MarketsBitcoin ETFs Experience $450 Million Outflow Following Clarity Act Setback
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs saw a significant outflow of $450 million, marking the largest single-day drop since June, after the Senate failed to progress the Clarity Act, leading to a decline in regulatory-sensitive tokens.
By Oliver Knight, Omkar Godbole| Edited by Sheldon Reback 11 min ago 4 min read
ETF outflows hit highest level since June as bitcoin slides (SoSoValue, TradingView)- On Tuesday, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded an outflow of $450.33 million, the most significant single-day drop since June 25.
- The Senate's failure to advance the Clarity Act on Tuesday fell approximately 10 votes short of the 60 required, effectively halting market structure legislation for the remainder of 2026.
- Bitcoin's price stands at $75,679, showing little change since midnight UTC but is down 8% from its high on September 4, with Stellar down 9.6% and XRP down 8.1% over the past 24 hours.
According to SoSoValue, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs experienced a drop of $450 million on Tuesday, the largest single-day outflow since June 25, following the Senate's decision not to move forward with the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. BTC$75,881.02 has remained relatively stable since midnight UTC, although it saw a decline after the vote, which was around 10 votes shy of the required 60. Notably, seven Democrats, who had engaged in extensive negotiations on the bill, voted against it.
The CoinDesk 20 Index also mirrored this loss, showing a minimal decline of less than 0.1% since midnight after a 4.6% drop on Tuesday, marking its steepest fall since June 5.
Market attention now shifts to the Federal Reserve, which is set to announce its interest rate decision later today, with an increase being the anticipated outcome leading into the meeting.
The failure of the Clarity Act effectively closes the door on any potential market structure legislation passing through the Senate this year, especially with Congress expected to remain divided come January.
Bitcoin's 24-hour decline of 1.7% appears modest compared to the larger drops seen in tokens more susceptible to U.S. regulatory scrutiny.
Stellar XLM$0.1754 fell 9.6% in the same time frame, while XRP dropped 8.1%. Among the CoinDesk 100, 95 tokens experienced a decline during this period.
In comparison, traditional markets have shown stability, with Nasdaq 100 index futures increasing by 0.33%, gold rising by 0.88%, and silver gaining 1.37%, while the Dollar Index remained unchanged.
Derivatives Positioning
- Futures Liquidations: The forced deleveraging accelerated over the past 24 hours as cryptocurrency prices fell following the Senate's procedural vote on the Clarity Act. More than $570 million in leveraged futures positions were liquidated during this period, the highest since August 22, but still significantly lower than the washouts seen in early February and June.
- Taker Long-Short Ratio: The taker long-short volume ratio has turned bearish, with shorts making up 51.5% of the flow in the past 24 hours. Takers are traders who accept available prices in the order book, thus affecting liquidity.
- Hyperliquid Long/Short Ratio: The Hyperliquid trader long/short ratio has decreased slightly to 2.53 from 2.71, the highest level since early October 2025, when bitcoin last traded above $120,000. However, there are still more than two longs for each short, indicating significant bullish leverage that could be liquidated if prices continue to decline.
- Bitcoin Futures Positioning: Despite a 1.4% drop in bitcoin over 24 hours, futures open interest rose to 688,000 BTC from 676,000 BTC. This scenario is typically interpreted as a short bias, as traders are adding bearish bets amid the decline. The cumulative volume delta (CVD) adjusted for open interest is negative, suggesting more shorts are being executed at current market prices rather than through passive limit orders. Nonetheless, perpetual funding rates indicate some remaining optimism among certain traders.
- XRP Futures Positioning: XRP, which focuses on payments, has dropped nearly 10%, alongside a slight increase in futures open interest. The open interest remains significantly below record highs, suggesting overall positioning is still light.
- Altcoin CVD and Funding Rates: XRP and most other major tokens, including ETH, TRX, DOGE, XLM, and SHIB, have negative 24-hour CVDs, indicating aggressive selling in the derivatives market. This situation calls for caution regarding a potential deeper decline. Funding rates also present a bearish outlook for ETH, XLM, TRX, SOL, BCH, ADA, and LINK.
- Implied Volatility: The 30-day implied volatility indexes for both bitcoin and ether, BVIV and EVIV, remain calm within recent ranges and well below their year-to-date peaks, indicating that traders are not anticipating a volatility spike surrounding the U.S. rate decision.
- Options Skew: The skews for one-week and one-month bitcoin options are positive and rising, reflecting increasing demand for puts and downside protection. The one-week skew is currently around 5.76% and the one-month skew is approximately 6.33%. Ether skews are showing similar trends.
- Options Volume: Recent volumes tell a different story. The most traded bitcoin options in the last 24 hours were predominantly calls, led by the $79,000 strike. In contrast, the top five most-traded options for ether were all puts.
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- Arbitrum ARB$0.1591 has emerged as a standout performer over the last 24 hours, gaining 16% after Standard Chartered projected the token could reach $10 by 2030, approximately 70 times its current level. The bank cited revenue from Robinhood Chain and the expansion of tokenized assets. The near-term target is more conservative at $0.50 by the end of this year.
- Synapse (SYN) has defied the broader market downturn, more than doubling to $0.1787 without any clear reasons. However, the composition of this move is telling: Futures volume reached $310.64 million over 24 hours against a market cap of just $41.18 million, with open interest equivalent to 60% of the token's value, and a long/short accounts ratio of 0.93 on Binance, suggesting the surge was driven by a short squeeze rather than robust spot demand.
- Privacy tokens remain the most resilient trade this month, with zcash (ZEC) climbing 6.9% to $1,186.75, leading the sector for the day, while dash DASH$52.76 increased by 2.9%.
- The perpetuals exchange token lighter (LIT) rose 6% to $4.27, and raydium RAY$1.3165 gained 5.4% to $1.30, both recovering some of the losses incurred during Tuesday's sell-off but not returning to their earlier weekly levels.
- DeFi tokens AAVE, JUP, and ETHFI all faced declines of over 2% after midnight, despite ether.fi founder Mike Silagadze stating to CoinDesk prior to the Clarity vote that, "the U.S. is currently a very small market for ether.fi, so honestly Clarity isn't much of an impact."
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