Bitcoin tumbles 3% to $76,000 as hopes of CLARITY Act passage this year fade

Bitcoin tumbles 3% to $76,000 as hopes of CLARITY Act passage this year fade

Ines Ferré · Senior Business Reporter

Tue, September 15, 2026 at 6:31 PM GMT+3 2 min read

What happened: Bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell 3% on Tuesday.

What's behind the move: The world's largest cryptocurrency lost ground ahead of a Fed decision this week and a key Senate procedural vote on the CLARITY Act, which is set for Tuesday afternoon.

Hopes of securing the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster faded after Republicans balked at a Democratic counteroffer hours before the vote.

Polymarket bettors gave the bill a 12% chance of becoming law this year. As a result, investors fear that the legislation will be shelved past the midterm elections and potentially kicked down the road into 2029.

The crypto market has been closely following the bill aimed at establishing a comprehensive federal framework for digital asset markets.

"The future of finance is being built on the blockchain," Coinbase (COIN) chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad told Yahoo Finance on Monday. (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance has a partnership with Coinbase.)

"This law gives developers, innovators, traditional financial companies, all of us, the regulatory certainty we need to know how to build the next generation of finance and what rules apply," he said.

(BTC-USD )

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76,324.91 -2,427.94 (-3.08%)

As of 4:10:18 PM UTC. Market Open.

What else you need to know: Following a brutal sell-off late last year and into 2026, bitcoin has been showing signs of a bottoming.

"The recent BTC price movement suggests that the crypto winter is close to being over," Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto Is Macro Now newsletter, told Yahoo Finance in a recent interview.

The token rallied 25% last month as the Treasury Department's recent intervention in the bond market and assistance to Japan helped lift the prices of gold and crypto assets.

Some of those gains were given back amid surging oil prices and rising expectations that the Federal Reserve will hike rates on Wednesday, with the market pricing in a 92% chance.

"Even if the Fed delivers the expected hike, there is room for the market reaction to be dovish if the dot plot or Chair Warsh's commentary falls short of those expectations,' said Sean Farrell, head of digital assets at Fundstrat.

"That could create another favorable asymmetry for BTC, ETH, and broader crypto," he added.

Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter for Yahoo Finance.

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