Bitcoin Coinbase Premium Drops to Four-Week Low as US Market Demand Weakens
Bitcoin's premium on Coinbase has fallen to its lowest point in four weeks, with the discount widening to around $50 and the price retreating to near $75,000, indicating weakening demand in the US. This premium measures the difference between Bitcoin's dollar price on Coinbase and its USDT price on Binance. CryptoQuant's Coinbase Premium Index was approximately -0.07% on Tuesday, deepening from -0.02% on Monday, as the Clarity Bill failed to pass on Tuesday, reversing the trend of the premium turning positive from late August to early September. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is expected to announce a 25 basis point interest rate hike on Wednesday, raising the federal funds target range to 3.75% to 4%. Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have pushed Brent crude oil to around $108, and the US 10-year Treasury yield has broken above 5%, further tightening financial conditions.
Cumberland Has Sold 1.5 Million PONS After Accumulating 17.64 Million PONS Over Two Weeks
Cumberland, which had been accumulating PONS over the past two weeks, has begun selling. Over the past two weeks, it withdrew 17.64 million PONS from Gate at an average price of $0.67, and in the last 5 hours, it deposited 1.5 million PONS ($877,000) back to Gate.
Circle announced the official launch of its Layer 1 blockchain, Arc mainnet, with protocols like Aave V4 lending market, Morpho, and Uniswap available from day one. Circle stated that over 100 applications are available at mainnet launch, with more than 100 institutions and ecosystem builders participating. The Arc public testnet went live in October 2025 and has processed over 700 million transactions in less than a year. On the mainnet, users pay gas fees in USDC, transaction finality is under one second, the network is EVM-compatible, and existing Solidity contracts can run directly. Circle announced the list of genesis validators in August, including 11 institutions such as BlackRock, DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, and Visa, which will join the network in phases. Circle completed the genesis mint of 10 billion ARC tokens this week but stated this does not represent a commitment to a public offering, as the company explores transitioning from PoA to PoS mechanism in 2027. ARC is planned as a coordination mechanism for network security, utility, and governance, while USDC remains the currency for paying fees. Circle and DTCC plan to support the tokenization of DTC custodied assets on Arc starting in the second half of 2027.
Bitcoin On-Chain Activity at Historic Lows, Only 3.8 Million BTC Moved in Past 180 Days
Bitcoin on-chain activity is at one of the lowest levels on record, with only 3.8 million BTC moved in the past 180 days. K33 states that the unusually low activity suggests selling pressure is weakening as Bitcoin shows signs of having passed the cycle bottom.
Analysis: Bitcoin Decouples from Dollar Index and US Stock Moves Ahead of Fed Decision
Ahead of the Fed's interest rate decision on Wednesday, the Bitcoin market has turned idiosyncratic, no longer following the dollar index or US stock movements. CoinMarketCap data shows Bitcoin's short-window (15 days or less) correlation with the dollar index has dropped to +0.08, compared to -0.54 over the past 30 days; its correlation with the S&P 500 fell to 0.43 from 0.75 yesterday, with the Nasdaq to 0.30 from 0.60, and with gold to 0.28 from 0.69 over the past 30 days. Alice Liu, Head of Research at CoinMarketCap, believes this decoupling stems from the market's recent focus on the Clarity Bill—which failed a key procedural vote in the Senate on Tuesday—diverting traders' attention from macroeconomic factors. The Fed is expected to announce its decision at 2:00 PM Eastern Time, with a 25 basis point rate hike widely anticipated and largely priced in. Analysts believe that unless Kevin Warsh announces a larger rate hike or unexpectedly hawkish guidance, the dollar index could decline, and a weaker dollar would be positive for Bitcoin. Traders should also watch for volatility in Treasury yields, as a sharp rise could tighten financial conditions and trigger safe-haven flows.
Kraken Parent Company Payward Plans to Offer US Users Hyperliquid HIP-3 Perpetual Swaps
Kraken parent company Payward announced its plan to launch an on-chain perpetual futures market for US customers, initially utilizing Hyperliquid's HIP-3 permissioned market architecture. The relevant markets will operate on the Hyperliquid public chain, matched and recorded by an on-chain order book. Payward's CFTC-regulated subsidiary, Bitnomial, will act as the HIP-3 deployer, responsible for creating, owning, and managing the market, as well as clearing and settling contracts; CFTC-registered futures commission merchant NinjaTrader Clearing will host customer accounts. US customers must open a futures account through a Payward-registered broker-dealer, and only accounts opened via NinjaTrader and whitelisted by both NinjaTrader and Bitnomial will be able to trade. The plan is subject to regulatory approval, and the relevant perpetual futures will be listed under the rules of the Bitnomial Exchange.
Strategy founder Michael Saylor stated that with the CLARITY Bill stalled, he expects the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and Treasury Department to continue advancing digital asset regulatory rules under existing laws without waiting for Congress to complete legislation. He anticipates banks will expand Bitcoin custody and Bitcoin-collateralized lending services, and more funds will flow into Bitcoin and digital credit. He expects the GENIUS Bill to support further stablecoin adoption, and that the crypto industry's development does not need to pause due to the CLARITY Bill's stagnation.
Bitcoin Core 32.0 entered its final testing phase on September 14, with the official version planned for release on October 10. This version does not change Bitcoin's consensus rules. Key updates include: a new second fee estimator that can reference currently pending transactions, allowing fee suggestions to drop faster when network congestion eases; nodes can now use multi-threading to fetch transaction data from the database when checking blocks, defaulting to eight threads to reduce disk wait times. On the security front, developers fixed a vulnerability present in non-Windows systems since Bitcoin Core 24.0: an authenticated user with wallet creation permissions could execute commands under specific conditions via a specially crafted wallet name, requiring the walletnotify feature to be enabled. Additionally, four commands used to create partially signed transactions will default to PSBT version 2 format, requiring related services to ensure compatibility. Furthermore, a new web server was found during an audit to have a memory exhaustion risk, where 16 unauthenticated REST connections could push a node's memory from 46MB to approximately 3GB within one minute. This issue was fixed before the release of version 32.
Changpeng Zhao: Every Dip Is an Opportunity
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao posted on platform X: "Every dip is an opportunity."
Bernstein report states that after the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act, the next phase of U.S. crypto rulemaking will shift to the SEC and CFTC. Analysts expect the SEC and CFTC to lean toward "specific rulemaking," with a process that will be "aggressive and swift" to make up for time lost in legislative negotiations. They anticipate the two agencies will address native crypto token classification, DeFi and self-custody infrastructure protection, and equity tokenization rules, and may also accelerate approval of real-world asset perpetual futures and coordinate on single-stock perpetual contracts. Bernstein stated that the failure of the Clarity Act leaves the stablecoin reward framework unchanged; the compromise text would have prohibited rewards on idle stablecoin balances and tied them to customer activity, allowing platforms like Coinbase to continue offering rewards on idle balances.
Aave to Launch Dedicated RWA Lending Market on Avalanche
Avalanche announced on X platform that Aave will launch a dedicated RWA lending market on Avalanche. The RWA Hub will allow institutions to borrow stablecoins using tokenized financial assets as collateral without selling their underlying positions. Tether's USAT will serve as the core of this market, providing the primary source of USD liquidity and becoming one of its first major institutional use cases. Since Aave V4 launched on Avalanche just two months ago, it has already attracted over $20 million in deposits. The RWA Hub extends this infrastructure to the tokenized financial asset market, enabling assets to be financed, collateralized, and utilized on-chain.
Clarity Act Gets Procedural Reprieve, Senator Thom Tillis Files Motion to Reconsider
The Clarity Act has received a procedural reprieve. Senator Thom Tillis initially voted in favor of the cloture motion on Tuesday, then switched to opposing it and filed a motion to reconsider. This strategic move placed Tillis on the winning side, allowing him to request another cloture vote while negotiations continue. Tillis stated that this is not the end for the Clarity Act, and the procedural motion enables all parties to continue working towards a positive outcome. The initial vote failed 49 to 50, far short of the required 60 votes.
Apple Considers Returning to Server Market, Targeting AI Inference Sector
Apple (AAPL.O) is considering a return to the server market and has held talks with Nvidia (NVDA.O) regarding the use of networking technology. The servers Apple plans to launch are expected to hit the market in 2029, targeting the AI inference sector.
Coinbase Adds BLUE CHIP (BLUECHIP) and Ritual (RITUAL) to Listing Roadmap
Coinbase announced it has added BLUE CHIP (BLUECHIP) and Ritual (RITUAL) to its listing roadmap.
Celsius Files Lawsuit Against BitMEX 11 Days Before Its Closure, Seeking $495 Million
The Celsius bankruptcy estate filed a lawsuit on September 12 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York against BitMEX operating entities, alleging fraud, market manipulation, and improper liquidation during the Bitcoin crash in March 2020, resulting in a loss of 6,360 BTC, valued at approximately $495 million at the time of filing. Defendants include HDR Global Trading, ABS Global Trading, Shine Effort, 100x Holdings, and HDR Global Services. The lawsuit, brought by the Blockchain Recovery Investment Consortium on behalf of Celsius entities, comes just as BitMEX prepares to shut down its exchange on September 23. Celsius claims BitMEX deliberately designed its platform and liquidation procedures to trigger collateral liquidations and defraud customers. On March 12, 2020, Bitcoin fell from approximately $7,200 to $5,678 in about 15 minutes, with approximately $702 million in positions liquidated on BitMEX during the initial crash, nearly all of which were long positions.
Jiang Zhuoer: Expects Market to Fall Then Rise After Fed Decision, Bitcoin May Test $84,000
Jiang Zhuoer, founder of Litecoin mining pool, stated that the Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision at 2:00 AM Beijing time on September 17. Based on calculations from 30-day federal fund futures prices, the probability of a 25 basis point rate hike is currently about 92%. He expects the Fed to raise the target rate range from 3.50% to 3.75% to 3.75% to 4.00%. Following the rate decision, the Fed will also release its dot plot. Jiang Zhuoer said attention should focus on the median rate forecast and the central tendency range after excluding the three highest and three lowest projections. He expects the dot plot to show a total of two rate hikes in 2026, meaning one more hike after this one within the year, and the realization of related expectations could drive a short-term market decline. Jiang Zhuoer believes that Fed Chair Jerome Powell's speech, starting at 2:30 AM, is the biggest variable, and he expects it may deliver dovish signals. Therefore, he judges the most likely market path is "fall first, then rise": a decline after the rate decision and dot plot release, followed by a recovery after Powell's speech. He predicts Bitcoin may drop below $75,000 before rebounding to between $83,000 and $84,000, followed by a more significant correction.
Flamingo Finance Suffers Attack, Attacker Profits Approximately $345,900
Flamingo Finance suffered an attack. The attacker borrowed approximately $18 million USDT via a Morpho flash loan, staked Curve USDP LP into Strategy during the transaction to inflate the VaultYUSDT share price, and then redeemed liquidity aUSDT. The attacker has realized a profit of approximately $345,900 USDT.
AI Startup Arcee AI Closes $150 Million Series B at $1 Billion Pre-Money Valuation
U.S. enterprise AI startup Arcee AI has completed a $150 million Series B funding round at a $1 billion pre-money valuation. The round was led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, and Emergence Capital, with participation from Microsoft's M12, AI10 Ventures, Hitachi, IAG, P7, and Wipro. Founded in 2023, Arcee AI initially focused on fine-tuning and optimizing existing models before pivoting to building open-weight models from scratch. Its founder, Mark McQuade, is a former early employee of Hugging Face. Funds will be used to develop new open-weight models and products, expand collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, and partner with Vista portfolio companies.
JPMorgan analysts stated that the Clarity Act is "not completely dead" after failing a procedural vote in the Senate, but the window for passage before the end of this Congress's session is "extremely short." Analysts expect attention to shift to rulemaking by the SEC and CFTC, but note that agency rules are less durable than laws passed by Congress.
Garrett Jin, the agent for the "1011 insider whale," has added to his ZEC short position again after a week. His 3x leveraged ZEC short position currently holds 37,759.57 ZEC, with a position value of approximately $47.211 million, an unrealized loss exceeding $22 million, and an investment return rate of -140.22%.
US CFTC Chairman: CFTC Ready to Introduce Rules for the Crypto Space
U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Mike Selig stated that following the failure of the CLARITY Act in the Senate, the agency will use its existing authority to advance the development of rules for the cryptocurrency market. Selig said: "The CFTC is ready and will introduce its rules for this new frontier of finance."
Fintech Company Tare Raises $13.25 Million in Seed Funding Led by Blockchain Capital
Fintech company Tare completes $13.25 million seed round, led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Janus Henderson, Strobe Ventures, the Venture Dept, Neoclassic Capital, and Avalanche Foundation. Individual investors include Aave CEO Stani Kulechov, Tether co-founder Phil Potter, and Privy CEO Henri Stern. Funds will be used to build and expand loan management software, hire staff, and obtain the necessary licenses for its lending division, Tare Credit LLC, to operate nationwide in the U.S. Founded by Kevin Miao, Keerthi Moudgal, and Lucas Vogelsang, Tare plans to build software on the Avalanche blockchain to create digital records for loans and automate related administrative work. Miao stated that the difference between the interest paid by borrowers and the returns received by investors is often absorbed by intermediaries, and a blockchain system can automate operational work and eliminate additional costs.
A Glassnode report indicates that Bitcoin fell approximately 4.6% this week to around $76,000, breaking below the bottom of the range since late August and the real market mean of $76,700. Despite the Senate CLARITY Act vote failing and a sharp sell-off in altcoins, the decline was relatively moderate. However, new demand is clearly absent: on-chain capital inflows stalled after 27 consecutive days, ETFs turned to net outflows, stablecoin supply remained flat, and corporate treasuries stopped buying. Within hours of the vote, the options market shifted from betting on upside to buying downside protection, with the max pain point at $72,000. A large accumulation of call options near $85,000 creates upside resistance. The order book shows nearly two-thirds of limit orders are concentrated within 1% to 10% below the current price. Support is thin below $68,000, with the next target at $71,300, followed by $62,000 to $65,000.
Coinbase to List BLUE CHIP (BLUECHIP) Spot
Coinbase Markets announced it will list BLUE CHIP (BLUECHIP) for spot trading. If liquidity conditions are met, the BLUECHIP-USD trading pair will open later on September 16, 2026, local time. Trading will be enabled in regions where liquidity conditions are met and local regulations support it.
Fed Hikes 25 Basis Points for First Time in 3 Years, Expects at Least One More Hike This Year
At 2:00 AM today, the Federal Reserve announced its latest interest rate decision. The FOMC voted unanimously to raise the federal funds rate target range by 25 basis points (0.25 percentage points) to 3.75%–4.00%. This is the first rate hike since July 2023. Previously, the Fed had held rates steady for several consecutive meetings in 2026. Among the 18 officials who submitted projections, 16 expect at least one more rate hike (25 basis points) by the end of 2026, with 4 believing there could be two more. The median path indicates one more hike this year, followed by rates remaining unchanged in 2027, before gradually declining thereafter. The next FOMC meeting is expected to be held in early November.
US House Ways and Means Committee Passes Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, Sends to Full House
The US House Ways and Means Committee passed the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act by an overwhelming majority of 38 votes in favor to 5 against, and it has now been sent to the full House for consideration. This development comes less than 24 hours after the crypto industry's core market structure bill, the Clarity Act, suffered a setback in the Senate. The bill aims to clarify tax treatment for digital assets regarding small payments, income recognition, transfers, wash sale rules, mining, staking, and broker reporting. It sets a tax exemption threshold of $10 for small transactions, aiming to reduce the tax reporting burden for everyday crypto payments. The bill received majority bipartisan support, but some Democratic lawmakers questioned granting special tax treatment to the crypto industry. Due to limited remaining legislative time in the current Congress, whether the bill can advance further remains uncertain.
Probability of Fed Rate Hike in October Nears 50%
According to the CME "FedWatch": After the Fed's rate hike in September as expected, the probability of the Fed maintaining rates at 3.75%-4.00% at its October meeting is 50.2%, while the probability of a 25 basis point hike is 49.8%. For December, the probability of rates remaining unchanged at 3.75%-4.00% is 11.3%, the probability of a cumulative 25 basis point hike is 50.1%, and the probability of a cumulative 50 basis point hike is 38.6%.
Wintermute Transfers 2,550 BTC to Binance, Worth Approximately $193 Million
Wintermute transferred 2,550 BTC (approximately $192.91 million) to Binance.
Galaxy: Q2 Crypto VC Investment Rebounds to $5.6 Billion, Up 31% Quarter-over-Quarter
A new report from Galaxy Research shows that cryptocurrency venture capital activity rebounded in the second quarter of 2026 after a slow first quarter. Venture capital firms invested approximately $5.6 billion across 384 deals into unlisted cryptocurrency and blockchain-related companies. Total investment grew 31% quarter-over-quarter, while deal count increased by 10%. Capital growth was primarily driven by later-stage financing. New fund fundraising remains difficult, with only 5 new crypto venture capital funds raising approximately $3.9 billion in Q2, the lowest number of new funds launched since Q4 2019. Based on the investment pace in the first half of 2026, the annual investment is projected to be approximately $20.037 billion; this figure is slightly below the $20.3 billion for the full year 2025 but higher than most of the market downturn period from 2023 to 2024. In terms of capital allocation, later-stage deals accounted for approximately 77% of the share, early-stage deals accounted for 15%, while seed and pre-seed deals accounted for the remaining 7%. US-based startups received 73.5% of the investment capital and accounted for 39.1% of all 384 deals. Companies in trading, exchanges, investment, and lending led with approximately $3.523 billion across 51 deals.
Vitalik posted a rebuttal to the view that "AI hackers will completely collapse cybersecurity." He stated that cybersecurity is inherently defense-favorable, as long as the work is done properly. His continued holding of cryptocurrency (approximately 90% of his net worth) is a bet on this point. Vitalik believes that if AI can prove the Navier-Stokes equations and Fermat's Last Theorem, then it can also prove "this program is secure" as a mathematical theorem, even if the program is complex. The definition of "security" itself is complex, encompassing various attack scenarios (forgery, replay, server compromise, key leakage, side channels, etc.), but the definition is far smaller than the attack surface of the implementation code and is easier to verify. In the past, only verifying parts "deemed security-critical" was prone to failure. Now with AI, it is necessary (and possible) to verify the entire program, including all parts like the database, network, and cache. Vitalik emphasized that this is not about "good guys finding vulnerabilities before bad guys," but proactively writing code that is more resistant to attacks. This is precisely the development direction for Ethereum in the coming years. Without adopting this approach, blockchains (especially those combining scalability and privacy features) will have no future.
Upbit to List PYUSD and JPYC Tokens on KRW, BTC, and USDT Markets
South Korean crypto exchange Upbit will list PYUSD and JPYC tokens on its KRW, BTC, and USDT markets.
WLFI Multi-Sig Wallet Transfers 88 Million Tokens to Binance, Worth $5.09 Million
A multi-sig wallet belonging to WLFI transferred 88 million WLFI (approximately $5.09 million) to Binance about half an hour ago. This address has transferred a total of 248 million WLFI (approximately $13.55 million) to Binance over the past month.
The US House Financial Services Committee voted 28 to 21 to advance H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act, introduced by Representative Nick Begich. The bill would establish the legal status of a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve," stipulating that Bitcoin held by the federal government be custodied by the Treasury Department and requiring a holding period of at least 20 years. The bill has now been sent to the full House for consideration, but a floor vote has not yet been scheduled.
In its 2026 Policy Address, the Hong Kong SAR Government mentioned that the Securities and Futures Commission will improve the virtual asset licensing regime and the regulatory framework for tokenized investment products, promoting the issuance and trading of gold and other suitable RWAs on licensed platforms. Hong Kong also plans to normalize the issuance of digital bonds and explore the full lifecycle application of digital currencies for settlement, coupon payments, and redemptions; the Hong Kong Monetary Authority will test the operation of tokenizing Exchange Fund Bills by the end of the year, aiming to help banks further leverage the advantages of tokenization technology to efficiently and round-the-clock utilize Exchange Fund Bills worth over HKD 1.3 trillion. Additionally, the HKMA plans to implement central bank digital currency (CBDC) settlement and round-the-clock operations under the "Ensemble" project (EnsembleTX) around the end of this year, and will continue to explore more application scenarios for tokenized deposits.
Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett stated that seven Democratic senators, including Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner, Ruben Gallego, and Angela Alsobrooks, expressed their commitment to advancing the CLARITY Act in a bipartisan manner. "This week's progress encountered setbacks, but that does not mean the end of this important work. We will continue to work through bipartisan cooperation to push for the passage of this bill." Three sources familiar with the matter said the move aims to assess the willingness of both sides to return to the negotiating table and pass the Clarity Act by the end of the year.
DeFi researcher Ignas stated that the Arc network is a permissioned enterprise chain targeting foreign exchange and payment businesses, and its team does not truly support crypto-native culture. In comparison, although Robinhood Chain also has enterprise attributes, it still supports Ethereum-based construction, uses ETH, and allocates 10% of its revenue to Arbitrum, making incentives among ecosystem stakeholders more aligned. Ignas further analyzed that the ARC token airdrop may be Arc's only relatively attractive narrative, but 60% of its tokens are allocated to the "ecosystem" share, likely mainly used to subsidize payment, foreign exchange, and tokenization partners, rather than retail traders. If Arc does not produce an unexpected new narrative, community users may turn to seek other more interesting opportunities.
Bithumb to List AVA Token on Korean Won Market
South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb will list the AVA token on its Korean Won market, with trading expected to open at 14:00 local time.