Crypto Prices Today: Why Bitcoin, XRP and Solana Are All Down Before the CLARITY Act Vote
Bitcoin and Solana are clinging to key support levels by less than one percent, and two events landing within 48 hours will either push them toward resistance or crack those floors wide open.
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Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) trades at $76,941 and Solana (CRYPTO:SOL) at $100.74, which puts Bitcoin 0.57% above the $76,500 floor and Solana 0.74% above $100. The Senate votes on the CLARITY Act at 2:15 p.m. ET on September 15, and the Federal Reserve announces its rate decision on September 16.
Every major coin is red on the day and red for the week. So what pushed crypto prices down before the vote, and which levels break if it goes badly?
Bitcoin and Solana Are Within a Percent of the Levels Holding Them Up
Bitcoin’s next resistance runs at $80,000, which is 3.98% above the current price. Solana’s ceiling is $105, another 4.23% up, and neither coin has traded near those numbers this month.
XRP trades at $1.40, which puts it 0.71% under the $1.41 resistance that has capped it all week. Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) at $2,474.76 has more space, with its range running from $2,405 to $2,600.
Every one of the four turned green over 30 days. Bitcoin is up 22.2% over a month, Ethereum 31.7%, Solana 33.9%, and XRP 40%. So the seven-day drop is a pullback inside a strong run, and a month of gains that size leaves holders plenty of profit to protect when two binary events land.
Oil Above $100 Turned a Fed Cut Into an 87% Hike
Brent crude touched $110 on the night of September 10, its highest since mid-May, and traded near $108.15 on September 14. WTI held near $102.64 on the same day. Both benchmarks added close to 9% across the week.
Two events drove that jump, and both came over the weekend. Oman postponed talks between Gulf states and Iran over Strait of Hormuz shipping late on September 13, and Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline stayed shut after drone strikes damaged it days earlier. Both removed a reason to expect cheaper oil.
Oil feeds straight into inflation, and August CPI arrived at 3.4% year over year with core at 2.4% on September 13. The 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.95% on September 10, its highest in a year, and the European Central Bank surprised markets with a hawkish tone in the same week. Traders now price a hike at 85% to 87% against a market that wanted a cut a month ago.
Traders Can Price the Fed but Not the Senate Vote at 2:15 p.m. ET
Cloture ends debate and lets a bill reach the floor. It takes 60 votes, and clearing it does not pass the CLARITY Act. It only lets the Senate start arguing about the text. Republicans hold 53 seats, so at least seven Democrats have to cross the aisle.
Senators Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott released the final text on September 13 and 14, carrying 126 changes Democrats had asked for. Polymarket traders still price the bill at 29.5% to become law this year, with Kalshi reading 37%.
Traders can price one of those two events and not the other. At 87%, a hike surprises almost nobody, and the money has already moved for it. A cloture vote near a coin flip gives traders nothing to price, so they cut risk instead.
XRP Held Up Best of the Four
Over 30 days, XRP gained 40%, more than Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana managed. Across the same seven days that cost Solana 2.7% and Bitcoin 2.2%, XRP gave up 0.1%.
Five spot XRP ETFs now trade in the United States, holding $1.58 billion in net assets, and they took in $11.26 million on September 14, per SoSoValue. Those funds move coins off exchanges and into custody, which thins the supply available to sell and steadies the price when the rest of the market drops.
XRP did break below $1.33 on Friday, September 11, its third straight daily decline, and has climbed back above it since. So the floor held, though only after it broke first.
The Senate and the Fed Settle This Inside 48 Hours
If cloture clears 60 votes and the Fed hikes with a soft press conference, Bitcoin heads for $80,000, XRP for $1.41 and Solana for $105. If cloture fails and the dot plot reads hawkish, both floors get tested within the hour.
The Bank of Japan meets on September 18, and cheap Japanese money funds a large share of the leveraged bets across global markets. Oil could also fall back, because the IEA expects global demand to drop 2.5 million barrels a day this year and OPEC has cut its demand forecast five months running. Cheaper oil takes the pressure off the Fed, and that takes the pressure off these four levels.
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Sam Daodu is a crypto analyst and the editor of 24/7 Wall St.'s Crypto Desk, where he covers Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Solana and the altcoins investors search for most. His work focuses on price levels, spot ETF flows, on-chain data and the regulatory decisions that move crypto markets, written so a first-time buyer and a seasoned trader can both use it.
Sam has written about crypto professionally since 2019 and has published more than 2,000 articles. Before joining 24/7 Wall St., he wrote for crypto media outlets and Web3 companies and ghostwrote for crypto founders and token launches. His analysis is syndicated on Yahoo Finance, MSN and AOL and has been cited by other crypto news sites. He also founded MacLabs Marketing, a content and personal branding agency for crypto founders and executives.
When he isn't reading charts, Sam is usually at the gym or watching One Piece, a series he maintains has better tokenomics than most altcoins.
