Bitcoin crossed $80,000 on Monday morning. The cryptocurrency has now surged 19% over the past month, outperforming the S&P 500’s roughly 10% return over the same time frame.
The bullish sentiment appears tied to promising developments on the CLARITY Act, a bill that would create a regulatory framework for crypto. The legislation passed the House in July 2025 but lost momentum in the Senate as banks and stablecoin companies sparred over the treatment of stablecoin yield. But after lawmakers reached a compromise on a major sticking point in the bill, CLARITY’s prospects are looking brighter.
“We’re in the red zone,” Senate Banking Committee chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said of CLARITY in a recent Fox Business interview. The South Carolina Republican said he is hoping to hold a markup of the bill in May and bring CLARITY to the Senate floor in June or July.
The CLARITY Act’s recent troubles began when Coinbase pulled its support of the bill in mid-January, partly due to a draft amendment that would have prevented crypto firms from offering yield on user stablecoin balances. The GENIUS Act, a similar bill specifically for stablecoins that was signed into law in 2025, prevents stablecoin issuers from paying yield directly, but third-party platforms like Coinbase can pay rewards on user stablecoin balances, something banks have decried as a “loophole.”
Late last week, Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) hammered out a compromise that would allow crypto firms to offer stablecoin yield, provided that the rewards are not “economically or functionally equivalent to the payment of interest or yield on an interest-bearing bank deposit,” Punchbowl News reported. Crypto equities reacted positively to the news, with Coinbase and Circle stock rising 7% and 15% on Monday morning, respectively.
Bitcoin’s rally on the CLARITY news is particularly notable because the price increase came at the same time that Michael Saylor’s Strategy, a Bitcoin-hoarding stock that has become one of the largest buyers of the token, has slowed down its purchases.
Bitcoin rallying while Strategy takes a breather “suggests the market may be drawing strength from a wider base of support beyond that single narrative,” digital assets firm QCP said in a market memo.
Still, Bitcoin’s momentum may be hitting a wall. There are a large number of call options sitting on $80,000, meaning options dealers who are buying those contracts must hedge their exposure by selling Bitcoin as the price climbs, putting a kind of “electric fence” around the $80,000 mark, Bloomberg reported.