Digital Asset News host covers the CLARITY Act vote, Fed rate hike expectations, oil prices, and historical crypto buying patterns around midterm elections
A solo presentation by the Digital Asset News host covering multiple market and regulatory developments in the crypto and macro space.
Summary
The Digital Asset News host covers several converging developments: the CLARITY Act's uncertain path to a Senate cloture vote, rising expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike, and a bullish historical case for buying crypto around midterm elections. New York Attorney General Letitia James leads an 18-state letter opposing the CLARITY Act, with Senator Elizabeth Warren among those aligned against the bill, which the host sees as a significant obstacle to passage. On the macro side, oil prices are described as still underpriced relative to physical market realities, with the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb both under Houthi influence, pushing inflation higher and driving 10-year Treasury yields to 5% for the first time since around 2007. The host then presents historical data showing that buying Bitcoin and select altcoins on midterm election day and holding for one year has produced substantial gains across 2014, 2018, and 2022 cycles. The episode also includes an extended comparison of Cardano versus Bitcoin held from the November 2022 midterm, showing Cardano briefly outperforming Bitcoin around its December 2024 peak before falling sharply, while Bitcoin remained significantly positive. A Q&A segment covers XRP historical performance, Canton Network's upcoming DTCC integration, and the host's broader investment philosophy around conviction-based altcoin selection.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Markets Overview and the CLARITY Act
Host: A lot of things to go over, so let's just jump right into it. First of all, the markets themselves are doing pretty good today, even though the S&P 500 is down just a little bit. Looking at it, it's down 0.2% on the day, also down over five days and one month — not looking too hot. However, the digital asset space is looking pretty good. Refreshing this — yeah, it keeps going up. We're almost at $79K for Bitcoin, up 2% in 24 hours. Ethereum's up. I think everything is up across the board in the last 24 hours. Looking pretty good.
So what's happening? What is leading to this? We're going to take a look at what's going to happen with the CLARITY Act — maybe it'll pass, maybe it won't. I personally don't believe it's going to pass, and I'm going to tell you exactly why. We're going to take a look at what's going on with the macro factors, especially what's going to happen on Tuesday and Wednesday. And the big thing is: what if we just buy in Q4? What would happen, especially with these midterm elections? Historically speaking, it's a really great time to buy.
This is from Bernstein. They see more CLARITY Act progress than markets expected and say any positive surprise is definitely not priced in. They may be correct, because today is a nice little pump even though we are having a negative day for the traditional markets. And this could be why.
Late Sunday, Senate Republicans released what they described as the final draft of the CLARITY Act. I have to give it up to Republicans for really pushing forward and trying to get this over the hump. It's not easy, and they know that if we don't get this going here, we're going to have to wait until 2027 or 2028 probably. But there's something in the back pocket they can pull out — we'll talk about that in a second.
They incorporated 126 substantive changes — really big changes — that were requested by the Democrats, and they reached across the aisle and said, "Sure, no big deal." And Donald Trump agreed to most of a bipartisan ethics proposal, including a role for state attorneys general in enforcing its restrictions. That sounds great. He's essentially saying, "Look, you attorneys general, you guys do whatever you want to do. Just come along for the ride. We're going to be just fine." This, of course, was Sunday.
Letitia James and the 18-State Opposition Letter
Host: And today, this is what they got. New York Attorney General Letitia James leads an 18-state letter to the Senate opposing the CLARITY Act. This just broke about an hour ago. She put this out today, September 14th, 2026, and she pretty much states, "Look, this bill is going to strip the powers to prosecute scams. We like to prosecute scams. We did a lot of these things with all your exchanges. We're going to do it again with all the different projects that are out there." They state the SEC's preemptive override of state regulation rules as a key concern.
What I'd like you to notice is that this is co-signed by the Honorable Elizabeth Warren — the original crypto Karen. She is not going to let this go, and she is not going to let this pass. That is, I think, where we're at for the attorney general situation. So the president can say this is great, attorneys general are going to be enforcing these restrictions, but Letitia James is saying not so fast.
Bernstein said the ethics offer is probably as good as it gets. I don't think that's probably as true for the Republicans, but I don't know what's going to happen with the actual bill.
The Cloture Vote Explained
Host: The Senate is scheduled to hold its cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act on Tuesday — that would be tomorrow. Cloture needs 60 votes. What's a cloture vote? Essentially, it's the "shut up" vote. It's saying, "Look, let's stop debating. Let's stop pushing the can down the road. You think this, I think this — let's just put it up for a vote. You ready? Let's do this." That's essentially what a cloture vote is going to do. They need 60 votes — a supermajority — for the CLARITY Act to go through.
Will they get it? I've got to tell you, I don't think the Democrats really want to give the crypto president of the United States a nice little victory right before the midterm elections. I have been wrong many a time, and on this one I hope that I'm wrong, but it's not looking too hot. We'll see where things go.
But lastly, a little glimmer of hope. The SEC and CFTC — and the chair of the CFTC, Brian Quintenz — came out and said that regulators could end up writing all the rules if Congress does not pass the legislation. So that's good, right? The CFTC and SEC work together to figure out what's a security, what's a currency, what would be considered a cryptocurrency, what is a different type of investment — they can do that and they can write the rules.
The problem is that they are agencies. If it goes through the Senate, it is more permanent — until the Senate comes back and says, "We don't like that law, we want to change it." So if they can pass this CLARITY Act, it's in the books for quite some time until they get a supermajority to overturn it, and that's going to take a long time. However, with the SEC and the CFTC, as soon as the administration is out and a new SEC chair and new CFTC chair is in, they change everything — because that's not what the new party wants. This could be good for the next two years, but it's not going to be permanent.
But maybe it is all we need. If we can get the SEC and CFTC to do it and move forward, maybe we can just ride this out until we get to 2028.
Additional Opposition: Indian Gaming Association
Host: Unfortunately, there was one more piece I forgot to mention. Other organizations are coming out against the CLARITY Act. The Indian Gaming Association chair said the CLARITY Act as currently written would represent the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty in a generation. I believe what they're talking about is prediction markets — they don't want that. So again, we've got other individuals and organizations piling up against the CLARITY Act.
Fed Rate Hike Expectations
Host: That's what's happening as far as Tuesday. And that's just Tuesday. Wednesday, the Fed comes out, and we'll see what they want to do. When Jerry and I were talking about this on Sunday, the probability of a rate hike was around 87%. Right now it's looking at almost 93%. So I'm pretty sure this is going to happen. It would be quite shocking to me if the Fed chair comes out and says, "You know what? We're keeping everything the same." There are actually three meetings this year, and many banks are saying there's going to be three rate hikes.
We took a look at this yesterday — rate hikes are not the doom prophecy that people are talking about, but just be aware that people will say it's priced in, probably a little bit, but there's always going to be some knee-jerk reactions and a pullback.
Oil Prices and Inflation: Amos Hochstein
Host: The reason why I think there are going to be more rate hikes has to do with inflation — more specifically oil, more specifically gas. Amos Hochstein from TWWG Global is going to lay it out for you just how underpriced oil and gas actually is. Before we go through this — it's about a minute and a half — I just want to tell you that what he says here is correct. When he talks about the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Houthis do have control of that, and that just happened this weekend. Some people say they have total control, some say they don't. But I can tell you there is a reduction in the amount of oil coming through, and that is a problem because oil stocks in the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve have fallen by 1.2 million barrels to the lowest level since 1982. So whatever is really going on in these areas, there is a shortage. When there's a shortage, the price of oil goes up. When the price of oil goes up, diesel goes up — and it's almost at its all-time high — on top of the gasoline situation. And because of those factors, you're going to see the price of goods and services go up.
Amos Hochstein: "I came on your show exactly a month ago, on August 13th, when oil prices were at $80–$81. And I said that the market was treating inventories and supplies from things like the SPR as though that was normal production. The market just forgot to do math. They were listening to headlines out of Washington, with the president saying everything's fine, and not counting the barrels and not looking at the actual physical market — and they got punished for it.
The market — and I think today's oil price at $107 Brent, $103 WTI — is still the wrong price. It is still too low. What we've seen over the weekend is what happens when you have no safety nets anymore. Our supplies out of reserves are dwindling, so their flow rates are lower, and the Middle East is still as volatile and now just became significantly more dangerous. Hormuz was essentially effectively not functioning, and the bypass was this pipeline and the Red Sea. The Trump administration did not offer any support to Saudi Arabia when the Houthis did their attack a few days ago, and now they control both the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb — the other strait — and they've damaged that pipeline that is a bypass. So we're at significantly lower volumes.
And the last thing I'd say: when you look at $103, you can't actually buy that outside the United States. This $107 Brent — the sale of actual physical barrels — is somewhere between $120 and $150 right now in the market. You can't buy this. This is just paper oil price. The actual price is significantly higher."
Host: Ouch. So that right there is not a good outcome. That's what we have as far as inflation going up, and you can see it all around you. I think we're going to feel that crunch even more. As this skirmish in Iran — I can't call it a war because Congress hasn't officially declared that — the price goes up. Not the greatest thing of all time.
And because of that, 10-year Treasury rates just hit 5%, which is the first time it's happened since around 2007 or so, back around the Great Recession. When you have something like that, it's kind of a warning sign that things aren't going so great.
So that concludes the bearish part of the show. If you'd like to leave now, I don't blame you. It was pretty rough. But if you stick around, it's going to be pretty good for you, because I think right now there are opportunities all around.
Midterm Elections and Historical Crypto Performance
Host: Historically speaking, the good times are coming up. What I'm talking about — and we've talked about this many times — is the midterm elections. We've got those coming up in November. That's going to determine who's going to run the House and who's going to run the Senate. Looks like the House is going to fall to Democrats; the Senate is potentially anybody's game.
But I will tell you that over time, we can see that four-year cycles aren't just for crypto — they're also based on midterm election years. Year-to-date for this time is actually 12 to 13% for the S&P 500, which is quite odd. But I do think there is an AI component to that, as people are thinking this is a generational event and they've got to get in now.
The midterm elections were in 2014, 2018, 2022 — one year after the all-time highs each time. And now we're at a midterm again. You can see right here across the board: presidential election year, which we just had in 2024, 2025 is not a bad year. Then the midterm year is just awful. But then the post-midterm year — these are the gains you can potentially expect in the S&P 500. And like we talked about yesterday, 100% of the time since 1942, if you bought the S&P 500 on midterm election day and waited six to seven months, you'd be up 15% minimum.
So I was thinking about that and I go, well, how does that compare to Bitcoin? Because sometimes we're correlated with the S&P 500, sometimes we're not.
Things are changing now. I believe in the four-year cycles, but people will remind me constantly that Bitcoin actually hit its all-time high — the previous all-time high — before the halving in 2024. And that is actually correct. So they say, "Well, that invalidates things." I will tell you there's a point there.
Taking a look at this: six months after midterm election day — and we're talking 2014, 2018, and 2022. If you would have bought Bitcoin on midterm election day in 2014, in six months you'd be down 28%. Crazy, right? If you did the same thing in 2018 and waited six months, you'd be down 11%. However, in 2022 — interesting enough, we had this thing called the coronavirus, big deal — on that one, you're up almost 50% if you bought in November of 2022 and waited six months.
But check this out. What if you would have waited just a year — one year after the midterm? You're up 25%. All you had to do was buy in November and wait until April or May, and you're up 25%. In 2018, if you just waited a year, you're up 45%. And in 2022, you would have been up 93%.
Altcoin Comparison: Bitcoin vs. Ethereum, Solana, Tron, BNB
Host: So that got me thinking. I know I'm going to buy Bitcoin. But I think there's something to be said for altcoins — getting the right altcoins. So I wanted to extrapolate that information. What would have happened if we compare Bitcoin versus Binance, Ethereum, Solana, Tron?
If you would have done the same thing in 2022 and held six months, you'd be up 49% for Bitcoin, 39% for Ethereum, Tron at 16%, and BNB and Solana down 14%. But if you did the same thing and waited just a year, look at that — you'd be up 93% on Bitcoin, Solana 79%, Tron 67%, BNB 42%. So when people are talking about just buying Bitcoin about a year after the midterms, you're pretty smart. Congratulations.
Now we get into the long game. What if you would have said, "I don't care, I like Solana, I like Tron, I like BNB"? If you would have held from November 8th, 2022 until its all-time high — look how big you would have been up on Solana. Solana's price on November 8th was $24.15. I think it went down to around $10. So that 1,113% — I mean, it's right if you would have waited until midterm election day like we just talked about. You'd be up big time. And then Tron, you'd be up 631%. Bitcoin 58%. So you are rewarded for the risk.
To me, I think it really has to play into your conviction. You better really know that altcoin. You better really know how big it can actually be, the actual improvements being made, the adoption that's happening, the tech that's involved, how it competes with everything else. Solana and Tron are not bad. BNB you're up 17%, and Ethereum a "measly" 270%. Just saying.
Cardano vs. Bitcoin Long-Term Comparison
Host: Let's take a look at another comparison. Going from November 13th, 2022 — let's look at Cardano. If you invested starting November 8th, comparing Cardano in orange versus Bitcoin in blue, you'd be doing okay until around 2024. Actually, you're up for about a week, then you fall down, then you're up, then you're not. Then in 2024, you're up for six or seven days. Then you're down. Then at the peak — December 6th, 2024 — you would have been up 229% versus Bitcoin at 188%. Would you really have taken that chance? Is the juice worth the squeeze?
And then of course everything just breaks down after that. ADA, you're down 53%, but Bitcoin you're up 76%. Just putting it out there.
Revolut Bank Hack Warning
Host: Before we get into the Q&A, just a little PSA. Revolut Bank — looks like there was another hack. These hacks are rough. A lot of people's personal information could potentially be leaked. So if you have Revolut Bank, I would be contacting them. The hackers want 10,000 Bitcoin or something crazy like that, and they've got everybody's personal information — account numbers, addresses — and they're threatening Revolut Bank to put it all out on the internet.
This is essentially why KYC is sometimes called "kill your customer." I just want to bring this to everybody's attention because there are a lot of things out there, and it's important that you not only diversify your investments but also diversify your cold storage. I know you hate the broken record, but please use a hardware wallet. Want to use a Ledger? Get into ETFs — not your keys, not your problems. Also, a little IRA action for retirement. That's essentially what Peter Thiel did — he took his PayPal stocks, stuck them in a Roth IRA, and those are worth three billion dollars in three years. Guess how much taxes he's paying on that? Zero. Because it was a Roth IRA. You can do the same thing with crypto and actually your stocks now.
Q&A Session
Host: All right, let's do a little Q&A. Joe asks about XRP. I don't own XRP, so that's why I don't talk about it much. But let's take a look. Starting from 2022, XRP is underwater for a while, then it's up roughly 200%, then 365%, then massively up at 512%, then still doing pretty good, then around 94%, 59%. As of right now, up around 30%. So there you go, Joe. Who's biased now? I just won't buy it because I don't personally believe in it. It's probably going to do great though.
Someone asks why Letitia James isn't in prison. It's hard to put the attorney general in prison. And I'm going to say something that people are going to laugh at — she is trying to protect New Yorkers. I believe that, because let's be honest, there are a lot of scams out there, and I'm sure she's seen a lot of people fall for them. Maybe she's trying to do the right thing. Sometimes people aren't always self-serving. Or maybe she is. I don't know. But I do know that it is a big push against the CLARITY Act, and we'll see how it goes.
Someone says the CLARITY Act was flawed and we can do better. We can always do better. The question is, do we have the time to do better? We'll find out.
Someone asks about Canton Network and the DTCC full launch for October — pump or dump? This is a great question. I actually do own Canton, so I'll probably be buying more of it. The DTCC has their own nodes, and it looks like JP Morgan and a bunch of banks are involved — they could be private or public nodes. Canton looks like they're leading the charge on tokenized real-world assets. Sounds pretty good. But the big question is how much fluctuation there's going to be and how much of that is going to be accessible to the public and how we can capitalize on it. I'll probably have someone on to discuss that further.
Someone in the chat says they're here for the financial gains. As the old saying goes, how do you know a politician is lying? If you see their mouth moving.
Someone asks how many people would have bought Bitcoin at the Lambo meme stage. Be honest — how many of you would have bought Bitcoin if you didn't see the number go up? If it was just stagnant like gold was forever, but you heard about it and thought, "Oh, it's decentralized, it's scarce, sound money" — I don't think many of us would have done that. But you go from $1,000 to $10,000 and you're like, "Wow." That was essentially my exposure in 2017. I was like, "I should probably get into this. What does it do? No idea." And now here we are talking about which one's more decentralized.
There's nothing wrong with that though. I bought because of BitBoy. Say what you want about BitBoy — he was entertaining and he did bring a lot of people into the crypto space. I hope and pray that he makes it through whatever he's going through, especially for the kids and the family.
Someone says XRP is just bouncing between a dollar and three and isn't going anywhere. But if you think about it, if you keep buying at $1.43 — wherever it's at today — and it goes to three, you doubled your money. That's really all that matters. I know some people say, "No, Rob, what matters is the technology." And to that I say, "Sure. I applaud you. Some people are here to change the world. I'm here to change my bank account."