Bitcoin Slides From $79,530 as the Clarity Act Misses 60 Senate Votes

Bitcoin gave up an overnight high of $79,530 on Tuesday and was trading around $77,400 through the European morning, CoinDesk reported, a drop of about 3% inside a few hours. Later that afternoon the Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the market-structure bill that would divide oversight of digital assets between two federal regulators. The procedural vote needed 60. It failed. An Instagram post that reached this desk after the close put bitcoin much lower still, under $76,000, alongside a tally of liquidated leveraged bets. Those figures are the part we could not confirm.

The prices we could check

CoinDesk's market report, stamped 03:23 UTC on 15 September, had bitcoin at $77,081.54 and ether at $2,485.22, with bitcoin off about 1% on the day after it held near $78,000 on Monday. Its live coverage a few hours later still showed bitcoin at roughly $77,400 and flat over 24 hours.

The post behind this story shows a Public app screen reading $75,983.38, down $2,490.50, or 3.17% on the day, and its caption puts bitcoin at $75,500 and ether below $2,400. Every one of those readings sits under the lowest figure we found in coverage from the same session, and the caption does not match the screenshot beside it. We could not find a second source for either level by publication time. A sub-$76,000 break paired with long liquidations was reported on 23 August by Crypto Briefing. Different day, different numbers.

The liquidation figure has one source

The caption claims more than $180 million in leveraged long positions were closed out in four hours. A long is a borrowed bet on a rising price; when it is liquidated, the exchange sells the underlying asset to repay the loan, which pushes the price down again. That mechanism is well documented. This particular total, over that particular four-hour window, is not. No outlet in our sweep carried it, and the trackers we checked showed no matching four-hour figure for Tuesday. It stands attributed to the post's author and unverified.

What the post asserts, in full:

Bitcoin under $76,000, quoted at $75,983.38, down $2,490.50 or 3.17% on the day
Bitcoin at $75,500, the caption's own separate figure
Ether below $2,400
More than $180 million in crypto longs liquidated in the past four hours
A Telegram group the author says carries over 100,000 members

Sixty votes, and what the regulators do next

A cloture vote decides whether a bill reaches floor debate. It does not pass the bill. CoinGape's live count had 46 in favour and 43 against while ballots were still being cast on Tuesday, an unofficial tally that had not been certified when we checked. The threshold was 60 either way, and the count never came close.

The failure moves the question from legislation to rulemaking. The SEC and the CFTC keep the authority they already hold, and both have signalled they intend to write rules with it. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong made that argument before the vote, in remarks carried by CoinDesk on Tuesday.

"If it doesn't pass, it's also going to be a good outcome because the SEC and the CFTC have said that they're ready to publish rulemaking," Armstrong said.

Not everyone put the day's trading on the Senate at all. "We think the market is a bit too focused on whether Clarity passes," Brian Vieten, a senior research analyst at Siebert Financial, told CoinDesk that morning. Other pressures sat on the tape. WTI crude was near $103 a barrel, and traders were pricing a 25 basis point move from the Fed this week, days after bitcoin slid below $77,000 on hot core CPI.

What Tuesday leaves open

Whether bitcoin traded under $76,000 after the vote is a narrow question, and it is still open. Every reading we verified stops in the morning, hours before the Senate acted. The evening figures come from one social post, and we could not establish which of its two bitcoin prices it means. The rulemaking timetable is the thing worth watching now, because nothing in the vote strips either regulator of what it already has.