Bitcoin pulls back from $65,000 as Clarity Act advances

Bitcoin spiked toward $65,400 before slipping back under $65,000, while ether climbed to an intraday high of $1,935.53 without breaking meaningfully higher. Trading volumes picked up as investors weighed a stalled diplomatic push between the United States and Iran alongside a fresh legislative catalyst working its way through the Senate.

On 8 August, Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act, the crypto market-structure bill that had stalled before the chamber's August recess. The manoeuvre sets up a procedural vote at 2:15pm ET on 15 September, though it will need support from at least seven Democrats or independents to clear the 60-vote threshold, since Republicans hold only 53 seats.

A cloture filing schedules a debate rather than settling one, so the bill's odds, and the price reaction already built around it, still rest on votes that do not yet exist.