Senate Republicans Release Final Clarity Act Text With Ethics Language Trump Accepted

Senators Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott, the bill's lead sponsors, published what they called the final text of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act late on Sunday, and said the draft incorporates 126 substantive changes requested by Democrats. Republicans described the release as their last offer before a cloture vote, the procedural step scheduled for Tuesday.

The provision that changed overnight is the ethics section. Republicans say the new version adopts most of the Tillis-Gallego proposal, including a role for state attorneys general in enforcing conflict-of-interest rules that apply to public officials, and President Donald Trump has signed off on that language. Those rules reach the president's own family digital-asset ventures. That is the reason the ethics fight, not the market-structure substance, has determined the bill's timetable since July.

The arithmetic behind the vote is unchanged by the new draft. Cloture requires 60 votes. Republicans hold 53 seats, so at least seven Democrats must join a full Republican conference for the bill to proceed, and Senate Democrats met on Sunday evening to settle a position. CoinDesk, surveying the same week, described the outcome as genuinely unresolved rather than close to done.

The legislative week does not end with the Senate. House tax writers may take up two crypto tax bills on September 16 covering deferral of mining income, wash-sale treatment, constructive sales and stablecoin transactions. Those provisions decide the after-tax economics of mining, market making and everyday stablecoin payments, and they move independently of the Senate fight.

If cloture fails, United States digital-asset rules stay where they have been for three years, set by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) discretion and by court rulings rather than by statute. That is a durable difference for firms choosing where to domicile.