Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wants to ban politicians from launching their own tokens. The idea makes more sense once you see how much Trump earned from crypto this week.
That's a billion dollars in personal income earned in a year when this same president signs the laws governing crypto markets. No predecessor ever disclosed a sum like that.
What Gillibrand Is Proposing
In a Friday notice, Gillibrand laid out a specific rule. Members of Congress, the US president, and their spouses would be barred from "issuing or sponsoring their own digital assets." On paper it covers any token. In practice it targets meme coins first. Classic meme coins such as Dogecoin have existed for years without any political scandal attached. The TRUMP token and Melania Trump's meme coin are a different case: a sitting president's own family issued them. Last year alone, the Solana-based TRUMP token brought the president more than $635 million in personal income.
Why Now
This week Trump reported over $1.4 billion in crypto income for 2025. He earned that money while holding an office that shapes the laws governing digital assets. In a CNBC interview he said he did nothing illegal and wasn't even fully aware of the scale of his own crypto holdings. He didn't directly answer questions about conflicts of interest.
"This is a commonsense requirement that should get broad bipartisan support. Public officials and their spouses should not be issuing meme coins. We cannot let self-dealing destroy an opportunity to strengthen consumer protections, crack down on illicit finance, and expand economic opportunity for the millions of Americans our financial system has left behind."
- Kirsten Gillibrand, US Senator for New York, from an official notice dated July 3, 2026
Not Her First Fight
Gillibrand ranks among the most crypto-friendly Democrats in the Senate. Yet she's also the one leading an ethics push against conflicts of interest among officials. Earlier this year she secured a bipartisan deal barring members of Congress from betting on prediction markets, over concerns that people close to the White House were trading on inside information. She has spent years pushing a separate ban on stock trading by sitting officials, too. She stressed that the time to act is now, and that reforms need to stop members of Congress, the president, and their spouses from cashing in on their office.
Where This Leaves the CLARITY Act
Gillibrand is one of the key negotiators on the CLARITY Act, the Senate's digital asset market structure bill. Back in May she warned the bill wouldn't pass without ethics guardrails covering Trump himself. Yet when the bill cleared a key committee vote, no such agreement was in place. Analysts at Galaxy Research now put the odds of passage this year at roughly 50-50, and they blame a packed Senate calendar, not disagreement over the text.
There's already a precedent. When the GENIUS Act moved through Congress in 2025, lawmakers stripped out provisions that directly targeted Trump's crypto ties, including the TRUMP token. Gillibrand said at the time the coin was likely illegal under existing law. Trump signed the bill anyway in July 2025. It regulates stablecoins such as USDT, but it leaves the president's personal crypto holdings untouched.
The CLARITY Act matters well beyond meme coins. The bill is meant to finally draw a clear line between SEC and CFTC authority over digital assets, replacing years of court fights with an actual rulebook. The crypto industry has lobbied for the bill for more than a year, and any further delay means another season of legal uncertainty for US exchanges and tokens.
Who the Rule Would Miss
Gillibrand's wording is narrower than it could be. It covers the president, members of Congress, and their spouses. It says nothing about the vice president or adult children. That gap matters, because Trump's sons run two prominent crypto ventures of their own.
- World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto platform, already drew scrutiny over a $500 million deal with the UAE.
- American Bitcoin: the president's sons' mining company pulls Bitcoin out of the ground at industrial scale.
- Both ventures would sit outside the new proposal even if Congress passes it.
Democratic senators already demanded an investigation into that WLF deal with the UAE this spring, citing the same conflict-of-interest concerns. The administration never gave them an answer.
What Happens Next
Right now this is a talking point, not a law. Gillibrand has put her wording on record, Republicans have stayed quiet, and they hold the Senate majority that decides the outcome. The market barely noticed. Bitcoin ETFs pulled in $222 million last week, the first positive week since May. Options traders aren't fully buying the rally either: both bitcoin and ether are trading with a cautious tilt despite the recent bounce. Whether the ethics fight actually shapes the CLARITY Act vote should become clear before summer ends.
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