Citigroup: SEC's new rulemaking will become the next observation point for the crypto market.

September 23: In its latest market strategy program, Citi stated that the U.S. Senate's failure to advance the CLARITY Act into formal deliberation did not interrupt Bitcoin's rebound. After the bill's procedural vote was blocked, Bitcoin remained strong, indicating that funds have begun to reduce reliance on a single legislative milestone and are instead focusing on whether regulatory rules can continue to move forward.

Citi believes that the legislative setback will limit the CFTC's ability to obtain more complete crypto market regulatory authority in the short term, but the SEC can still advance some rulemaking based on its existing authority. For the market, this means there is still room for the crypto industry's compliance process to continue, and the subsequent focus will fall on the actual pace of SEC enforcement regarding trading, tokenized assets, and market access rules.

In addition, the macroeconomic environment remains a variable in Bitcoin's rebound. The baseline judgment of Citi's economics team is that this round of rate hikes may be close to "one and done"; however, the quantitative macro team warns that if AI investment continues to support growth and employment and wage pressures persist, interest rates may face further upward revision risk. Citi views Bitcoin standing above its medium-term moving average as a signal of recovering risk appetite and says its correlation with Nasdaq performance is worth continuing to track.