Sponsors (22)
The bill tightens ethics rules and clarifies which digital assets and actors are covered—improving transparency and trust and protecting consumers—at the cost of broader compliance obligations, privacy exposure, constraints on officials' personal investments, and potential dampening of crypto-sector innovation.
Federal officials (President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and specified relatives) and the public benefit from reduced corruption and conflicts of interest because covered individuals are barred from using their official positions to profit from or direct digital-asset activity, increasing ethical safeguards and public trust.
Market participants (investors, crypto firms, and financial institutions) gain clearer legal definitions and prohibitions for digital assets and related products, which reduces regulatory uncertainty and helps restore investor confidence by lowering the risk of insider-driven token deals.
Enforcement and transparency improve because the bill closes loopholes—treating significant owners (5%+), controllers, and beneficiaries (including trusts/nominee arrangements) as subject to prohibitions—making it harder for covered persons to hide prohibited digital-asset activity behind intermediaries.
Crypto businesses, financial institutions, and consumers may face substantial new compliance costs and administrative burdens as broader product and actor coverage forces firms to change systems, potentially reducing services and slowing innovation or product launches.
Expanded beneficial-ownership and disclosure rules (including indirect holdings, trusts, wallets, and family connections) risk privacy intrusions and could sweep in passive investors or complicate ordinary transactions, imposing burdens on small owners and family-held accounts.
Covered federal officials and their families lose access to certain digital-asset investment opportunities while in office and face criminal penalties and reputational/legal risk if rules are misinterpreted or enforcement errors occur.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Bans top federal officials and certain close relatives from owning, controlling, issuing, promoting, receiving pay for, or trading a wide range of digital assets, and extends prohibitions to indirect ownership and intermediaries.
Introduced May 21, 2025 by Maxine Waters · Last progress May 21, 2025
Prohibits the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and certain close relatives from owning, controlling, issuing, promoting, receiving pay for, or trading a wide range of digital assets. It also bars covered officials from using intermediaries to evade the rules and makes violations subject to criminal penalties modeled on existing federal ethics laws. Defines "digital asset" broadly to include tokens on distributed ledgers (stablecoins, memecoins, NFTs), financial contracts tied to digital assets (futures, options, swaps), securities or trusts benchmarked to digital assets, and yield-bearing DeFi products; applies the prohibitions to direct and indirect ownership, control, and beneficial interests, including trusts and nominee arrangements.