Today in crypto: investment bank TD Cowen reportedly warned that a key cryptocurrency market structure bill could be delayed until 2027. Meanwhile, Bitcoin Core developers warned users of a wallet migration bug that can delete files and result in fund losses, and US crypto stocks soared amid a wider crypto market rally.
TD Cowen: US midterms could delay crypto market structure bill
Investment bank TD Cowen has warned that the United States’ digital asset market structure legislation, known as the CLARITY Act, could remain stalled for the next year as Democrats and Republicans jockey for position ahead of the US midterm elections.
According to TD Cowen’s research team, Senate Democrats may seek to block the bill before the elections, given the potential for the midterms to shift the balance of power in Congress.
“Election outcomes are always uncertain, which is why Democrats may cut a deal,” the report said, according to a summary cited by Wu Blockchain.
TD Cowen added that time may ultimately favor passage of the legislation, noting that many of the political risks would disappear if the bill were enacted in 2027 and took effect in 2029.
However, the bank cautioned that the crypto industry would need to accept that the outcome of the presidential election could influence the final regulatory framework, while Democrats would likely need to accept that the bill’s conflict-of-interest provision would not apply to President Donald Trump.
Bitcoin Core v30 bug risks fund loss during legacy wallet upgrades
Bitcoin Core developers warned users of a wallet migration bug in versions 30.0 and 30.1 that can delete files and result in fund loss.
The issue occurs under specific conditions and affects migrations from old Bitcoin Core wallets that were never renamed or upgraded.
Lacie Zhang, market analyst at Bitget Wallet, told Cointelegraph that the bug is triggered when the software attempts to migrate an unnamed legacy “wallet.dat” file stored in a custom wallet directory, often defined using “-walletdir” setting, while pruning is enabled.
In these cases, the migration can appear to complete successfully, but the cleanup logic mistakenly deletes the entire wallet directory, and if a user does not have an external backup, “loss of access to funds is effectively guaranteed because all local wallet files are removed.”
Shawn Odonaghue, community lead at layer-3 blockchain Orbs, told Cointelegraph that the bug primarily impacts “very old wallet setups,” and that users with a hardware wallet or modern wallet software are unlikely to experience such issues.
Bitcoin Core 30.1 was released on Jan. 1 and the wallet migration bug was publicly disclosed on Monday, with developers pulling the 30.0 and 30.1 binaries from the official download site.
The project told users not to use the wallet‑migration tools until a fixed release, Bitcoin Core 30.2, is available, stressing that existing users who are not attempting migrations can continue running their nodes as normal.
US crypto stocks soar as markets rally
Major public US crypto companies rallied with double-digit percentage gains on Monday amid a crypto market rally that saw major tokens hit multi-week highs.
Crypto infrastructure platform Bakkt (BKKT) led Monday’s gains with a nearly 31.5% rise, while Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company Kindly MD (NAKA) was among the top gainers with a 24% lift.
The Donald Jr. and Eric Trump-led crypto miner American Bitcoin (ABTC) led the sector and climbed 13.5% to over $2 for the first time in nearly a month, with its rivals Hut 8 (HUT), IREN (IREN) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) all posting gains of between 13.5% to 12%.
In the 24 hours to Monday, the total capitalization of the crypto market had risen by 1.3% to nearly $3.3 trillion, adding to its gains from just over $3 trillion at the start of 2026.
Bitcoin had gained 1.2% in the past day, cooling to $93,800 after hitting a 24-hour high of over $94,600, its highest price since early December, while Ether (ETH) hit a three-week high of over $3,200.
