Bitcoin fell below $76,000 on Tuesday night, a seven-week low, as traders weighed the implications of a Democratic Congress for crypto. By Wednesday afternoon, it had rebounded above $80,800, up 4% on the day, before retracing to around $79,600.
The rally coincided with a broader market surge: the Dow jumped 3%, the Nasdaq gained 1.6%, and oil prices fell sharply. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped 9% to $88 a barrel, down almost 17% on the week, after Iran’s parliament speaker said voters had “said NO TO WAR.”
James Butterfill of CoinShares cautioned that for Bitcoin, “real yields, dollar liquidity and ETP flows still carry more weight than the elections.”
Policy shift draws attention
More significant than the price action, according to the report, was policy news that emerged Wednesday afternoon. Eleanor Terrett reported that House Democrats are discussing expanding Maxine Waters’ Crypto Investor and Consumer Bill of Rights—originally an amendment to the CLARITY Act in 2025—into a full market structure bill next Congress. The draft would incorporate Democratic CLARITY provisions that the House rejected last year, plus provisions Senate Democrats and Republicans had already agreed on before the September cloture vote that killed the bill. Three industry sources described the talks to her.
Waters is the likely incoming chair of House Financial Services, and she is apparently planning to write a bill rather than hold hearings. The new proposals under discussion would give the SEC a larger role supervising crypto markets and leave the CFTC with a smaller one. The draft is expected to carry ethics provisions restricting the crypto activities of Trump and other federal officials—provisions Democrats have long sought and that many thought would kill any chances of the bill being signed.
ETF flows turn positive
The Bitcoin ETFs saw $74 million in net inflows on Wednesday, while the ETH ETFs saw $53 million in inflows, breaking a streak of outflows.
In corporate treasury news, Saylor’s STRC hit its $100 par value for the first time since May, enabling Strategy to buy 191 BTC.
Security and exchange updates
Coinbase said it holds more than 99% of customer assets in cold storage in a blog post responding to the Binance hack, detailing split cold-wallet keys that are never fully reassembled, rate limits on cold-to-hot transfers, and kill switches that take signing keys offline entirely.
ZachXBT named French banking group Crédit Mutuel Arkéa as the alleged victim of a crypto theft now exceeding $133 million, up from the $106 million he flagged Monday.
Binance and Deribit revoked all API keys linked to third-party trading platform SignalPlus after SignalPlus flagged a potential security issue.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin sued Kalshi over its sports event contracts, alleging the exchange operates an unlicensed gambling platform and sidestepped state licensing and taxes.
A Polygon Labs validator support team member proposed a hard fork of Polygon PoS to move roughly 70.49 million POL stolen in the Polymarket and Binance hacks, worth about $6.5 million, from the attackers’ addresses to recovery addresses designated by both companies.
Market snapshot
Among major cryptocurrencies, BTC was up 2% at $79,900, ETH up 3% at $2,390, SOL up 2% at $95, HYPE down 5% at $81.80, and ZEC even at $1,298. INJ (+8%), ATOM (+7%), and RAY (+6%) led top altcoin movers.
In traditional markets, gold rose 1.5% to $4,135. Stock futures were mixed after yesterday’s rally, with Dow futures up 0.5% and Nasdaq futures down 0.7%.
Meme coins were mixed: DOGE +1%, SHIB +1%, PEPE -2%, PENGU -2%, TRUMP -15%, SPX -2%, BONK -2%.
Hyperliquid led onchain protocols in revenue on the day with $3.67 million, followed by Pump.fun at $1.71 million and Uniswap at $364,000.
In NFTs, CryptoPunks were even at 30.4 ETH, BAYC up 1% at 5.64 ETH, and Pudgy Penguins down 4% at 2.25 ETH. Wired (+30%) and Milady (+5%) led top movers.
