Bitcoin at $77,500 as midterms, Fed collide
Bitcoin sits near $77,500 on midterm day, down $2,000 in a week shaped by a $6.3B hack, $1B in ETF outflows and 71% odds of a December hike.
Bitcoin traded near $77,500 Tuesday morning as U.S. midterm polls opened, down about 0.6% on the day and roughly $30,000 below its price a year ago, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data.
The vote decides more than Congress. It decides whether the CLARITY Act, the market structure bill that passed the House 294-134 in July 2025 and failed Senate cloture 49-50 in September, lives or dies before the new session convenes January 3.
What the numbers show
Price action this week has layered several shocks on top of each other, each with its own paper trail.
- Bitcoin opened November near $78,500 and has lost about $2,000 since, per Bitcoin Magazine.
- The Oct. 29 Binance hack drained roughly $6.3 billion, the largest crypto theft on record, per the same report.
- U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $643.3 million on Oct. 31, their worst single day since June 25, per SoSoValue data cited in the article.
- Another $399 million left ETFs the following Monday.
- Kalshi prices a 94% chance Democrats take the House and 74% for the Senate.
The read on CLARITY
The default take frames this as a hack-and-macro story: a record theft, a hawkish Fed, oil above $100 on Iran tensions. All three are real and all three matter.
But the number that should worry traders more is 94%. That is Kalshi's odds of a Democratic House, which would likely hand Sen. Elizabeth Warren the Banking Committee gavel.
TD Cowen calls a Democratic sweep the least favorable outcome for crypto regulation, worse than gridlock. Crypto groups spent over $200 million on these midterms specifically to avoid that result, per CNBC.
A hack gets patched. A hawkish Fed meeting ends. A bill that dies in a new Congress needs to be reintroduced from zero, and a hostile committee chair can bury it indefinitely.
The $6.3 billion theft and the ETF outflows are headlines. The CLARITY Act's fate is the structural variable that outlasts this week's selling and resets the regulatory clock for the entire industry.
Markets are already pricing the macro overhang. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index sits at 37, in fear territory, and Deribit's DVOL near 36.5 says options traders expect calm, not panic.
That calm is a bet that today's vote does not change the policy trajectory much. The CLARITY Act's history argues otherwise: one failed cloture vote already cost the bill momentum once.
Signals that confirm or break this
Three dates will show whether the policy risk is being priced correctly or ignored.
- Control of the Senate Banking Committee chair, confirmed once midterm results are certified and committee assignments are announced.
- Whether CLARITY Act sponsors reintroduce the bill before January 3 or let it lapse into the new session.
- Binance's next proof-of-reserves snapshot, due Wednesday, which will show whether the $6.3 billion hack reshapes exchange-level trust metrics independent of the vote.