Day-one DEX volume on Arc finished at around $82 million, compared with the $878 million Robinhood Chain did on July 12, when its own institutional pitch was overtaken by memecoins and a cat token briefly hit a $156 million market cap. Arc’s largest token, ARGUS, is worth $16 million. Its second- and third-largest are cirBTC and EURC — Circle’s own products.

The sharper criticism is that Circle invited this. Rachel Mayer, Circle’s VP of product for Arc, posted an AI-generated image promoting DUKE, a memecoin, writing that it was Allaire’s dog. The post drew about 1 million views and a wave of hostile replies accusing Circle of shilling tokens to bootstrap its own network.

“You can clearly see a lot of their team fundamentally misunderstands meme culture,” wrote Abbas Khan. “Now it’s stuck in this weird middle ground where nobody really knows whether it’s supposed to be a meme chain or a corporate stablecoin chain.”

Circle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The chain itself is performing as designed, with half-second blocks being processed with no congestion, and DeFi platforms like Aave and Morpho live. But waning sentiment has led to feelings of frustration from the memecoin crowd, despite speculative token activity driving most of the day-one volume.

Bitcoin (BTC) traded near $76,500 after Thursday’s Wall Street open as investors snapped up US stocks following their recent dip.

Key points:

• Bitcoin consolidated after dropping below $76,000 on the back of a 0.25% interest-rate hike by the US Federal Reserve. 
• US equities rebounded, with the Nasdaq Composite Index gaining 1.5% as analysis saw upside continuation.
• Bitcoin price analysis retained its bullish slant on market conditions, with CryptoQuant’s Bull Score Index circling 60/100 on Thursday.

Bitcoin halts losses as US stocks turn green

Data from TradingView showed that BTC price volatility was cooling over the last 24 hours, with only modest moves to take nearby liquidity. 

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Data from CoinGlass showed both bid and ask liquidity thickening around the current spot price, a typical feature of rangebound trading conditions.

BTC/USDT liquidation heatmap (Binance). Source: CoinGlass

US equities gained on the day, as investors sought to capitalize on the local downside that followed policy tightening by the US Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 Index and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.9% and 1.5%, respectively.

Nasdaq Composite Index one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

On Wednesday, the Fed voted to increase benchmark interest rates by 25 basis points to 3.75-4%. This was its first hike since July 2023, and signaled an end to three years of easing in which the Fed either cut rates or held them in the same range between meetings.

Commenting, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter suggested that assets would continue to perform strongly despite the prospect of lower-liquidity conditions associated with the rate hikes. As Cointelegraph reported, central-bank rates are notching higher globally, as the European Central Bank hiked by 0.25% last week and the Bank of Japan is expected to follow suit on Friday.

“The asset owner economy just keeps getting better,” it wrote in a post on X, referencing the day’s gains in the Nasdaq.

Analysis sees BTC price trend “cooling, not turning”

Bitcoin also enjoyed relief after falling to new month-to-date lows on Tuesday. At the time of writing, BTC/USD traded 0.5% higher on the day.

Related: Bitcoin treasuries buy just 5.9K BTC in three months as paper losses linger

Commenting on the current market landscape, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant described macro conditions as a hurdle to the continuation of Bitcoin’s previous rebound that totaled 25% in August.

“The trend is still bullish, but momentum and macro are working against it near-term,” head of research Julio Moreno wrote in its latest weekly report sent to Cointelegraph.

Moreno noted that one of CryptoQuant’s proprietary indicators tracking BTC price cycles, the Bull Score Index, had dropped from 80 to 60 — the cut-off point for what it describes as “bullish conditions.”

“Bitcoin is cooling, not turning. A Bull Score of 60 keeps the trend bullish, but fading US demand, rising altcoin inflows, and a week of macro risk — the delay of the CLARITY Act and a likely Fed hike — argue for consolidation. Watch $70K and $62K–$65K as support,” the report summarized.

Bitcoin Bull Score Index. Source: CryptoQuant

Fortitude Mining has appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as chief executive as the Zcash-focused miner prepares to go public through a proposed merger with HeartSciences. Leverton will succeed Andrea Childs as CEO on Sept. 21, with Childs moving to chief operating officer.

Fortitude mined 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026, accounting for about 28% of the network’s total production during the period. The company reported revenue of $20.9 million for the second quarter.

It operates more than 60 megawatts of power capacity across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas and New York, and in July agreed to purchase 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, which are expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate. Shipments are expected in the fourth quarter.

Fortitude, wholly owned by Digital Currency Group, has mined ZEC since 2019 and launched as a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025.

The company announced its proposed combination with HeartSciences in June, with the transaction expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and bring Fortitude to the public markets. The combined company is expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE, subject to approval.

Leverton previously served as CEO of Hut 8, where she oversaw the Bitcoin miner’s merger with US Bitcoin Corp. and its transition into a US-domiciled Nasdaq-listed company. Current CEO Andrea Childs will transition to the chief operating officer role.

Related: Cypherpunk launches Zcash mining fleet controlling 18% of network hashrate

Zcash surges amid Paradigm investment

Zcash continued its rally on Thursday, with ZEC, the native token of the blockchain designed to enable private transactions using zero-knowledge proofs, trading around $1,424. The token has gained about 185% over the past 30 days and more than 2,600% over the past year, according to CoinGecko.

The latest gains came after Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang disclosed Wednesday that the crypto investment firm holds ZEC and is an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab.

Huang described Zcash as a “private complement to Bitcoin” and backed its inflation-funded developer fund, arguing that long-term funding for privacy technology is increasingly important as artificial intelligence and quantum computing advance.

Over the past year, privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed the broader crypto market. As of Sept. 6, the sector was up 213% from Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak, while every other crypto sector tracked by Glassnode remained below its level at the time.

ZEC accounted for 62% of the privacy sector’s market capitalization, according to Glassnode data. Excluding ZEC, the firm’s cap-weighted basket of privacy tokens was still up 85% over the past year.

Source: Glassnode

Importantly, the index is designed not only to provide broader exposure across the crypto market, but also to limit concentration in its largest assets. Bitcoin and ether represent a large share of total crypto market capitalization, meaning a traditional market-cap-weighted index would be dominated by those two assets.

The CoinDesk 20 Index addresses that concentration through a modified market capitalization weighting methodology. The index applies:

· 30% cap on the largest constituent

· 20% cap on all other constituents

These caps limit concentration in a single crypto asset and allow other major cryptocurrencies to play a larger role in the index.

Left: Source: CoinDesk, as of June 30, 2026. Right: ProShares hypothetical calculation using the CoinDesk 20 Index constituents, weighted by market capitalization without the index caps, as of June 30, 2026. For illustrative purposes only.

Without these caps, the index would largely reflect the performance of bitcoin and ether alone. By limiting concentration in the largest assets, the CoinDesk 20 Index creates more balanced exposure across a wider set of cryptocurrencies.

There is also a practical consideration. Building similar exposure directly would require an investor to purchase, custody and periodically rebalance a relatively large number of individual crypto assets. The infrastructure surrounding crypto custody has improved considerably, but holding multiple cryptocurrencies can still require navigating different exchanges, wallets, custody arrangements and operational considerations. An index-based approach can simplify that process while maintaining exposure to changes occurring across the broader market.

“I believe that tokenization holds the potential to help the securities industry achieve a real-time inventory management, which could drive efficiency, reduce settlement failures, mitigate the risk of abusive naked short selling, with the goal of eliminating that possibility altogether,” Atkins said. “Therefore, I’ve asked the staff to consider what steps can be taken to dovetail a growth-friendly environment with protections against harmful market behavior.”

Moving the U.S. securities markets beyond their weekday, daytime tradition will involve significant adjustments, Atkins and other SEC commissioners admitted, though Commissioner Hester Peirce noted, “Crypto markets certainly don’t sleep.”

Peirce said that firms may be concerned that expanding their trading hours may contribute to wider spreads, increased volatility of prices, less time to deal with technology issues and making sure the transactions are properly monitored.

“These concerns are the real consequences of extending trading into hours when human involvement is limited,” Peirce said, adding that companies may also be worried about overnight drama such as “social media rumors tanking your stock while your corporate office slumbers.”

But the SEC is steaming toward the expansion, and Atkins said that “several needed preparations are already underway or in place.”

The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said Thursday that it conducted actions to crack down on three illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading locations in London in a sign the regulator is ramping up enforcement activity as the country’s legal framework for crypto comes closer to implementation.

The financial watchdog, which said the crackdown was a joint effort with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and London’s Metropolitan Police, said it issued cease-and-desist letters at the three premises, requiring traders to stop participating in illegal crypto businesses. Peer-to-peer trading occurs when individuals buy and sell crypto directly with each other, an activity that needs to be legally registered in the U.K.

“There are currently no FCA-registered peer-to-peer crypto businesses operating in the U.K.,” the FCA said. “By operating outside the FCA’s registration regime, they avoid controls designed to detect and prevent money laundering,” the agency said.

The action signals that the era of “light-touch” crypto regulation in the U.K. is ending, said Caroline Black, a consultant at Gherson Solicitors LLP.