Cryptocurrency Roundup: US Senate Faces CLARITY Vote And Bitcoin Holds Amid Rate Fears

Bitcoin is holding near US$77,000 despite ETF outflows and mounting macroeconomic pressure, while a series of developments across Australia’s crypto industry signal a maturing market increasingly focused on regulation, tokenisation and institutional infrastructure.

The week has brought a new chief executive at blockchain firm Redbelly Network, a tokenisation partnership between Openmarkets and Ondo Finance, Apple Pay integration for Binance Card holders and a critical vote on the CLARITY Act in the US Senate – all unfolding against a backdrop of rising interest rate expectations and persistent inflation.

Bitcoin Resilient Near US$77,000 As Rate Pressure Builds

Bitcoin closed the past week down 4.36 per cent but held above US$77,000 (approximately A$107,800), avoiding the sharper losses recorded across the altcoin market. LINK posted the steepest decline among tracked assets, while Ethereum proved comparatively resilient with a 1.49 per cent fall.

Bitcoin ETFs recorded approximately US$463 million in outflows, reversing strong demand seen earlier in the month. Ethereum products moved in the opposite direction, attracting around US$216 million and notching a fourth consecutive week of institutional inflows.

US core inflation dropped to 2.4 per cent, the lowest reading since 2021, but markets remain priced for another Federal Reserve rate hike. The 10-year US Treasury yield has crossed 5 per cent, and oil trading above US$100 has compounded concerns about persistent price pressures. A Japanese rate hike is also expected.

Despite the headwinds, Bitcoin flashed a Golden Cross signal, where the 50-day moving average crosses above the 200-day average. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index sat at 57, indicating mild greed across the market.

CLARITY Act Faces Critical Senate Vote

The CLARITY Act, a sweeping piece of US crypto legislation, faces a cloture vote in the Senate that requires 60 of 100 Senators to advance the bill to debate and amendment. Prediction market Kalshi saw the odds of the Act becoming law before October 2027 surge to 64 per cent after a new draft was released offering concessions on several contentious issues.

However, both TD Cowen and Galaxy’s Head of Research, Alex Thorn, put the odds of passage this year at just 25 per cent.

The revised draft includes changes to ethics provisions aimed at President Donald Trump, requiring him to divest his crypto holdings. The provisions no longer carry a sunset clause and would allow State Attorneys General to sue if they are not enforced. Senator Elizabeth Warren has argued these provisions are insufficient, warning the White House supervising ethics official could block any lawsuit by issuing a legal opinion that Trump had complied.

Eight bank trading groups have pushed back against what they describe as loopholes allowing stablecoin rewards, while crypto industry groups have criticised the removal of protections for decentralised blockchain developers.

If the bill stalls, the CFTC and SEC have already developed pro-crypto rulemaking to roll out as an alternative pathway.

Three additional crypto bills are also being considered at committee level. The House Financial Services Committee will vote on the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill, which would add seized Bitcoin to a national reserve, lock it for 20 years and study budget-neutral methods for expanding holdings. Separately, the House Ways and Means Committee will examine a bill enabling Bitcoin miners to defer declaring mined Bitcoin as income until it is sold. A third bill would apply wash trading bans to cryptocurrency.

Redbelly Network Appoints Payments Veteran As Chief Executive

Redbelly Network has appointed, Christian Westerlind Wigstrom, as Chief Executive Officer, with the role commencing in November 2026. The appointment places a veteran of Australia’s payments infrastructure at the helm of a blockchain company positioning itself as the settlement layer for regulated capital markets.

As Co-Founder and CEO of payments platform, Monoova, Wigstrom built a fintech that processed $200 billion in transactions and interacted with more than 10 per cent of all Australians. Monoova became Australia’s largest PayTo processor, issued almost a quarter of the country’s PayIDs and won Fintech Australia’s Fintech Organisation of the Year.

Wigstrom has also served on the boards of FinTech Australia and the Australian Payments Network.

The appointment comes as Australia’s regulatory environment shifts. The Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Act became law in 2026 and takes effect in 2027, bringing digital asset platforms into the same licensing regime as brokers and fund managers.

Redbelly participated in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Project Acacia, a landmark research program that tested tokenised settlement across 20 use cases. While several chains participated via private or permissioned instances, Redbelly was the only public Layer 1 blockchain to carry a real central bank claim on public infrastructure.

The DFCRC estimates digital finance innovation could deliver $24 billion in annual economic gains for Australia.

“One of Redbelly’s many strengths is its regulatory credibility,” Wigstrom remarked. “In payments, I learnt that success belonged to the company that saw compliance as a product edge rather than a tick box. The same thing applies to capital-markets infrastructure. As new regulation takes effect, this insight stops being philosophical and starts being existential.”

He added: “The next era of finance won’t be won by the loudest chain. It’ll be won by the chain that institutions can actually use.”

Openmarkets And Ondo Finance Target Tokenised Finance In Australia

Openmarkets Group and Ondo Finance have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore bringing Ondo’s institutional-grade tokenised financial products to eligible Australian investors and developing new tokenised products for the local market.

The collaboration will initially focus on two workstreams: assessing pathways for Openmarkets to distribute selected Ondo products to eligible Australian investors, subject to regulatory requirements, and exploring tokenised products tailored to Australia, potentially including tokenised Australian-listed securities and access to offshore tokenised markets.

Chief Executive of Openmarkets, Dan Jowett, described the partnership as a natural fit.

“Tokenisation is already transforming Australia’s financial services industry and improving the way local participants access, transact and hold assets,” Jowett explained. “As a licensed broker and fintech with a deep market footprint, Openmarkets is uniquely positioned as an infrastructure provider and distributor of digital products.”

Managing Director of Global Business Development at Ondo Finance, Min Lin, noted that Australia represents a natural step in the firm’s expansion beyond the US.

“Openmarkets brings deep local market expertise and established financial infrastructure, creating a compelling pathway to explore how Ondo’s institutional-grade tokenised products can reach eligible Australian investors,” Lin commented. “Together, we aim to connect one of the Asia-Pacific region’s most sophisticated capital markets with the global onchain economy.”

Openmarkets holds authorisations as an ASX, Cboe and NSX participant under an Australian Financial Services Licence and is registered on AUSTRAC’s Virtual Asset Service Provider Register. The company has also entered into a plan of merger and business combination agreement with special purpose acquisition company, Lake Superior Acquisition Corp. Upon completion, the combined Openmarkets Group would become a Nasdaq-listed company.

Forecasts cited by the companies suggest the global tokenised asset market could reach US$16 trillion by 2030.

Binance Card Adds Apple Pay In Australia And New Zealand

Binance has made Apple Pay available for eligible Binance Card holders in Australia and New Zealand. Users can add their Binance Card to Apple Wallet and make contactless payments using an iPhone or Apple Watch across physical stores, public transport, websites and applications that accept Apple Pay.

The Binance Card supports payments using digital assets including USDC, USDT, BTC, XRP, BNB and ETH, and can be used at more than 150 million Mastercard merchants worldwide.

General Manager of Binance ANZ, Jenny Wei, framed the move as part of a broader strategy to embed digital assets into everyday transactions.

“Making digital assets genuinely useful means fitting them into the way people already live and pay,” Wei explained. “Apple Pay gives Binance Card holders a simple and familiar way to use their digital assets for everyday purchases, while offering greater flexibility in how they manage and spend their funds.”

Elliptic Publishes Principles For Governing Agentic Crypto Risk

Blockchain analytics firm, Elliptic, has published what it calls the Elliptic Standard: eight principles for governing agentic on-chain risk, as AI-driven autonomous agents increasingly originate, authorise and settle crypto transactions.

The company reports a 522 per cent increase in crypto transaction count on agentic rails between late May and late August 2026. Research from PHD and WARC projects that agent-facilitated consumer spending will reach US$3.35 trillion by 2030, while the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded US$893 million in adjusted 2025 losses tied to AI-related crime.

The eight principles cover data quality, model transparency, AI safety (including drift, hallucination and bias), foundation model agnosticism, configurability, human oversight, business resilience and employee training.

CEO of Elliptic, Simone Maini, argued that the shift to agentic transactions represents a defining moment for financial crime risk.

“A criminal only needs to be right once. Our customers need to be right every time, and that only holds if we stop bad actors at the door, not investigate them afterwards,” Maini stated.

“An agent that can act fast but cannot explain why it acted is not compliant, it is just automation.”

Vice President of Financial Crimes Compliance at Circle, Joanna Marathakis, welcomed the initiative: “Human oversight has to be built into these systems from the start, not added when something goes wrong.”

BTC Markets Launches Redesigned Platform

Australian cryptocurrency exchange, BTC Markets, has moved its redesigned web platform out of beta. Built around portfolio management, the new platform introduces performance tracking with profit and loss monitoring, a Quick Buy/Sell function and AI-driven market news and asset discovery tools.

Users can switch between the new and classic platforms via the top menu. The exchange indicated that all new features and products will arrive on the redesigned platform going forward, while its classic platform and Advanced Trade tools remain supported.

HardBlock Releases Desktop App For Windows

Australian Bitcoin platform, HardBlock, has launched a desktop application for Windows, bringing exchange access and security tools into a single app. The application supports Australian dollar deposits, Bitcoin purchases and account activity review from a desktop environment.

The app integrates with hardware wallets and HardBlock’s GuardBlock Bitcoin Vault, which uses collaborative signing and a planned recovery path for long-term holdings. It also includes scam detection features that flag withdrawal details requiring additional verification, supported by an AI assistant that can explain notices but cannot approve or move Bitcoin.

The app runs on 64-bit Windows 10 or later and uses existing HardBlock accounts.

NiceHash Opens USDT Payments For Cloud Mining

Cryptocurrency mining marketplace, NiceHash, has added USDT as a payment option for its EasyMining service, allowing users to access Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash solo mining with packages starting from 5 USDT.

The platform, which lets users mine without owning hardware, highlighted an early success: a user purchased a 50 USDT package and mined a Bitcoin Cash block worth approximately 3.031 BCH, valued at around $672.

EasyMining supports mining across BTC, BCH, ZEC, KAS, DOGE and LTC, with transparency features showing mining speed, estimated global speed, duration and probability for each package. The platform displays all blocks mined by users.

Binance Tax Season Resources For Australian Users

Binance Australia has partnered with crypto tax platforms, Summ and Koinly, to provide educational tax resources for Australian users ahead of the tax return deadline.

Summ is offering free tax reports for Binance-only traders at any volume, and 30 per cent off paid plans for users who trade across multiple platforms and wallets. Koinly is offering 30 per cent off first tax reports for new Australian customers using the code BINANCEAU26, valid until October 31, 2026.

UK House Of Lords Backs Crypto Strategy Amendment

The UK House of Lords has backed an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill requiring the government to develop a digital asset strategy within 12 months of the bill becoming law. The strategy would cover crypto, stablecoins and security tokens along with consumer protections and access to banking, payment and settlement services.

The ruling Labour party opposed the amendment, and it will head to the House of Commons for another vote.

Canada Clarifies Tokenised Deposit Rules

Canada’s banking regulator, OSFI, has confirmed that tokenised deposits are legally no different from traditional bank deposits. The clarification reinforces a technology-neutral approach and enables federally regulated banks to develop blockchain-based deposit products under existing rules.

Singapore Exchange Wins CFTC Approval For Crypto Futures

The Singapore Exchange has become the first major Asian exchange to receive the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s approval to provide Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual futures to US institutions.

Separately, Singapore-based banks DBS, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation and United Overseas Bank have completed the first live SGD interbank transactions using tokenised deposits on Swift’s new blockchain.

Singapore police have also warned retail users to add two-factor authentication to their email accounts following an increase in compromised accounts leading to crypto thefts.

Quantum Computing Threat To Crypto Draws Closer

Researchers from the Ethereum Foundation, Starkware and Theta Labs have more than halved the estimated resources required for a quantum computer to break Bitcoin and Ethereum’s elliptic curve cryptography. Google researchers previously revised the estimate down significantly in March, and the latest findings reduce it further to 1,151 logical qubits.

Revolut Customer Data Stolen In Law Enforcement Breach

Financial technology company, Revolut, has been tricked into handing over sensitive customer data to scammers, including passports, selfies and transaction histories. The attackers reportedly compromised multiple Italian law enforcement departments and sent legitimate-seeming requests for the information.

The scammers are demanding a ransom while releasing data onto the web. According to the International Cyber Digest, the attackers also stole 147 GB of data from Italian law enforcement.

Cantor Fitzgerald Doubles BitMine Price Target

Wall Street firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, has more than doubled its price target on ETH treasury company, BitMine, from US$31 to US$64. BitMine has accumulated close to 5 per cent of the ETH supply, and the revised target suggests Cantor Fitzgerald holds a positive outlook on Ethereum’s price trajectory.

AI Development Slowdown Clouds Market Outlook

Over the weekend, major US AI companies agreed to slow development amid concerns the technology is advancing beyond controllable limits. Stock market returns have been driven by the AI buildout, but the effect of the slowdown on broader markets and risk assets, including crypto, remains unclear.

Last Updated on September 16, 2026 by Nick Ross