Final rift in the Clarification Act: Multiple boycotts may cause the Senate vote to fail

According to Woofun AI, the US Senate is scheduled to hold a key vote on the “Clarity Act” on Tuesday, but the bill has shown serious structural cracks in the final agreement issued on September 14, leaving the future of legislation uncertain.

Despite Republicans trying to bridge their differences through a series of compromises, joint boycotts from the banking industry, Democratic lawmakers, state attorneys general, and cryptocurrency industry advocates continued to rise, putting the legislative process aimed at establishing a regulatory framework for digital assets at risk of stalling. The core conflict centers on ethics, ownership of enforcement, and the potential impact of stablecoins on the traditional financial system. These unresolved disputes directly threaten whether the bill can cross the Senate vote threshold and determine whether the US can establish a clear legal system for crypto assets in the near future.

Questions by the Democratic Party and state-level law enforcement agencies over the bill's moral provisions and allocation of enforcement powers constituted the primary obstacle. Voting for H.R. 3633 is scheduled to begin at 2:15 p.m. EST and must receive 60 votes in favor before entering the review phase. Warren and his team pointed out that although the final version requires federal officials with significant cryptographic financial interests to sell assets or deposit them into anonymous trusts, the Department of Justice still retains key enforcement powers, and if the White House ethics regulator determines compliance, it may hinder state enforcement actions.

This mechanism is viewed by critics as placing enforcement powers under administrative agencies that may interfere with the affairs of their own officials, weakening regulatory independence. New York Attorney General Letitia James led a cross-party coalition of 17 other state attorneys general to strongly oppose the bill's potential restrictions on law enforcement efforts in various states. James emphasized that his office is committed to protecting the public from cryptocurrency scams, and that the current draft could fuel scammers and strip states of their power to protect investors.

According to data compiled by Woofun AI, this widespread opposition from the local enforcement level reflects the deep anxiety of states about the regulatory vacuum in the absence of clear federal authorization, making the game between morality and enforcement power a key variable preventing the passage of the bill.

Banking concerns about stablecoin risks have further exacerbated legislative difficulties, and previously agreed compromises have failed to completely calm the differences. Although the Republicans adopted the “fusing mechanism” proposed by the US Treasury to try to ease concerns about stablecoin rewards attracting deposits out of community banks, banking groups believe that the mechanism's response has been delayed, and the damage may have occurred before regulation intervened. For months, the American Bankers Association and state banking associations have been urging Congress to strengthen the ban on the grounds that rewards offered by cryptocurrency exchanges and their affiliates could lead to stablecoins replacing bank deposits, thereby reducing local loan funding.

Although Republicans promise that if stablecoins harm community banks, they will use methods to protect banks, the banking industry believes this is insufficient to fill regulatory loopholes. This concern about systemic risk caused the banking industry to call for action by the senators before the final draft was released, and the current compromise failed to provide sufficient preventive protection measures, causing the trust gap between the banking industry and legislators to continue to widen, becoming another major obstacle in advancing the bill.

Industry advocates, tribal gaming disputes, and voting consequences together constituted the final hurdle for the bill to be passed. While the bill retained protections for developers and extended them to miners and validators, Republicans removed explicit protections relating to section 18 of the U.S. Code 1960, which raised concerns in the industry about criminal provisions targeting unauthorized money transmission operations.

Furthermore, disputes over prediction markets and tribal gaming remain unresolved, and the final version reduced the scope of protection for decentralized finance to avoid changing derivatives rules or creating new exemptions for predictive markets. David Z. Bean, president of the Indian Gaming Association, pointed out that these changes cannot address the concerns of Indian-populated areas. The association hopes to provide explicit guarantees for tribal and state gaming laws and the Indian Gaming Regulation Act, and restrict the provision of sports betting and similar casino contract services on federally regulated prediction market platforms. Bean warned that otherwise, legislation would expand the powers of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission at the expense of tribal sovereignty. Tuesday's vote directly tested whether the Republican Party's concessions were enough to overcome opposition. Without 60 votes in support, the Senate would not be able to begin debate. Although the bill has been drastically revised, it still lacks the broad support needed to move forward, highlighting the legislative impasse in a game of multi-party interests.