According to critics, half of crypto’s most influential people were at Trump’s recent meme coin dinner, which is why they can’t say anything.
The CLARITY Act, the most consequential crypto legislation working through the US Senate, is stalling partly because of President Donald Trump’s own meme coin.
That’s the argument being made publicly by at least one analyst who says the broader industry is too close to the president to say it loud.
Trump’s Token Is Giving Democrats Ammunition
Crypto analyst Simon Dedic posted on X on Tuesday, writing that:
“Trump’s meme coin is currently the biggest obstacle to crypto regulation right now.”
His case is fairly simple: Democrats are pointing to the president’s gala dinners with the biggest holders of his Official Trump meme coin and the retail wealth that has evaporated around the token as justification to demand ethics clauses before they’ll vote yes.
“The ‘pro crypto president’ is actively sabotaging the legislation this industry needs most, just to further fill his own bags,” Dedic wrote.
He didn’t stop there:
“The reason nobody in crypto calls this out? Because half the industry’s most important people were at that dinner on Saturday. Smiling, clapping and kissing the ring of the man whose meme coin is single-handedly delaying the regulation they claim to be fighting for.”
The ethics issue has now crossed party lines, as Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, told Politico that ethics language has to be in the bill before it leaves the Senate, or he would go from negotiating it to voting against it.
Senator Adam Schiff told the same outlet that talks are advancing and that negotiators are “narrowing our differences,” although nobody has said what the ethics provision would actually look like.
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That fight is sitting on top of several other issues that still aren’t resolved. For instance, the Senate Banking Committee reportedly skipped its expected markup hearing last week, with a vote on Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh getting moved ahead of the CLARITY Act on the committee’s calendar.
A Tight Window and Competing Pressures
The clock is running down on the bill’s prospects this legislative cycle, as, according to Ji Kim, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, the Senate has about 13 weeks of floor time remaining. However, factoring in recesses and a packed agenda cuts that time down to maybe nine or ten weeks.
Still, some on Capitol Hill remain publicly optimistic, with Wyoming lawmaker Cynthia Lummis telling the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas on Monday that a markup is coming in May and that the bill will “get to the finish line.”
Elsewhere, Bernie Moreno reportedly told a Washington event that he expects it to be done by the end of May and dismissed the banking industry’s pressure on stablecoin yields as “noise” and “completely fake.”
Meanwhile, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said on a podcast last Friday that the bill will get finalized in May and Trump will sign it in June. But his own firm’s head of research put the odds of passage this year at 50%.
The banks are also pushing on multiple fronts. The American Bankers Association has asked Treasury for more than 60 extra days to comment on GENIUS Act implementation rules, with Patrick Witt, the White House crypto adviser, saying on X that continued bank lobbying was hard to explain as anything “other than greed or ignorance.”