News

• Oil spill at UAE coast as a result of the Iran war. Source

• Brazilian stock market dropped nearly 30% on surprise re-election of President Lula Da Silva. Source

• Saudi Arabia offered Yemen’s Houthis $1B to halt their attacks. Source

• The Federal Reserve left the federal funds rate unchanged at 4%. Source

• ECB expected to do 25bps rate hike in December, then pause. Source

• Russia set to extend diesel export ban until end of year. Source

• Ukraine paused strikes on Russian refiners after pressure from the US. Source

• Trump spoke with Netanyahu to prepare new bombings on Iran after the US midterms. Source

Calendar

Monday 2 November

• US - ISM Manufacturing PMI - forecast 54.7, previous 54.5

Tuesday 3 November

• US - JOLTS Job Openings - forecast 7.11M, previous 7.08M

• US - Congressional Elections

Wednesday 4 November

• Eurozone - Core CPI Flash Estimate y/y - forecast 2.5%, previous 2.5%

• Eurozone - CPI Flash Estimate y/y - forecast 4.0%, previous 3.8%

• US - ISM Services PMI - forecast 54.9, previous 54.9

Thursday 5 November

• UK - BOE Monetary Policy Report

• UK - Monetary Policy Summary

• UK - Official Bank Rate - forecast 4.00%, previous 3.75%

• UK - BOE Gov Bailey Speaks

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 197K, previous 194K

• Eurozone - ECB President Lagarde Speaks

Friday 6 November

• US - Average Hourly Earnings m/m - forecast 0.3%, previous 0.1%

• US - Non-Farm Employment Change - forecast 63K, previous 29K

• US - Unemployment Rate - forecast 4.2%, previous 4.2%

• US - Prelim UoM Consumer Sentiment - forecast 47.8, previous 48.0

• US - Prelim UoM Inflation Expectations - previous 4.7%

• Japan - BOJ Gov Ueda Speaks

Crypto

Prices

A mild red week, which looks boring on face value, but it’s remarkable considering what went down this week. Crypto just experienced its biggest hack (in USD) in its entire history with one of the biggest exchanges in the world, Binance, getting hacked for about $6B across multiple chains. The market definitely took a hit because of it, but most coins, especially BTC, had limited downside all things considered.

HYPE is an unexpected outlier because the legendary, oldschool, TradFi investor and trader Stanley Druckenmiller announced on X that he’s investing in Trade(xyz), which is partnering with ICE to bring 24/7 perps on Hyperliquid in the US. Druckenmiller almost never posts on X, so it’s a special event.

PEPE also had a great week, printing higher lows, which might be the result of a Justin Sun linked wallet accumulating it.

News

• DAT news: Strategy bought no BTC this week, but repurchased $204.9M worth of STRC, Strive bought 6,182 BTC and Bitmine bought 10,452 ETH last week. Source

• The NBA partnered with Kalshi and Polymarket. Source

• Legendary TradFi investor, Druckenmiller himself, posted on X that he invested in Trade(xyz). Source

• Dubai royal family backed company launched a $1.5B bitcoin investment fund. Source

• Binance got hacked for a total of approximately $6.3B. $3B of those assets have been frozen onchain so far, with notable help from Tether and Circle. Coinbase CEO Armstrong announced that they’ll help Binance however they can. Binance and CZ assured users that all user funds would be safe and that Binance would cover the loss. The FBI announced that the culprit is North Korea. This is the largest hack in USD in all of crypto history. Binance Circle Tether Coinbase FBI

ETFs

BlackRock ETF customers were still buying BTC this week, but other ETFs sold off significantly, resulting in a negative week. ETH has a red week as well, but here’s it’s all BlackRock that did the selling.

TradFi is still in risk-off mode. It’s no surprise with a Fed funds rate decision this week and increased Iran war tensions, and then on top of that there was an unprecedented Binance hack.

Unlocks

There are only a couple notable unlocks, but they’re big. BTW has the biggest notional unlock at $111.8M, but KITE is taking the worst supply shock with a $73.3M unlock that makes up roughly 27% of its mcap.

There’s potentially some extra supply coming up because of the Binance hack this week. The hackers still have BTC, ETH, XRP and SOL. Before they also had smaller quantities of AVAX and TRX, but those have been converted already to ETH and stablecoins.

What I’m watching

A lot has changed since last week, but at the same time nothing has changed.

The Fed funds rate decision is behind and it remained unchanged at 4%, so that uncertainty is behind us now. US GDP was decent, and core PCE came in at 0.3% m/m as expected. The ECB and BOJ are expected do one more hike. None of this has a major impact on the markets anymore.

There are three things that happened this week that were significant.

1. The AI bubble got deflated a bit with declining capex and major crashes of some big tech stocks, most notably GOOG and INTC.

2. Trump indicated that the USA and Israel will most likely strike Iran hard again after the US midterms on the third of November.

3. Binance got hacked for more than $6B.

Because of the AI revolution we’ve seen some unprecedented gains this year, and now we’re seeing some unprecedented drops. It’s neither a surprise that this AI fueled market would be volatile, nor is it a surprise that there would be corrections. I think that this has very little effect on crypto at the moment.

Trump has been signaling for a couple weeks that he’ll most likely go to war with Iran again after the midterms. This has most likely already been, at least partially, priced in.

The Binance hack was, of course, dramatic and it clearly ruined the positive momentum that crypto briefly had. However, considering that this was the largest hack in all of crypto history, of one of the biggest exchanges in the world, it’s incredible that BTC hasn’t made new lows, and it proves, in my opinion, that there’s a strong hidden bid.

There’s been an enormous amount of bad news recently, and it’s been dragging the market down a bit, but BTC simply refuses to make new lows. Call me crazy, but this is massively bullish.

Open interest has been rising, and it’s almost back to its previous highs. During this downturn long liquidations have been slowly ramping up too, so it’s clear that there’s liquidity around the local low of $75k. I expect one more drop, potentially around the midterms, that takes out the local low, triggers a lot of liquidations, depletes the increased open interest that will be used as fuel, then a reversal to the upside.

As far as my bags go, nothing changes. I still hold everything that I’ve talked about in the previous issues. In fact, all of my bids have been filled now, with the exception of a few more BTC bids. We’re just waiting for the climax of this de-risking period, then I think that BTC will violently move higher.

Stocks

Prices

It was a very strange week for stocks. The S&P500 dropped less than 2%, but a bunch of tech stocks, mostly within the AI and semicon sector, took serious beatings. GOOG and INTC stole the show with 12% and 24% crashes, respectively. This comes as AI capex is slowing down. We’re seeing the AI bubble getting deflated a little bit.

News

• SPCX signed a $40B GPU financing deal with Apollo (APO). Source

• META set to raise up to $95B through series of stock offerings to fund AI development. Its first tranche of $25B was 5x oversubscribed. Source Source

• Anthropic officially filed its registration for an IPO. Source

• OpenAI plans to buy Google AI chips. Source

• Marvell (MRVL) is in advanced talks to buy Lumentum (LITE). Source

• INTC crashed 24% after weaker than expected earnings. Source

• OKTA to be added to the S&P500. Source

• Google in talks with the DOD for work on Golden Dome. Source

Earnings

There were some rough sell-offs this week after earnings, both beat and missed, and next week there are a few more big ones coming up. There’s some weakness in the stock market at the moment, so hold on tight.

News

• A critical bug in PHP created a vulnerability for about 70% of the world’s websites. The bug was found using AI. Many websites went offline to prevent security breaches, until a patch was pushed. Source

• Major US banks detect unauthorized AI agents accessing customer accounts. No funds lost so far, but many banks are restricting AI agent access. Source

• Yemen’s Houthis announced that they struck Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude oil pipeline. Source

• Ukraine’s military-grade version of Starlink experienced a significant slowdown which disrupted military operations. Source

• Trump said that he’s considering striking Iran again. This comes shortly after Netanyahu claimed that Iran is restarting its nuclear program. Source Source

Calendar

Tuesday 27 October

• US - CB Consumer Confidence - forecast 80.5, previous 81.9

Wednesday 28 October

• US - Federal Funds Rate - forecast 4.00%, previous 4.00%

• US - FOMC Statement

• US - FOMC Press Conference

Thursday 29 October

• US - Advance GDP q/q - forecast 3.2%, previous 2.2%

• US - Core PCE Price Index m/m - forecast 0.3%, previous 0.2%

• US - Advance GDP Price Index q/q - forecast 3.5%, previous 6.1%

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 198K, previous 194K

• Eurozone - Main Refinancing Rate - forecast 2.65%, previous 2.65%

• Eurozone - Monetary Policy Statement

• Eurozone - ECB Press Conference

Friday 30 October

• Japan - BOJ Policy Rate - forecast <1.25%, previous <1.25%

• Japan - Monetary Policy Statement

• Japan - BOJ Outlook Report

• Japan - BOJ Press Conference

• Germany - Prelim CPI m/m - forecast 0.1%, previous 0.6%

• Germany - Prelim GDP q/q - forecast 0.1%, previous 0.3%

• US - Employment Cost Index q/q - forecast 0.8%, previous 0.9%

Crypto

Prices

A narrow grinding decline. BTC, although red, is holding up somewhat on decent ETF inflows, but altcoins take a big hit every time BTC sneezes. The market is skittish because of geopolitical tensions and a big macro financials week coming up.

News

• BlackRock filed for another bitcoin ETF with downside protection. Source

• Dogecoin Labs, backed by Dogecoin Foundation, consolidated MyDoge wallet, DogeOS and Such App in a move to push DOGE into payments and DeFi. Source

• TSLA revealed that it hasn’t sold any of its $972,000,000 BTC in Q3 2026. Source

• Switzerland’s FINMA approved the country’s first retail BTC ETF. Source

• NEAR announces cross margin powered by Hyperliquid. Source

• FOMO launches Hyperliquid powered perps on web. Source

ETFs

BTC has a positive week again, after two negative ones. It’s entirely carried by BlackRock, while other ETFs were neutral or negative.

ETH is taking the worst of it and has now printed a fourth red week. TradFi is clearly in risk-off mode at the moment, most likely because of the heightened geopolitical issues.

Unlocks

There’s a pretty big unlocks week coming up, which couldn’t come at a worse time since the market has already been selling off. Bullish unlocks seem unlikely at the moment.

What I’m watching

Just as predicted last week, BTC swept the 80k low and then bounced. And, also like expected, altcoins took a harder beating in the process.

Now the question is whether BTC will print merely a dead cat bounce and then dump further to the bottom of the wider range and sweep the $75k low or not.

Geopolitical tensions, mainly the war in Ukraine and rising tensions with Iran, have been rising significantly again. On top of that, we’ve got a stacked macro financial week coming up with interest rate decisions from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan, major tech company earnings, US GDP data and US inflation data. I think it’s good that the market has been selling off going into these events, it increases the chances that all of the bad news has already been priced in. I could see the Fed funds rate decision specifically being the climax of this de-risking period that we’re in. So I’m looking at a BTC trend change either after the Fed funds rate decision, whatever level it’s at, or a sweep of the 75k local low and then a reversal. Once bitcoin bounces, altcoins will follow shortly after.

I still hold the position that crypto has completed a four year cycle and we’re at the beginning of a new bull market. Keep in mind that during bull markets prices rise on a continuous wall of worry.

Stocks

Prices

A mixed bag, but overall a slightly negative week. META fell after earnings, even though it was a beat.

News

• TSLA missed earnings, but reported a positive EPS and gross margin. Source

• Elon said he’ll donate one share of SPCX to every American child in 2027. Source

• SPCX crushed its Q3 2026 earnings and guided Q1 2027 revenue to $35B vs $25B expected. Elon also expects SPCX’s Starlink bandwidth demand to grow 1000x over the next five years. Source Source Source

• Elon said that the SPCX and TSLA Terafab project is targeting its first working test chip by May 2027. Source

• 1.3B SPCX shares unlocked as of Oct 22 2026, now available for trading. Source

• EBAY to cut about 9% of its workforce to simplify operations. Source

• OpenAI and GOOG made a major AI distribution deal. Source

• OpenAI is expanding ChatGPT ads to 89 countries. Source

• OpenAI is in the process of closing a funding round that would raise $30B and value the company at $1.25T. Source

• NET stock pumped this week after rolling out emergency protection against two critical PHP security bugs affecting roughly 70% of the internet’s websites. Source

• META is reportedly planning a new class of non-voting shares to help fund its massive AI build out without weakening Zuckerberg’s control. Source

• META beat Q3 2026 earnings. Source

• Zuckerberg said that he expects Muse compute cost efficiency to increase more than 10-fold over the next year. Source

• IBM beat earnings on strong AI demand. Source

• ONDS is expanding its partnership with PLTR. Source

• AXP (American Express) lays off 5% of its employees. Source

Earnings

It’s earnings season, so we’re doing two charts this week.

Strategy’s revenue is pretty much irrelevant, because its core business has become diluting shares for bitcoin accumulation. So let’s take a look at that: its estimated earnings per share is $21.50 against $8.42 last year, and its BTC holdings rose from from 640,031 at the end of Q3 last year to 848,517 as of 18 October. Purchases have recently slowed down though: the last three weeks they bought 334 BTC, then 250 and 267 last week.

We have a bunch of big tech stocks this week that have been doing a lot of the carrying of the AI bull run. The earnings of these companies have been phenomenal, but SK Hynix is stealing the show: a quadrupling of its revenue since last year. Intel is also experiencing revenue growth that they haven’t seen in years with a 21% y.o.y increase.

There’s been some pressure on the stock market though, mainly because of geopolitical FUD, and it’s these big AI related tech companies that are responsible for most of the gains of the stock market this year. So hopefully they beat their earnings to keep the market afloat.

News

• US CPI data came in hotter than expected. Source

• The US has floated the idea of unfreezing Russian assets to restart peace talks with Ukraine. Source

• Ukrainian president Zelensky asked the EU for €70B to keep funding the war against Russia. Source

Calendar

Wednesday 21 October

• UK - CPI y/y - forecast 3.4%, previous 3.1%

• UK - BOE Gov Bailey Speaks

Thursday 22 October

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 200K, previous 199K

Friday 23 October

• UK - Retail Sales m/m - forecast -0.2%, previous 0.5%

• France - Flash Manufacturing PMI - forecast 50.6, previous 50.6

• France - Flash Services PMI - forecast 50.8, previous 51.2

• Germany - Flash Manufacturing PMI - forecast 53.5, previous 53.9

• Germany - Flash Services PMI - forecast 52.6, previous 52.9

• UK - Flash Manufacturing PMI - forecast 51.8, previous 51.9

• UK - Flash Services PMI - forecast 51.8, previous 52.1

• US - Flash Manufacturing PMI - forecast 55.5, previous 55.9

• US - Flash Services PMI - forecast 58.0, previous 58.8

• US - Revised UoM Consumer Sentiment - forecast 46.3, previous 46.3

• US - Revised UoM Inflation Expectations - previous 4.7%

Crypto

Prices

Crypto got cooked this week. BTC held up relatively well, but alts took a beating. It’s clear that the macroeconomic shitshow is affecting crypto too. More on that in the later section “What I’m watching”.

News

• Kraken’s parent company Payward received full approval from Dubai to allow virtual asset services for retail and institutions. Source

• Strategy acquired 250 BTC and repurchased $192M of STRC. Source

• Morgan Stanley’s head of Digital Asset Strategy said during an interview at TOKEN2049 that the RWA market would reach the $3T to $10T range by 2030 without question. Source

• Bitmine added12,532 ETH over the past week to its holdings. Source

• Coinbase outlined its Bitcoin post quantum security recommendations. Source

• France is considering imposing a 31.4% tax on crypto to stablecoin conversions. Source

• Kraken is set to buy the EU regulated Saldo Bank, expected to close in 2027. Source

• Ripple Prime added support for perpetual swaps tied to more than 100 traditional asset markets. The swaps reference perps listed by Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid. Source

• PumpFun is set to launch crypto perpetual futures powered by Hyperliquid. Source

ETFs

ETFs continue selling off, that’s two back to back net outflow weeks now, although the selling was less severe this week than it was last week. The majority of the flows came from BlackRock, while other ETFs were mostly flat.

Unlocks

ZRO has a significant unlock coming up. This is one of the coins that I talked about in the previous issue. It’s one that I might end up buying, but as I said last time, only if the fee switch gets approved in December, because otherwise it simply has too much supply with monthly unlocks of about 10.6M ZRO to core contributors and 13M to investors.

What I’m watching

BTC did a sweep of the local low, as I expected and pointed out in last week’s issue. However, there was no follow through higher after the stop hunt, so I think that it’s very likely that we get another sweep. There are two possibilities here since we’re stuck in a range within a larger range. Either BTC dips just below 80k and then recovers, or it does that dip, dead cat bounces, and then sweeps the low of the wider range at 75k before recovering again.

Crypto looks weak this week, and so do the stock markets. The Ukraine war and the Iran war both escalated again, the energy crisis is back in full swing, CPI is hot, the market fears that the Federal Reserve will hike rates, and as a cherry on top there are increased fears over EU nations debt sustainability. This has been weighing on the stock market, and the FUD has spilled over to crypto. The ETFs, the main reason why BTC printed a bottom at $60k, are now selling off. This is the issue that we’re facing at the moment, and it’s the reason why I expect more red short term.

But there’s another way to look at this. Despite all of these terrible macro events, BTC is still trading at $80k, most alts haven’t made new lows, and the S&P500 is trading not so far from its all time high. This shows resilience, which is mostly due to the fact that we’re in the midst of one of the greatest tech revolutions of our lifetime with AI, and crypto having completed its four year cycle and printing a high timeframe bottom on institutional demand. If any of these macro situations improve even a little bit, it could suddenly alleviate a lot of pressure and move everything higher very quickly.

For this reason I remain short term bearish, but long term bullish.

Stocks

Prices

Stocks are a mixed bag this week, but it’s a troubling one because there’s a defensive de-risking out of AI related stocks, which have been the main driver of the stock bull market this year.

News

• MU slid 14% this past week, possibly because of reports that China’s CXMT plans to launch new server memory by the end of the year. Source

• ASML dipped after a slight revenue miss, yet net income remains strong. Source

• Just 10 tech stocks have been responsible for 70% of the S&P500’s gains since March 30. Source

• Anthropic’s revenue jumped to $16.8B, up nearly 50% from Q2. Source

• SK Hynix seeks US approval to export chipmaking equipment to China as condition for building a new US factory. Source

• CRWV credit default swaps rose sharply amid heavy debt concerns for its AI infrastructure expansion. Source

• TSLA demonstrated a flying Roadster. We got flying cars before GTA VI. Source

• SPCX Starlink Mobile is projected to reach $65B in revenue by 2031. Source

Earnings

There’s a monster earnings week coming up with more than 300 reports. A couple of them are very important right now, most notably SPCX, TSLA and META. The stock market’s mainly been driven by the big tech companies, so these giants better have good earnings to keep the market afloat.

News

• Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz have rebounded almost to pre war levels. Source

• US Strategic Petroleum Reserve inventory fell 767,000 barrels to 283 million, the lowest level since 1982. Source

• President Trump said that the US won’t attack Iran prior to the midterm elections in November. Source

• The cost of insuring against a French default is at multi year highs. Source

Calendar

Wednesday 14 October

• Eurozone - ECB President Lagarde Speaks

• US - Core CPI m/m - forecast 0.2%, previous 0.3%

• US - Core CPI y/y - forecast 2.5%, previous 2.4%

• US - CPI m/m - forecast 0.6%, previous 0.4%

• US - CPI y/y - forecast 3.6%, previous 3.4%

Thursday 15 October

• UK - GDP m/m - forecast -0.1%, previous 0.4%

• US - Core PPI m/m - forecast 0.3%, previous 0.2%

• US - Core Retail Sales m/m - forecast 0.5%, previous 1.4%

• US - PPI m/m - forecast 0.5%, previous 0.4%

• US - Retail Sales m/m - forecast 0.3%, previous 1.2%

• US - Philly Fed Manufacturing Index - forecast 26.5, previous 37.8

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 195K, previous 197K

Friday 16 October

• US - Fed Chairman Warsh Speaks

Crypto

Prices

Crypto experienced some serious de-risking this week across the board, with a few exceptions. STRK is the notable one that stands out, and it’s actually related to the broader market sell-off.

This week there were renewed fears of quantum computers and AI accelerated math possibly breaking blockchain security in the not so distant future. Some high profile people in the industry like Justin Drake and Vitalik Buterin shared their thoughts on this which made the rounds on Twitter (source). STRK pumped on this narrative because the Starknet L2 has built in quantum resistance.

News

• Strategy reported a $21B gain on digital assets in Q3 2026. It acquired 334 extra BTC last week and repurchased $176M of STRC. Source

• The SEC approved the first ever 3x leveraged BTC and ETH ETFs. Source

• The CFTC Chair labeled BTC, ETH, SOL, XLM, XTZ and XRP as digital commodities. Source

• OKX raised capital at $25B valuation. Source

• Ether.fi announced its own USD stablecoin, built on Ethena’s platform. Source

• Coinbase Markets added PONS to its roadmap, leading to a possible listing. Source

• The Winklevoss twins filed for a spot ZEC ETF with the SEC. Source

• South Africa’s First National Bank launched crypto trading for its customers. Source

• China called for the construction of a national blockchain network. Source

• The DOJ is reviewing Binance’s compliance with its 2023 settlement, which could lead to revived charges and fines. Source

• Citrini Research shared an article on the intersection of agentic AI and crypto, featuring two of their crypto investment baskets. Source

• The Plasma One card is now averaging over $1M in daily spend. Source

ETFs

Painful ETF week, both BTC and ETH got hit hard. We also have an unusual flow split between the ETFs. Most of the BTC selling came from second tier ETFs, while the bulk of the ETH outflows was driven by BlackRock, which is usually the main source of new inflows.

It’s possible that TradFi traders reduced their risk on the quantum computer and AI accelerated math fears that I mentioned earlier.

Unlocks

PUMP and ARB have the largest unlocks notionally, but they make up only about 1.5% of their market caps. DBR has an unlock of $11.9M coming up, but it makes up more than 10% of its market cap.

STRK rallied this week, but it’s rallying straight into a somewhat sizable unlock.

What I’m watching

This week’s price action played out exactly as I predicted in last week’s issue. On the high timeframe I’m still very bullish; on the low timeframe there’s more chop to come. And it’ll stay like that until open interest meaningfully increases. Currently it seems very unlikely that a strong trend can be established without OI that can be used as fuel.

Besides BTC, I’m still very bullish on RWA related coins. The RWA trade seems to be reaching critical mass with the wildly popular Citrini Research which just published a new article in which they talk about how RWA is reaching escape velocity.

They also shared their crypto investment basket and it looks like this:

There’s a lot of overlap with the coins that I’ve been eyeing (check last week’s issue for the list). The dips that happened this week across the board were a prime opportunity for me to accumulate.

I also added ZRX (0x Protocol) to my portfolio. I think that it has a great risk/reward. If it goes back to its previous all time high, it would be roughly a 19x.
0x is a DEX aggregator. It’s benefiting from RWA adoption because it routes xStocks on Ethereum. It also benefits from Robinhood Chain, where it’s an aggregator and which has integrated xStocks. ZRX currently has zero inflation and about 85% of its total supply is already circulating. The only downside is that holders don’t get a cut of the revenue and revenue isn’t that great to begin with.

After reading the Citrini piece I decided to research ZRO. It’s an interesting messaging layer that lets blockchains talk to each other, but whether I’ll be buying it or not depends on an incredibly important “fee switch” vote that the LayerZero community will be having at a date yet to be decided, but sometime in December. LayerZero could charge an extra fee on cross chain messages (their core application) and use it to buy and burn ZRO. If this fee switch gets turned on then I’ll be buying it, otherwise I won’t because ZRO has significant monthly unlocks.

LINK is also a great coin, and benefits from the RWA narrative, but I don’t think it a great buy because it already has such a big mcap.

Stocks

Prices

Mixed bag this week. It’s mostly semis that sold off. We’re seeing a rotation out of AI hardware, into payments and staples. TSM’s earnings coming up will be very interesting.

News

• VZ (Verizon) and other US mobile carriers took a beating this week as SPCX (SpaceX) is trying to acquire a license to become a mobile carrier as well. Source

• OpenAI is discussing a pre-money valuation of $1.4T in a new financing round. Its annualized revenue is $20B lower than the initially projected $70B. Source

• SHOP (Shopify) renewed its multi year deal with the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Source

• NVDA (Nvidia) is in talks to invest further in, or acquire Reflection AI. Source

Earnings

There’s a busy earnings week coming up, and it’s mostly financial companies. TSM is the only non financial company, but it’s the most important one. The entire AI trade runs through Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Macro

News

• The US government is offering to loan 40 million barrels of oil to energy companies from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Source

• US PCE inflation data came in lower than expected at 0.2% m/m after its calculation was revised by the government. Source

• The US 10Y Note Yield rose above 5.30% and hit its highest level since April 2002. Source

• China suspends fuel exports until further notice. China depleting its own oil reserves was a major reason why the global energy crisis remained relatively muted. Source

• The US adds 29,000 jobs to the economy in September, below the expectations of 89,000. Source

• According to Trump, Europe has agreed to release a “massive amount” of its own diesel reserves. This comes after Trump threatened to put a ban on US diesel exports. Source

Calendar

Monday 5 October

• US - ISM Services PMI - forecast 55.1, previous 55.4

Tuesday 6 October

• Japan - BOJ Gov Ueda Speaks

Wednesday 7 October

• US - FOMC Meeting Minutes

Thursday 8 October

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 200K, previous 197K

Friday 9 October

• US - Prelim UoM Consumer Sentiment - forecast 47.6, previous 47.8

• US - Prelim UoM Inflation Expectations - previous 4.6%

Crypto

Prices

BTC and ETH stayed flat, while the rest of the market retraced a bit. Higher timeframe bullish structures remain intact for most coins though.

AAVE is one of the interesting odd ones out in a positive way. Tokenized stocks went live. Seven Coinbase stock tokens can now be used as collateral on Aave V4.

I explain later in the newsletter why LIT and ENA had a significant bleed.

News

• Strategy acquired 1,665 BTC and repurchased $152M of STRC. Source

• Coinbase is bringing stablecoins into the banking system with Citi, offering instant stablecoin acceptance for institutions on bank grade, regulated infrastructure. Source

• Belarus officially registers its first two crypto banks. Source

• Coinbase received CFTC approval for Coinbase Clearing LLC, which allows it to offer a full derivatives suite. Source

• State Street, a $6.2tn asset manager, says it plans to bring assets onchain in 2027. Source

• Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, announced 24/7 equities markets. Robinhood has also announced that it will offer crypto perps in app for US users, via Bitstamp, which it acquired in 2025. Source Source

• Hyperliquid Labs unstaked $320m of HYPE on Sep 30 for its monthly team unlock, which will be sold OTC to an institution. Source

• OpenUSD, backed by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, went live on Wednesday across Solana, Base and Tempo. Source

• The SEC proposes a new self custody rule for investment firms. Source

• Trump’s memecoin team is hosting a third event for the top 185 token holders. Source

• South African banking giant Absa becomes Africa's first bank to offer crypto custody services. Source

• NEAR Intents halted services after a bug in how its smart contract interacted with Omni's deposit and withdrawal flow. General Manager Alex Shevchenko says they have identified the entity behind the exploit. Source

ETFs

The ETFs significantly slowed down this week, with ETH being slightly negative even. I don’t believe that this is anything to worry about, I read this as consolidation after an exceptional inflow week last week.

Note: BlackRock’s Friday figures haven’t been posted at the time of writing. So the numbers could be revised and change the story.

Unlocks

ENA and HYPE are worth paying attention to.

Ethena bought out several early investors. All remaining early investor tokens have been moved to a single unlock event on Oct 5. That’s a total of 1.4B tokens ($340M), which makes up about 14% of the circulating supply that could get sold. However, the reason why these investors still have their tokens is because they didn’t want to sell to Ethena, which would be interpreted as conviction.

On top of this 1.4B supply, there’s another 3.03B token supply that StablecoinX holds, which could also unlock starting tomorrow. It seems unlikely though because 1. StablecoinX is an ENA DAT, so the whole purpose of the company is to hold ENA, and 2. even if it wanted to sell, the Foundation’s approval and five business days’ notice are needed.

What I’m watching

The market generally looks great. Overall the bias remains bullish, especially now that we’ve had a weekly and monthly close above the previous high timeframe swing high. The cyclical downtrend has now, per classical technical analysis rules, been officially broken.

However, on lower timeframes it’s likely that BTC will chop around for a bit, because a range seems to have been established, and there’s clearly liquidity resting on both sides. Any dips that could come out of this, both for BTC and altcoins, are for buying in my opinion.

LIT is one of the coins that I’ve mentioned multiple times, but this week it experienced a fundamentally devastating event. Lighter has a partnership with Robinhood that’s centered on Robinhood Chain and Robinhood Wallet where users could trade perps with USDG as collateral. However, Vlad Tenev (RH CEO) announced this week that Robinhood will be offering crypto perps in its app via Bitstamp. This is direct competition for Lighter. It’s still a great project, but for this reason LIT isn’t very interesting to me at the moment.

I still really like RWA coins, as mentioned in previous editions. The charts above (source, source) further show that this is a rapidly growing subsection of the crypto industry. The first chart shows the total circulating onchain supply of tokenized equities in nominal terms, and the second one shows the same but as a percentage of the total stablecoin supply. That second chart is especially interesting because it tells you that even though RWA is trending up at an incredible pace, it’s still only a fraction of the total stablecoin supply, which is currently still the most successful crypto application. In simple English: we’re still early to the RWA trade.

Coins I like: UNI, AAVE, ENA, HYPE, ONDO, AERO, MORPHO, RAY, SYRUP, PLUME, ZRX.

ENA has a massive unlock event tomorrow, Oct 5. The coin has already retraced quite a bit and could dip even further because of the FUD, but if it does it would be a great buying opportunity. ENA is even more interesting because it should perform really well during bull markets. Funding rates increase during a bull market and farming funding is a core part of Ethena’s business.

Prices

MU beat earnings convincingly, but the stock sold off slightly regardless.

SPCX has had a great month and seems to have established an uptrend after its initial heavy sell off shortly after the IPO.

News

• Anthropic is seeking to IPO mid November. Source

• Reuters did an Anthropic IPO prospectus review and unveiled some shocking numbers. Anthropic had a $42B loss for 2025, $4.6B in revenue, and plans on investing $518B in future cloud and infra commitments. Source

• SNPS (Synopsys) and OpenAI partner to develop joint chip design model. Source

• MU (Micron) strongly beat earnings. Source

• US equity ETFs are losing steam as inflows have gone down for three months straight. Source

Earnings

Trump said at the beginning of the week that he was open to meeting Iranian President Pezeshkian at the UN General Assembly. No such meeting happened, but a senior Iranian official told Reuters that diplomacy could be revived. However, since the weekend started the war has escalated again with Iran targeting vessels that tried to go through the Hormuz Strait without Iran’s permission (Source).

Trump is also considering a 90 day ban on US diesel exports to try to suppress the price domestically. He has already asked exporters to “voluntarily” lower their exports a bit (Source).

Calendar

Monday 28 September

• Eurozone - ECB President Lagarde Speaks

Tuesday 29 September

• Eurozone - ECB President Lagarde Speaks

• US - CB Consumer Confidence - forecast 90.1, previous 89.4

• US - JOLTS Job Openings - forecast 7.23M, previous 7.27M

Wednesday 30 September

• Germany - Prelim CPI m/m - forecast 0.5%, previous 0.2%

• US - ADP Non-Farm Employment Change - forecast 70K, previous 38K

• US - Core PCE Price Index m/m - forecast 0.3%, previous 0.2%

• US - Final GDP q/q - forecast 1.5%, previous 1.5%

• US - Final GDP Price Index q/q - forecast 6.4%, previous 6.4%

Thursday 1 October

• UK - BOE Gov Bailey Speaks

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 199K, previous 197K

• Eurozone - ECB President Lagarde Speaks

• US - FOMC Member Waller Speaks

• US - ISM Manufacturing PMI - forecast 55.0, previous 54.6

Friday 2 October

• Eurozone - Core CPI Flash Estimate y/y - forecast 2.5%, previous 2.4%

• Eurozone - CPI Flash Estimate y/y - forecast 3.7%, previous 3.3%

• US - Average Hourly Earnings m/m - forecast 0.3%, previous 0.3%

• US - Non-Farm Employment Change - forecast 98K, previous 162K

• US - Unemployment Rate - forecast 4.1%, previous 4.1%

Crypto

Heatmap

43 of the top 50 closed green.

Coins like ONDO, UNI, AAVE, and ARB that are benefiting from the RWA (real world assets) narrative continue to perform well.

ENA is still on a rampage too after the Foundation bought out several of the early investors.

NEAR is pumping because filed a spot ETF with the SEC which the NYSE approved and the SEC confirmed the registration statement effective on the same day.
Venice (VVV) also launched verifiably encrypted AI inference on NEAR on the 24th. VVV itself has also been performing very well, mostly because of the AI trade that’s hot across markets.

QNT had a remarkable week after being named technology partner for a tokenized deposit network involving 25 US banks.
Quant is a UK company that created middleware that lets different blockchains and bank systems talk to each other (so not a chain). It caters solely to institutions. On the 24th of September, The Clearing House, which is owned by the largest US banks and runs the country’s core payment rails, named Quant as its tech partner for its On-chain Money Initiative.

News

• Banks moved on-chain on three continents this week. Canada's six biggest banks launched a joint tokenized deposits project for 24/7 blockchain based payments. The UK's largest banks made the world's first interbank customer transactions using tokenized sterling deposits. Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International, with $235bn in assets, partnered with Bitpanda to enable crypto trading across 11 European markets. And Apple posted a job listing requiring stablecoin expertise, hinting at crypto payments via Apple Pay. Source Source Source Source

• The SEC clarified that live tokens on a working network aren't securities, and neither are buybacks or staking receipts on those networks. Commissioner Hester Peirce separately called for an end to mass KYC data collection, advocating ZK proofs to verify users instead. Source Source

• Both major prediction markets took legal heat. The CFTC is examining Kalshi's trades after a WSJ report alleged it inflated ether perp volume with repeated ~$5,500 trades; Kalshi denies wash trading, saying the prints came from market makers posting fixed quotes that faster traders hit. New York separately sued Polymarket for running an illegal gambling operation. Source Source

• CME Group is adding Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures. Moscow Exchange launched perpetual futures on BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP and TRX. And Binance finally listed HYPE for spot. Source Source

• Strategy bought 950 BTC and repurchased $174m of STRC. Saylor separately proposed moving STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD dividends to daily payouts. Source Source

• Last week Solana surpassed the NYSE for the first time ever in weekly trades. Source

• Ethena expands its USDe backing strategy into bStocks and equity perps on Binance. Source

• Bitget gets hacked with a loss of approximately $350M. CEO claims that user funds are safe. Source

• BlackRock supplies Ondo with allocation strategies for tokenized investment portfolios. Source

• Binance finally lists HYPE for spot trading. Source

ETFs

BTC had a fantastic ETF week with +$2,385.8M inflows. It’s good to see that after last week’s FUD with the Fed funds rate hike and the Clarity Act failing, the bid is now back on the menu.

We can clearly see by looking at the weekly chart that after the summer lull, the trend has completely changed and the ETFs are consistently accumulating again. This week’s BTC inflow was actually a top ten week in ETFs history.

ETH also had a great week with a nice +$689.8M inflow. BlackRock is, as always, doing most of the work, although Fidelity’s inflows for both BTC and ETH this week are impressive too.

Unlocks

It’s a pretty big unlocks week with 2Z taking the heaviest hit. The Oct 2 unlock makes up 48.6% of its market cap.

However, in the current state of the market, unlocks aren’t a guaranteed disaster. XPL, for example, had a massive unlock last week, worth about 65% of its mcap, but it rallied into the unlock and dipped afterwards, still finishing the week up about 17%.

ARB also bottomed on its $12.9M unlock on the 15th of September and then went on a 104% rally.

The impact of unlocks in this environment is more nuanced and depends on catalysts and community conviction.

What I’m watching

As I’ve said in past editions, I believe that RWA is going to be one of the biggest narratives this cycle because of its institutional/TradFi adoption, and the price action of recent weeks backs this theory.

It’s for this reason that I’m a fan of coins like UNI, ONDO, AAVE, HYPE, ENA and AERO. Interesting coins with slightly higher risk are MORPHO, RAY, SYRUP and PLUME.

UNI is the main venue for spot stock token trading.
ONDO is the largest issuer of tokenized treasuries and stocks.
AAVE has Horizon, a market where institutions can post RWAs as collateral.
HYPE dominates stock perps.
ENA’s reserves are moving into RWA.
AERO covers most stock token trading on Base.
MORPHO is a lending platform that lends against RWAs.
RAY is the main venue for Solana’s xStocks.
SYRUP does onchain private credit.
PLUME is a chain built only for RWAs.

Some of these coins have already experienced significant pumps so they might be a bit overextended short term, but dips are worth buying.

I also like coins with a stablecoin narrative, which is still the most successful crypto invention to date, and one seeing serious TradFi interest. Funny enough we see some overlap with RWA coins too.

XPL is the Tether backed L1 built specifically for stablecoin payments.
ENA gives exposure to the success of Ethena’s synthetic USDe.
AAVE is the largest lending market for stables.
MORPHO is the largest Robinhood Chain stables collateralized lender.
SYRUP is an institutional stablecoin lender.

Stocks

Heatmap

META had a great week on the unveiling of its new palm sized Tamagotchi like device with 5G, cameras and microphones, that will run its AI agent “Muse” (Source). META also partnered with SHOP to bring agentic checkout to all Shopify stores (Source).

The semiconductor and memory sectors are also doing well as the AI industry seems to be unfazed by the latest Fed fund rate hike.

Something to watch is TSM that’s been discussing a 5% wafer price hike starting January 2027 (Source).

Earnings

Memory has been hot for a minute and MU has been the face of it in the West. So Micron’s earnings could have an impact on the broader tech sector.

News

• Chinese gold ETFs added 11 tonnes of gold in August, their second consecutive increase. Source

• The EU has officially proposed making Canada an associate member. Source

• Saudi Arabia has informed European refiners that they’ll be allocating no crude oil next month amid the East-West pipeline shutdown due to the USA - Iran war. Source

• The Bank of Japan raised its interest rate by 25 bps to fight the highest inflation that Japan has experienced since 1995. Source

• Trump is forming an AI force to stop attacks on the AI industry. He’ll announce an AI czar in the near future. Trump reiterated his sentiment that AI growth shouldn’t be hindered or slowed down, and also predicted that the AI sector be worth as much as 25% of the USA’s GDP. Source

Calendar

Monday 21 September

• Eurozone - ECB President Lagarde Speaks

Tuesday 22 September

• Eurozone - ECB President Lagarde Speaks

Wednesday 23 September

• France - Flash Manufacturing PMI - forecast 50.9, previous 51.5

• France - Flash Services PMI - forecast 48.4, previous 48.4

• Germany - Flash Manufacturing PMI - forecast 54.0, previous 54.1

• Germany - Flash Services PMI - forecast 49.9, previous 48.5

• UK - Flash Manufacturing PMI - forecast 51.4, previous 51.5

• UK - Flash Services PMI - forecast 52.0, previous 52.8

Thursday 24 September

• Switzerland - SNB Monetary Policy Assessment

• Switzerland - SNB Policy Rate - forecast 0.00%, previous 0.00%

• Switzerland - SNB Press Conference

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 201K, previous 196K

Friday 25 September

• UK - BOE Gov Bailey Speaks

• US - Revised UoM Consumer Sentiment - forecast 47.5, previous 47.8

• US - Revised UoM Inflation Expectations - previous 4.6%

Crypto

Heatmap

The entire market pumps after a Fed rate hike and the Clarity Act failing. All of the worries were priced in, and now that the FUD is behind us the market experiences relief.

News

• The DOJ claims that millions of dollars in Iranian oil proceeds were laundered on Binance. Source

• X (Twitter) launches cashtag partner program with the ability to trade through participating brokerages, including Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini. Source

• Robinhood employees are charged by the DOJ with commodities fraud for insider trading on Robinhood listings on Hyperliquid. Source

• The US senate vote to advance the Clarity Act failed. Source

• Zcash holders backed the proposal to keep bitcoin-style halvings. Source

• Deutsche Bank launches institutional crypto custody service. Source

• Circle launched their new L1 chain Arc, with Blackrock and Visa being amongst their validators. Source

• Kraken’s parent company Payward plans to offer US clients onchain perps on Hyperliquid via HIP3 markets. Source

• Robinhood announced that it’ll support Circle’s L1, Arc. Source

• The CFTC announces that it’s ready to issue crypto rules despite the Senate failing to pass the Clarity Act cloture. Source

• The CFTC permits developers to build passive derivatives software without registering as brokers, including for crypto markets. Source

• The SEC allows temporary, conditional exemption to allow limited trading on tokenized stocks onchain. Source

• The USA sanctions crypto exchange BitBank over alleged transfers to Iran’s IRGC. Source

ETFs

Essentially a zero netflow week, but on twice as much volume as last week. This goes to show that traders weren’t sure what to make of major macro events that happened this week, so buyers and sellers cancelled each other out. BlackRock, interestingly, remains a buyer though.

ETH has its first negative week after it started its run.

Unlocks

Theoretically we got a massive unlocks week coming up, and it’s all because of XPL which has an unlock of a whopping $172.4M coming up, making up roughly 68% of its mcap. Tokenomist has asked the project for confirmation if this is actually happening, but the request remains pending.

What I’m watching

The Federal Reserved hiked the interest rate by 25 bps and the crypto Clarity Act is most likely dead after a failed US senate vote on Wednesday. In a vacuum you would say that both of these events are quite bearish, but the circumstances are unique and change the outcome quite a bit.

The Fed had to hike to do something, because inflation is sticky, bond yields were rising fast, and Warsh was seemingly all (hawkish) talk, but no action. The hike inspired confidence in the Fed again, and since a hike was already priced in anyway, it turned out to be a bullish one.

The senate vote to keep the Clarity Act advancing failed on Wednesday, which is a bummer, but it’s not as big of a deal as some people make it out to be. The SEC and CFTC can, on their own, create positive crypto regulation, and both of them have already announced that they will.

So both of these major events were bearish on face value, but there was bullishness hidden underneath. And with the turmoil and uncertainty behind us, and the strong bullish spring that crypto made after the failed Clarity Act vote, things are looking very good.

BTC is, however, at the range high resistance. So it does look strong and I remain bullish, but short term it’ll most likely continue ranging for a bit. This could be a great environment though for alts to continue to shine.

Another reason why alts might steal the show for a bit is that ETH is structurally already ahead of bitcoin since it has broken out of its range on the higher timeframe.

The coins that I’ve been talking about are looking great: HYPE, LIT, UNI, AAVE. I believe that those are still great holds, but after the pump this week they’re a bit extended, so short term pullbacks are possible.

Stocks

Heatmap

A mixed bag. The market doesn’t really know what to do because of the Iran war that’s heating up again.

News

• Zuckerberg outlines Meta’s AI strategy of allocating most compute to user-serving models, and simultaneously rejects calls for AI growth slowdown. Source

• OpenAI is having discussions about delaying its IPO while pursuing fresh funding rounds, valued at $1.2T. Source

• Anthropic moves its planned IPO to November. Source

• Google claims that Gemini hacked three companies in its first known breakout. Source

Earnings

A quiet earnings week, nothing of note.

News

• Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, claims that OpenAI has achieved AGI with GPT-6 Astra. Source

• US data center construction spending rose 57% yoy to a record annualized $75B. Big tech continues to accelerate investment in AI. Source

• Copper on the London Metal Exchange has reached a record price of $14,533 a ton, up 47% in the past 12 months. This is the result of increased demand from data center investment plus fears that Trump will expand tariffs to copper imports. Source

• Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic AI researcher, posted on twitter that he’s resigning after three years of doing research for both Anthropic and OpenAI because he claims that neither company is acting responsibly. The post gained quite a lot of attention, especially after Evan Hubinger, an Anthropic alignment science lead, reposted it and said that Anthropic genuinely believes that there’s an above 10% chance that AI kills all of humanity within the next decade. Source

• Trump commented on the calls for AI slowdown by saying that the people advocating for slowdown are “very negative figures”. He’s adamant on continuing to race with China. Source

• The US Treasury announced that it’s going to buy back $6B in longer dated debt. The bond market clearly didn’t think it was enough and yields rose. Source

• OpenAI formally endorses four new California AI bills aimed to increase AI safety. OpenAI says that it’s willing to slow or even halt model development over unacceptable risks, and they want a global standard for when frontier progress must stop. Source

• Brent crude oil rose above a $100 again this week as the US-Iran war escalated again.

• Saudi Arabia notified OPEC that its output declined by 1.9 million barrels per day to 6.2 million total, amid the Iran war. Source

• China has for the second month in a row increased its oil reserves. One of the main reasons the US-Iran energy crisis stayed muted is that China was drawing on its own reserves instead of importing. That has now changed. Source

Calendar

Wednesday 16 September

• UK - CPI y/y - forecast 3.1%, previous 2.9%

• US - Core Retail Sales m/m - forecast 0.5%, previous -0.3%

• US - Retail Sales m/m - forecast 0.8%, previous -0.6%

• US - Federal Funds Rate - forecast 3.75%, previous 3.75%

• US - FOMC Economic Projections

• US - FOMC Statement

• US - FOMC Press Conference

Thursday 17 September

• UK - Monetary Policy Summary

• UK - Official Bank Rate - forecast 3.75%, previous 3.75%

• US - Philly Fed Manufacturing Index - forecast 28.9, previous 47.4

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 209K, previous 206K

Friday 18 September

• Japan - BOJ Policy Rate - forecast <1.25%, previous <1.00%

• Japan - Monetary Policy Statement

• Japan - BOJ Press Conference

• UK - Retail Sales m/m - forecast -0.2%, previous -0.5%

Crypto

Heatmap

Crypto retraced across the board this week. Some altcoins had major pullbacks, but the majors only experienced light bleeds and are still chopping inside their respective ranges.

VVV, the ERC20 token of Venice AI, had a strong week and pushed to a new all time high. It’s been benefiting from the recent AI bull run frenzy and performs consistently well despite what the rest of crypto is doing.

FIL had a big surge and breakout this week, which is mostly the market front running the fact that Filecoin’s vesting program for early investors and the team ends on the 15th of October 2026. After that the future supply drops by 75%.

ENA is currently in an interesting situation because the Ethena Foundation announced that it offered to buy out, via OTC, large early investors who, together, owned 0.25% of the supply. 14 wallets accepted, 31 didn’t. Ethena described their refusal as “conviction”. The investor schedule changed from monthly unlocks to one date when everything left unlocks: the 5th of October 2026.
On top of that Ethena Labs agreed to assign the protocol’s IP and economics to the Foundation so that revenue routed to ENA becomes a property of the token.
And finally a governance vote passed to enable a fee switch.

Initially the price rallied on this news, but there are concerns:

1. The final, single, unlock is massive: an estimated 14% of circulating supply.

2. The buyback can’t run yet because the fee switch only happens when the USDe supply reaches $7.5B and it’s currently at $4.22B. The vote passed, but the mechanism isn’t running yet.

3. Even if the buyback mechanism starts running, the remaining vesting of the team and Foundation will most likely still outweigh the buybacks.

News

• On the 9th of September Hunter Biden launched his own memecoin LAPTOP on the Base chain, supposedly to support people who got rugged by Trump with his memecoins. LAPTOP is already down 99%. Source

• Onchain trading terminals just had their biggest weekly volume since December 2024. Source

• Saylor’s Strategy repurchased $176M of STRC and doubled its Digital Credit Securities buyback program to $2B. STRC is Strategy's 'digital credit' stock, which pays monthly dividends and is supposed to trade near a 'peg' of $100. This buyback aims to tighten its price. Source

• Strive (ASST), the Nasdaq listed DAT (digital asset treasury), purchased 1,375 BTC for $109 million at an average of $79,281 per coin. Source

• Bitmine, Tom Lee’s Ethereum DAT, added 28,086 ETH last week to reach 5.93 million in total holdings now. Source

• Robinhood has struck a deal with Crypto.com and OG.com to expand its prediction market offering. Robinhood will also take equity stakes in both companies. Source

• The total tokenized asset holders has passed 3.5 million for the first time in history with Robinhood being a major reason for the recent acceleration. Source

ETFs

BTC had its first negative ETF week since the recovery that started the 17th of August. It’s a pretty stark decline from +$986.7M last week to -$462.7M this week. Volume also dropped from $14.6B last week to $8.7B this week.

Meanwhile ETH had a great week with a positive flow of +$196.9M on increased volume totaling $5.1B. It’s possible that we’re seeing a bit of a rotation here, but overall more money left the ETFs this week than came in.

Unlocks

A minor unlocks week coming. Only YZY is getting hit hard with an $8.4M unlock that makes up 9.6% of its current mcap.

ARB printed a whopping -26% weekly candle going into its upcoming unlocks.

What I’m watching

All eyes were on ETH this week as it was the major that displayed the most strength. It tried to break out from the range on high volume and a big open interest increase, but failed and price went back inside of the range. The theory says that ETH is now primed to move back to the bottom of the range, grab the liquidity below the local lows there and then pump again.

Honestly it’s very difficult at the moment to guess where the market in general is headed next because a lot will depend on the Federal Reserve’s funds rate decision Wednesday the 16th of September. On the higher timeframe I’m personally still very bullish on crypto and I do think that no matter what, we’ll move higher eventually, but if the Federal funds rate event scares the market, then taking out the local lows first is very likely.

Coins I think are strong, and the levels where they're good buys:
ETH - $2300
SOL - $95
HYPE - $75
LIT - $3.8
UNI - $5.5
AAVE - $118
VVV - $20

These are ballpark levels. It’s very much possible that some of these levels won’t even get hit because of how strong they currently look. Layered bids are always advisable when you want to build a bag for the bull run.

Stocks

Heatmap

Stocks were an uninteresting mixed bag this week, but memory and assembly stocks remained strong.

SpaceX is still holding up very well. Ever since Elon made fun of shorts, it has been on a recovery track.

News

• Circle is acquiring Tazapay, a Singaporean payments company, for $400M in an all stock deal. Source

Earnings

Slow earnings week, nothing worth mentioning.

Tips

Arc, Circle’s own L1 blockchain, is set to launch on the 16th of September. It’s branded as the stablecoin native blockchain with fees paid directly in USDC. It has institutional backing by companies like BlackRock and Visa, and it’s supported by many perp DEXes, regular DEXes, launchpads and trading terminals.
I think that bridging to this chain will be worth it. There’s no doubt that Circle, with its institutional backing, will try to push this chain hard. It could attract a lot of volume and activity and therefore opportunities to make money.

News

• Secretary of the Treasury Bessent says that he and Fed chair Warsh are on the same page regarding the bond market, implying that there’s direct coordination between the current US administration and the Fed. Source

• Bessent says that the Strait of Hormuz will be “worthless” in two years as new pipelines will be built that will bypass the waterway. Source

• US August manufacturing ISM came in at 54.6 vs 55.2 expected, which means that factory activity is still growing, but the pace of growth sees a modest cooling.

• Currency debasement is once again becoming a focus for investors as it appears a number of record times in Bloomberg articles. It’s seen as one of the driving reasons to invest in assets like bitcoin and gold. Source

Calendar

Thursday 10 September

• Eurozone - Main Refinancing Rate - forecast 2.65%, previous 2.40%

• Eurozone - Monetary Policy Statement

• US - Core PPI m/m - forecast 0.3%, previous 0.2%

• US - PPI m/m - forecast 0.4%, previous 0.0%

• US - Unemployment Claims - forecast 205K, previous 206K

• Eurozone - ECB Press Conference

Friday 11 September

• UK - GDP m/m - forecast 0.0%, previous 0.3%

• US - Core CPI m/m - forecast 0.2%, previous 0.2%

• US - Core CPI y/y - forecast 2.4%, previous 2.5%

• US - CPI m/m - forecast 0.4%, previous 0.1%

• US - CPI y/y - forecast 3.4%, previous 3.4%

• US - Prelim UoM Consumer Sentiment - forecast 51.0, previous 51.0

• US - Prelim UoM Inflation Expectations - previous 4.3%

Saturday 12 September

• Eurozone - ECB President Lagarde Speaks

Crypto

Heatmap

Crypto had a phenomenal week. Besides TRX and PUMP, the entire top 50 rose higher. BTC once again surprised everyone and pumped, although this time around there weren’t a significant amount of short liquidations.

A handful of coins/tokens truly stole the show this week, starting with a brand new entrant in the top 50: PONS. This is the token for the non-custodial and permissionless token launchpad “Pons”, specifically built for Robinhood Chain. The platform has seen very high activity during this recent Robinhood Chain frenzy and 80% of the protocol’s share of the revenue is used to buy back and burn PONS.

Besides the new kid on the blockchain, we have the same showstoppers from last week performing well. HYPE and LIT are the DEX tokens that continue to perform well. ZEC and XMR are still the privacy coins of the moment.

UNI is still the frontrunner of the legacy DeFi coins.

News

• Strategy bought 4,603 BTC at an average price of $80,318 (total value of $369.7M) Source

• Prospect Markets has signed a deal with Cryptocom’s CFTC-registered derivatives exchange to launch a sports focused prediction markets platform in the USA. Source

• Robinhood is running a learn to earn program where you can get a little bit of XPL by spending a few minutes in the app learning. Source

• There are now a record 1.9 million onchain tokenized equity holders, an increase of 1,360% year to date. This growth mostly comes from hype around pre IPO big tech stocks like Anthropic and OpenAI which have significantly increased demand for 24/7 markets. Source

• FOMO, the social and multi-chain crypto trading app, reaches record high daily revenue amid altcoin boom. Source

ETFs

Despite volume diminishing, the BTC and ETH ETFs print their third straight positive week with a BTC netflow of +$986.7M and an ETH netflow of +$215.3M.

BTC had a negative day on Tuesday with an outflow of -$236.5M, most of which came from IBIT. ETH had a negative day on Wednesday with an outflow of -$48.2M. However it all got bought back and more with Thursday 3 September being the biggest day for both: BTC +$730.8M, which is 74% of the entire week, and ETH +$141.4M.

Unlocks

PUMP has the largest notional unlock worth $27.5M at the current price, although it’s a small percentage of its total market cap. However the recent unlocks might be part of the reason why PUMP has underperformed this week while the rest of the market continued pumping.

LINEA has the largest unlock percentage wise with a $2.6M unlock being 4.1% of its total mcap.

What I’m watching

The DEX tokens du moment HYPE and LIT are still very strong and they’re currently trading in price discovery territory. Funding and open interest are quite muted, so there doesn’t seem to be frothiness in their respective markets yet, most of the lifting is done by spot flows. The RSI is showing early signs of potential short term weakness, but these tokens will most likely continue to be good holds this cycle with platforms behind them being majorly successful and seeing TradFi adoption.

PONS really is the king of the altcoins this week. In just two weeks’ time it went from a $25M mcap coin to a $640M mcap coin. This boom is entirely fueled by the surge in activity of Robinhood Chain. It’s hard to recommend buying a coin that has already risen so much, but because of the success of the platform and the captured mindshare, it seems likely that PONS will reach a billion dollar mcap.

The other three coins shown on the chart are strong memes that the legendary memecoin trader Unipcs has been shilling hard: USELESS on Solana, MARSCOIN on BinanceChain and BASECAT on Base. I expect a short term pullback (which is already ongoing) on all of them, but these will, in my opinion, continue to be winners in the memecoin category because of the attention that they’ve captured, and we all know that memecoin trading is all about attention.

Stocks

Heatmap

Stocks are more of a mixed bag this week than crypto with 32 of the top 50 being up. The traditional USA tech stocks like GOOG, MSFT, and AMZN saw a reversal this week after having performed well last week. Tech stocks that are part of the AI bottleneck group like NVDA, ASML and MU had a really good week.

DELL was the odd one out in a positive way after fantastic earnings with record revenue of $47B, up 58% yoy, and positive forward guidance caused by the AI boom that’s still ongoing. DELL’s performance most likely also had a positive impact on the other AI related stocks.

News

• Chevron ($CVX) is finalizing a deal that will significantly expand its operations in Venezuela under a push by Donald Trump to begin pumping Venezuelan oil. Source

• Robinhood launches a new referral program, rewarding users for bringing new people into investing with Robinhood. Source

Earnings

Tips

• A new FriendTech-like app called ClanTech has launched on Robinhood Chain. It’s the exact same concept as FriendTech, but with different founders and it works with Robinhood Chain native ETH. The main founder, Fiat Phobia, has said that they’ll be implementing some unique features too.
  The app is still very new and keys are cheap. Considering how massive FriendTech was at one point, and how hot Robinhood Chain is right now, it could be worth it to get involved.

• It’s almost a full blown alt season with the burst of activity on Robinhood Chain further fueled by the ease of use and social aspect of the FOMO app that allows you to easily trade on not just Robinhood Chain, but other chains like Solana, Base and BinanceChain too. Here’s a nice list with a bunch of interesting tools for the FOMO ecosystem: tweet