Harborne and Delo subsequently gave about 3 million and 4 million pounds, respectively, in the first quarter of 2026. Together, that accounted for roughly 76% of Reform’s 9.26 million pounds in reported donations, excluding public funds, according to a calculation based on Electoral Commission figures.
Farage has actively courted the industry.
At the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in May 2025, he vowed to establish a bitcoin reserve at the Bank of England, introduce a 10% capital gains tax on cryptoassets and prevent banks from closing customers’ accounts because of their crypto activity.
The Guardian’s report did not specify whether the latest donations were paid in cryptocurrency. Harborne’s earlier 9-million-pound gift was made in cash.
In March, the Electoral Commission told lawmakers that no political party had reported donations identified as cryptoassets, according to a House of Commons Library briefing.
The new funding arrives as the Metropolitan Police investigate allegations concerning Reform’s political donations. Farage separately faces a parliamentary standards investigation over a 5 million pound personal gift from Harborne before his election as an MP in 2024. Reform and Farage deny wrongdoing, per The Guardian’s report.
The government separately announced plans in March to ban political donations made in cryptocurrency and cap contributions from overseas electors at 100,000 pounds annually.
Crypto analyst Ali Martinez said that $XRP has reached a critical support zone after the sharp correction in recent weeks, and the $1.35 level could be decisive for short-term price movement. According to data shared by Martinez, $XRP has lost approximately 20% of its value in the last three weeks, falling from $1.70 to $1.35.
One of the reasons cited for the pullback in $XRP is profit-taking by large investors. Martinez stated that whales have sold or distributed approximately 90 million $XRP to different addresses in the last week.
Parallel to the price drop, there was also a significant decline in activity on the $XRP network. The number of daily active addresses decreased by 90.18%, from 388,492 to 38,163. According to Martinez, this indicates a significant decrease in investor participation during the correction period.
However, $XRP appears to have found strong support around $1.35. The fact that approximately 2.29 billion $XRP have changed hands in this price region in the past increases the technical significance of this level.
Martinez stated that if the $1.35 support level holds and $XRP rises above $1.38 again, the price could recover first to $1.60 and then to $1.68. According to the analyst, the most critical level to watch for $XRP in the short term will be the $1.35 support level.
Nasdaq’s agreement to invest $100 million in Payward, Kraken’s parent company, adds a planned surveillance rollout to a push into tokenized and always-on markets. One day earlier, Citadel Securities asked U.S. regulators to keep products tied to public companies, including equity-linked event contracts and perpetual derivatives, inside the Securities and Exchange Commission’s perimeter.
Together, the two moves expose the gate facing always-on markets. The disputed products use public-company shares, prices or reported financial metrics as reference points. Their legal classification shapes the listing path, market access and investor protections. Nasdaq’s technology could help Payward monitor trading across crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures and options, but it cannot decide what a product is under federal law.
Nasdaq said Sept. 10 that its venture arm had agreed to invest $100 million in Payward. The announcement describes an agreement to invest, not a completed transaction.
The companies also announced that Payward would adopt Nasdaq surveillance across its portfolio of trading venues. Nasdaq’s investor release names crypto, equities, tokenized equities, futures and options as the covered asset classes.
That is broad venue coverage, but the disclosed implementation detail is thin. Nasdaq gave no deployment date and did not say whether Payward’s system would combine trading on its venues with order and trade data from the underlying U.S. cash-equity market.
Citadel’s concern is that misconduct can cross venue boundaries. Its filing describes how a trader with material nonpublic information could profit through an equity-linked derivative before an issuer announcement, or use a derivative in a strategy involving the price of the underlying security.
In its Sept. 9 comment letter, Citadel argued that effective oversight therefore requires regulators to surveil an equity-linked product together with activity in the underlying cash equity. That is Citadel’s policy position, not a decision by either the SEC or Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Yet it identifies a test the Nasdaq-Payward announcement does not answer: whether multi-asset monitoring also means cross-market access to the securities data needed to spot manipulation and insider trading.
Classification still controls the route to market
Surveillance can strengthen a venue’s case that it can operate an orderly market. It cannot decide whether an equity-linked instrument is a security, security-based swap, swap or futures contract.
The procedural stakes are concrete. Regulatory routes differ. Under CFTC Regulation 40.2, a designated contract market may list a product without prior Commission approval after filing a written self-certification by the preceding business day. The venue must certify compliance with the Commodity Exchange Act and applicable rules. Regulation 40.3 provides a separate voluntary approval route.
The SEC does not use one uniform track for every exchange filing, but recent equity-linked proposals show the contrast between routes. A July 10 Cboe notice described binary options tied to issuer key performance indicators as a proposed rule change. An Aug. 24 MEMX notice similarly described proposed securities event contracts tied to financial metrics reported by issuers.
At the same time, a CFTC product filing page listed a QCEX KPI Contract as certified on June 18. Another CFTC page for organization code COIN listed US500, Tech100, Defense10, China10 and AI10 index perpetual-style futures as certified.
Those pages establish certification status, not trading volume, launch dates or availability to a particular customer group. The official record therefore supports a narrower statement than claims that equity perpetuals are already broadly trading in the United States: multiple equity-index products have been certified, while the cited pages do not prove their live commercial status.
On May 29, 2026, the CFTC took a historical, bitcoin-specific step when it approved KalshiEX’s bitcoin-referencing BTCPERP under Regulation 40.3. Its companion policy statement called for case-by-case review of perpetuals tied to asset classes outside that order. That past bitcoin approval did not settle how equity-linked perpetuals should be classified.
Citadel’s filing argues that the SEC perimeter brings more than an approval process. It points to best execution, order handling and front-running rules, execution-quality disclosure, fair access, venue transparency and coordinated trading halts. For equity-linked perpetuals, it separately cites market-access controls and the risk of automatic deleveraging during volatile periods.
Those are the practical stakes for users. Two contracts can provide exposure to a similar corporate outcome while offering different disclosure, execution and surveillance arrangements. A faster listing route can widen access, but it can also create uncertainty over which protections apply and which regulator has the data and authority to investigate misconduct spanning the derivative and the underlying stock.
On March 18, 2026, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s rule change for eligible securities to trade in tokenized form during a Depository Trust Company pilot.
Under that model, a tokenized share must be fungible with its traditional counterpart, carry the same CUSIP and symbol, provide the same shareholder rights, and trade on the same order book with the same execution priority. Market surveillance for the tokenized and traditional forms would rely on the same underlying data available to Nasdaq and FINRA.
That March 18 approval did not equal a launch. The order says the framework becomes effective only after DTC establishes the required infrastructure and post-trade settlement services. Nasdaq must then give members at least 30 calendar days’ notice before tokenized trading begins.
Nasdaq separately expects its work with Payward on Nasdaq Equity Tokens, or NETs, to launch in the second quarter of 2027. That is a forward-looking target. The sources do not establish that the Payward rollout and the DTC-pilot model have identical operating conditions.
The SEC’s Sept. 17 roundtable will bring these questions closer together without resolving them by itself. The published agenda covers exchange and broker readiness, overnight surveillance, closing-price processes, clearance and settlement, investor protection, system resiliency, market-data continuity and expected liquidity.
The event concerns preparations for 24-hour trading in conventional market infrastructure, with a later panel looking toward possible future expansion to 24×7 trading. It is a public discussion, not a rulemaking decision. That distinction prevents a debate about longer US equity sessions from being collapsed into the separate question of tokenized equities and perpetual derivatives that may trade continuously.
The regulatory test is not a choice between surveillance and law. Venues will need both. Nasdaq’s technology could help Payward show that always-on markets are observable across its own stack. Citadel’s argument is that equity-linked oversight must also reach the underlying securities market and fit the statutory boundary between the SEC and CFTC.
Until those pieces align, the fastest token rail will not necessarily deliver the broadest U.S. access. The products that reach users with durable liquidity may be the ones that combine continuous monitoring, cross-market data, operational resilience and a classification regulators can defend.
Ethereum has started consolidating near $2,470 after its August recovery, as falling exchange reserves reveal an increasingly tight liquidity supply structure.
Reportedly, the supply structure shifted as fewer tokens remained readily available on Binance.
According to CryptoQuant, the Binance $ETH reserves had fallen to approximately 3.74 million $ETH, marking their lowest level in three months.
The decline reflected a broader reduction in exchange-held Ethereum. The total reserves across the major exchanges recently hit a multi-year low of approximately 14.88 million $ETH.
The lower reserves limited the $ETH immediately available for trading, reducing potential selling pressure.
However, falling reserves alone did not necessarily indicate stronger demand, but this supply shift coincided with record Ethereum staking participation.
Roughly 43.1 million $ETH was staked, which represented 35.9% of circulating supply. The rising staking additionally limited the portion of $ETH readily available for trading as well.
These developments together pointed toward an increasingly constrained liquid supply outlook.
Source: CryptoQuant
How the tightening supply could reshape $ETH price direction
The tightening liquid supply could become more significant and influential in case the spot demand strengthens.
The fewer readily available tokens meant the bulls could face limited exchange-side supply pressure. Consequently, this imbalance could make Ethereum highly sensitive to sustained buying pressure.
However, the supply tightening does not guarantee higher prices without sufficient demand.
Therefore, continued exchange exits could reinforce this structure by keeping immediately tradable $ETH constrained. Persistent inflows could instead increase potential selling availability.
Ultimately, $ETH’s next price directional move depends partly on whether demand expands alongside the declining liquid supply.
Binance top traders maintained their long bias
The derivatives positioning continued supporting the bulls as Binance top traders preserved a clear long-side bias.
According to CoinGlass data, the long accounts represented 59.05%, versus 40.95% holding short positions. This resulted in a Long/Short Ratio of 1.44, showing a stronger bullish positioning among the Binance top traders.
Additionally, the Ethereum Open Interest remained elevated at around $33.73 billion. This largely stable Open Interest suggests leveraged participation remained significant as $ETH consolidated within its current range.
Together with the long-side dominance, this shows that traders retained a bullish exposure without a reduction in derivatives participation.
However, the concentrated long positioning could trigger a liquidation risk in case $ETH loses its current support.
But for now, the derivatives positioning remains supportive as $ETH attempts to build strength for another resistance attempt.
Source: CoinGlass
Cooling RSI and bearish Parabolic SAR tested $ETH’s recovery
At the time of analysis, Ethereum [$ETH] traded around $2,473, inside its consolidation range after August’s rapid price advance.
The token continued holding above the $2,372 support, as repeated attempts stalled around $2,540 resistance area.
The RSI indicator retreated to approximately 60.5 after previously hitting the overbought territory. This suggested that buying strength had moderated without pushing RSI into the bearish territory.
The Parabolic SAR meanwhile remained above the current price, maintaining a short-term bearish pressure within the consolidation.
Holding above the $2,372 support would keep the broader price structure intact despite these cooling indicator conditions.
A successful breakout above the $2,540 area could likely reopen the path for another upside expansion.
Source: TradingView
Final Summary
Binance reserves fell as record staking reduced Ethereum’s immediately available liquid supply.
Long-heavy derivatives positioning favored buyers, but $ETH still needed to clear $2,540.
Jiang Zhuoer, a well-known cryptocurrency miner from China and the founder of the $BTC.TOP mining pool, announced that he has sold all of his Bitcoin ($BTC) positions. Jiang stated that he liquidated 100% of his $BTC holdings at the price of $77,226.
Jiang’s decision to exit Bitcoin entirely comes amidst rising inflation data from the US and hardening expectations regarding the Fed’s monetary policy. The renowned miner had stated the day before that the probability of a Fed interest rate hike had risen to 70% following the latest US Producer Price Index (PPI) data.
Jiang also stated that he expects the next Consumer Price Index (CPI) data to have negative consequences for the markets, and that he is prepared to open a short position in the market if the conditions are right.
The latest sale stands in stark contrast to Jiang Zhuoer’s recently expressed more optimistic market views. Jiang had previously stated that he was 90% certain the bear market was over, that Ethereum could outperform Bitcoin in the current cycle, and that he planned to use his remaining reserve funds to buy ETH.
$XRP is becoming increasingly embedded in regulated financial markets, with new developments spanning ETF flows, derivatives infrastructure and institutional ownership. Canadian-listed $XRP ETF options are now explicitly covered by a framework allowing their offer and sale in the United States, while federal rules continue to place $XRP alongside Bitcoin, Ether and Solana for certain exchange-listed investment products.
The expansion comes as U.S. spot $XRP ETFs show unusually resilient demand. $XRP funds attracted fresh capital on September 8 even as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana ETFs recorded outflows, adding to a longer run of institutional accumulation. At the same time, comments from Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz have revived discussion over just how large $XRP could eventually become if adoption continues to accelerate.
$XRP ETF Options Gain a Clearer Route Into the U.S.
A Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation filing has put $XRP alongside some of the largest cryptocurrencies in another corner of regulated finance. The document lists options on the Evolve $XRP ETF and Purpose $XRP ETF among Montréal Exchange contracts covered by CDCC’s Form S-20 registration for offer and sale in the United States.
The development does not mean that new $XRP options have launched directly on a U.S. exchange. The contracts remain listed in Canada and are cleared through CDCC. Instead, the filing establishes a regulated cross-border structure through which eligible U.S. market participants can access options tied to Canadian $XRP ETFs.
That distinction matters because $XRP is gradually gaining exposure across several layers of traditional market infrastructure rather than relying primarily on offshore crypto derivatives. Earlier 2026 SEC exhibits had already included options on the Evolve and Purpose $XRP ETFs, so the latest filing reinforces an existing regulatory pathway rather than representing an entirely new approval.
$XRP is also being grouped with larger digital assets elsewhere in federal market rules. A separate Federal Register filing identifies Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and $XRP as assets currently qualifying under generic listing standards for commodity-based trust shares.
The classification should not be interpreted as a blanket determination of $XRP’s status in every regulatory context. For investment-product infrastructure, however, it shows $XRP increasingly appearing beside BTC, ETH and SOL when exchanges and regulators establish rules for listed crypto products.
Institutional $XRP Trading Is Moving Beyond Spot ETFs
The cross-border options development adds to an institutional derivatives market that has already expanded rapidly. CME $XRP futures and options generated approximately $13 billion in notional volume during the first quarter of 2026, while cumulative $XRP futures volume later surpassed $62 billion.
Those figures point to a broader shift in how professional investors can gain $XRP exposure. Spot ETFs provide direct investment access, while futures and options give institutions tools to hedge positions, express directional views and manage risk without relying exclusively on crypto-native exchanges.
This infrastructure can also make $XRP more practical for larger portfolios. Institutional investors typically require liquid derivatives and regulated custody or investment vehicles before committing significant capital to an asset. $XRP’s growing presence across ETFs, futures and options therefore matters even when individual product launches do not immediately affect its price.
For readers following the latest $XRP news, the trend has become increasingly consistent: $XRP is gaining more of the market infrastructure that previously developed around Bitcoin and Ethereum.
$XRP ETFs Defy Broader Crypto Fund Outflows
Recent ETF flows provide another indication that investor interest is holding up. U.S. spot $XRP ETFs recorded $1.55 million in net inflows on September 8, while the other major crypto ETF categories experienced withdrawals.
$XRP ETFs stood apart from the broader crypto market with positive net inflows on September 8. Source: SoSoValue
Bitcoin ETFs recorded approximately $46.65 million in outflows, Ethereum funds lost around $24.29 million and Solana products posted roughly $668,000 in withdrawals. The $1.55 million entering $XRP products was relatively small by itself, but the direction of flows separated $XRP from the rest of the major crypto ETF market during the session.
That divergence follows a stronger accumulation trend. $XRP ETFs previously recorded an 11-session inflow streak that brought approximately $170 million into the products, while their strongest week of 2026 generated $110.49 million in new capital. Cumulative inflows had reached roughly $1.66 billion to $1.68 billion around the beginning of September.
Institutional ownership has also become more visible. Goldman Sachs emerged as the largest disclosed $XRP ETF holder at approximately $87.4 million, while firms including Jane Street and Millennium Management have also appeared among significant reported holders.
One trading session does not establish a permanent rotation from Bitcoin or Ethereum into $XRP, particularly because the Bitcoin ETF market remains substantially larger. The persistence of $XRP inflows is nevertheless becoming more notable because demand has continued through periods when broader crypto investment products have struggled to attract capital.
$XRP Price Strengthens Alongside ETF Demand
The latest positive ETF flows have also coincided with an improvement in $XRP’s market price. $XRP traded around $1.43 on September 9, gaining approximately 2.7% over 24 hours and 7.4% over seven days, while daily trading volume stood near $2.87 billion.
That relationship has not always been straightforward. Earlier periods of record $XRP ETF inflows occurred alongside declining prices and pressure from rising Treasury yields, showing that institutional fund demand alone is not sufficient to determine short-term market direction.
The latest period presents a more supportive combination. ETF flows have returned to positive territory while $XRP itself has moved higher, potentially giving investors a clearer indication that institutional buying and spot-market demand are working in the same direction.
Ownership concentration remains another factor worth monitoring as institutional participation increases. Data on the biggest $XRP holders provides additional context on how the token’s supply is distributed across major addresses as the investor base evolves.
David Schwartz Revives the $XRP-Bitcoin Flippening Debate
The growth of regulated $XRP products has arrived at the same time that David Schwartz has revived one of the cryptocurrency’s most ambitious long-term debates. The Ripple CTO emeritus recently said he believes $XRP could eventually overtake Bitcoin by market capitalization.
Schwartz’s argument was not based on Bitcoin collapsing. Instead, he suggested that the overall digital asset market could become much larger, allowing both cryptocurrencies to appreciate while $XRP grows faster because of the $XRP Ledger’s functionality and speed.
The current numbers show how ambitious that scenario remains. Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands at approximately $1.58 trillion compared with roughly $88.9 billion for $XRP, making Bitcoin about 17.7 times larger.
With approximately 62.74 billion $XRP circulating, matching Bitcoin’s current market capitalization would require a price near $25.10 per $XRP, assuming Bitcoin’s valuation remained unchanged. That calculation is not a price target. Any increase in Bitcoin’s market capitalization would raise the $XRP price required to overtake it.
The gap also looks considerably wider than it did during $XRP’s previous peak relative to Bitcoin. On January 1, 2018, $XRP was the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of approximately $92.6 billion compared with Bitcoin’s $229.1 billion. $XRP was worth roughly 40% as much as Bitcoin at that point, versus only about 5.6% today.
$XRP’s Institutional Case Is Getting Stronger, but the Gap With Bitcoin Remains Huge
The flippening discussion remains highly speculative, but the institutional developments behind it are more concrete. $XRP now has growing spot ETF demand, an expanding CME derivatives market and Canadian ETF options operating within a regulated cross-border framework.
The key question is whether those developments translate into sustained capital inflows rather than simply more ways to trade the asset. $XRP’s recent ability to attract ETF money while competing crypto funds experience withdrawals provides an encouraging signal, but closing the enormous valuation gap with Bitcoin would require adoption on a dramatically larger scale.
For now, the more significant development is not whether $XRP can overtake Bitcoin. It is that $XRP continues to move closer to the regulated market structure already surrounding the industry’s largest digital assets, giving both institutional and traditional investors more ways to gain exposure than at any earlier point in its history.
Ethereum developers have tentatively scheduled the Glamsterdam upgrade for Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet on October 6 at 13:53 UTC, even as private devnet testing continues to uncover bugs.
The date gives developers a path toward a December mainnet release, but it remains conditional on whether the next testing phase can produce a stable network.
Glamsterdam Date Depends on Devnet Testing
Protocol specialist Christine D. Kim noted in her latest newsletter that developers agreed to the October 6 Sepolia date while acknowledging several caveats, the biggest of which is that Glamsterdam has yet to run successfully on a stable private devnet.
Glamsterdam-Devnet-9 launched on September 1 with 1,000 validator nodes, making it the largest devnet of its kind by node count so far. But the network is not finalizing, meaning too few validators are correctly proposing and attesting to the chain head.
Ethereum Foundation (EF) developer operations engineer Stefan Starflinger said the size of the network exposed problems, noting it “showed that there are still quite a few edge cases and issues” left to address. He added that the previous devnet, Devnet-8, had an even more serious flaw, a bug that could freeze the entire network if a validator proposed a block sharing its parent’s hash.
Separately, EF researcher Maria Silva flagged a bug tied to EIP-8037, the State Creation Gas Cost Increase, which will require every execution-layer client to update its code.
Because of those fixes, another devnet is coming, and as of this week, the one to watch is Devnet-11, not 10 as originally planned. Parithosh Jayanti, the Ethereum Foundation developer operations engineer who chaired the call, said that if the new devnet fails again, “we’d have to take it case by case” on whether October 6 still works.
Hoodi and Mainnet Dates Remain Uncertain
Developers have also held off on setting a date for Hoodi, Ethereum’s second public testnet in the rollout, with Enrico del Fante of Consensys arguing that waiting a few more weeks before committing to Hoodi would be sensible given the problems found on Devnet-9.
The uncertainty extends to the main network. Developers still hope that the upgrade can reach Ethereum mainnet before the end of 2026, but the Sepolia date does not make the outcome more certain, especially since client implementations are not yet considered ready for mainnet.
As CryptoPotato reported previously, Ethereum’s broader roadmap has penciled in Glamsterdam’s mainnet activation for December 2026, ahead of a separate push toward quantum-resistant infrastructure targeted for 2029.
That plan, tied to the Hegotá upgrade that follows Glamsterdam, points to Ethereum shipping major changes roughly twice a year, a pace it kept last December when Fusaka activated on schedule.
“If it creates a separate financial instrument that holds or references freely transferable shares without changing the issuer’s rights, obligations, or authoritative shareholder record, issuer consent should not be required,” Tenev wrote.
That distinction is where AMC’s Aron and Tenev disagree.
Aron has called Robinhood’s product a “fictitious synthetic equity market” and argued that it could weaken AMC’s ability to raise capital, confuse investors about their rights and create a market bearing AMC’s name without the company’s consent.
Tenev, on the other hand, argued existing markets already allow similar arrangements. Options, unsponsored American depositary receipts and structured products can reference public shares without giving the underlying company control over the product.
He drew a line at products that alter the shares themselves. If a token changes shareholder rights, replaces a company’s official stock ledger or creates new obligations for the issuer or its transfer agent, Tenev said the company should have a say.
“If a product purports to change the rights attached to the underlying shares, replaces the company’s official stock ledger, or imposes new obligations on the company or its transfer agent, the issuer should be involved,” he wrote.
The disagreement matters beyond AMC and Robinhood. Firms are testing several ways to put stock exposure on blockchains, from synthetic products to conventional shares held by custodians and issuer-backed shares recorded directly onchain.
Tuesday at 2:15 in the afternoon, the Senate holds a procedural vote that decides whether America gets crypto market structure law in this Congress.
Look at who wants it. The Treasury Secretary has publicly told the Senate to pass it. The President worked senators directly at a White House meeting with Ripple’s CEO, Coinbase’s CEO and the SEC chairman in the room. The Majority Leader filed cloture before the August recess instead of quietly letting the bill rot on the calendar. Brian Armstrong says flatly that it passes.
Now look at the count. Sixty votes. Republicans have fifty-three. At least two of those are expected to vote no anyway.
Galaxy Digital has tracked this bill all year and just cut its odds of 2026 passage to around 10%. In May they had it at 75%. Prediction markets put enactment in the low teens.
So the most senior economic officials in the country are whipping votes for something the people pricing it give roughly a one-in-ten shot. That gap is the story, and it is worth understanding before Tuesday instead of reading about it afterwards.
What Bessent actually said
The content is unremarkable. Who said it is not.
Bessent stated that the Senate should pass the CLARITY Act, framing it around regulatory certainty for digital asset markets and the competitive position of the United States. He has made related arguments through the year, including remarks tying stablecoin growth to demand for Treasury securities, and the administration has treated digital asset policy as a priority since the executive order issued in January 2025 that our executive orders page traces.
A sitting Treasury Secretary publicly whipping votes for a specific bill is not routine. Treasury Secretaries comment on fiscal policy, on debt management, on international financial conditions. Advocating for the passage of a particular piece of market structure legislation, by name, days before a procedural vote, places the department’s institutional weight behind an outcome in a way that is closer to legislative affairs than to economic stewardship.
JUST IN: The CLARITY Act is facing growing doubts ahead of a Senate vote on September 15
Former prosecutor Renato Mariotti said support has crumbled after talks with legislators and staff https://t.co/NFsjGXWGUB pic.twitter.com/qJE1ZhTunx
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) September 9, 2026
That is a signal about how much the administration wants this, and it is not by itself a signal about whether it will happen. Those are different things and the coverage has tended to merge them.
The vote that is actually happening
“The Senate votes on CLARITY” is doing a lot of work in most headlines. What happens Tuesday is narrower.
Thune filed cloture on August 8, immediately before the chamber left for recess. The vote scheduled for 2:15 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday is cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633. That is not a vote on the bill. It is a vote on whether to begin debating the bill.
Cloture on a motion to proceed requires sixty votes. If it succeeds, the Senate enters debate with an amendment process ahead of it, and a second cloture vote would eventually be needed to end debate on the bill itself. If it fails, the motion is defeated and leadership must decide whether to try again, restructure the bill, or move on.
The mechanism matters for reading Tuesday’s result. A failed cloture vote is not a rejection of market structure legislation on its merits; it is a determination that sixty senators are not yet willing to start. Our page on cloture covers why this threshold shapes every piece of crypto legislation, and our CLARITY Act status page tracks where the bill has reached.
Why the odds are so low
Seventy-five to ten is a big move, and Galaxy has no reason to talk down crypto legislation. Four things got them there.
The ethics provision never closed. The dispute over restricting federal officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets consumed the negotiation. Republicans released text in July assigning sole enforcement to the Justice Department with a 2029 sunset, and Democrats rejected it the same day, with the objection centred on enforcement design and not on the prohibition itself. Our close read of that provision examines the three design choices at issue. No replacement has emerged publicly.
Seven votes have not materialised. Republicans hold 53 seats and at least two Republican defections have been expected, which raises the Democratic requirement above seven in practice. The Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill 15-9 with only two Democrats in favour, which was the first clear evidence that assembling a crossover coalition would be hard.
JUST IN: Fidelity does not expect the CLARITY Act to advance on Sept. 15
The asset manager is calling the Senate vote unlikely to move the bill forward https://t.co/NFsjGXXeK9 pic.twitter.com/uk9wj7r1PU
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) September 10, 2026
The calendar compressed. The chamber returns for a limited window before the October recess, with appropriations deadlines competing for floor time and members increasingly oriented toward November. Complex financial legislation historically struggles in that environment.
And opposition broadened beyond the ethics fight. New York’s attorney general came out publicly against the bill on preemption grounds, arguing it would undermine state and municipal authority to prosecute cryptocurrency fraud. That objection travels across party lines and is structurally harder to negotiate away than an enforcement clause, because preemption runs through the bill’s jurisdictional architecture instead of sitting in one title.
What moved in the other direction
Two things genuinely got better, and ignoring them would be dishonest.
The Sheriffs’ Association dropped its opposition on September 3, moving to a neutral position after negotiating amendments to the bill’s illicit finance provisions. Law enforcement opposition to a financial bill is a specific and durable obstacle, because it gives members from both parties a non-partisan reason to vote no. Removing it removes an argument instead of adding a vote, and that is still meaningful.
The White House engaged directly. The President met senators alongside Ripple’s chief executive, Coinbase’s chief executive, and the SEC chairman. Presidential attention does not produce votes on its own, and it does determine whether an administration spends capital on floor time, amendment negotiation, and the retail politics of persuading individual members.
And leadership filed cloture instead of letting the bill die quietly. Thune had the option of leaving H.R. 3633 on the calendar untouched. Filing before recess forced a scheduled vote and created a deadline, which is what leaders do when they want a bill moved instead of buried.
Set against the vote count, none of this changes the arithmetic. It changes the probability that the arithmetic gets worked on.
Why this is harder than the stablecoin bill
The obvious retort to all of this is that crypto legislation already passed once. The $GENIUS Act was signed in July 2025. If the Senate could do stablecoins, why not market structure?
Because they are not the same kind of bill, and the differences all run the wrong way.
Stablecoins had a constituency that wanted regulating. Circle and Paxos had spent years asking for a federal framework, because a licence is worth more than ambiguity when your product is a dollar and your customers are institutions. Market structure has a constituency that wants classification resolved in a specific direction, which is a different thing and a harder sell.
Stablecoins had banks partly onside. The yield prohibition was written into the statute precisely because the banking lobby wanted it, which converted a potential opponent into a participant. Market structure has the banking industry watching for exactly the loophole the American Bankers Association is now pressing senators to close, and has state prosecutors objecting on preemption.
Stablecoins were one product. The Act defines a payment stablecoin, names who may issue it, and says what backs it. Market structure has to classify every digital asset, split jurisdiction between two agencies, create registration regimes for exchanges, brokers, dealers and custodians, and write a developer shield. More surface means more objections.
And stablecoins did not touch the President’s family business. That is the entire ethics fight in one sentence, and it is why a provision that occupies a handful of pages has consumed a year of negotiation over a bill running more than six hundred.
The lesson from $GENIUS was never that crypto legislation passes. It was that narrow, single-product legislation with a cooperative industry and a neutralised opposition can pass. CLARITY is none of those things, which is a better explanation for the ten percent than anything about the calendar.
Reading the gap
So why push this hard on a one-in-ten? Three answers, and they can all be true at once.
The odds could be wrong. Prediction markets and research desks price public information. Vote counts are private until they are not, and a leadership office that files cloture usually has a better read on its own conference than an outside observer does. Thune’s willingness to schedule the vote is itself evidence, though his own public framing before the recess was notably unenthusiastic.
The push could be about the next attempt. A failed cloture vote with visible administration support creates a record: named senators who declined, an identifiable obstacle, and a case to make in November and in the next Congress. The industry’s political operation, which our examination of its spending documented, is built to run exactly that play. Losing a vote you have publicly fought for is more useful politically than never holding it.
Or the push could be the point. An administration that has made digital asset policy a priority benefits from being seen to fight for it whether or not it wins. Constituencies notice effort, and effort is cheaper than success.
The distinguishing evidence arrives Tuesday. If cloture clears with votes to spare, the odds were wrong and the private count was better than the public one. If it fails narrowly, the push was real and insufficient. If it fails badly, the exercise was about the record.
What the industry’s own position tells you
Watch what the industry does this week, not what it says.
Coinbase’s chief executive has said the bill will pass. The Ripple and Coinbase leadership attended the White House meeting. The industry’s super PAC network entered this cycle with a war chest measured in the hundreds of millions, and our audit of that spending documented crypto contributions reaching a substantial share of all corporate election spending. That is an operation built to produce exactly this vote.
Two years of that effort has produced one enacted statute, the stablecoin law, and a market structure bill that has not cleared a procedural motion. That is not nothing, and it is considerably less than the spending implied.
LATEST: Thune confirms CLARITY Act pushback to September
The Senate will revisit the crypto legislation after the summer break https://t.co/NFsjGXXeK9 pic.twitter.com/d1iCLct49M
— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) August 7, 2026
What the sector does over the next five days is the more informative signal than what it says. Public confidence costs nothing. Whether the political operation spends on targeted advertising in the states of undecided senators, whether individual firms make direct approaches, and whether any concession on the ethics provision is publicly floated are all observable and all expensive. An industry that believes a vote is winnable spends into it. An industry that has concluded a vote is lost preserves capital for November.
There is also a structural bind worth naming. A rider or a quiet insertion into a larger vehicle passes without a recorded roll call, which is procedurally attractive and politically useless to an operation whose theory of influence rests on the threat of a funded primary challenge. Accountability requires named votes. So the sector has a reason to want this vote held even if it loses, which complicates any reading of its public optimism as a forecast.
The honest summary is that industry confidence is not evidence about the vote count, and treating it as such has been the most common error in coverage of this bill all year.
What Tuesday determines
Four outcomes. The coverage will treat them as two.
Cloture succeeds comfortably. The bill enters debate with an amendment process ahead, and the compressed calendar becomes the binding constraint instead of the vote count. Passage in this Congress becomes plausible without becoming likely, because a second cloture vote and House concurrence both remain.
Cloture succeeds narrowly. Same procedural position, weaker footing for the amendment fight, and every subsequent vote becomes a renegotiation.
Cloture fails narrowly. Leadership can refile. The gap becomes a target list, and the ethics provision becomes the explicit price of the missing votes.
Cloture fails badly. Market structure legislation moves to the next Congress, and everything governing digital asset classification in the United States continues to rest on the joint SEC-CFTC interpretive release from March 2026, which is agency policy revocable by a future commission. Our SEC page covers why that impermanence is the entire argument for the statute.
What is actually in the bill nobody is voting on yet
Lost in the vote-count arithmetic is that the thing the Senate might start debating on Tuesday is a specific 616-page text with specific contents, and most people arguing about its odds have not read what it does.
Classification. It defines digital commodities and separates them from securities, replacing case-by-case determination under the investment contract test with statutory categories. A grandfather provision would deem tokens anchoring exchange-traded products at the start of 2026 to be non-securities by operation of law, which resolves status instantly for the assets underlying every listed spot product.
Jurisdiction. Spot trading in digital commodities moves to the CFTC. The SEC keeps digital assets that are securities. Our CFTC page covers what the agency already governs and what it would inherit.
Registration regimes. New categories for digital commodity exchanges, brokers, dealers and custodians, each needing years of agency rulemaking before they function. Provisional registration lets existing firms operate during the build.
A developer shield. Non-custodial software developers excluded from money transmitter treatment under the Bank Secrecy Act, operating by definitional exclusion, with no rulemaking needed.
And preemption. Federal jurisdiction displacing conflicting state regimes for covered assets and intermediaries, which is the provision New York’s attorney general is objecting to and which is structurally harder to negotiate than the ethics title.
Two things follow. The grandfather clause and the developer shield take effect on enactment, so passage delivers something immediately. The registration regimes do not, and on the evidence of the stablecoin statute, whose implementing agencies missed their one-year rulemaking deadline this July, the useful parts arrive somewhere around 2028 or 2029.
Which is worth holding in mind on Tuesday. A cloture vote that succeeds does not produce a functioning market structure framework. It produces the beginning of a process that has historically run long.
The seven senators
Nobody has published the list, so here is how to build it yourself, because the names are more informative than any odds estimate.
Start with the two Democrats who voted the bill out of the Banking Committee. That 15-9 markup is the only recorded evidence of Democratic willingness to advance this text, and both have since expressed reservations about the version that emerged from the merge. Assume they are gettable and not guaranteed.
Add the seven Democrats who were negotiating on the ethics provision through the summer and then issued a joint statement rejecting the July text. That group is the target list, by definition: they were at the table, which means they wanted a deal, and they walked, which means the deal on offer was not one. They are also the reason the ethics title is the price, not a side issue.
Subtract the Democrats who have never been in the room. Members who opposed the stablecoin bill, who have been publicly critical of the administration’s digital asset posture, or who represent states where the attorney general has come out against preemption are not persuadable on a floor vote five days out.
On the Republican side, subtract the libertarian objections and the members who have voted against expanding federal regulatory authority as a matter of course. Two defections has been the working assumption all year, and nobody has publicly revised it.
Run that arithmetic and the coalition has to come almost entirely from the group that walked away in July. Which is why every serious read of Tuesday reduces to a single question: has anyone moved on enforcement of the ethics provision, and the answer as of this writing is that nothing has been announced.
If a hybrid mechanism surfaces before Tuesday, with the Justice Department primary and some independent or state backstop, the odds are wrong. If the vote arrives with the July text unchanged, the odds are approximately right.
What a failure actually costs
Assume cloture fails. What breaks, and what does not?
Nothing breaks immediately. Markets operate today under the joint SEC-CFTC interpretive release from March 2026, which names sixteen digital assets as digital commodities and places staking, mining and airdrops outside securities law. Exchanges list, funds launch, institutions custody. None of that stops.
The impermanence stays. That interpretive release is agency policy, not statute. A future commission can withdraw it by vote, and commissioners serve at presidential pleasure. Every firm making a decade-long infrastructure commitment is building on something a change of administration can unwind, which is the entire argument for legislating and the reason the industry keeps spending on it.
Newer assets stay stuck. The sixteen named assets have clarity. The seventeenth does not, and without the self-certification path the bill would create, there is no process for getting it. That is a growth constraint rather than an operating one, and it compounds.
The state patchwork survives. No preemption means the licensing map stays as it is, which our legality page documents, and the prediction market litigation across a dozen states keeps running on the current framework.
And the calendar gets much worse. A failed vote in September means the next window is a lame duck session, then a new Congress in January 2027 with a composition set by the November midterms. Analysts have warned that missing 2026 could push market structure legislation out by years, and the base rate for a bill that has to be reintroduced and re-marked-up in a new Congress is not encouraging.
The honest summary is that failure is expensive in a slow, compounding way rather than a dramatic one. Nothing collapses. The industry simply continues operating on borrowed permission, which it has done for two years and can presumably do for two more.
What to watch
The roll call itself, not the result. Which Democrats vote yes is the list that determines whether a second attempt is viable and what it would cost.
Whether any ethics compromise surfaces before Tuesday. A hybrid enforcement mechanism, with the Justice Department primary and some independent or state-level backstop, is the visible landing zone. Its appearance in the next five days would be the strongest possible signal that the count is closer than the odds suggest.
Republican defections. Two have been expected. A third raises the Democratic requirement to eight and changes the arithmetic materially.
Whether Galaxy or the prediction markets move before the vote. Both reprice continuously. A sharp move upward in the final days would indicate that information is reaching the market that has not reached the press.
What leadership says immediately after. Refile, restructure, or move on. That statement determines whether this is a setback or an ending.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. It describes pending legislation and a scheduled procedural vote whose outcome is unknown, and probability estimates cited are third-party assessments that change continuously. Nothing here predicts any legislative result. Information is accurate as of September 10, 2026.
What did the Treasury Secretary say about the CLARITY Act?
Scott Bessent publicly called on the Senate to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act as the chamber returned from its August recess, framing it around regulatory certainty and American competitiveness. A sitting Treasury Secretary advocating by name for a specific market structure bill days before a procedural vote is unusual and places the department’s institutional weight behind the outcome.
What exactly is the Senate voting on September 15?
Cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633, scheduled for 2:15 p.m. Eastern. That is a vote on whether to begin debating the bill, not on the bill itself. It requires sixty votes. If it succeeds, the Senate enters debate with an amendment process ahead and a further cloture vote eventually needed to end debate.
How many votes does it need?
Sixty. Republicans hold 53 seats, so at least seven Democrats must cross, and in practice more, because at least two Republican defections have been expected. The Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill 15-9 with only two Democrats in favour, which was the first indication that a crossover coalition would be difficult to assemble.
Why are the odds of passage so low?
Galaxy Digital cut its estimate to roughly 10% from about 75% in May, and prediction markets have priced enactment in the low teens. Four factors: the ethics provision dispute never closed, the seven Democratic votes have not publicly materialised, the calendar compressed against appropriations deadlines and the midterms, and opposition broadened to include preemption objections from state law enforcement.
What is the ethics provision fight about?
Restricting federal officials, including the President, from issuing or sponsoring digital assets while in office. Republicans released text in July assigning sole enforcement to the Justice Department with a 2029 sunset, and Democrats rejected it the same day, objecting to the enforcement design and not to the prohibition. No public replacement has emerged.
Has anything improved for the bill?
Yes. The National Sheriffs’ Association dropped its opposition on September 3, moving to neutral after negotiating amendments to the illicit finance provisions, which removes a non-partisan reason for members to vote no. The White House engaged directly with senators, and leadership filed cloture before recess instead of letting the bill lapse.
What happens if the vote fails?
Leadership decides whether to refile, restructure, or move on, and that statement is the most informative thing that follows. If market structure legislation slips to the next Congress, digital asset classification in the United States continues to rest on the joint SEC-CFTC interpretive release from March 2026, which is agency policy that a future commission can withdraw by vote.
Does the administration’s support mean it will pass?
Not on its own. Political support and vote counts are different things, and the gap between them is the subject of this piece. Presidential and Treasury engagement determines whether capital gets spent on persuading individual members; it does not determine whether sixty senators are willing to proceed. Tuesday’s roll call is the evidence. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
India’s Maharashtra state has begun preparing policies to tokenize up to 50% of selected electricity transmission assets to finance new power lines and solar energy storage facilities.
Maharashtra considers tokens tied to power revenue
Praveen Pardeshi, chief economic adviser to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and CEO of the Maharashtra Institution for Transformation, outlined the plan at The Box Launch, an invitation-only event held at the World Trade Center in Mumbai.
Real estate tokenization company RealX and MST Blockchain hosted the event, where Pardeshi described how Maharashtra could use digital tokens to raise money against revenue-producing state assets without selling the assets outright.
Under one possible structure, the state could tokenize 40% to 50% of an electricity transmission line. Investors who purchase the tokens would then receive a share of the income earned by Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company, commonly known as Maharashtra Transco.
Pardeshi said Maharashtra could direct the capital raised through token sales toward additional transmission lines. Funding could also support storage centers designed to hold solar power until electricity demand rises.
Rather than transferring full control of the infrastructure to private owners, the proposed model would allow investors to take part in the income generated by a defined portion of a public asset. Pardeshi described tokenization as a financing tool that could open public infrastructure development to more citizens.
Detailed terms have not been disclosed, including which transmission assets could enter the program, how token holders would receive revenue, who could invest, or which blockchain network would record ownership. The state has also not announced the size or timing of a possible token sale.
Limited grid capacity leaves solar power unused
Maharashtra’s interest in new financing stems partly from a mismatch between its solar power output and transmission capacity, according to Pardeshi.
The state produces more solar electricity than it can use during certain periods, yet its grid cannot always move the power to areas where demand exists. Without enough transmission lines and storage, low-cost electricity generated during surplus hours may not be available when consumption reaches its daily peak.
Pardeshi said electricity can be traded for as little as two paise per unit on the power exchange when supply exceeds demand. During peak hours, however, distribution companies may have to purchase power at rates ranging from 16 rupees to 18 rupees per unit.
Energy storage facilities could hold part of the daytime solar surplus and release it later, while new lines could carry electricity from generation sites to consumption centers. Maharashtra plans to use proceeds from any infrastructure tokenization program for both types of projects, based on the model presented at the event.
Token holders would rely on the revenue rights and legal protections attached to each asset rather than owning the entire physical transmission line. The final structure would therefore need to define how income is calculated, distributed, and recorded, as well as what rights investors would have if revenue falls below expectations.
Liquidity would present another consideration for any tradable version of the tokens. As crypto.news reported in September, the value of tokenized real-world assets had reached $34.6 billion, but only $3.79 billion was being used within protocols, leaving about 89% of the issued value inactive.
Falcon Finance chief RWA officer Artem Tolkachev said in the report that low utilization should be assessed against an asset’s intended use. A token designed primarily to distribute yield may still serve its purpose without frequent trading, while an asset created for use as collateral would face a different test.
DELTA Act would set rules for property tokenization
Alongside its power infrastructure proposal, Maharashtra is drafting the Maharashtra Digital and Land Token Asset Trading Act, known as the DELTA Act.
If enacted, the proposed law would make Maharashtra the first Indian state to adopt legislation specifically covering blockchain-based property tokenization, according to details presented at The Box Launch. The available information does not provide a legislative timetable or state whether a draft has reached the Maharashtra legislature.
Pardeshi used Mumbai’s Express Towers commercial building to explain how property tokenization could operate. The building was tokenized through a real estate investment trust structure, dividing an interest in the property into smaller investment units.
A June 2026 explainer described real-world asset tokenization as the process of representing rights to an off-chain asset through tokens recorded on a blockchain. Depending on the legal structure, a token may represent ownership, income rights, debt, or another contractual claim.
In Maharashtra’s proposed infrastructure model, the legal connection between a token and Maharashtra Transco’s revenue would be central. Blockchain records alone would not determine whether investors hold enforceable claims; those rights would depend on the state’s legislation, offering documents and contractual framework.
Pardeshi also rejected the idea that tokenizing a portion of a government asset automatically amounts to privatization. Under the model he presented, the state would continue creating and operating public infrastructure while token buyers would participate financially in the asset’s revenue.
U.S. rules show why token rights matter
For American investors, any access to Maharashtra-linked tokens would depend on the eventual offering terms and applicable U.S. securities rules. No plan has been announced to market the proposed tokens in the United States or make them available through U.S.-registered platforms.
Recent disputes involving stock tokens show why the legal rights attached to a digital asset matter. Robinhood’s conflict with AMC Entertainment raised questions over third-party tokens linked to publicly traded shares, including whether buyers receive the same rights as shareholders in the underlying company.
Robinhood’s tokenized stock products cited in the September report were offered through an offshore unit and were unavailable to U.S. users. AMC CEO Adam Aron objected to an AMC-linked product created without the company’s approval, while Robinhood said the tokens followed the value of the underlying shares through a custodial structure.
Maharashtra’s proposal differs in form because the state is considering a direct financing arrangement tied to public infrastructure revenue. Pardeshi’s presentation indicates that Maharashtra would establish the model through state policy and the proposed DELTA Act, though the final investor protections, eligibility requirements, trading rules and revenue-distribution process remain subject to the legislation and any later offering documents.
