Crypto’s biggest legislative push in years just ran into an unexpected wall: nuns, bishops, and nearly 100 Catholic leaders who say the bill doesn’t do enough to stop human traffickers from using digital assets.

The Alliance to End Human Trafficking, backed by Catholic organizations across the country, has formally opposed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, known as H.R. 3633. Their concern is straightforward: a bill designed to bring order to the crypto markets may inadvertently make it easier for bad actors to exploit those same markets.

What the bill actually does

The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act is the crypto industry’s best shot at a comprehensive federal framework, and it has been moving through Congress with real momentum. The House passed it in July 2025 by a vote of 294 to 134, a margin wide enough to suggest genuine bipartisan appetite for getting crypto regulation done.

The bill’s core mission is to end the long-running turf war between the SEC and the CFTC over who gets to regulate digital assets. It does this by classifying many tokens, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, as commodities rather than securities, handing primary oversight to the CFTC. It also creates registration categories for crypto intermediaries like exchanges and brokers. The bill also addresses pathways for certain digital assets to transition from security to commodity status based on their decentralization level.

The Senate Banking Committee cleared the bill on May 14, 2026, by a vote of 15 to 9. That narrow margin told a different story than the House blowout. Senators on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns, and the path to a full Senate floor vote remains genuinely uncertain as of mid-June 2026.

Why the trafficking argument lands differently than typical crypto opposition

The Alliance to End Human Trafficking argues that the bill’s illicit finance provisions are not strong enough to prevent digital assets from being used to move money tied to trafficking networks. The group’s position is essentially that regulatory clarity for the industry is fine, but not at the cost of weakening the safeguards that exist to catch financial crimes. When nearly 100 religious leaders sign onto that argument, it gives skeptical senators a politically safe reason to slow-walk the bill or demand amendments.

The bill’s supporters would argue it does not eliminate existing anti-money laundering requirements, which continue to apply to registered crypto intermediaries under federal law. But the Alliance’s pushback suggests those existing frameworks are not seen as sufficient by groups working directly on trafficking issues.

The Senate’s other sticking points compound the problem. Beyond the illicit finance debate, senators have raised ethics concerns related to provisions in the bill, and competing legislative priorities, including budget negotiations and other financial regulation, are crowding the calendar.

What this means for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader market

Bitcoin and Ethereum stand to benefit the most from the bill passing, because their classification as commodities under CFTC oversight is already widely expected and would remove a significant layer of regulatory uncertainty.

The trafficking opposition creates a specific kind of risk: the demand for stronger anti-money laundering provisions could force amendments that reshape how the bill treats crypto intermediaries. If exchanges and brokers face significantly tighter compliance burdens as a condition of Senate passage, the operational costs for the industry go up, and some of the bill’s promised clarity gets replaced with new complexity.

The next major milestone is whether Senate leadership schedules a floor vote before competing priorities push the bill into the legislative equivalent of a waiting room. The committee cleared it. The House already passed it. Whether it actually becomes law depends on a Senate calendar that currently has no shortage of things to argue about.