Bitcoin tops $72,000 as Clarity Act optimism collides with AI rotation

Bitcoin climbed to $72,300 Thursday, breaking a six-week range as $3 billion in shorts got wiped and Trump urged Congress to pass the Clarity Act.

"If and when the Clarity Act gets passed, I think that will blow new life into crypto enthusiasm and trust in the biggest economy in the world, which will then also transpire to the rest of the world," Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe, told CoinDesk.

Ghoos's view diverges from OKX's global managing partner Haider Rafique, who said recently that regulation-inspired optimism is already priced into bitcoin. "The market prices news ahead of time," Rafique said. "Most of the appreciation from Clarity is already reflected in current prices."

The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the market-structure bill Sept. 15, a test of whether supporters can secure the 60 votes needed to advance it before the November recess.

Ghoos has long argued that regulation is the foundation, not the obstacle. He predicted in June that 80 percent of crypto exchanges would not survive Europe's MiCA regime, citing the cost of building a compliant multi-license operation. Before MiCA, Europe counted more than 3,000 registered virtual-asset service providers; as of late June, about 244 firms were authorized.

Regardless of how quickly U.S. rules progress, Ghoos said the market has already found its floor as money that moved into AI and semiconductor stocks returns to digital assets. "A lot of the money that flowed into semiconductors, AI stocks, SpaceX, will find a way back into crypto," he said.

AI-tied memory and semiconductor stocks showed signs of weakening after dominating markets in 2026, CoinDesk analyst James Van Straten wrote in early July. The rotation has lifted crypto-linked equities: Coinbase (COIN) and Bullish (BLSH) climbed about 8 percent Wednesday while Circle (CRCL) gained nearly 10 percent, Clear Street analyst Owen Lau noted, pointing to both the AI trade reversal and fresh optimism around the Clarity Act. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds drew about $700 million in inflows, the largest daily haul in months.

Retail trading has been another drag, most visible in a 50 percent decline at South Korea's Upbit and Bithumb. Ghoos argued retail traders are following momentum, not leaving crypto. "I predict that the capital is not going to stay gone," he said. "They're thinking where is the opportunity? Where is the hype? Where can we make money?"

European volume tells a different story. After Binance stopped serving EU customers when it failed to secure a MiCA license, OKX recorded a 160 percent jump in EU app downloads in the 12 days that followed, Ghoos said.

The Sept. 15 vote is the next milestone. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott said the bill has a "really good shot" of moving forward, while White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said negotiators are "down to kind of more of an A-B type of environment" where a grand bargain can be had. Democrats have said they will withhold support without a strong ethics provision, a sticking point that has kept the bill deadlocked since the House approved it in July 2025.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.