Morning Minute: The Clarity Act Just Passed Its First Major Vote

GM!

Today’s top news:

Every Republican voted yes, and two Democrats crossed: Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. The result came despite late-night negotiations collapsing without a deal on ethics provisions.

Lummis commented: “Ultimately, we have an agreement on 99% of the bill. I hope my colleagues across the aisle will work with me to get the remaining 1% resolved after we pass this bill out of committee." Though Alsobrooks also weighed in, saying that her committee yes vote doesn’t guarantee a floor vote yet without the ethics language.

Markets moved immediately. BTC hit $82,000 on the vote. Circle surged 19.9%, and Coinbase gained 6.1%. As for prediction markets, the odds of the bill passing jumped 8% to 70% (still far from a done deal, but now a decent favorite).

The bill now heads to the full Senate, where it needs 60 votes to pass—roughly six Democratic crossovers. Then, a House reconciliation with the version passed 294-134 in July 2025 would be next, ahead of Trump’s signature. Lummis has repeatedly warned that missing this window pushes the next viable legislative opportunity to 2030.

Coinbase and Circle announced Thursday that Coinbase will serve as the official treasury deployer for USDC on Hyperliquid under a new framework called AQAv2.

A few highlights of the arrangement:

As a part of the deal, USDC becomes the primary stablecoin for all of Hyperliquid’s markets. Notably, this is the first time Coinbase has taken a formal treasury deployer role on a major DeFi protocol—a new category of institutional crypto relationship.

Hyperliquid is a big winner here. They get a ton of new revenue (early estimates are a 25% bump). And a competitor in perps (Coinbase has its own perps offering) effectively bends the knee.

The market liked it, with HYPE ripping 20% on the day to $47, erasing the past 5 days of losses in just a few hours and hitting a new local high.

Cerebras surged as much as 100% above its $185 IPO price on its Nasdaq debut Thursday, giving the AI chipmaker a market cap north of $100 billion by mid-session. The company had raised $5.55 billion (one of the largest US IPOs ever) after pricing above its revised range for the third time in a week.

Notably, price discovery largely happened on Hyperliquid via TradeXYZ, where it traded pre-IPO in the $300 range even with the IPO price of $180. The stock then shot straight to $300 on open.

The debut lifted the entire AI infrastructure sector: Keel Infrastructure (formerly Bitfarms) +9%, IREN +5%, Hive Digital +8%. Arm and SoftBank had both reportedly attempted to acquire Cerebras in the weeks before the listing. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all expected to follow later in 2026, and if Cerebras is giving us a taste of the demand, expect fireworks.

Xi opened by telling Trump that “China’s door will only open wider” on trade, a signal that Beijing is willing to deal, and the two sides made meaningful progress on tariff reductions and purchase commitments. Elon Musk, Larry Fink, and a dozen other US CEOs in attendance saw what they came for: early signs of a thaw after months of escalating trade tension. US and Chinese negotiators reportedly agreed to a framework for continued talks, with specific deliverables on agricultural purchases and technology cooperation expected to be formalized in a joint announcement on Friday.

Specific wins included China ordering 200 Boeing jets and Nvidia getting the green light to sell its H200 chips to Chinese companies.

The caveat was Taiwan. Xi told Trump directly that mishandling the issue could push bilateral ties “into a highly perilous situation.” On Iran, China is actively facilitating and both sides discussed Hormuz. No joint statement materialized on Day One but the conversations are reportedly substantive, yet hopes remain high for a joint statement still to come that would be a big catalyst for oil and BTC near-term.

While a formal trade deal hasn’t been announced, the truce continues ahead of Xi’s potential visit to the U.S. on September 24. Now that becomes a key date to watch as summer unfolds.

The decision follows the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit, in which a LayerZero 1-of-1 DVN configuration was compromised by Lazarus Group. Kelp DAO migrated to Chainlink CCIP in April. Solv Protocol ($700M) followed. Kraken is now the third and largest institutional migration.

LayerZero has acknowledged making a mistake by allowing its own DVN to serve as sole verifier for high-value transactions. But that apology is appearing to be too little, too late.