiations, swelling the proposal from 168 pages to 616 pages.

• Senator Cynthia Lummis pushed back on Democratic holdouts on the CLARITY Act 
• Lummis pointed to new ethics provisions, including a prohibition on the president, vice president and members of Congress issuing or sponsoring digital assets, with penalties for violators.
• The National Fraternal Order of Police has also endorsed the bill, which Lummis said showed that concerns about crypto crime, illicit finance and anti-money laundering safeguards are sufficiently addressed.

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) aimed Democratic holdouts on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, also known as the CLARITY Act, in a Senate floor speech on Thursday. Addressing her colleagues, Lummis asked them to point to “the section” that the Democrats are against, leading to the holdup. 

After 11 months of negotiations, Lummis said the bill already included more than 100 Democratic wins, including 33 separate edits to Title One, three brand new titles, 23 additional sections aimed at illicit finance, and more than 30 changes to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) provisions in the bill.

She traced the bill's roots to the 2022 Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act, a 168-page framework she co-authored with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), which has since ballooned to 616 pages through what she described as good-faith, bipartisan negotiation in closed-door sessions.

Ethics Concessions And Growing Support

On Thursday, she said that the concessions also included ethics, she said, noting President Trump’s agreement to a “first-of-its-kind ban on any covered individual,” including the president, vice president and members of Congress, from issuing or sponsoring a digital asset, along with civil penalties and disgorgement requirements for violations.

"If you give a mouse a cookie... he will ask for a glass of milk too, but we've now given our Democrat friends the entire cooking factory and a tanker load of milk," Lummis said, arguing that continuing to withhold support isn't caution but "a deliberate decision to run out the clock."

Building Momentum

Lummis’s appeal followed other signs of momentum for the bill. The National Fraternal Order of Police endorsed the legislation after months of raising concerns it would hamper law enforcement’s ability to investigate crypto crime, and Lummis pointed to that as evidence that the bill’s illicit-finance and anti-money-laundering provisions had addressed critics’ concerns in good faith.

The CLARITY Act would provide Circle (CRCL) with regulatory certainty to issue stablecoins, boosting institutional confidence in USDC and its edge over less-regulated issuers such as Tether (USDT). A clearer line between commodities and securities would benefit Coinbase (COIN) by reducing the risk of litigation.

Retail Sentiment: COIN And CRCL

COIN stock was down over 10% on Friday. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around COIN remained in the ‘bullish’ zone. In comparison, CRCL’s stock closed over 2% on Friday. Retail sentiment around CRCL remained in the ‘bearish’ zone on the platform. 

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