Bitcoin holds steady following a Fed rate hike and the failure of the Clarity Act
A solo commentary episode from the Digital Asset News channel analyzing Bitcoin's price resilience after two major market tests.
Summary
The host from Digital Asset News reviews Bitcoin's performance following two significant events in quick succession: the failure of the Clarity Act to pass the Senate, and a 25-basis-point Federal Reserve rate hike announced by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh. Despite dropping from near $80,000 to around $74,000, Bitcoin stabilized, which the host considers a win. He also covers President Trump's trading activity — nearly 29,000 trades since returning to office, more than all of Congress combined — and presents a counterargument that these trades are executed by third-party firms with full discretionary authority across eight accounts, with no reported input from Trump himself. The host also covers a DeFi bridge hack in which an attacker turned 330 satoshis (roughly a quarter) into approximately $770,000 by exploiting two software flaws in the Symbiosis bridge to create 46 billion fake Bitcoin tokens. The episode closes with a warning about malicious apps targeting crypto wallet keys and mnemonic phrases.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin's resilience after the Fed rate hike
Well, I have to say I will take the win for today. We just had a rate hike and it looks like Bitcoin, even though it went through a couple of big turbulent sessions, is coming out on top. And really what it comes down to is Tom Lee. I saw this yesterday and I thought to myself, ah, this is just Tom Lee being Tom Lee. As he states, the Fed rate hike could trigger a very big rally in markets. This is from Fund Strat. Tom Lee — one of my favorite people in the crypto space. That guy is always bullish. And I have to tell you, taking a look at it, I don't think it would be considered a very massive big bull run, but pretty flat. I think for us this is a big win. I like flat. Not a big deal. I'd like it to go a bit more, but not too bad.
Two big tests in 48 hours: the Clarity Act and the rate hike
Now, over the last 48 hours or so, we've seen two big tests. One, of course, the Clarity Act didn't get passed — bummer. And then of course we have the Fed rate hike, as Kevin Warsh came out and said yes, we're going to raise it by 25 basis points. And there's a call for two more rate hikes to happen in October and going into the end of the year.
So we can see that over the last 48 hours we were riding high. I don't usually use candles like this, but I thought it was kind of important to look at the five-minute chart to see where we're at. We know we were almost at $80,000 just on Monday, September 14th, and we were riding high. Everything was looking pretty good. A lot of people — almost everybody — was thinking that the Clarity Act was going to go through. Didn't happen. But you can see that on Monday it was nice and exuberant, then we kind of came down, and then of course we got our first big test where the Clarity Act was deemed unnecessary, the cloture vote collapsed, and then of course we collapsed down to around $74,000 or so. Then a little bit of a rally, and then we went down again to $75,000. Then today, when Kevin Warsh came out — some people would say this is already priced in, we'll just keep going up. I was like, I don't think that's how it's going to happen. There's always going to be somebody who's going to be worried about it, or someone who's like, "What? A rate hike? I didn't hear anything about it." And you're going to see some people that are going to go long and short. There's liquidations. There's people on leverage. That's just how the market goes.
And as we're seeing now on the five-minute chart, we're headed downward on a nice slope trajectory. We'll see how low it goes. Now, I personally would like to see it go lower — I've talked about that many times on the channel. Maybe we hit $74K again. But this is what is happening. Don't be too concerned. Like we've talked about the last couple of days, the federal funds rate — it's not the end of the world and doomsday. It's just what it is. It's a natural part of the cycle.
Historical context: Fed rate hikes and Bitcoin's price
And as a reminder, as we talked about on Sunday with Jerry from Costa Rica, we took a look at the federal funds rate, essentially the target range. Going back to 2017 — which is when I got in — Bitcoin was starting to take off like a rocket as we were raising rates one, two, three, four times until December 7th, 2017. We had four rate hikes. Then of course we collapsed as we always do in these cycles, and then we flattened out. Then it's kind of weird because as Bitcoin went up, rates weren't doing anything. Bitcoin was going up nicely, and then all of a sudden we're at a peak in 2019 and we start cutting rates — and where does Bitcoin go? It goes down. So you look at this and you're like, that doesn't make any sense.
And of course we have this thing called coronavirus, which messes up everything. Then we come over here and of course we raise, raise, raise, and then people are like, "See, this is what happens when you raise rates — Bitcoin goes down." But then up here we're on the sixth raise, we go seven, eight, nine, and ten, and Bitcoin continues to go up. So the federal funds rate is just one of those things where I always thought there's going to be more volatility. People are going to come into it and be like, "What? There's a funds rate?" And then you see stuff like this and it's all over the place. Then you have these green candles and up off it goes.
Anyhow, not a big deal. In the long run, we're going to probably get some more rate hikes. As of today, September 6th, there was a 99% probability of a hike, with still a 0.1% holdout — that doesn't make any sense. But the next one will be on October 28th. Essentially it's a 50-50 split, so we'll see where it goes. And then we've got splits in December. But to go out that far is usually not accurate. I would just start with October, which is right around the corner, and we'll probably get another rate hike. We'll see how it goes. But as we've seen historically, not a big deal.
CFTC steps in after Clarity Act failure
Now, as far as good news — I consider today a win because there's no big crash, just a little bit of sideways action. Mike Celix, chairman of the CFTC — even though we didn't get the Clarity Act to go through, which is a bummer. When you get a bill or legislation actually go through the House of Representatives, then through the Senate, and then it goes to the president's desk and he signs it into law, essentially it's there until they go through the whole process again, which is very difficult as we're seeing with the Clarity Act.
Now, the CFTC, the SEC, and the OCC can step in and say, "Look, we'll take care of it. We'll write all the rules." They can do that, and that can work for the current administration. But once the next administration comes in, they can change it at the drop of a hat. And I think that's what's going to happen. But I'll take the win for two years.
Michael Celix says this: "The outcome of yesterday's Senate vote was unfortunate. Americans deserve regulatory clarity, legal certainty, and consumer protections in crypto asset markets. President Trump promised to deliver a future-proof crypto asset framework one way or the other, and we'll help him get the job done using our existing statutory authorities. The US will remain the crypto capital of the world. The CFTC is locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance."
I would also say that's a win. The SEC is on board, the CFTC, the OCC — I believe. So that is pretty good news moving forward. I like what I see.
Trump's trading activity: nearly 29,000 trades since taking office
But there are some things that kind of bother me. Did you know this has been making the rounds — the trades that Trump has done since he's been in office? 28,700. This is a vast departure from his first tenure, his first four years, because he was mostly a real estate guy. Not a lot to trade there. It's just real estate. But now Trump has gotten into the game of equities and bonds, and of course crypto and digital assets — more importantly, World Liberty Financial, and Melania and Trump Coin, the best coins of all time. And because of that, he has made 28,700 trades. The House and Senate don't even equal up to that. So essentially Trump out-Pelosi'd Pelosi. Sorry, that's a goofy joke, but it is what it is. He has made more trades than all of Congress combined.
And I read this and I go, man, this sucks. This is from CoinDesk. President Trump is making roughly 40 security trades per day. Compared with 500 his entire first term. You would look at that and say to yourself, does this guy have any time to govern? He's making all these trades. Trump has made nearly 29,000 trades since his return to office, more than all of Congress combined. His portfolio includes thousands of holdings in stocks, bonds, and crypto across eight investment accounts. And he did a really good job with that memecoin, also World Liberty Financial. And just to make things 100% clear — did you know that he really didn't dump the Trump Coin? He and World Liberty Financial actually hold 80% of those coins. Just going to put that out there. Shout out to A1 Rising for making that crystal clear.
So the stock trading ban he's backing — I like this one — the stock trading ban that he's backing would apply to Congress, but not to the president. Rules for thee, but not for me. Now, who's tired of winning?
The counterargument: third-party discretionary accounts
Okay, so that was the Trump-bashing part. Now let me give you a counterargument, because we should be fair and take a look at things. Even though it will initially really make you mad and look at that and go, "Dear, that's the president of the United States — that's what he's doing for the country?" I just give the information. I don't make the rules. This is what we've got.
So, first of all, Trump made a lot of trades. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, House of Representatives — he's made 8,000. I think he's more of an equities guy. Good for him. Michael McCaul, Texas — great state — 1,700. The House total is 19,400. And then Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut had 800. These are pretty big guys as far as investments go. Now, they don't have the portfolio of Trump, but just so everybody knows, these 28,700 trades — Trump accounts for all of Congress, 22,200, January to June 2026. His portfolio is more than $858 million across eight different accounts. The trading volume was between $600 million and $1.86 billion. Q1 was 3,642 trades. He bought between $126 and $400 million. He sold between $86 and $300 million. So that's a lot of volume, I must admit.
However, who's doing that? Is it Trump? Is it the presidente? It is not. It is across eight different organizations. The ones that we can see here are Schwab — he has multiple accounts — JP Morgan, UBS, and Stevens. Those are the ones that make the actual trades. They have full discretionary third-party accounts. Firms have sole authority over allocation, trades, and rebalancing. It's automated model direct indexing — probably not a bad idea to take some losses and then use those losses for the next year, especially as we get into the end of the year. No notice, no input, no override by the Trump family or organization. That is what is said.
But come on. If I had a client who was the president of the United States and he gave me a little input, maybe I might not have reported that. I'm just reporting what is out there and trying to give you both sides of the story. I personally am not a big fan of this. But he is still an American citizen and allowed to make those trades, even though he says he is not behind them at all whatsoever — just making the most fantastic trades of all time. Looks kind of fishy. That's what we've got.
DeFi hack: attacker turns a quarter into $770,000 on Symbiosis bridge
And to finish up — this is even fishier. Hackers this year, and I think most years in crypto, are the best-performing investors of all time. They'll beat you, they'll beat me, and they'll definitely beat President Trump. And this guy turned a quarter into $770,000.
Here's what happened. A hacker created 46 billion fake Bitcoin tokens on the Symbiosis bridge. And we keep hearing about these bridges and DeFi and hacks and nonsense. This is not the future of finance. This is the future for hackers becoming the richest investors of all time.
Here's what happened. Tokens on the Symbiosis application — the attacker started with a deposit of just 330 satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, worth about a quarter. A post-mortem published Tuesday shows how two software flaws in the Symbiosis Bitcoin bridge combined to let an attacker create an enormous amount — 46 billion fake Bitcoin. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are only 21 million Bitcoin. But okay, 46 billion — sure. The attacker processed 12 bogus deposits across BNB, Ethereum, and Rootstock in roughly four minutes, eventually creating about 46 billion Symbiosis Bitcoin, or more than 2,000 times the 21 million coin limit. Preliminary estimates put losses to liquidity providers at almost 10 Bitcoin, or $770,000.
If you think you can do that well in four minutes trading, sign me up to your program, because that's amazing. Again, hacks and these things are only going to get worse. We're going to see more issues come about. You're going to hear more friends and family getting hacked, and these things are going to be quite an issue.
Warning: malicious apps targeting crypto wallet keys
I just saw a video today — shout out to Jimmy for sending this to me — where a gentleman took a look at the top 45 apps across the Apple App Store. Out of those 45 apps, the primary reason that they existed was to root through your device and find mnemonic phrases and private keys and send those back to hackers. I always thought that was an Android issue. This was really eye-opening. I will play this video tomorrow.
Just know: don't download anything. And for God's sakes, make sure that you're diversifying your storage. I use Tangem and Ledger, and now getting into the ETFs. It just makes sense to me because I know it's not a matter of if, it's when. I've already been compromised on my MetaMask wallet — probably because of something I downloaded — and I lost a lot of meme tokens. I lost some Meme tokens. I was pretty ticked off about that. But these things are going to keep happening. Check out iTrust, check out Tangem. If you want a Ledger, go for it. And then also ETFs — not your keys, not your problems.
Q&A
Host: Matty O is correct — DeFi sounds like the wild wild west. Still. Matty's right. It's the wild wild west. It scares the hell out of me. Me and Jerry were talking about the different processes of DeFi farming on Sunday, and he was just talking about how he used to do that, thought it was the greatest thing of all time, but now as he gets into it he realizes it's very dangerous and the yield that you actually get — the juice is not worth the squeeze. A lot of these DeFi products I just cannot get behind. I just don't think this is the future of finance. I think this is all going to go away. I think it's a lot of problems.
Yudi asks, "Why is Bitcoin still stable after this FOMC?" There was some volatility throughout, and then we came from $76,500 down to almost $74,900 and now we're making our way up. What's happening here is that people are just buying dips — dip here, dip here, dip here, dip here. Par for the course. Then they're watching it go up, and then there's some scalpers out there doing their scalping things. But I don't do that. The federal funds rate is not the end-all be-all. It's not the worst thing. We've gone through it before. We'll go through it again. I think some of this was a little priced in, but there was a little volatility. We'll see what happens in October and then December.
Someone says the Asian session will give us a better answer to price direction, plus the Bank of Japan decision on Friday. I think everyone's going to start raising rates. It's just pretty much how it is. We'll find out. The Fed can't stop this train. There was the speaker of the Iranian parliament who came out on X — which I thought was interesting that they post there — and just said that hey, even if you raise rates, you can't open up the Strait of Hormuz. I thought that was a pretty good rip against us.
Close enough to DCA now. Lyn Alden, of course.