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Senate Democrats Launch Fierce Opposition to Sweeping Crypto Bill as it Nears Final Vote

Key Democratic senators are mounting a vigorous campaign against the Clarity Act in its current form, as the expansive cryptocurrency legislation approaches a critical final legislative hurdle.

On Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) penned a letter to Senate leadership, advocating for the inclusion of provisions that would prohibit President Donald Trump and his family from profiting from the cryptocurrency sector. These restrictions have not yet been incorporated into the bill, despite recent disclosures revealing the president’s substantial earnings of over $1.2 billion from crypto ventures last year.

“The crypto legislation heading to the Senate floor must prevent the president, vice president, senior administration officials, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off the crypto industry,” Warren stated. “Anything less would be a flagrant giveaway to the president and his family at the expense of the public.”

On Tuesday, several other Senate Democrats, including potential 2028 presidential candidates Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), are scheduled to hold a press conference to voice their opposition to the Clarity Act. The event is expected to highlight not only the president’s cryptocurrency dealings but also the bill’s potential to broadly weaken financial oversight.

While industry stakeholders contend that the Clarity Act, by legalizing most crypto activities in the United States, would enhance regulation of the nascent sector, critics argue it would significantly undermine financial regulations established in the aftermath of the Great Depression. They contend the bill would create exemptions for blockchain-based assets within these long-standing rules.

The bill, which has been under consideration on Capitol Hill for over a year, now faces a decisive final push. Most involved parties agree that its passage is imperative before Congress’s upcoming August recess. Failure to do so risks the bill becoming entangled with the looming November midterm elections and the potential for shifts in control of the House and Senate.

This leaves less than four weeks to secure the bill’s passage, with several key language-related issues still unresolved.

Further complicating the legislative landscape is the dwindling number of active Republican senators. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remains hospitalized following a health incident last month, and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) passed away unexpectedly over the weekend, though he is slated to be replaced.

The Clarity Act requires a 60-vote majority in the Senate, necessitating the support of at least seven Democrats, and potentially more.

On Monday, President Trump urged the Senate to pass the Clarity Act in tribute to the late Senator Graham, whom Trump described as a “big supporter” of cryptocurrency legislation. However, Graham was not directly involved in negotiations concerning the Clarity Act and rarely commented on the subject. Notably, he was the sole Senate Republican to co-sponsor the 2023 Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, a bill that cryptocurrency groups had criticized as “very anti-crypto.”

Prosecutors Propose New Framework for Crypto Money Laundering Cases

An article published in the official newspaper of China’s top prosecutors’ office has outlined a potential framework for prosecuting cryptocurrency money laundering, suggesting that courts should presume criminal intent when suspects utilize coin mixers and privacy coins. The proposal also advocates for the state to establish a platform for liquidating seized cryptocurrency.

The piece appeared in the “theory” section of the Procuratorate Daily, the newspaper of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. Authored by two district prosecutors from Hunan province and a university law professor, the article carries no legal weight. However, such publications offer insight into the evolving legal thinking within China’s prosecution system, which charged over 3,000 individuals with crypto-related money laundering in 2024 alone.

According to the authors, China’s specific money-laundering offense currently encompasses only seven categories of predicate crimes. Consequently, prosecutors often resort to a broader “concealment” charge for crypto cases, a workaround they describe as having become an overextended catch-all.

The authors urge the adoption of a “double investigation of one case” rule. This would involve scrutinizing every underlying crime for laundering activities and requiring investigators to meticulously map the flow of any involved cryptocurrency. This proposal builds upon a 2024 judicial interpretation from China’s Supreme People’s Court, which already classifies the use of virtual asset transactions to move criminal proceeds as a form of money laundering.

The most significant proposals relate to the burden of proof. The authors contend that courts should be empowered to presume a suspect’s intent to launder money unless they can provide “reasonable counter-evidence.” This presumption would apply when suspects employ tools designed to obscure transactions, such as mixers or privacy coins; offload large amounts of cryptocurrency at “obviously unreasonable” prices; or conduct high-frequency, large-scale transfers through anonymous wallets lacking any link to their identity.

Furthermore, the article introduces a “blockchain data self-verification” principle. This would treat on-chain records, verifiable on public block explorers with matching hash values, as presumptively genuine, shifting the onus of proof to any party disputing them. Reports from compliant blockchain analytics firms, including fund flow maps and address clustering, would be admissible as expert evidence. Money laundering could then be established from circumstantial, fragmented evidence, provided it forms a coherent chain, even if not every coin can be traced to its origin.

Addressing Seized Cryptocurrency

The third key aspect of the article addresses the disposition of seized cryptocurrency in China. Beijing’s ban on cryptocurrency trading means that authorities confiscating tokens lack a clear legal avenue to convert them into fiat currency, leaving billions of dollars in assets in a legal gray area.

The article advocates for a national platform to manage and dispose of seized crypto through “compliant channels,” such as directed auctions. It also calls for a standing expert committee to value holdings based on on-chain data and global exchange prices. Additionally, the proposal includes provisions for cross-border deals and a blockchain-based “judicial cooperation chain” to trace and recover assets moved offshore. In practice, local governments have reportedly been discreetly selling seized cryptocurrency through private firms in offshore markets, a workaround that Reuters documented last year and which a formal system would aim to replace.

China outlawed cryptocurrency trading and mining in 2021, yet it remains a significant hub for crypto-based money laundering. Chinese police have dismantled large laundering rings, including a $1.7 billion operation in 2022. According to Chainalysis, Chinese-language laundering networks processed an estimated $16 billion in 2025 and now account for roughly one-fifth of all global crypto money laundering. The firm attributes their rise partly to China’s capital controls, as wealthy citizens moving funds offshore provide the liquidity that enables these networks to launder money for Western organized crime groups.

Apple has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and two former employees, alleging that the artificial intelligence company used stolen trade secrets in its consumer hardware development.

Lawsuit Details

The complaint, lodged on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names Chang Liu, a former senior system electrical engineer at Apple, and Tang Yew Tan, an ex-executive involved in iPhone and Apple Watch design. OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI Group PBC, and io Products are also listed as defendants.

Apple claims that Liu, who departed the company in January after an eight-year tenure, failed to return a company laptop and subsequently gained access to Apple’s internal systems through an authentication vulnerability.

“While employed by OpenAI, Mr. Liu also exploited a rare, previously unknown authentication bug to access Apple’s shared network folders,” Apple’s attorneys stated in the complaint. “Upon discovering that he had this unauthorized access to Apple’s systems, Mr. Liu did not report it, return his stolen Apple-issued work laptop, or delete the program that allowed the access.”

The tech giant alleges that Liu downloaded numerous confidential hardware files, including details on unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data.

Allegations Against Former Executive

Apple also accuses Tan, who spent 24 years at Apple before becoming OpenAI’s chief hardware officer, of leveraging confidential information from his time at Apple to benefit OpenAI.

The lawsuit asserts that Tan used internal Apple project names during OpenAI interviews and inquired about unreleased products. Apple further alleges that candidates were instructed to bring “actual parts” for “show and tell.”

Additionally, Apple claims that OpenAI’s recruitment process solicited “CAD/design artifacts,” prototypes, supplier information, and specifics about employees’ work on Apple hardware.

Representatives for Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Broader Context

This legal action follows OpenAI’s recent $6.4 billion acquisition of io Products, a hardware startup founded by former Apple designer Jony Ive. Ive is not named in the current complaint.

According to the filing, OpenAI’s hardware division has recruited over 400 former Apple employees. Apple states it approached OpenAI in February with concerns about confidential information being transferred to the company but received no response.

The lawsuit emerges amidst a separate trade secret dispute between OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI. In September, xAI sued OpenAI, alleging that the ChatGPT maker recruited former employees to acquire confidential source code, training methodologies, and data center strategies. OpenAI denied these accusations, and a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in June, ruling that xAI failed to demonstrate that OpenAI encouraged a former employee to disclose confidential information.

The current lawsuit marks a significant shift from the earlier relationship between Apple and OpenAI. In 2024, Apple had integrated OpenAI’s technology to power Siri as part of its Apple Intelligence initiative. However, earlier this year, Apple opted to partner with Google’s Gemini to power its next generation of AI models, following delays that impacted its own rollout.

Senators Demand Hearings on Trump’s Crypto Holdings After $1.2 Billion Income Revealed

Democratic senators are calling for congressional hearings into President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency holdings, citing new financial disclosures that revealed over $1.2 billion in income for him last year.

Five Senate Democrats—Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Gary Peters (D-MI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Ron Wyden (D-OR)—stated that the disclosures have raised significant concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest, foreign influence, and Trump’s role in shaping cryptocurrency policy while simultaneously profiting from the industry.

“The disclosures heighten concerns about the president pushing Congress to pass crypto legislation in favor of the very industry he’s cashing in on, the administration’s moves to exempt cryptocurrencies and service providers from existing financial services regulations, and its steps to weaken enforcement, including by disbanding the Department of Justice’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team,” the lawmakers said in a statement Friday.

The senators who signed the letter are the leading Democrats on the Senate Banking, Investigations, Homeland Security, Judiciary, and Finance committees, respectively. They have formally requested that all of these bodies convene hearings to examine the president’s cryptocurrency dealings.

The group specifically highlighted that Trump’s disclosures indicated that unknown “third-parties” hold a stake in his family’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial. Notably, UAE royals purchased a 49% stake in the firm last year.

This request for hearings comes as the Trump administration is actively urging Congress to pass the Clarity Act, a significant bill aimed at formally legalizing most cryptocurrency activities in the United States. The legislation has faced considerable delays, primarily due to disagreements over ethics provisions that would govern the president’s ability to issue and endorse digital assets while in office.

Trump’s financial disclosure report, released last month, showed he earned more than $1.2 billion from crypto-related ventures. This includes over $635 million tied to his Trump meme coin and more than $588 million from token sales connected to World Liberty Financial. The disclosures also revealed that Trump holds tens of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The Clarity Act advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee in May, with two Democrats breaking ranks to support its progression. However, the lawmakers cautioned that a resolution on ethics language remains a prerequisite for their votes on the Senate floor.

Supporters of the legislation contend that it must be passed by Congress by August to become law this year, given the approaching November midterm elections.