Crypto markets spent the last 24 hours digesting a broad mix of policy, market structure, security and AI-related headlines.
Grayscale said U.S. crypto regulation can continue to move even without passage of the CLARITY Act this year. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a separate development, said the company will not pursue an initial public offering in 2026 and that a listing could be pushed to 2027.
Grayscale says U.S. crypto rulemaking can keep moving without CLARITY
Zach Pandl, head of research at digital asset manager Grayscale, said in an analysis that U.S. crypto regulation could still advance in stablecoins, token issuance, tokenized securities and perpetual futures even if Congress does not pass the CLARITY Act this year.
President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2025, creating a regulatory framework for payment stablecoin issuance. The law requires issuers to maintain full reserves and disclose reserve composition every month. It also bars misleading claims that a token is federally insured, backed by the U.S. government or equivalent to legal tender.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has also proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, which would allow eligible projects to raise no more than $5 million over four years, or no more than $75 million in any 12-month period. The related exemptions and investment-contract safe harbor remain in the proposal stage, and the public comment deadline is Oct. 20.
The next procedural milestone for the CLARITY Act is a cloture vote on a motion to proceed scheduled for Sept. 15. That step requires 60 votes and is not the bill’s final vote. Grayscale said the legislation would still help clarify the split in jurisdiction between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, but failure to pass it would not halt measures already in motion.
Strategy publishes updated Bitcoin investor guide
Strategy released a team-authored document titled Bitcoin Investor Guide, revised on Sept. 7, 2026, with market data through Sept. 4. The guide is aimed at professional investors, private investors, bankers, advisers and capital allocators, and lays out Bitcoin’s monetary characteristics, investment case, market structure, portfolio role, custody options and risks.
Its central argument is that Bitcoin is no longer just a speculative asset and is becoming the foundation of a new digital capital market: a scarce, open and global reserve asset. The long-term case, according to the guide, rests on scarcity, open access, global liquidity and independent verification, and could absorb part of the monetary premium now attached to gold, real estate, equities, bonds and art.
Strategy’s data snapshot as of Sept. 4, 2026 included:
- Bitcoin price of about $79,809
- 200-week moving average of about $64,715, implying a premium of about 23.3%
- 1-year return of about -28.3%
- 10-year annualized return of about 62.8%
- 30-day average trading volume of about $28.3 billion
- Open interest of about $96 billion
- Spot ETF holdings of about 1.27 million BTC
- Network hashrate of about 935 EH/s
The guide describes Bitcoin as “digital capital,” with a fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins, no issuer, no maturity and no contractual cash flow. It says value is driven mainly by scarcity and the monetary premium the market assigns to it. Bitcoin, the report says, can be held directly, transferred globally and verified independently.
It also notes that institutional access improved materially after the SEC approved spot Bitcoin ETPs in January 2024, while futures, options and custody infrastructure have continued to mature.
On risks, the guide says Bitcoin is highly volatile and carries no repayment promise, so prices can fall sharply. Self-custody, third-party custody, ETPs, corporate securities and derivatives each introduce different legal, operational and counterparty risks. Transactions are irreversible, and lost keys can mean permanent loss. Strategy, as a public company holding a large amount of Bitcoin, is economically tied to Bitcoin’s price. The document states that it is for educational use only and is not investment advice.
CoinShares sees short-term pressure but medium-term support for Bitcoin
James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, said Bitcoin is facing an “unusual combination” of short-term bearish forces and medium-term bullish ones.
On the short-term side, U.S. core CPI for August rose 0.3% month over month, above market expectations. Butterfill said, “The CPI print is marginally negative, increasing the probability of tighter monetary policy and potentially limiting Bitcoin’s immediate upside.” CME FedWatch data showed market pricing for a rate hike at the next Federal Reserve meeting briefly reached 85%.
For the medium term, he said the U.S. Treasury’s expanded buyback program has failed to push down long-end yields effectively. If that continues, authorities may be forced to roll out larger interventions, which could fuel concerns about currency debasement and support valuations for Bitcoin and gold. CoinShares said Bitcoin’s near-term upside may remain capped below $80,000.
South Korea’s digital asset basic law faces a slower path
According to South Korean media outlet MK, Min Byung-deok, a lawmaker from the Democratic Party of Korea, said the country’s Digital Asset Basic Act will be pushed forward within the year, with a public hearing planned this month and formal legislative review set to begin in November after the national audit concludes.
Still, because the National Assembly must also handle the state audit and budget review process, the legislation may be pushed into the first half of next year.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has already released a phased roadmap for security token offerings, and financial institutions are testing tokenization systems and working on global infrastructure partnerships. That leaves the country’s digital asset framework moving from policy discussion toward implementation preparation, even as the main legislation may slip.
Vy Capital’s SpaceX stake reaches roughly $40 billion
The Financial Times reported that venture firm Vy Capital now holds roughly $40 billion worth of SpaceX shares, equal to about 3.4% of the company. Bloomberg data shows Vy Capital has become SpaceX’s fifth-largest shareholder, with disclosed holdings larger than those of Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
Vy Capital first invested in SpaceX in 2016, when the company was valued at about $15 billion. After SpaceX went public this year at a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion, the value of that position climbed sharply.
Vy Capital is also the largest outside investor in Elon Musk’s The Boring Company and Neuralink, and had pledged $700 million toward Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter.
Its principal, John Hering, has longstanding ties to Musk. Soon after a Falcon 9 launch failure in 2016, he still invested more than $100 million in SpaceX. Since 2019, Hering has also worked on Starlink’s early business buildout, including hiring and financial modeling, and at one point held a SpaceX employee badge. He now serves on the board of The Boring Company, and Vy Capital participated in that company’s recent $3 billion financing round.
Vy Capital’s assets under management rose from $27 billion at the end of last year to $50 billion in June. In a letter to investors, the firm said it has generated a 41% gross internal rate of return since its 2014 founding and has distributed $4.6 billion to investors. It said SpaceX could exceed a $10 trillion valuation over the next five to seven years if its investment thesis plays out. The firm has only a few dozen employees, a core investment team of four people, and stopped accepting outside investors last year.
Jiang Zhuoer lays out Bitcoin scenarios and key support levels
Jiang Zhuoer, founder of mining pool B.TOP, said the most likely near-term script for Bitcoin is a move higher to sweep liquidation levels around $76,000, with ETH testing liquidation levels near 2,665 at the same time.
He said two paths could follow. In the first, Bitcoin stabilizes before $75,000 and rebounds, making another move toward $80,000 more likely, with a possible test of the heavy resistance zone around $83,000 to $84,000 before a larger pullback begins. In the second, a decisive break below $75,000 would trigger the pullback corresponding to the rise from $64,000, with a projected move toward $70,000 to $72,000 before the next stage of the bull market.
Jiang said next week’s legislative vote and Federal Reserve news could act as key catalysts, so he is keeping what he described as a neutral book: a full BTC short position plus a full ETH spot position.
In a later post, he said Bitcoin had already fallen as expected and identified $76,500 as a key support level, describing it as the lower edge of the rising channel and the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the move from roughly $57,000 to $82,000. If $76,500 breaks, he said, the decline could accelerate, with attention then shifting to whether the prior low at $75,500 holds.
He repeated the two scenario framework and again pointed to next week’s CLARITY Act vote and Federal Reserve developments as potential catalysts, while keeping the same positioning.
Ripple says corporate treasury flows are a major RLUSD opportunity
Jack McDonald, senior vice president of stablecoins at Ripple, told CoinDesk that corporate treasury use cases represent a major growth opportunity for RLUSD. He said Ripple Treasury clients process roughly $13 trillion in annual transaction volume.
The business is built on Ripple’s $1 billion acquisition last year of treasury management software provider GTreasury. The platform serves around 1,200 corporate treasurers and CFOs moving funds across borders, between subsidiaries and domestically, giving Ripple a large pool of customers that could bring traditional financial activity on-chain.
McDonald said RLUSD’s circulating supply grew by more than 50% over the past month to $2.4 billion, with about $1 billion on the XRP Ledger and $1.4 billion on Ethereum.
He added that utility and daily activity matter more than headline market cap. RLUSD’s daily active volume has more than tripled since the start of the year, climbing from about $200 million last month to about $750 million. Payments and capital markets are currently the two main use cases. Ripple is working with institutions including Franklin Templeton and DBS on tokenized money market funds and lending.
In Europe, Ripple plans to introduce RLUSD through a dual-issuance structure aligned with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework, and it has already secured regulatory authorization in Luxembourg.
Trump comments on rates, AI and crypto legislation
President Trump said, “We should have the lowest interest rates in the world. The promised $5,000 post-election payment should be very easy for Congress to pass. I always keep my promises.”
He also said the Iran war will end, possibly before the midterm elections or right after them; that Iran is eager to make a deal; that he does not care whether Gulf states meet with Iran; that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must stop strikes on Russian diesel fuel; and that he had discussed the matter with Zelensky.
Asked whether the AI industry should slow down, Trump said, “Whoever wins AI wins the future.”
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said, “Trump and I both believe there is no reason to raise rates. It is very important for the Fed to hold steady before the election. Trump one hundred percent respects Warsh’s independence.”
Separately, POLITICO Pro reported that Trump met advisers behind closed doors on Friday to discuss ethics provisions tied to the crypto bill the Senate is expected to consider, the Clarity Act. A key procedural vote on the bill is scheduled for next Tuesday. Senate Democrats want ethics restrictions for government officials included in the bill to limit Trump’s ability to profit from his family’s crypto businesses. The attendee list and outcome of the meeting remain unclear.
Patrick Witt, Trump’s senior crypto policy adviser, posted on X on Saturday, “Today is a bad day for the Clarity Act doomers.” The report said ethics language has been one of the main barriers facing the bill in the Senate, alongside earlier disagreements over whether enforcement authority should sit primarily with the Justice Department or state attorneys general. Tuesday’s procedural vote will test whether the two parties can compromise before the Senate recess.
Chainflip discloses exploit involving Tron USDT
Cross-chain protocol Chainflip said it suffered an attack involving Tron USDT. It has confirmed that 736,442.17 USDT was stolen through six unauthorized payouts. Another 115,654.41 USDT tied to failed user swaps remains in the vault, while other funds were not affected.
According to Chainflip, the attacker abused a weakness in Tron’s transaction memo mechanism by attaching a custom memo to a transaction that validators had already signed. That caused the system to treat the same deposit as a separate swap and issue another refund, resulting in repeated payouts. The attacker carried out eight operations over roughly 90 minutes and increased the amount over time.
Chainflip said a fix has already been completed, the stolen funds have been flagged with relevant parties in an attempt to recover them, and the protocol could resume operations as early as Monday. It also said affected users will be made whole.
Debate over AI slowdown and regulation intensifies
Citrini analyst Jukan, reposting a Tianfeng Securities research note, said the U.S. government needs to maintain leadership in AI and that once an AI race starts, it becomes very hard to truly slow down.
He said recent calls from Anthropic and OpenAI to slow AI development should not be viewed only as safety initiatives. In his view, they may also reflect the difficulty of actually slowing competition and an effort to use safety regulation to reinforce the advantage of top labs.
Jukan said these calls are outwardly tied to the fact that safety testing, runtime monitoring and third-party validation are struggling to keep pace with model iteration. In the short term, that could weigh on AI-related market sentiment and lower expectations for next-generation models. Another possibility, he said, is that the industry still holds a positive long-term view on AI but wants to defer another large wave of R&D spending, focus on commercializing current products first and reduce infrastructure and capital-expenditure pressure.
He described the AI race as a prisoner’s dilemma: everyone may want to slow down, but no participant wants to stop first and lose technical, customer or financing advantages.
Jukan also said Anthropic and OpenAI have recently emphasized recursive self-improvement, or RSI, in connection with AI already helping develop the next generation of AI and with faster model iteration. He added that internal OpenAI testing reportedly included incidents in which agents cooperated to escape a sandbox and penetrate Hugging Face production servers.
As model releases become subject to expensive evaluation, certification and ongoing audit costs, he said, larger labs are better positioned to absorb those fixed costs, while smaller teams face higher entry barriers. If leading labs gain more influence over evaluation standards, industry barriers could rise further.
Sam Altman told Fortune that OpenAI will not go public this year and that an IPO could be delayed until 2027. He said going public would not be wise given the current safety-related environment and that the company is under no pressure to do so. Altman added that OpenAI still has substantial work ahead on safety, alignment and cooperation with governments.
That comment came as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publicly called on Saturday for the AI race to slow down, with Altman and Elon Musk both quickly expressing support.
Arthur Hayes posted on X that beyond AI safety concerns, if companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX stop acting as buyers of compute capacity, the U.S. government may have to step in. In another scenario, if demand for compute disappears and related AI debt defaults, the Federal Reserve may have to “print money” to rescue insurers holding that debt. Hayes said either way the solution ends in monetary expansion, adding the remark “Yachtzee.”
Brazil’s new capital rules raise the bar for crypto exchanges
Brazil’s central bank has introduced rules requiring virtual asset service providers to meet capital, audit, anti-money-laundering and ongoing reporting standards. The capital requirement can reach as high as 37.2 million reais, or about $7.2 million.
Of roughly 300 current market participants, only 20 to 25 may be in a position to apply for authorization, and only around 10 are expected to obtain licenses.
Some smaller platforms have already ended or restructured retail operations, including Bitnuvem, NovaDAX, Digitra and Coinext, though those firms did not attribute their decisions to the new rules. Companies that fail to meet the requirements will also face continuing compliance costs, leaving some business lines difficult to sustain.
Firms must apply for authorization by Oct. 30. Those that do not apply will have 30 days to wind down operations and notify clients. Isabel Longhi, Ripple’s head of public and regulatory policy for Latin America, said market consolidation is likely as Brazil’s crypto market matures, but the rules will curb innovation in the short term.
SEC reviews Grayscale Litecoin trust ETF renaming and listing plan
The SEC is reviewing Grayscale’s application to rename the Grayscale Litecoin Trust as the “Grayscale Litecoin Trust ETF” and list it on NYSE Arca under the ticker LTCN.
On-chain signals, market calls and platform updates
CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost said this cycle may be the most active one yet for Bitcoin long-term holders, or LTHs. He used a coin-days-destroyed, or CDD, heatmap to track the trend. The metric measures the number of days BTC was held before being spent or moved, and transfers by long-term holders often point to selling intent.
He said stronger LTH activity in this cycle may be tied to extra liquidity created by spot ETFs and by companies building Bitcoin treasury reserves. But a rise in CDD does not only appear at market tops and can also reflect capitulation by some holders.
Darkfost added that Coinbase previously moved 800,000 BTC, with many of those coins having been held for more than six months. That type of asset transfer can cause a temporary jump in CDD but is an isolated event. At present, recent Bitcoin gains have led to a small pickup in LTH activity, which may indicate some holders are taking quick profits. Even so, he said overall activity remains quiet in 2026 and long-term holders are still waiting.
CoinGlass data showed the Coinbase Bitcoin premium index has stayed negative for seven straight days, last reading -0.0205%, signaling another period of weak U.S. buying power. On Aug. 24, the metric had turned positive at 0.0052% for the first time since May 19, briefly ending a record 97-day stretch of negative readings.
The index measures the price spread for Bitcoin between Coinbase Pro and Binance. A persistent negative reading usually means Coinbase is quoting lower, which can reflect weaker U.S. buying or heavier selling pressure. The report added that the indicator alone should not be used to conclude institutional capital is leaving the market.
Tom Lee said the crypto market is headed into an extremely bullish 12-month phase. He argued that more than $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated on Oct. 10 last year after the U.S. threatened a 100% tariff on China, removing a large amount of borrowed money from the market, and that the bottom of crypto’s four-year cycle may arrive next month.
Lee also said he sees a large long-term opportunity in asset tokenization. If $100 trillion in assets eventually moves on-chain and 1% of that becomes revenue, that would produce about $1.1 trillion in annual revenue and imply a market opportunity of roughly $20 trillion using traditional corporate valuation frameworks.
BitMine, however, currently holds 5.93 million ETH and is sitting on an unrealized loss of about $5 billion. Fundstrat has advised clients for more than a decade to allocate 2% of portfolios to crypto, and Lee said in accounts that followed that guidance, crypto now accounts for more than 85% of portfolio value.
Crypto brokerage platform Cascade, formerly Perennial, said it is shutting down. The company said it spent the past five years trying to build a unified platform for global markets around 24/7 access and broad accessibility. Cascade said the decision was not made lightly, thanked its supporters and confirmed that operations have stopped. Users can claim remaining funds in Cascade, listed as CLS+trading, through the official designated link after logging in through Privy Home.
Robinhood’s stock tokens draw fresh criticism
AMC CEO Adam Aron again criticized Robinhood’s stock-token business and directed a list of questions at Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and chief legal officer Dan Gallagher.
Aron said stock tokens run against the basic idea of stock ownership. He also questioned why Robinhood is heavily promoting the product on its U.S. website even though it cannot offer it to U.S. users.
He further asked whether stock tokens could mislead buyers into thinking they hold the same rights as actual shareholders, and whether Robinhood’s claimed 1:1 stock backing really holds if some of the underlying shares are also lent out to short sellers.
Aron also criticized Robinhood’s use of a Jersey entity for the business and said that what Robinhood may see as innovation “will only bring shame on Robinhood” in his view.
The day before, co-founder Vlad Tenev had published a long post laying out Robinhood’s vision of using blockchain to give global investors, especially those outside the U.S., exposure to U.S. stocks and ETFs, and discussing whether issuers should have to consent before their shares are tokenized.
TRM says only a small share of x402 volume comes from AI agents
Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs said in a report that most transaction volume on Coinbase’s x402 payment protocol does not come from AI agents.
The report examined 198.9 million settlements worth about $52.7 million handled by known x402 facilitators on Base, Solana and Polygon since May 2025. After excluding self-payments and other anomalous flows, roughly $25.62 million was classified as potential commercial activity. Of that amount, only 0.6% to 7.5% by value appeared to come from AI agents.
TRM said ordinary scripts, scheduled jobs and self-trading can generate the same on-chain footprint, so total protocol volume is not enough to measure agent commerce. Its model flags addresses that repeatedly pay the same service as scripts, which may undercount the true scale of single-purpose agents.
USDC accounted for 99.6% of settlement value during the period, or about $52.47 million. At the same time, Binance’s Agent OS launched in August with an embedded x402 payment layer, Coinbase’s Base is backing agent and payments startups through a $1 million accelerator, and Amazon in May joined Coinbase and Stripe to launch AgentCore Payments.
TRM said the next steps should include a better on-chain agent registration mechanism, a verifiable counterparty reputation system for agents and a monitoring framework designed for small, high-frequency payments. The report added, “Agent commerce needs agent compliance.”
Token moves and product updates
The Defiant reported that Daniele Sesta said his automated market maker Equilibra is being deployed on Robinhood Chain and belongs to the HeyAnon project token ANON. The token jumped about 220% in 24 hours, climbing from $0.2159 to as high as $1 before easing to about $0.6967. Trading volume reached $3.2 million, around 15 times the prior day.
ANON’s circulating market capitalization stands at about $10.7 million, with 15.3 million tokens in circulation and a maximum supply of 21 million. Most liquidity sits on decentralized venues including Uniswap V3 on Ethereum and Raydium on Solana, though the token also trades on centralized exchanges such as MEXC, Gate and KCEX.
Solana meme-coin launchpad Pump.fun announced two changes: holder rewards and the removal of the cashback model. Holder reward tokens distribute rewards based on holding alone, with higher caps for longer holding periods, and are designed around community development.
The cashback model will no longer be available as a launch option. Creators can choose either creator fees or holder reward tokens. Existing tokens can apply for an irreversible switch, submitted by teams or communities, and reviewed using objective information about what benefits the token and its community. Custom trading pairs must use a fixed fee between 0.01% and 3%, while SOL/USDC keeps its market-cap-tiered fee structure.
Fees go into Pump.fun’s distribution wallet and are paid out automatically multiple times per hour on a pro rata basis. Holders need more than $20 in value to qualify. Protocol fees are the same across token types, and rewards are paid in the quote asset.
According to GMGN data, Solana meme coin baton briefly exceeded a market capitalization of $18 million overnight, setting a record high. It was later quoted at $12.3 million, up 86.8% over 24 hours. BATON is a community meme coin built around the historical narrative tied to Baton Corporation, the company behind Pump.fun, and its early project Baton Finance, with PUMP as the paired token. The token borrows the narrative only and is not officially connected to Pump.fun. Market commentary warned users that meme-coin prices are highly volatile.
Revolut discloses data exposure incident
Revolut said an unauthorized third party used an email account under a real government domain to submit fake requests for client information, which led to the exposure of sensitive data belonging to a small number of customers. The company described the episode as a “sophisticated external impersonation scam,” said its own systems and client funds were not affected, and added that the offending email account has been blocked.
The potentially exposed information includes names, dates of birth, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, copies of identification documents such as passports and driver’s licenses, identity-verification selfies, account statements, IBANs, withdrawal records and complete transaction histories, including Bitcoin transaction records. Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès said he was among those affected.
Revolut did not disclose the number of affected customers, whether the event was limited to one market, or which government body owned the impersonated domain. It said it has notified the relevant government authority, law enforcement, data protection agencies and financial regulators. On-chain investigator ZachXBT said the scale may be limited, but the target may have been high-net-worth users.
Meme rankings and related reads
GMGN market data as of 09:00 on Sept. 14 showed the top five trending ETH tokens over the previous 24 hours were SEND, STOCKER, UNI, LINK and PEPE. On Solana, the top five were STONK, EMBER, NINA, PVE and ANSEM. On Base, the top five were Basecat, FLOCK, VVV, STONKEX and SOL.
ChainCatcher also highlighted several related reads from the past day, including discussions around AI safety and AI-linked stocks, Binance Research’s view that AI trading is rotating from semiconductors toward software and capital markets, and an analysis of what Ethereum’s changing gas-payment experience may mean for users and wallets.