Bitcoin climbed back above $81,000 during Asian trading hours after the U.S. Senate Banking Committee advanced the Clarity Act in a 15-9 bipartisan vote late Thursday. CoinDesk data showed BTC at $81,055, up 2.3% over 24 hours and 1.9% over the past seven days, recovering the level it lost after Wednesday’s U.S. producer price index release.
A 15-9 committee vote puts the bill on a new track
The committee action marked the first major bipartisan move on crypto market structure legislation in months. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott used a late procedural shift to admit amendments that had previously been rejected. That move won support from two Democrats and secured the 15-9 result after hours of partisan clashes.
After the vote, Scott said the process had been one of the most informative and challenging he had experienced as a U.S. senator. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the committee’s ranking Democrat, objected to the procedural change that brought the additional amendments back into consideration, telling colleagues, “the deal you like, it’s not the deal I like.”
Merged legislation will still face Senate and House votes
The bill now heads toward a merger with a similar version that was previously approved by the Senate Agriculture Committee in a party-line vote. Once merged, the legislation will go to the full Senate and then to the U.S. House of Representatives. Several substantive issues are still unresolved, including law enforcement concerns and an ethics provision that some Democrats have identified as a condition for broader backing.
XRP outpaces the market as DOGE, BNB and SOL also rise
Among major tokens, XRP posted the strongest move, rising 4.5% to $1.49 and extending its seven-day gain to 7.6%. Dogecoin added 3% to $0.1159 and is now up 8.9% over the past week. BNB gained 2% to $681, while Solana climbed 2% to $91.
The report linked XRP’s relative strength to the regulatory angle of the bill. Since the SEC’s case against Ripple Labs, XRP has been one of the tokens most directly exposed to legal uncertainty in the U.S. A clearer market structure framework would remove one of the structural pressures that has weighed on its price.
Stablecoin carveout seen as useful for payments industry
Renna Ba, head of ecosystem at Layer-2 network Morph, said the Clarity Act’s separation of payment stablecoins from investment assets gives the global payments industry “the legal foundation it has needed to build with confidence.” The comment points to why the bill’s progress is being watched beyond price action alone, especially by participants focused on payments and compliance rules.