THE CLARITY ACT IS IN TROUBLE! DEMOCRATS REJECT NEW CRYPTO BILL & ELIZABETH WARREN FIGHTS ETHICS!

Tony Edward (0:05)

Hey folks, welcome into The Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. I'm your host Tony Edward. On your way in, please hit that subscribe button, as well as the thumbs up button, and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform, such as Spotify or Apple, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star rating. Well folks, the Clarity Act is in a heated battle right now. Republicans vs. Democrats vs. the banks and much more. It's a lot. So please bear with me as I go through all the moving parts and components, because tomorrow is the big day. The vote is scheduled in the Senate for 2:15 p.m. Eastern. I will of course bring you guys the latest details and coverage.

Right now, we are still seeing a lot of back and forth. So last night, the Senate Republicans released a new draft of the Clarity Act, and it reflected 126 changes that were requested by the Democrats. So the Republicans really came to the table here, saying, hey, we've made the updates. It also included the new ethics language, which Senator Thillis and Gallego worked on, and they sent to the White House for Trump to approve. Now, one GOP official had said, it's about 80% of what they sent over that Trump agreed to. But the fact that he agreed to that much is really great. And remember, there's no perfect bill and we have to find compromise, but he was definitely ready to play ball here, and the Democrats are still pushing back on it to give you the TLDR, which we're going to break down a little bit later.

It also included a circuit breaker for stablecoin yield, where if there is substantial deposit flight from community banks, the Treasury would step in. And remember, the banks already got a compromise in the Senate Banking Committee, but this is in addition to that. So the banks are also pushing back. So you got a lot of posturing here, a lot of, oh, I want everything, right? But it's not possible to get everything. It's kind of ridiculous what the Democrats and the banks are doing.

Eleanor Turrett gave a full breakdown of some of these things. So let me read through it. So on ethics, Trump has agreed to what a GOP aid described as 80% of the Tillis-Gaiego ethics proposal, including to either divest substantial crypto-related financial interests or place them in a blind trust. It would also allow a role for state attorney generals to enforce ethics provisions, something to which the White House had previously balked at. So again, the White House came with a lot here. Trump agreed to a lot. Now on stablecoin yield, as mentioned, a circuit breaker language was introduced that would effectively act as a backstop by allowing federal regulators to intervene if there was evidence of widespread deposit flight from community banks to stablecoins. But that hasn't happened. Stablecoin yield has been around for so long. And it's just BS, right? This goes back to what I've been saying. The banks just want to continue to give consumers breadcrumbs, 0.01%.

And they pocket the majority of the money. They get the big bonuses while they give the consumers next to nothing. They just don't want competition. That is the crux of the issue. Now on DeFi, the BRCA, the provision has been narrowed to the Bank Secrecy Act and civil enforcement. Specific language extending its protections to criminal cases, including prosecutions under section 1960 has been removed. A lot of folks are coming out and saying, this is not good. This guts DeFi in the bill. But again, there is no perfect bill. And we do have to keep fighting once this bill is passed to do amendments and add-ons, right? To help get the right lingo and messaging around DeFi.

But this is an amazing update to the bill. However, we're seeing Democrats are pushing back. Now, the good thing is they have introduced a counter offer. They literally sent it over this evening. So not a lot of people have gotten to read through yet. So I don't have all the details. But it's at least good that they are coming back and saying, OK, we're not just giving up and walking away. Here's a counter offer. So we'll see what that looks like. Obviously, this is really cutting it close. We have a vote tomorrow. And I think by the morning, we should have some more details what the Democrats' version is about. Now, of course, you have your usual anti-crypto army suspects. Elizabeth Warren made an appearance. She crawled out from under her rock, where she started circulating points against the crypto ethics deal. Warren's staff argues the state attorney general's powers are a mirage. Only the DOJ can bring enforcement actions, and no action may be brought if White House ethics officials clear the crypto activity. So, again, Warren, doesn't matter what you bring to the table. She's just going to be doing the same old BS.