Senator Cynthia Lummis took to the Senate floor to defend the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, telling colleagues she plans to keep speaking on the bill through the following day. She called it good for the country, good for consumers and good for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The Wyoming Republican said she is struggling to understand what more Democrats could want after 11 months of negotiations that gave the other side nearly everything requested.
A Bipartisan Project From The Start
Lummis traced the bill’s roots back to her 2020 election, when Wyoming’s state legislature was already building a legal framework for digital asset companies years ahead of Washington. She wanted to keep those companies in Wyoming, and in America.
Her partner on the project has been Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Lummis called Gillibrand a genuine friend despite years of raised eyebrows over a Wyoming Republican and a New York Democrat working closely together.
The two introduced the Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act in June 2022, a 68-page bill that split oversight between the SEC and CFTC and regulated stablecoins. A 2023 version grew to 274 pages, adding crackdowns on mixers, tumblers and crypto ATMs along with plain language customer agreements.
Today’s bill runs 616 pages. It cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May on a 15-9 bipartisan vote. Lummis said she rejected repeated suggestions to push the bill through on Republican votes alone, arguing that only a jointly built bill can survive future elections and administrations.
Industry And Law Enforcement Both On Board
Lummis pointed to support from across the digital asset industry alongside major financial firms including Goldman Sachs and Fidelity. The National Fraternal Order of Police endorsed the bill last Friday, reversing months of concern that the legislation would restrict crypto crime investigations.
Dozens Of Democrat Priorities In The Text
Lummis walked through the concessions built into the bill at Democrats’ request. Title One alone contains 33 Democrat driven edits, including tighter core definitions to prevent companies from structuring around federal securities laws and a mandatory SEC front door certification process.
Other changes include new SEC anti-evasion authority, a cut to the annual fundraising cap from $75 million to $50 million with a $200 million lifetime limit, a ban on felons convicted of fraud or money laundering using the framework, and a tightened insider resale threshold moving from 5% down to 3% ownership.
Three entirely new titles were added at Democrats’ request, contributing 23 sections aimed at illicit finance. These cover standards for determining when a decentralized finance platform is genuinely decentralized, sanctions compliance requirements for DeFi platforms, and new authority to target platforms that facilitate money laundering tied to Russia, Iran and North Korea.
The bill also adds $150 million in new FinCEN funding, mandatory Treasury and GAO studies on mixers and financial stability risk, federal protections for digital asset ATMs and a joint SEC-CFTC financial literacy mandate.
On the agriculture and CFTC side, Lummis counted more than 30 additional Democrat wins, including a private right of action for consumer protection violations, memecoins brought under CFTC jurisdiction, stronger conflict of interest rules than the House-passed version, and $150 million in new CFTC appropriations.
Trump’s Ethics Concessions
Lummis said the biggest concessions came on ethics. When Democrats raised concerns, she took them directly to President Trump, who she said voluntarily agreed to the strongest ethics provisions in US history.
The provisions include a first of its kind ban on the president, vice president, every member of Congress, federal judges and their spouses issuing or sponsoring a digital asset for consideration. Trump agreed to place his existing digital assets into a blind trust or divest from them entirely.
The attorney general is directed to bring civil enforcement actions against any covered individual who knowingly violates the ban. Exchanges face civil penalties up to $250,000 per violation per day, and violating officials must give up all profits plus a penalty of up to 10% of what they received or $500,000, whichever is greater.
“Not Yet Isn’t Cautious Anymore”
Lummis said she and Senator Bernie Moreno were surprised the president accepted terms this strict, yet Democrats still say the bill isn’t ready. She compared the situation to the children’s book where giving a mouse a cookie leads to a demand for milk too.
She asked her Democratic colleagues directly what specific provision remains missing, requesting a section number rather than a general objection. Lummis said continued delay without a specific ask amounts to a deliberate decision to run out the clock and kill the bill rather than record a no vote.
