All figures as of September 17, 2026. NFA. This is a framework; size it to your own risk. Forty-eight hours, two binary events, and the market got the worse outcome on both. The CLARITY Act d
All figures as of September 17, 2026. NFA. This is a framework; size it to your own risk.
Forty-eight hours, two binary events, and the market got the worse outcome on both. The CLARITY Act didn’t get the votes to reach the Senate floor on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Fed raised rates for the first time since July 2023. Bitcoin was near $80,000 on Monday. Now, it’s at $76,569, almost like Bitcoin Shrugged.
That shrug is the most interesting thing that happened this week because not everything shrugged with it. XRP is still almost 12% below where it traded before the vote, but ZEC is up over 29%. Some assets need clarity. Maybe others don’t. That split tells you more than the failed vote or the hike did.
The FOMC voted 12–0 to raise its benchmark rate to 3.75%- 4.00%. Everyone expected it, so the number moved little. The tone did the work. The statement says inflation “remains elevated,” and Chair Warsh said he’d be hard-pressed to call current financial conditions restrictive. A chair who says that thinks he has room to keep going.
Oil is the driver. Brent sits around $103, and the Fed can’t do much about an energy shock. What it can do is keep that shock from spreading into everything else. The biggest inflation pressure right now is coming from energy. The new projections put PCE inflation at 3.7% for 2026, then 2.3% in 2027. That’s the Fed planning for another year of this.
Unanimity is the tell. In July, three members dissented in favor of a hike while the rest voted to hold. This week, the vote to hike was 12–0, so nobody inside the Fed is arguing for a pause anymore. Another rate hike in October or December is a real risk for anything priced on cheap money, including crypto.
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The dot plot did the talking.
16 of 18 officials expect at least one more hike this year.
4 of the 16expect two more increases, not just one.
The other 2 think Wednesday’s hike was the last one this year.
Futures are close behind. CME FedWatch has October at about 51% and puts the odds of at least one more hike by December near 88%. Goldman changed their forecast hours after the press conference and now expects another hike in October. JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley still expect December.
We think a second hike is likely and a third is a coin flip. The projections show no hikes in 2027 and a cut in 2028, so the Fed is pitching a short, sharp cycle. If oil keeps forcing the issue, the 2027 dots will become the next casualty.
Cloture on the motion to proceed needed 60 votes. It got 49, all Republicans. The 50 nays were 46 Democrats plus Susan Collins, Josh Hawley, Jerry Moran, and Thom Tillis, who voted yes and then switched.
That switch is why this bill isn’t dead.
Only a senator on the winning side can move to reconsider. Tillis switched so he could file exactly that, and Majority Leader Thune entered the motion at 3:01 PM. The Senate can now re-run the cloture vote when they have 60 votes, without restarting. Thune did the same thing with the GENIUS Act in May 2025, and that bill became law.
The public fight was ethics. Republicans published a final draft Sunday night with 126 Democratic changes, including ethics limits on officials and their spouses. Democrats wanted to include other relatives, but Republicans rejected that counteroffer before the roll was called. By the end, the argument was about how far the limits on President Trump’s crypto interests reach.
That same draft carried a Treasury-controlled circuit breaker on stablecoin rewards, written to protect community bank deposits, so the yield fight never left the room. We think the banks pretty much dictated the cloture plan through their lobby. The industry tried to play nice, and we got slapped down for it.
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Lummis put it bluntly: “I think we’re done. It’s over.” She then spent Wednesday publicly pressing Democrat Angela Alsobrooks over her vote, which is an odd way to treat a dead bill.
Alsobrooks and six other Democrats who helped write it said this is “not the end.”
Ted Cruz sees “a big difference between dead and mostly dead.”
John Kennedy says it’ll have to wait for the lame duck.
The House leaves today and won’t return until after the November 3 midterms, and the Senate goes in early October. That leaves the lame-duck session. Before the 119th Congress ends January 3, the bill needs cloture, Senate passage, House sign-off, and a signature in about six working weeks. Polymarket has it barely on a heartbeat at 8%, and Kalshi is at 27%. Possible, not probable.
The agencies don’t need 60 votes.
SEC: The Regulation Crypto Assets comment period closes October 20. On Wednesday, Chair Atkins posted that the agency will act “with or without legislation.”
CFTC: Chair Selig plans market-structure rules under existing authority.
Tax: The Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act cleared Ways and Means 38–5 on Wednesday and brings wash-sale rules to crypto.
None of it replaces CLARITY’s SEC/CFTC split, and the next administration can reverse a rule far more easily than a statute. With Congress sidelined, TradFi incumbents could end up dominating this policy even more than they did on the Hill.
Bitcoin fell from $78,250 before the vote to $74,888 after, down 4.3%. It reclaimed $76,000 after the Fed release and sits at $76,569.
The plumbing behind that move matters more than the print:
Leverage: The vote flushed more than $570 million in longs. In the 24 hours after the Fed, $345 million more got liquidated, and $208 million of that was shorts.
ETFs: Spot BTC funds lost $450.4 million on Tuesday, the most since June 25, with IBIT and FBTC making up 84% of it. ETH funds shed $141 million. Wednesday brought another $296 million out of BTC funds, so the relief showed up in price while flows stayed red.
XRP: Down 12.2% after the vote, and it’s barely bounced.
Zcash: ZEC gained 11% after the vote, and is up 176% this year. On Wednesday, Paradigm disclosed a stake, and holders approved the NU7 upgrade the same day, so the vote isn’t the whole story. Still, when the U.S. regulatory path clouds over, capital rotates toward assets that don’t need Washington’s permission.
BTC rising into a hike is the week’s key signal. Both negative catalysts are out of the way, and positioning is cleaner than it’s been in a month. BTC slipped under $75,000 briefly and got right back above it. That’s a floor until it isn’t.
$75,000. It survived a failed bill and a rate hike. Losing it now would mean something new is wrong.
The 10-year. It touched 5.045% Tuesday, the highest since 2007, and sits at 4.955%. It matters more than the next FOMC. If it breaks higher, nothing risk-on works.
Oil. Brent under $95 weakens the case for December. Above $110, October tips toward a hike.
Payrolls. If they crack, the dots collapse quickly.
The seven Democrats. They’ve reopened talks. Bill text during recess would be the best sign a lame-duck deal is real.
Stay tuned. We’ll keep tracking exactly how the Fed and CLARITY stories unfold.
