The Hashpoint Special Edition: The Senate Says No, 49 to 50
September 15, 2026 · Dennis W. Davis
Bitcoin Hashpoint, September 15, 2026, 3:15 PM Eastern
At 2:18 PM Eastern the Senate began voting on cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, and the count never came near 60. The final tally was 49 yeas and 50 nays, eleven short of the sixty the motion needed, and the nays finished ahead. Bitcoin went into the roll call at $75,997 on CoinGecko's 2:30 PM read, down 3.2% on the day from an overnight high of $79,530, and sat at 1.19 times the power-law floor of $63,830 and 0.50 times the median of $151,977. This edition exists to fix that moment in place before the week's other numbers move it.
The count, as it happened
The roll call opened with the yeas ahead. At 38 to 35 the motion still had a ceiling of 65. At 40 to 40, with 20 senators unrecorded, reaching 60 required every one of them. At 44 to 41 the ceiling fell to 59 and the outcome settled with fifteen votes still out. The nays passed the yeas at 46 to 47, the pattern that shows up when a leadership office switches to no at the close to preserve the right to move to reconsider, and the roll closed at 49 to 50 with one senator unrecorded. Republicans hold 53 seats; Rand Paul and Josh Hawley had signaled no votes, and the Democratic side never delivered the seven to nine crossovers the sponsors needed after the ethics language, the developer carve-back, and the stablecoin circuit breaker all landed inside 48 hours of the vote.
The Senate Daily Press floor log records the start of voting at 2:18 PM and lists Thune, Schumer, Lummis, and Warren among the day's speakers. Schumer took the floor when the count closed. The 49 to 50 tally is the C-SPAN gavel number; the Senate roll-call record will carry the names, and the crossovers in each direction belong in tomorrow's edition.
What the market looked like at the gavel
Bitcoin traded at $77,473 at 7:20 AM, printed $79,530 overnight on the ethics-deal optimism that lifted Polymarket's passage odds above 30% on Monday, and slid through the morning as the bank and attorney general letters pushed those odds to 18% by Monday evening. By the time the clerk called the roll it stood at $75,997, with the day's low at $75,595. The 24-hour move was 3.2% down; the seven-day move was 2.6% down. Against bands the Hashpoint dashboard generated at 11:15 UTC, that is 1.19 times the floor and 0.50 times the median, the lowest floor multiple of the September series so far. On September 9 the same coin was 1.24 times a floor $230 lower.
The bond market did not move for the vote. The 10-year sat at 5.013%, up 2.5 basis points on the session and at its highest since July 2007; the 30-year read 5.38%, the 2-year 4.68%, and the dollar index 99.66. The Fed decides tomorrow at 2:00 PM with a hike priced above even money. The Senate's answer on crypto market structure arrived 24 hours before the Fed's answer on the cost of money, and only one of those answers reaches the numbers this publication tracks.
STRC on its ex-date, Strategy on the sidelines
STRC went ex-dividend today on a $0.50 payment due September 30, so Monday's $98.91 close implied $98.41 before any bid. TradingView's intraday read during the vote showed $97.88, down 0.51% on the adjusted basis; the dashboard will confirm the close tonight. That is $2.12 under par with 127 days since the last close at or above $100, the at-the-market program closed, and the 12.00% coupon locked until October 1. Strategy's Monday 8-K showed zero Bitcoin bought for a second straight week and $139.3 million spent on 1,420,467 STRC shares. None of that changed at 2:18 PM.
One number worth keeping from this afternoon: Strategy's average cost is $75,412, and the coin traded at $75,997 while the Senate voted. The largest corporate holder's entire position was $585 a coin above water at the gavel.
Where the bill goes now
The motion to proceed failed, so the bill never reached the floor. Thune can move to reconsider if a deal on the Democratic counterproposal materializes, but the House has cancelled the weeks of September 21 and 28 and leaves after September 17, so any second attempt is a lame-duck exercise. TD Cowen and Galaxy had 2026 signature odds at 25% before the vote. SEC Chair Atkins said Monday the agency's custody, issuance, and transfer-agent rulemakings proceed "with or without" the bill, and that is now the operating framework. Bitcoin's commodity status continues to rest on CFTC precedent rather than statute; the Senate had already stripped the House's explicit language on June 1.
The Hashpoint read
Price sits at 1.19 times the floor and 0.50 times the median. STRC is roughly $2 under par on its ex-date with the coupon frozen for 16 more days. The 10-year is 5.013%. The Senate declined to take up the one bill that would have let banks custody and lend against the coin without separate approvals, and the market gave back about 3% on the day. The spring lost a little length this afternoon and none of its tension: the same two numbers that held it coiled this morning hold it coiled tonight.
The next confirming data point is tomorrow's Fed statement at 2:00 PM and the 10-year's reaction to it; a hold above 5% with STRC under $98 keeps the structural read intact. The disconfirming one would be a Bitcoin close back above $77,500 by Wednesday's open, which would show the market treating the Senate's answer as a headline and not a repricing.
Data: Senate Daily Press floor log (voting began 2:18 PM), C-SPAN live tally at the gavel (49 to 50; official roll-call record with names pending), Bitcoin Hashpoint dashboard (bands generated 11:15 UTC, strc/current), CoinGecko (2:30 PM read), TradingView, Trading Economics, Farside Investors, Decrypt, The Block, TheStreet, CoinDesk. Nothing here is investment advice.
