Is the CLARITY Act Really (Not) Needed for Bitcoin Price to Rally?

The short answer, if you’re looking at the CLARITY Act as it is and not at the speculative sentiment around it in the market, is — not really. However, if signed into law, its main value for bitcoin would be protection against policy reversals, and it would matter mostly from 2029, and only if the next administration is more hostile.

WRITTEN BYLinas Kmieliauskas
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Published:Sep 17, 2026, 3:30 AM EDT

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Key Takeaways

• The CLARITY Act may add legal protection for bitcoin’s existing regulatory status, but it is unlikely to drive bitcoin price directly.
• U.S. bank capital rules for bitcoin could have a greater impact on demand than the Act if they become more favorable.
• The bill’s biggest long-term value for bitcoin could come after 2029 by making supportive regulatory policies harder for a future administration to reverse.

On Tuesday, in the Senate, CLARITY Act cloture failed. On Polymarket, this pushed the odds of signing the bill into law this year to 5%, compared to 15% on the day of the vote. On the same day, the bitcoin price dropped toward $75,000, down 1% in a day. The market was left guessing whether the move was related to the failed vote or expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve would hike rates the next day, Wednesday. In either case, throughout this year, BTC hasn’t been moving in lockstep with the odds of approving the bill. Sometimes it has reacted to news from Congress; other times, it hasn’t.

And there might be a reason for this inconsistent correlation, as bitcoin already has many things that the bill offers.

Signing Into Law What Already Exists

In short, the CLARITY Act, among other things, would set federal rules for crypto asset markets, establishing which tokens fall under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and which fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as well as what banks and exchanges may do.

While the bill itself doesn’t mention bitcoin at all, the most popular cryptocurrency is already treated as a digital commodity by regulators, which the bill defines as a blockchain-powered asset that anyone can own and transact without a middleman.

Regulators have already granted bitcoin multiple things that help its adoption and demand. Possibly the biggest of them is spot bitcoin ETFs, which regulators approved in January 2024 and which have since become a key player in the BTC market. In March 2026, both the SEC and the CFTC officially confirmed that bitcoin is a commodity, which also helps the market develop new bitcoin-related investment products, such as perpetual futures contracts on a U.S.-regulated exchange tied to bitcoin’s spot price.

Therefore, multiple BTC market players have dismissed the importance of the CLARITY Act for bitcoin specifically.

Who Needs Clarity?

“Bitcoin doesn’t need CLARITY. America needs clarity,” Strategy’s Michael Saylor said this past August, while still backing the bill and saying that “Bitcoin will succeed with or without legislation.”

Entrepreneur, investor, and Bitcoin advocate Anthony Pompliano also claims that bitcoin doesn’t need the CLARITY Act to succeed, while Arthur Hayes, co-founder of the Maelstrom fund and the BitMEX exchange, said that “Bitcoin didn’t need the Clarity Act from 2009 until the present, it doesn’t need it to the future.”

“Crypto will be fine without the Clarity Act. We are lucky to have two agencies, the SEC and CFTC, with all of the excellent staff and authority they need to do the job,” Jake Chervinsky, CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center, concluded.

More Important Change for Bitcoin Price Is Brewing

The bill can still support the adoption of BTC and its products. For example, it would write into law banks’ right to hold bitcoin for customers and offer lending, payments, derivatives-related, and other services. This might not increase demand for bitcoin the way changed capital rules for banks can, as the bill allows banks to hold bitcoin only for purposes such as fees, risk management, and settlement. Therefore, the main obstacle to banks starting to buy bitcoin remains.

Now, under the global Basel standard, a bank would need to hold at least $1 million in capital to back $1 million in bitcoin. However, the U.S. hasn’t adopted this rule, and local regulators haven’t settled their own capital rules for bank-held bitcoin either. In the meantime, the Basel Committee is reviewing this rule, while Bitcoin industry lobbyists and some senators are also working on this. Should this rule change into a more favorable one, it might affect demand for bitcoin more than the CLARITY Act.

What’s more, should this bill be signed into law this year, not much would really change in practice before late 2027. Most of the Act would start only 360 days after signing.

Protection From Policy Changes and Altcoin Support

So what is this fuss all about? The strongest value of the CLARITY Act is making many regulatory decisions permanent by writing them into law. For bitcoin, it’s mostly about its commodity status and banks’ permissions.

Should the next administration, after the U.S. presidential election in November 2028, be less friendly to bitcoin, undoing the supportive policies would be harder once they’re signed into law.

What’s more, while not creating new demand, the CLARITY Act could make the crypto asset system safer and clearer for customers, while also protecting Bitcoin developers, miners, and dormant self-custodied BTC should anyone try to seize “abandoned” coins, as the market saw this year.

Meanwhile, the altcoin market, such as XRP, might get more from the bill, as it would make the rules for those assets also harder to change. In turn, it could drain some of the capital that could otherwise go into bitcoin.

Bitcoin Is a Global Market Asset

Therefore, the bill, as it is, is less relevant for the bitcoin price both in the short and longer term, with the biggest, so far theoretical, regulatory risks coming mainly after January 2029, when the next U.S. president enters the White House. However, while the bill’s content is less relevant in the short term, market sentiment around the vote may still affect the bitcoin price.

Other regulatory changes, such as the above-mentioned Basel rule, could affect the demand for bitcoin and, subsequently, its price more, while the market has many other moving parts that could affect BTC. Moreover, the U.S., while being a leading BTC market, is still only one of the markets around the globe, and developments there can also affect bitcoin.

“I see the US selling with the failed Clarity Act (on Coinbase). Meanwhile, the more dominant global offshore continues accumulating (on Binance). Bullish,” bitcoin analyst Willy Woo pointed out following the failed vote on the Act.

To conclude, all the bullish long-term bitcoin price forecasts coming even from industry players in the U.S. see bitcoin possibly reaching hundreds of thousands or even $1 million by 2030. These long-term estimates have been made regardless of whether the CLARITY Act is signed into law.

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Source: news.bitcoin.com