Crypto
CLARITY Act stalls as US crypto regulators write rules without Congress
The Senate stopped short of debating a federal crypto market structure bill. A week later, the CFTC chair was still laying out plans for tokenized collateral and round-the-clock markets. The agencies can act under existing law, but their records show how far each action actually reaches.
Summary
- The Sept. 15 Senate cloture vote on the CLARITY Act ended 49 to 50, with one senator absent.
- The SEC’s March 17 crypto interpretation describes five asset categories but creates no new spot market regulator.
- An Aug. 18 SEC proposal includes offering exemptions of $5 million and $75 million, subject to public comment.
- The SEC’s Sept. 17 stock trading exemption expires in 2031 and covers a defined venue model.
- A CFTC crypto markets measure entered White House review on Sept. 17 at the prerule stage.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission wants markets ready for tokenized collateral and 24-hour trading. Its chair, Michael Selig, said as much at a Treasury market conference on Sept. 22, one week after the Senate blocked debate on the CLARITY Act. He described work on stablecoins as derivatives collateral and said some products, including crypto, may suit continuous trading. The agency had already sent a crypto market measure to White House review. Selig’s remarks were a statement of direction, not the publication of that measure.
The order of events matters. The Securities and Exchange Commission had proposed crypto offering rules before the Senate vote. It issued a limited exemption for tokenized stock trading two days afterward. The CFTC filed a separate measure for preliminary review the same day, as crypto.news reported when the CFTC submission appeared. Washington is writing parts of a rulebook while the bill that would set its statutory foundation remains stalled.
How much of a market can those parts govern? The public documents give a more useful answer than the shorthand that regulators have replaced Congress. One action interprets existing securities law. Another proposes exemptions for raising money. A third permits a specific way to trade tokenized stocks. The CFTC’s next rule has not yet been released for public inspection. None is the spot digital commodity market law contemplated by CLARITY.
The Senate rejected debate, not a final crypto law
On Sept. 15, the Senate voted on cloture on a motion to proceed to H.R. 3633. The official roll call records 49 votes for cloture, 50 against and one senator not voting. Sixty votes were required. Senators did not vote on final passage or settle the bill’s provisions through floor amendments.
Some accounts inverted the numbers, describing 50 votes in favor and 49 against. The Senate record says the reverse. Either count falls short of 60, but a feature about who can write law should get the legislature’s own vote right. The 49 supporting senators were 11 votes short of the threshold. Four Republicans voted against the motion, including Thom Tillis, whose procedural switch left a route to seek reconsideration. The bill remained available for further negotiation; its Sept. 15 path to debate was blocked.
CLARITY aimed to divide oversight of digital assets and their markets between the SEC and CFTC, including a registration structure for digital commodity intermediaries. Congress had been considering a more complete answer to questions that agencies now confront through rules, interpretations and orders. The House passed its version in July 2025. Its later Senate text changed during negotiations, so an account of a disputed September provision must specify which version it describes. The Senate-reported version remains a public reference, but it should not be mistaken for every late negotiating draft.
The disagreement was political and substantive. Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott said after the vote that the SEC and CFTC should set rules until Congress legislates. Democratic Senator Mark Warner said he wanted digital asset legislation, but would not advance this version without stronger restrictions on senior officials profiting from policies affecting their crypto holdings. Banking organizations separately pressed for tighter restrictions on rewards associated with holding stablecoins, saying deposit competition could affect lending. Those groups made a policy argument; no projected deposit loss should be treated as an observed outcome.
Seven Democratic senators who opposed the motion said the following day that they remained committed to bipartisan legislation. Calling the bill law would be false. Calling it permanently dead would go beyond the vote.
The SEC can interpret a transaction without licensing its market
The regulatory work did not begin on Sept. 15. On March 11, the SEC and CFTC signed a coordination agreement covering shared definitions, examinations and enforcement. Six days later, the SEC issued interpretive release Nos. 33-11412 and 34-105020, with accompanying CFTC guidance. It described digital commodities, collectibles, tools, stablecoins and digital securities. It addressed staking, mining, airdrops and wrapping, as well as when a nonsecurity crypto asset can be sold as part of an investment contract. The agencies’ March interpretation was an exercise of their existing authority.
The distinction between an asset and a transaction is central. A token need not itself be a security for a promoter’s offer of it to involve an investment contract. The SEC’s description of an asset does not remove the securities laws from every transaction in that asset. Nor does calling an asset a digital commodity hand the CFTC full supervision of every spot exchange that lists it. An earlier crypto.news examination of the SEC’s classification of XRP addresses the separate question of how long an agency interpretation may last.
Consider a platform that lists a digital commodity for ordinary purchase and another platform that offers leveraged positions in the same asset. The asset label may be the same. The activity and applicable jurisdiction are different. The CFTC regulates derivatives and certain leveraged retail commodity transactions under existing law. For ordinary spot digital commodities, it has described its federal role principally as enforcement against fraud and manipulation, without general day-to-day supervision of spot exchanges. Its own account of the distinction is unusually clear.
That is the gap CLARITY was designed to address. The SEC and CFTC can coordinate their interpretations. They cannot create an unrestricted federal spot market mandate merely by agreeing which tokens count as commodities. An agency can regulate conduct within the perimeter Congress gave it. It cannot vote itself the rest of the perimeter.
There is still practical value in the interpretation. An issuer deciding whether a proposed token sale needs securities registration now has a published view from the SEC. A derivatives venue knows the CFTC says it will administer the Commodity Exchange Act consistently with that view. The treatment could shape business decisions immediately. It is still different from a new statute governing intermediaries across the spot market. A court or later commission can test or revisit an agency’s reading of existing law.
Four records show why the ‘new rulebook’ is still uneven
The primary documents can be sorted by two questions: has the action taken effect, and does it govern ordinary crypto spot trading? The answer changes in every row.
Record as of Sept. 23
Legal stage
Market activity it addresses
What it does not do
SEC-CFTC interpretation, March 17
Issued interpretation
Securities treatment of specified crypto assets and transactions
Create a new spot digital commodity exchange regime
SEC Regulation Crypto Assets, Aug. 18
Proposed rule, comments due Oct. 20
Certain offerings involving crypto asset investment contracts
Give all token sellers a live exemption today
SEC tokenized stock order, Sept. 17
Effective conditional exemption through Sept. 17, 2031
A defined model for trading tokenized listed stocks
License ordinary crypto spot exchanges
CFTC crypto markets filing, Sept. 17
Prerule submission in executive review
Details have not been made public
Put a final crypto market rule into effect
One of these measures is an effective exemption. One remains a proposal. Another is a public interpretation, and the fourth is a filing title and review status. Describing all four as ‘rules now in force’ would turn a process into a result. More tellingly, the effective exemption concerns shares, which remain securities, while the largest proposed jurisdictional change in CLARITY concerned digital commodity markets. The most visible new trading permission sits on a different side of the SEC-CFTC divide.
The CFTC review record names ‘Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets,’ identifies the agency, and labels its stage ‘Prerule.’ It gives a Sept. 17 receipt date. It does not disclose draft provisions or show a commission vote on a proposed or final rule. That small entry proves that a measure entered review. It does not prove what legal powers the eventual text will claim.
Selig offered a possible route in August. He said staff were examining whether existing registrants and unregistered crypto exchanges could be designated as a type of CFTC designated contract market, with leveraged or margined crypto trading under tailored rules. His remarks also described working with onchain software developers. They are evidence of his intended approach, not a substitute for the unreleased CFTC text. Whether the agency’s eventual proposal fits its existing authority depends on its actual provisions.
The narrower route may still change a great deal for firms that want to offer margined crypto trading in the United States. It would not automatically cover every app where a customer buys and withdraws an unleveraged token. That missing customer, venue and transaction sit at the center of the congressional question.
The SEC’s $75 million route is a proposal with an expiry problem
The SEC’s Aug. 18 proposal would give eligible projects two tailored ways to offer investment contracts involving crypto assets without registering the offering. One would allow up to $5 million over a four-year period. Another would permit up to $75 million in each 12-month period, with financial statements and ongoing reporting alongside required disclosures. It proposes a conditional safe harbor concerning when the related investment contract no longer applies. The published proposal sets an Oct. 20 comment deadline. A crypto.news account of the offering proposal examines those routes in more detail.
The proposal does not say that every token becomes exempt from securities law after four years. Its application depends on the facts of an issuer’s commitments and compliance with its conditions. It does not license an exchange to ignore laws governing securities activity. Antifraud provisions remain relevant. And none of the proposed fundraising routes can be used merely because the SEC has announced them; a final rule would have to follow the comment process.
The policy choice is significant. Projects often raise money while a team is still promising to build the network on which a token’s value might depend. The SEC is trying to specify how that fundraising stage might be conducted and, under stated conditions, how the associated investment contract could end. The proposal answers a question about capital raising. It does not supply a federal registration system for the entire digital commodity spot market.
That distinction has an institutional consequence. A company can plan a token offering around a published proposal only provisionally. It can plan around an effective rule more confidently, while still accounting for future changes and court review. A national law fixing the agencies’ mandates would require another institution to change it. Industry advocates want the agency work to advance precisely because waiting for that institution has not produced a bill. The staged process creates rules sooner in some corners and leaves others open.
A five-year stock exemption has a narrower address
The SEC’s Sept. 17 order, release No. 34-106402, is the most concrete post-vote action. It temporarily exempts qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues from the Exchange Act definition of ‘exchange’ for a particular model of permissioned automated market maker trading in tokenized National Market System stocks. It grants separate conditional relief to certain liquidity providers from the definition of ‘dealer.’ The 60-page order states that the exemptions run until Sept. 17, 2031, unless the commission changes them under its authority.
Stockholders must have the same rights and privileges as holders of an equivalent traditional share. The venue faces limits on symbols and trading volume, must stop trading when the underlying stock is halted, and must allow an issuer to object when an unaffiliated third party tokenizes its shares. The smart contracts used for the trading model must be public and auditable on a public, permissionless ledger, while access to the venue is restricted to approved participants. The order does not exempt fraud or manipulation.
Those conditions illustrate both the potential and the boundary of agency action. An SEC exemption can open a defined route for trading securities without waiting for Congress to rewrite every exchange rule. It does not make all decentralized trading lawful or designate the CFTC as supervisor of every crypto asset. SEC Chair Paul Atkins called the measure a bridge and said durable rulemaking would need to follow. A crypto.news report on the tokenized stock exemption looks at the possible commercial users. A bridge is useful. It is not the destination.
The order deserves scrutiny on its own merits, too. Its volume caps are meant to limit disruptions if prices in an automated pool diverge from shares trading in conventional markets. Disclosure and records conditions give the SEC a way to see how the model operates. Whether actual venues satisfy the conditions, attract activity and preserve shareholder rights is an observable question, not an assumption to be filled in by the agency announcement.
Supporters of agency action have a strong practical case
Scott’s call for regulators to act did not require the claim that legislation was unnecessary. Selig himself said in August that a statute was the strongest way to fix the SEC-CFTC jurisdictional line and set principles for spot crypto markets. He nonetheless directed CFTC staff to examine rules under current authority. Those positions can coexist: a firm needs to know what rules apply to a proposed product now, even when Congress might later change the governing law.
Atkins made a related case for using a temporary SEC exemption while the commission studies tokenized stock trading. The Sept. 17 order imposes participant screening, trading limits, disclosure, records, issuer rights and the ordinary securities law bans on fraud and manipulation. It is an intervention with conditions, not an unregulated free pass. His argument is that an observed market can inform permanent rules better than a market that cannot start.
Coin Center, a crypto policy organization, made a different case within the same debate. Its March submission urged broad prospective rulemaking over individual relief, arguing that selective exemptions can favor applicants with the resources to seek them and leave decentralized projects outside. That criticism does not show the SEC order is improper. It identifies a question the order cannot settle: whether other workable models get an equivalent path.
Warner’s opposition to the Senate bill is another constraint on a simple ‘Congress failed, agencies solved it’ account. He said the dispute over ethics requirements involving elected officials prevented his support despite progress on national security issues. Rules from financial regulators about trading venues do not resolve the elected-official ethics issue that helped stop the vote. Banking groups’ concerns about rewards tied to stablecoin balances likewise involve a separate dispute over the boundary between payments and deposit competition. The missing legislation is missing for reasons the agencies’ crypto rulemaking cannot erase.
The decisive test is an ordinary spot trade
Take a customer who deposits dollars on an exchange, buys an unleveraged digital commodity and withdraws it to a wallet. The March interpretation helps describe the asset and the legal treatment of a particular sale. The SEC’s offering proposal could matter to an earlier fundraising transaction involving that asset. The tokenized stock order is irrelevant to this trade. The CFTC’s unpublished measure cannot yet be applied to it, and Selig’s public example centers on leveraged or margined trading.
What federally supervises that ordinary spot exchange’s routine operations? Existing anti-fraud powers, applicable state regimes and other federal obligations do not amount to the dedicated CFTC spot-market registration and supervision framework CLARITY sought to create. This is the part of the rulebook agencies cannot simply announce into existence. The difference is more than durability: it is the scope of the legal authority available in the first place.
That customer example is also a way to judge the feature’s claim. If Congress passes a law assigning broad spot digital commodity oversight, the gap narrows by statute. A crypto.news look at Bitcoin after the Senate vote addresses the asset’s current classification. If the CFTC publishes a measure that identifies an existing legal basis covering more of the ordinary spot transaction than Selig’s August remarks suggested, its precise terms will need to be examined. The Sept. 17 review listing alone does not answer either point.
The limits run in both directions. The failure of CLARITY did not repeal securities or commodities law, undo the SEC’s March interpretation, or stop agencies from proposing and issuing measures within their authority. The SEC stock exemption is real. So are its boundaries. The CFTC may yet publish a consequential proposal. Until it does, a filed title should not be asked to carry the weight of a completed rule.
What to watch
The CFTC proposal: Watch for publication of the text tied to RIN 3038-AF80 after executive review. Its treatment of unleveraged spot trading is the most direct test of its reach.
The SEC comment deadline: Comments on Regulation Crypto Assets are due Oct. 20, 2026, under the published proposal. Any subsequent final text could change the $5 million and $75 million routes.
The tokenized stock venues: Public venue notices, trading volume and issuer objections will show whether the SEC’s five-year exemption becomes a used market or remains an available permission.
The Senate’s next motion: A renewed effort to proceed to H.R. 3633, revised bill text or a new bipartisan agreement would change the legislative outlook. The Sept. 15 cloture vote did not decide final passage.
The spot exchange question: Any proposed CFTC registration requirements should be read for the products and transactions they cover, not only the number of exchanges that might apply.
FAQ
Did the CLARITY Act fail in the Senate?
The Senate rejected a motion to end debate on whether to proceed to H.R. 3633 on Sept. 15, 2026. Senators did not take a final passage vote. The legislation remains unresolved.
What was the actual CLARITY Act vote count?
The Senate’s official roll call records 49 yeas, 50 nays and one senator not voting. The motion needed 60 votes to advance.
Did the SEC and CFTC replace the CLARITY Act?
No. They have interpreted existing law, proposed rules and issued a limited exemption. Those actions do not enact the spot digital commodity framework that Congress considered.
Are the SEC’s $5 million and $75 million crypto exemptions available now?
They were proposed on Aug. 18, 2026. The published proposal calls for comments through Oct. 20; the new exemptions would need a final rule before taking effect.
What did the SEC allow for tokenized stocks?
Its Sept. 17 order temporarily permits qualifying venues to trade tokenized listed stocks through a defined permissioned model under conditions. The exemption runs to Sept. 17, 2031, unless modified.
Has the CFTC published its new crypto market rules?
The public Sept. 17 record identifies a CFTC measure at the prerule stage of White House review. It does not make a rule final or disclose the measure’s operative text.
Does the CFTC regulate all spot Bitcoin exchanges?
The CFTC has fraud and manipulation authority over spot digital commodities, but its general regulatory remit centers on derivatives and certain leveraged transactions. The proposed comprehensive spot exchange framework was part of CLARITY.
What happens if Congress never passes CLARITY?
The SEC and CFTC can continue acting under their existing statutes, and their measures can still matter to specific products. Whether they cover the wider spot market depends on the reach of those statutes and the text of future rules. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Figures reflect regulatory filings and reporting available at the time of writing and change with each disclosure. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of September 24, 2025.
Goldman Sachs’ Anshul Sehgal says bonds yielding 5% or more are not the best trade right now. He still favors AI infrastructure, which he sees as a far more asymmetric bet than the long bond.
Sehgal, a global co-head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (FICC) at the bank, laid out the view just a few days after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.
Why Goldman Sachs Is Passing on 5%+ Bonds
On Goldman’s The Markets, Sehgal said the 30-year Treasury, known as the long bond, had hovered around 5% for weeks. He noted that clients want to buy it at 5% or higher, yet he still sees little upside.
The yield has kept climbing since the recording, reaching 5.56% on September 29, a new 52-week high. Sehgal blamed structural pressure for the strain on the long end. Retiring baby boomers are buying fewer long bonds, and heavy long-dated borrowing tied to AI is crowding the market.
Those pressures explain why the selloff can persist even without a fresh inflation shock. Fewer retirees buying long bonds and a steady flow of long-dated borrowing tied to AI both weigh on prices, and neither fades quickly.
Sehgal adds that fear over US debt sustainability makes investors less willing to hold the long end, which feeds on itself.
The takeaway is that a rising yield does not necessarily break his thesis. It may instead show why he sees limited reward in owning the bond, while the risk to his AI trade is that costlier long-term borrowing squeezes the levered companies he favors.
AI Compute Is the Asymmetric Trade
An asymmetric trade offers far more potential gain than risk. Sehgal applies that label to compute (AI computing power), data centers, and Neoclouds, which are cloud providers built to rent out that capacity.
“I think the asymmetric expression is being long compute.”
Anshul Sehgal, Goldman
The catch is leverage. Savers collecting higher interest have effectively financed the AI build-out, leaving equities more indebted than a year ago. Sehgal admits these are levered bets. Still, he thinks they can multiply in value, while the wider stock market looks less certain.
Tighter Policy Hits Spenders, Not Capital
Sehgal says the Fed frames its September 16 hike as catch-up after five years above its inflation target. Schwab counts 16 of 19 Fed officials expecting another increase this year. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh also stressed three times that the Fed is easing back some stimulus rather than turning restrictive, Sehgal adds.
He argues that government interest payments flow to capital rather than workers, so higher rates curb household spending, a risk for the broader stock market.
He also rejects the debt-sustainability fears weighing on long bonds.
“For me, that’s a red herring.”
Anshul Sehgal, Goldman
Meanwhile, BlackRock’s Rick Rieder is cutting equities for bonds paying 7% to 8%, though his high-grade bond call still cautions against rushing into the 10-year Treasury.
Sehgal names the Middle East conflict as the top driver of policy and markets in the weeks ahead.
The post Goldman Sachs Explains Why Not to Buy the 5%+ Bonds and Rather Stick to AI appeared first on BeInCrypto.
“Bitcoin has pulled back to $83K, testing the lower boundary of last week’s consolidation range,” Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, said in an email to CoinDesk. “As with the market as a whole, a retest of the $82K region, where peaks were formed in May and early September, is entirely to be expected under current conditions.”
“Looking ahead, a sustained return to prices below $80K would be an important signal that the market is not ready to move higher for some time yet. If, however, this consolidation is soon followed by a new bullish momentum, it could send the leading cryptocurrency well above $90K,” he added.
The pressure is coming from bonds and oil.
Treasuries steadied in Asia after tumbling during U.S. trading, with the 10-year yield up one basis point to 5.25% after reaching its highest level since 2007 on Monday. A higher guaranteed return on government debt raises the bar for holding assets that pay no income, bitcoin among them.
Brent rose more than 1% to nearly $107 a barrel, its second straight gain, as hopes for an imminent diplomatic breakthrough with Iran faded.
Pricier oil feeds into inflation, and traders have been adding to bets that the Fed will raise rates again. MSCI’s All Country World Index fell to its lowest since Sept. 18, and Nasdaq 100 futures slipped 0.3% after Monday’s tech-led selloff on Wall Street.
U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether is a go-to tool for the Iranian government to bypass sanctions, a new report from a group of Senate Democrats said.
Democrats on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence published a report Monday laying out the argument that Tether plays a key role in allowing Iran to conduct transactions that skirt international sanctions.
“Iran’s cryptocurrency-based shadow banking network has processed significant volumes of funds and implicates various Iranian interests,” the report said, adding that Tether has “repeatedly failed” to block Iran-connected wallets.
“USDT has become a significant financial lifeline within Iran’s shadow banking network,” the report said.
When Tether does freeze wallets, it sometimes takes weeks, but the company also sometimes responds to requests without actually blacklisting wallets, the report claimed.
“Prior to 2024, Tether did not comprehensively and consistently freeze wallets designated by counter-terrorism agencies and continues to fail to proactively block clearly illicit wallets,” the report said. “This absence of deterrence invited abuse: terrorist organizations such as Hamas shifted from transacting in Bitcoin and a mix of cryptocurrencies to promoting USDT.”
Elon Musk’s Grok AI predicts an extremely bullish price for Ripple (XRP) by January 1, 2027, that will blow the minds of even the most dedicated members of the Ripple Army.
If you’re holding a sizeable bag of XRP USD, you may want to sit down before reading this. Grok claims that $25–$40 is achievable by 2027, with a stretch target of $50+ under the assumption of a full-blown crypto bull market returning and being supercharged by an unprecedented institutional catalyst.
XRP currently trades near $1.50–$1.52 as of September 28, 2026, down nearly -3% over the past 24 hours and with a daily trading volume of $3.5Bn, up from $3.2Bn the day prior.
This outlook is extreme and leans far beyond standard institutional forecasts. It assumes not only a strong late-2026 bull market driven by liquidity and risk-on conditions, but also a once-in-a-generation catalyst.
What is the Catalyst that Grok AI Predicts Could Spark an XRP Run Toward $40
Major central banks (including the Fed, ECB, Bank of Japan, and PBOC) announcing that the XRP Ledger will serve as a primary settlement layer for cross-border CBDC and tokenized asset flows, combined with large commercial banks being incentivized or required to hold XRP as a liquidity buffer, and revelations of massive sovereign wealth fund accumulation.
Under this highly speculative scenario, forced institutional demand collides with retail FOMO in a classic late-cycle mania, allowing XRP to move from the current ~$1.50 range through previous-cycle highs and into the mid-to-high double digits by early 2027.
This remains pure speculation and entertainment, not a base-case or even high-probability outlook. Crypto markets are extremely volatile, and the catalyst described above would require multiple extraordinary policy and institutional developments.
However, with Ripple’s case against the SEC dropped and its subsequent rise as a highly favored US-based digital asset company under President Trump, anything could be on the table for XRP if the perfect scenario aligns.
Got a Gut Feeling? It Could Pay Out 3.7X on Polymarket
Technical Analysis Supporting the Insane Grok AI XRP Price Prediction
On the higher timeframes, XRP has already established a constructive recovery base after reclaiming key moving averages from the mid-September lows near $1.25–$1.30. Price is consolidating in the $1.45–$1.55 region after testing highs near $1.63–$1.66.
In a normal bull market, a sustained break above $1.70–$2.00 would open the door to the prior cycle high near $3.65. Under the extreme institutional adoption scenario outlined above, that prior high would likely be cleared with significant force, triggering a series of measured-move and Fibonacci extension targets far beyond historical levels.
Aggressive projections from the multi-year base, combined with the kind of vertical price discovery seen in previous mania phases, could theoretically extend into the $25–$40+ zone if volume and momentum expand dramatically. RSI and momentum indicators would almost certainly reach deeply overbought levels during such a move, which is typical of parabolic advances.
Key nearer-term supports remain in the $1.40–$1.45 and $1.30 zones; holding those would keep the broader recovery structure intact while the market waits for (or prices in) any extraordinary catalysts.
Overall, while the current chart supports continued upside in a standard bull market, only an extreme surge in institutional demand and narrative intensity could justify the kind of multi-thousand-percent extension implied by the $25–$50 targets.
Earn $50 and Enter $300K Prize Draw on EdgeX
Maxi Doge Targets Early Mover Upside as XRP Tests Key Levels
While the Grok AI prediction of a potential 30x run for XRP is exciting, presale plays have a stronger track record of producing such returns. It does explain why attention keeps drifting toward presale-stage plays with smaller denominators.
Maxi Doge ($MAXI) is one of those plays. It is an Ethereum-based meme token built around a 240-lb canine mascot and a “1000x leverage” trading-culture identity. The presale has raised $4.8M at a current price of $0.0002841, with dynamic APY staking live for holders.
Standout features include holder-only trading competitions with leaderboard rewards and a Maxi Fund treasury earmarked for liquidity and partnerships.
The meme-first, gym-bro marketing angle (“never skip leg day, never skip a pump”) is endearing. The accumulation numbers suggest plenty of traders are picking a side.
Get Ahead of Next Meme Coin Launch Here
Discover: The Best Token Presales
The post Grok AI Predicts XRP Could Hit $40 in 2026 With Landmark Event appeared first on Cryptonews.
When it was first proposed in December 2025, the rule was divisive, drawing ire from environmental advocates while garnering praise from auto-industry trade groups. The Administration finalized it last week with a signoff from President Donald Trump.
The President commented on the forthcoming rule Sept. 26, saying the new standards would “take the waste out of building cars in America.”
“That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car,” he wrote on Truth Social.
The claim that the revisions will pass down cost savings to American buyers, however, relies on several factors, including automakers’ pricing decisions, fuel costs, and broader economic conditions.
What changes under Trump’s new fuel economy rule?
Former President Joe Biden’s regulations were put in place in 2024 to reduce car-based greenhouse gas emissions, decrease dependence on fossil fuels, and spur a transition to electric and hybrid vehicles. The Trump Administration has claimed that its revisions are more focused on bolstering the auto industry and making safer, newer cars more accessible.
EigenLayer held $19.7 billion at its peak and liquid restaking tokens grew more than 1,000% in the first six weeks of 2024. But the services buying security never paid enough to cover both the base staking yield and a premium on top, so the second yield restaking promised never materialized.
On Sept. 8, DefiLlama’s restaking category held $10.02 billion and generated $99,977 in fees over the prior week. The liquid staking category, on $51.87 billion, generated $27.35 million. Per dollar secured, ordinary staking earns roughly 53 times more.
Two developments then removed what was left of the incentive to restake. Points programs subsidizing deposits wound down through 2025, and slashing went live in April 2025. Slashing is the penalty that confiscates part of an operator’s staked ETH when it misbehaves, by going offline or signing conflicting messages, for example. So restaking suddenly carried a real, priced downside where before the risk had been theoretical. There was no extra yield to compensate.
Set ether.fi aside and the rest of the sector is small. Renzo, Kelp, Swell, Puffer Finance and Bedrock, the five largest remaining liquid restaking tokens, made $953,350 in combined gross profit in the second quarter of 2026. Three quarters earlier the same five made $2.18 million. Puffer, which raised $23 million, recorded $21,590 for the quarter. Swell recorded $22,370.
The income statements also show which part of these businesses was ever profitable, and it was not the restaking. On Kelp’s books, EIGEN token rewards appear at $460,600 in gross revenue and $460,600 in cost of revenue: they arrive and pass straight to depositors, leaving nothing with the protocol. Puffer and Swell book staking rewards the same way. Whatever profit these companies made came from the orinary staking fees charged underneath the restaking layer.
“There’s a convergence now that you’re seeing between traditional market participants and digital asset market participants as well,” Lynq CEO Jerald David said in an interview with CoinDesk TV.
For firms using Lynq, FTIXX gives them somewhere to put cash between trades rather than leaving it sitting around. They can earn yield on the money and pull it out when they need it again.
That was a product Lynq’s clients had been asking for, David said. The network works with firms including B2C2, Wintermute, Galaxy ·, FalconX, Crypto.com and Fireblocks, whose businesses can require moving large amounts of money between trades. They wanted another option for putting that cash to work in the meantime.
“We needed to demonstrate that there was client demand,” David said. “Our clients were looking for a treasury asset on the platform that may have had a different yield profile than the other instrument that’s on there right now.”
Getting FTIXX onto the network required some work. Lynq had to modify its technology, restrict access to U.S. clients and integrate with Mosaic, he said. Customers also need a relationship with tZERO Securities and must meet the required onboarding and eligibility checks.
Lynq itself runs on a private, permissioned Avalanche (AVAX) Layer 1 blockchain. Its network has more than 30 institutional digital-asset firms onboarded and more than $89 million in assets, according to the company.
Crypto
Crypto’s Widening Net: From Fed Bets to Blackjack Tables, Digital Assets Keep Blurring Old Boundaries
If there is one throughline in this week’s crop of crypto headlines, it is that the industry has stopped pretending it is only about buying and holding coins. Across a handful of stories making the rounds, digital assets are shown pushing into territory once reserved for central bankers, casino floors, brokerage accounts and pre-IPO investors alike — a reminder that “crypto news” increasingly means finance news, gambling news and macro news rolled into one.
Take the growing chatter around prediction markets and Federal Reserve policy. Traders have been flocking to on-chain betting platforms to price the odds of late-2026 rate decisions, effectively turning monetary policy into a tradable asset class alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum. That such markets exist at all is notable: a decade ago, speculating on FOMC outcomes required options contracts or futures desks.
Now it can happen peer-to-peer on a blockchain, with odds shifting in real time as economic data lands. The rise of these markets suggests crypto infrastructure is becoming a genuine alternative venue for hedging and speculating on the traditional economy, not just a parallel casino for digital tokens.
Speaking of casinos, the sector itself continues to evolve in ways that mirror shifts in consumer taste rather than technology alone. Reports on crypto gambling lobbies note that live-dealer blackjack tables are increasingly outnumbering roulette wheels—a seemingly small detail that says more about what crypto-native gamblers want.
Live blackjack offers a sense of skill and control that pure-chance games like roulette can’t match, and operators appear to be responding by stacking their lobbies accordingly. It’s a small but telling sign that crypto casinos are maturing into product-driven businesses competing on experience, not just novelty.
Meanwhile, the boundary between crypto trading and traditional equities markets keeps eroding. New developments around Aave’s lending protocol reportedly let users borrow stablecoins against tokenized versions of tech stocks issued through Coinbase and built on the Base network.
If that model gains traction, it would mark a significant step in bringing real-world assets fully into DeFi’s collateral system — letting someone hold a tokenized slice of a Nasdaq darling and borrow against it the same way they might borrow against ETH or Bitcoin today. It’s the kind of integration that regulators, banks and crypto-native builders have all been circling for years, and its practical rollout matters more than the concept alone.
On the trading-platform side, perpetual futures exchanges continue to expand what counts as a “market.” One report describes a platform offering more than 120 perpetual contracts spanning everything from Bitcoin to pre-IPO robotics companies, letting traders apply leverage to assets that, in many cases, aren’t even publicly listed yet.
This kind of expansion into speculative, illiquid corners of the private market — wrapped in crypto’s leverage-friendly perpetual format — raises real questions about price discovery and risk, even as it satisfies demand from traders hungry for exposure beyond the usual crypto majors.
Finally, there’s the steady drumbeat of token listings that keeps the broader ecosystem churning. A gambling-focused token tied to the Dexsport platform recently landed on the MEXC exchange, a move that typically brings a token more liquidity and visibility, if not necessarily more fundamental value. Listings like these remain a bread-and-butter event in crypto markets — routine, but still closely watched by holders hoping for a price bump and a wider trading audience.
Individually, none of these developments is likely to reshape the industry overnight. But together they sketch a familiar pattern in crypto’s ongoing evolution: infrastructure built for speculative tokens is steadily being repurposed for macro bets, tokenized equities, private-company exposure and gambling products alike.
The technology is proving flexible enough to wrap around almost anything with a price — which is exactly why regulators, investors and casual observers alike keep struggling to say where “crypto” ends and the rest of finance begins.
Perplexity AI predicts that if a full-blown bull market returns in Q4, Bitcoin could reach $180,000 before January 1, 2027. The bullish range is estimated at $140,000 to $180,000, with a potential late-cycle surge that could push Bitcoin beyond $200,000.
Currently priced around $83,000, this would represent a gain of about 115% to reach $180,000. What’s noteworthy is that Bitcoin has already corrected significantly from its previous cycle high of about $126,200 on October 6, 2025, followed by a sharp decline during 2026.
Bitcoin has a history of producing substantial gains during strong market cycles. According to historical annual data, BTC gained approximately 154% in 2023 and 110% in 2024. If the current predictions hold true, we may see a similar increase on the horizon.
Perplexity AI Predicts Bitcoin to $180,000 if Bullish Catalysts Align: Does the Technical Analysis Back it Up?
Bitcoin recently broke out of a pattern of lower highs that had developed since May, reclaiming several key moving averages. According to Reuters’ technical analysis, $81,781 is considered important support, while $86,500 is a significant resistance level. Above that, the next technical targets are around $90,000 and $97,867.
CryptoQuant has noted a similar trend, calling $81,700 a key level because it aligns with Bitcoin’s 365-day moving average. Resistance levels above this are near $86,600 and $88,700.
Bitcoin’s first major test is surpassing the $85,000 level, followed by the $86,000 to $88,000 range. Bitcoin has pushed through this area, which matters because a sustained breakout would remove one of the largest technical obstacles between its current price and the $100,000 level.
The next major milestone is approximately $98,000. Beyond that, the market will be approaching the all-time high of $126,200, where it gets particularly interesting.
Once Bitcoin decisively breaks beyond $126,000, it will enter a phase of genuine price discovery. Historical resistance above that level is very limited. At that point, psychological targets such as $130,000, $140,000, and $150,000 could attract momentum traders and institutional investors.
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Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early Mover Upside as Bitcoin Drops Dangerously Close to $80,000
A -2.5% daily drop is not too much to worry about for whales and those already heavily positioned at a much lower price. However, for those who bought over $80,000, things could be getting uncomfortable, which is why presale opportunities prove so popular.
Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is positioning itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with full SVM integration. It boasts smart contract execution built for speed that outpaces Solana itself, while settling back to Bitcoin’s base-layer security.
As of today, the presale has raised more than $33.1M at a current token price of just $0.0136864, with staking rewards live at launch at a huge 35% APY.
The pitch: solve Bitcoin’s slow transactions, high fees, and lack of programmability without abandoning what makes BTC trusted in the first place. A Decentralized Canonical Bridge handles BTC transfers natively.
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The post Perplexity AI Predicts a Big Move for BTC in 2026 Even With Recent Dip appeared first on Cryptonews.
XRP lost its $1.50 price pivot today, sliding to $1.47 after a daily decline of about 3%. The break forces a binary question onto the chart: does the selling pressure showing up in spot-market volume resolve into a quick reclaim, or does it open the door to a deeper slide toward $1.40-$1.42?
The 200-day EMA is near $1.37, the level that would flip the medium-term structure from bullish to neutral. The token has been printing lower highs since a local peak near $1.63 on September 23, and a second attempt to clear $1.60 on September 25 failed as well. Since then, the decline has been slow and orderly: $1.55, then $1.52, then $1.50, and now $1.47.
There was no single dramatic session driving the move. Instead, the pattern reads as buyers simply not showing up, with every small bounce getting sold rather than extended. After the sharp rally in early September, that kind of cooling was overdue, but the open question is whether $1.50 was ever real support or just a round number the market is now testing.
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ETF Accumulation Narrative or Technical Pullback?
The chart itself frames this as a cooling-off period following the rally that carried the XRP price up nearly 50% from its August low near $1.00. RSI sits at a neutral 54, with no overbought or oversold readings to lean on. Price levels, not oscillators, are setting the tone for this week.
Separately, market data has pointed to sustained spot XRP ETF inflows running into the hundreds of millions of dollars over recent weeks, a trend some trackers frame as ongoing institutional accumulation beneath the price action. That flow data is useful context, but it is not confirmed as the driver of Monday’s drop, as the pullback below $1.50 traces cleanly to failed resistance tests and fading bid support.
The medium-term structure remains intact for now. XRP sits above its 200-day EMA at $1.37, which is curling upward for the first time since spring. This is a sign the longer trend has not broken, even as the shorter-term chart bleeds lower. A descending trendline from the late-August spike to $1.70 was cleared in mid-September, and that breakout is what fueled the run to $1.67 in the first place.
A second descending trendline, drawn from the September 23 high, is now the line bulls need to clear in October; left alone, it points toward $1.20 by mid-November. The levels on both sides of the current price are well defined.
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Reclaim $1.50 or Risk $1.37: XRP Price Next Move
The first job for bulls is straightforward: close a daily candle back above $1.50. Do that, and Monday’s drop reads as a fakeout rather than a breakdown, with $1.55 as the next confirmation level and $1.60-$1.63 as the target that would put the September 23 high back in play.
Fail to reclaim $1.50 in the next day or two, and $1.40-$1.42 becomes the level to watch, with the 200-day EMA at $1.37 as the line that actually matters for the medium-term outlook. A close below it would shift Ripple’s native asset from a bullish structure to a neutral one, opening room toward $1.30 and, in a broader crypto market sell-off scenario, $1.20.
$XRP just printed it's 6th weekly close beneath the 50 week EMA. The bears contInue to hold their defence line, with the bulls support below at $1.31 as a guardrail. (20 week EMA. For the time being, we remain compressed. https://t.co/7j6d2KB27L pic.twitter.com/r9kwHDmf2R
—
ChartNerd
(@ChartNerdTA) September 28, 2026
For this week, the range is $1.37 to $1.60, with $1.50 sitting as the pivot in between. On technical analysis grounds, the base case is a dip toward $1.40-$1.42 that gets bought, followed by another attempt at reclaiming $1.50. A pattern consistent with pullbacks inside an uptrend rather than the start of a new downtrend.
The $1.80-$2.00 zone remains the valid medium-term target as long as $1.37 holds; lose it, and that target moves out of reach for the immediate term.
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The post XRP Price Slides 2.9% as $1.50 Reclaim Becomes Critical appeared first on Cryptonews.
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