Pennsylvanians can’t afford the U.S. Senate to validate corporate crypto grift

During my eight years as Mayor of Philadelphia, I learned that real leadership means standing up for working people and keeping the playing field fair. In a town like Philly, if a neighborhood corner store or a local contractor tried to write their own health codes or manipulate the city's licensing system to line their own pockets, they’d be shut down before lunch. But right now in Washington, the United States Senate is preparing to vote on cryptocurrency legislation that effectively gives powerful special interests the permission to rewrite the financial rulebook for their own gain.

The CLARITY Act arrives on the Senate floor as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is an industry-backed handout that lacks meaningful public-integrity or anti-corruption guardrails. The bill completely ignores the staggering conflicts of interest that arise when high-ranking public officials profit directly from the very markets they are supposed to regulate. Public service is supposed to be a sacred public trust, not a vehicle for personal profit. Yet, under the CLARITY Act, the guardrails for the crypto industry are nonexistent.

The scope of this self-dealing is truly unprecedented. Independent reporting by Forbes has revealed that President Donald Trump and his associates have built a sprawling, unvetted digital-asset fortune that accounts for an estimated $3.3 billion of the president’s $5.5 billion total net worth. While his administration and congressional allies drag their feet on oversight, Trump has actively promoted his family’s commercial stablecoin venture, World Liberty Financial, operated a bitcoin mining firm, and pocketed millions in transaction fees on his personal memecoins.

Just look at a recent, explosive investigation by NOTUS, which revealed that the Trump family’s commercial crypto venture is now expected to receive federal banking privileges. Think about that for a second. The Trump administration is actively drafting and negotiating federal laws to regulate digital assets while simultaneously positioning Trump’s own family business to secure a highly lucrative federal banking charter.

Without bright-line disclosure rules and strict conflict-of-interest bans, the CLARITY Act doesn’t protect consumers; far from it. It paves the way for what U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has accurately called a regulatory “superhighway for corruption.” It allows senior officials, legislators and their family members who hold massive, unvetted crypto portfolios to leverage insider information to manipulate markets for private profit. Who will be left to pay the price when the bubble bursts? Everyday Pennsylvania families.

The responsibility now rests on our leaders in the Senate to protect the integrity of our laws, our democracy and our financial system. U.S. Sen. John Fetterman has spent his career fighting for working people and standing up to powerful insiders who think the rules don’t apply to them. I respectfully urge him not to accept legislation that falls short of fully prohibiting all elected and appointed public officials – including the president and vice president, and their families – from promoting, issuing or sponsoring crypto products and services, directly or indirectly. 

An effort to ban an elected official from issuing tokens while completely exempting their immediate family members from the rulebook does not amount to real reform. It is an empty gesture that leaves the backdoor wide open to systemic corruption.

It is crucial that the Senate stands firm with Pennsylvanians who care about the integrity of our government and vote NO on the CLARITY Act until full, mandated ethics standards are explicitly written into the text.