Trump Presses Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini and Chainlink Leaders for a Fair CLARITY Act Ahead of Sept. 15 Senate Vote
President Trump used a White House sit-down with the crypto industry’s biggest names to press Congress for a “fair version” of the CLARITY Act, less than a month before the bill faces the toughest vote of its life. The message, delivered inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to a room that included the chief executives of Coinbase, Ripple, and Gemini, along with executives from Chainlink Labs, was blunt: get this done, and get it done in a form the industry can live with.
Trump called the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act “very, very powerful structured legislation which will keep us ahead of China, keep us ahead of everyone else,” framing the bill’s market-structure framework as a matter of preserving America’s edge in digital assets rather than simply a domestic policy fight. Also in the room were SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, the two officials who would be handed much of the responsibility for implementing the bill’s split oversight of tokens and trading venues if it passes.
The bill now heads toward a Senate cloture vote scheduled for September 15 at 2:15 p.m. Eastern, a procedural hurdle that requires 60 votes to clear. Republicans control 53 seats, and leadership is bracing for defections from at least Senators Rand Paul and Josh Hawley, with Thom Tillis also seen as uncertain — meaning at least ten Democratic senators would need to cross over for the bill to advance. Fail here, and the CLARITY Act’s market-structure push effectively dies for the year, with little realistic path back before the 2029 election cycle given the midterms in between.
Three fights are still unresolved heading into that vote. One centers on ethics provisions tied to the roughly $1.4 billion in crypto-related income linked to Trump personally. A second involves liability protections for DeFi developers written into Section 604 of the bill. A third concerns a stablecoin yield provision that touches an estimated $1.35 billion a year in USDC rewards revenue that flows to Coinbase — money the exchange has a direct stake in protecting.
The industry’s financial commitment to getting the bill across the line has been sizable. Coinbase has funneled roughly $35.2 million through affiliated political committees, while Ripple has put in close to $49 million, spending that reflects how much is riding on the outcome for both companies. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse posted after the meeting that “crypto isn’t a fringe industry,” pointing to the roughly 67 million Americans — nearly one in four — who now hold some form of crypto. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, for his part, has described the bill as reflecting “a true bipartisan compromise” that could make the current regulatory progress durable for decades rather than reversible by the next administration.
Whether that optimism survives contact with the Senate floor on September 15 is still an open question. Prediction markets tracking the vote have been split hard on the outcome, and the same three disputes that have stalled negotiations for weeks show no clean resolution yet. What’s changed is the level of direct presidential pressure now being applied to move it.
Crypto policy outcomes are inherently unpredictable and this is not investment advice; token prices tied to regulatory news can swing sharply in either direction. For a primer on how US crypto regulation actually works, see coin680’s Bitcoin Academy.