The Weekly Wrap: Clarity Without the Clarity Act & AAII Members Pivot Bearish

Listen to the Weekly Wrap on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It is a summary with the help of AI-voices. 

This Week’s Top Stories

“Clarity Act fails procedural Senate vote.” – Tuesday, 15 September 2026 

• On Tuesday, the Senate voted 49-50 against the Clarity Act, which would regulate the digital asset industry comprehensively for the first time at the federal level.
• Key Democratic negotiators said they voted against the bill largely because of ethics concerns. Republicans, Democrats and the White House have gone back and forth on ethics language over the past few months, but as of Tuesday, key issues still remain over whether or not states could charge public officials and whether the provision should cover family members.
• For many industry leaders and politicians, this week’s vote on the Clarity Act is disappointing, but it is not the end on multiple fronts. Many stated that regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can fill in regulatory gaps.
• On Wednesday, one day after the vote, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chair Mike Selig both stated that both agencies are locked in and ready to ship their rules for the new frontier of finance.

“The SEC released its innovation exemption to bring capital markets onchain in the US.” – Thursday, 17 September 2026 

• The SEC released its long-awaited innovation exemption, which Chair Paul Atkins says will bring capital markets in the US into a new digital era by allowing onchain trading of tokenized stocks.
• The five-year exemption had been in the works for over a year and was spurred by market interest, an SEC spokesperson said on a call with reporters.
• The agency stated that since Congress was not able to advance the Clarity Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a significant step forward within its statutory authority.
• The exemption would exempt certain trading venues, called tokenized securities venues, from being defined as exchanges and would also exempt specific liquidity providers from being defined as dealers under securities law when they trade stocks or provide liquidity through automated market makers.

“The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in three years.” – Wednesday, 16 September 2026 

• US interest rates have been raised for the first time in more than three years and could be increased further in a bid to slow inflation.
• US CPI rose 0.4% month-over-month in August, the largest increase in three months, while the annual inflation rate held at 3.4%, both in line with expectations. Gasoline prices jumped 3.9% and accounted for more than one-third of the monthly increase. Core CPI rose 0.3% on the month, also matching forecasts, while the annual core rate slowed to 2.4% from 2.5%, its lowest level since March 2021.
• The FOMC voted unanimously, 12–0, to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00%, while continuing its policy of maintaining ample reserves in the banking system. 
• They stated that the US economy continues to expand at a solid pace, domestic spending remains resilient, productivity growth and capital investment are strong, and the labor market is broadly stable. Uncertainty remains elevated, in part due to geopolitical developments. Inflation remains elevated, and the Committee said the rate increase is intended to support a timelier return to its 2% target.

SEC innovation exemption sends crypto higher 

The crypto market, especially certain specifically affected projects, is trading higher this week after the SEC announced its innovation exemption on Thursday. After an initial shock and a move to the downside following the Clarity Act’s failure to pass in the Senate, the market is slowly recovering and trading to the upside. Projects such as Uniswap, Hyperliquid, NEAR Protocol, and Zcash are up by double-digit percentages this week, with ZEC up 33%, NEAR up 40%, and UNI up 44%. 

Bitcoin traded below its 20-day low on Tuesday but managed to reclaim the $75.5K level on Wednesday amid the Fed’s interest rate decision, as market participants interpreted the hike as a positive sign in the fight against inflation and markets resolved higher afterwards. Bitcoin is trading above $77.7K at the time of writing, with Ethereum just below $2.5K. 

The S&P 500 traded at its lowest level since early August on Wednesday but quickly recovered and is currently up more than 2% from Wednesday’s low.

Zcash (ZEC) above $1.5K 

Zcash holders were recently able to vote on the option to cut the network’s target block time to 25 seconds from 75 seconds and preserve its existing halving schedule in a poll on the next major upgrade. The faster-block proposal received 99.9% of the Zcash (ZEC)-weighted vote, while 98.9% supported keeping halvings, according to results published Monday. Voting power reflected eligible ZEC holdings, with both percentages including abstentions. 

The news might have played a role in Zcash’s latest move to the upside, as ZEC traded above $1.5K for the first time in many years. ZEC is currently up more than 700% from its February low and almost 200% since the end of August.

Circle launched Arc, NYSE is exploring 24/7 onchain trading & Hyperliquid x Payward

This week, Circle launched the Arc mainnet. According to the Arc team, more than 100 applications and 100+ institutions and ecosystem builders are live at launch. Founding validators include BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, SBI Group, Standard Chartered and Visa. Arc uses USDC for gas and offers sub-second finality. 

Avalanche posted on X that the NYSE is currently exploring finalizing 24/7 onchain trading through an alternative trading system (ATS), which is currently under development. Michael Blaugrund of Intercontinental Exchange and NYSE said Avalanche meets many of the platform’s requirements and that the teams are working closely together. 

In other news, Payward, the company behind the crypto exchange Kraken, announced plans to offer onchain perpetual futures to its US clients through Hyperliquid. The company plans to start with HIP-3 markets, and trading would be limited to approved and whitelisted users.

Mixed ETF Flows & Saylor did not buy more BTC 

Last week, the Bitcoin spot ETFs saw net outflows of roughly $450M, while the Ethereum spot ETFs managed to attract more than $200M in net inflows. This week, both products are sitting on net outflows so far, with $350M leaving the BTC products and roughly $300M flowing out of the ETH products. The BTC spot ETFs actually experienced their largest daily outflow since June on Tuesday amid the Clarity Act failure in the US Senate. 

Meanwhile, Strategy did not buy or sell any BTC last week and did not sell any shares either. Instead, the company spent $139.3M in cash to repurchase about 1.42M shares of its STRC preferred stock. As always, BitMine communicated the purchase of an additional 27K Ether over the past week, bringing its total holdings to 5.96 million ETH as of September 13. The position represents about 4.9% of Ethereum’s supply, putting the company 98% of the way towards its goal of owning 5% of all ETH.

Huge bearish shift in retail stock investors 

Members of the AAII flipped bearish in a major pivot this week, with more than 53% of all members feeling bearish about the stock market over the coming six months. This amounts to the highest level of bearish members since April and May 2025, when Trump announced his famous tariffs. 

The crypto market is back in greedy territory (56) after spending some time at neutral levels this week. The CNN Fear and Greed Index, on the other hand, is in Fear (29), on the verge of Extreme Fear.

• Revolut disclosed sensitive data on 680 customers after cybercriminals used a legitimate government email account to submit fraudulent information requests, the Financial Times reported. – Link 
• Germany's largest lender, Deutsche Bank AG, has announced plans to launch an institutional-grade cryptocurrency custody service, marking its formal entry into digital asset storage. – Link 
• S&P Global has entered into an agreement to acquire OpenZeppelin, a leading smart contract security company, as it expands its digital asset risk assessment capabilities into onchain technology. – Link 
• The DOJ charged two ex-Robinhood engineers with wire and commodities fraud for trading Hyperliquid perps on leaked pre-listing data. – Link 
• The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate by 25 basis points from 1.0% to 1.25%, with the decision passing by a 7–2 vote. – Link

Clarity without the Clarity Act 

It currently looks like the market is expecting the regulatory situation to move forward despite the Clarity Act not passing in the Senate this week. The SEC and CFTC’s comments seem to have satisfied participants in this regard, and the market has moved higher following their announcements and comments. The Fed’s rate hike was not able to spook the crypto market either and it currently looks like the markets want to resolve to the upside. Many investors continue to have their eyes on the $82.5K level, while $75.5K currently looks like the must-hold level to the downside. The week ahead will not bring any major economic data releases and as retail sentiment in the stock market is at multi-month or even yearly highs, it would be a shame if it just trades higher over the coming weeks. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Thursday, 24 September 

Switzerland – SNB Interest Rate Decision, Monetary Policy Assessment 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims 

USA – New Home Sales