Crypto stocks rise as Trump presses Congress on rules bill

Crypto stocks rose Thursday as Bitcoin gained 3.48% to $71,505, its first move above $70,000 since June. Policy risk remained the sector's main constraint.

Cryptocurrency-related equities gained a day after the Treasury Department said it would double buyback sizes for long-duration debt. The statement followed a bond selloff that pushed the 30-year Treasury yield to its highest level since 2007.

Bitcoin clears $70,000

Bitcoin last traded at $71,505, up 3.48% on the session and above $70,000 for the first time since June. The token remains down about 18% so far this year and about 43% below its October record, keeping Thursday's move inside a wider drawdown.

Ether gained 2.46% to $2,272, its highest level in more than three months. The move came after analysts described the prior crypto tape as narrow, a setup that can amplify price action when short positions are forced to close.

Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at brokerage FxPro, attributed the crypto move to positioning after the quiet stretch. "The rally (in crypto) was then fueled by a wave of short-covering, following weeks of extremely narrow trading," he said in a research note.

Long bonds set the backdrop

Treasury's planned increase in long-duration buybacks was small relative to the Treasury market, and analysts said the relief in bonds was brief. The signal still mattered for crypto traders because higher yields usually make safer assets more competitive with tokens and other risk assets.

That sequence matters for a sector with no conventional cash-flow anchor. The rate on a 30-year Treasury can change the relative appeal of holding Bitcoin even when crypto-specific news is unchanged.

The Thursday setup therefore mixed a rates signal with a policy signal, rather than a single crypto catalyst. For crypto-linked equities, that combination can affect both token exposure and investor appetite for higher-volatility balance sheets.

Trump presses Clarity Act

President Trump used a White House event with crypto executives on Wednesday to urge Congress to pass a "fair version of the Clarity Act," a bill stalled in the Senate. The proposal would define when a cryptocurrency is treated as a security or a commodity, dividing authority between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Bo Pei, an analyst at U.S. Tiger Securities, said the comments were "incrementally positive because they suggest the White House is putting more direct pressure on Congress to get the legislation done." For the industry, the bill is a core policy target because agencies and courts have set much of the rulebook in the absence of new legislation.

For crypto companies, the security-versus-commodity line affects registration, disclosure duties and which regulator writes day-to-day rules. A statutory split would not remove enforcement risk, but it would narrow the scope for each election cycle to reset the sector's operating assumptions.

The politics remain contested. Some Democrats and Republicans have said they would not back a bill unless it bars political officials, including Trump, from profiting from their own crypto ventures; Trump disclosed more than $1.4 billion in earnings from his family's crypto ventures in 2025.

Yields and rules split paths

If long-dated yields stay below Thursday's 2007-era stress point, global financial conditions would be easier at the margin. Bitcoin and crypto-linked equities would have less competition from safe yields, while exchanges, miners and token issuers would face a steadier funding backdrop.

If yields rise again, the mechanism runs in reverse: higher risk-free returns can pull capital away from non-yielding tokens and levered crypto equities. If Congress advances the Clarity Act, the industry would gain a cleaner compliance map; if the bill stalls, the sector remains exposed to agency shifts, court rulings and conflict over political crypto profits.