Bitcoin gained 22.6% over seven days, its largest advance over any seven-day window since November 2024, after the president told crypto executives at the White House that Congress needs to pass market structure legislation.
Bitcoin rose to its highest level in three months on Friday, capping a three-day rally that lifted every major token and broke a seven-week range, after President Donald Trump pressed the Senate to pass the CLARITY Act at a White House meeting with crypto executives on Wednesday.
The Senate has a date. Cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 is scheduled to ripen Tuesday, Sept. 15 at 2:15 p.m., according to the Senate Democratic leadership’s floor schedule. The bill needs 60 votes to advance, and traders had pushed the odds of passage into 2027 earlier this month after Majority Leader John Thune skipped an earlier cloture filing. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s token offering proposal on Tuesday and the president’s remarks a day later put a legislative calendar back into the market.
Bitcoin last changed hands at $76,977, up 6.4% over 24 hours and 22.6% over seven days, after trading between $72,500 and $79,320, CoinGecko data shows. Ether was at $2,420, up 4.2% on the day and 28.8% on the week. XRP added 11.3% to $1.37 and 36.7% over seven days; Solana rose 4.4% to $91.02 and 21.5% on the week; BNB gained 4% to $672. Total crypto market value stood at $2.6 trillion, up 2.2% over 24 hours, on $157.9 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 59.2%.
Biggest Week In Twenty-One Months
Bitcoin’s seven-day gain is its largest since the week to Nov. 12, 2024, when it rose 26.9% in the days after the U.S. presidential election, based on daily Coinbase closing prices. No rolling seven-day window between that week and Thursday produced a gain above 15.1%.
The advance takes bitcoin to its highest close since May 25, when it settled at $77,249. Friday’s intraday high of $79,320 was the highest since May 15. Bitcoin had traded between roughly $59,000 and $67,000 for seven weeks before Wednesday’s break.
Ether’s 28.8% week is its strongest since August 2025 and puts it at its highest level since April 17. XRP’s 36.7% gain is its largest weekly move since January 2025. Solana’s 21.5% is its biggest since October 2025.
The rally leaves both majors far below their records. Bitcoin is 38.9% under the $126,080 it reached in October 2025. Ether is 51.1% below the $4,946 it hit in August 2025.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 72, or greed, on Friday, against 29 — fear — on Aug. 14, according to Alternative.me. The index crossed out of fear on Thursday.
Trump Wants A Fair Version
Trump hosted SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig and executives including Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, Kraken’s Arjun Sethi, Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev, Chainlink Labs’ Sergey Nazarov and Gemini’s Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss at the White House on Wednesday. The White House published video of the remarks without a written transcript or readout.
“So, now we need Congress to take the next step by passing the CLARITY Act — a fair version of the CLARITY Act, and this landmark structure legislation,” Trump said, according to the event transcript. He called it “a very, very powerful, structured legislation which will keep us ahead of China.”
Armstrong put a number on the target at the same event: “if we all come together, I think we can get this bill over the finish line and hopefully get more than 60 votes come September 15th.”
The text awaiting a floor vote is Chairman Tim Scott’s substitute, not the version the House passed in 2025. Senate Banking reported H.R. 3633 with a strike-and-insert amendment on June 1 after approving it 15-9 in May, and Democratic objections have not been resolved. The Defiant covered the seven-Democrat math when the bill reached the floor calendar in June.
Atkins told Trump at the meeting that Tuesday’s rulemaking “is consonant with our belief that the most important priority is for Congress to send the CLARITY Act to your desk for your signature, and the SEC is doing everything we can to support that work.” In his written statement on the proposal, he argued that legislation “remains indispensable to enacting ‘future-proofed’ rules of the road that are durable enough to protect the work we are undertaking today from being unwound by a future rogue regulator.”
The SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets on Tuesday, creating exemptions for token offerings of up to $5 million over four years and up to $75 million per 12-month period, plus a conditional safe harbor that removes the “investment contract” label once an issuer completes its promised managerial efforts. The Defiant covered the proposal here.
Selig’s CFTC held the first meeting of its Innovation Advisory Committee on Thursday. In prepared remarks, he said staff have been directed to explore rules allowing spot and leveraged crypto trading on CFTC-registered venues, and asserted exclusive federal jurisdiction over prediction markets against state restrictions. Trump said at Wednesday’s meeting that Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid onshore “in a fully compliant and legal fashion,” which The Defiant reported.
Longs Are Not Paying Up
Perpetual funding rates stayed close to zero through the entire move. OKX’s BTC-USDT swap paid 0.0100% on Friday with a premium of -0.00039, meaning the perpetual traded below index; the ETH swap showed the same rate and a premium of -0.00025. On Deribit, eight-hour funding was 0.0030% for bitcoin and 0.0046% for ether, with current funding at zero for both.
Bitcoin gained 22.6% in a week without traders bidding up the cost of long exposure. Shorts closing out and spot fund buying carried the move.
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $517.2 million on Wednesday and $606.3 million on Thursday, the largest daily intake since May 1, according to Farside Investors. BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $503 million of Thursday’s total. The two days follow $297.5 million on Monday and $189.3 million on Tuesday. Spot ether ETFs took in $186.8 million on Wednesday; Thursday’s figure is incomplete, with BlackRock and Bitwise yet to report.
Coinglass recorded roughly $3 billion of leveraged positions closing over 24 hours around Wednesday’s break, more than 90% of them shorts, and a further $1.24 billion in the 24 hours to Friday morning with shorts at $1.06 billion. The firm publishes one liquidation order per second and Binance restricted its liquidation reporting in 2021, so the totals understate actual volumes. Open interest on OKX stood at $2.30 billion for the bitcoin swap and $1.43 billion for ether; Deribit’s bitcoin perpetual held $921 million and its ether perpetual $284 million.
Bonds Bid, Fed Hawkish
The rally started in the bond market. Treasury said Wednesday it will at least double the size of its buybacks in the 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year nominal sectors, to at least $4 billion per operation from $2 billion, effective Sept. 9 through Nov. 4. The 30-year yield had closed at 5.31% on Monday, its highest since June 2007, and fell to 5.19% on Wednesday before backing up to 5.23% Thursday, Treasury data shows. The two-year held at 4.19% throughout, confining the move to the long end. The Defiant covered the buyback expansion on Wednesday.
Crypto rallied against a hawkish Federal Reserve. Minutes of the July 28-29 meeting, released Wednesday afternoon, show Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan dissented in favor of a quarter-point increase, and that “many participants assessed that policy tightening would likely be necessary if inflation did not decline.” July CPI, published Aug. 12, put headline inflation at 3.4% over 12 months against core at 2.5%.
Chair Kevin Warsh speaks at the Kansas City Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium on Aug. 27-29, his first as chair. Equities lagged crypto: the S&P 500 rose 0.5% to 7,681 on Friday afternoon.
Ethena Warehouses A Billion
| Token | Price | 24h | 7d |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin Cash (BCH) | $281.23 | +28.3% | +39.9% |
| Ethena (ENA) | $0.1390 | +26.5% | +64.0% |
| Curve DAO (CRV) | $0.3262 | +24.3% | +38.3% |
| Stacks (STX) | $0.1775 | +22.8% | +43.3% |
| Pepe (PEPE) | $0.00000381 | +22.4% | +43.3% |
| Zcash (ZEC) | $693.42 | +21.2% | +39.7% |
| Bitway (BTW) | $0.4858 | +20.1% | +57.2% |
| WhiteBIT Coin (WBT) | $71.17 | +17.7% | +30.7% |
Ethena’s ENA was the largest weekly gainer among the 150 biggest tokens. FalconX and Ethena announced a $1 billion warehouse financing facility on Wednesday morning, routing assets backing the USDe stablecoin into overcollateralized institutional loans through a special purpose vehicle. Collateral sits with qualified custodians, and FalconX acts as originator, servicer and collateral manager.
“Secured institutional lending is one of the largest and most durable sources of return in finance, and on-chain capital has barely touched it,” said Guy Young, founder of Ethena Labs. Ethena’s governance forum had carried a legal review of the FalconX credit agreement since Aug. 4.
The ENA fee switch remains dormant. The Risk Committee’s 2024 conditions required USDe supply above $6 billion; supply now stands at $4.08 billion, according to DefiLlama. Committee applicants writing on the governance forum this month said the conditions are unmet. Ethena’s annualized fees run at $322 million on $4.38 billion of total value locked.
Curve’s CRV rose on a scheduled supply cut. Annual CRV emissions fell below 100 million for the first time on Aug. 13 as Epoch 6 began, dropping to about 97.2 million from 115.5 million, a 15.9% cut that requires no vote, Curve said. The protocol holds $1.32 billion of TVL and generates $58.4 million of annualized fees, with roughly 90% of fee revenue going to veCRV holders.
Zcash extended a run built on institutional buying. Grayscale amended its filing to convert the Grayscale Zcash Trust into a spot ETF on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH, disclosing that DCG International Investments is in non-binding talks to acquire about 200,000 ZEC, worth roughly $139 million at Friday’s price. Fortitude, the DCG-owned Zcash miner, reported Thursday it mined 33,646 ZEC in the second quarter on $20.9 million of revenue. The Defiant covered Grayscale’s original conversion filing in November.
Stacks gained on a September calendar. Its Bitcoin Staking Genesis Bond begins at Bitcoin block 966,350, expected next month, and a 90-day DeFi incentive program with Zest and Bitflow was announced Aug. 13, according to Stacks. STX trades 95% below its April 2024 record.
Lighter’s LIT rose 17% after the CFTC committee meeting. Founder Vladimir Novakovski holds one of the 43 seats on the Innovation Advisory Committee. Neither Lighter nor the CFTC has announced a U.S. perpetuals offering. Lighter processed $9.95 billion of perpetual volume over seven days against $577.8 million of TVL.
Bitcoin Cash, Pepe and WhiteBIT Coin rallied without token-specific news. WBT set a record $72.23 on Friday.
MemeCore Finds A Buyer
| Token | Price | 24h | 7d |
|---|---|---|---|
| MemeCore (M) | $1.12 | -5.8% | +3.1% |
| OKB | $104.06 | -2.4% | -3.8% |
| Mantle (MNT) | $0.5026 | -2.4% | +7.3% |
| Monero (XMR) | $409.61 | +0.0% | +2.9% |
| Velvet (VELVET) | $0.7711 | +12.8% | -20.6% |
MemeCore was the worst performer among the 150 largest tokens for a second day, and the supply increase that appeared on Aug. 19 now has an explanation. Nasdaq-listed ZeroStack said Wednesday it received 925,925,926 M tokens valued at $1.08 each, or $1 billion, from Puple AI and Blockcat Pte. in exchange for 3.5 million common shares and pre-funded warrants for 36.2 million more at $25.19 per share. The token count matches the roughly 926 million increase in M’s circulating supply recorded that day.
Rudy Rong, a MemeCore principal, was appointed ZeroStack president. “We believe ZeroStack represents the ideal public company through which to accelerate collaboration,” he said in the release. Neither the release nor MemeCore’s announcements page explains where the tokens originated. CoinGecko counts 2.26 billion M in circulation against 5.41 billion total and a 10 billion maximum, for a $2.54 billion market value on $4.35 million of daily volume — a turnover ratio of 0.17%. Onchain researcher ZachXBT publicly asked MemeCore in April to “provide a single data point to support your $6B mkt cap at a top 20 token and why insiders hold >90% of supply.” The team has not responded.
Monero’s 2.9% week against Zcash’s 39.7% comes down to access. Zcash has a spot ETF conversion pending at the SEC, a DCG-owned miner filing quarterly results and public-company treasury buyers. Monero has no U.S. spot ETF path. XMR is up 14.9% over 30 days after reaching a record earlier this year, and no protocol or security issue surfaced this week.
OKB was the largest token by market value to fall over seven days, one of only six decliners among the 150 biggest. It rose 6.5% on Aug. 15 while the broader market was falling, and gave back the gain as everything else caught up.
Velvet was the week’s largest decliner despite gaining 12.8% on Friday. The token is 63% below the $2.08 record it set on June 29 after a 571% three-month run, and monthly unlocks of about 1% of supply began July 10, with the next due Sept. 10. No exploit, delisting or governance action occurred. Velvet holds $663,198 of TVL against a $330 million market value.
DeFi total value locked rose 4.9% over 24 hours to $86.06 billion, DefiLlama data shows. Stablecoin supply did not follow. The total stablecoin market capitalization stood at $302.1 billion, up 0.47% over seven days and down 0.23% over 30 days. The TVL increase reflects collateral repricing rather than new capital entering.
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