Sen. Lummis Says Her Crypto Bill Could Have Slowed The $6.3B Binance Heist
Sen. Cynthia Lummis says her crypto bill, the Clarity Act, would have helped stop the thieves behind this week’s $6.3 billion Binance heist, a claim a critic quickly disputed.
Key Takeaways
- Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, says the Clarity Act includes a pilot for crypto firms and federal law enforcement to share intelligence directly
- She says the bill would also have given crypto firms legal cover to freeze suspicious transactions the moment police call
- The Clarity Act is not law, and Lummis blames Democrats for voting against it
- Critic Amanda Fischer says the bill only requires freezes under a court order, and Lummis replied that it covers exchanges like Binance
What Lummis Said
Lummis has used the Binance theft to make the case for the Clarity Act, a bill that sets rules for crypto markets. “Thieves stole $6.3 billion in crypto this week and moved it across blockchains in minutes,” she wrote on Sunday. “The Clarity Act created a pilot program for crypto firms and federal law enforcement to share intelligence directly.”
Two days earlier she went further. Hackers “stole more than $6 billion from Binance in less than 4 hours,” she posted on Friday, and the Clarity Act “would have given crypto firms legal cover to freeze suspicious transactions the instant law enforcement calls.”
The wording matters. Lummis is not proposing a new alert system. She is pointing to measures already written into a bill that has not become law, and arguing they would have helped.
The Pushback
Not everyone agrees the bill would have made a difference.
Amanda Fischer replied on X that the claim “is not true,” arguing the Clarity Act requires stablecoin issuers to freeze funds only under a court order, and shared the bill’s language for exchanges.
Lummis hit back on Friday.
She said the section Fischer cited is a savings clause that keeps existing finance and sanctions law in place, and that the bill “would classify Binance as a covered person because it is a digital asset service provider.”
She added, “No law stops every bad actor, but the Clarity Act would have given the people fighting them better tools and the ability to act faster. Your party voted no, and you have to own that.”
Also Read: FBI Blames North Korea For The $6B Binance Heist And Asks Firms To Block The Loot
A Week-Long Campaign
The Binance posts are part of a daily push by Lummis to blame Democrats for opposing the bill. In posts through late October she listed changes Democrats asked for, from $150 million in funding for the CFTC to police crypto markets, to fundraising caps under the bill’s Regulation Crypto rules, saying each was included and Democrats “still voted no.”
Why Speed Matters In This Case
The Binance theft shows why both sides are arguing about speed. The attacker drained Binance’s wallets in under three hours on Oct. 29. Stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle froze about $2 billion within hours using powers they already have, while about $484 million in Ether that no company can freeze still sits in two attacker wallets, Fathom’s on-chain tracing shows.
The FBI has blamed North Korea and asked crypto firms to block the hackers’ addresses.
Whether a law like the Clarity Act would have frozen more of the money faster is the question at the center of this fight, and one that neither side’s posts can settle.
Read Next: We Traced The $6.3B Binance Hack, And Half Of It Is Already Frozen
