Digital Asset News host discusses setbacks to the Clarity Act and other crypto developments
Solo commentary by the Digital Asset News host covering legislative and market news in the crypto space.
Summary
The Digital Asset News host covers several setbacks facing the Clarity Act in the US Senate, focusing on resistance from Democratic senators Angela Alsobrooks and Kirsten Gillibrand, both of whom have raised ethics concerns tied to the Trump administration's crypto involvement. He also covers the collapse of Satsuma Tech's Bitcoin treasury, Jack Mallers' departure from 21, and Movement Labs filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The episode closes with a live Q&A session in which the host discusses his four-year cycle analysis — drawing detailed comparisons to 2018, 2021, and 2022 price patterns — arguing the market may see a mid-year rally followed by further decline before recovering after the November midterm elections. The Q&A also covers viewer price predictions, scam projects including the Balance Coin exploit, and general investor sentiment.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Clarity Act Hits Democratic Resistance
Host: The Clarity Act looks like it has hit a little bit of a wall, or at least a speed bump, and to be quite honest, I'm not surprised. As a refresher, the Clarity Act is going to be great when and if they can pass it. At some point they will pass this bill — I am sure of it. I just don't know exactly when. It's the same thing as people saying Bitcoin's going to a million dollars and giving you a time frame. They don't really know. It's just a good guess. But I do believe that the American government and the American people want this to pass. Unfortunately, it is in the hands of our representatives.
As a quick reminder, this bill came out of the Banking Committee, where Elizabeth Warren was the ranking member on the Democratic side and Chairman Tim Scott on the Republican side. They actually did a pretty great job of getting a couple of people to cross over — one of those was Ruben Gallego and the other was Angela Alsobrooks. When people see that, they think to themselves, "Okay, we've got two Democrats who have come over. That means the other Democrats will come over, we can get a supermajority, hit 60 votes, and everything's good." But it's not how it works.
Both Ruben and Angela said the same thing: "Look, we're just getting this out of committee, but it's up to us to really shore up some of this language, especially when it comes to ethics." And unfortunately, Angela Alsobrooks has already broken from that position. Senator Angela Alsobrooks said the White House proposal to have the Department of Justice enforce the Clarity Act's ethics provisions is a "un-serious offer." She said she will not support the bill if that is the only enforcement option.
So now they have to go back to the Republicans and say, "Look, that's not good enough. You've got to give us more, because we don't want you investing in crypto and digital assets when your leader, the President of the United States, just made $1.4 billion." And that's just how it is. This isn't a political channel, but unfortunately we have to deal with the politics to get the Clarity Act over the hump. That is just one Democrat who is facing issues and going back to say, "Hey, I never said I was going to vote for this. This language isn't correct. I'm not going through with it."
Gillibrand Faces Progressive Backlash
Host: On top of that, Senator Gillibrand — I believe she is from New York, correct me in the comments — is facing tremendous backlash from progressives over the Clarity Act's ethics rules. I personally believe this is a structural bill and not so much an ethics-type issue. Maybe it should go through the Judiciary Committee, but I'm not in Congress, which is a good thing.
Progressive groups, including Indivisible and Demand Progress, have launched a blistering campaign against Senator Gillibrand, claiming her family's crypto ties expose Democrats to the same conflicts of interest they accuse President Trump of exploiting. You might say to yourself, "Well, she's definitely going to pull back." I don't know if she's going to walk back her support — if she's actually supporting this or not.
There is a meaningful difference here when it comes to elections. For those outside the United States: the Senate has 100 members, two per state, and the House of Representatives has over 400 members, allocated by population. Gillibrand is not up for re-election until, I believe, 2030 — senators are elected every six years on a staggered basis, so only about a third of the Senate is up at any given election. She may be thinking, "I don't care — we'll shore this up in 2030. People have the attention span of goldfish." That could be one factor. For House members, that's why they don't want to break rank.
I am actually surprised there was such a big tidal wave of support in the House. It was a vast supermajority that got it to the Senate. Unfortunately, the Senate is now changing some of the language, which means it has to go back to the House. They'll do their work and then hopefully get it approved and onto the president's desk. But right now we've got two Democrats saying they're not doing this, and there are probably a lot of back-channel deals going on. It's all about the language and ethics. I just don't think they want to give the president of the United States a win. We'll see if it comes through.
Digital Asset Treasuries Under Pressure
Host: For more bad news — I gave you a boatload of good news yesterday and I like to balance things out — digital asset treasuries, the darlings of 2025, are becoming a liability. This is from Tony Edwards over at Thinking Crypto. He says that shareholders of Mark Moss's backed Bitcoin treasury company, Satsuma Tech, voted to sell all of its remaining 668 Bitcoin, return the capital to shareholders, and shut down the company.
These things happen. In 2018 we saw a lot of different crypto programs just shut down and go to bankruptcy. 2022 was the big year — FTX, Voyager, Celsius, BlockFi, Three Arrows Capital, Luna and their stablecoin — just collapsed and crumbled. I was buoyed by the hope that in 2026 we weren't seeing too many things collapse. Right now MicroStrategy is still going strong — I think they just crossed over $100 — and Strike is hanging around at $86.
But I think this was inevitable for some digital asset treasuries. Godspeed to all the people who invested in that. That's just how investing goes. Sometimes things don't work out.
Jack Mallers Departs from 21
Host: I want to be careful with how I say this, because there's a big difference between what happened with Satsuma and what's going on with Jack Mallers and 21. This was announced yesterday. I saw Jack's post, and Pladimir tried to rub it in, saying, "So 21 ended up just like the NCR partnership. Dude just has been one fire festival after another." Which is pretty funny, but it's not what it is — it's actually quite different.
Jack himself said: "To be clear, 21 isn't over. It's a separate company that continues on without me. At the end of the day, the board and I could not agree about the road ahead, so I stepped down." He said he's still going to do his thing with Strike, and they're going to do their thing with 21. I think that's a great move, especially if you don't see eye to eye ideologically. You just have to move forward. Some companies don't make it, some have to take drastic measures, and this one took a drastic measure. We'll see how it all works out.
Movement Labs Files for Bankruptcy
Host: For more bad news: Movement Labs is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with less than half a million dollars in assets. Former co-founder Rushi Munshi is listed among the company's largest creditors. The filing follows a token market-making scandal, a Binance ban, and an internal investigation into its MOVE token launch.
They filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy with less than half a million in assets, 18 months after targeting a $3 billion valuation. That is a serious face plant. The price action was just abysmal — straight down to a penny. It's amazing. So if that was one of your investments, I apologize. These things happen. This is why investing is risky. But for the long haul and the right projects, things can work out pretty well.
Four-Year Cycle Analysis and Price Predictions
Host: A couple of days ago we talked about the price predictions on the website. I want to bring everybody in to do price predictions, because I believe you guys are going to be some of the pros. The pros are people like Samson Mow, who thinks Bitcoin's going to a million dollars in 2026. Robert Kiyosaki says $250k. Raoul Pal says $450k by end of 2026, though he's missed a couple already. Arthur Hayes says $125k. Peter Brandt, I think he's going to nail it. And then there are a range of others going out by time frame.
What I wanted to do was bring you guys into it, and so far you have not disappointed — very conservative price predictions. GA says $181k by September 2026, which is a little bit of an outlier. Others are coming in more conservatively. Jerry Hall says $75k by March 2027 — that sounds pretty reasonable.
Live Q&A
Host: Plato says, "I am sick to the back teeth of scamming companies." There was a post this morning from the Coin Bureau team. They said a dollar stablecoin called Balance Coin crashed to nearly zero after a nearly $1 million exploit. It was meant to hold a dollar value using Bitcoin-backed collateral — which sounds nice, words sound great — but it crashed more than 99% to under a penny. SlowMist said the attacker manipulated the protocol's oracle to trigger an extremely low Bitcoin price, triggering liquidations of vaults. The attacker seized the collateral and converted it into $912,000 in profit. The entire circulating supply is now valued at just $2,570.
I believe this: scammers are pound-for-pound the greatest investors of all time, because their initial investment is zero and their return on investment is essentially infinity. So think about that when you're tempted to YOLO into some project with a hot wallet and no hardware wallet protection. It's a good idea not to go for these crazy projects.
Ken Mac raises a point about the political framing. When talking about politics you have to be very careful. The Democrats are saying, "Look, we don't want to get our constituents screwed over." The Republicans are saying, "Look, we just want to get this passed for our constituents because they want it, the Clarity Act is good, and it enables us to move forward — Russia just passed a law and beat us." And on the other side of that, there are people in both parties doing things that may serve their own best interests at the same time. Some of them are good-natured people who want to do the right thing. Others are not. That's pretty much what it is.
On the question of voting: I moved to Puerto Rico, so I can't vote for the president of the United States. I can vote for the governor, which is always fun.
Liberty asks whether we're still banking on October to end the bear market and push up from there. Everybody was feeling pretty good in July, partly because of the wave of Clarity Act momentum and talk about it potentially passing. And it could still pass. Even if people say it'll take a long time to implement, look at the GENIUS Act — it passed in May or June of 2025, and then three or four months later we got the top.
On the four-year cycle: if you look at the historical patterns, in December 2021 there was a big drop-off in April and May, then June felt pretty awful, and then in July there was a little bit of action. Going back to 2018, it's the same thing — a high, then it craters into February, a little rally, then March goes down, a nice rally in April and May, then it drops again, rallies from $6,000 to $8,000, and then craters, falling off the cliff in December. And in 2022, a little spot in June, a nice rally into August, then a drop-off, and we don't go all the way down until November.
My thoughts are that I still see this playing out the same way. Midterms are still in play. I want to say November 3rd is the midterm election day, and after that things start to recover, because the markets are no longer asking, "What are they going to do? Who's in power? How do I set this up?" I still see it the same way. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop buying. I buy every Monday and I'm still doing that.
On sentiment in crypto: on this channel it's pretty good. The demographic, as I talked about yesterday, is somewhere between 35 and 55. Some a little younger, some a little older. Relatively stable in life — either entrepreneurs, business owners, or people with an entrepreneurial spirit, and this isn't your first rodeo as an investor. I think most of you understand that this is where money is made, and you're doing a great job. I know it's not easy.
Will says, "I don't think Trump will follow whatever laws we set, but I still don't think Dems should cave in. This will get passed because it's a bipartisan show of Americans." Well said, Will. The man is a billionaire — he needs no crypto. We're the ones who need it. And thanks to that meme coin, he's a multi-billionaire now.
Grabby asks about real-world assets — Ondo or Syrup? I have no idea what Syrup is. Ondo I think is backed by BlackRock, so I'd say it looks pretty good — it's up around 7–8% today. If you look at rwa.xyz, it'll tell you which ones are being chosen so far.
William says he thinks the Clarity Act will pass and encourages everyone to send letters to their senators. Yes — call them up. They work for you, not the other way around.