Bitcoin ETFs shed $450 million as Clarity Act fails

U.S. spot bitcoin

ETFs shed $450 million on Tuesday, according to SoSoValue, the heaviest single-day outflow since June 25, after the U.S. Senate declined to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.

Bitcoin

is little changed since midnight UTC, after dropping following the vote, which garnered around 10 fewer votes than the 60 required. Among those opposing the motion were seven Democrats who had spent months negotiating the text.

The CoinDesk 20 Index also held its loss, dropping less than 0.1% since midnight after falling 4.6% on Tuesday in the steepest decline since June 5.

Attention now switches to the Federal Reserve, which announces its interest-rate decision later today, with an increase having been the market's base case going into the meeting.

The bill’s failure effectively ends any prospect of market structure legislation clearing the Senate this year, with Congress expected to be under split control in January.

Bitcoin’s 24-hour drop of 1.7% seems muted compared with slides in the tokens most exposed to U.S. regulatory treatment.

Stellar

fell 9.6% over 24 hours and $XRP lost 8.1% Among CoinDesk 100 constituents, a full 95 lost value over the period.

Traditional markets have been steady by comparison, with Nasdaq 100 index futures adding 0.33%, gold 0.88% higher and silver rising 1.37%, while the Dollar Index is unchanged.

Derivatives positioning

• Futures liquidations: Forced deleveraging intensified over the past 24 hours as cryptocurrency prices sold off after the Senate’s procedural vote on the Clarity Act failed. Leveraged futures positions worth more than $570 million were liquidated in that window, the most since Aug. 22, though still well short of the washouts seen in early February and early June.
• Taker long-short ratio: The taker long-short volume ratio flipped bearish, with shorts accounting for 51.5% of flow over 24 hours. Takers are traders who lift offers or hit bids at available prices in the order book, thereby draining liquidity.
• Hyperliquid long/short ratio: The Hyperliquid trader long/short ratio has pulled back slightly to 2.53 from 2.71, the highest reading since early October 2025, when bitcoin last traded at record highs above $120,000. Even so, there are still more than two longs for every short, pointing to considerable bullish leverage that could face liquidation if prices keep sliding.
• Bitcoin futures positioning: Bitcoin dropped 1.4% over 24 hours even as futures open interest ticked up to 688,000 $BTC from 676,000 $BTC. That combination is widely read as a short bias: traders adding bearish bets into the decline. $BTC’s 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) is negative, a sign that more shorts are being executed at the prevailing market price rather than via passive limit orders. Perpetual funding rates, however, point to lingering optimism among some traders.
• $XRP futures positioning: Payments-focused $XRP has dropped nearly 10%, again alongside a slight uptick in futures open interest. The open-interest tally remains well below record highs, indicating that 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, implying aggressive selling in the derivatives market. That setup argues for caution around a deeper decline. Funding rates also paint a bearish picture for $ETH, $XLM, $TRX, SOL, BCH, ADA and LINK.
• Implied volatility: Both bitcoin and ether 30-day implied volatility indexes, BVIV and EVIV, remain calm within recent ranges and well below year-to-date peaks, a sign that traders are not pricing a volatility spike around the U.S. rate decision.
• Options skew: Bitcoin one-week and one-month options skews are positive and rising, a sign of growing demand for puts and downside protection. The one-week skew currently hovers around 5.76% and the one-month around 6.33%. Ether skews point in the same direction.
• Options volume: Volumes tell a different story. The most-traded bitcoin options over the past 24 hours were mostly calls, led by the $79,000 strike. In ether, however, the top five most-traded options were all puts.