Bitcoin's Week. A Failed Senate Vote, a Fed Hike, and a Rally That Shrugged Off Both

Between a failed Senate vote and an interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve, the last week was a challenging one for the legislature, but not for bitcoin. Let's take a look.

Tuesday, September 15: The CLARITY Act Fails

At 2:15 p.m. E.T. on Tuesday, the Senate held a vote to end debate and move forward with consideration of the CLARITY Act. Without cloture, or the end of debate, the act cannot move forward. The vote failed 49-50. 60 votes were needed for cloture. No Democrat voted yes, and one, Chris Coons, didn't vote at all. The opposition itself was bipartisan: Republican Senators Susan Collins, Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran also voted against the act, joining the Democrats who opposed it. Bitcoin tumbled to $75,620 after the news, and more than $450 million was withdrawn from bitcoin ETFs.

Wednesday, 16 September

The FOMC raised the fed funds rate by 25 basis points to the 3.75% to 4.00% range, its first hike since 2023, with the vote unanimous at 12 to 0. After the rate hike, Chair Warsh told the media that members of the FOMC were not certain that inflation was moving back to the 2% target. Bitcoin price rose 0.76% to trade at $76,191 as Bitcoin ETFs combined to trade -$295.9 million.

Thursday, 17 September

Bitcoin was up 0.33% to trade at $76,440 for the day. Bitcoin ETFs combined to trade $159.5 million, the first positive flow since Tuesday's selling began.

Friday, 18 September

Bitcoin had its biggest trading day of the week on Friday, gaining 5.81% and closing at $80,882. CoinGlass reported that $470 million of trades were liquidated in the prior 24 hours. On the same day, the SEC issued a separate order allowing tokenised US stocks to trade on public blockchains, an olive branch of sorts that set a positive tone for Bitcoin and other ETFs even as the CLARITY Act failure and the Fed hike stayed in the headlines. The Fidelity bitcoin ETF (FBTC) had a strong positive flow of $310.7 million.

Price line, daily, Sep 15-18 2026

The Weekend: Sep 19-20

Bitcoin retained its value over the weekend. It closed at $81,253 on Saturday, a 0.46% increase. On Sunday, it closed at $81,303, a slight increase from the previous day. Because of the previous week's dip, Bitcoin's September value is positive at about 3.5%. Likewise, Bitcoin is about 39% positive since its June close. Based on these values, Bitcoin is forecasted to close positive for the third quarter, a positive for the first quarterly close in about a year.

Net Flows, Bitcoin SPOT ETF, Sep 15-18, 2026

The Cross

Early September brought the first occurrence since November 2025 of the 50-day moving average crossing the 200-day moving average in Bitcoin, a pattern often referred to as a "golden cross." This will be confirmed this week. Due to the narrowing gap between the two moving averages through the first part of the month, most agreed this was an event traders would be watching to confirm an uptrend for Bitcoin rather than an event predicting an upcoming change.

What it means

$75,025 was the low on Tuesday, and the closest price to the downside the rest of the week. $82,614 is the resistance level chartists are watching next. Some see a potential path to $100,000 from here if that level breaks on a daily close. Other chart resistance is noted at $83,000 to $86,000, flagged by Glassnode, where a greater concentration of BTC was traded. Bitcoin ETFs now comprise approximately 6.29% of the total BTC supply, up from a smaller share earlier this year. Bitcoin ETFs are seen to move in and out of BTC positions, which can impact the price of BTC, sometimes substantially. This was evident this week.

Data as of 20 September 2026. Prices and figures sourced from Investing.com, CoinGecko, Farside Investors, CoinDesk, CNBC, Axios, Reuters, Yahoo Finance, CryptoDaily, The Coin Republic, TechFlow, and FinanceMagnates reporting.