A U.S. Senate vote rejecting the Clarity bill shook markets, but an analysis said the odds are low that it will break bitcoin’s bull run. Blockchain media outlet CoinPost reported this on Sept. 17.

Matt Hougan (매트 호건), chief investment officer at U.S. crypto asset manager Bitwise, said in a memo dated Sept. 16 that the bill’s failure was unlikely to halt the crypto upswing that has continued since July.

The bill fell short of the 60 votes needed in the Senate, receiving 49. All Democratic senators opposed it, and some Republican votes also broke away. Hougan said it was hard to conclude, based only on bitcoin’s price path, that legislative expectations had been the core driver of the rally.

Hougan pointed to a chart overlaying bitcoin’s price with the likelihood of the Clarity bill passing, saying the two moved inversely. Bitcoin rose from a low of $57,950 on July 1 to above $80,000 on Sept. 4. Over the same period, the probability of the bill becoming law on prediction-market platform Polymarket fell to 18 percent from 39 percent. Hougan said this showed expectations for the bill’s passage did not underpin the bull market.

He also cited Wall Street moves along similar lines. Financial firms moved to expand crypto businesses without waiting for legislative results. Robinhood moved to roll out its own blockchain, and Morgan Stanley launched a spot Solana ETF. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp (DTCC) began tokenised stock settlement. Hougan said expectations that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) would keep a crypto-friendly stance through 2029 supported such entries.

Market attention now appears to be shifting from Congress to regulators. A team of analysts led by Gautam Chhugani (고탐 추가니) at Bernstein said the lead in regulatory design would move to the SEC and CFTC. The view is that the two agencies can respond more quickly and actively on issues such as token classification, DeFi and self-custody-based protections, and rules for stock tokenisation. The analysts also mentioned speeding up approvals for real-world-asset-backed perpetual futures and possible room for cooperation related to perpetual futures on single stocks.

Market expectations for the bill have already retreated sharply. On Polymarket, the probability of the bill becoming law in 2026 fell to 16 percent just before the vote from 82 percent in February. It is read as a signal that, even after the Senate rejection, the market has begun to place more importance on regulator-led detailed rule-making than immediate structural change.

Regulatory chiefs also stressed their policy resolve regardless of the legislative failure. SEC Chair Paul Atkins said he was grateful to the administration and Congress, investors and innovators who worked to advance the Clarity bill, but said his confidence in the United States’ leading position remained unshaken. He said the SEC would act within the scope of its statutory authority regardless of whether legislation is enacted.

CFTC Chair Selig said the Senate vote result was disappointing, but said Americans deserve regulatory clarity, legal certainty and consumer protection. He said the agency would use existing statutory authority to keep the United States a crypto hub while putting market-structure rules in place.

As a result, market watchers are expected to focus for the time being less on whether the bill will be revived and more on what detailed rules the SEC and CFTC actually put forward. With confirmation that bitcoin’s bull market is not relying solely on legislative expectations, capital and business moves are more likely to react sensitively to follow-up steps from regulators.