Fail the Clarity vote, long live Clarity
After a year of buildup, the US Senate has failed to pass a cloture motion on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (Clarity) Act.
The proposal received only 49 votes in favor and 50 against, short of the required 60 votes.
However, Republican Senator Thom Tillis’s “no” vote seems unlikely, and he confirmed that he switched sides at the last minute to enable a new vote to be called in the future.
So does this mean Clarity Law could be resurrected? The GENIUS bill suffered a similar failed vote in cloture and then passed just 11 days later.
While there’s a small chance Clarity could still pass, the politics and number of legislative days suggest it’s unlikely.
Congressman Sri Thanadar, a Democrat who supported Clarity in the House, told the magazine that the timeline was a “major obstacle.”
“There are only 20 legislative days left in this Congress, all of them after the midterms, making the chances of a 2026 compromise, unfortunately, very slim.”
The seven Democratic senators who voted against the bill – claimed they were “committed” to passing it. at some point “We were ready to strike a deal today and were in negotiations leading up to the vote. Republican leadership pulled it off at the very last minute,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks.
NEAR chief legislative officer Abhishek Vaidyanathan noted that the House has already canceled two sitting weeks and the Senate’s state work period began on October 5.
“Now that cloture has failed, the next Congress is the next possible opportunity to address crypto market structure,” he said.
SEC Chair Proposes New Rules in Absence of Clarity
After the failed vote, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse predicted that US regulators would “continue to work hard to issue rules to fill legislative gaps.”
The industry didn’t have to wait until the US Securities and Exchange Commission just two days later announced a five-year-long exemption allowing limited trading of tokenized US stocks on decentralized public blockchains.
The innovation exemption allows tokenized stock trading using automated market makers and exempts them from registering as securities exchanges.
But the new rules don’t exempt “synthetic” stock tokens that don’t grant holders the same rights as traditional stock. This is bad news for almost all stock tokens issued by xStocks and Robinhood so far.
CFTC jumps in to propose new crypto rules
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also announced regulatory relief for providers of “passive software” that connects users to regulated derivatives firms and exchanges.
It issued a no-action position saying it would not recommend enforcement against CFTC-registered firms and against qualifying providers or their employees for failing to register introducing brokers or related persons when facilitating trading with exchanges.
Offering access to regulated derivatives, including fixed contracts and prediction markets, could make the position easier for crypto wallets and other apps.
The CFTC has also submitted draft crypto rules to the White House titled “Regulating Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulating Crypto Asset Markets”. The action is listed in the “prerule” stage, meaning it has not yet been formally proposed.
Coinbase submitted an application to the CFTC this week to offer 24/5 perpetual futures trading on individual US stocks. Kalshi filed a very similar proposal on the same day.
House Committee Votes Yes on Bitcoin Reserve
The American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026 passed the US House Committee on Financial Services this week. It would formalize the current executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve A digital asset stockpile containing other confiscated cryptocurrencies would also be held within the Treasury Department, according to the legislation.
The law requires all federal agencies to provide full audits of the digital assets they hold and mandates that they provide quarterly “evidence of reserves” reports.
This will prompt a study of budget-neutral acquisition strategies to purchase additional bitcoins for reserves. Connor Brown, executive director of the Bitcoin Policy Institute, on Wednesday to call This is “a truly historic step for Bitcoin policy.”
The US House Ways and Means Committee also passed the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act with bipartisan support, legislation aimed at overhauling the federal tax treatment of digital assets.
Revolut’s $3 million ransom demand highlights ID storage dangers
The theft of sensitive customer data from Revolut, including passports and KYC selfies, turned bizarre when a second hacker demanded a $3 million ransom.
Calling himself “IAmNotAVillain,” the actor publicly demanded 6,000 Monero from Revolut within 24 hours or it would sell customer records to criminal groups.
Earlier a group called themselves “Revolute Smiley”. claim 10,000 bitcoins for information, which is worth about $780 million. IAmNotAVillain suggested that the claim came from a former colleague who only had a small sample of the data.
The theft highlights the dangers of mandating KYC checks that have led to thousands of companies storing ID documents across the web, serving as a honeypot for hackers.
Disappointingly, it is now possible to verify identity using zero knowledge proof without sending any identity documents to third parties, but the technology is not yet widely used.
winners and losers
By week’s end, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading up 5.9% at $81,185, Ethereum (ETH) was up 6.6% at $2,639, and XRP (XRP) was up 5.4% at $1.40. According to CoinMarketCap the total market cap is $2.78 trillion.
Among the 100 largest cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week were NEAR Protocol (NEAR), with gains of 76.4%, Arbitrum (ARB) at 64.3%, and Athena (ENA) at 61.6%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week were STABLE down 11.6%, Pi (PI) down 11.3% and SPX6900 (SPX) down 1.8%.
Forecast for the week
Standard Chartered says Arbitram could grow 70X by 2030
Standard Chartered says the price of Layer-2 network arbitrage could reach as high as $10 by 2030. From current levels, this would represent a nearly 70-fold increase, which is much higher than Standard Chartered’s projected earnings for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) over the same period.
Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital asset research, said Arbitram’s economics offer substantial upside as the network receives 10% of net protocol revenue from companies built on it, the Robinhood chain being the first major example. The Robinhood fee will push Arbitram’s September revenue to $5 million, a fivefold increase from before the Robinhood chain launched in July.
Kendrick said the biggest risks to his ARB price projection include “a slower-than-expected pace of asset tokenization and more competition from alternative blockchains.”
Best FUD of the week
State hackers drive 420% increase in onchain malware, Chainanalysis shows
State-linked hackers account for nearly two-thirds of new activity each quarter as the number of attackers storing malware instructions or infrastructure data on public blockchains has risen 420% over the past 12 months, according to a Chainanalysis report.
Chainanalysis identified North Korea and Iran-linked operators among the state actors adopting the strategy. The analytics firm linked previously undetected activity across Tron, Aptos and the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) to UNC 5342, a North Korea-linked group tracked by Google Threat Intelligence.
Chainalysis says that using public blockchains increases the sustainability of malware campaigns because stored information remains accessible after domains, servers or code repositories are taken down.
BIS paper finds large gap in Bitcoin onchain transfer estimates
Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements found that estimates of bitcoin onchain transfer values can vary by up to sixfold depending on how transactions are measured.
The six-fold gap reflects differences between measurement systems, including how output changes and other transfers back to the sender are treated.
The measurement problem also extends to Bitcoin’s market capitalization. The researchers found that the prevailing measure was sometimes four times greater than the available capital, which values each coin at the price it was last moved.
Hong Kong ex-banker jailed for $1.6B in fake credit, cryptocurrency bribes
A former Hong Kong bank official who falsely authenticated more than $1.6 billion in letters of credit was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to repay more than $470,000 he received in cryptocurrency bribes.
Lam Chun-yin, 32, who was a customer relationship manager at China Construction Bank (Asia), previously pleaded guilty in The Standard District Court. Report saturday
Top magazine feature of the week
Is there any chance of saving the Clarity Act?
Clarity isn’t dead after failing in a key Senate vote, but with time running short and Democrats still demanding change, its path forward is narrowing.
Bitcoin Treasury Firms May Outperform BTC… But Is It Worth the Risk?
Bitcoin treasury companies only promise increased returns on investments in Bitcoin, but does the potential upside outweigh the risk of loss?
Revolut ID theft highlights the dangers of KYC: here’s how to fix it
Zero-knowledge technology can let companies verify who you are without storing your identity documents. So why isn’t this already standard practice?
Cointelegraph publishes long-form journalism, analysis and narrative reports with subject-matter expertise developed by Cointelegraph’s in-house editorial team. All articles are edited and reviewed by Cointelegraph editors according to our editorial standards. Some articles contain affiliate links, from which Cointelegraph may earn commissions. These relationships do not influence which products we review or our editorial decisions The content published here does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with appropriate professionals. Cointelegraph maintains complete editorial independence.
