Bitcoin ended the week higher even after two developments that would normally weigh on crypto prices: the U.S. Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, and the Federal Reserve delivered its first rate hike since July 2023. The market’s tone changed after the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a five-year "innovation exemption" order allowing qualified platforms to trade tokenized U.S. equities on public blockchains through liquidity pools. Bitcoin rebounded from around $76,000 to above $81,000 on Sept. 18, while roughly $470 million in short positions were liquidated over 24 hours, according to CoinGlass. The article traces the sequence across three days and asks whether the move marks a genuine clearing of bearish catalysts or a replay of 2023, when regulatory optimism lifted prices before macro pressure pulled them back down. It reviews the Senate vote count, the Fed’s updated rate path, ETF flow data, Glassnode’s on-chain observations, and the resistance zone between $83,000 and $86,000, where about 1.07 million BTC are said to be concentrated. It also contrasts the current market structure, shaped by spot Bitcoin ETFs and a larger stablecoin base, with the setup seen in 2023.

Goldman Sachs said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has created a compliant path for tokenized stock trading in the United States by granting certain exchanges and liquidity providers a five-year conditional registration exemption. The bank said the Sept. 17 order is the first broad opening for U.S. tokenized equities, but it also argued that the near-term effect should remain limited because the framework comes with tight constraints. According to Goldman’s Sept. 18 report, only venues using automated market maker, or AMM, order books can qualify, while traditional exchanges and most centralized crypto exchanges rely on central limit order books and do not fit the exemption. The order also applies only to natively tokenized shares, excludes derivative-style tokenized stocks, and gives issuers the right to object before trading begins. Goldman added that tokenized securities venues must face limits on ticker count and trading volume, provide shareholder rights and dividends comparable to the underlying stock, use auditable smart contracts deployed on public blockchains, and disclose operating and trading information. Within Goldman’s coverage universe, Coinbase and Robinhood could build tokenized stock businesses in the U.S., but Goldman said Coinbase stands to benefit more directly because its brokerage product already matches many of the exemption’s requirements. The bank also said the direct competitive threat to Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange remains limited for now, while broader legislative reform, including the stalled CLARITY Act, remains the bigger long-term variable.

Bitcoin rose about 5.9% on Sept. 19, climbing from around $76,000 to above $80,000 and reaching an intraday high of $80,857, according to ABMedia. The outlet, citing Decrypt, said the rally was driven mainly by forced liquidations of short positions rather than fresh spot buying. Bitcoin had fallen to roughly $75,590 on Sept. 16, when crypto-related assets weakened after the CLARITY Act failed to clear a procedural vote in the Senate by a 49-50 margin. After two days of sideways trading, the market turned sharply higher on Friday, with Bitcoin closing near $80,874 and later trading around $80,900. From the Sept. 16 low, the gain was about 7.5%. ABMedia also cited figures saying more than $445 million in crypto short positions were liquidated, with Bitcoin accounting for about $230 million. A separate CoinGlass figure put total 24-hour liquidations at about $529 million, mostly from shorts. The report added that the liquidation data could not be independently verified by Chain News because CoinGlass raw data requires a paid key, while price data was cross-checked against market quotes. ABMedia linked the repricing to the Federal Reserve’s rate projections released alongside its Sept. 16 decision to raise rates by 25 basis points.

Strategy founder Michael Saylor said the digital asset industry should spend the next two years pushing financial products into wider use rather than focusing on extra restrictions that may appear in a final compromise version of the CLARITY Act. In his view, the strongest defense of innovation is to make sure more people benefit from it directly. Saylor argued that the industry should lower costs, simplify access, offer more practical services, and give users stronger control over their funds. That, he said, would build a public base with a direct stake in supporting financial innovation. He also said the CLARITY Act would limit service providers from offering yield solely because users hold payment stablecoins, while also placing limits on some activity rewards and innovation sandboxes. At the same time, Saylor noted that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Treasury Department have recently used existing authority to advance tokenized stocks, on-chain finance, and stablecoins. He said the crypto industry should expand digital asset products in 2027 and 2028 and work to turn temporary regulatory measures into long-term rules.

Strategy founder Michael Saylor said the digital asset industry would be better off with supportive rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Treasury Department, and banking regulators than with the restrictions contained in the final CLARITY compromise. He argued that the safer path is to build products customers want, deploy them broadly, and make sure the public has a stake in innovation. In his view, policymakers should protect property rights, require honest disclosure, punish fraud, and then let entrepreneurs compete. Saylor said the September CLARITY compromise would have limited covered providers to paying customers only for holding payment stablecoins, while allowing qualified activity rewards and directing the Treasury to restrict certain rewards if community banks saw large harmful deposit shifts. He also noted that the GENIUS Act already includes limits on issuers paying interest and yield on payment stablecoins. Separately, he said CLARITY’s innovation sandbox would have capped participants at 25 employees and limited each committee to 20 project approvals per year. Saylor pointed to conditional SEC relief issued on Sept. 17 for on-chain trading of certain tokenized stocks and said the CFTC chair had pledged to use existing authority if legislation stalls.

Prediction market operator Kalshi has filed a proposed rule change with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and separately sought approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to list perpetual futures linked to individual U.S. stocks. The filing mirrors an application submitted by Coinbase on the same day, as both companies try to bring a product long associated with crypto trading into the traditional equities market. Under Kalshi’s proposal, the contracts would have no preset expiration date and would use periodic funding payments between long and short positions to keep prices aligned with the underlying shares. Kalshi said the products would be treated as security futures and cleared through Kalshi Klear, its CFTC-registered clearinghouse. The push comes as competition grows: Payward, Kraken’s parent company, has also filed through Bitnomial Exchange to offer stock-linked perpetual futures tied initially to 10 U.S. equities, including Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, with a goal of trading 24 hours a day, five days a week.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points on Sept. 16, marking its first hike in more than three years. While tighter policy is usually seen as negative for risk assets such as Bitcoin, the market reaction was brief: BTC dipped, then quickly recovered and moved higher. Analysts said the hike had been widely expected, which limited its immediate impact. They argued that a bigger source of volatility came a day earlier, when the U.S. Senate failed to pass the CLARITY Act on Sept. 15. Data cited in the report showed spot Bitcoin ETFs posted about $450 million in net outflows that day, followed by another $296 million in net outflows on Sept. 16. According to the analysts, upcoming inflation, employment and U.S. Treasury yield data may matter more for Bitcoin than the Fed meeting itself. If inflation cools and yields stabilize, pressure on the asset could ease.

CoinDesk has published a report revisiting the failed U.S. CLARITY Act and looking at what regulatory alternatives could emerge after the bill stalled. The article outlines the bill’s main provisions, which were designed to give cryptocurrencies a clearer regulatory framework in the United States. It also reviews how the measure failed to pass a Senate vote. According to the summary cited by Techub, the collapse of the CLARITY Act was followed by a quick response from U.S. regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, have already issued multiple crypto-related rules after the bill’s failure.