“A bill to prohibit certain individuals from engaging in prohibited financial transactions, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section prohibits covered individuals—defined as the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, Delegates, Resident Commissioners of Puerto Rico, and candidates in elections for those offices—from engaging in prohibited financial transactions involving digital assets (i.e., any digital representation of value recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger) from the date of filing as a candidate through the election, during their term of service, and for one year thereafter. Prohibited financial transactions include issuing, sponsoring, or endorsing such assets; purchasing, selling, holding, or otherwise obtaining them; acquiring comparable interests synthetically (e.g., via derivatives) or through funds (e.g., mutual funds or ETFs). Covered individuals must instead place existing digital assets into a qualified blind trust (as defined in 5 U.S.C. §13104(f)(3) and approved by the applicable supervising ethics office), with the trustee required to divest within 6 months, provide annual certifications of nondisclosure to the covered individual, and have no close personal or business relationship with them. This section further (1) requires supervising ethics offices to publish qualified blind trust agreements online; (2) amends 5 U.S.C. §13101(18) to designate the Federal Election Commission as a supervising ethics office for specified candidates (previously A-D only); (3) deems violations unofficial acts ineligible for immunity; (4) authorizes the Attorney General to pursue civil penalties of up to $250,000 for knowing violations, plus disgorgement of profits; and (5) establishes criminal penalties for knowing violations causing $1 million or more in aggregate U.S. losses or yielding financial benefits (direct or indirect), including fines under 18 U.S.C. and imprisonment for up to 18 years.