Senator Cynthia Lummis says the CLARITY Act gives Treasury and exchanges new powers to freeze suspicious crypto transactions, targeting North Korea's Lazarus Group which stole $6.75B since 2019.
Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) said the CLARITY Act closes illicit-finance gaps that groups like North Korea's Lazarus Group have exploited, arguing the bill hands the U.S. Treasury Department and crypto exchanges new authority to freeze suspicious transactions before funds move overseas.
Lummis, one of the bill's lead sponsors, took to X and pointed to its anti-money laundering provisions as she pushes for a Senate floor vote before lawmakers leave for August recess. The Wyoming Republican has repeated the argument since defending the legislation from Senator Elizabeth Warren earlier this month.
"Sec. 303 enables new crypto sanctions on Iran. Sec. 305 lets exchanges stop illicit funds before they reach North Korea," Lummis said.
Section 303 gives the Treasury new special-measure authority to designate a foreign jurisdiction or financial institution as a "primary money laundering concern" specifically for digital asset activity. Once designated, covered exchanges and stablecoin issuers must prohibit or restrict fund transfers involving that entity, extending a tool regulators have long used against correspondent banks into crypto for the first time.
Section 305 works at the transaction level. It allows exchange operators and stablecoin issuers to place a 30-day hold on any transaction they have reason to believe involves illicit activity, extendable to 180 days if law enforcement submits a formal written request. Firms that act in good faith get a safe harbor from civil liability; existing suspicious activity report obligations stay in place.
Lummis has paired both sections with Section 201, which extends Bank Secrecy Act anti-money laundering requirements to digital asset firms for the first time. She calls that part of more than 16 illicit-finance safeguards built into the bill, a case she has also made for why the CLARITY Act would protect customer crypto in exchange bankruptcies.
The legislative push comes as North Korea-linked hackers stole roughly two-thirds of all crypto hacking losses worldwide in the first half of 2026. That was about $643 million of the $972 million stolen across a record 207 incidents, researchers tracked.
The single largest hits came in April. The Lazarus Group drained Solana-based Drift Protocol of $285 million and then compromised the Layerzero bridge connecting DeFi platform KelpDAO to Ethereum for another $292 million. Those losses build on a pattern tracked for years: DPRK-linked actors stole a record $2.02 billion in 2025 alone, a 51% jump from the year before, pushing the group's cumulative haul since 2019 to $6.75 billion. The single largest exploit remains the February 2025 attack on Bybit, where Lazarus-linked hackers made off with roughly $1.5 billion in ethereum.
The group has also shifted tactics this year, moving beyond bridge and protocol exploits toward direct targeting of crypto executives. Bitcoin.com News tracked a Lazarus-linked campaign dubbed Mach-O Man in April, which uses fake meeting invitations and a social-engineering technique called ClickFix to trick fintech and crypto staff into pasting malicious commands into their own Mac terminals, giving hackers a foothold before any onchain theft even begins.
Galaxy Research lowered its estimate for the CLARITY Act becoming law in 2026 to 30% after lawmakers released final text. The firm cited increased partisan friction over the bill's stablecoin provisions and Treasury powers as the main reasons for the downgrade.
The CLARITY Act has also drawn support from traditional finance figures. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon backed the bill earlier this month, arguing it would let banks compete with stablecoin issuers while tightening oversight. That dynamic has created an unusual coalition: crypto exchanges and Wall Street banks both want the bill, while some privacy advocates and progressive Democrats remain opposed.
For now, the Senate Banking Committee has not scheduled a markup. Lummis said she is working with Majority Leader John Thune to find floor time before the August recess, though the calendar is tight with appropriations bills and a debt-ceiling deadline.
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