Washington came surprisingly close this week to writing a dollar amount into one of its thorniest crypto ethics rule debates.

Under the final Senate draft of the CLARITY Act, senior federal officials holding equity worth at least $15,000 in certain businesses that issue or sponsor digital assets would have had to sell that interest or place it into a qualified blind trust. Their spouses would have faced the same restriction, but their adult children wouldn’t.

The bill failed to advance on Sept. 15, so none of this became law. But the language is revealing because CLARITY was primarily supposed to establish who regulates crypto markets and under what rules. By the end of the negotiations, Congress was also trying to decide where a…