Senate Blocks Trump-Backed Crypto Bill, 49-50, Over Ethics Concerns From Both Parties

The Senate's yearlong push to write the first comprehensive federal rulebook for cryptocurrency collapsed Tuesday, September 15, when the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act fell 11 votes short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster. The final tally was 49-50, according to the Washington Sun.

The bill had already cleared the House more than a year ago and passed the Senate Banking Committee in May. It stalled from there, and Tuesday's vote was the last realistic shot before Congress's calendar fills up ahead of the midterms.

Who voted how, and why

Democrats were mostly united against the bill. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, told reporters ahead of the vote she couldn't back legislation that "supercharges Donald Trump feeding at the trough to make himself and his family richer while he regulates the industry."

Warren laid out specific objections in floor remarks. The bill's ethics language would leave enforcement to officials aligned with Trump, block state attorneys general from acting directly against a sitting president, and permit a nominal blind trust structure that wouldn't actually remove a president's knowledge of his own underlying crypto assets. She also argued the bill would make it easier for sanctioned states like Iran and North Korea and for drug cartels to move money through crypto, and could let non-crypto firms shift assets onto blockchain networks to dodge existing securities rules, according to Traders Union's account of her remarks.

Three Republicans crossed over to help kill it: Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Jerry Moran of Kansas. Their objections were separate from the Democrats' ethics complaints and were not detailed in available reporting, according to Fox News.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina switched his vote to "nay" at the last moment for procedural reasons that would let Republicans bring the bill back to the floor later, according to the Washington Sun and Epoch Times. Sens. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Ruben Gallego of Arizona both voted to advance the bill out of committee in May but voted no Tuesday, citing the absence of a strong enough divestment requirement. Alsobrooks told the outlet just before the vote, "Literally I don't know how I'm going to vote yet. It's divestment."

The money at stake

Trump's reported income jumped from roughly $620 million in 2024 to about $2.2 billion in 2025, an increase of about 250%, according to the president's financial disclosure forms reviewed by Fox News Digital. Much of that growth is tied to crypto ventures run by his sons Don Jr. and Eric.

The family also holds a controlling stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto platform and stablecoin issuer co-founded with Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff, which is expected to receive a federal banking charter soon. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump also launched meme coins before his second term began, according to Breitbart.

Gallego had been working with Tillis on a proposal that would have required Trump to place his crypto holdings in a genuine blind trust and divest once they hit a certain value. Gallego told Fox News Digital negotiations were "getting very, very close" before a staffer from Sen. Tim Scott's office "came in and just said, negotiations are over."

The other side of the argument

Republicans backing the bill say Democrats walked away from a deal that gave them real concessions. Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, the bill's chief architect, said Democrats secured more than 100 separate requests and wrote roughly half of the bill's 630 pages. The revised text released the Sunday before the vote added a provision letting state attorneys general enforce ethics requirements on federal officials, which Lummis said Trump endorsed.

Lummis argued on the floor that voting the bill down was "a vote against the consumer protections American families are counting on" and "a vote to hand the future of financial innovation to a foreign competitor," according to the Epoch Times. Senate Majority Leader John Thune made a similar case, saying the bill would provide "clear rules of the road while encouraging innovation to happen right here in America."

After the vote, Lummis signaled the effort is finished. "I think we're done. It's over," she said, adding when asked if the bill would return to the floor, "Nope," according to Fox News.

What's unresolved

Tillis's procedural vote switch technically preserves a path to revive the bill, but no new negotiations have been scheduled. Whether Congress takes up crypto regulation again before the midterms, and whether any future version includes the blind-trust divestment language Gallego and Tillis were pushing, remains unanswered. The $2.3 trillion crypto market, as characterized by the Associated Press, continues operating without the federal framework the industry has lobbied for.