The SkyBridge Capital founder said Congress should apply the bill’s crypto conflict-of-interest logic more broadly to stock trading and strengthen ethics enforcement for lawmakers.
SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said the CLARITY Act’s ban on federal officials issuing or sponsoring digital assets does not go far enough, arguing that Congress should apply the same ethics logic to stock trading and insider-trading restrictions more broadly. Speaking on CNBC, he said lawmakers’ $180,000 annual salary can create incentives to exploit information gathered in office and suggested a model like Singapore’s, where officials are paid far more but face stricter ethics enforcement. Scaramucci pointed to public trading disclosures showing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s portfolio, managed by her husband Paul Pelosi, has outperformed both the S&P 500 and Berkshire Hathaway, including a 70.9% gain in 2024 versus the index’s 24.9% return. He also cited Congress’s past rollback of part of the STOCK Act’s transparency regime after the law was passed in 2012 to curb trading on nonpublic information. The debate comes as the CLARITY Act already includes restrictions on the president and other federal officials sponsoring digital assets, while any effort to extend similar rules to congressional stock trading faces a narrow window before the August recess.