US Senator Warren: Crypto Legislation Must Advance
US Senator Elizabeth Warren recently stated, "We need crypto legislation," emphasizing, "I have been calling for this for a long time, and I am ready with a crypto bill."
This statement came after the Senate voted on the Clarity Act, which aims to establish a federal regulatory framework for digital assets, clearly delineating the regulatory boundaries between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and requiring coordination between the two agencies.
The vote took place on September 15, with a final result of 49 votes in favor and 50 against, failing to reach the 60 votes needed for procedural advancement. All Democratic senators and four Republican senators voted against the bill, preventing its progress.
Warren stated that the bill "poses significant risks to families, our economy, and national security," pointing out that its ethical provisions are merely "a small fig leaf" insufficient to stop current President Trump and his family from continuing to profit from crypto businesses; reports mention that Trump earned up to $1.4 billion from crypto-related businesses in the previous year.
Warren did not propose an alternative bill text in this statement but called on Republicans to "return to the negotiating table and negotiate a real, bipartisan-supported crypto bill," which needs to include stronger conflict of interest prevention mechanisms.
This is not the first time Warren has systematically articulated her stance on crypto regulation: she previously presented five principles for crypto market structure legislation during a Senate Banking Committee hearing titled "From Wall Street to Web3" on July 9, 2025, including preventing non-crypto companies from evading SEC regulation through asset tokenization, unifying existing investor protection rules, setting capital and liquidity requirements for crypto intermediaries, mandating anti-money laundering measures and closing sanction loopholes, and prohibiting government officials, including the president, from issuing, sponsoring, or profiting from crypto tokens.
From a market mechanism perspective, the failure of the Clarity Act vote means that the anticipated federal unified regulatory framework for the industry cannot be realized in the short term, and crypto businesses such as exchanges and issuers will continue to face regulatory uncertainty, putting pressure on financing and compliance costs; those advocating for stricter conflict of interest provisions are using the bill's failure to gain leverage for future negotiations, attempting to force Republicans and the industry to accept stronger restrictions on presidential family conflicts of interest, thus further delaying market expectations for the timeline of crypto regulation. Senate Majority Leader Thune mentioned that the bill had incorporated over 100 amendments requested by Democrats but still failed to secure enough Democratic support votes.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Warren's involvement in crypto regulation is not a recent development: she led the proposal for an anti-money laundering-focused crypto "regulatory" bill at the end of 2022, which faced strong resistance from the crypto industry due to its stringent regulatory measures. According to Bloomberg, in 2024, the crypto industry intensified its opposition to her related anti-crime legislation; in July 2025, she systematically proposed five principles for market structure legislation. This latest statement follows the failure of the Clarity Act vote, demonstrating her long-term deep involvement in regulatory details rather than a temporary political stance.
The focus of this negotiation is not on funding allocation but on the struggle for power and rule-making authority: Senate Majority Leader Thune mentioned that the bill had incorporated over 100 amendments requested by Democrats but still failed to secure enough votes, indicating that the real resistance in current negotiations lies not in the technical regulatory delineation itself but in the political issue of whether the president and his family's crypto business interests should be subject to legislative restrictions, which is why Warren explicitly pointed out the profit issues concerning the Trump family in her statement.
This tug-of-war process can be compared to the prolonged congressional battles during the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform legislation, where historically significant financial regulatory frameworks often require multiple rounds of failed votes and repeated negotiations to take shape; currently, crypto regulation is in an intermediate stage where "stablecoin regulation has passed (Genius Act), and market structure regulation is still in contention," and a complete regulatory loop has yet to be formed, leaving the industry in a period of regulatory vacuum.
Structurally, this is essentially a regulatory change: the focus of contradictions has shifted from purely technical divisions of market structure to the political issue of whether the executive branch's own commercial interests should be subject to legislative limitations. This means that the future pace of crypto regulatory legislation will depend more on the political games between the two parties regarding conflict of interest provisions, rather than technical details like the regulatory boundaries between the CFTC and SEC, potentially extending the period of regulatory blank spaces further.