Bitcoin weathers September storm as rate hikes and Clarity act setback test bulls — SkimNews
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- Bitcoin is trading near $78,000 — roughly back to where it was before the Fed's 25-basis-point rate hike — and is down just 1.5% for September, defying the month's historical average loss of roughly 3% since 2013.
- The Clarity Act failed in the Senate on Tuesday, securing only 49 of the 60 votes needed to advance; bitcoin briefly dipped below $74,887 before stabilizing, suggesting traders had priced in the failure.
- Mitchell Askew of Blockware Intelligence called the muted reaction a sign of "seller exhaustion," arguing that anyone positioned to sell on bad news has already sold — "exactly what you tend to see in the later stages of a bottoming process."
- The Bank of Japan lifted its benchmark rate to a 31-year high, while West Texas Intermediate crude topped $106 a barrel and the Dollar Index broke above 100 — headwinds bitcoin absorbed without breaking trend.
- The SEC unveiled its long-awaited tokenization exemption on Thursday, allowing qualifying platforms to facilitate onchain trading of stocks under specified conditions, partially offsetting the Clarity Act setback.
- Fabian Dori of Sygnum Bank argued rising rates and bond yields can actually be bullish for store-of-value assets if they signal debasement and sovereign counterparty risk, while markets price in three more quarter-point Fed hikes by April 2027.
- Bitcoin remains up about 32% for the quarter, putting it on course for its first positive quarterly close since Q3 2025, with Q4 historically delivering an average 77% gain according to CoinDesk.
Why it matters: Bitcoin absorbing a Fed rate hike, a stalled market-structure bill, oil above $106 and a 31-year-high BoJ rate with only a 1.5% monthly drawdown suggests seller exhaustion has set in — and with the quarter up ~32%, a meaningful catalyst from macro, geopolitics or regulation could trigger the next leg higher for the ~$78,000 asset.
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