Polkadot Leads a Rotation Into Older Layer-1 Tokens as Fed Hike Odds Reach 54.5%

Layer-1 tokens launched before 2018 carried parts of Tuesday’s crypto market, with Polkadot leading the move after a proposal to give the network its own stablecoin entered OpenGov. Bitcoin and ether finished lower as traders extended their bet that the Federal Reserve will raise rates next week.

Bitcoin last traded at $78,539, down 0.83% over 24 hours and up 1.6% over seven days, according to CoinGecko data. It traded between $77,666 and $79,432. Ether stood at $2,484.83, down 0.29% on the day and up 2.8% on the week. XRP rose 1.53% to $1.42, Solana fell 0.59% to $103.24, and BNB gained 1.66% to $751.92. BNB’s weekly advance reached 10.5%.

Total crypto market value was $2.70 trillion on $91.54 billion in volume. Bitcoin dominance was 58.36%. Among the 125 largest non-stablecoin tokens, 57 rose and 66 fell.

Bitcoin Gives Back an Early Gain

Bitcoin reached $79,432 shortly after 10 p.m. ET Monday, during Tokyo’s morning. It then sold off through the European session, reaching the 24-hour low of $77,666 during the 10 a.m. ET hour. The token recovered to $78,833 by midday before giving back the gain through the afternoon and ending the U.S. session close to its opening level.

Bitcoin remained 37.7% below the $126,080 record set in October 2025. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 69 on Tuesday, down from 71 on Monday and 74 on Sept. 4, according to Alternative.me. The index has stayed above 60 every day since Aug. 29.

Polkadot’s Stablecoin Proposal

Polkadot rose 16.7% to $1.25 and gained 42.5% over seven days. Monday’s 13.85% increase was followed by a second straight double-digit daily gain. Trading volume reached $420 million against a market value of $2.13 billion, giving DOT the largest weekly gain among the 50 biggest tokens.

The proposal tied to the move went on-chain at 11:49 a.m. ET Monday. OpenGov Referendum 1944, titled “dotUSD: A Native Stablecoin for Polkadot,” is on the Root track and in its deciding period. The text says the proposal signals the DAO’s intent to introduce dotUSD as Polkadot’s primary stable-value instrument.

The referendum lists seven actions. They include creating the dotUSD asset “owned by the protocol,” opening a DOT-dotUSD liquidity pool on Asset Hub, designating dotUSD as a sufficient asset and setting parameters for a peg stability module. The proposal commits treasury funds: “$2.5M in USDT will be used to mint dotUSD and $2.5M in DOT will be allocated initially to the pool.”

The Polkadot Community Foundation submitted the referendum and disclaims operational control. The text describes dotUSD as “a decentralized, protocol-native stablecoin project” that would have no issuer and would operate autonomously through on-chain logic.

Voting stood at 2,343,074 DOT in favor against 59,896 opposed. Support amounted to 558,519 DOT against an electorate of 1.67 billion DOT. A second referendum, No. 1942, would upgrade system chains to runtime 2.5. It went on-chain Sept. 5 and was also in its deciding period.

No U.S. product filing accompanied the move. An EDGAR full-text search returned one document mentioning Polkadot between Sept. 1 and Sept. 8: a Canary Staked TRX ETF prospectus that uses the name in passing. Polkadot’s own account had posted nothing about dotUSD.

Older Layer-1 Tokens Move Together

Cosmos Hub rose 10.8% to $1.83 and gained 23.3% over seven days. Decred advanced 9.4% to $17.30, up 19.4% for the week. Ethereum Classic rose 9.3% to $8.60, up 18.3% over seven days. The three tokens moved alongside Polkadot without a dated catalyst.

Cosmos Hub’s latest governance proposals, Nos. 1052 and 1053, were submitted Aug. 25 and finished voting Sept. 1. Decred’s latest substantive release was the v2.1.6 consensus security patch from late August. Its latest account post, dated Sept. 7, was a marketing message. Ethereum Classic’s core-geth has not released a new version since Hermes v1.12.22 on March 28, and its repositories show no September activity.

None of the three appeared in Binance listing announcements dated Sept. 4 through Sept. 8. VeChain added 10.6% to $0.008006 and gained 19.5% over seven days. Its Aug. 6 post about the Interstellar upgrade and its Aug. 24 statement that the VIP-255 vote had passed did not provide a mainnet activation date.

Rate-Hike Odds Reach 54.5%

Traders widened their tightening bet for a third consecutive session. Polymarket put the probability of a 25-basis-point increase at 54.5% and no change at 45.5%, with $104.6 million in volume. The same contracts showed 52.5% and 45.5% at midday Tuesday, 50.5% and 49.5% on Monday, and 30.5% and 67.5% on Aug. 24. A 25-basis-point cut traded at 0.45%.

The Federal Open Market Committee meets Sept. 15-16. It is one of the four meetings each year that includes a Summary of Economic Projections. Friday’s labor report set the direction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that “total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent.” June and July payrolls were revised higher by a combined 55,000.

August producer prices are due Sept. 10 and consumer prices Sept. 11, both at 8:30 a.m. ET. They are the final two federal releases before the committee meets.

Oil Nears $100 as Risk Assets Close Lower

Brent crude settled at $99.31 a barrel, up 3.15% from Friday and at its highest close since July 23, when it ended at $100.69. West Texas Intermediate rose 3.03% to $94.25.

The yen traded at 153.97 per dollar, its firmest level since Feb. 18, while the dollar index fell 0.31% to 98.85. “Higher oil prices on the back of continued geopolitical escalations between the US and Iran and a rally in the Japanese yen to a 7-month high have taken the spotlight in the past 24 hours,” Thahbib Rahman, a research analyst at Block Scholes, wrote in a note emailed to reporters Tuesday. “Both events weighed on risk assets across US equity markets and crypto markets alike.”

Rahman said options positioning had not followed spot prices lower. “While not near the highs of mid-August and early September, after the US Treasury’s bond interventions and Fed Governor Waller’s dovish speech, short-dated BTC put-call skew remains tilted towards call options,” he wrote. “This means investors are leaning more bullish than bearish and is an indication that traders are willing to pay more for upside exposure to spot price than downside protection.”

U.S. equities closed lower. The S&P 500 fell 0.58% to 7,673.52 and the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.32% to 26,421.41. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.81%, and the 30-year yield reached 5.26%. Gold futures fell 0.67% to $4,400 an ounce.

Zcash Gets an Options-Trading Announcement

Zcash rose 0.82% to $1,166.37 and gained 39.2% over seven days after reaching $1,210.35. It held 10th place with a $19.73 billion market value, above Hyperliquid at $18.79 billion and Dogecoin at $14.01 billion. Zcash remained 63.4% below the $3,191.93 record set on Oct. 28, 2016.

Grayscale said Tuesday that “$ZCSH, the world’s first Zcash fund, is now available for options trading on @NYSE.” The post links to the fund’s prospectus but does not name the options venue. The shares list on NYSE Arca, while NYSE American Options and NYSE Arca Options are separate venues.

No exchange listing notice or SEC rule filing corroborating the options listing was retrievable. The most recent document under the trust’s EDGAR record was the Aug. 25 prospectus. The fund completed its uplisting from OTCQX to NYSE Arca on Aug. 25 under the ticker ZCSH. It registered the shares through a Form 8-A12B filed Aug. 24 and changed its name to The Zcash ETF the same day.

The fund’s account said Sept. 4 that ZCSH “just crossed $400,000,000 in AUM.” The Defiant covered the original conversion filing in November 2025.

Monero fell 4.3% to $497.42 after trading as high as $525.33. It was down 0.7% over seven days, compared with Zcash’s 39.2% gain. Monero’s official blog has published nothing since the July 21 GUI release, and no Monero item appeared on Binance, Kraken, OKX or Bithumb announcement pages Monday or Tuesday. The token has no U.S.-listed vehicle.

Injective Has Three Dated Announcements

Injective rose 5.25% to $6.45 and gained 33.8% over seven days. It had been up 12.7% at midday. Volume reached $190 million against a $650 million market value.

Three dated announcements sat behind the move. Injective said Tuesday that “native USDC on Injective is now live on @krakenfx,” allowing the stablecoin to be deposited and withdrawn directly between the exchange and the chain. On Monday, the project said “$INJ is now live on @RobinhoodCrypto.” Robinhood’s asset page lists INJ as tradable but does not state a date.

Also Monday, the project said “over 58.8 Million INJ tokens are now staked onchain,” calling it a record. Injective’s public node reported 58,461,008 INJ bonded against a total supply of 122,781,894, or 47.6%, slightly below the figure provided by the project.

INJ traded 87.7% below the $52.62 record set in March 2024. The chain’s latest blog post, dated Sept. 4, says Pineapple Financial has moved more than $1 billion in residential mortgage records onto Injective.

Korean Listings Lift Useless Coin

Useless Coin gained 24% to $0.2791 on $174 million in volume and a $279 million market value after two Korean exchanges opened trading Tuesday. Bithumb’s market list carries a KRW-USELESS pair whose hourly candles begin at 1 a.m. ET. Upbit’s market list carries BTC and USDT pairs whose candles begin at 8 a.m. ET. The USDT pair was flagged for price volatility and cross-venue price gaps, and Upbit did not open a won pair.

The listings account for Tuesday’s move. The token’s 138.5% seven-day gain predates both listings, and no project statement covering that earlier period was available.

Venice Token led the day with a 30.2% gain, reaching a record $25.49 before easing to $24.18. Its market value was $1.15 billion and volume was $177 million. The latest post on the Venice blog is dated July 17 and carries an Aug. 5 update that cuts VVV emissions to 2.5 million a year on Sept. 1 and 2 million on Oct. 1. It also raises the DIEM supply target to 40,000 on Sept. 14. Those dates were set five weeks earlier. The project changelog has not been updated since July 30.

Falcon Finance rose 25.6% to $0.1495 and gained 51.9% over seven days. Its latest blog post is dated Aug. 31, while its Sept. 8 account posts respond to the price rather than explain it. Pons gained 17.7% to $0.8265 and rose 93.8% over seven days. Uniswap Labs bought PONS tokens on Sept. 3.

ETF Flow Data Misses Tuesday’s Session

U.S. spot bitcoin and ether ETF flows for Tuesday had not been published by 5 p.m. ET. The last completed session was Friday, when bitcoin funds took in $174.6 million and ether funds received $25.9 million, according to Farside Investors.

BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $117.4 million of the bitcoin total, while Fidelity’s FBTC took in $57.2 million. Among ether funds, BlackRock’s two products drew $74.2 million and Fidelity’s FETH lost $48.3 million.

No row existed for Monday because U.S. markets were closed for Labor Day. Monday’s altcoin advance therefore took place while both the ETF and equity markets were shut.

DeFi total value locked stood at $87.94 billion, down 0.7% over 24 hours and up 1.57% over seven days, according to DefiLlama. Stablecoin supply was $311.71 billion, down 0.1% on the day, up 0.49% over seven days and 1.35% over 30 days.

Hyperliquid fell 0.79% to $84.50 and traded 5.7% below the $89.60 record set Sept. 6. Its account had posted nothing since Aug. 31. WhiteBIT Coin rose 6.16% to $81.35 and gained 14.3% over seven days after touching a record $81.98 at 12:40 p.m. ET. Its blog had published nothing since July 28.

Top Gainers and Decliners

Ribbita by Virtuals fell 10.8% to $0.2055 and was down 14.8% over seven days. Akedo dropped 8.6% to $0.01575 but retained a 76.7% weekly gain. Unibase fell 7.9% to $0.1207 and was up 2.4% for the week. Monad declined 5.9% to $0.02582 and was down 0.4% over seven days.

Pudgy Penguins fell 5.1% to $0.008108 and was down 4.5% over seven days. Kite declined 4.8% to $0.1135 and was down 8.1% for the week. Arweave fell 4.8% to $2.84 but remained up 24.5% over seven days. Hedera dropped 4.6% to $0.07895 and was still up 6.8% for the week.

Akedo traded 21% higher at midday before ending 8.6% lower. Hedera was the largest token among the decliners at a $3.46 billion market value, and remained up 6.8% over seven days. Its latest blog post, dated Sept. 4, covers new council partners. Its Tuesday statements concerned an insurance consortium building on the network.

Monero’s 4.3% decline fell just outside the decliner table. Prices and market data were as of 5:11 p.m. ET on Sept. 8, 2026.