Surprisingly Useful AI Article Enhancements
Bitcoin closed the week where it started at US$79,123, but the calm at the surface masked significant activity underneath. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have just recorded their strongest three-week stretch of 2026, pulling in close to US$1 billion in inflows over the past week alone and bringing the three-week total to roughly US$4 billion.
The inflows continued even as Bitcoin retreated from a brief push above US$81,000 earlier in the week, a move that faded after a stronger-than-expected US jobs report revived expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike.
Ethereum finished flat at US$2,488, while XRP, Solana and Hyperliquid all ended within 1.5 per cent of where they began seven days ago. Ethereum ETFs attracted US$218 million in inflows, XRP ETFs took in US$19 million and Solana ETFs added US$6 million. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index sits at 71, in “Greed” territory.
The disconnect between rising ETF allocations and a flat-to-falling spot price has become the week’s defining feature. Institutional buyers appear to be operating on a different timeline to short-term traders, with the former building positions while the latter react to shifting rate expectations.
Jobs Data Resets The Rate Outlook
Friday’s US jobs report showed employers adding 162,000 positions in August, more than triple the 50,000 expected, while unemployment held at 4.1 per cent. The figures pushed the odds of a September rate hike to around 60 per cent, following hawkish comments from US Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh, and sent both equity and crypto markets lower on the day.
The underlying US economy appears to be in reasonable shape despite the country’s US$40 trillion debt pile and ongoing bond market turbulence. The Services PMI, which tracks activity in the goods and services sector, came in at 55.4, above expectations of 54.3.
A Wall Of Catalysts Ahead
The next two weeks bring a concentration of macro and political events that could sharply alter the trajectory of crypto markets.
US Producer Price Index data arrives on Wednesday, followed by the Consumer Price Index on Thursday. The CLARITY Act heads to a procedural vote in the Senate on September 15, requiring 60 out of 100 votes to advance. The Federal Reserve delivers its interest rate decision on September 16.
Analyst, Ted Pillows, warned on X that the coming fortnight is no time for speculation.
“The market has multiple catalysts stacked on top of each other. That’s a lot of potential volatility packed into a very short window,” he wrote. “When uncertainty is this high, patience matters. Let the data, the Fed and the political headlines reveal the direction. I’d rather react to confirmation than force a trade based on a guess.”
Roughly US$840 million in Bitcoin options expire on Deribit on September 11, the same day as the CPI release. While smaller than the approximately US$12 billion options event due later in the month, the timing alongside inflation data could amplify short-term volatility.
Bitcoin And XRP Move In Lock-Step, But A Test Is Coming
Since September 3, Bitcoin and XRP have traded in near-identical patterns. Both peaked on the same day, pulled back by roughly the same percentage following the jobs report and have since consolidated in tight ranges with matching technical structures.
Bitcoin hit its cycle high of US$82,200 on September 3. XRP reached US$1.48 on the same day. Both began falling within the same trading session. Bitcoin has settled into a range between roughly US$78,700 and US$80,500, while XRP has held between approximately US$1.38 and US$1.43.
The Bitrue Research Institute argued that the synchronisation is telling.
“The degree of synchronisation between Bitcoin and XRP over the past two weeks is notable because it is not driven by the same underlying asset, it is driven by the same macro variable,” the institute observed. “When two assets with different fundamentals move in near-perfect lockstep, it usually means the market is pricing macro risk rather than asset-specific value.”
Related: Best Business Laptops for work & school
Related: Best Gaming Laptops
Related: Best Portable Laptop
That correlation faces its first real test this week. The fixCleanup3_3_0 amendment to the XRP Ledger is tracking toward activation around September 11, bringing infrastructure upgrades to vaults, the lending protocol and automated market makers. The amendment lands on the same day as August CPI, creating an unusually clean natural experiment.
If XRP holds above US$1.43 or pushes higher while Bitcoin remains range-bound, it would suggest the two-week correlation was circumstantial. If XRP continues to track Bitcoin regardless of its own ecosystem catalyst, it would suggest the market has structurally repriced XRP as a high-beta macro asset, and that ledger development alone is not enough to differentiate it at the price level.
“Amendment activations on XRPL have historically generated positive ecosystem sentiment,” the Bitrue Research Institute observed. “But this one lands in an environment where XRP has been trading as a high-beta macro asset rather than on its own fundamentals.”
Bitcoin Decouples From Equities
On-chain analyst, Willy Woo, pointed out that Bitcoin has not diverged from the S&P 500 to this degree in nearly a decade. The last comparable decoupling came in 2015, just before the 2017 bull run.
“2014: Stocks remained bullish while BTC suffered an uncorrelated bear market. 2015-2016: Equities chopped bearish for two years while BTC engaged bull mode, then mooning in 2017 when equities aligned bullish,” Woo wrote. “The setup looks similar.”
Are We In A Bull Market?
Bitcoin briefly topped the 50-week moving average this past week but failed to hold above it, leaving the question of whether a bull market has been confirmed unresolved.
Cycle theorist, Ben Cowen, maintains there is a 65 per cent chance Bitcoin will hit a new cycle low in Q4. However, the weekly supertrend indicator has flipped green, and commentator, Joe Carlasare, argues Bitcoin has closed above the 200-day moving average for more than 15 consecutive days, a pattern that has never previously preceded a new cycle low.
Wall Street research firm, Bernstein, expects Bitcoin to reclaim US$125,000 by late 2026 in both its base and bull-case scenarios. Its base case has Bitcoin reaching US$150,000 by mid-2027, peaking at US$300,000 in 2029, while the bull case projects US$200,000 within a year and US$500,000 by 2029. Its long-term target for both scenarios is US$1 million by 2033.
Galaxy Research points to the 50-week moving average signal having held true for 11 of the past 13 bear markets, placing the current target around US$81,300.
VanEck Asia Pacific Managing Director, Arian Neiron, told the Australian Financial Review the rally reflected a “fiscal reckoning” for the world’s largest economy.
“The US is holding so much debt and long-term yields are at 2007 levels,” Neiron explained. “So the question for an investor is: well, if I’ve got too much US Treasuries, what is my real store of value?”
August delivered a 26 per cent return for Bitcoin, the fourth-strongest August on record and the largest monthly gain since November 2024. Ethereum climbed 34 per cent over the same period.
Liquid Hackers Return US$269 Million But Keep Nearly 600 BTC
Self-proclaimed “white hat” hackers who extracted 4,000 Bitcoin from Blockstream’s Liquid Network sidechain returned 3,400 of the coins, worth approximately US$269 million, to the federation wallet, recovering about 85 per cent of the total.
Approximately 598.5 Bitcoin, valued at around US$47 million, remains in the address linked to the withdrawal.
The incident began when a customer sent 4,000 L-BTC to SideSwap’s peg-out service. The actors later identified themselves as “whitehats” in a Bitcoin transaction message, insisting that all nodes needed to be patched before funds would be returned.
“Please fix the bug first. The chain is under risk at latest commit right now. Make sure every node is patched. Then we will transfer the money back safely after confirming the fix,” the actors wrote in an on-chain message.
Blockstream responded with a signed message confirming the bridge nodes had been patched, after which the actors transferred 3,400 Bitcoin to the Liquid Federation address.
Ledger Chief Technology Officer, Charles Guillemet, remained sceptical of the white-hat characterisation.
“The ‘white hats’ still hold 600 BTC. If this was ever a negotiated reward under an encrypted contract signed on-chain, it looks more like extortion than white-hat hacking,” Guillemet wrote on X.
Liquid disabled its bridge nodes after the withdrawal and asked exchanges to suspend L-BTC deposits and withdrawals. The network has not indicated whether the remaining coins will be returned, how it will cover any gap in L-BTC backing or when the sidechain will resume normal operations.
CLARITY Act Faces Narrow Path
The CLARITY Act heads to a procedural vote in the Senate on September 15, but its path to passage has narrowed. Prediction market Polymarket puts the odds of the bill passing this year at just 17 per cent, and the outlook worsened after the last two weeks of House sessions were cancelled.
Even if the Senate advances the bill, there will not be time to reconcile the new text with the House version until the post-midterm elections lame duck session.
One development in the bill’s favour: the National Sheriffs’ Association upgraded its position from “opposed” to “neutral.”
In separate regulatory activity, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed updating transfer agent rules for the tokenised stock era.
Banking Giants Plan Stablecoin Venture
A consortium of 21 banks, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citi and Deutsche Bank, will create a new company to issue a USD stablecoin in the first half of 2027. The venture plans to subsequently issue stablecoins linked to other G7 currencies, including the euro.
The move comes despite opposition from Pablo Hernandez de Cos, Chief of the Bank for International Settlements, who argued that stablecoins do not credibly function as a means of payment at scale and that tokenised bank deposits should instead be used for day-to-day payments.
That is increasingly a minority position. The Wall Street Journal reports JPMorgan Chase held preliminary internal discussions about launching its own stablecoin, and Revolut has launched a euro-backed stablecoin called EURR for two million customers across Denmark, Poland and Portugal, with plans to expand across its 75-million-strong user base.
In the UK, the London Stock Exchange is partnering with Payward to add the 100 largest LSE-listed companies to the xStocks platform. It also hopes to list them on its forthcoming LSE 24 trading venue in 2027, pending regulatory approval.
The G20 nations have issued a statement agreeing on the importance of digital asset innovation and the need for appropriate regulation.
Robinhood Chain Flips Solana For DEX Volume
Robinhood Chain flipped Solana for daily decentralised exchange volume this past week and generated US$30 million in weekly revenue. The chain’s native launchpad token, PONS, surged 140 per cent and joined the top 100 coins, with the project reportedly reaching a US$100 million annual run rate.
The success of the Layer 2 chain has pushed Ethereum data blob usage to new all-time highs. Part of the activity has involved pairing memecoins with tokenised stocks such as AMC, although AMC Chief Executive, Adam Aron, has threatened legal action.
Less than two months after launch, Robinhood Chain took US$1 million in 24-hour fees on one day this past week, surpassing Solana, Tron and Ethereum.
Solana Triples Transaction Size
Solana is set to triple its maximum transaction size on Wednesday, a change that will allow operations previously requiring multiple transactions to be completed in one. The infrastructure upgrade has been framed as a user-experience improvement, reducing the complexity of on-chain interactions.
Separately, Solana validators have voted to reduce the network’s inflation rate, resulting in 18.9 million fewer SOL tokens coming into existence over the next six years. Under the new schedule, Solana will reach a 1.5 per cent annual inflation rate within 2.8 years instead of the 5.7 years previously projected.
Hunter Biden Announces Memecoin
Hunter Biden has announced plans to launch a memecoin called LAPTOP on Coinbase’s Base network, allocating 20 per cent of the supply to investors who lost money on the TRUMP memecoin. The project will burn up to 30 per cent of the supply if the Democrats win the 2028 presidential election.
The announcement is part of a broader uptick in memecoin activity, which some commentators view as a sign that speculative appetite is returning to the market.
Singapore Cements Position As Regional Crypto Hub
Singapore is home to 2,285 of the 3,957 blockchain companies in Southeast Asia and accounts for 82.5 per cent of all-time blockchain equity funding tracked in the region, according to market data platform Tracxn.
In 2026, regional firms closed 25 funding rounds worth US$680 million, more than double the 2025 figure.
Singapore has also cracked down on crypto scams, with four operations conducted this year by police with the help of crypto service providers. The latest operation prevented 355 people from losing US$7 million to scammers.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore has proposed a new licence for issuers of MAS-regulated stablecoins. The framework would require reserves of at least 100 per cent of tokens in circulation, timely redemptions and would prohibit issuers from paying interest or rewards. Reserves would need to be segregated from the issuer’s other funds and held with licensed custodians.
Separately, Singapore payments company, Nium, will test the use of USD and euro-backed stablecoins for cross-border payment settlement outside business hours using the Visa payments network. The trial is part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Bloom.
Bridge Founder, Zach Abrams, told Fortune he believed Singapore businesses would embrace local stablecoins. “Businesses in Singapore are going to want to hold tokenised Singapore dollars, so they can convert them into Treasuries or other assets to earn yield,” Abrams explained.
New York Lawsuit Targets Dormant Bitcoin Wallets
A class action filed in New York under the state’s lost property law seeks control of roughly 39,069 Bitcoin addresses that have sat untouched for years, representing an estimated US$293 billion combined. The suit argues the coins should be treated as abandoned property.
The timing proved awkward. A wallet that acquired 40 Bitcoin for about US$120 in 2011 moved its entire balance, now worth more than US$3 million, in a single transaction last week. It was one of four old wallets that stirred in the same period, together worth close to US$16 million. Researchers had flagged the address as one of those named in the lawsuit.
Quantum-Proofing Efforts Advance
Blockstream researchers have published a new Bitcoin Improvement Proposal to upgrade Bitcoin with the SHRINCS signature scheme. While smaller than the post-quantum scheme it was derived from, it still requires a 5,777-byte fallback transaction for wallet restoration from a seed phrase. The proposal acknowledges that “a security proof is TODO.”
StarkWare has tested an experimental quantum-secure transaction on the existing Bitcoin mainnet that protects against short-range attacks in the mempool. However, the process takes hours of computation and costs around US$200.
Developers at Ripple have laid out a four-stage plan to upgrade the XRP ledger to quantum-secure status, including an emergency fallback plan.
Ethereum’s core developers have confirmed EIP-8141 for next year’s Hegota hard fork. Known as Frame Transaction, the proposal combines native account abstraction with post-quantum readiness.
AUSTRAC Tightens Enforcement
AUSTRAC has cancelled, suspended or refused to renew 45 remittance and virtual asset provider registrations over the past year. The financial intelligence agency linked the cancellation of GetCoins’ licence to the disruption of alleged cryptocurrency scams following customer complaints.
Last Updated on September 9, 2026 by Nick Ross
