6 stories cleared the bar for Sep 16 -- a genuinely active day, with a live Fed decision and two separate House committee votes landing within hours of each other.
1. The Fed hiked rates 25bp to 3.75%-4.00%, its first hike since 2023, in a unanimous 12-0 vote. New Chair Kevin Warsh said inflation has stayed "too high for too long," and the Fed's own projections point to one more hike before year-end. Bitcoin's reaction was muted -- trading in a $75K-$76.5K range through the announcement, since the move was already priced in after this week's bigger CLARITY Act shock.
2. Hours after the CLARITY Act's Senate defeat, two separate House committees advanced their own crypto bills. The Financial Services Committee passed the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill (H.R. 8957) 28-21, which would house Treasury's Bitcoin holdings in a 20-year-lockup reserve instead of auctioning forfeiture seizures. It now heads to the full House with no floor vote scheduled yet.
3. Separately, the Ways and Means Committee advanced the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act 38-5 -- the first real movement on crypto tax legislation in Congress, exempting small transaction fees under $10 and addressing mining/staking income timing and wash-sale rules.
4. Federal prosecutors charged two former Robinhood engineers, Hefu Chai and Huaisong Xiang, with using confidential advance knowledge of upcoming Robinhood Crypto listings to trade Hyperliquid perpetual futures on those tokens before the public announcements -- allegedly profiting over $50K each. It's a notable case applying insider-trading-style enforcement to a decentralized derivatives venue rather than a traditional exchange.
5. Exchange CoinEx announced it's shutting down entirely after nearly nine years, citing a prolonged market downturn and rising compliance costs. Futures already moved to reduce-only; margin, staking, and loans close Sept 22; all spot trading ends Sept 29; withdrawals stay open until Dec 22. CoinEx says reserves exceed 100% and user assets remain fully backed.
6. Hong Kong's 2026 Policy Address opened new ground for regulated stablecoins to trade on licensed platforms and settle tokenized money-market funds, expanding its tokenization framework toward gold and other real-world assets, five months after issuing its first stablecoin licenses.
A Fed hike, two competing House committee wins, and an exchange shutdown all landed the same day -- which of today's threads do you think actually moves markets next week?
Not financial advice. DYOR.
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