Two macro events set the tone for crypto markets on September 16: the U.S. Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since 2023. Bitcoin retreated toward its lows near $74,900–75,200 during the day and finished around $75,800–75,900 almost flat, while total market capitalization stood near $2.58 trillion. Yield on 10-year Treasuries climbed above 5%, the highest since 2007. Investors withdrew money from funds: $450.4 million left bitcoin ETFs and $142.3 million left ether ETFs, while the Coinbase premium on bitcoin fell to a one-month low.
Fed's first rate hike since 2023 and bitcoin's reaction
The FOMC unanimously (12-0) raised the key rate by 25 basis points to 3.75–4.00%, the first increase since July 2023. The decision was broadly expected (traders priced in more than a 90% probability), so bitcoin barely moved: it traded a range of roughly $75,200–76,000 and finished the evening near $75,800. The median FOMC forecast implies one more hike by the end of 2026; 16 of 18 members expect at least one more increase this year, with the median path near 4.1–4.25% by year-end. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said "the economy really has strengthened" and called inflation "a problem." During the first hour after the decision, $117.35 million in positions were liquidated, of which $90.16 million were shorts.
The immediate post-decision volatility, however, was modest compared with the broader backdrop: 10-year Treasury yields exceeded 5%, and after the Senate's regulatory blow earlier in the day, short-term holders had already sent bitcoin to exchanges at a loss (see below).
Senate blocks CLARITY Act: ethics, not economics
The U.S. Senate failed to pass the cloture vote on the CLARITY Act, falling short of the 60 votes required. Most sources report a tally of 49-50 (some report 50-49). The bill's fate remains open: Senator Tom Tillis voted no as a procedural step and filed a motion to reconsider. The failure is blamed on disagreements over ethics provisions on crypto holdings of public officials — including the president — and gaps on national security.
Democrats pushed for stricter ethics rules, including extending requirements to officials' children, divestitures within 180 days, and a ban on transactions by the president and his family. Senator Elissa Slotkin called the ethics provisions "too thin" and pointed to gaps in CFTC oversight and anti-money-laundering. The House had passed the bill in July 2025 by 294-134, but Polymarket gave only a 5–6.6% probability of the Act being signed in 2026. The bill was meant to cement, for the long term, the division of powers between the SEC and the CFTC and the legal status of digital assets; its rejection leaves the market in uncertainty and shifts rulemaking to agencies whose rules are easier to overturn.
Market impact: ETF outflows and XRP's sharp drop
The regulatory failure triggered a selloff, and XRP was hit hardest of all, falling an estimated 8–12% to around $1.27–1.29 from levels near $1.40–1.45. The XRP CVD on Bybit reversed from +$6.512 million to -$10.575 million within hours. Ripple argues its legal footing is unchanged, citing the 2023 court ruling that XRP is not a security and the March joint SEC/CFTC interpretation calling XRP a digital commodity. Ripple's CEO Brad Garlinghouse said "it hurts," though he stressed the company's business has never been stronger, saying crypto can outlast the setback.
Spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. posted their largest daily outflow since June 24: $450.4 million, led by Fidelity's FBTC ($214.8 million) and BlackRock's IBIT ($161.7 million); Grayscale GBTC lost $44.1 million, ARKB $17.4 million and BITB $12.4 million. Ether ETFs lost $142.3 million the same day, XRP funds were flat, and total withdrawals across spot crypto ETFs approached $593 million.
The Coinbase Premium Index — the gap between BTC prices on Coinbase and Binance — slipped to -0.079, its lowest since August 16, reflecting weaker U.S. demand. Short-term holders sent up to 34,000 BTC to exchanges over a rolling day, the largest inflow in a month. According to CryptoQuant, after the CLARITY failure short-term holders moved 23,200 BTC (~$1.79 billion) to exchanges at a loss — the biggest STH loss realization in a month and the largest capitulation episode of September, with daily exchange inflows rising 71% to about 33,100 BTC. Binance saw more than 10,000 BTC in daily inflows and Kraken more than 6,000 BTC. Analyst Willy Woo called the divergence between Coinbase and Binance sellers a "bullish" signal.
Washington and beyond: tax, regulators, UK and digital euro
Despite the Senate setback, the House tax committee voted 38-5 the next day to advance the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act (H.R. 10357) — the first comprehensive federal tax framework for crypto. From 2028, income or loss on network and transaction fees up to $10 would not be recognized (a de minimis exemption); wash-sale rules extend to digital assets; and mining and staking rewards would be taxed as ordinary income, with a special regime for USD-pegged stablecoins. JCT estimates the provisions will raise roughly $2.5 billion, with a net effect of about $500 million over 10 years, partly by limiting loss write-offs.
Uncertainty over CLARITY has handed crypto rulemaking to the agencies. CFTC Chair Michael Selig said the CFTC is "ready and intends to issue its rules" and that the U.S. will remain the "crypto capital of the world"; SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the SEC will "act decisively within the SEC's authority — with or without legislation." The SEC's Crypto Assets proposal is published in the Federal Register with comments open until October 20, while the CFTC has sent 18 rule drafts to the Federal Register since January but none on crypto market structure. JPMorgan analysts note agency rules are less durable than a statute and vulnerable to courts.
Beyond Washington, the UK's FCA published its final perimeter guidance on crypto authorization: issuers of qualifying stablecoins, trading platforms, deal arrangements, custody and staking all fall within scope. The application window opens September 30 and closes February 28, 2027; the regime takes effect October 25, 2027. Existing MLR registrations and permissions will not carry over automatically, and no overseas persons exclusion applies to firms serving UK retail clients. Separately, the Bank of England has replaced individual issuance limits with a £40 billion cap on systemically important stablecoins.
In Brussels, the ECB opened applications for euro-zone online and mobile merchants to join a 12-month digital euro pilot expected in the second half of 2027; applications close October 27. The beta digital euro will not be legal tender, and issuance will only proceed after EU legislation.
Circle launches Arc mainnet: USDC as gas, Wall Street as validators
Circle launched its public mainnet for Arc — an EVM-compatible Layer-1 built for payments, tokenized assets and agentic transactions, with fees denominated in USDC, sub-second finality and a target base fee near $0.01. The first validator pool includes BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, MoneyGram, SBI Group, Standard Chartered, Sumitomo, Visa, Worldpay and Circle. On launch day, more than 100 applications (including Aave V4, Morpho and Uniswap) and more than 100 institutional partners (among them BNY, HSBC and State Street) were running on the network. The testnet processed more than 700 million transactions in under a year, and USDC has about $74 billion in circulation. Circle completed a genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens, stating this is not a commitment to list ARC publicly; a transition from Proof of Authority to Proof of Stake is being considered for 2027. Founder Jeremy Allaire called the launch "more consequential" than USDC, and the company raised $222 million in a pre-sale at a $3 billion valuation.
Banks and institutions move into crypto custody
Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest lender, plans to launch regulated digital-asset custody for institutional and corporate clients in Europe, expecting its MiCA license via BaFin in October. At launch it will support BTC, ETH, and stablecoins USDC, EURC and EURAU; tokenized financial instruments are on the roadmap. The bank will manage wallets and keys directly with hardware key generation, multi-person approval and segregated cold and warm storage, working with tech partners Bitpanda and Taurus. EURAU is the euro stablecoin of AllUnity, a joint venture of DWS, Flow Traders and Galaxy.
Ondo Finance's broker-dealer Oasis Pro Markets became the first tokenization player to join the DTCC Fund/SERV network, which handles more than 85% of U.S. mutual fund transaction activity and moves more than $12 trillion a year. Ondo, which already tokenizes USDY and OUSG, said the integration paves the way for distributing tokenized funds through the traditional fund ecosystem; the first deal, product and launch date have not been announced.
Meanwhile, MSCI is consulting (until September 30, 2026) on admitting non-operating companies to its GIMI indices; a simulation flagged Strategy, Metaplanet and Yellow Cake for exclusion. A decision is expected October 16, with implementation from December 1. Strategy holds more than 845,050 BTC, and passive funds tracking MSCI GIMI indices hold about 3.1% of its shares. Grayscale also updated its Digital Assets Next Gen model portfolio, giving XRP a 26% weight — the second-largest position after Ethereum's 42.34% — alongside Solana, Cardano and 5% each for SUI and LINK; the XRP holding is custodied at Coinbase Custody.
Exchanges: Celsius vs BitMEX, and regulated Hyperliquid perps in the U.S.
The Celsius bankruptcy estate filed suit in the Southern District of New York against five BitMEX entities over liquidation losses of 6,360.17 BTC (~$495 million) during the March 2020 crash: 1,325.84 BTC lost by Celsius on March 12 and 5,034.33 BTC by the investment fund JST the following day, whose claims were assigned to the estate. The suit cites fraud, breach of contract and unjust enrichment. BitMEX is ceasing trading on September 23.
Payward, Kraken's parent, plans to offer U.S. clients perpetual futures on Hyperliquid's permissioned HIP-3 markets under CFTC oversight. Bitnomial (acquired by Payward for $550 million) would act as the CFTC-regulated exchange and clearinghouse, NinjaTrader Clearing would hold client accounts, and trading would be executed and recorded on Hyperliquid's public blockchain. The launch is subject to regulatory approval — making Payward potentially the first registered U.S. platform to offer Hyperliquid markets. HYPE rose more than 3% on the news, open interest on Binance climbed 7%, and Hyperliquid has processed more than $200 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days.
Security: Robinhood charges, Revolut ransom and Lightning warning
U.S. prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged former Robinhood engineers Hefu Chai and Huaisun "Jerry" Xiang with commodity manipulation and wire fraud, alleging they used confidential information from the company's private Slack channel about upcoming token listings to trade Hyperliquid perpetuals in 2025–2026, each earning more than $50,000. Chai allegedly traded ahead of at least 10 announcements (including MEW, MOODENG, ASTER, XPL, HYPE, ENA and AERO); Xiang traded around the POPCAT listing and at least 10 more announcements. Each faces up to 10 years on the CEA count and up to 20 years for wire fraud; Robinhood cooperated with the investigation. The case follows the Coinbase insider case (Ishan Wahi) and is reported to be linked to researcher Astra Trades.
A group calling itself iamnotavillain has demanded 6,000 XMR (~$3 million) from Revolut within 24 hours, threatening to sell stolen customer data to other criminal groups. According to FT and sources, at least 680 accounts were affected, with identifying documents, verification photos and transaction histories exposed. The hackers claim they used onchain analysis to target accounts with significant crypto holdings, mostly in Switzerland and France. Revolut says its own systems, databases and client funds were not compromised, and that it had no direct contact with the group.
In network security, Bitcoin Core 32.0 has entered release-candidate testing, targeting release on October 10. The update speeds up block validation via parallel database reads, changes fee calculation and block handling, moves four wallet commands to the new PSBT format, and fixes a vulnerability that could let an authenticated user run commands on a node. A separate patch curbs excessive HTTP server memory use, cutting growth from 3.2 GB to ~3 MB across 16 unauthenticated connections. Separately, Core Lightning warned node operators to immediately disable experimental features while it investigates a vulnerability that could cause loss of assets on nodes running CLN software (not on Bitcoin's base layer); an emergency fix (26.06.7) shipped in late August.
Miners and networks: Ethiopia, Solana, Zcash and more
Ethiopia's state power utility EEP cut electricity supplies to bitcoin miners to 23% of contracted volumes (after cuts to 75% and then 50%) amid falling hydro reservoir inflows, reported at -20%, due to dry conditions tied to El Niño. Miners generated 35% of EEP's revenue last fiscal year; a review is planned for October, and power exports may also be limited.
Solana activated the V1 transaction format on September 15, tripling the maximum useful transaction size to 4,096 bytes, and is set to enable 250 ms slots at the epoch 1037 boundary, around 05:01 UTC on September 18. The network ran at record activity: it processed 5.2 billion non-vote transactions in August (+19% versus July) and led all chains in DEX volume last week at about $16.59 billion. The final roadmap stage, 200 ms slots, is live on devnet and testnet but has no mainnet date.
Zcash holders approved the core decisions of the NU7 upgrade: 99.9% of the weighted vote backed shortening block time from 75 to 25 seconds, 98.9% voted to keep bitcoin-style halvings, 96.6% supported deferring the re-emission of the accumulated NSM fee until February 2031, and 99.3% backed launching NU7 soon. Almost 2.4 million ZEC voted (threshold 1 million). The activation date is not set; the chosen features still need to be built, tested and shipped. ZEC rallied on the news, with estimates ranging from about 3.8% to 11–20% intraday.
On XRP Ledger, the Batch amendment (XLS-56) reached 82.86% validator support (29 of 35, above the 80% threshold), starting a 14-day timer for automatic activation on September 29 at 14:06 UTC. Batch lets up to eight transactions from different users close the ledger atomically in a single close. The first version was paused in February after Cantina AI found a signature-check flaw; after re-audits by Halborn and Common Prefix, the reworked code shipped in xrpld v3.3.0. The amendment is part of the institutional roadmap for XRPL (tokenized securities, exchanges, gas fees).
Finally, Ethereum and Base ended months of joint work on a common next-generation wallet standard. Ethereum is advancing EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) for the Hegotá upgrade, while Base is pursuing EIP-8130 for its Cobalt upgrade (testnet/mainnet in September). Cross-chain wallets and applications may now face two distinct transaction systems.