Advocacy groups are pressuring two ambitious Democratic senators to back provisions that would crack down on President Donald Trump's involvement with the cryptocurrency industry. Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) find themselves caught between an industry that helped elect them and the Democratic Party's message on presidential self-dealing.
The Senate is poised to advance long-anticipated legislation that would grant the crypto industry the soft regulation it has been lobbying for. However, the bill cannot pass without support from a handful of Democrats. Schiff and Gallego, both with progressive credentials and beneficiaries of millions of dollars in ads from industry-backed super PACs in 2024, are key swing votes.
Progressive groups pressed Gallego and Schiff to withhold support from the new bill unless it bans the president from participating in crypto businesses, as Trump has done during his second term. “Senators cannot accept legislation that falls short of prohibiting all elected and appointed public officials to high office and their families, including the President and Vice President, from promoting, issuing, or sponsoring crypto products and services, directly or indirectly,” Americans for Financial Reform, Demand Progress Action, Indivisible and Public Citizen said in a letter on Friday, which has not been previously reported.
Senate Democrats initially demanded presidential ethics provisions be added to a smaller crypto bill Congress passed last year, but still voted for the bill even after their demands were mostly rebuffed.
Spokespeople for Schiff and Gallego, a potential 2028 presidential contender, did not respond to requests for comment on Monday. Gallego is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, which will vote on the so-called market structure bill this week. The legislation has been stalled over a dispute between the crypto industry and banks, which dislike a proposal to allow “stablecoin” issuers to pay their customers “yields,” an idea that strikes banks as overly similar to interest on savings accounts.
“Our concern is that payment stablecoin yield, or incentives that act like yield, can reduce U.S. deposits and, in turn, banks’ capacity to extend credit across the country,” a group of bank trade associations warned lawmakers on Friday.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the banking committee’s top Democrat, has made Trump’s involvement in crypto a key reason for opposing Republican bills granting the industry soft-touch regulation. At a hearing in February, she pointed to a Wall Street Journal report that Trump’s company, World Liberty Financial, received an investment from a member of the United Arab Emirates royal family, and that the UAE subsequently won access to tightly guarded AI chips. “President Trump’s crypto company is now at the center of perhaps the most disgraceful presidential corruption scandal in U.S. history,” Warren said.
