The crypto market's total capitalization hovered near $2.85–3 trillion during the day. Bitcoin first updated local highs around $87,000 — its best level since January — then pulled back below $84,000 on a wave of long liquidations and a move in 10-year US Treasury yields above 5% for the first time since 2007. Spot bitcoin ETFs, meanwhile, kept drawing large inflows — about $1.7 billion over two days — and turned the cumulative 2026 net inflow figure positive for the first time. Altcoins showed mixed dynamics: BCH and UNI jumped after the CME futures announcement, ZEC held above $1,600 after the launch of a European ETP, XRP returned above $1.60, and HYPE reached a record high near $98. The main story of the day, however, was regulation: the SEC officially opened the door to trading tokenized US stocks.

SEC legalizes tokenized stocks

The key event of the day was regulatory. The SEC issued a five-year Innovation Exemption that temporarily relieves platforms from exchange registration when trading tokenized NMS stocks on blockchain through permissioned AMM pools with on-chain settlements. The token must give holders the same rights, dividends and voting as the underlying stock, while the issuer may block the token until trading starts. Synthetic stock tokens do not fall under the new framework, which in its current form excludes Robinhood's Stock Tokens and Kraken's xStocks. Uniswap, for its part, introduced Permissioned Pools for v4 back in July, with KYC access compatible with SEC requirements. Commissioner Hester Peirce stressed that the exemption covers the TSV model, but the agency remains open to other models. At the same time, the SEC warned about the risk of price divergence between tokenized and traditional stocks and about the complexities of Regulation NMS. This is considered the first official regulatory framework for legal trading of US stocks on public blockchains — a potentially multi-billion-dollar market that could involve Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken, Uniswap and Ondo. (Based on Cointelegraph and Crypto.News.)

Virtually the entire day's institutional news was built around this decision. Blockchain.com and NYSE Group signed a memorandum of understanding: users of the crypto exchange, which has more than 44 million accounts, may get access to tokenized US stocks and ETFs through NYSE's planned digital ATS with 24/7 trading, fractional shares and on-chain settlements. Under the deal, ICE Data Services will distribute Blockchain.com crypto data, while the platform will add NYSE and ICE feeds. The tokenized stocks segment is already estimated at about $3.14 billion in distributed value, up 18% in 30 days, with the number of holders growing 72% to 3.87 million. The partnership will require regulatory approval; timing and financial terms were not disclosed. Blockchain.com confidentially filed for a US IPO in May. (Based on Cointelegraph and Decrypt.)

Meanwhile, CFTC chair Michael Selig urged markets to prepare for "mass tokenization" and said the regulator is getting ready for 24/7 on-chain markets. In his view, tokenization is the basis of a more efficient financial system with near-instant settlement, and crypto and precious metals suit round-the-clock markets. The CFTC also sent a regulatory action on crypto transactions and markets to the White House for review on September 17. (Based on Cointelegraph.)

Exchanges are also preparing the infrastructure. Binance will start moving crypto balances from Funding Account to Spot Account on September 29, and will rename Funding Account to Stocks Account in January 2027; BNB will be one of six settlement assets of the new product. MoonPay agreed to an all-stock acquisition of North Capital, an SEC-registered private-markets infrastructure provider (broker-dealer, ATS, transfer agent, investment adviser), for more than $60 million: according to the company, North Capital supported more than $8.7 billion in primary and secondary transactions and brought more than 1,250 assets to the secondary market. Ondo launched in-kind minting of tokenized US stocks through Alpaca: approved institutions can exchange existing stock portfolios for Ondo Stocks without separate cash funding. Finally, KB Securities, Securitize and the Optimism Foundation signed a three-party memorandum on developing tokenized funds for Korean institutional investors — the first product will be a money market fund on OP Mainnet, while South Korea's updated securities tokenization rules take effect on February 4, 2027.

Against this backdrop, Solana's RWA ecosystem reached an all-time high of roughly $4.6 billion in distributed assets, up 11.47% in 30 days, with the number of holders nearly doubling to 685,850. Circle is the largest platform by RWA value on Solana.

Bitcoin: a run to $87,000, a pullback and ETF inflows back in the black

The day's market dynamics began with a strong bitcoin push: the price updated local highs near $87,000 — its best since January — with the daily high touching $87,283, according to tracking data. That was followed by a sharp correction to $83,874 amid a wave of long liquidations: per CoinGlass, $580.97 million was liquidated in 24 hours, of which longs accounted for $437.58 million; the largest single liquidation was a $10.04 million ETHUSDT long on Binance. Pressure was compounded by 10-year US Treasury yields rising above 5% for the first time since 2007 on strong September PMI data; according to Bitcoin Magazine, bitcoin fell 2% to $84,357, the composite PMI stood at a five-year high, and input-cost growth hit its highest since October 2022.

Remarkably, the correction did not stop institutional demand. Net inflows into spot bitcoin ETFs turned positive for 2026 for the first time after a four-trading-day streak since September 17: $159.5 million, $433 million, $999 million and $714.7 million — about $2.31 billion in total — and September 21 produced the largest single-day inflow in about 11 months. Per U.Today, IBIT led with $350.3 million, FBTC with $257.4 million, and a Morgan Stanley product with $99 million. About $4.9 billion has entered bitcoin ETFs since August 19, when the US Treasury announced the buyback of long-dated bonds; over the same period BTC has risen roughly 35%.

Attention is also fixed on the upcoming expiry: on Friday, September 25, the largest quarterly options of the year expire on Deribit — about 182,000 BTC (~$15.6 billion) and 777,000 ETH (~$2.1 billion), some $18 billion in total, with the book skewed toward calls (put/call ratio 0.71). Max pain for BTC is estimated around $75,000–76,000, well below the current price; the most loaded strike is $70,000. Deribit settles at 8:00 UTC, and CME's September bitcoin futures settle the same day.

On-chain signals, meanwhile, confirm a bullish turn. According to CryptoQuant, bitcoin closed above the 365-day moving average (~$80,500) for the first time since March 2023, which is read as the start of a new bull market by analogy with 2019 and 2023; MVRV crossed its 365-day average — a signal that previously foreshadowed the ends of the 2018 and 2022 bear markets. That said, analysts warn that the $88,000–90,000 zone coincides with an on-chain supply cluster and the next resistance, while profit-taking is likely near $90,300 — the upper edge of the $64,300 realized price of one-to-three-month traders.

Analyst forecasts diverge sharply. Analyst Ali Martinez sets the next BTC target at $100,000, citing 2,722 BTC transactions of $1 million or more per day and $1.6 billion in ETF inflows over 72 hours; Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone, in contrast, calls a final bottom at $60,000 unlikely and puts a fundamentally justified bottom near $10,000. CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju expects 3–5x cycle returns rather than 10x; Bitfinex analysts see the rally continuing if the $85,000–86,500 zone holds, where about 633,000 BTC last changed hands. Santiment notes that BTC's market cap has grown 36% since August 18 versus +0.8% for the S&P 500 and −1.5% for gold, with correlations to gold and the Nasdaq 100 weakening.

Corporate treasury activity continued: Strategy resumed buying after a two-week pause — 950 BTC for $75.7 million in the week to September 20, bringing its holdings to 846,000 BTC (worth about $63.8 billion); meanwhile Strive bought 1,355 BTC, taking its reserves to 26,355 BTC. Another sentiment signal — a wallet dormant for 14.2 years moved 600 BTC (~$51.9 million), received on July 14, 2012, booking realized profit of +$48.71 million.

Altcoins: CME futures, XRP and Zcash

The day's main altcoin catalyst was CME Group, which announced the launch of regulated Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures on October 19. Standard contracts will be 250 BCH and 10,000 UNI; micro contracts 25 BCH and 1,000 UNI. BCH will become CME's tenth single crypto contract and UNI its eleventh. The market reaction was immediate: BCH jumped up to 30% in a day, breaking $340 and briefly reaching ~$358 (weekly gain above 50%), UNI rose about 15% to $10+, and Lookonchain flagged whales buying UNI for $2.84 million and $1.23 million. In sync with BCH, BSV added about 20%, hitting a yearly high near $21. (Based on Decrypt and CryptoPotato.)

XRP continued its bullish move: for the first time since early February the asset broke $1.60, with an intraday high of about $1.66, returning its market cap above $100 billion. Per Santiment, whales accumulated about 1.54 billion XRP (~$2.2 billion) over 96 hours; the day saw 1,917 transactions of $100,000 or more and 3,647 new wallets. Inflows into spot XRP ETFs continue: they totaled $13.03 million on September 22, about $936.66 million cumulatively; Bitwise bought $19.17 million of XRP in a day, with its XRP ETF's assets reaching $615 million. Coinbase Markets, for its part, flagged one of the most bullish XRP options skews of the year — the weekly 25-delta skew rose to 9.3 volatility points (95th percentile). At the same time, XRP reserves on Binance hit about 2.68 billion XRP, the highest since June, and native lending amendments XLS-65 and XLS-66 remain under validator voting on the XRP Ledger.

Zcash held above $1,600: for the first time since 2016 price traded around $1,643 on the launch of Europe's first physically backed Zcash ETP from 21Shares (ticker ZCASH on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam). Weekly shielded transactions hit a high not seen since 2022 — 62,379 (the Ironwood pool accounted for about 89%) — and Grayscale's Zcash product took in $32.81 million on Tuesday, with assets under management of about $979 million. The network is preparing the NU7 upgrade, aiming for activation on November 5; Zcash co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson said privacy and post-quantum security could become baseline industry requirements.

Among other alts, Solana and Hyperliquid stood out. SOL reached a nine-month high near $120 with a 16–20% weekly gain, open interest exceeded $2.97 billion, and analysts cite targets from $450 to $500 as a weekly golden cross forms; spot Solana ETFs recorded inflows for 12 straight trading weeks. HYPE hit a record high near $98, gaining 18–23% for the week and more than 112% for the year. Ethereum added about 15% over the week to $2,700+, with ETH leaving Binance at a pace not seen in three years; after rejection near $2,800 the asset slipped below $2,700 but held its longer-term averages amid two days of spot ETH ETF inflows ($270 million and $162.2 million). Cardano rose about 30% on the week to ~$0.25, its best since May, and PEPE jumped 45–50% to $0.0000049 with a golden cross forming and open interest climbing from ~$219 million to ~$393 million.

On the infrastructure side: Chainlink announced a partnership with Infosys — Chainlink services and the Chainlink Runtime Environment will be integrated into the Finacle Digital Assets platform, which serves more than 1.7 billion bank accounts (no rollout timeline was given). Aave App launched direct bank deposits in beta, with 1:1 fiat-to-stablecoin conversion and USDC deposits from Base in the mobile app. Bitwise launched the first ETP on the token of the decentralized derivatives platform Lighter on Deutsche Börse Xetra, fully backed by 1.01 million LIT in cold storage. Coinbase expanded its Morpho-based lending: users can now borrow USDC against Bitcoin at a fixed rate and with a set maturity — the first enterprise deployment of Morpho Midnight, with more than $1.4 billion in active loans secured by ~$3 billion in collateral. Vitalik Buterin welcomed prediction market Trueo's planned move from Base to the Ethereum mainnet — TRUE's market cap grew from roughly $1.7 million to more than $12 million and the price jumped 699%. Coinbase, meanwhile, delisted IOTX across its platforms after a regular listing review; the IoTeX Foundation will offer a 1:1 conversion for legacy ERC-20 IOTX holders, and IOTX has lost about 85% over the year.

Banks and institutional investors

The banking sector kept integrating crypto into retail. Raiffeisen Bank International announced a group agreement with Bitpanda: its network banks in 11 Central and Eastern European countries will be able to offer crypto services to up to 18 million clients through the Bitpanda Enterprise infrastructure. A pilot has been running in Austria since 2024 (RLB NÖ-Wien became the first traditional bank in the EU with crypto trading in a banking app), rollout in Albania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia is planned for the first half of 2027, and Bitpanda's MiCA license lets banks avoid obtaining their own crypto license. Bitpanda also said CEO Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad will leave in Q1 2027, with co-founder Christian Trummer remaining as co-CEO.

Six of Canada's biggest banks — RBC, TD, BMO, Scotiabank, CIBC and National Bank — outlined the first phase of a shared tokenized-deposit network in Canadian dollars: interbank transfers. The project is separate from the Bank of Canada's consultations on a digital Canadian dollar; per a poll, 85% of about 90,000 respondents are not ready to use a digital currency.

The world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, published a study titled "The Machine-Native Economy," arguing that AI agents will need 24/7 programmable payments — a stimulus for stablecoins — and that tokenized claims on compute capacity could become a new asset class. According to BlackRock, adjusted stablecoin transaction volume exceeded $11 trillion in 2025 (about 80% annual growth since 2020 versus 8.5% for ACH), and stablecoin market capitalization topped $300 billion by September 2026.

A separate signal of demand resilience came from the first Bitwise Institutional Crypto Adoption Report: none of the 15 surveyed endowments, family offices, pension and sovereign funds trimmed crypto positions during the market's ~50% drawdown (Q4 2025 – Q2 2026), all hold Bitcoin, and the typical allocation is 1–2%. A Nexo survey of 1,000 investors in the US, UK and Argentina adds nuance: 67% of affluent investors own crypto, but only 4.7% have deeply integrated it; the main barriers are security (36%), fees (34%) and platform complexity (28%). Galaxy Digital bought $100 million of sUSDS and approved the asset as collateral for institutional loans while clients keep the Sky savings rate (3.6%). Hut 8 won the auction for Poolin's Texas data centers (Pyote and Tarbush) with a $140 million bid, pending approval by the New Jersey bankruptcy court on September 29. EDX Markets and Fireblocks announced a Fireblocks Network Link integration to simplify institutional crypto transfers and treasury workflows.

In stablecoin payments, channels kept growing. Visa and Reap are expanding their stablecoin card infrastructure to Europe, the Middle East and Africa on top of Asia and Latin America; Visa has more than 160 stablecoin programs, and its annual stablecoin settlement volume has exceeded $20 billion, up almost 200% year over year. Per Chainalysis, Latin America's crypto economy grew 9.8% to $593.8 billion despite a 1.6% global market contraction, with cross-border stablecoin flows up 77.5% to $220.3 billion — stablecoins account for 32% of the region's cross-border value; Brazil topped Chainalysis's redesigned crypto adoption index. A Visa survey (Morning Consult, 2,192 US adults) found willingness to use stablecoins for international transfers would rise from 36% to 56% with bank-level protections and deposit insurance, even though 56% of Americans have never heard of stablecoins.

Regulation and stablecoins

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is considering measures to promote dollar stablecoins abroad to reinforce the dollar's reserve status and support demand for Treasuries; joint ventures between private companies (Circle and Paxos are named) and federal agencies, including the Treasury, State Department and DFC, are possible. The measures are being discussed as the GENIUS Act is phased in; the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act last week, and Reuters reported that China is considering a roadmap for yuan stablecoins. The ECB, per reports, intends to change stablecoin rules in the European Union.

A separate regulatory debate is unfolding around prediction markets. All 11 Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee sent a letter to Chair Tim Scott demanding public hearings after Republicans held a private meeting with Kalshi's CEO; the letter is led by Elizabeth Warren and Catherine Cortez Masto. At stake is the potential classification of contracts on corporate metrics as security-based swaps; trading volumes at Kalshi and Polymarket reportedly grew from $5 billion (September) to $24 billion (April) and to roughly $53 billion (July 2026), and Bernstein projects the market at up to $10 trillion by 2035. Kalshi, meanwhile, denies Wall Street Journal reports that the CFTC is reviewing its trading data ahead of a possible enforcement probe: per the report, nearly 1 million trades in ether perpetuals with orders clustered near $5,500 totalled more than $5 billion; the exchange links the patterns to its liquidity program. In parallel, CFTC staff issued an advisory stating that contracts on discrete actions of a named individual (speeches, presence, handshakes, social-media activity) should be presumed susceptible to manipulation. Gaming-state lawmakers also asked the US Supreme Court to take up the Kalshi case, and White House adviser Patrick Whit publicly defended President Trump's crypto ties after the CLARITY Act defeat, citing Trump's readiness for divestment or a blind trust. Former acting SEC chair Mark Uyeda, for his part, explained the agency's early-2025 dismissal of civil crypto cases as a way to avoid defending positions that contradicted the planned policy turnaround.

Market structure around stablecoin volumes also matters. On-chain analyst RyeBlocks estimated that liquidity farming on Aerodrome (a Base DEX) accounted for about $109 billion of the $121 billion in daily USDC transfers on September 23 (one-tick farming about 75% of volume since launch), while a CoinDesk column highlights Tron's role as the settlement layer for roughly $150–190 billion of stablecoin transfers a week. Cloudflare's director of payment products, Will Paper, in turn said Ethereum's original sharding plan could suit the stablecoin micropayments Cloudflare is building.

Security: hacks and quantum threats

Seven agencies of Japan, the US, Australia and Germany issued a joint advisory on the North Korean group WaterPlum (Contagious Interview): through fake job interviews, roughly from December 2025 to July 2026, the group infected devices and drained about $10.71 million (about ¥1.7 billion) from more than 7,000 crypto wallets, infecting at least 30,000 devices in more than 100 countries. Five malware families were named, including BeaverTail, InvisibleFerret and StoatWaffle; Japanese authorities dismantled a domestic "laptop farm" for the first time, and the NPA and FBI link the group to Bureau 313 of North Korea's military industry department. (Based on Decrypt.)

Cosmos Hub produced no blocks for 24 hours and 48 minutes after an attack via the "AI Agent Takeover" governance proposal on Neutron: the attacker spent just $20,199 to secure voting power and gained control of Astroport ($4.9 million) and Drop ($4.4 million); roughly $9.5 million was stolen and about 20% was extracted. Validators froze 1.23 million ATOM (more than $2.2 million) on the attacker's address. Protos, meanwhile, found discrepancies in HTX's September proof of reserves: the claimed 360,949.90 USDS on the specified address were actually zero (the tokens arrived after the report's date), and the claimed 44.976 million USDD did not match the actual 44.886 million; HTX did not respond to a request. The hacking group ShinyHunters claims to have stolen data of 5,000 FBI agents via a zero-day in Oracle PeopleSoft on AWS GovCloud — part of the data was partially corroborated by Reuters; the FBI confirmed unauthorized access.

A separate track of the day involved quantum risks. EBA, EIOPA and ESMA published a joint warning that the development of quantum computers could undermine the cryptography protecting blockchains and transactions; per Google Quantum AI estimates, breaking current cryptography may take about 20 times fewer physical qubits than previously thought (no computer capable of such an attack exists today). The Ethereum Foundation aims to make Ethereum quantum-resistant by December 2029. Coinbase, in turn, is designing a post-quantum custody architecture for roughly $250 billion of institutional assets, compatible with any post-quantum signature scheme, including ML-DSA. On the law-enforcement coordination front, the FBI held its ninth closed Virtual Asset Technical Exchange forum. One episode of "agent" security worth noting: Australia's prime minister confirmed that an OpenAI AI agent gained unauthorized access in June to the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal — no personal data was affected, according to available information.

The takeaway of the day: the market simultaneously confirmed a new bull cycle and faced its first serious resistance zone, while the SEC's framework began turning tokenization of US stocks from a concept into a real market. The coming days will show whether bitcoin can hold the $85,000–86,500 zone ahead of the $18 billion quarterly options expiry on Friday.