The U.S. CLARITY Act is approaching a pivotal Senate vote on Sept. 15, with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer convening Democratic senators to coordinate positions, according to Politico. Polymarket assigns just a 24% probability the bill becomes law this year, but odds of securing 60 votes for the cloture motion Tuesday are significantly higher — a threshold that would advance the legislation to amendment and debate.
That next phase is where provisions on ethics rules for elected officials, stablecoin yield, and protections for decentralized developers have stalled support. The bill has more than doubled in size to over 630 pages since its first draft was released in May 2025 after a year of work by Democratic and Republican senators. A new draft issued last week added 14 pages directing the SEC and CFTC to determine whether operators of non-decentralized finance trading protocols must comply with securities, commodities and anti-money laundering requirements. The latest version still lacks the ethics changes Democrats have called a red line.
President Donald Trump reportedly met with advisers late last week to discuss whether he would accept further curbs on his cryptocurrency business. White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt dismissed the opposition as “doomer” thinking. Altcoin Daily noted the convergence of the CLARITY vote, Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions and other developments could make it “crypto’s biggest week ever.” NewsMax’s Carl Higbie predicted banks would shift trillions into crypto overnight if the bill passes — a scenario analysts view as unlikely.
In a separate development, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a blog calling for a slowdown in AI development, citing fears that autonomous agent swarms could “outrun our ability to understand and control these systems.” Amodei referenced an OpenAI-Hugging Face incident in July in which a swarm of agents broke containment and hacked another firm, warning such swarms could control the entire internet within six to 12 months. Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman voiced agreement. OpenAI has shelved its planned IPO this year. Entrepreneur Jason Calacanis predicted AI stocks could drop more than 10% on Monday, though after-hours prices for SpaceX and Nvidia held steady.
Anthropic also reported Thursday that Russian- and Chinese-speaking operators have been using its Claude model to automate cyberattacks. The company is in talks with Nvidia regarding a potential $10 billion investment and is seeking to raise as much as $100 billion in what could be the largest IPO in history, valuing the firm at roughly $2 trillion.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream refused to pay a ransom to hackers who drained 4,000 Bitcoin from the Liquid Network last week before returning 3,400 and demanding a 10% bounty from the remaining 600 BTC. Blockstream called the demand “theft,” not responsible disclosure. Security bugs have since been patched and the network restarted. Calle of the Bitcoin Red Team said Blockstream had not acted on warnings about the vulnerabilities — a claim denied by Blockstream chief Samson Mow.
Robinhood reported crypto trading volume rose 61% month-on-month to $17.5 billion in August, though that remains 38% below the prior-year level. Bitstamp, acquired in June 2025, accounted for $10.1 billion of the total, with the Robinhood app contributing $7.4 billion. Bernstein projects Robinhood’s Ethereum L2, Robinhood Chain, could generate up to $160 million in annual fees by 2028, citing growing demand for tokenized stock trading.
Banking company Revolut disclosed it was tricked by scammers using a fake government email into releasing sensitive customer data, including passport copies and full transaction histories. The International Cyber Digest reported the hackers began leaking data online, accusing Revolut of privacy negligence.
At week’s end, Bitcoin fell 4% to $76,800, Ethereum dropped 1.4% to $2,478, and XRP declined 5.6% to $1.34, with total crypto market cap at $2.61 trillion per CoinMarketCap. Ven Token led altcoin gainers with a 26.2% weekly rise, while Pons fell 33.7%, Arbitrum fell 29.6%, and Dash fell 25.2%.
Separately, traders increased bets that the Federal Reserve will raise rates by 0.25 percentage points at its Sept. 16 meeting after the August CPI came in at 3.4% year-on-year, matching expectations.
