Cryptocurrency Journalist Brady Dale: The CLARITY Act Failed to Pass Senate Procedural Vote, Trump is the Primary Responsible Party
Cryptocurrency journalist Brady Dale posted on platform X regarding the failure of the CLARITY Act to pass the Senate procedural vote, outlining the responsibility hierarchy: he believes the primary responsible party is U.S. President Trump, due to his launch of the eponymous token TRUMP; secondly, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, who insisted on the Senate drafting an independent version, consuming the bipartisan political momentum accumulated after the previous passage of the GENIUS Act (stablecoin regulation bill); third is Senator Cynthia Lummis, who has announced she will not seek re-election and is set to retire.
Regarding Trump's accountability, Dale's reasoning is related to a widely reported fact: since Trump launched his personal token TRUMP, its trading activity has been extremely high, with Bloomberg previously reporting that its trading volume exceeded that of all members of Congress combined. This image has long been cited by critics as evidence of his potential conflict of interest in cryptocurrency regulatory legislation and is a key point of contention that has delayed consensus on the "presidential profit limitation clause" (Ethics provision) during bill negotiations.
On Tim Scott's accountability, Dale points out that Scott previously insisted on the Senate independently drafting a bill version rather than directly adopting the text already passed by the House, a decision he believes slowed the overall legislative pace and wasted the bipartisan cooperation momentum that should have continued after the GENIUS Act's smooth passage, causing the CLARITY Act to miss opportunities for faster advancement during a critical window.
Regarding Lummis's accountability, Cynthia Lummis announced in December 2025 that she would not seek re-election in 2026, becoming the ninth U.S. senator to publicly announce retirement that year. Dale believes her impending departure objectively weakened her political leverage and urgency in coordinating bipartisan negotiations and securing key swing votes during the final stages of legislation, reducing her effectiveness in the sprint phase.
Dale also emphasized that despite the Republican Party currently controlling both chambers of Congress, this vote failure should still be characterized as a "non-forced error"; he stated that SEC Chairman Paul Atkins might be able to alleviate some of the uncertainty brought to the industry by the bill's setback through regulatory administrative measures. He also noted that the voting result itself was not surprising, with greater significance lying in laying the groundwork for public opinion ahead of a new round of political action by Fairshake, one of the largest political action committees in the cryptocurrency industry, scheduled to begin in October.
From a funding flow perspective, if the bill's failure is clearly attributed to specific members' decision-making errors rather than a lack of overall political influence from the industry, Fairshake gains a legitimate basis for concentrating funds during the October election cycle to target current members identified as "dragging down" the legislative process in their districts; this means that the vote failure is being transformed into a foundation for the next round of political funding—benefiting challengers ready to receive focused support and targets of negative advertising, while current members named or implied to be "responsible" are under pressure, shifting the funding flow from previous "broad campaigning" to "targeted accountability."
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Since Trump launched his personal token TRUMP in early 2025, its trading activity has previously been reported by Bloomberg to exceed the combined trading of members of both chambers of Congress, a specific action long cited by critics as evidence of his potential conflict of interest in cryptocurrency regulatory legislation; Tim Scott, as Senate Banking Committee Chairman, previously collaborated with Lummis and Boozman to release the final text of the bill, insisting on using the Senate's independently drafted version during the process.
From a funding pathway perspective, Fairshake, as one of the largest political action committees in the cryptocurrency industry, primarily receives funding from leading companies like Coinbase, a16z, and Ripple, and has previously campaigned for the CLARITY Act through national advertising; following this vote failure, the funding pathway is expected to shift towards the October election cycle, focusing on current members identified as "dragging down" the legislative process, pressuring them to change their stance through funding challengers or negative advertising.
This model can be compared to the "scorecard + targeted funding" strategy long employed by traditional political action committees like the NRA—publicly attributing specific legislative outcomes to individual members' decisions to provide a basis for subsequent targeted funding. The cryptocurrency industry's political action committee is currently transitioning from "broad lobbying" to "precise accountability funding."
From a structural nature perspective, this event corresponds to capital concentration: Fairshake attributes the legislative failure to specific members, and this narrative framework essentially lays the groundwork for concentrated capital deployment; the causal mechanism is that if political funding aims to achieve maximum leverage effect, it must transform general "industry lobbying" into targeted "precise accountability" against specific individuals. Once responsibility is clearly locked onto a few members, subsequent funding can be highly concentrated on challengers in those members' districts or negative advertising, rather than being dispersed across Congress, thus achieving greater political deterrent effects with a smaller funding scale, which is the typical operational logic of political action committee capital concentration effects.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
The more precise the accountability, the more concentrated the funding.
Those who retire often lack leverage in the end.
Non-forced errors are the most costly lessons.