Trump gathers crypto leaders at the White House and calls for a "fair version" of the Clarity Act

*Some meetings are remembered mainly for the photo.* The one on Wednesday 19 August 2026, at the White House, is a case in point: gathered around Donald Trump, in the Roosevelt Room and then in the Oval Office, was virtually everyone who matters in US crypto.

Brian Armstrong for Coinbase, Brad Garlinghouse for Ripple, Vlad Tenev for Robinhood, Arjun Sethi for Kraken, the Winklevoss brothers for Gemini, Sergey Nazarov for Chainlink, Chris Dixon for a16z crypto, Peter Smith for Blockchain.com. And, in a sign that the nature of the issue has shifted, two traditional finance leaders: Adena Friedman, head of Nasdaq, and Jeffrey Sprecher, head of ICE, owner of the New York Stock Exchange. On the official side: Paul Atkins for the SEC, Michael Selig for the CFTC, and Patrick Witt, White House crypto advisor.

The message was summed up in a single sentence, reported in particular by Yahoo Finance:

Namely: "Now we need Congress to take the next step by passing the Clarity Act — a fair version of the Clarity Act."

The rest of his remarks was more expected. A "very, very powerful" piece of legislation that will "keep us ahead of China", and the ambition to make the United States the "undisputed" leader not only in bitcoin but also in prediction markets and artificial intelligence (CoinDesk).

"A fair version". No one, at this stage, has explained what this phrase entails — neither the White House nor the participants. And that is precisely what makes it interesting.

For the Clarity Act, the bill designed to split crypto oversight between the SEC and the CFTC, is no longer stalled on technical details. It is stumbling over an ethics clause demanded by Democrats: a ban on public officials and their spouses issuing or sponsoring digital assets. A clause that would target, among others, the president's family.

Should "fair version" be read as a call to soften this clause? *This is a hypothesis, not a fact, and we present it as such. But a detail reported by Sergey Nazarov to The Block is worth noting: in the Oval Office, discussions covered the timetable, unresolved issues, and above all which senators needed convincing*. The ethics clause itself was not brought up.

In the hours that followed, bitcoin broke through $69,000, a level it had not touched for two months. Ether gained more than 10% and climbed back above the $2,000 mark for the first time since May. Caught on the wrong side, leveraged positions worth $1.92 billion were liquidated in twenty-four hours (The Block).

The rally continued the following day — the crypto market gained roughly $190 billion in market cap in a single day — and further still on 21 August. As of Saturday morning, bitcoin is trading at $77,406, up 24.5% over seven days, with ether at $2,439, representing +33.7% over the week. Meanwhile, XRP surged 65% over seven days.

Crypto-related stocks followed suit: Fold Holdings jumped by around 20%, BitGo and American Bitcoin by around 15%, and MicroStrategy and Bitmine by around 10%.

It would be convenient to write that Trump sent bitcoin up by $10,000 in three days. That would be false, or at least highly incomplete.

Three events collided in the same week: the SEC's proposed rule on 18 August; the White House meeting on the 19th; and, less visible but probably more decisive, the US Treasury's decision to double its long-dated debt buybacks — from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, from 9 September to 4 November. The yield on the 30-year bond fell back from 5.337% to around 5.20%.

When the cost of money drops, non-yielding assets — gold, bitcoin — mechanically become less costly to hold. It is dull financial plumbing, but it often explains far more than a speech.

Every serious source cites at least two of these three drivers. Attributing the rally solely to the Clarity Act would mean confusing timing with cause.

The meeting on 19 August was not a celebration: it was a lobbying push. The Senate is set to vote on 15 September on an initial procedural step, and 60 votes are required to clear it. Republicans hold 53.

In other words, everything said in the Oval Office was aimed at a handful of Democratic senators who were not present. We are devoting a separate article to these mechanics, as they will determine what happens next far more surely than this week's prices.

Crypto Hebdo provides information and does not offer investment advice. Crypto-assets are volatile and you may lose all or part of your investment.