Bitcoin gives back Monday's gain as Clarity Act odds fade on Polymarket

Bitcoin reversed a late-Monday rally and traded around $76,862 on Tuesday, giving back gains that pushed it to $79,427 the previous day. The cryptocurrency is now about 6.6% below its monthly high of $82,284 set on Sept. 4. Ether and solana also weakened, with ether down about 1.6% to roughly $2,474.76 and solana off 2% at $100.43.

The moves coincided with a sharp drop in Polymarket’s estimate that the U.S. Clarity Act will become law this year, which fell from roughly 34% on Monday to about 17% after Democrats presented a counterproposal to a Republican draft. Lawmakers in the Senate were scheduled to vote at 2:15 p.m. ET on whether to invoke cloture and force a final vote; passage would advance the bill toward establishing clearer rules on regulatory jurisdiction for crypto, while failure would likely push market-structure legislation past the midterm elections.

Selling pressure was broad across crypto markets: 92 of the CoinDesk 100 constituents were lower on the day, leaving the index down about 1.6%. Traditional equity futures moved the other way, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.43% and S&P 500 futures up 0.35%, and the Dollar Index rose 0.17%, indicating the weakness was concentrated in crypto. On-chain derivatives signs pointed to reduced appetite for leveraged exposure — cumulative open interest slipped 1% to $135 billion while 24-hour trading volume surged 54% to $207 billion, suggesting participants were closing positions faster than opening new ones.

Futures data showed taker selling in bitcoin during the overnight pullback and open interest for bitcoin futures remained below 680,000 BTC. Open interest in major tokens including ether, solana and XRP continued a downtrend; solana’s futures open interest stood at 58.81 million tokens, its lowest since May. The 24-hour open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta readings were negative for several large tokens, signaling bearish pressure. Funding rates stayed mostly positive across major tokens, though ether and solana displayed mildly negative readings and TRX showed deeply negative open interest.

There were token-specific divergences: Stellar’s XLM was an outlier, up about 4% with futures open interest rising over 10% to 1 billion XLM and an annualized funding rate near 10%, a pattern consistent with long accumulation. Filecoin, which rallied 27% on Monday with a 70% spike in futures open interest, was retracing and down about 5.1% to $0.89 while its open interest fell 23% to $106 million. AI- and computing-related tokens bore additional pressure — Internet Computer fell 6% to $2.58, Theta Network lost 4.5% and NEAR Protocol slipped 3.7% — while Uniswap held up, gaining about 1% to $6.60. Volatility measures for bitcoin and ether ticked higher but remained well below the spikes seen in February and June, and options activity continued to favor calls, with higher-strike calls dominating short-term volume on Deribit.