Cody Carbone, CEO of the Digital Chamber, a crypto trade group that lobbied on the bill, says the industry lost a core protection in the last round of Clarity Act negotiations and should think hard before giving up anything else to revive the bill.

“Are we willing to go further? I don’t know the answer to that right now,” he said on Unchained on Thursday, two days after the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the bill. He does not think anyone in the industry is walking away from the bill, he said, but “we need to make sure that we’re not giving up the farm to get a bill, and then the bill is not great for our industry.”

The sponsors said the final text carried 126 substantive changes made at Democrats’ request, including ethics restrictions the president accepted. Every Democrat voted against cloture anyway, and Carbone said on the show that ethics “really carried the day.”

What the Final Text Took Out

The provision he named is the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, which shields developers who cannot control users’ transactions. Sens. Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott released the final text on Sept. 14, and its Sec. 10604 says a non-controlling blockchain developer is not to be treated as a money transmitting business. The sponsors’ own summary of what changed says the section now preserves those registration protections “while removing references to 18 U.S.C. 1960 in the text,” and extends them to miners and validators for the first time. That statute makes running an unlicensed money transmitting business a federal crime. It appears nowhere in the 635-page bill.

Developers “lost the criminal liability shield” in that draft, Carbone said on the show. They would keep civil protection, he said, “but if someone uses your technology that you’ve created for some kind of, uh, illicit activity, you can still be criminally liable, and that’s exactly what we were trying to fight against.” Sec. 10604 itself draws no line between civil and criminal liability; the sponsors describe what it leaves as a “strong civil safe harbor.”

Republicans Want Assurances First

Carbone said the industry had already swallowed limits on stablecoin rewards, which the final text bars where they amount to interest for simply holding a stablecoin. He did not think that was fair, he said, but “I had to, you know, bite my tongue” to keep the bill moving.

The calculation now runs both ways, he said, with Republicans asking what another concession buys. “Are we gonna get any assurances that if we give, you’re gonna vote yes on the Democratic side?” he said on the show. Congress has two weeks of session left this month, he said, then the election, then the lame duck, which he called crypto’s likely last chance: “I don’t think we see a bill next Congress.”

Related Listen: The Chopping Block: Crypto Clarity Act Drama + Stablecoin Yield Wars + Developer Liability Fights