Democratic lawmakers have spent the past year blasting the Trump family’s growing footprint in the cryptocurrency industry. Now, just months ahead of the midterm elections, they’re digging in on a push to crack down on one of the first family’s most lucrative businesses.
Republicans may have limited time to use their control of government to deliver on a Trump campaign promise to pass a sweeping crypto bill that would help the industry. But they need support from Senate Democrats, who are seeking to use the leverage to force the White House to agree to a provision restricting how executive branch officials use digital assets.
“There is no final bill — there is no final movement — unless there is a bipartisan agreement when it comes to the ethics provision,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat generally supportive of the legislation who has been involved in negotiations over the issue.
The debate over the bill is giving Democrats a powerful point of leverage over one of the president’s marquee financial policy priorities. The Trump family’s crypto businesses, which account for more than $1 billion of their wealth, have been a common point of outrage among lawmakers on the left who say Republican-led efforts to enact a light-touch regulatory regime on the digital asset industry will enrich the first family.
The White House has consistently said the president doesn’t have any conflicts of interest, and Senate Republicans have mostly defended the president from attacks on his family’s businesses. But they are nonetheless trying to come to a deal with Democrats on an ethics provision. Both parties know that if Republicans lose either chamber of Congress, the push to pass legislation splitting up oversight of crypto trading between Wall Street regulators, a long-standing industry goal, would face long odds.
Now, Democrats have at least one reinforcement from across the aisle: Sen. Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina Republican and senior Senate Banking Committee member, said in an interview that ethics language in the bill is a must.
“There has to be ethics language in the bill before it leaves the Senate, or I’ll go from one of the people working on negotiating it to voting against it,” said Tillis, who has been an obstacle to other White House efforts on the Hill, including confirmation of a new Federal Reserve chair.
Lawmakers who have worked to land a bipartisan ethics agreement have struggled for months to make progress. But they now say that talks are advancing.
“We’re making progress,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “We have been talking for a long time without making much progress, and now that other parts of the bill are starting to come together, we’re narrowing our differences.”
It’s unclear what shape the ethics language could take.
Schiff, who is leading negotiations for Democrats on the issue along with Gallego, said earlier this year they want “a ban on sponsoring, endorsing or issuing digital assets that applies to all federal employees,” including the president. Negotiations are ongoing over how the restrictions would be enforced, and it remains unclear whether Democrats will be able to get Senate Republicans and the White House to sign off on a deal that would meaningfully crack down on the Trump family’s crypto businesses.
Patrick Witt, a White House crypto policy adviser, is spearheading negotiations for the administration, alongside GOP Sens. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Bernie Moreno of Ohio. Moreno said in a recent interview that lawmakers are talking about “common sense” reforms.
Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee are hoping to advance the crypto bill — which has been stalled for months due to other policy disputes — in the coming weeks. The ethics fight is one of the last outstanding issues that needs to be resolved in order for the legislation to win bipartisan support. Because the issue is outside of the Banking Committee’s jurisdiction, the bill the committee approves is not expected to include ethics language. But Gallego said in an interview this month that there “needs to be a clear explanation about how this is going to go and how it’s going to be incorporated before it gets to the floor” by the time of a markup.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement that “President Trump pledged to make America the crypto capital of the world, and he has delivered over the last historic 15 months.”
Once a fierce crypto skeptic, President Donald Trump and his family jumped into the crypto business during the heart of the 2024 presidential campaign — just as the then-former president pledged to make America “the crypto capital of the planet.”
The growing Trump crypto empire now includes several ventures: World Liberty Financial, a crypto project that Trump and his sons helped co-found; a Trump-themed memecoin; and Truth Social parent company Trump Media & Technology Group, which has sought to expand into the crypto markets. As in his first term, Trump has agreed to step away from the day-to-day operations of his family business and keep his assets in a trust managed by his children while serving as president.
The Trumps have emerged as major crypto players as the Washington landscape for the sector has become significantly more friendly, thanks in large part to Trump’s regulators and the industry’s allies on Capitol Hill. The latest bill could particularly help accelerate crypto’s expansion into mainstream finance, opening it up to more investors and Wall Street giants who have until now been reluctant to jump into the market due to the outstanding questions about its regulation.
Not that Trump’s projects have shown any sign of slowing down with their namesake in office.
World Liberty Financial has launched a stablecoin, USD1, and applied for a federal banking license. And an entity affiliated with the memecoin, which is known as $TRUMP, hosted a crypto conference Saturday at Mar-a-Lago for nearly 300 of the token’s top investors. Among those who spoke at the event were Mike Tyson, the former boxer; Tony Robbins, the self-help guru; and Trump, who spoke at the event before flying back to Washington for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“It’s a pretty blatant example of the president selling access,” said Donald Sherman, who leads the ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, of the memecoin conference. Trump, Sherman said, is “effectively auctioning off access to the highest bidder with no transparency.”
The Mar-a-Lago conference came after a bruising sell-off in the token, which reached as high as $75 in value early last year. As of Sunday morning, the $TRUMP token was trading at around $2.65. In his remarks, Trump, wearing a navy suit and light blue tie, said "today, we celebrate our tremendous success in keeping America at the forefront of the crypto revolution," according to a recording of his remarks. He also spoke on the war in Iran and artificial intelligence, among other topics.
A White House official said the president attended the event in his personal capacity. The Trump organization did not respond to a request for comment.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has previously denied that Trump or his family “have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.”
Investors and traders have recently shown signs of souring on the Trump projects. Justin Sun, a crypto billionaire who calls himself an ardent Trump supporter, sued World Liberty Financial on Tuesday over what he calls an “illegal scheme” to seize his holdings in the company’s WLFI token.
World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff, who is the son of Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, fired back at Sun’s lawsuit on X, calling it “a desperate attempt to deflect attention from Sun’s own misconduct.” And Eric Trump, the president’s son and a World Liberty Financial co-founder, was quick to pile on.
“The only thing more ridiculous than this lawsuit is spending $6 million on a banana duct-taped to a wall,” Eric Trump said, referring to Sun’s infamous 2024 purchase. “We are incredibly proud of the [World Liberty] team.”
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