{"id":78427,"date":"2026-09-20T15:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T15:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/no-clarity-plenty-of-activity-week-in-review\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T15:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T15:56:11","slug":"no-clarity-plenty-of-activity-week-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/no-clarity-plenty-of-activity-week-in-review\/","title":{"rendered":"No CLARITY, Plenty of Activity \u2014 Week in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Originally posted on : Bitcoin News )<\/b>
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This editorial is from this week\u2019s edition of the newsletter Week in Review, sent to subscribers on Friday. <\/b>Subscribe to the newsletter<\/a> to get this weekly editorial the second it\u2019s finished. The newsletter also includes the biggest stories of the week, with a comment on each story.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Bitcoin and U.S. equities are relatively flat from last Friday to early Friday morning, but the path from there to here was volatile in both directions.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin\u2019s longer-term outlook continued to look constructive this week<\/a>. It remains comfortably above its 200-week moving average. The people who bought around here the last three times this happened did well. The BTC\/Gold pair continues to look good too. Unfortunately, the macroeconomic and political risks haven\u2019t gone away.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, JP Morgan released an oil report that everyone is talking about. In it, the venerable bank echoed concerns raised in this newsletter for the past four or five weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time since the start of the Iran conflict, we don\u2019t have a baseline view. We simply don\u2019t know how to model the endgame. We assumed there were economic redlines the US administration would be unwilling to cross: $100 oil, gasoline near $5 a gallon, a 4% headline inflation print, or a 5-handle on the 10-year Treasury yield.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. involvement in the Middle East<\/a> certainly led to elevated volatility this week. President Trump claimed Iran wanted a peace deal, helping the Dow erase its Monday morning losses. Then came reports of Saudi oil shipments to Europe being canceled, potentially for two months. Some are less alarmed about this cancellation than others.
Elevated inflation led the Fed to raise rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday. The decision was unanimous, although not everyone outside the Fed agreed. Michael Green, along with other experts, believes that current high-interest-rate policy from the Federal Reserve can actually create inflationary conditions.<\/p>\n

The rate hike didn\u2019t lead to any material increase in long-duration bond yields in the U.S., probably because policy rates are not what\u2019s driving the long end. As Jordi Visser points out in a phenomenal episode of Bits + Bips, the government is having to compete with the private sector:<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants government bonds. They\u2019d rather be getting higher yields on companies that have the best balance sheets in the world. And I don\u2019t mean Anthropic and OpenAI.\u201d<\/p>\n

As mentioned last week, higher rates aren\u2019t exclusively an American problem. Jim Bianco pointed out that yields are at local highs across multiple countries.
So, with the U.S. 10-year approaching 5%, the Fed hiking rates, oil above $100, and a Middle East conflict that is dragging on, the U.S. economy appears to be ripping? Or, to put it uncouthly, \u201cpeople are still buying shit, aren\u2019t they?\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest news in crypto was the CLARITY Act, perhaps its swan song. The week began with reports that President Trump had accepted CLARITY\u2019s ethics revisions. It wasn\u2019t enough. The bill failed to advance<\/a> in the Senate, leaving its prospects for 2026 looking bleak and prompting the predictable recriminations. Patrick Witt called it a failure of leadership. Others rediscovered the comforting cope that crypto doesn\u2019t need a bill anyway.<\/p>\n

Speculation about the fallout extended to possible effects on the bond market, followed by disagreement about whether higher yields would be good for Bitcoin or something rather less bullish for it. These are competing theses, not an established chain of causation.<\/p>\n

Blockworks\u2019 Mike Ippolito appeared to discover from first principles the banking industry\u2019s capacity for self-interest. Omid Malekan supplied a historical example of the banking cartel\u2019s arguments against money market funds that sound eerily familiar to current complaints about stablecoins.<\/p>\n

A brief bullish tangent. Despite all the headwinds, Bitcoin has remained strong. One positive catalyst next month that could fuel the next leg higher is the potential upside surprises in Q3 earnings from crypto-related companies. Or maybe the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill, which cleared committee on Wednesday, passes a full House floor vote?<\/p>\n

In the end, it might not matter that CLARITY failed. By all accounts, it was very close to passing, which indicates bipartisan support on nearly all issues. The SEC and CFTC can simply make rules based on the latest version of CLARITY and have some level of confidence that it\u2019s acceptable to both parties.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, U.S. companies aren\u2019t waiting for Washington to get its act together. Tokenized stocks could be the biggest story of this cycle, potentially dwarfing the activity in crypto-native assets.<\/p>\n

Circle\u2019s Arc went live. Long.xyz said its tokenized stocks would be transferable 1:1 between Robinhood and Arc, and Fomo is integrating the chain. Unfortunately, the launch livestream attracted criticism, mockery, and more mockery for looking unprofessional.<\/p>\n

Robinhood raised its gas limit and lowered fees, addressing the complaints from two weeks ago. Base is playing catch-up in tokenized stocks. A looming problem with all this competition is the fragmentation across rival versions of tokenized equities. Stablecoin fragmentation is already annoying, but this will be far worse.<\/p>\n

Tempo also appears to be gaining market share, without quite so much spectacle. Hyperliquid, meanwhile, is coming to the U.S. through Kraken\u2019s parent, Payward. This potentially gives Hyperliquid access to six million accounts and $100 billion in monthly volume.<\/p>\n

Shayne Coplan reported record U.S. activity for Polymarket and a No. 3 app ranking in America. The ranking is most likely intraday cherry-picking, but directionally impressive. Interestingly, given the composition of their tech stack, and the likelihood that U.S. volume percentage will only increase, it\u2019s safe to say that Polymarket is already a web2 fintech company with some blockchain window dressing.<\/p>\n

Tether is also doing things traditionally associated with banks. Its $1.45 billion arrangement with Gold.com is a lease on bullion. Gold.com gets metal without paying the full cost upfront, uses it in trading and retail operations, and settles later. Tether is providing the kinds of financing a commercial bank or trade-finance desk normally offers, while positioning itself as a tokenized gold leader.<\/p>\n

The Zcash governance debate<\/a> mentioned last week heated up. Matt Huang questioned the sufficiency of coinholder voting, and Naval Ravikant pushed back strongly. Maxime Desalle, himself a developer-fund grant recipient, warned against Zcash becoming a government. Economist Alex Tabarrok weighed in, and Zooko found merit in his view. Eli Ben-Sasson proposed a concrete hybrid governance model.<\/p>\n

On to the business of crypto. Crypto VCs have had a difficult time, as befits the beginning of a bull market. Mark Moss has also had a rough time. His Bitcoin DAT Satsuma shut down and returned $41 million to shareholders. CoinEx is shutting down too. ZachXBT hopes customers get their assets back.<\/p>\n

Binance likely got caught in the crossfire of Operation Economic Outcast<\/a>, the U.S. Treasury\u2019s operation to go after Iran\u2019s crypto. Department of Justice prosecutors seek $61 million in forfeitures, alleging Chinese companies used Binance accounts to launder oil proceeds. These are allegations about customers\u2019 activity, not a finding against Binance. It\u2019s worth remembering that where financial crime is concerned, crypto is a small fish.<\/p>\n

Then there was the Polish oil fiasco involving a $230 million advance<\/a>, USDT, and USB sticks. The fiasco has been a Polish political scandal for two years, but the reconstruction this week is the first account of how the $230 million actually moved.<\/p>\n

Finally, security. LayerZero faced allegations that it lost a Wyoming private key and misrepresented what happened. Its CEO denied losing the key, while Keith Lawhorn, the Chief Information Security Officer of the Wyoming Stable Token Commission, wrote an article that didn\u2019t make LayerZero look good. As luck would have it, the next day LayerZero posted a marketing message that stated, \u201cZero is coming.\u201d Ouch.<\/p>\n

Revolut suffered a major data leak, with hackers allegedly gaining access through multiple Italian law-enforcement agencies. The hackers want a $3 million ransom paid in Monero.<\/p>\n

Stay safe out there.<\/p>\n

-David Sencil<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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(Originally posted on : Bitcoin News ) This editorial is from this week\u2019s edition of the newsletter Week in Review, sent to subscribers on Friday. Subscribe to the newsletter to get this weekly editorial the second it\u2019s finished. The newsletter also includes the biggest stories of the week, with a comment on each story. Bitcoin […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":78428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowdfundjunction.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}