Clarity Act Markup Arrives, But Bitcoin Options Markets Are Pricing Zero Event Risk

The U.S. Senate is set to mark up the Clarity Act today — a sweeping digital-asset bill banning interest on stablecoin balances, imposing penalties up to $5 million, and adding the Treasury as a rule-making authority alongside the SEC and CFTC. Over 100 amendments were submitted ahead of the session, including one that would ban Federal Reserve master accounts for crypto companies. Ethics language preventing government officials from issuing tokens is still absent from the current draft.

Despite the stakes, bitcoin's options market is unmoved. Block Scholes analysts Andrew Melville and Thahbib Rahman noted that implied volatility is compressed across all forward horizons, with short-dated options near year-to-date lows at a historical low of 30% — and no event risk visibly priced in ahead of the markup. Coinbase equity options tell a different story, with an implied vol premium…