Senate Democrats, led by Senator Adam Schiff and nine colleagues, have introduced the Curbing Officials’ Income and Nondisclosure (COIN) Act aimed at banning U.S. public officials, including the president, from issuing, promoting, or profiting from cryptocurrencies, memecoins, NFTs, or stablecoins. The legislation responds directly to President Donald Trump's reported $57.4 million earnings in 2024 from a DeFi project called World Liberty Financial (WLF). The bill prohibits officials and their immediate family members from engaging in such digital asset activities 180 days before and two years after their time in office, with enhanced disclosure requirements on digital asset holdings and transactions.
The COIN Act seeks to eliminate potential conflicts of interest and improve transparency by including crypto assets in officials' financial disclosures and treating them as financial interests that require recusal from related policy decisions. It also imposes compliance requirements on stablecoin issuers connected to public officials, mandating certification that no public figure profits from their issuance.
The legislation emerges amid growing regulatory and ethical concerns over crypto’s role in politics and follows reports of Trump’s family-backed WLF issuing a USD1 stablecoin last year. While the bill has support from advocacy groups such as Public Citizen and CREW and represents a pioneering legislative effort in the Senate to curb crypto-related political profiteering, its fate is uncertain due to the current minority status of Democrats in Congress and possible presidential veto.