Digital-Asset Rules Near Senate Test as Lawmakers Negotiate Three Safeguards

Kirsten Gillibrand frames digital-asset legislation as neither a celebration of crypto nor a concession to an industry asking to be left alone. Her argument is that the industry already exists, Americans are already exposed to it, and Congress has left too much of the market without clear rules.

Gillibrand said her interest began roughly five years ago, after conversations with people including a former SEC chairman and a former prosecutor from the Southern District of New York. Their core point, as she recalled it, was that cryptocurrency and blockchain lacked regulation. Gillibrand brought her own background to that assessment: she had worked as a securities lawyer for 15 years and said she understood the importance of safety and soundness in financial services, consumer protections, and disclosure.

That led her to Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, who also wanted to work on digital assets. Gillibrand described the resulting effort as five years of meetings with stakeholders across the country to understand business models, use cases, risks, and regulatory gaps. The central legal problem, in her telling, is that some digital assets have features of securities and features of commodities. The question becomes which agency should supervise them: the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or both at different stages.

The legislation under discussion was the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025, or Clarity Act. Gillibrand said she was optimistic that Congress was “on the precipice” of passing it, but she identified three open items that still had to be negotiated. Those items are not cosmetic; she said they are necessary for Democratic votes.

The first is an ethics provision barring members of Congress, senior administration officials, presidents, and vice presidents from being issuers of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, or memecoins. Gillibrand said the reason is that such activity creates “a significant appearance of impropriety,” undermines campaign finance laws, and “looks like grift.” Jonathan Capehart asked whether that would require a president who had issued coins to give them back. Gillibrand said the person would have to be unable to own the company and would need to divest “in some meaningful way,” though the language was still being negotiated.

The second unresolved provision concerns consumer protections at the CFTC. Gillibrand drew a distinction between the SEC, which she said was built around disclosure, and the CFTC, which she said “was never really built for consumer protections.” If digital assets are going to trade under CFTC oversight, she argued, consumers need more information and issuers should hold less informational power.

The third provision is enforcement for illicit finance in decentralized or partly decentralized settings. Gillibrand said the goal is to make sure that someone who is intentionally engaging in illicit finance can be prosecuted even if operating in a “quasi decentralized finance place.” She did not present that language as final, but said she believed negotiators would find a way to address it.

On the politics of passage, Gillibrand was precise about the limit of her control. She said only Senate Majority Leader John Thune could decide floor timing. But if the three provisions were written well, she believed a bipartisan working group could produce enough votes to clear the 60-vote threshold. She also said Republicans and White House staff were involved in negotiations, though she did not know whether White House staff were talking directly to President Trump.

Capehart raised the risk that Trump could praise or tolerate a bipartisan bill and then reject it, citing a recent housing bill that, in Capehart’s account, passed the Senate with 85 votes before Trump reversed course soon after the signing ceremony. Gillibrand said that could happen, but it was not what she was focused on. Her stated purpose was to create “robust rules of the road” so that the United States has a regulated digital-asset industry and American participants are not left “entirely unprotected.”

A question about white-collar crime, enforcement penalties, and mechanisms to prevent abuse drew Gillibrand into the mechanics of the bill. She used a hypothetical “Kirsten Coin” to explain why she believes some token issuers need disclosure obligations even if the asset is ultimately intended to function like a commodity.

If someone wants to issue a cryptocurrency and sell it on a blockchain, Gillibrand said, the bill as written would require a filing with the SEC. The reason is informational asymmetry. An issuer knows how many tokens will be issued, how many may be held back, and whether the issuer might later “dump it on the market” and “pull the rug out.” In her view, that differs from trading oil or wheat, which she described as “100% fungible” and not dependent on issuer-controlled inside information.

Her distinction was not that a newly issued token is necessarily a traditional security. She said there may be “no underlying value”: no piece of a company, no ownership right, just a digital asset that may or may not have value, perhaps “based on vibe” or on how popular the issuer is. But that still creates security-like attributes at the issuance stage because the value can depend on the issuer’s conduct and management.

The regulatory answer she described is dual oversight. The issuer would file disclosures with the SEC, including quarterly information about the business and token supply, while also being regulated by the CFTC. Over time, if the project matures into a fully decentralized system with no one running the company and the tokens trade “like oil or wheat,” the disclosure obligation would end.

Capehart summarized the enforcement point as applying the same penalties as fraud. Gillibrand answered more broadly: federal laws for securities fraud, commodities fraud, insider trading, and illicit finance would all apply.

That explanation clarified why she sees the Clarity Act as stronger than simply moving crypto into a commodities framework. Her concern is not only whether an asset’s legal classification is correct at a static moment. It is whether the regulatory regime accounts for the transition from issuer-driven project to potentially decentralized market, and whether consumers are protected during the period when issuers know more than buyers.

Gillibrand’s broader case for digital assets is that regulated crypto could expand access to financial services for people poorly served by the existing banking system. She said 30% of Americans are underbanked or unbanked, meaning they cannot get a bank account, cannot easily access a credit card, and have difficulty sending money to family in another country. She argued those people are often exposed to predatory lenders.

Her example was remittances: someone sending money to a mother in El Salvador might pay a 10% or 20% fee through existing systems, whereas a crypto account in a phone wallet could send value immediately with little friction. She described that as one reason digital assets appeal to young people and to the underbanked or unbanked.

Gillibrand did not argue that the market should be trusted because it is innovative. Her claim was the opposite: because these tools are becoming attractive to people who need alternatives, Congress has an obligation to regulate them. She said the rise of cryptocurrency use is “exponential” worldwide and increasing in Black and brown communities. She named Senator Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland as one of the Democrats most passionate about the issue, saying Alsobrooks has argued that her community wants access and that lawmakers must ensure rules of the road protect people’s money and prevent “charlatans” from taking advantage of them.

Gillibrand’s political point was that the coalition for digital-asset regulation is not the one outsiders might expect. She said support for a smaller stablecoin bill included newer senators, senators representing low-income communities and districts, and Black and brown senators who care about access to capital. The purpose, as she put it, is not to protect the banking sector but to make sure access to capital and alternative platforms is “responsibly regulated.”

That argument also connects to New York’s financial position. Gillibrand said the United States, and New York in particular, should maintain its role as the center of world financial markets. In her view, failing to regulate emerging financial industries would weaken that position.

The crypto bill was presented as part of a wider Senate pattern. Gillibrand told Capehart that bipartisanship is “running rampant” in the Senate, even if that is not how national politics usually appears. She emphasized that she has worked with Republicans who seem ideologically distant from her, including Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, on issues where the parties’ usual divisions did not dominate the substance.

With Cruz, she cited three bills. The first involved pregnant cadets at West Point. Gillibrand described the previous policy as giving a pregnant cadet three choices: have an abortion; give up all parental rights and stay; or keep the child, leave, and repay the $400,000 cost of the education. She said she and Cruz both reacted that the policy was unacceptable and worked to allow a cadet to remain, serve, and be a parent, with the necessary family, spouse, or child-care support.

The second Cruz collaboration concerned people trafficked as minors who were left with felony records that prevented them from moving on with their lives. Gillibrand said they worked to allow those felonies to be expunged. The third involved online bullying after one of Cruz’s constituents in the LGBT community was bullied so severely that he took his own life; Gillibrand said they worked on changing rules for how such cases proceed.

With Hawley, Gillibrand said she is working on banning members of Congress from trading stocks based on non-public information. She called it “one of the most obvious things,” arguing that members should not get rich from their jobs because they have access to information the public does not. That example connects directly to her insistence on crypto ethics rules: in both cases, she framed the problem as public officials exploiting privileged position for private gain or appearing to do so.

Gillibrand also said she wants to work more with Senator Katie Britt of Alabama. She described a connection through a weekly Wednesday prayer breakfast that Gillibrand once chaired and Britt now chairs. The two have discussed child-care and other issues, she said, but have not yet found the particular fight they will take on together.

Her most extended example of bipartisan coalition-building was military sexual-assault reform with Senator Joni Ernst. Gillibrand said she worked for five years to change how sexual assault in the military was handled. Ernst’s support, in Gillibrand’s telling, brought the final 10 Republicans she needed to reach 65 votes, creating a veto-proof majority. Gillibrand credited Ernst’s status as a former commander and sexual-assault survivor with giving credibility to Republican colleagues who had not served. She said they were up against the chair and ranking member of Armed Services in both chambers and the entire Department of Defense, but their collaboration was stronger. She added that she is now fighting Defense Secretary Hegseth not to “delete” those reforms and that she will miss Ernst when Ernst retires.

The pattern Gillibrand described is tactical: find issues where the ideological barrier is lower, identify a Republican whose biography or constituency gives them standing, and use that partnership to unlock votes that would not otherwise move.

As chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Gillibrand argued that the 2026 political environment resembles the 2006 midterm wave that first elected her to Congress. Capehart made the comparison first; Gillibrand said he was “totally right.”

Her analogy had three parts. In 2006, she said, George W. Bush was mired in the Iraq war, faced a “culture of corruption” in Washington, and tried to privatize Social Security. In 2026, she argued, Trump is mired in the war in Iran, presides over what she called a “massive culture of corruption,” and “literally deleted half of Medicaid.” In both cases, she said, the climate causes some Republican or traditionally red voters to want change.

Gillibrand said the national environment was D+6 and that she expected it to grow, with bluer and purpler areas already at D+8. Her theory of competitiveness is arithmetic: in an R+10 state, a six-point Democratic environment means a candidate needs to find four additional points. That is why, she said, Texas is in play. She described Texas as an R+9 state and argued that James Talarico could close the remaining gap, especially with Ken Paxton as the opponent, whom she described as corrupt and sycophantic toward Trump.

Maine, in Gillibrand’s telling, is both a prime opportunity and a warning against easy assumptions. She said Senator Susan Collins has “never been more vulnerable” but acknowledged that Collins has always overperformed and is “very tough to beat.” She said Collins’s approval ratings had hovered in the 30s and low 40s, that Maine is a pro-choice state, and that Collins had never fully paid a price for her vote for Brett Kavanaugh. She also said Maine is D+7, meaning Harris won it by seven points in the previous cycle.

Gillibrand identified the Iran war as a major vulnerability for Collins, saying the war is extremely unpopular and that 70% of Americans oppose it across both parties. But she said the dominant issue across races would be the “cost of life”: groceries, housing, insurance, energy, and gas. In her account, families are angry that costs are higher than a year ago and higher than the last election cycle, despite Trump’s promises to bring them down.

She described a broad DSCC map rather than a narrow set of races. Democrats, she said, must defend Georgia, New Hampshire, and the winner of Michigan. Beyond that, she said she was focused on pickup or expansion races including Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Texas, Mississippi, and Florida. She cited internal or current polling claims from the stage — Democrats up by five in Alaska, up by two in Ohio, up by two in Iowa, up by five in North Carolina, and up by three in Maine — as evidence that the map is live. She also said Florida had produced a dead-even poll.

Her Florida example centered on Vindman, whom she described as a talented Democratic candidate who was outraising his appointed Republican opponent. Gillibrand said the opponent raised $1.2 million last quarter while Vindman raised $8 million. She presented that contrast as part of the broader case that the map is unusually competitive: strong Democratic candidates, weaker Republican candidates, a difficult climate for Republicans who do not stand up to Trump, and voters who want change because life has become too expensive.

Gillibrand’s critique of Trump’s Iran policy was not only that she opposes the war. She argued that the administration has not articulated a goal that has been achieved, a measurable end point, or a convincing case that Americans are safer.

She said Trump’s stated aims had failed: ensuring Iran never has a nuclear weapon “did not come to fruition”; stopping Iran from funding terror was contradicted, in her telling, by giving Iran $300 billion; regime change had not occurred because the same regime remained in charge. She said she did not know his purpose, did not know his plan, and did not see a measure for when the war would end.

Gillibrand also said Trump was spending a billion dollars a day and had not shown that the United States was safer. She linked that directly to domestic costs: “a billion dollars a day for bombs” while doing nothing to reduce grocery prices, gas prices, or health-care costs. She also referred to money spent on “that ballroom” as part of the same contrast between presidential priorities and family budgets.

On Republican colleagues, Gillibrand said she did not know that Republicans were not going to the White House to tell Trump the policy was failing. She said she believed that probably was happening. But she also described many Republicans as “sycophants” who say “yes, sir” and do what Trump wants. She said there had been a “shocking lack of courage” to stand up to a president she believes is wrong on many issues.

She allowed that Republican behavior might change as polling worsens. Those not running for re-election, she said, have more courage because some had tried to oppose Trump and could not sustain the MAGA response. She named Thom Tillis as standing up “quite a bit,” suggested Ernst might stand up, and said Mitch McConnell had stood up to Trump a few times. But for rank-and-file Republicans, she said, silence remained the norm.

Gillibrand repeatedly returned to the SAVE Act as a central threat to voting access. She said Trump had used it as leverage over other legislation, including a bipartisan housing bill written by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott. In her description, Trump said he would not sign the housing bill unless Congress gave him the SAVE Act.

Her objection is that the bill is not simply about showing identification to vote or register. Gillibrand said the IDs most people carry would not be sufficient. A driver’s license would not work, nor would a Real ID driver’s license. A military ID would not count. She said a passport would be required if someone registered to vote today, and estimated that only 50% of Americans have passports.

Gillibrand emphasized the effect on women whose names changed after marriage. If a passport does not match a birth certificate because of a married name, she said, the person would not be able to register unless she changed the birth certificate to the married name. She argued that would disenfranchise many women. She also said military members and veterans would be blocked if military IDs did not count.

The provision she called the “worst part” would require voter rolls to be given to the federal government for analysis, after which the government would send back a list of who is allowed to vote. Gillibrand questioned the basis for that review and suggested it could be used to exclude people with Latino surnames on the pretext of citizenship uncertainty. She also argued that voter rolls are only a snapshot in time: if someone registered the day after the rolls were requested, it is unclear how that person would be treated.

Capehart added that the Constitution assigns election administration to the states, not the federal government. Gillibrand’s broader claim was that the SAVE Act was written intentionally to reduce ballot access. “No one should ever be confused,” she said, that it is merely about having ID.

On the filibuster, Gillibrand said she did not know whether Thune would continue resisting Trump’s pressure to eliminate it in order to pass the SAVE Act. She said she was hopeful Thune would resist because he knows it would be wrong in this instance.

Gillibrand treated the possibility of election disruption as a live operational risk. She cited Trump’s previous behavior after the 2020 election, including his call to a Georgia official asking to “find” votes; Capehart supplied the number as 11,780 votes, “one more than we need.”

Democrats, she said, are preparing for “any type of undermining of voting rights.” That preparation includes lawsuits wherever they believe Trump is trying to subvert the ballot; fighting the SAVE Act; state-by-state and county-by-county protection measures; lawyers in every state; and coordination with legislators, governors, and secretaries of state on cyber protection.

She specifically raised the possibility of Trump sending the National Guard or ICE agents into counties. In places where Democrats think that may happen, she said they intend to have people on the ground to monitor elections and make sure they are “safely held.” She described her DSCC role as including the ability to raise millions of dollars into a legal fund for election-security lawsuits.

But her strategy was not only defensive. Gillibrand said one reason she wants 11 states in play, and possibly more including longer shots such as South Carolina and Kansas, is to force Trump and Republicans to defend too many places at once. She said she wants Trump worried about Florida, including his “backyard,” and asserted that Democrats had “flipped Mar-a-Lago.” She also said Texas is useful to put in play because large states force Republicans to spend heavily. In her account, the Republican Party spent $100 million trying to defend Senator John Cornyn from Ken Paxton, only for Cornyn to lose his primary.

Her underlying theory is that election subversion is harder if the contest is not concentrated in one or two states. A broad map, in her telling, creates both political opportunity and structural protection.

Gillibrand’s answers on the Supreme Court were less about consistency across doctrine than about whether the Court would sometimes resist Trump. Capehart described same-day rulings on mail-in voting and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and asked whether a pending birthright-citizenship decision could also be a win for democracy. He said the mail-in voting ruling was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the majority opinion and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining.

Gillibrand said she was hopeful because of the mail-in voting decision. She identified Barrett, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Roberts as swing votes who had been reachable on some issues. Trump, she said, had been furious about some of those decisions and had called out the justices, especially Barrett.

Her hope on birthright citizenship was grounded in constitutional identity as much as doctrine. She said birthright citizenship is part of the Constitution, “who we are,” and tied to the United States as a nation founded by immigrants. She described it as important to the country’s economy and cultural fabric. She took some relief from the Court sometimes “finding reasons to be for or against” Trump, including preserving Cook’s position on the basis of Federal Reserve independence while allowing Trump to fire people from the Federal Trade Commission. But she said the real test is whether the Court stands up to Trump when it “really, really counts.”

That constitutional anxiety shaped her answer about the 250th anniversary of America. If the founders returned, she said, they would see that democracy is still standing and would probably think they had gotten it right. But she immediately added that “everything is at risk,” accusing Trump of undermining institutions, the rule of law, and the Constitution, and of pre-pardoning himself and people around him.

Fidel Vargas, identifying himself as president and CEO of HSF, pushed the discussion toward Democratic politics in New York after the primaries, especially in New York City. Gillibrand said New York had a “very strong change election,” with interest in new candidates, younger candidates in some cases, and the next generation of candidates. Several incumbents lost to challengers, she said, because of that trend.

She interpreted that as useful for Democrats nationally, not because the same ideological profile would work everywhere, but because it showed the depth of voter demand for change. The change election would look different in North Carolina than in New York City, she said. Not every state would want a “far, far left Democratic socialist,” but voters in many places would want something different.

The common theme, she said, is cost. Candidates must listen to what voters’ lives are like and speak to the costs that matter in their state or locality. In New Jersey, she said, energy costs were the most important issue. In New York City, groceries and housing were more central. She also named gubernatorial candidates Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger as more moderate candidates who nevertheless ran on cost-of-living concerns.

That cost-centered strategy also informed her answer to the charge that Democrats are not playing enough hardball. Gillibrand rejected the premise, saying the fights are visible in targeted states and purple districts, not necessarily in blue-state media markets. Her account of Democratic campaign messaging was specific: candidates are contrasting Trump spending money on a ballroom with failing to lower grocery prices; Trump “lining his own pockets with his billionaires” while doing nothing about housing costs; and Trump spending taxpayer dollars on an unauthorized, illegal, and unwanted war at a billion dollars a day while doing nothing about Medicaid.

She argued that the national media environment obscures the fight because Democrats do not yet have a presidential nominee who can “punch Trump equally.” The harder combat, she said, is more visible in Senate and House races where two candidates are directly engaged.

Her example was Mary Peltola in Alaska and an ad called “Fish, Family, Freedom,” which Gillibrand described as one of the most authentic ads of the cycle. She said Peltola names names, attacking Senator Dan Sullivan for failing to support Alaska fisheries and Native trade while investing in a fish farm. Gillibrand presented that as evidence that Democratic candidates are not avoiding conflict; they are choosing local, concrete lines of attack that may not reach people outside contested media markets.

Asked whether the role of money in politics concerns her while she is leading Senate fundraising efforts, Gillibrand said yes. She said money should be removed from politics and that public financing was the cornerstone of her brief 2020 presidential campaign.

Her preferred model is “democracy dollars,” in which voters receive vouchers — perhaps $100 or $200 — to direct to candidates. She said Seattle had used such a system, and argued that it changes who campaigns have to engage. Instead of campaigning mainly in “fancy living rooms,” candidates would go to housing authorities, subway stops, and regular voters to ask for votes and vouchers.

She argued that the Democratic Party should become the party of publicly funded elections and added that someday the Supreme Court would be flipped, “money will not equal speech,” and corporations will not have the same free-speech rights as Americans. As DSCC chair, she is still raising money aggressively for Senate races, legal funds, and campaign operations. Her stated position is that the system requiring that fundraising is itself bad for democracy.