Bitcoin slipped below $77,000 on September 10, hitting an intraday low of ~$76,748, after the release of US producer price index (PPI) data for August, which rose 5.4% year over year — 0.1 percentage point above expectations. Traders quickly raised the probability of a Federal Reserve rate hike at the September 16 meeting to roughly 70–74%.

Risk assets faced additional pressure from oil, which broke above $100 a barrel for the first time since May (Brent above $105) amid the escalation of the US–Iran conflict, and from 30-year Treasury yields, which reached 5.353% — the highest since 2007. Altcoins gave ground: XRP fell almost 4% and Ethereum about 2%, while spot bitcoin ETFs posted their second consecutive day of outflows. The week's biggest events are still ahead: the Fed meeting on September 16 and the Senate's procedural vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15.

CLARITY Act: the September 15 vote shapes the future of the US crypto bill

Senate Republicans circulated an updated 630-page edition of the CLARITY Act — the Cryptocurrency Clarity Act — with changes on DeFi and credit unions. CoinDesk reports that non-decentralized DeFi protocols would have to register with the CFTC, with Bank Secrecy Act requirements extended to part of them; the DeFi language is limited to cash and spot transactions in digital commodities and does not touch prediction markets. To keep moving on September 15, the bill needs 60 votes. Cynthia Lummis reported more than 100 changes requested by Democrats, yet Politico says no Democrat currently backs the document. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House crypto adviser Patrick Uytte called on lawmakers to pass the bill, with Bessent warning of a “troubling signal” if it fails (Cointelegraph). Meanwhile, Galaxy has cut the probability of CLARITY passing in 2026 to 10% — down from 75% in May.

Market sentiment remains mixed: Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong told CNBC the bill is “ready to secure the votes” on September 15, with ethics provisions as the only sticking point. He also said the bottom of the current bitcoin cycle is in and called the $400,000-by-2030 target “reasonable.” Prediction platform Myriad, by contrast, puts only 17% odds on CLARITY being signed in 2026.

Regulators and tokenization: SEC, the UK and the EU

The UK set a strategic direction: the House of Lords voted 194–138 to back an amendment requiring the Treasury to prepare, publish and consult on a digital assets strategy within 12 months of the Financial Services and Markets Act taking effect, covering cryptoassets, stablecoins, tokenized securities and digital financial infrastructure.

In the US, the SEC proposed overhauling its more-than-half-century-old transfer agent rules to allow electronic databases, including blockchain ledgers, to serve as the official record of securities ownership — potentially eliminating the need for parallel off-chain ledgers for tokenized securities. A 60-day public comment period is now open.

In the EU, a coalition of finance and tokenization groups — including Nasdaq, Boerse Stuttgart and Securitize — urged lawmakers to scrap the proposed €100 billion cap on tokenized financial instruments or raise it to at least €500 billion, noting that some existing European projects already reach the scale of €350 billion.

Nasdaq to invest in Kraken

Traditional exchanges keep moving into crypto infrastructure: Nasdaq's venture arm agreed to invest $100 million in Payward — Kraken's parent company — at a $21 billion valuation, roughly 58% above Deutsche Boerse's April valuation (~$13.3 billion), which had previously put $200 million into Payward. Kraken will distribute tokenized versions of Nasdaq stocks, while Payward will adopt Nasdaq's market surveillance technology; Nasdaq's own Equity Tokens (NETs) are expected to launch in Q2 2027 (Cointelegraph). The total value of tokenized stocks on distributed ledgers already exceeds $2.9 billion (RWA.xyz), and xStocks products recorded more than $35 billion in aggregate volume in their first year.

ESMA questions prediction markets in the EU

In a monitoring report, European regulator ESMA warned that growing crypto ties to traditional finance — including tokenized stocks, DeFi exploits and prediction markets — could amplify the risk of shocks spreading through the financial system, and flagged prediction markets as an emerging risk due to insider-trading and manipulation threats. ESMA also questioned the legality of Polymarket's and Kalshi's access to EU markets: event contracts could fall under the EU ban on binary options, as well as under the MiCA framework or national gambling laws.

Prediction infrastructure, meanwhile, is moving into DeFi: trade.xyz launched fully collateralized outcome contracts on Hyperliquid via HIP-4, with no leverage, funding or liquidations, with sports markets using ESPN data and Daily Up/Down markets priced off Hyperliquid candles.

US Treasury strikes at scam networks

US authorities froze more than $52 million in crypto tied to the Xinbi Guarantee scam marketplace: OFAC sanctioned Xinbi, SafeW Technology and Anwen Technology, while the Secret Service froze $52.8 million in USDT across 52 wallets linked to Xinbi. Tether assisted US investigators in the operation; the UK had already sanctioned Xinbi on March 26.

Liquid Network resumes blocks after the exploit

Blockstream's Liquid Network resumed block production after emergency software updates triggered by an exploit that drained about 4,000 BTC (~$320 million) on September 6. Hackers returned 3,400 BTC, leaving roughly 598 BTC outstanding. Analysis linked the vulnerability to the proof-validation cache in the Elements codebase (fixed in v23.3.4), and CertiK tied the exploit (~$318.7 million) to ambiguous cache-key encoding during rangeproof verification. Peg operations, including PAK-authorized peg-outs, remain suspended.

Stablecoins move into everyday payments

MoneyGram launched the virtual MoneyGram Card in Colombia, built on stablecoin balances: the card runs on Rain infrastructure, Crossmint wallet technology and Stellar blockchain settlement, starting with USDC and automatic conversion into fiat. The card can be linked to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet; a physical card, ATM withdrawals and expansion are planned by the end of 2026, with the MGUSD stablecoin to follow. MoneyGram serves more than 60 million active customers across 200+ countries.

Coinbase partnered with financial platform Moov to bring stablecoin acceptance, settlement and round-the-clock funding to more than 1,000 US banks and credit unions. U.S. Bank completed a pilot cross-border payment between its North American and European divisions using its own dollar-backed stablecoin USBDC, issued on Stellar, also testing token freeze and recall functions.

Institutional stablecoin lending is scaling: Tether and Fasanara Capital launched StableFund, a perpetual private-credit fund with $400 million in initial capital, aiming to raise up to $3 billion from third-party institutional investors, lending over USDT rails. Circle, meanwhile, is moving the Cosmos USDC standard to Injective — USDC.inj becomes the standard stablecoin instead of Noble USDC, with migration via Skip:Go opening on September 11 and new USDC issuance on Noble ending on October 13, 2026. In the same space, Binance announced the delisting of Pax Dollar (USDP): spot trading ends September 24 and margin trading September 11. Ripple, for its part, burned 15 million RLUSD in treasury management, following a 10 million RLUSD burn on September 8.

Security: Trezor, the courts and quantum computing

Trezor disclosed a breach at its third-party marketing email provider Brevo: attackers sent “Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability” phishing emails from the official Trezor domain, and the emails passed SPF, DKIM and DMARC checks. The emails went to roughly 347,000 customers; Trezor took the domain out of use and said other company systems were unaffected. BitBox and CoinTracking reported similar campaigns through the same provider.

Malone Lam, 22, pleaded guilty as the ringleader of an international cyber group that stole 4,100 bitcoin and other crypto assets worth $245 million through social engineering and home invasions. The sentencing hearing is scheduled for December 8, 2026.

In research, the ECDSA.Fail competition saw teams using AI agents cut the estimated resource cost of a hypothetical quantum attack on bitcoin's secp256k1 cryptography by 86% — from 10.75 billion to 1.496 billion. No private keys were actually broken, but the debate over post-quantum protection is reignited. In the same vein, Vitalik Buterin advanced an Ethereum plan to sharply reduce the cost of quantum-safe privacy through more efficient post-quantum cryptographic approaches.

Ecosystems: Ethereum and Solana

Consensys announced it will split into two independent companies by the end of 2026: MetaMask (consumer self-custody products led by Joe Lubin, with more than 100 million downloads and plans for a Money Account and its own token) and Consensys (Ethereum protocols — Linea and Besu — and institutional infrastructure, with Mike Krieger becoming CEO).

Solana activated Transaction Format V1 on mainnet, raising the maximum transaction size from 1,232 to 4,096 bytes — paving the way for zero-knowledge proofs, confidential transfers and larger multisig constructions. The Alpenglow upgrade with ~150 ms finality is expected with Agave 4.3 in October.

Institutional interest in SOL keeps building: per Arkham Intelligence, Bitwise bought about $107.4 million in Solana over 20 trading sessions, lifting its holdings above 9.03 million SOL (~$918 million). The network also posted a record day with more than 263,000 new SPL tokens issued, mostly via the Pump.fun launchpad. Pump.fun, in turn, launched Custom Pairs, letting creators launch tokens against tokenized stocks, crypto majors, metals and other assets instead of SOL or USDC: 20 tokenized stocks were added via Sunrise and xStocks, and 50% of Custom Pairs revenue goes to the $PUMP buyback-and-burn contract.

Exchanges and derivatives

Coinbase renamed Base App back to Coinbase Wallet, shifting focus from a social “everything app” toward multi-chain trading: Hyperliquid perpetuals, tokenized stocks and prediction markets; the wallet supports more than 10 networks, including Robinhood Chain and Monad. OKX launched pre-IPO perpetuals on OpenAI and Anthropic in Europe with up to 10x leverage, plus 100 tokenized stocks and ETFs for 24/7 trading — traders only get exposure to the valuation of private companies, not ownership. Canada's CDCC registered options on Evolve's and Purpose's XRP ETFs for sale in the US: the SEC and CFTC have classified XRP as a qualified digital commodity, placing it in the same digital-derivatives tier as BTC, ETH and SOL. In DeFi, Uniswap Labs deployed the StablePair Hook — a Uniswap v4 tool that dynamically sets fees for the USDC/USDT and USDC/USDG pools on Ethereum, where stablecoin swaps totaled $43.4 billion in Q2.

Altcoin stories

Memecoin risks resurfaced: the Hunter Biden-themed LAPTOP token climbed above $300 soon after its Base launch, then lost more than 99% of its value within hours. The team blamed sniper bots and thin liquidity; per Bubblemaps, about 80% of LAPTOP traders lost money. Hunter Biden himself denies profiting from the token. XRP Healthcare, meanwhile, announced it is winding down after a September 3 hack affecting 4,011 wallets (~$452,000) and critical flaws found in its app code: analysis showed the algorithm generated seed phrases with low entropy, allowing private keys to be recovered.

Macro and geopolitics

The macro backdrop is turning tighter: the ECB raised its deposit rate by 25 bps to 2.5% after eurozone inflation reached 3.3%, driven largely by high energy prices from the Iran conflict. In the US, President Trump promised $5,000 “dividends” to every adult American if Republicans win the midterms — with no funding details, and economists including Peter Schiff calling the proposal voter bribery. Bitcoin is feeling the volatility: social media, meanwhile, circulated an unconfirmed rumor that Barron Trump may have opened a 100x short on bitcoin near the $79,320 liquidation zone — the position's owner is not publicly identified and the information is not confirmed.

The market enters a decisive week: September 15 brings the procedural CLARITY Act vote and September 16 the Fed meeting. These two events will do much to determine both bitcoin's direction and the industry's ground rules for years to come.