Bitcoin Reclaims $81,000 After CLARITY Vote as JPMorgan Says It's Winning the Institutional Race

Bitcoin reclaimed $81,055 in Friday Asian hours, up 2.3% over 24 hours, after the Senate Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act in a 15-9 bipartisan vote late Thursday. XRP and DOGE each surged roughly 5%, with XRP leading gains among major tokens as investors bet that clearer U.S. rules will ease the regulatory overhang on its payments use case.

The bounce reversed Wednesday’s dip below $80,000, which had coincided with $635 million in single-day spot ETF outflows, the largest since January 29. But the technical picture is still cautious. Bitcoin’s 200-day simple moving average near $82,000 has rejected the price four times in two weeks, and the failed breakout resolved to the downside before Thursday’s CLARITY catalyst.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Macro headwinds are piling up. U.S. two-year and 10-year Treasury yields hit 12-month highs Thursday after hotter-than-expected inflation data, leading traders to bet the Fed will keep rates higher for longer under new chair Kevin Warsh. President Trump said the U.S. does not need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, sending Brent crude higher and deepening concerns about energy costs feeding into inflation. Rising yields typically act as a headwind for assets like bitcoin and gold while potentially benefiting tokenized Treasury products, which hit a record $15.35 billion in total value locked Thursday.

In a separate note, JPMorgan analysts led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said bitcoin continues to outperform ether and altcoins across nearly every institutional metric, including spot ETF flows and institutional futures positioning. “This underperformance trend that started in 2023 is unlikely to change unless we see meaningful improvements in network activity, DeFi, and real-world applications,” the analysts wrote.

They said Ethereum upgrades over the past three years have mainly reduced Layer 2 costs rather than boosting mainnet activity, weakening the token burn mechanism, and ether’s price support. The CLARITY Act’s passage, JPMorgan added, could trigger fresh institutional activity around crypto VC funding, M&A, IPOs, and adoption by traditional financial firms.

On the institutional adoption front, Dartmouth allocated $14.5 million to spot bitcoin, ether, and Solana ETFs, another Ivy League endowment signaling that digital assets are entering the permanent-capital allocation framework.