The release of the U.S. August Consumer Price Index set the tone for crypto markets on Thursday, September 11. Headline inflation came in at +0.4% m/m and +3.4% y/y, in line with consensus, but the core gauge was hotter: +0.3% m/m versus the +0.2% expected, even as annual core inflation slowed to 2.4% — its lowest since 2021. Bitcoin briefly dipped to ~$76,500, then reversed sharply and surged toward $79,600–79,840 before consolidating around $77,400–78,700. Ether reached $2,640–2,663 for the first time in eight months, and Solana climbed back above $100. Sources estimated total daily liquidations at $660–897 million — roughly $660 million per CryptoPotato, $758 million per Bitcoin.com News and $897 million per Decrypt — with about 40% of the volume in ether. One telling moment of the day: according to CryptoPotato, more than $250 million in short positions was wiped out within a single hour.
The macro backdrop remains the dominant driver. Markets now price in a 25-basis-point Fed rate hike at the September 15–16 meeting: odds rose to ~85–87% on CME FedWatch and ~81% on Polymarket. Yields on 30-year U.S. Treasuries hit their highest level since 2004, and Brent crude moved above $100 amid the expanding U.S.–Iran conflict. Producer prices added pressure: August PPI (+0.4% m/m and +5.4% y/y versus 5.1% expected) had pushed 30-year Treasury yields to a 19-year high on Wednesday, sending bitcoin down nearly 2% to below $77,000; at the same time, spot ETH ETFs saw inflows while retail investors sold 307,000 ETH over the week as whales accumulated 82,000. More on the market reaction in this Cointelegraph report.
The main regulatory story of the day was the fate of the CLARITY Act. Senator Cynthia Lummis's office published a revised text under which non-decentralized DeFi protocols would have to register with the CFTC and comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, while the SEC and CFTC would gain authority to develop activity-based rules; the DeFi provisions are limited to spot and cash transactions in digital commodities. The cloture vote is set for September 15 at 2:15 p.m. ET and needs 60 votes against 53 Republican seats. Treasury Secretary Bessent publicly urged the Senate to pass the bill, Coinbase and Ripple support it, and Senator Elizabeth Warren opposes it. Odds remain conservative: Galaxy Digital cut its 2026 probability from ~75% in May to ~10%, while Polymarket implies ~18%. Per Lummis, the update locked in more than 115 "wins" for Democrats, and Stand With Crypto counted ~50,000 messages to Congress in August. Details in this Cointelegraph piece.
Regulatory activity also moved elsewhere. The House of Lords voted 194–138 for an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Act requiring the UK Treasury to prepare, publish and consult on a national strategy for digital assets — covering cryptoassets, eligible stablecoins, CBDCs and tokenized securities; the FCA's crypto regime takes effect on October 25, 2027. Germany's Finance Ministry circulated a September 9 draft scrapping the tax exemption for holding crypto over a year: gains would be taxed at a flat 26.375% (25% plus a 5.5% solidarity surcharge) regardless of holding period, applying to assets bought from January 1, 2027, with automatic withholding by providers from January 1, 2028. It is the fourth attempt in about 18 months and the first included in a budget bill. The same ministry is preparing an Eckpunktepapier obliging retail, hospitality and services to accept at least one digital payment method alongside cash, and wants to accelerate the digital euro at the EU level. Canada's OSFI clarified that tokenized deposits are not legally distinct from traditional bank deposits, and from 2027 will soften capital recognition for cross-exchange crypto hedges.
In the U.S., the SEC proposed a 60-day rulemaking process to modernize transfer-agent rules so registered agents can use blockchain ledgers for tokenized stocks — though tokens would not become legal shares or give holders shareholder rights. The Fed, FDIC, NCUA and OCC proposed new third-party risk guidelines that could cover crypto custodians, stablecoin and payment providers; Fed governor Michael Barr dissented over supervisory gaps. Russia now requires a tax ID to open crypto depository accounts and reporting for crypto transactions above 60,000 rubles, with anonymous accounts banned — part of the regulated crypto market that opened on September 1 — while Russia and India discuss CBDC settlement for bilateral trade approaching $60 billion. At the municipal level, Albuquerque banned crypto ATMs, giving operators 45 days to remove them, and ESMA dedicated a section of its new risk monitor to prediction markets, saying they are "rife with insider trading."
A significant share of the day's news was about security. Blockstream officially refused to pay the hackers' demanded 10% "bounty" for the return of the remaining ~598.5 BTC (~$46 million) held after the September 6 Liquid Network hack, calling the retention of funds "theft" rather than responsible disclosure. Recall that attackers drained ~4,000 BTC (~$320 million) from the federated wallet via a sidechain inflation exploit that minted ~4,000 unbacked L-BTC; on September 7 ~3,400 BTC (~85%) were returned. The company will work with law enforcement, exchanges and forensic experts. The Elements v23.3.4 patch has been released, block production has resumed, BTC operations remain paused, and private keys were not compromised. Coverage via Cointelegraph.
Phishing pressure on holders also scaled up. A flaw at the authorization boundary of the Brevo email platform's login let an attacker reach 138 client accounts and send phishing emails to ~347,000 subscribers of Trezor's newsletter — a letter titled "Critical Security Alert" requesting wallet backups. The domain was blocked within 20 minutes, but ~2,500 people opened the link; Trezor treats all those addresses as known to the attacker, and the lists of BitBox and CoinTracking were also hit. Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice, with Tether's help, restrained more than $52 million in crypto linked to the "Xinbi Guarantee" fraud network, seizing two wallets (~$12 million) and seeking restrictions on 47 more. Osmosis found that an exploit of Nomic had minted more than 40 BTC of unbacked nBTC on June 25 — discovered only after 74 days — leaving allBTC roughly 36% unbacked. On the state level, Japan reported that ~246,000 records at its Digital Agency may have leaked through a VPN-device vulnerability. Finally, in the ECDSA.Fail benchmark, more than 100 researchers using AI coding agents cut the estimated quantum-attack cost on Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptography by 86% to 1.496 billion; the Ethereum Foundation set a December 2029 deadline for quantum resilience.
The institutional push continued. Circle announced the acquisition of Singapore-based cross-border payments platform Tazapay for $400 million in Class A shares — it processes more than $25 billion in annual payment volume, about 60% in stablecoins, and enables local payouts via 60+ banking and fintech partners across more than 100 markets; the deal awaits regulatory approvals, including from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and is expected to close in 2027 (more in CryptoSlate). Italy's second-largest bank, UniCredit, is reportedly in early-stage talks, per Bloomberg, to pick a technology partner for crypto custody, brokerage and tokenized products, with no final decision made. U.S. Bank, the sixth-largest U.S. bank, completed a live intercompany cross-border transfer between its North American and European units on Stellar using its own USBDC stablecoin; the amount, client availability and commercial launch date were not disclosed. And The Smarter Web Company, the UK's largest listed bitcoin treasury company, plans to list MORE preference shares on the LSE main market targeting £15–25 million.
Stablecoin infrastructure moved on several fronts. PayPal, M0 and MoonPay launched PYUSDx on September 9 — a platform letting any business issue an application stablecoin backed through PayPal USD; three issuers are live with more than $100 million in combined volume, though PYUSDx tokens cannot be used inside PayPal or Venmo. Circle also unveiled cirBTC, a wrapped bitcoin backed 1:1 by BTC in segregated accounts at Circle National Trust, verified in real time via Chainlink Proof of Reserve, with no lending or rehypothecation of reserves. Not all stablecoin news was positive: Circle is ending USDC and CCTP support on Noble — new minting ceases on October 13, 2026, and from January 13, 2027 balances will be snapshotted with manual redemptions, while Noble will not get CCTP V2. Separate news: Spark opened a USDT savings vault (3.5% yield, 750 million USDT cap) to OKX users on X Layer, with deposits arriving as USDT0.
Real-world asset tokenization advanced in major economies. India launched the Demat 2.0 pilot (details via CoinDesk): REC, Larsen & Toubro and IIFL issued tokenized corporate bonds worth ₹1,025 crore (~$107 million), settled in the RBI's wholesale digital rupee with same-day atomic settlement via the Unified Market Interface. According to SEBI, India is the first country to combine native DLT bond issuance, depository records and CBDC settlement. India's wealthiest state, Maharashtra, is meanwhile preparing a policy to tokenize government assets — including 40–50% of selected Maharashtra Transco assets — to fund infrastructure. On Solana, the value of tokenized stocks and funds hit a record ~$684 million. The segment is also contested: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said public companies should not have a veto over stock tokens, replying to AMC CEO Adam Aron, who called the product a "fake synthetic stock market" and threatened to approach the SEC. Separately, Kalshi is preparing to seek approval for ~60 24/7 perpetuals on stocks and ETFs (including Tesla, Apple and Nvidia), while Citadel Securities warned of a possible "parallel shadow market."
XRP Ledger was at the center of attention on several fronts. Per RWA.xyz, the network drew $3.6 billion in RWA inflows in 2026 — more than any other chain (for comparison: BNB at $2.6 billion, Stellar at $2.5 billion, Solana at $2.2 billion and Ethereum at $1.2 billion). Monthly stablecoin transfer volume on XRPL topped $5.25 billion (+18.21% m/m), with the number of stablecoin holders up 10.13% to 80,740 and RLUSD's market value at $1.033 billion. Lending protocol Clearpool proposed moving its core infrastructure to XRP Ledger and migrating CPOOL to CLEAR via a 1:1 swap, bringing Ripple in as a limited partner with settlements exclusively in RLUSD; the proposal is in a 14-day discussion window before a token-holder vote. The network activated the fixCleanup3_3_0 amendment (backed by 88.57% of validators), and CDCC filings registered options on Canadian XRP ETFs from Evolve and Purpose for sale in the U.S. The XRPL Foundation says it is embedding "traditional finance" primitives — Lending Protocol, Single Asset Vaults and token payment channels for autonomous AI-agent payments — directly into the ledger. Ripple also added GSmart AI agents to its Ripple Treasury platform, where every action still requires human approval.
There was negative XRP news too. XRP Healthcare announced it is winding down and delisting XRPH and XRPHAI tokens after a weak key-generation mechanism in XRPH Wallet cut the key space from 2^128 to ~2^46 (the input was truncated to 16 characters), letting an attacker drain ~$452,000 from 4,011 accounts on September 3; the XRPL network itself was not compromised. On the speculative side, former Ripple CTO David Schwartz said he considers it possible for XRP to overtake bitcoin in market capitalization long-term — his personal view.
Ether gained both technical and market momentum. Developers tentatively set the Glamsterdam upgrade activation on the Sepolia testnet for 13:53 UTC on October 6, conditional on a stable Devnet-11 (scheduled for September 14); earlier devnets surfaced finalization issues and a bug tied to EIP-8037. The mainnet activation is tentatively scheduled for December 2026. BlackRock's Ethereum staking ETF (ETHB) posted a 20th consecutive day of inflows — ~$250 million over three weeks, including ~$13.9 million in the latest session, with no outflow days. Against that backdrop, Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee — whose firm is considered Ethereum's largest corporate holder, with 5.9 million ETH (~4.9% of global issuance), mostly staked — predicted a powerful rally capable of breaking short sellers; that is his personal forecast.
Institutional bitcoin flows remain mixed. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs posted a net $282.6 million outflow on Thursday — the largest daily outflow in almost two months — bringing the three-day run to $449 million (led by ARKB at $164 million, GBTC at $36 million and FBTC at $33.6 million), partially offsetting the $3.8 billion of inflows from the strongest three-week period of 2026. Binance reserves, meanwhile, topped 693,000 BTC — a two-year high, typically signaling greater selling readiness — while Glassnode points to dense long-term-holder supply at $83,000–85,000. On the downside, Bitwise is liquidating its spot Dogecoin ETF (BWOW): the last trading day on NYSE Arca is October 14, and the fund held only ~$688,000 in assets; weak demand is confirmed by a lack of inflows into all three U.S. DOGE ETFs since September 3. Retail activity, however, is recovering: Robinhood's crypto volume rose 61% m/m in August to $17.5 billion.
Other notable developments: the FTX legal saga continues — Sam Bankman-Fried asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his 2023 fraud conviction and overturn the $11 billion forfeiture order; the Second Circuit upheld the verdict and the 25-year sentence in June, and the defense cites the Eighth Amendment. Metaplanet cut its Series 10 options pool by 41% and announced a Hong Kong subsidiary. A solo miner on the Braiins Solo pool found a block worth $244,920 after a nearly 40-day drought, and bitcoin went through a one-block chain reorganization at height 966,500 with no sign of attack or consensus bug. Elsewhere in the market: Zcash, which had rallied from below $500 to above $1,200, corrected about 16%, triggering $28.37 million in liquidations ($23.75 million of longs); Cardano fell four straight days toward support at $0.20 with a 1,085% long-biased liquidation skew; and a dormant Shiba Inu whale moved its final 192 billion SHIB to BitGo.
Among the lighter but telling stories, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said bitcoin's cyclical bottom is behind and that $400,000 by 2030 is his personal target. Zcash remains one of the most economically unusual assets: per Grayscale, ZEC mining earns 2–4x more per megawatt-hour than bitcoin mining (Z15 Pro at ~$708/MWh versus ~$179 for the best BTC ASIC), drawing hashrate into the network. On prediction markets, ESMA's warnings follow a very active stretch for the sector. And at the macro level, the People's Bank of China bought 20 tonnes of gold in July — the largest monthly purchase since 2023 and a 21st consecutive month of buying, supporting the demand for safe-haven assets amid reserve de-dollarization.