A complete set of U.S. market-structure bills for the crypto industry and others—waited for years.

The House passed it, the Banking Committee passed it, and the Agriculture Committee version was folded in as well. In the Senate, the next step depends on whether the full chamber can somehow reach 60 votes. The process got stuck.

So where was it stuck?

Trump’s damn meme coin.

This isn’t a joke—it’s a fact. In the CLARITY bill, there’s an ethics clause: the president, vice president, members of Congress, and federal judges cannot, during their term, issue or sponsor digital assets in exchange for compensation. Any existing rights must be handled through blind trusts or through sale, etc. Once this clause came out, everyone stared at Trump—his meme coins, his World Liberty Financial. What’s going to happen?

The Democrats used this as leverage, and Republicans also had to iron it out internally first. Without settling the ethics clause, the whole bill couldn’t move.

It dragged on for a few months.

Then on July 21, the news came out: Trump reached a compromise with key Republican senators. On the 22nd, Lummis released new draft text that combined the outcomes of the merged Banking Committee and Agriculture Committee. The biggest internal obstacle for Republicans was temporarily cleared, and Republicans hoped they could push for a vote as soon as next week.

But on the Democrats’ side, they hadn’t nodded yet. On the same day, Gallego said the current text was still insufficient, and Warren went even further, directly criticizing that there were huge loopholes. Getting 60 votes? Not even close.

On Polymarket, the chance of success rebounded from a low point to just over 40%—the market started repricing again, but it was still far from “it’s settled.”

The absurdity here is that—after years of the entire U.S. crypto industry waiting for a regulatory framework, the boundary line of what SEC and CFTC each oversee, the foundational rules for a multi-trillion-dollar market—almost got stalled over a meme coin issued by a president.

But even more absurd: in the end, it still moved only because he gave his approval.

Of course, even if the Senate passes it, the two chamber versions still need reconciliation if there are differences, and it won’t happen overnight. But the direction is already clear: this would be the first time the U.S. provides a proper federal-level regulatory framework for digital assets.

In the past few years, the SEC has relied on enforcement to pave the way—today suing Coinbase, tomorrow issuing a Wells Notice to Uniswap—while the whole industry scrambles in the gray zone. Once CLARITY passes, the game rules change—not that there’s no regulation, but that there’s clear regulation.

At the end of the day, one of the biggest obstacles to getting this bill to where it is today almost turned out to be the person who most wanted to push it—his own meme coin. The crypto industry story will never be boring.