Clarity Act Failed and Crypto Went Up: 9 Day Scoreboard

Nine days ago we watched the Clarity Act die in the Senate. Crypto crumbled that afternoon, and I was buying. So where are we nine days later? HYPE is up about 21% since the vote. XRP is up about 16%. Every single major coin is higher. In this video I walk through the scoreboard, the four things that actually drove the bounce, what is really going on with the bill in Washington, and what I am doing with my own money.

The scoreboard since the bill died

The numbers do not lie. On the day of the vote HYPE was $76.90. It is now around $93.50. That is 21.6%. XRP went from about $1.28 to about $1.49, which is 16.6%. Remember, we were buying and talking about it when XRP was down in the 90 cent range. Now it is running.

Everything was supposed to go terrible. The writer of the bill said she was spent. Nine days later my portfolio is nice and green. I do not go in for a 15% to 20% gain. I go in for multipliers. But it is a very nice start.

Here is what vote day actually looked like. You may have seen posts saying XRP rose about 2% that day. That was the price before the vote. At 2:19 pm eastern, when the vote landed, XRP fell from about $1.40 to $1.28 within the hour. By 4:33 that afternoon it was $1.29. That was a final blowoff bottom. The bears piled in, we got a short squeeze, and we ran.

Every major coin went up, and XRP and HYPE did not even lead

The bill everyone called the catalyst failed, and every major asset went up anyway. You cannot stop crypto. You can only hope to contain it.

Bitcoin Cash was the best performing major over the same nine days at 54.9%. Zcash did 34.7%. HYPE and XRP came in third and fourth. The weakest major was Tron, and it was still up 2.8%. There was no loser, only degrees of winners. Some of you have been trying to get me into Zcash and Bitcoin Cash for a while. Congratulations, you made more money than me this week.

One thing to keep straight. None of the four big names is at its high right now. XRP is about 10% below its recent high, HYPE about 5% below, and Bitcoin about 3% below.

The red day everybody panicked about

Yesterday was a nasty red day for HYPE and my comments filled up with people saying it was the end of the world. A week ago you said it was the best day ever at $92. Now you are at $94 and you feel like the world is ending. Why? Because you wanted it to go up every day.

This is called consolidation. HYPE got heated up to around 72 on the RSI. It is back down to 64. It is fine if it consolidates for a week or two and cools into the 50 to 60 range before it takes off again. I will keep buying on any major red candle, which is exactly what I did yesterday, to the tune of over $20,000.

XRP is the same picture. The chart put in a triple break of the upper band, and we normally come back to the 5 or the 13 day average after that, usually the 13. As long as the 13 keeps moving up, do not be surprised if we bounce and run again by early next week, maybe sooner.

Four things drove the bounce, and not one is Congress

First, spot Bitcoin ETF demand came back and then went vertical. On September 21 alone the ETFs took in $999 million, the biggest single day since October 2025. That is roughly 11,530 Bitcoin of required buying on the open market. Then $714 million the next day. That set off a short squeeze in three stages. Bitcoin cleared $82,000 and hit a liquidation cluster, then $84,000, then $85,000, and a massive number of shorts got burned.

Second, the real macro driver was the Treasury, not the Fed. An expanded buyback program for long dated bonds loosened financial conditions and sent money looking for risk. That was us.

Third, the bad news was already in the price. We knew it was not going to pass. I told you to expect two days of panic and then a flood, and that is what happened. Bitcoin ETFs saw about $450 million of outflows on September 15 and $295 million on September 16, roughly $746 million out over two days. By the end of the window the net figure was about $1.56 billion in. How quickly it turns.

Fourth, Hyperliquid had its own reason, and it has nothing to do with Washington.

Hyperliquid switched on lending and set four records in five days

Three days after the bill died, on September 18, Hyperliquid turned on native borrowing. You can pledge HYPE or Bitcoin as collateral and borrow stablecoins against it. About $269 million was borrowed on day one.

That pushed HYPE to four records in five days, on September 19, 21, 22 and 23, each one higher than the last, topping out near $98. Then we got the pullback.

Here is the honest part about all time highs. When a coin is at a record, not a single person who owns it is down. That is a scary thought, because everyone has profit to take, and profit taking pushes the price down. The question is how far. So I ask myself one thing: do I believe Hyperliquid will be at new all time highs again within 12 months? They are burning their own supply and the business is crushing it. My answer is yes. If your answer is yes, buying the monster red day makes sense. Judge me after the year is up, not after one red candle.

The pros did not panic

I went looking for the analyst who said crypto would crash on this and I could not find one. One digital asset fund said the Clarity Act falling short stings but is nothing structural, that capital is not leaving, it is concentrating. An analyst at BTC Markets said a fourth quarter recovery does not need Congress. The bill would have helped, big time. But even without it, the SEC and the CFTC can start the process, and they have.

What is actually true about the Clarity Act right now

Cloture on the motion to proceed failed 49 to 50. It needed 60, so it lost by 11, not by one. Senator Tillis switched his vote to no at the end so he would be on the winning side, which is the procedural trick that lets him file a motion to reconsider. He filed it. It is on the official record. That was September 15, and there has not been a single action on the bill since. On the Senate calendar it sits under general orders with no dates and nothing scheduled.

The honest line is this: procedurally alive, politically inert. It expires by itself on January 3 when the 119th Congress ends.

Three things the coverage keeps getting wrong. One, it was four Republicans who voted no, not three, because Tillis had to vote no to file that motion. Two, 49 to 50 makes people think one flipped vote fixes it. It does not. The bar is 60. Three, calling the bill dead is not quite fair either. The GENIUS Act made it out 11 days after it failed. This is not the same situation, but it can still come back.

What is blocking it is the ethics fight, not the banks. The Democrats want ethics language aimed at the president. Republicans gave up around 120 considerations the Democrats asked for, and at the end not a single Democrat voted yes. I am not in the room, so I do not know the rest. As a crypto holder with a substantial amount of my family’s wealth in this, I was disappointed. I am a lot less disappointed after the last few days.

The calendar from here

There is no October. Zero hearings. The Senate is out almost the entire month for the elections. They come back November 9 for two days that week, and then the lame duck session runs to a target adjournment of December 18. That is about five weeks, and things do get done in five weeks. On January 3 the bill expires.

The people I talk to in DC do not call it a fast track. Call it a quick run. So much has already been debated that they expect to reintroduce it in the 120th Congress and move quickly. Best case, done by the end of summer 2027. Normal timing, end of fall 2027. If it cannot make it out in 2027, nothing happens until after the 2028 elections.

On the Senate math, it is 53 to 47 today. Thirty five seats are up, 23 of them held by Republicans. Of the four Republican no votes, only one is actually facing voters, Senator Collins, rated a tossup. Tillis is gone in January no matter who wins his seat. The Kansas seat is not up until 2028 and Missouri not until 2030. Fairshake announced $30 million against Brown in Ohio on September 21. Depending on the market you look at, the odds of Democrats taking the Senate run from 51% to 65%.

Read what the SEC chairman actually wrote

The opening line of Chairman Atkins’ statement on September 17, the one that came with the innovation exemption, says that earlier in the week Congress was unsuccessful in advancing the Clarity Act despite the tireless efforts of many. Two days after the bill died, the SEC issued the exemption anyway. And the comment period on the 146 page Regulation Crypto Assets proposal is still running. You will keep hearing me bring that one up, because it is big.

Real money is not pretending either. The prediction markets now put about a 6% chance on the Clarity Act becoming law in 2026, and the contract for any bill by January 1 trades around 8.5 cents. Both moved, and not in a good direction.

Three things I take from all of this

One, the market decoupled from Washington, and it did it fast. Thank goodness. We want crypto running on its own merits, not on one bill. Two, the catalyst was never the bill. It is the rules underneath it, and the SEC and the CFTC are writing those right now. Three, agency rules are reversible. If the presidency changes hands in 2028 and the new administration is not pro crypto, all of this can be changed. That is the truth, and it is why the 2028 election matters more to crypto than this vote did.

One last thing. I have been bullish on ending September strong, and we have. I cannot promise the same for October. I am doing research that has me interested in making some moves going into October, and I will share it when it is ready.

Keep reading on Stock Moe

• XRP and HYPE Price Targets for the Next 12 Months
• XRP Short Squeeze Reset: Who Is Short and What I Am Watching
• XRP and HYPE After the Biggest Short Squeeze Since January

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Sources

• Senate roll call on the cloture motion for H.R. 3633, September 15, 2026, and the Senate legislative calendar
• SEC Chairman statement accompanying the innovation exemption order, September 17, 2026
• Spot Bitcoin ETF daily flow data, September 15 to 22, 2026
• Hyperliquid lending launch and borrowing data, September 18, 2026
• Nine day price data for HYPE, XRP, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Zcash and Tron, September 15 to 24, 2026
• Prediction market contracts on the Clarity Act and Senate control, as shown in the video
• Fairshake PAC announcement, September 21, 2026

I am not a financial advisor and nothing in this article is financial advice. Everything here is my own opinion, for educational and entertainment purposes only. Do your own research and talk to a licensed professional before you make any financial decision.