Bitcoin Soars Above $85k (Jan Highs) As Saylor Sees Clarity Act Collapse ‘A Win’

Bitcoin has surged above $85,000 this morning for the first time since late-January…

The rally comes alongside advances in stocks and bonds, as falling oil prices and optimism ahead of a summit between US President Trump and China’s Xi Jinping are buoying markets more broadly. Rival digital assets have also bounced.

Ether, the second-largest token, has spiked up to almost $2750, while other cryptocurrencies including XRP, Solana and Monero also posted gains…

Bitcoin’s gains build upon a recovery that began late last week, when crypto absorbed the failure of the landmark Clarity Act (up around 14% since) to establish a clearer understanding of industry regulation as well the Fed’s first interest-rate increase in more than three years.

“Financial markets have rediscovered a risk-on frame of mind after being consumed with worry about government bond yields, debt piles and the prospect of a return to tighter policy at the world’s most powerful central bank,” said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at investing and trading platform IG.

A green light on Thursday from the Securities and Exchange Commission for digital versions of securities to start trading in the US helped to brighten the mood. 

Interestingly, Bitcoin treasury founder and pioneer Michael Saylor has said that the blockage of the Clarity Act is actually good for the digital asset space. 

Writing on X on Saturday, the Strategy founder and chair said that legislation can make restrictions permanent just as easily as rights. 

The Digital Assets industry is better off moving forward with supportive rules from the SEC, CFTC, Treasury, and banking regulators than accepting the restrictions in the final CLARITY compromise. We have an administration willing to modernize financial markets. We should use the next two years to put better financial products into people’s hands.

Our safest path forward is to create products that delight customers and deploy them broadly. Lower costs, easier access, useful services, and greater control over money give people a direct interest in preserving innovation. The strongest constituency we can build is a public that benefits from what we create.

Legal certainty matters. So does the freedom to compete. A law can make a restriction durable just as easily as it can make a right durable. Before celebrating permanence, we should examine what we are making permanent.

The September CLARITY compromise would have restricted covered providers from paying customers simply for holding payment stablecoins, while allowing qualifying activity rewards. It also would have directed Treasury to restrict certain rewards upon specified findings of substantial, detrimental deposit transfers from community banks.

Protecting a bank from a liquidity crisis and protecting it from a better competitor are different objectives. Financial stability requires sound oversight. Competition requires that customers be free to choose a better service. When technology reduces the cost of delivering financial services, consumers should share in the savings.

Read more here…

Additionally, Saylor’s Strategy purchased Bitcoin for the first time in three weeks, acquiring $75.7 million of the original cryptocurrency after seeking to rebuild investor confidence by reshaping its balance sheet and building out reserves.

The original Bitcoin treasury company – co-founded and run by Saylor – also repurchased $174 million of its STRC perpetual preferred shares, part of its effort to lift the price above par so that the securities can be used again to finance future Bitcoin purchases. Cash was used to fund both transactions, Strategy said in a filing on Monday. The preferred trade just below $99.

Strategy is now (846,002) just 1363 BTC below its all time high holdings from June 22 when it was 847,365…

“The crypto market capitalization has risen to $2.8T, its highest level since the end of January this year,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, the FxPro chief market analyst.

“Although Friday’s rally was followed by increased selling pressure, buyers have once again been dominating the cryptocurrency market since Sunday.”

Bloomberg reports that bitcoin open interest on the options trading platform Deribit was heavily dominated by calls, signaling bullish sentiment. The platform showed more than 272,000 contracts for the right to buy the token compared with over 154,000 for puts, or the right to sell.

“Bitcoin options market is positioned to capture the upside,” said Pratik Kala, a portfolio manager at digital-asset hedge fund Apollo Crypto.

“People are repositioning from downside protection to wanting to capture the upside.”

But not all traders are convinced the momentum can last given the difficult macroeconomic headwinds, with crude oil still above $100 a barrel and US Treasury yields elevated.

Bitcoin is well off its 2026 high of over $97,000 in mid-January, and even further from its October record. Retail enthusiasm has also proven hard to rekindle as artificial intelligence stocks and other AI-linked trades compete for the same pool of speculative capital.

“For this week, there aren’t any big catalysts to watch out for per se, but any hawkish or dovish remarks by Fed officials could impact the market,” said Jeff Mei, chief operating officer of BTSE.

 Finally, we note that ETF inflows have re-accelerated…

Various investor cohorts also returned to aggregate profit, including Bitcoin corporate treasuries, holdings of which have a cost basis of around $80,500. Now, price is approaching its cost basis for investors in US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Per data by onchain analytics platform Glassnode, this cost basis currently sits at $85,638…

In a departure from the norm, the largest Bitcoin ETF, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), did not account for the lion’s share of inflows. Instead, most investors piled into Fidelity Investments’ Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), which accounted for $310 million of the total. In their analysis of recent market developments, the onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant discussed this change in ETF netflow composition. 

“The key change is therefore not simply positive ETF activity, but a clear redistribution of flow leadership: IBIT went from dominating FBTC by nearly six times on September 3 to FBTC recording almost three times IBIT’s holdings netflow on September 18,” CryptoQuant stated in a blog post.

After reacting positively to the announcement of US bond-market interventions in August, Bitcoin market participants continue to monitor any events surrounding yields. In a report for CME on Sept. 16, Jim Iuorio, CEO of JI Financial Strategies, argued that interventions may represent a liquidity tailwind for Bitcoin and crypto markets.

“Perhaps markets viewed these actions as being dollar-negative, pushing money back into dollar hedges like gold and Bitcoin,” he said.