Bitcoin has rebounded above the $81,000 mark, extending a sharp recovery that has lifted the broader cryptocurrency market and triggered a strong rally in crypto-linked stocks.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency climbed more than 5% on Friday, surging as high as $81,204, while shares of companies including Coinbase, Strategy and Robinhood posted double-digit or near-double-digit gains.
The recovery comes after Bitcoin fell below $75,000 earlier in the week following the U.S. Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act, with renewed regulatory developments and a wave of short liquidations helping fuel the latest rebound.
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Recall that earlier this week, the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the U.S. Senate, dealing a setback to efforts to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency industry.
The Senate voted 49-50 against invoking cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633. The measure needed 60 votes to advance to full debate. All Democrats opposed the motion.
Republican U.S. senator representing Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis, has accused Democrats of putting politics ahead of progress, after the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the U.S. Senate.
In a statement following the vote, Lummis said Democrats proved they were never truly serious about protecting consumers and preserving American leadership.
She argued that after more than a year of negotiations and substantial concessions, the opposition amounted to political gamesmanship rather than genuine policy disagreement.
The collapse of the Clarity Act ought to have dealt a big blow to the price of Bitcoin, but the world’s largest crypto asset showed resilience.
Bitcoin’s latest upside saw it reclaim its True Market Mean, the aggregate cost basis of all coins acquired on secondary markets, which currently sits at $76,660.
“That puts price back above a crucial level and back into a bullish regime,” on-chain analytics platform Glassnode told X followers on Friday.
Commenting on low-time frame BTC price action, trader and analyst Rekt Capital said that bulls now faced a “moment of truth.”
A chart uploaded to X showed $82,000 as a key level for BTCUSD to break through. Failing to do so would constitute a double rejection pattern together with the price action that ended the mid-May rebound.
Since the vote, US regulators have begun moving ahead with crypto-related actions under their existing authority.
Thursday brought actions from both agencies, with the CFTC providing no-action relief to passive software providers and the SEC temporarily easing requirements for certain platforms facilitating onchain trading of tokenized securities.
The CFTC also submitted a crypto market regulatory action for White House review, though the “prerule” filing does not disclose details of the planned regulation.
A House panel voted earlier this week to move forward with the American Reserve Modernization Act, which would direct the Treasury Department to maintain a “secure Bitcoin storage facility.”
“The industry doesn’t need Congress,” Dan Morehead, Pantera Capital founder and managing partner, told CNBC on Friday. “The SEC and CFTC are enacting all of the things that would have been in Clarity anyway.”
Morehead said people remain bullish on bitcoin because the U.S. Federal Reserve is “still way behind on inflation… rates should be much higher than they are today.”
Outlook
Bitcoin’s near-term outlook now hinges on whether the cryptocurrency can sustain its recovery above the $80,000–$81,000 area.
Analysts have identified the $81,000–$86,000 range as a significant resistance zone, where cost-basis levels, existing supply, and short-liquidation positions could create additional volatility.
A sustained break above $82,000 could strengthen the recovery and put higher resistance levels into focus, while failure to clear the zone could leave Bitcoin vulnerable to another period of consolidation or a pullback.