slipped to about $80,935 by 7:25 a.m. ET. Ethereum opened near $2,418 and dropped to roughly $2,360 over the same stretch. The move is small. Bitcoin has been opening in the $81,000 to $83,000 range since last Friday, and ether has hovered around $2,400.
The longer view is less comfortable. Bitcoin is down about 28% from a year ago. Its all-time high of $126,198 came in October 2025. Early October looked better, when bitcoin traded near $86,200. That level has not held.
ETF flows tell a similar story of momentum that stalls. In the week ending October 2, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in about $241 million, their third straight week of inflows. BlackRock's IBIT collected roughly $450 million, while Fidelity's FBTC lost about $168 million. The next week reversed course. The Defiant reported net outflows of $678.9 million for the first week of October trading in the following period, a swing of about $920 million from the week before. Year-to-date net inflows are still positive, though one separate calculation puts the figure at only about $500 million.
The bigger story is in Washington. On September 15 the Senate voted 49 to 50 on cloture for the CLARITY Act, 11 votes short of the 60 required to open debate. Every Democrat present voted no, and four Republicans joined them. Because it was a procedural vote, the market structure provisions themselves never reached the floor. The bill is not formally dead. A motion to reconsider remains pending and no new cloture vote is scheduled. The fight was over ethics provisions and stablecoin yield, and this week the White House's lead negotiator on the bill, Patrick Witt, stepped down. With the November midterms close, the calendar is getting shorter.
Regulators are not waiting. On October 1 the SEC proposed a custody framework for crypto held by registered investment advisers and regulated funds. If adopted, advisers could self-custody crypto in certain circumstances, and some state trust companies would be treated as qualified custodians. Commissioner Hester Peirce noted that "self-custody" here means the adviser acting as custodian, not individual clients holding their own keys. It is a proposal, not a final rule. It follows the SEC's innovation exemption and a CFTC rulemaking filing last month.
That approach has a weakness. Without a statute, any of these rules can be rewritten by the next set of commissioners.
Large allocators have so far kept their positions through the rough patch. Bitwise's September institutional report, based on interviews at 15 major entities including endowments, pensions and sovereign wealth funds, found that none cut their crypto allocations during a roughly 50% drawdown from late 2025 into mid-2026, and several added exposure.
Macro conditions may matter more than crypto news over the next two weeks. The Federal Reserve meets on October 27 and 28. Binance Research's weekly note from October 12 pointed to rising real yields and concentrated market leadership as defining features of the current setup.
This is a news report, not investment advice.
