Bitwise CIO Says Bitcoin (BTC) Gained 8% After CLARITY Act Stalled

Bitwise's Post-Vote Memo

Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan argues that the US Senate's failure to advance the CLARITY Act has left the crypto market better off, not worse. In a memo published on Wednesday, Sept 30, Hougan framed the legislative collapse as a favorable exchange: crypto gave up the promise of long-term statutory certainty and received more favorable rules from regulators sooner. “Crypto got better rules sooner in exchange for long-term certainty. Not a bad trade-off,” the memo concludes. The vote itself came on Tuesday, Sept 15, when the Senate rejected a cloture motion to end debate and move to a final vote by 49 to 50, well short of the 60 votes required. That defeat capped three years of cross-party negotiation on the market-structure bill, which much of the industry had backed precisely because it promised regulatory clarity. Markets have shrugged off the failure. Since the vote, Bitcoin (BTC) has gained 8% and Ethereum (ETH) 7% by Hougan's tally, while the altcoin move ran far hotter: NEAR Protocol jumped 104%, close to doubling, Uniswap (UNI) rose 49% and Avalanche (AVAX) climbed 43%. Bitwise, the asset manager behind a family of crypto ETF products, reads those rallies as the market pricing in a lighter-touch regulatory path. He does flag one risk: a new administration taking office in January 2029 could install stricter SEC and CFTC leadership. The spot trading-adjacent price action tells its own story for now, with the Bitcoin price holding in the $83,000–$84,000 band as of this writing, keeping most of the post-vote gain.

Four Sectors That Skirted the Bill

Hougan identifies four sectors that come out ahead under the status quo. First, stablecoin rewards. Banking lobbyists had pushed to use the CLARITY Act to shut down interest payments on customer stablecoin balances, and the bill's final draft went further: it would have banned trading platforms from paying stablecoin yield in any form, with fines of up to $5 million per violation. Because the bill died, the GENIUS Act enacted in 2025 remains the operative law, and it bars only issuers from paying interest. Exchanges such as Coinbase can therefore keep paying rewards on customer balances with no federal cap. Second, exchanges themselves. Had the bill passed, it would have created a new nationwide exchange license and forced a separation between exchange and broker functions, a change Hougan believes would have eroded the edge of incumbents like Coinbase and Kraken. Third, tokenization. Two days after the vote, on Thursday, Sept 17, the SEC announced exemptive relief allowing tokenized US equities to trade on permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. Participating platforms are spared securities-exchange registration and liquidity providers are spared dealer registration; the relief runs for five years, covers listed US stocks only, and carries caps on the number of securities and trading volume. Hougan names Securitize among the beneficiaries. Fourth, yield-bearing tokens. On Friday, Sept 25, the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance published guidance stating that, for tokens on networks already functioning, announcing a buyback program does not by itself make the token a security. Hougan judges that this clears away ambiguity the bill would have left standing for projects such as NEAR and Uniswap.

Rules Without a Statute

Our read of the documents: every gain Hougan lists traces to agency discretion rather than law. The Sept 17 action is an SEC exemptive order, the Sept 25 FAQ is staff guidance with no legally binding force, and the CLARITY Act died as a proposal, so no statutory text binds anyone today; the only operative statute is the GENIUS Act, which restricts issuers, not platforms. The January 2029 inauguration is therefore the single point of failure, since a stricter SEC and CFTC leadership could unwind both orders. Hougan still judges a broad rollback unlikely, on the argument that years of institutional blockchain building make reversal costly.