President Donald Trump’s negotiators on the US Senate’s Crypto Market Structure Act are refusing to sign legislation that would go after the president for his digital asset business dealings – one of the key points Democrats have demanded in negotiations over how to govern the US industry.
Some of the earlier proposals for the ethics provisions of the bill — particularly those proposed by Sen. Adan Schiff of California — were “absolutely outrageous,” Patrick Witt, the executive director of the President’s Council of Digital Asset Advisors, told CoinDesk TV in an interview Tuesday at the Ondo Summit in New York.
“We have made it clear that there are red lines,” he said. “We will not allow the targeting of the president individually or his family members.”
He said he’s hopeful Democrats will pitch more reasonable versions “that feel a little bit closer to something that could ultimately be agreed upon.” And he said he believes a solution will be found.
“But at the end of the day, this is not an ethics bill,” he said.
Witt chaired a meeting of crypto policy experts and representatives of the US banking industry on Monday, where the digital asset insiders left frustrated that the bankers had yet to come to the table to offer a way forward on their disagreements over stablecoin dividends.
He told CoinDesk that the meeting “revealed some new areas of agreement,” but the White House is trying to thread the needle between bankers concerned about protecting their own deposit businesses and clearing a path for stablecoin products
“We are trying to broker a deal,” he said. “My No. 1 job is to get a bill to the president’s desk. He wants to see this bill done.”
But it’s Senate Democrats who may pose the tougher sell at this point, as they continue to push for crypto limits on senior officials, along with other major requests.
In the previous proposals that would have restricted the spouses of government officials from industry involvement, “a lot of senators’ wives and husbands might have been put out of work by that,” Witt said.
Democrats met with industry representatives on Jan. 16, two days after a Senate Banking Committee hearing to advance the legislation fell apart. And Democratic lawmakers plan to meet again on Wednesday to continue talking about their approach, according to a person briefed on the plans. If they can’t embrace a compromise proposal in the Senate Banking Committee, the legislation may have to advance with only Republican support, as a similar version was already in the Senate Agriculture Committee.
Ultimately, however, legislation must have significant Democratic support to pass the Senate, which generally requires a 60-vote majority to approve a bill. The White House directed industry insiders to get their compromise ideas together by the end of February, according to people familiar with the discussion. The longer this legislative process drags on, the harder it will be to pass a bill before Congress leaves to campaign for this year’s midterm elections.
Witt was also asked on Tuesday if he would be willing to identify how much in crypto the US government currently holds, a particularly relevant number in light of the ongoing presidential plan to create federal stockpiles.
“No,” he said. “I won’t go into that.”
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