If Republicans were really willing to “do right” by the American people, they should have confronted Trump’s crypto dealings as they were happening. Instead, they largely stayed silent. That silence was a problem, and so was the scale of Trump’s personal financial involvement in crypto. Together, they created serious conflict-of-interest concerns that Republicans failed to adequately address or even acknowledge. Republicans then tried to negotiate legislation meant to advance that same industry without first resolving those concerns. So understand the position that put them in at the negotiating table. Given that context, it was hardly unreasonable for Democrats to insist that conflicts of interest, loopholes, and other exploitable gaps be thoroughly scrutinized before agreeing to move the bill forward. And yes, Democrats spent years taking an aggressively hostile approach toward crypto, but when it came to Trump’s own involvement, Republicans largely stood by while he did many of the very things Democrats had previously pointed to as hypothetical examples of how the industry could be abused. In doing so, they fed the very political opposition to crypto that they had spent years fighting. Now that opposition is back at the negotiating table, and the same checks and balances that once benefited the industry are working in the other direction.