Senator Cynthia Lummis Says Jamie Dimon Is 'Absolutely Wrong' On CLARITY Act, Hasn't Read The Bill

• Senator Cynthia Lummis said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is "absolutely wrong" about the CLARITY Act.
• She claimed that he either has not read the bill or is misrepresenting its anti-money laundering provisions.
• Lummis said the legislation contains more than 1,600 references to existing AML and Bank Secrecy Act requirements and defended protections for open-source software developers who do not control or know their end users.

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon's criticism of the CLARITY Act was “absolutely wrong” on Wednesday, contending that the banking executive has not read the legislation.

Speaking on CNBC, Lummis said Dimon's recent comments about the bill's anti-money laundering (AML) requirements and treatment of software developers were incorrect. 

Lummis pushed back on Dimon, who recently slammed the proposed CLARITY Act and crypto stablecoins for lacking adequate anti-money laundering (AML) and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) protections. He said that if crypto companies perform bank-like functions, they should be subject to the same AML, know-your-customer (KYC), and regulatory standards as traditional banks, which Lummis said is wrong.

Dimon also aimed at Coinbase Global Inc (COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong, calling him "full of sh*t" and vowing to fight the legislation. Lummis criticized those remarks, saying she found Dimon's comments about Armstrong "distasteful."

Commenting on Demon’s remarks on the CLARITY bill, Lummis said, "He either hasn't read the bill, or he wants to mislead people,” the Senator added.

Lummis Defends AML Safeguards

The Senator claimed that the legislation incorporates existing AML and BSA requirements that already apply to banks. She said the bill contains more than 1,600 references to those provisions and would continue applying them to digital-asset activities.

She also defended protections for code writers. According to Lummis, developers who write open-source code for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and other digital-asset products should not be held liable for how end users employ that software because "Once they've written the code,” Lummis said, “They don't know who the end user is." 

Bitcoin’s price was trading at $66,508, down over 1%, during the past 24 hours. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around BTC remained in the ‘extremely bearish’ zone, while chatter around it stayed ‘high’ over the past day. 

Next Steps For The CLARITY Act 

Lummis also outlined the path forward for the CLARITY Act, which cleared the Senate Banking Committee last month.

As the industry looks forward to a markup after July 4, Lummis said lawmakers are working to combine the legislation's US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) related provisions with commodity market provisions developed through the Senate Agriculture Committee. According to Lummis, lawmakers are also working on revisions tied to the GENIUS Act and ethics-related provisions before bringing a unified package to the Senate floor.

The senator said she has been coordinating with Senators Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), and Thom Tillis (R-NC), among others, as lawmakers work to assemble the final package. She added that some proposed changes are intended to address concerns raised by banks following passage of the GENIUS Act.

The latest exchange follows criticism of the CLARITY Act from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon last week, who warned that the legislation could put stablecoin issuers on unequal regulatory footing with banks.

Coinbase’s price was down over 4% during the mid-morning trade. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around COIN remained in the ‘bearish’ zone, while chatter around it stayed in the ‘low’ levels over the past day.

Read also: Economist Alex Krüger Calls Crypto A 'Failed Asset Class' — But Says Bitcoin And Blockchain Still Matter

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