Custodia CEO warns Trump crypto ties are complicating the CLARITY Act

Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long said controversy around crypto activity tied to President Donald Trump’s family has made it harder to build Senate support for the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act. Speaking at ETHDenver, she pointed to Trump-associated meme coins and other ventures, including World Liberty Financial, as an ethics flashpoint that is now bleeding into the bill’s vote math.

The tension is not limited to lawmakers who oppose crypto regulation outright. Even senators who want clearer rules have had to answer questions about conflicts of interest, and Senator Cynthia Lummis has acknowledged that the noise makes coalition-building more difficult.

Introduced in May 2025, the CLARITY Act would set digital-asset market structure rules and split oversight between the SEC and the CFTC. The House passed the bill in July 2025, but it has stalled in the Senate, where lawmakers are also debating how any framework should handle DeFi activity and stablecoin-related provisions.

The Senate path runs through a cloture vote, which means reaching 60 votes. That requires support from multiple Democrats, and critics have been vocal. Senator Elizabeth Warren, among others, has pressed the ethics angle in public statements about Trump family-linked crypto activity.

The broader issue is durability. Without legislation, regulators can still steer the market through rulemaking and enforcement, but those approaches can shift quickly under a new administration. A statute is harder to reverse, which is why the market-structure fight has become a priority for both industry and policy advocates.

Long says the bill’s prospects in the Senate remain uncertain and describes the odds as a coin flip.