Recently, the "Clarity Act," which was supposed to lay down a unified federal regulatory framework for the U.S. digital asset market, has suddenly hit an invisible threshold: Negotiations between the White House and Republican senators over the ethical clauses related to digital assets have stalled, as the White House has yet to define acceptable ethical boundaries. The updated legislative text has not been released publicly, and the Senate voting date remains uncertain. The "Clarity Act" originally aimed to provide a set of national regulatory rules for platforms, brokers, custodians, and even newly entering financial service companies through a written law. However, now, the momentum is firmly held by the administration and Senate Republicans, neither of whom is willing to concede on the "ethical" issue. Last week, President Trump summoned key figures involved in the deadlock to the White House—Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, legal advisor David Warrington, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, alongside Patrick Witt, the Executive Director from the Crypto Council, and active senators on the digital assets issue, Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno. A closed-door meeting attempted to align industry voices with political calculations on the same table, yet no compromise on the ethical clauses was achieved. As industry forces such as the Crypto Council have been drawn into the negotiations but cannot alter the framework, the unified regulatory framework for U.S. digital assets is compelled to remain suspended. Platforms and institutions operate without knowing when and under what ethical boundaries new regulations will come into effect, leaving the entire market teetering between the federal level's regulatory void and compliance expectations, enduring a regulatory trial with uncertain timelines and difficult-to-estimate costs.

Stalemate on Ethical Clauses: Clashes Between the White House and Republicans

In the current version of the "Clarity Act," the question of what kind of "ethical clauses" should be set around digital assets has transformed from a technical detail into a core bottleneck blocking the legislative process. According to reports from Crypto in America, the White House has yet to clarify its acceptable ethical boundaries for digital assets, indicating that it desires to embed a set of value judgments in the new framework while simultaneously failing to provide specific standards that can hold up politically and legally. On the Republican senator side, there is a refusal to back this yet-to-be-formed ethical design without foreseeable consequences; negotiations remain unable to converge on a common text, and the updated draft of the "Clarity Act" has been stuck in an "unpublished" state, with the Senate vote date also left hanging.

Last week, Trump summoned Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House legal advisor David Warrington, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Crypto Council Executive Director Patrick Witt, and Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno into the same room, attempting to find a feasible compromise on the ethical clauses in a closed-door meeting. However, this meeting did not break the deadlock; the White House and Republican senators still disagree on the fundamental questions of "whether and how to strengthen ethical constraints on digital assets through ethical standards." Consequently, it remains unpredictable how law enforcement will define compliance and violations based on this, and whether value judgment thresholds will be introduced during license approvals, creating an added layer of uncertainty risk for institutions when planning long-term compliance paths and federal licensing strategies.

Delayed Regulatory Framework: Who is Left Hanging?

From the outset, the "Clarity Act" was presented to the federal legislative table to write a set of unified rules for the U.S. digital asset market that could be "copied"—clearly outlining what constitutes compliant issuance, what constitutes legal custody, how platforms should report, and how financial institutions should enter the market. The entities with the most direct expectation for this framework are domestic trading platforms, custodians, asset issuers, as well as compliant funds and traditional financial institutions focusing on digital asset allocation. They have long reserved a chapter titled "Clarity Act" in their internal compliance manuals, waiting to replace the currently patchworked terms with a clear federal standard.

However, the deadlock over the ethical clauses has prevented this chapter from being written. Due to a lack of breakthroughs in negotiations, the updated bill text has yet to be released, and the Senate voting date remains uncertain, meaning that within the foreseeable future, all the aforementioned market participants can only continue to adhere to existing regulatory rules, navigating operations within a fragmented and layered institutional environment. They must cope with cross-examinations under varying regulatory standards while being unable to adjust business models and license layouts based on the future federal framework. Compliance costs rise while uncertainty cannot be mitigated by "clear rules," leaving the key institutions in the entire U.S. digital asset supply chain hanging, forced to seek survival space within an incomplete old order.

Trump's Meeting Ends Empty: Limits of Industry Lobbying

In this suspended state, last week, the White House attempted to recalibrate the direction of the "Clarity Act" through a high-density closed-door meeting. President Trump personally summoned Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House legal advisor David Warrington, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to sit together, while on the other side were Crypto Council Executive Director Patrick Witt and Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno—almost everyone from the executive branch, the judicial system, industry lobbying organizations, and key legislators was present, demonstrating that digital assets have deeply embedded themselves in the power structure of federal legislative games. The goal of this meeting was not hidden: to find a compromise on the ethical clauses blocking the legislative process and to clear obstacles for the updated text such that the new regulatory framework at least enters the Senate procedure instead of continuing to be stalled on invisible red lines within the White House.

However, the political calculations and risk preferences of those present did not naturally converge in those few hours, and at the end of the meeting, the negotiations on ethical clauses remained unbroken, with the deadlock left untouched on the table. For the industry, this was a close encounter with the core of federal power, yet it also exposed the hard boundaries of lobbying: companies and industry organizations can pressure through data, voter mobilization, and capital market influence to demand a "servable" compliance framework as soon as possible, yet it is challenging to draw lines for the government on issues involving ethical standards. Ultimately, the ability to delineate acceptable ethical boundaries for digital assets still resides within the political bargaining of the White House and the Senate, rather than within any industry alliance's negotiation tactics.

Voting Uncertain: A Compliance Vacuum for Platforms and Institutions

The prolonged inability to reach an agreement on the ethical clauses has directly placed the "Clarity Act" at a double threshold of text and procedure: the updated legislative text has yet to be released, and the Senate cannot schedule any voting processes, with the voting date completely removed from the agenda. For market participants, this means that the federal regulatory upgrade that was originally hoped to provide a "unified answer" is temporarily shelved, leaving the regulatory framework hovering between old fragmented rules and enforcement standards, forcing compliance planning to recalculate repeatedly based on a set of assumptions that could change at any moment.

During this compliance vacuum period, trading platforms, custodians, and asset management institutions in the United States are simultaneously under triple pressure: on one hand, they must plan future licensing pathways but cannot predict under which category they will fall based on the "Clarity Act"; on the other hand, the design of new products can only patch existing rules, without being able to connect in advance with the potential incoming federal framework, and must proactively narrow risk boundaries through limiting exposures and shortening product durations; finally, risk management teams cannot recalibrate compliance costs based on a clear legislative text and must maintain a conservative and inefficient allocation model under the dual constraints of "old rules + future uncertainty." This uncertainty is not confined to the domestic U.S. market—lack of a clear timeline and compromise plan in official information also forces overseas institutions to factor in scenarios of "sudden legislative thaw and significant rule rewriting" when evaluating the U.S. market, leading to cautious behavior in capital deployment and business layouts until the federal level's regulatory boundaries become fully established.

Regulatory Philosophy Rift: U.S. Pathway and Global Warnings

The division in the regulatory philosophy around the yet-to-be-publicized ethical clauses for digital assets has been thoroughly exposed in the U.S.: on one end, there is a insistence on moral and social risk, demanding that "untouchable" red lines be drawn on on-chain behaviors and capital usage scenarios; on the other end, there is greater emphasis on innovation and efficiency in the capital markets, hoping that the "Clarity Act" will serve as a tool for releasing compliance certainty rather than adding a layer of subjective moral scrutiny. The White House has yet to clarify acceptable ethical boundaries, and Republican senators are unwilling to concede on principle, with no official arrangements for the updated bill text and Senate voting time, signaling very clearly to the industry—regulatory order restructuring remains in the "conceptual battle" stage. In such a state of high timeline uncertainty, institutions and projects cannot bet on the swift implementation of a single bill, but must prepare for various regulatory evolutionary paths, reserving technical, compliance, and business buffers. They need to be ready to operate long-term under existing fragmented rules while also preparing for the impact of a scenario where "one day a new federal framework suddenly takes effect." For the global market, the "Clarity Act" is viewed as a potentially key legislation to reshape U.S. digital asset regulatory order; its trajectory has demonstrative effects, and how the U.S. ultimately delineates the boundaries of ethics and innovation will directly affect compliance costs and capital flows in cross-border business, while the current outcome remains highly open, making any strategy betting on a singular pathway a gamble against uncertainty itself.

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