Coinbase, Circle Drop 10% as Senate Fails to Advance CLARITY Act
Key Takeaways
- •The Senate's cloture motion on the CLARITY Act failed to secure the 60 votes needed to move the digital asset market-structure bill to the floor for consideration.
- •Shares of Circle and Coinbase each fell about 10%, with Coinbase declining 9.9%, as investors reacted to the stalled crypto legislation.
- •Bitcoin treasury firms and miners also retreated, including American Bitcoin down around 8%, Strategy and Strive down about 5% each, and Riot Platforms down roughly 6%.
- •The bill faces steep odds with fewer than 36 legislative days left before a new Congress is sworn in after the November midterms, since legislation not enacted by then must be reintroduced from scratch.
- •Bitcoin briefly slipped below $75,000 following the vote before climbing back to approximately $76,000.
Crypto-linked stocks fell sharply on Tuesday after the United States Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, with shares of Circle and Coinbase dropping about 10%.
Bitcoin treasury companies were also caught in the selloff, with American Bitcoin falling around 8%, while Strategy and Strive each declined about 5%, according to Yahoo Finance data. Bitcoin miners joined the retreat: Riot Platforms dropped about 6%, CleanSpark nearly 5%, Hut 8 more than 4% and IREN almost 4%.
Shares of Coinbase (COIN) fell 9.9% on Tuesday, according to Yahoo Finance.
The declines followed a Senate vote on a cloture motion — the procedural step required to bring the legislation to the chamber floor — which fell short of the 60 votes needed in the 100-member Senate. The CLARITY Act would set rules for the US digital asset market and delineate which parts of the industry fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). How digital assets should be divided between those two agencies has been one of the longest-running open questions in US crypto regulation.
A failed cloture vote does not formally kill a bill, but the setback leaves this one with little time to advance this year, with fewer than 36 legislative days remaining before a new Congress is sworn in following November's midterm elections. Under congressional rules, legislation that is not enacted by the end of a Congress lapses and would have to be reintroduced from the beginning.
Following the vote, Bitcoin briefly fell below75,000 before climbing back to around $76,000 at the time of writing, CoinGecko data showed.
Related: Democrats push back on GOP's 'final' CLARITY offer with counterproposal.
Armstrong pushed for CLARITY ahead of vote
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong had been one of the most vocal industry advocates for the CLARITY Act, saying in May that the legislation had never been in a “stronger or more bipartisan position.”
In August, he was even more explicit about the bill's prospects, predicting either “60+ votes in the Senate on September 15th” or new rules from the CFTC and SEC on Sept. 16 if the bill failed to advance. “Sounds like clarity is coming either way,” he wrote on X.
Ahead of Tuesday's vote, Armstrong again urged senators to support the legislation, framing the choice as one between promoting US crypto innovation and other countries to take the lead. “History — and the crypto voter — won't forget,” he wrote.
Following the failed vote, Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor offered his own take on regulatory clarity. “The only clarity you need is Bitcoin,” he wrote on X.
