September 25 opened in a calm but signal-rich mode. Bitcoin consolidated around $84,000 — sources range from $83,476 to $84,843 — after testing $87,000 earlier in the week. Tellingly, as the top end was rejected, the broader market kept rising: 93 of 100 assets in the CoinDesk 100 index advanced, and the altseason index touched its highest level in more than three months. BTC dominance fell roughly 2% over the week, and Glassnode's signal flipped from BTC season to altcoins.
At the same time, the market has a powerful foundation in institutional demand and a difficult backdrop in macro. Spot Bitcoin ETFs logged a sixth consecutive day of inflows, and total 2026 flows turned positive for the first time. Treasuries yields, meanwhile, climbed to 5.2% in the ten-year and the thirty-year bond closed at its highest level since 2004. The day will also be remembered for the largest exchange hack of 2026 and a cascade of regulatory decisions in Washington and Brussels.
Stablecoin rules: the Fed publishes its first detailed framework
The day's key industry event is two proposals from the Federal Reserve Board, published on September 24 following the adoption of the GENIUS Act: a 60-page Docket R-1900 (RIN 7100-AH30) on the approval procedure, and a separate 392-page notice on reserves, capital, redemption and custody.
The key condition: only an insured bank that is a Fed member can apply, and the stablecoin is issued by its subsidiary. A fintech company cannot be the applicant. The proposals also include a $5 million minimum capital requirement indexed to nominal GDP, 2% of capital in non-insured reserve assets, and redemption within two business days. Issuance above $10 billion moves the issuer into the federal regime within 360 days. Fed Governor Barr backed the measures against "runs" and payment-system risks.
These are proposals, not issued licenses: the comment period expires 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, and the final rules may change. Still, these documents will for the first time determine who can issue stablecoins and what reserve and redemption requirements become mandatory — directly relevant to USDT and USDC. Details are outlined by The Defiant and Crypto.News.
Bitget: revised damage estimate of $387.5 million
The largest exchange hack of 2026 unfolded with the market largely unfazed. Bitget detected unauthorized transfers at 18:31 UTC on September 24, with the first notification at 21:39 UTC. The initial estimate was around $351.6 million, and after expanding the accounting to include Zcash and TRON, the company raised it to $387.5 million — a recalculation, not new transfers. Outside estimates diverge: Lookonchain put the loss at roughly $356.8 million, Wu Blockchain had tracked $178–190 million, and Bitwise about $388 million.
According to CEO Gracy Chen, the attackers compromised the wallet infrastructure backend, forged transaction data and triggered an internal authorization process — private keys were not stolen. Part of the hot and warm wallets were affected; cold wallets and Bitget Wallet were not. Withdrawals are suspended, deposits and trading work, and the loss is covered by the User Protection Fund — 5,500 BTC, more than $464 million. Customer balances are correct. The CEO says attribution is unconfirmed, but North Korean involvement is suspected based on VPN/IP data; she considers an insider attack unlikely.
The $387.5 million equals roughly 84% of the exchange's safety fund, created in 2022 and holding 5,500 BTC. Affected networks include EVM, XRP Ledger, Zcash and TRON; stolen assets include XRP (more than $100 million), ETH, USDT, ZEC, USDC, USDT0, XAUt, BNB, AVAX and TRX. Some funds, according to the exchange, have already been returned.
Bitget launched a bounty of 5% of frozen or recovered assets, said the vulnerability has been found and fixed, and promised to announce the withdrawal status before 04:00 UTC on September 26. Read the analysis at Decrypt and Finance Magnates Crypto.
Stablecoin issuers did respond. Circle and Tether blacklisted an address holding roughly $318 thousand in USDT and USDC. But most of the stolen funds have already been converted into ETH and other assets that issuers cannot freeze: researchers note the attacker swapped USDC for ETH, again raising questions about the speed and effectiveness of issuer freezes. As Circle's terms state, USDC is irreversible once a transaction is initiated, and the issuer freezes funds only on legal order. This again shows that the speed of stablecoin freezes determines how much can actually be returned.
The regulatory landscape: Peirce departs, prediction markets stay in the states' lane
In the regulatory block of the day is Hester Peirce's departure from the SEC. The commissioner posted a resignation letter on X, with her last day at the agency on October 2, 2026. After her departure, only two members remain: Chair Paul Atkins and Republican appointee Mark Uyeda. The White House has not named Democratic nominees for either the SEC or the CFTC.
Peirce led the Crypto Task Force and supported the path of an "innovation exemption" for securities tokenization; she will now become a professor at Regent University School of Law. The departure of the regulator's steadiest crypto advocate weakens policy continuity at a moment when Congress failed on the CLARITY Act — as CoinDesk reported.
On the same day, SEC staff updated its crypto FAQ on staking tokens and buybacks. Under the Division of Corporation Finance's position, a liquid staking receipt token may under certain conditions be a digital commodity rather than a security, provided it adds no new economic rights and control over the deposited asset does not transfer to the issuer. For an already functioning network, securing safety, supporting and developing it, as well as announcing a token buyback, do not by themselves count as "essential managerial efforts" under the Howey test. At the same time, marketing promises of buybacks as a source of income before the system launches may change the analysis, and the presence of a secondary market does not automatically make an exchange a promoter. The document is a staff position, not a Commission rule: it has not been approved or rejected, carries no legal force and creates no new obligations. For projects whose tokens serve as collateral and trade on the secondary market — Ethereum and Solana above all — this is a notable reduction in regulatory risk.
Another resignation is tied to the lobbying landscape: the Blockchain Association announced that CEO Summer Mersinger will leave on October 16, 2026, to be temporarily replaced by returning Kristin Smith, the organization's first CEO since its launch in 2018. Smith keeps her posts as president of the Solana Policy Institute and chair of the association's board. The change came days after the Senate failed to gather votes to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act: all Democrats and some Republicans did not support the procedure. The GENIUS Act was adopted during Mersinger's tenure; the association did not mention the CLARITY Act and did not disclose leadership plans for 2027.
A separate front runs through prediction markets. New York Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul filed suit against Polymarket US on September 24, characterizing event contracts on sporting events as unlicensed gambling and pointing to access for users under 21. The state seeks to halt the activity, impose fines, confiscate proceeds and return funds to users. Polymarket returned to the US by acquiring regulated exchange infrastructure and operating under the federal commodities-exchange regime. The allegations have not been tested in court; at the federal level event contracts may fall under CFTC jurisdiction, while states treat them as betting. New York authorities attacked competitor Kalshi in July.
In parallel, a decision from the Sixth Circuit. A three-judge panel ruled that Kalshi's sports event contracts are not swaps and therefore are not subject to CFTC oversight. The ruling touched two cases — against regulators in Ohio and Tennessee, where federal courts issued opposite rulings. The Third Circuit previously found CFTC jurisdiction, the Eighth ruled the other way, creating a split among circuits; the Third Circuit's case is already appealed to the US Supreme Court. States argue that prediction markets compete with their casinos, evade taxes and are available from age 18. The result is the same: the split among appeals courts leaves the segment in the states' legal field, increasing pressure on both Kalshi and Polymarket.
Europe has its own regulatory picture. In a written response to the European Commission's MiCA review, the EBA proposed considering an extension of regulation to brokered crypto loans and to requirements for CASPs connecting clients to DeFi lending protocols. Options include suitability tests, leverage limits for some or all users, detailed disclosures, warnings about the unregulated nature of fully decentralized protocols and possible certification of DeFi lending protocols. The regulator points to regulatory-arbitrage risk, since MiCA does not regulate crypto lending and prohibits interest accruing on stablecoins. As of September 1, 39 e-money tokens were registered and not a single authorized asset-referenced token; the MiCA review consultation opened May 20 and closes September 30. Crypto lending already operates in at least 16 EU countries.
Macro: 5.2% yields and oil from the Strait of Hormuz
The backdrop remains tough. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.18–5.20% on September 24 from 5.11% a day earlier, and the 30-year closed at 5.47%, its highest since 2004. The Fed raised rates by 25 basis points to 3.75–4.00% back on September 16, and several officials see a chance of another hike this year.
Oil closed at its highs: Brent at $106.60 and WTI at $94.61, before US–Iran talks on reopening the Strait of Hormuz offered support. The preliminary US PMI rose from 56.0 to 58.4, a five-year-plus high. Bond volatility (MOVE) is at its highest since March, while bitcoin volatility (BVIV) and the VIX remain at multi-year lows — a rare divergence in which risk and crypto volatility are both pinned low. High real yields remain the main macro factor pressuring risk assets, including crypto.
Institutional demand: ETFs, Strategy and Bitwise
Despite the tough backdrop, institutional demand is holding. Spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $191 million on September 24 (IBIT about $163 million, FBTC about $12.86 million), extending the streak of net inflows to six consecutive sessions. Sources estimate the size of the streak differently — roughly $2.8–3 billion. 2026 net flows, previously running at minus $5.8 billion, have flipped to roughly +$800 million. Earlier in the week there were inflows of nearly $999 million (September 21), $714.7 million (September 22) and $346.98 million (September 23). Cumulative net inflows into US spot BTC ETFs reached roughly $57.4 billion with fund assets of about $108.9 billion. The return of institutional demand is the bulls' main argument after the failure of the CLARITY Act and the Fed's tightening.
Meanwhile, Strategy asked shareholders to approve amendments making every calendar day a dividend date for all four preferred lines — STRC, STRF, STRK and STRD. Annual amounts and rates do not change: STRF 10%, STRK 8%, STRD 10%, STRC floating. STRC moves from semi-monthly to daily payments from November 1, 2026, and the other three from January 1, 2027. The vote is set for October 28, and entry into force requires charter amendments in Delaware; preferred holders do not vote. The goal is to hold STRC near the $99–100 target range, with the stock trading below $100 since May at a stated yield of 12% and roughly $1 billion in buybacks. According to the 8-K of September 21, Strategy holds 846,000 BTC worth $63.8 billion and bought back $174 million of STRC over the week.
Another institutional win: NYSE Arca approved Bitwise's application for public registration of ETF shares under Section 12(b) via Form 8-A. The product will trade under the ticker NRR without the use of derivatives. The management fee is 0.75% annually, the trust intends to stake 100% of NEAR, and staking expenses take 33% of newly generated NEAR. Bitwise Investment Manager will purchase 20,000 initial shares for $500,000 to buy NEAR. On the decision, NEAR rose about 20% in a day to $5, up some 175% on the week, while futures open interest grew nearly 15% to $1.49 billion. The first trading date is not officially confirmed — launch is expected next week. An altcoin staking ETF could set a precedent for listings of such products.
Market, derivatives and real-world asset tokenization
With $87,000 rejected, altcoins took the spotlight. Bitcoin dominance fell roughly 2% over the week to 56.5%, and Glassnode's signal flipped from BTC season to altcoin dominance. Weekly leaders were BTW +73%, ENA +52%, NEAR +45%, ONDO +40%, SUI +39%, BCH +32%, AVAX +29%; among large assets, XRP, LINK and ADA added 17–18%. Over the day, Solana gained 1.39%, while ETH fell 0.83% and XRP 0.92%. Falling BTC dominance alongside the rejection of $87,000 is a sign of seasonal capital rotation from bitcoin into altcoins.
At the same time, quarterly Deribit options on Bitcoin and Ethereum expired on September 25 at 08:00 UTC, with a 30-minute settlement window. Notional estimates differ: the BTC component around $15.6–16.1 billion, ETH adding roughly $2.13 billion, for a total of $16.5 to $18.1 billion depending on the pre-expiry snapshot. BTC max pain was estimated at $75,000 with a put/call ratio of 0.69. Deribit open interest exceeds $50 billion, with about a third expiring in Friday's cycle. Actual payouts are not publicly disclosed: inverse BTC options settle in BTC, linear ones by futures execution followed by USDC settlement.
Real-world asset tokenization keeps advancing. Aave launched an Equities Hub in Aave V4 on Base: seven tokenized Coinbase shares (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla) became collateral for USDC borrowing in a dedicated market. The initial borrow limit is $21 million, the USDC supply limit is $32 million; LTV ranges from 65% (Meta, Tesla) to 79% (Microsoft). Access is limited to qualified investors outside the US, and the shares themselves cannot be borrowed. Pricing comes from Chainlink (collateral price does not update on weekends) and risk parameters from LlamaRisk. Deployment on Base formally requires an offchain Snapshot vote followed by an onchain vote; AAVE gained more than 7%. Tokenized equities become mainstream DeFi collateral for the first time.
Ondo Global Markets launched three portfolios — Ondo High Income, Diversified Growth and High Growth Powered by BlackRock — each packaged into a single onchain token. The strategies were developed by BlackRock specifically for Ondo, but the company does not issue or manage the tokens. The base asset is the Ondo Stocks platform, dividends are reinvested automatically, and distribution, rebalancing and fee logic are encoded in smart contracts. Access is limited to qualified investors outside the US; the portfolios disclose up to 95% in equities and about 5% in Bitcoin. The ONDO token gained more than 32% on the news, with RSI around 73 — an overbought zone. The largest traditional manager is bringing its strategies into public onchain wrappers, still a strong institutionalization signal for RWAs.
Ethena built a similar mechanism, for a stablecoin. From September 25 it began allocating USDe backing into a delta-neutral basis trade: the spot leg is bStocks, the hedge a short of USDT perpetual futures on Binance's equity perpetuals. Binance is the first venue; Ethena expects the equity-perpetual market to multiply the $15+ billion it gathered in crypto perpetuals over the last cycle. Market qualification follows the Kairos Research framework for the Risk Committee: 17 Binance markets passed screening (about $2.14 billion OI), including Nvidia, Tesla and SpaceX, with three markets at OKX and none at Bybit or Kraken. Screening criteria are OI of at least $25 million over 14 days, 30 days of funding history and listing on the same venue. Average carry on approved trades fell from about 18% in late July to 7% by August 26, with two markets already negative. The Risk Committee's main structural risk is divergence between the perpetual and the underlying share on US market holidays. Ethena also plans to introduce a fee for ENA buybacks at USDe volume of $7.5 billion (14-day average).
Stack: rsETH exploit, NFT approvals and a stablecoin's fiat on-ramp
The year's largest exploit has turned into litigation. KelpDAO's legal entity (Evercrest Technologies) filed suit on September 24 in British Columbia against LayerZero and co-founder Bryan Pellegrino over the April 18 attack that withdrew 116,500 rsETH (about $292 million); a second attempt to withdraw 40,000 rsETH failed. KelpDAO says LayerZero failed to disclose risks and approved the 1-of-1 DVN configuration in writing, with its own DVN as the sole verifier. LayerZero responds that such a setup is a single point of failure the company warned about. Chainalysis and Blockaid linked the attack to compromise of off-chain infrastructure (social engineering of a developer on March 6), and LayerZero and researchers attributed it to the TraderTraitor group ("Lazarus"). Kelp migrated its bridge from LayerZero OFT to Chainlink CCIP and allocated 2,000 ETH for recovery; the CEO calls the lawsuit baseless. Cyvers previously valued the theft at about $293.7 million. The 1-of-1 DVN configuration remains a systemic risk for cross-chain bridges.
In NFTs, an exploit hit LimitBreak Payment Processor V2. Security researcher Quit pulled 3,832 NFTs from outside wallets and ultimately rescued 23,155 NFTs worth about $5.7–6 million. The root cause was a bug in the LimitBreak Payment Processor V2 contract: the attacker drained 10 Meebits, 50 Otherdeeds, 10 World of Women and 235 Despertae Apewives. The vulnerability could also be used to withdraw WETH — 660 WETH could not be recovered — while version V3 was paused. Owners are advised to revoke vulnerable approvals. Magic Eden has not officially confirmed the exploit and has not disclosed the number of affected NFTs or wallets; its EVM marketplace closed on March 9, 2026, so the scale of impact on live services is unclear. Compromised legacy approvals remain active, and NFT holders in the Ethereum ecosystem remain at risk.
A separate story concerns stablecoins' fiat on-ramp risks. US prosecutors filed a civil forfeiture complaint over about $84.2 million held at payment operator Capstone, through which the Dominican offshore bank EQIBank processed payments for Tether and Bitfinex. Tether confirmed it is an EQIBank client but estimates its share at less than 0.034% of assets (at most about $64 million) and said it knows nothing about Capstone's conduct. EQIBank says US authorities froze about $89 million — roughly 80% of its cash assets — and warns of liquidation risk; on July 16 a court rejected its attempt to recover the funds. Amounts differ across reports: $79.1 million per the court decision, $84.2 million in the prosecutors' complaint and roughly $89 million per EQIBank's statement. The case shows the risks of stablecoins' fiat on-ramps even at minimal issuer exposure — with USDT's market cap around $184 billion.
Infrastructure and onchain activity
CoinMarketCap (owned by Binance) closed its acquisition of the analytics platform CoinGlass (formerly Bybt); financial terms were not disclosed. The platform will continue as a separate product with unchanged branding, website, app, API and pricing. CoinGlass tracks data from 28 exchanges and more than 2,500 instruments, has over 5 million monthly users and 10,000+ API clients, while CoinMarketCap has about 115 million users. According to a CoinGlass report, crypto derivatives volume in H1 2026 was $35.08 trillion (−15.7% year over year) and average daily open interest was $112.7 billion. Consolidating a key derivatives data source strengthens Binance's influence over market infrastructure and analytics.
Onchain activity closes the day. According to Arkham Intelligence, 4,500 BTC worth $381.38 million were moved from an address that received those coins exactly four years ago, when they were worth about $187.38 million. The source wallet's balance is now zero, and the funds were moved to a new "clean" address along with seven dust deposits. At a price of about $84,070, unrealized profit is roughly $194 million, but it is not realized. The funds did not go to exchanges and there are no signs of selling; the wallet's source is linked to one of the oldest mining networks, controlling about 33,000 BTC. A large transfer from a long-dormant wallet remains a potential source of selling pressure.
Researchers at Alloc Init (Clara Shikhelman, Mikhail Komarov, Aleksei Moskvin) presented a Shielded Bitcoin concept on September 24: amount, sender and receiver are published as encrypted data with a zero-knowledge proof of transaction validity. Verification is performed by separate indexers outside the Bitcoin consensus, so no soft fork is required, and invalid shielded data is simply rejected. Komarov estimates such a transaction would take about 700 vB versus 100–200 vB for a normal one — roughly four times more expensive. The BTC entry and exit mechanism (PIPEs) is left for future work; critics point to the lack of quantum resistance and the risk of a small anonymity set. If implemented, bitcoin would gain basic privacy without splitting the network.
Day in review
The overall picture of September 25 is this: the market is choosing altcoins, but it does so against tough yields, bond volatility at its highest since March, and record oil levels. Institutional demand, meanwhile, is returning — spot BTC ETFs recorded a sixth straight day of inflows, and 2026 flows turned positive. The regulatory perimeter, by contrast, is tightening: the Fed publishes its first detailed stablecoin rules, the SEC loses a key crypto advocate, prediction markets remain caught between state and federal regulators, and the EBA proposes extending MiCA to crypto lending. The day was not without the year's largest exchange hack either — Bitget put the damage at $387.5 million and introduced a 5% bounty for frozen assets, while Circle and Tether froze only about $318 thousand, since most of the funds had already moved into ETH. And the market barely reacted to any of the shock headlines — itself a signal about current positioning.