Crypto
Bitcoin rallied after a Fed hike. Who bought it?
Bitcoin climbed past $87,000 after a rate increase that should have made risk harder to own. The public record identifies several sources of demand, but it cannot put a name to every buyer or turn fund inflows into a complete account of the rally.
Summary
- The Fed raised its target range to 3.75% to 4.00% on September 16.
- US spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $746.3 million across September 15 and 16.
- Those funds then gained about $2.65 billion across five sessions through September 23.
- Strategy bought 950 BTC for $75.7 million during September 14 to 20.
- Bitcoin reached roughly $87,300 on September 21 before slipping toward $84,000.
Bitcoin’s rally after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates has an answer that can be measured, though not a single buyer who can be named. Money returned to US spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds. A public company resumed purchases. Traders caught on the wrong side of the rise had to close positions. By September 21, Bitcoin had moved above $87,000, then surrendered part of the gain two days later.
The timing matters. The Federal Open Market Committee raised its target range by a quarter point to 3.75% to 4.00% on September 16. Its September projections put the median year end policy rate at 4.1% in both 2026 and 2027. In June, those medians were 3.8% and 3.6%. The Fed did not promise a cut.
A hike had been expected by many traders. Expectations alone, however, cannot account for the subsequent purchases. The useful question is narrower: which observable channels brought demand into Bitcoin after the decision, and which claims about the buyers go beyond the evidence?
The funds first lost $746 million
Farside Investors’ daily fund table records $450.4 million of net withdrawals from US spot Bitcoin ETFs on September 15 and another $295.9 million on the day of the Fed decision. Add them: $746.3 million left over two trading sessions. The decision was hardly greeted by an immediate flood into the funds.
The direction changed on September 17. Funds took in $159.5 million, followed by $433.0 million on September 18, $999.0 million on September 21 and $714.7 million on September 22. SoSoValue’s September 23 figures, reported by crypto.news, add $346.98 million for a fifth consecutive positive session.
Together, the five figures total $2,653.18 million. Subtract the $746.3 million of withdrawals from September 15 and 16 and the eight trading days show a net $1,906.88 million entering the funds. The latter is an accounting window, not a measure of money that bought Bitcoin at the rally’s exact hour. It is the net of two sharply different periods, and reporting only the five positive sessions would conceal the withdrawals immediately before the turn.
There is a data trap here. An earlier snapshot of Farside’s September 23 table showed only $32.4 million, with several issuers’ entries still blank. The later SoSoValue reading included $166.29 million for BlackRock’s IBIT and $143.24 million for Fidelity’s FBTC, among other reported fund flows. Treating a blank as zero would understate that day’s total by more than $300 million. These are dated snapshots, and totals can change when issuers report.
The apparent buyers changed between Monday and Wednesday
Monday’s $999.0 million was spread among several funds. Farside recorded $381.4 million for BlackRock’s IBIT, $289.1 million for ARK 21Shares’ ARKB and $238.8 million for Fidelity’s FBTC. Combined, those three accounted for $909.3 million, or about 91% of that day’s total. This identifies fund vehicles, not the institutions or people placing orders through them.
Tuesday’s flow was $714.7 million in Farside’s later table. IBIT received $350.3 million and FBTC $257.4 million. Those two accounted for about 85% of the daily total. By Wednesday, Bitcoin had retreated toward $84,000 even as SoSoValue reported another $346.98 million into the funds.
That final pairing is as important as the Monday surge. A positive ETF print does not guarantee a positive Bitcoin session. Fund subscriptions are one channel of net demand; sellers on exchanges, derivatives positions and the timing of fund hedging all affect the price. The five day fund streak establishes persistent subscriptions. It cannot prove those subscriptions alone pushed Bitcoin through $87,000.
The concentration figures matter for the same reason. On Monday, IBIT, ARKB and FBTC supplied more than nine tenths of net additions; that does not mean three asset managers independently decided to buy Bitcoin with their own balance sheets. A fund can receive orders from brokerage customers, registered advisers and institutions. The issuer reports the fund level flow. Its table does not sort the orders by investor type. Calling all $999 million institutional buying would add a claim the data do not contain.
Monday and Wednesday also illustrate why two kinds of accounting should stay separate. A fund flow is a net change in assets associated with subscriptions and redemptions. A traded fund share can change hands repeatedly between investors in the secondary market without producing the same amount of new fund creation. Price, exchange turnover and ETF net flow are different measurements. A headline can be accurate on one and misleading on another.
ETF inflows are net creations or subscriptions valued in dollars, not a public register of every underlying investor or a second by second ledger of coins bought. Market makers and authorized participants can bridge a fund trade and its underlying hedge at different times. Nor does a dollar flow translate into an exact Bitcoin quantity without choosing a price and knowing when the exposure was acquired. Converting $999 million into BTC at the day’s closing quote would produce an illustration, not an audited purchase count.
A corporate purchase is real, but its clock is different
Strategy provides a named buyer. Its September 21 Form 8-K reports the purchase of 950 BTC for $75.7 million, including fees and expenses, at an average $79,670 per coin. The transactions occurred between September 14 and September 20. The filing gives the period, not the individual trades’ timestamps.
That distinction rules out an easy claim. Strategy’s announcement landed on September 21, when Bitcoin rallied, but the filing does not show that Strategy bought Bitcoin during Monday’s surge. Its purchase may have happened before, after or across the September 16 rate decision. It used existing USD Cash and said it issued no shares through its at the market program during the period.
Strive’s September 21 filing identifies another corporate buyer: 1,355 BTC at an average price of roughly $79,475 during September 14 to 18. Its disclosure has the same dating problem for anyone trying to explain a particular candle. The combined reported 2,305 BTC shows corporate accumulation over overlapping periods; it does not measure corporate buying on September 21.
Strategy’s 950 BTC can be compared with its own past and future disclosures. It cannot simply be added to $2.65 billion of ETF inflows and called total market demand. The windows overlap, the units differ and other buyers and sellers are missing.
Some buyers were closing losing bets
The other identifiable class of buyer did not necessarily want to own Bitcoin for months. A trader short a Bitcoin perpetual or futures contract must buy back exposure to exit. If price rises quickly, liquidation can force that purchase. Those buy orders can add fuel to the move that made the short untenable.
Nansen senior research analyst Nicolai Sondergaard described the rally as a combination of ETF demand and short covering. A September 23 crypto.news account quoted CoinMarketCap research lead Alice Liu saying covering, rather than new buying, drove much of the rise. These are analysts’ interpretations, not a trader by trader audit.
One check comes after the peak. A CryptoQuant analyst’s exchange data, cited by crypto.news, showed Binance Bitcoin open interest falling from about $5.4 billion to $4.9 billion between September 21 and 23. Bitcoin had declined by then. Falling open interest shows positions closed, but it does not, on its own, separate shorts closed during the rally from longs unwound during the retreat. The $500 million change is a change in the dollar value of outstanding positions, not $500 million of confirmed short buying.
No comprehensive public tape identifies the beneficial owner behind each ETF order and each derivatives close. A forced short buy and a patient fund subscription may both lift demand, but they imply different things about what happens when price stops climbing.
The strongest case for lasting demand has a limit
There is a serious argument that the inflows represent more than a squeeze. Five consecutive positive fund sessions, worth $2.65 billion, spanned the climb and continued on September 23 after the pullback. The purchases were not confined to one fund. IBIT, FBTC and ARKB all drew substantial cash on September 21. Corporate filings show at least two companies buying during the surrounding week. Those are observable commitments, regardless of the Fed’s posture.
The opposing interpretation has a different strength. Bitcoin’s move to about $87,300 did not hold; price was back near $84,000 by September 23. The ETF print records subscriptions during a day, while the price reflects all orders at their execution times. If new fund cash keeps arriving as Bitcoin falls, it means sellers are meeting it. That does not make the fund demand imaginary. It means its price impact cannot be read directly off its dollar total.
Recent crypto.news coverage of the ETF streak reported the pullback alongside continuing inflows and falling Binance open interest. Those facts support a mixed account: underlying fund demand was present, while leverage amplified and then retreated from the move. The public numbers do not tell us the exact share attributable to each.
For a cleaner test, compare the next complete fund reports with the path of open interest after the rally. If subscriptions remain large while open interest stops contracting, the evidence for demand beyond traders closing shorts strengthens. If subscriptions dry up and the price keeps slipping, Monday’s surge looks more dependent on temporary buying. Neither pattern proves causation on its own, because the public series are aggregated across markets and reported at different frequencies.
There is a second timing problem. Bitcoin trades around the clock; US listed fund shares trade during US market hours. The biggest crypto move can happen before an ETF session opens or after it closes. A daily ETF total cannot be laid over a 24 hour Bitcoin candle as though both cover identical hours. Any precise account of Monday would require intraday spot order flow, fund creation timing and derivatives transactions on a common clock. The available public daily series fall short of that standard.
The Fed did not become a buyer’s signal
The Fed’s September statement said inflation remained elevated and economic activity was expanding at a solid pace. Its 2026 and 2027 median rate projections of 4.1% are each higher than in June. The September projection table is a set of participants’ assessments of appropriate policy, not a binding schedule of decisions, but it offers little support for a claim that a near term rate cut drove the immediate rally.
A risk asset can rise after a hawkish decision if the surprise was already priced, other yields fall, or buyers in its own market outweigh macro pressure. Those are possible mechanisms, not proof that one explains this week. The observed fund reversal begins September 17, one day after the announcement. By September 21 it was large enough to see without a macro theory: $999 million in reported net subscriptions.
The more revealing development came when price and subscriptions parted ways on September 23. That is where the original question becomes testable. If fund creations keep coming while short positioning stays less crowded and Bitcoin holds its gains, the evidence for sustained cash demand improves. If creations turn negative and the price loses the levels recovered after the decision, the short squeeze explanation gains weight. Neither result can assign every past trade to an individual investor.
What the public record can actually name
The records identify funds, companies and position types. They do not name the ultimate owner of IBIT shares purchased on September 21. They do not date Strategy’s 950 BTC to Monday. They do not show that every liquidation produced a spot Bitcoin purchase on an exchange.
What they do show is enough to reject two simple versions of the story. Bitcoin did not rally because investors immediately celebrated the September 16 hike: ETF funds lost a combined $746.3 million on September 15 and 16. Nor was the rebound just a chart artifact with no recorded cash demand: about $2.65 billion entered spot funds over the next five sessions, on the figures available September 24.
A public filing adds 950 BTC of Strategy purchases during September 14 to 20, while Strive reports another 1,355 BTC during September 14 to 18. Short covering plausibly accelerated the price move, but no audited decomposition of its contribution has been published. The answer is a set of buyers, operating on different clocks.
What to watch
Daily ETF creations: Check the complete issuer table after every fund has reported; a blank cell is not a zero.
Fund concentration: A positive total spread across IBIT, FBTC and ARKB differs from one driven by a single product.
Open interest with price: Rising price and falling open interest can fit short covering; falling price and falling open interest can reflect long unwinds.
Corporate filings: Read transaction windows in each 8-K before assigning a purchase to a specific trading day.
Price against flows: Compare Bitcoin’s daily close with that day’s fund subscriptions. The September 23 divergence deserves more attention than an inflow headline alone.
FAQ
Did the Fed cut rates in September 2026?
No. It increased the target federal funds rate by a quarter percentage point to 3.75% to 4.00% on September 16.
How much entered Bitcoin ETFs after the Fed decision?
Reported net inflows across September 17, 18, 21, 22 and 23 totaled about $2.65 billion, using Farside’s earlier daily figures and SoSoValue’s completed September 23 reading.
Did ETFs buy Bitcoin on the day of the hike?
Fund flow data show a net $295.9 million withdrawal on September 16. The figures are daily net subscriptions, not a complete record of every underlying trade during the Fed announcement.
Which Bitcoin fund drew the most on September 21?
BlackRock’s IBIT led Farside’s table with $381.4 million. ARK 21Shares’ ARKB followed with $289.1 million, then Fidelity’s FBTC with $238.8 million.
Did Strategy buy Bitcoin during the September 21 rally?
Its filing does not establish that. Strategy reported 950 BTC bought between September 14 and 20 and announced the purchases on September 21.
Was the rally only a short squeeze?
The public record does not support that conclusion. Short covering was cited by market analysts, but spot Bitcoin funds registered substantial net subscriptions across five trading sessions.
Why did Bitcoin fall while ETFs still recorded inflows?
Bitcoin moved back toward $84,000 by September 23 while funds recorded $346.98 million of net inflows. Other selling and position changes can outweigh one channel of demand.
Can these figures identify who ultimately bought Bitcoin?
They identify fund vehicles and disclosed corporate purchasers, not every beneficial owner or trade. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.
Disclaimer: This article is for information and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Figures reflect regulatory filings and reporting available at the time of writing and change with each disclosure. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or asset. Always do your own research. Information is accurate as of September 24, 2026.
The launch this morning was both imperfect and stripped down to its orbital essentials. On the way up, one of the Starship’s six engines failed to burn properly, requiring the other engines to compensate for the missing thrust to get the ship in orbit.
In addition, the return to Earth was simplified. SpaceX has made itself famous for safely landing the first stage of its Falcon 9 and Starship boosters—with 641 out of 688 Falcon 9 launches featuring this kind of recovery, allowing the boosters to be reused and make flying cheaper. Starship’s first stage, meantime, performs what has become known as a chopstick recovery, with the booster navigating its way back to the launch tower where two giant metal arms pluck it from the sky. For the current mission, the chopstick recovery was done away with to simplify the flight objectives; instead the first stage made a soft, engine-assisted splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship spacecraft was planned for a six-orbit, 10-hour mission, with the ship’s engines set to fire around the dinner hour Monday to bring the spacecraft down for a similar gentle, watery landing.
Goldman Sachs’ Anshul Sehgal says bonds yielding 5% or more are not the best trade right now. He still favors AI infrastructure, which he sees as a far more asymmetric bet than the long bond.
Sehgal, a global co-head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (FICC) at the bank, laid out the view just a few days after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.
Why Goldman Sachs Is Passing on 5%+ Bonds
On Goldman’s The Markets, Sehgal said the 30-year Treasury, known as the long bond, had hovered around 5% for weeks. He noted that clients want to buy it at 5% or higher, yet he still sees little upside.
The yield has kept climbing since the recording, reaching 5.56% on September 29, a new 52-week high. Sehgal blamed structural pressure for the strain on the long end. Retiring baby boomers are buying fewer long bonds, and heavy long-dated borrowing tied to AI is crowding the market.
Those pressures explain why the selloff can persist even without a fresh inflation shock. Fewer retirees buying long bonds and a steady flow of long-dated borrowing tied to AI both weigh on prices, and neither fades quickly.
Sehgal adds that fear over US debt sustainability makes investors less willing to hold the long end, which feeds on itself.
The takeaway is that a rising yield does not necessarily break his thesis. It may instead show why he sees limited reward in owning the bond, while the risk to his AI trade is that costlier long-term borrowing squeezes the levered companies he favors.
AI Compute Is the Asymmetric Trade
An asymmetric trade offers far more potential gain than risk. Sehgal applies that label to compute (AI computing power), data centers, and Neoclouds, which are cloud providers built to rent out that capacity.
“I think the asymmetric expression is being long compute.”
Anshul Sehgal, Goldman
The catch is leverage. Savers collecting higher interest have effectively financed the AI build-out, leaving equities more indebted than a year ago. Sehgal admits these are levered bets. Still, he thinks they can multiply in value, while the wider stock market looks less certain.
Tighter Policy Hits Spenders, Not Capital
Sehgal says the Fed frames its September 16 hike as catch-up after five years above its inflation target. Schwab counts 16 of 19 Fed officials expecting another increase this year. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh also stressed three times that the Fed is easing back some stimulus rather than turning restrictive, Sehgal adds.
He argues that government interest payments flow to capital rather than workers, so higher rates curb household spending, a risk for the broader stock market.
He also rejects the debt-sustainability fears weighing on long bonds.
“For me, that’s a red herring.”
Anshul Sehgal, Goldman
Meanwhile, BlackRock’s Rick Rieder is cutting equities for bonds paying 7% to 8%, though his high-grade bond call still cautions against rushing into the 10-year Treasury.
Sehgal names the Middle East conflict as the top driver of policy and markets in the weeks ahead.
The post Goldman Sachs Explains Why Not to Buy the 5%+ Bonds and Rather Stick to AI appeared first on BeInCrypto.
“Bitcoin has pulled back to $83K, testing the lower boundary of last week’s consolidation range,” Alex Kuptsikevich, chief market analyst at FxPro, said in an email to CoinDesk. “As with the market as a whole, a retest of the $82K region, where peaks were formed in May and early September, is entirely to be expected under current conditions.”
“Looking ahead, a sustained return to prices below $80K would be an important signal that the market is not ready to move higher for some time yet. If, however, this consolidation is soon followed by a new bullish momentum, it could send the leading cryptocurrency well above $90K,” he added.
The pressure is coming from bonds and oil.
Treasuries steadied in Asia after tumbling during U.S. trading, with the 10-year yield up one basis point to 5.25% after reaching its highest level since 2007 on Monday. A higher guaranteed return on government debt raises the bar for holding assets that pay no income, bitcoin among them.
Brent rose more than 1% to nearly $107 a barrel, its second straight gain, as hopes for an imminent diplomatic breakthrough with Iran faded.
Pricier oil feeds into inflation, and traders have been adding to bets that the Fed will raise rates again. MSCI’s All Country World Index fell to its lowest since Sept. 18, and Nasdaq 100 futures slipped 0.3% after Monday’s tech-led selloff on Wall Street.
U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether is a go-to tool for the Iranian government to bypass sanctions, a new report from a group of Senate Democrats said.
Democrats on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence published a report Monday laying out the argument that Tether plays a key role in allowing Iran to conduct transactions that skirt international sanctions.
“Iran’s cryptocurrency-based shadow banking network has processed significant volumes of funds and implicates various Iranian interests,” the report said, adding that Tether has “repeatedly failed” to block Iran-connected wallets.
“USDT has become a significant financial lifeline within Iran’s shadow banking network,” the report said.
When Tether does freeze wallets, it sometimes takes weeks, but the company also sometimes responds to requests without actually blacklisting wallets, the report claimed.
“Prior to 2024, Tether did not comprehensively and consistently freeze wallets designated by counter-terrorism agencies and continues to fail to proactively block clearly illicit wallets,” the report said. “This absence of deterrence invited abuse: terrorist organizations such as Hamas shifted from transacting in Bitcoin and a mix of cryptocurrencies to promoting USDT.”
Elon Musk’s Grok AI predicts an extremely bullish price for Ripple (XRP) by January 1, 2027, that will blow the minds of even the most dedicated members of the Ripple Army.
If you’re holding a sizeable bag of XRP USD, you may want to sit down before reading this. Grok claims that $25–$40 is achievable by 2027, with a stretch target of $50+ under the assumption of a full-blown crypto bull market returning and being supercharged by an unprecedented institutional catalyst.
XRP currently trades near $1.50–$1.52 as of September 28, 2026, down nearly -3% over the past 24 hours and with a daily trading volume of $3.5Bn, up from $3.2Bn the day prior.
This outlook is extreme and leans far beyond standard institutional forecasts. It assumes not only a strong late-2026 bull market driven by liquidity and risk-on conditions, but also a once-in-a-generation catalyst.
What is the Catalyst that Grok AI Predicts Could Spark an XRP Run Toward $40
Major central banks (including the Fed, ECB, Bank of Japan, and PBOC) announcing that the XRP Ledger will serve as a primary settlement layer for cross-border CBDC and tokenized asset flows, combined with large commercial banks being incentivized or required to hold XRP as a liquidity buffer, and revelations of massive sovereign wealth fund accumulation.
Under this highly speculative scenario, forced institutional demand collides with retail FOMO in a classic late-cycle mania, allowing XRP to move from the current ~$1.50 range through previous-cycle highs and into the mid-to-high double digits by early 2027.
This remains pure speculation and entertainment, not a base-case or even high-probability outlook. Crypto markets are extremely volatile, and the catalyst described above would require multiple extraordinary policy and institutional developments.
However, with Ripple’s case against the SEC dropped and its subsequent rise as a highly favored US-based digital asset company under President Trump, anything could be on the table for XRP if the perfect scenario aligns.
Got a Gut Feeling? It Could Pay Out 3.7X on Polymarket
Technical Analysis Supporting the Insane Grok AI XRP Price Prediction
On the higher timeframes, XRP has already established a constructive recovery base after reclaiming key moving averages from the mid-September lows near $1.25–$1.30. Price is consolidating in the $1.45–$1.55 region after testing highs near $1.63–$1.66.
In a normal bull market, a sustained break above $1.70–$2.00 would open the door to the prior cycle high near $3.65. Under the extreme institutional adoption scenario outlined above, that prior high would likely be cleared with significant force, triggering a series of measured-move and Fibonacci extension targets far beyond historical levels.
Aggressive projections from the multi-year base, combined with the kind of vertical price discovery seen in previous mania phases, could theoretically extend into the $25–$40+ zone if volume and momentum expand dramatically. RSI and momentum indicators would almost certainly reach deeply overbought levels during such a move, which is typical of parabolic advances.
Key nearer-term supports remain in the $1.40–$1.45 and $1.30 zones; holding those would keep the broader recovery structure intact while the market waits for (or prices in) any extraordinary catalysts.
Overall, while the current chart supports continued upside in a standard bull market, only an extreme surge in institutional demand and narrative intensity could justify the kind of multi-thousand-percent extension implied by the $25–$50 targets.
Earn $50 and Enter $300K Prize Draw on EdgeX
Maxi Doge Targets Early Mover Upside as XRP Tests Key Levels
While the Grok AI prediction of a potential 30x run for XRP is exciting, presale plays have a stronger track record of producing such returns. It does explain why attention keeps drifting toward presale-stage plays with smaller denominators.
Maxi Doge ($MAXI) is one of those plays. It is an Ethereum-based meme token built around a 240-lb canine mascot and a “1000x leverage” trading-culture identity. The presale has raised $4.8M at a current price of $0.0002841, with dynamic APY staking live for holders.
Standout features include holder-only trading competitions with leaderboard rewards and a Maxi Fund treasury earmarked for liquidity and partnerships.
The meme-first, gym-bro marketing angle (“never skip leg day, never skip a pump”) is endearing. The accumulation numbers suggest plenty of traders are picking a side.
Get Ahead of Next Meme Coin Launch Here
Discover: The Best Token Presales
The post Grok AI Predicts XRP Could Hit $40 in 2026 With Landmark Event appeared first on Cryptonews.
When it was first proposed in December 2025, the rule was divisive, drawing ire from environmental advocates while garnering praise from auto-industry trade groups. The Administration finalized it last week with a signoff from President Donald Trump.
The President commented on the forthcoming rule Sept. 26, saying the new standards would “take the waste out of building cars in America.”
“That means LOWER PRICES, saving families thousands on a new, beautiful, and safe car,” he wrote on Truth Social.
The claim that the revisions will pass down cost savings to American buyers, however, relies on several factors, including automakers’ pricing decisions, fuel costs, and broader economic conditions.
What changes under Trump’s new fuel economy rule?
Former President Joe Biden’s regulations were put in place in 2024 to reduce car-based greenhouse gas emissions, decrease dependence on fossil fuels, and spur a transition to electric and hybrid vehicles. The Trump Administration has claimed that its revisions are more focused on bolstering the auto industry and making safer, newer cars more accessible.
EigenLayer held $19.7 billion at its peak and liquid restaking tokens grew more than 1,000% in the first six weeks of 2024. But the services buying security never paid enough to cover both the base staking yield and a premium on top, so the second yield restaking promised never materialized.
On Sept. 8, DefiLlama’s restaking category held $10.02 billion and generated $99,977 in fees over the prior week. The liquid staking category, on $51.87 billion, generated $27.35 million. Per dollar secured, ordinary staking earns roughly 53 times more.
Two developments then removed what was left of the incentive to restake. Points programs subsidizing deposits wound down through 2025, and slashing went live in April 2025. Slashing is the penalty that confiscates part of an operator’s staked ETH when it misbehaves, by going offline or signing conflicting messages, for example. So restaking suddenly carried a real, priced downside where before the risk had been theoretical. There was no extra yield to compensate.
Set ether.fi aside and the rest of the sector is small. Renzo, Kelp, Swell, Puffer Finance and Bedrock, the five largest remaining liquid restaking tokens, made $953,350 in combined gross profit in the second quarter of 2026. Three quarters earlier the same five made $2.18 million. Puffer, which raised $23 million, recorded $21,590 for the quarter. Swell recorded $22,370.
The income statements also show which part of these businesses was ever profitable, and it was not the restaking. On Kelp’s books, EIGEN token rewards appear at $460,600 in gross revenue and $460,600 in cost of revenue: they arrive and pass straight to depositors, leaving nothing with the protocol. Puffer and Swell book staking rewards the same way. Whatever profit these companies made came from the orinary staking fees charged underneath the restaking layer.
“There’s a convergence now that you’re seeing between traditional market participants and digital asset market participants as well,” Lynq CEO Jerald David said in an interview with CoinDesk TV.
For firms using Lynq, FTIXX gives them somewhere to put cash between trades rather than leaving it sitting around. They can earn yield on the money and pull it out when they need it again.
That was a product Lynq’s clients had been asking for, David said. The network works with firms including B2C2, Wintermute, Galaxy ·, FalconX, Crypto.com and Fireblocks, whose businesses can require moving large amounts of money between trades. They wanted another option for putting that cash to work in the meantime.
“We needed to demonstrate that there was client demand,” David said. “Our clients were looking for a treasury asset on the platform that may have had a different yield profile than the other instrument that’s on there right now.”
Getting FTIXX onto the network required some work. Lynq had to modify its technology, restrict access to U.S. clients and integrate with Mosaic, he said. Customers also need a relationship with tZERO Securities and must meet the required onboarding and eligibility checks.
Lynq itself runs on a private, permissioned Avalanche (AVAX) Layer 1 blockchain. Its network has more than 30 institutional digital-asset firms onboarded and more than $89 million in assets, according to the company.
Crypto
Crypto’s Widening Net: From Fed Bets to Blackjack Tables, Digital Assets Keep Blurring Old Boundaries
If there is one throughline in this week’s crop of crypto headlines, it is that the industry has stopped pretending it is only about buying and holding coins. Across a handful of stories making the rounds, digital assets are shown pushing into territory once reserved for central bankers, casino floors, brokerage accounts and pre-IPO investors alike — a reminder that “crypto news” increasingly means finance news, gambling news and macro news rolled into one.
Take the growing chatter around prediction markets and Federal Reserve policy. Traders have been flocking to on-chain betting platforms to price the odds of late-2026 rate decisions, effectively turning monetary policy into a tradable asset class alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum. That such markets exist at all is notable: a decade ago, speculating on FOMC outcomes required options contracts or futures desks.
Now it can happen peer-to-peer on a blockchain, with odds shifting in real time as economic data lands. The rise of these markets suggests crypto infrastructure is becoming a genuine alternative venue for hedging and speculating on the traditional economy, not just a parallel casino for digital tokens.
Speaking of casinos, the sector itself continues to evolve in ways that mirror shifts in consumer taste rather than technology alone. Reports on crypto gambling lobbies note that live-dealer blackjack tables are increasingly outnumbering roulette wheels—a seemingly small detail that says more about what crypto-native gamblers want.
Live blackjack offers a sense of skill and control that pure-chance games like roulette can’t match, and operators appear to be responding by stacking their lobbies accordingly. It’s a small but telling sign that crypto casinos are maturing into product-driven businesses competing on experience, not just novelty.
Meanwhile, the boundary between crypto trading and traditional equities markets keeps eroding. New developments around Aave’s lending protocol reportedly let users borrow stablecoins against tokenized versions of tech stocks issued through Coinbase and built on the Base network.
If that model gains traction, it would mark a significant step in bringing real-world assets fully into DeFi’s collateral system — letting someone hold a tokenized slice of a Nasdaq darling and borrow against it the same way they might borrow against ETH or Bitcoin today. It’s the kind of integration that regulators, banks and crypto-native builders have all been circling for years, and its practical rollout matters more than the concept alone.
On the trading-platform side, perpetual futures exchanges continue to expand what counts as a “market.” One report describes a platform offering more than 120 perpetual contracts spanning everything from Bitcoin to pre-IPO robotics companies, letting traders apply leverage to assets that, in many cases, aren’t even publicly listed yet.
This kind of expansion into speculative, illiquid corners of the private market — wrapped in crypto’s leverage-friendly perpetual format — raises real questions about price discovery and risk, even as it satisfies demand from traders hungry for exposure beyond the usual crypto majors.
Finally, there’s the steady drumbeat of token listings that keeps the broader ecosystem churning. A gambling-focused token tied to the Dexsport platform recently landed on the MEXC exchange, a move that typically brings a token more liquidity and visibility, if not necessarily more fundamental value. Listings like these remain a bread-and-butter event in crypto markets — routine, but still closely watched by holders hoping for a price bump and a wider trading audience.
Individually, none of these developments is likely to reshape the industry overnight. But together they sketch a familiar pattern in crypto’s ongoing evolution: infrastructure built for speculative tokens is steadily being repurposed for macro bets, tokenized equities, private-company exposure and gambling products alike.
The technology is proving flexible enough to wrap around almost anything with a price — which is exactly why regulators, investors and casual observers alike keep struggling to say where “crypto” ends and the rest of finance begins.
Perplexity AI predicts that if a full-blown bull market returns in Q4, Bitcoin could reach $180,000 before January 1, 2027. The bullish range is estimated at $140,000 to $180,000, with a potential late-cycle surge that could push Bitcoin beyond $200,000.
Currently priced around $83,000, this would represent a gain of about 115% to reach $180,000. What’s noteworthy is that Bitcoin has already corrected significantly from its previous cycle high of about $126,200 on October 6, 2025, followed by a sharp decline during 2026.
Bitcoin has a history of producing substantial gains during strong market cycles. According to historical annual data, BTC gained approximately 154% in 2023 and 110% in 2024. If the current predictions hold true, we may see a similar increase on the horizon.
Perplexity AI Predicts Bitcoin to $180,000 if Bullish Catalysts Align: Does the Technical Analysis Back it Up?
Bitcoin recently broke out of a pattern of lower highs that had developed since May, reclaiming several key moving averages. According to Reuters’ technical analysis, $81,781 is considered important support, while $86,500 is a significant resistance level. Above that, the next technical targets are around $90,000 and $97,867.
CryptoQuant has noted a similar trend, calling $81,700 a key level because it aligns with Bitcoin’s 365-day moving average. Resistance levels above this are near $86,600 and $88,700.
Bitcoin’s first major test is surpassing the $85,000 level, followed by the $86,000 to $88,000 range. Bitcoin has pushed through this area, which matters because a sustained breakout would remove one of the largest technical obstacles between its current price and the $100,000 level.
The next major milestone is approximately $98,000. Beyond that, the market will be approaching the all-time high of $126,200, where it gets particularly interesting.
Once Bitcoin decisively breaks beyond $126,000, it will enter a phase of genuine price discovery. Historical resistance above that level is very limited. At that point, psychological targets such as $130,000, $140,000, and $150,000 could attract momentum traders and institutional investors.
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Bitcoin Hyper Targets Early Mover Upside as Bitcoin Drops Dangerously Close to $80,000
A -2.5% daily drop is not too much to worry about for whales and those already heavily positioned at a much lower price. However, for those who bought over $80,000, things could be getting uncomfortable, which is why presale opportunities prove so popular.
Bitcoin Hyper ($HYPER) is positioning itself as the first Bitcoin Layer 2 with full SVM integration. It boasts smart contract execution built for speed that outpaces Solana itself, while settling back to Bitcoin’s base-layer security.
As of today, the presale has raised more than $33.1M at a current token price of just $0.0136864, with staking rewards live at launch at a huge 35% APY.
The pitch: solve Bitcoin’s slow transactions, high fees, and lack of programmability without abandoning what makes BTC trusted in the first place. A Decentralized Canonical Bridge handles BTC transfers natively.
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The post Perplexity AI Predicts a Big Move for BTC in 2026 Even With Recent Dip appeared first on Cryptonews.
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