The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Rips Past $81K — Is The CLARITY Win Already Priced In?

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

The CLARITY Act just cleared the Senate Banking Committee in a 15-9 vote, sending the most consequential crypto market structure bill in U.S. history to the full Senate floor — and Bitcoin sits on edge at $81K trying to decide if the news is already priced in. The catalyst stack is massive: Jerome Powell officially exits as Fed chair as Kevin Warsh takes over under Trump's pressure to cut rates, Bloomberg warns that AI-powered North Korean hackers have already drained nearly $600 million from DeFi this year and are putting the $130 billion sector on the brink, and a fresh Politico poll shows Americans still distrust both crypto and AI even as Fairshake's $28M PAC blitz reshapes the midterms. Add yesterday's $630M Bitcoin ETF outflow, Coinbase's Brian Armstrong calling the bill a "true compromise," and crypto stocks ripping (COIN +10%, MSTR +7%, MARA +7%) — and the question becomes whether this is the launchpad for Bitcoin's next leg up or a textbook "sell the news" trap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One day, you're negotiating with suppliers. The next, you're installing a shelf in the back room. Running a business means moving in many directions all the time. TD's new small business banking accounts are built for how your business moves. It's how we're making banking more human. The Bitcoin roller toaster continues as it dropped below 80,000 and then ripped back above 81 when the Clarity Act passed the Senate banking community. Is that all the bump we get on good news?

is the clarity win already priced in. We'll discuss that, probably, and the few other things that anyone can possibly care about in the crypto news cycle today. It's going to be inspiring stuff. Let's go. Hey, stop.

You over there. See you. What's going on? Good morning. Welcome to The Wolf of All Streets every Friday here on YouTube. Yeah, guys, do the like and subscribe thing. So listen, I do a daily show every single day where I rant and rave about the news. And then sometimes the news just gets very

repetitive and it gets a little boring. And then we show up on Friday morning. I'm like, who's the guest? Oh yeah, we don't have guests on Friday morning. We used to do the Friday 5 here with NLW. He gave up and went back to AI. He now has the biggest AI podcast in the world, actually, to his credit. So it was probably a good decision for him to focus on that. And then, you know, you just cover all the news yesterday. There was so little news that I'd decided to spend nine of the 15 minutes of the Daily Wolf ranting about why I like Bitcoin. If you didn't watch that, you should. I think it's a pretty good explainer for Normies who have no clue, and it's going a little bit

slightly kind of viral on X, which is nice. But, you know, that's why we're actually here. We talk about this news all day. Oh, clarity act and yay. The Fed. And sometimes I just wonder how we got here. Like how is our entire conversation now surrounding all the things we hate? And we cheer for now, right?

J.P. Morgasim, as I like to say. Well, let's dive into the news right here. All right. Okay. First one, Clarity Act passes Senate Bank and Community Crypto Stocks Rally for five minutes. All right. But what's interesting here is it did pass 15 to 9, which means that there was bipartisan support because if it was just on party lines, it would have been 13 to 11.

That said, also Brooks, who came over and Gallego, who came over, they're the two Democrats who had the sack to do the right thing here. They both were like, yeah, we're passing this now out of this committee because we've done the work. But we both need to see an ethics provision when it hits the floor of the Senate, which I don't know. If you've been listening to me, I've been saying literally the entire time. So the crypto industry is out here celebrating this like a massive win. And listen, I mean, I'm happy for you, bro. I was supposed to do the different view. Check this out.

I'm going to do this live. I'm going to resize my screen. Can't see if it's right. Oh, that's good. That's the good stuff right there. Live TV. But we're seeing all these takes on X like, Clarity Act passes.

It's a new day for crypto. And I'm like, no, it's just a Thursday for crypto. And listen, I like to celebrate the small wins. It's great. Like, I'm still on the fence as to whether I even give a shit about the Clarity Act passing. Because maybe it's not for us and it's for the banks. But it's a small win to get it past the Senate Banking Committee. But there's still, it's not going to the Senate floor yet.

All the reports are like, go straight to the Senate floor for vote. So here's what still needs to happen to my understanding, which obviously, as I've admitted many times, just comes from schoolhouse rocks. I'm just a bill. I'm only a bill, and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill. Well, it's a long, long journey to the capital city. A long, long wait when you're sitting in committee. Hope will be a loss of day. I hope and pray that I will, but today I am still.

Just a bill. Yep. Billed two minutes. Singing that song. Yeah, it's just a bill, man. And we're still just got out of committee. So now it needs to happen is they need to merge the bill with the Senate ag version, which was marked up in January. That is not a foregone conclusion.

Tim Scott and Boozman, the man who boozes, have to come together with their little staffs and their army of sycophants. And they have to make this into one bill, which it is not. And it's not a foregone conclusion that that happens. Maybe there's a political will to do it, but we have checks notes like a couple of weeks. to get this done right now. You know? So maybe it doesn't even get to the Senate floor. So we can't celebrate that.

Oh, by the way, if it passes the Senate, which it won't, probably. Sorry. But we need seven Democrats to come over. And every single Democrat who has yet shown any support says there has to be an ethics clause, which means the Trumps won't be able to grift and extract value from you, my beautiful listeners. Viewers for watching, your viewers. unless you're blind, I'm sorry. But you can hear me still.

We can brail it. Show subtitles. Helen Keller would have a terrible time with the show. Yeah, you know, and then we need it to pass the Senate, and then they have to take it over to the House, and those people have to agree on it. And all this has to happen by our nation's birthday, July 4th. So call me skeptical, but yeah, Bitcoin only went up

like 81,000. Is it priced in that this passes? Probably because we've been talking about it for so long. Everybody expects it to get done now for some reason because polymarkets over 70%. And in my opinion, we've just kind of seen the few small iterations and first steps towards this may be happening. But listen, if it gets done great, I have a feeling if it does get done, it kind of helps the banks more than it helps us. And like, honestly, fuck the banks. Seriously. Speaking of which, let's move on.

Because this guy, he's back today, maybe. Or actually, he's gone today, maybe. We're going to probably do like a montage of Powell's greatest hits if we can get it together. I love to wake up in the morning and go to my team and be like, you know it would be awesome today. If you guys could pull every clip in the history of Jerome Powell's words and stitch together something really funny that we can play on national TV.

Oh, by the way, we don't have editors. Powell's legacy at the Fed to be shaped by his misjudging inflation and standing up to Trump. This is Mr. Transitory riding into the sunset. So listen, I think there's like mixed views on Jerome Powell's success at the Fed. So, like, I don't think anybody debates that he was a humongous puswa back when, you know, he tried to hike rates into the roaring Trump economy back at the beginning. and then like completely capitulated and gave up and turned around the first time. And everybody knows that Captain Transitory here, bad at the mirrors.

Captain Transitory here was wrong about inflation. He called it transitory and then just hiked rates for way too long and just we printed money into oblivion during the COVID years. Like he completely blew that. But to his credit, I guess maybe kind of. sort of we were not in a great depression last I checked and actually we kind of avoided a recession so that soft landing no landing thing

maybe just maybe he actually pulled it off I'm not giving Jerome Powell credit I don't like him I don't like the Fed I think the Fed should be abolished I don't even understand why the Fed exists if you guys look at the history of how the Fed was created it's absolutely absurd

I mean you got six guys board a private rail train in 1910 and head off to Jekyll Island. Nobody's allowed to use their names. And it's the guys in the room basically represented a quarter of the wealth of the entire planet. And they came up with a way to form this thing called the Federal Reserve, which is neither federal or a reserve to basically project their own interests on the public. And then they pretended that they were against it so that the senators and congressmen would vote for it and pass the Federal Reserve Act. And now you have basically, effectively, private bankers who set monetary policy at their own discretion to their own benefit,

and we pretend that they're doing it in the interest of the country. So I don't know if the Fed should exist at all, but now we are getting everybody's favorite sock puppet rolling in, which is awesome. I should get the meme. You guys are going to shut up and wait. Be quiet. Don't bitch. I've got a whole folder here of new. memes I've made now, and I don't want to waste them, to be honest. We got Daddy Warshbox. Where's the sock puppet? This, one second. Carry that. Oh, it's not dragging.

Guys, I take my Friday show very seriously. There he is. Kevin Warsh, the man with the amazing hair, looks like dark helmet. Trump's sock puppet. I've said this over and over again, but like, would you ever want this job? This guy's billions of dollars. He could literally go do any. He can live on a yacht.

and never be in the spotlight, which is honestly the dream. This guy decides that he wants quote unquote regime change at the Federal Reserve, and he's going to make his case to be the Federal Reserve chairman. And now, after Trump bullied Powell for ages, ages about cutting and stimulating the economy, the odds of a rate hike this year now higher than 30%. That's the rate hike, the other way. The odds of a rate cut, less than 2%. Now, given forward guidance, dot plots, betting, they're always wrong about the Fed, because

the Fed is always wrong about the Fed. But Kevin Warsh just inherited maybe the worst possible situation ever. I mean, futures are now seeing the base case of the Fed is a rate hike. A rate hike. So now you have to, if you're in Kevin Powell's shoes, and we've talked about this before, pop it. If you're in Kevin Powell, whatever the hell is. name is. Kevin Powell, Jerome Warsh. Kevin Warsh. Warsh Bucks. If you're him, you now have inherited a job

where the expectation of the guy who gave you the job is that you're going to cut rates, but inflation is actually potentially soaring. And if you cut rates, you will fuel that fire. And sensible people think that you should be hiking rates to get inflation under control. And if he does that, he breaks the economy. Welcome to the job, Kevin Warsh. We're happy to have you. It's amazing. So we're going to be watching closely to Fed,

but today is the day that Jerome Powell is officially sunsetted. If only, if only, he could ride into the distance like a horse. And like a horse, I mean, injure his foot in the Kentucky Derby and get sent to the glue factory. I don't really want Kevin, whatever's name is. I don't want him to die. That was mean. And I think it's mean that they kill the horse.

horses, to be honest. Why do they do that? Why doesn't a horse get hurt and then they have to kill it? Because it's going to limp a little bit? Seems mean. So, you know what else seems mean? Doing polls about crypto in a bare market. Politico, they don't care. Our poll shows Congress crypto push isn't catching on with voters. Voters are broadly skeptical of the crypto industry. I wonder why. And don't view it as an important issue for political candidates the survey shows. Honestly, that one I say kind of thank you, Donald Trump. Because the Trump family has clearly grifted their way through this. I almost, we almost actually, we're going to interview some Trumps recently, which I don't want to do.

At the consensus conference, we almost had, I think Zach Wickoff was interested in coming on. He's not Trump, but he's Trump adjacent. And Eric was going to come. And then my producer, my booking guy is like, hey, they'd like to know what you'd like to talk about. I was like, they're grifting. we're to ask you about World Liberty Finance and they didn't call us back. I don't really understand why they're the headliners at every conference right now with the same talking points when you can see literally exactly what happened with the Trump

meme coin and the Melania meme coin and the Trump NFTs and of course World Liberty Financial, even if you take the most optimistic view. But yeah, I would love to interview them if we can have an honest conversation about how you send $5 billion of your own tokens to a lending platform and extract all the value in actual dollars from the token that you printed from the pool so that nobody else can withdraw. I'm sure you have a great explanation. You can explain it. Easy.

Let's explain it. But either way, we have this poll here. They don't care. Our poll shows Congress crypto pushes and catch you on with voters. So here's some of the compelling stats from this amazing. survey. Okay, first of all, it's 2,000 people. I just read that. This is stupid. Let's do it. 45% of Americans say investing in crypto isn't worth the risk. Probably right. If you're not saying Bitcoin. I mean, how can you argue with that, by the way?

Right now. I think you should invest in Bitcoin and I don't view it as an investment if you watch my ramp. But like crypto broadly, it's been pretty bad. Yeah, 44% think AI is developing too fast. Stark warning sign for candidates accepting industry linked super PAC money. So yeah, I mean, everybody I think thinks that AI might be developing too fast. But what I find interesting here is the next one. Nearly half of respondents trust traditional banks over crypto platforms. And two-thirds want Congress to impose strict regulations or broad oversight on AI, which is completely like unrelated. Even as the Clarity Act just cleared Senate Bank in 2059. So if nearly half of respondents trust traditional banks, what did the slightly over half say?

But they don't? How do you report that less than half like traditional banks more than crypto and the other option is do you like crypto more than the traditional banks? I got to see the numbers on this thing because that math is not mathing to me. Yeah, I think we have a problem right now. We had this amazing Goldilocks brief moment when everybody loved us. We came in hot after the Trump election. Gary Gensler was gone.

We fired him. We, SEC dropped all their cases against everyone. And then on the eve of the inauguration, we got a meme coin and we saw exactly how it was going to be. Right. And it turns out that, like, that actually affects public opinion of our industry. That said, when public. public opinion is dead when Bitcoin, how to buy Bitcoin searches, Friday.

Searches on Google are at a 12-month low, which they are. That's your opportunity. That's the time to buy. I really like Bitcoin at $79,000, even if Bitcoin goes to $50,000. By the way, I see no reason for Bitcoin to go to $50,000 unless this all completely blows up. But yeah, but it's very clear. People don't care. And you know who really does care?

I'm just going to show this. I wish we could put... I don't have it anymore. I used to have that roadcaster thing, remember? And I used to play music and beep-p-be-p-be-be-boo! And like air horns in the middle of my show because I was... I don't know, retarded.

You can say that now. That's okay. Once Mike McGlone told me that people call him Mick Retard, I knew that we were back with the R-word. Because if Mike McGlone can say it, we can all say it. But I'm trying to bring up the STRC tracker here. This is how much Bitcoin Michael Saylor can buy with STRC just this week. Now it's below par again, so he's done.

17,753 Bitcoin $1.45 billion did total volume of $2.94 billion for STRC. This machine is not stopping. You can think that it's a Ponzi scheme or whatever. I don't happen to believe that. I do own STRC. but Bitcoin should go up every time we're getting to the dividend date and you know that this is going to trade above par that Michael Saylor is going to buy a shit ton of Bitcoin, right? I mean, doesn't make sense when you know that there's a guy

who's buying a ton in the market that you can actually front run that for the first time in history. Pretty amazing stuff. When is the snapshot taken? I think it was the 15th. I think today, when is the snapshot taken? So that's why they're trying to go to twice a month because I like this better too, by the way.

Mike McWinter. Good one. What else are you guys saying over there? I'm not going to say that. I wouldn't say this out loud. Your legend, Scott. You said it. I didn't say it.

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, that's all the topics that I really wanted to cover today. You know, I'm feeling pretty good about Bitcoin here. I think it's struggling at 82. It's fine. Maybe we get a little retracement. But this is all sideways. as, you know, and in my opinion, everybody keeps talking about it by everybody, I mean, Mike McClode.

Everybody keeps talking about how Bitcoin's leading to the downside, but last I checked, the stock markets an all-time high. So what if, just what if Bitcoin is actually trailing and is ready to break out and follow stocks to new all-time highs? Do you ever think about that? I was thinking about that when I was sleeping last night, dreaming of a day when Bitcoin was not always $80,000. All right, guys, I'm going to go get ready for the Daily Wolf. Wow, I only got 18 minutes out of this ranting today. Imagine how hard the Daily Wolf is going to be for 15 when I have to actually make a

point. I'm going to produce a video today on Jerome Powell. That's exactly 15 minutes of his worst takes. They just play it. We got three hours, guys. Get to work. All right, everybody. I'll see on the Daily Wolf and dude.

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