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For decades, the mechanics of global equity indexing were treated as plumbing—hidden, technical, and resolutely administrative. Providers like Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) designed benchmarks to reflect the economic reality of public markets, not to shape it. Their mandate was descriptive, serving as a transparent mirror of global capital flows, sector weightings, and free-float market capitalizations.
That architectural assumption has quietly fractured. Today, the sheer scale of passive index-tracking capital has transformed benchmark administrators from passive cartographers into de facto market regulators. When an index provider determines the eligibility criteria for inclusion in indexes such as the MSCI Global Investable Market Indexes (GIMI), it is no longer merely measuring a company’s market value; it is dictating its access to institutional capital, influencing its cost of borrowing, shaping its shareholder register, and driving its liquidity profile.
Nowhere is this transformation more evident—or more contentious—than in MSCI’s ongoing confrontation with public Bitcoin treasury companies. Following a failed attempt in late 2025 to explicitly target digital-asset holding vehicles, MSCI launched a sweeping consultation on August 3, 2026, aimed at redefining and restricting the index eligibility of “non-operating companies.” While the proposal is drafted in neutral financial terminology, its practical architecture threatens to eject major corporate Bitcoin adopters, most notably Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), from global benchmarks.
This clash is much more than a corporate dispute over index weighting. It raises a profound structural question for contemporary capital markets: What happens when a private, for-profit index provider acquires the power to penalize corporate balance-sheet innovation, and by extension, exercise private market governance without regulatory accountability?
From Direct Exclusion to Structural Filters To understand the current crisis, one must trace MSCI’s regulatory maneuvers over the past twelve months. In late 2025, MSCI opened a consultation specifically addressing “Digital Asset Treasury Companies,” proposing to strip index eligibility from any corporate issuer whose digital asset holdings represented 50 percent or more of its total assets. Market participants quickly recognized the measure as an explicit screen against companies that had pivoted their corporate treasuries into Bitcoin.
Facing intense pushback from issuers and institutional investors who pointed out the arbitrary nature of singling out a specific asset class, MSCI shelved that direct approach on January 6, 2026. Rather than dropping the inquiry, however, the index provider retreated to draft a more sophisticated mechanism.
On August 3, 2026, MSCI announced a broader, ostensibly asset-agnostic consultation regarding the eligibility of “non-operating companies” for the GIMI framework. Rather than naming Bitcoin directly, the new proposal establishes a two-step quantitative sieve designed to catch companies deemed to be operating primarily as holding vehicles or investment funds rather than traditional operating businesses.
The methodology proceeds in two distinct stages:
The Core Screen: MSCI applies a primary balance-sheet test to determine whether an issuer maintains substantial operating assets. A company clears this initial hurdle if its operating assets exceed 50 percent of its total assets. The Exclusion Screen: For any issuer failing the core screen, MSCI applies five non-industry-specific financial ratios: operating asset intensity, expense intensity, operating cash flow, fair value intensity, and capital dependence. If a company triggers failing thresholds on at least four of these five metrics, it is classified as a non-operating company and rendered ineligible for index inclusion. While existing constituents receive modest procedural protections—such as a more lenient 10 percent operating asset floor rather than 20 percent and a requirement to fail the screen in two consecutive annual filings before removal—the structural intent is clear. The simulation accompanying the August 2026 consultation revealed that applying the screen to the MSCI ACWI IMI universe using mid-2026 data would immediately flag and delete major public Bitcoin treasuries, including Strategy and Japan’s Metaplanet, alongside UK-based uranium holding vehicle Yellow Cake plc, while placing firms like SharpLink, Center Laboratories, and Lydia Holding onto a public watchlist.
The Targets and the Quantitative Realities The primary focal point of this methodology is Strategy. Following its multi-year pivot into accumulating Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, Strategy has amassed over 845,050 bitcoin, making it the largest corporate holder of the asset globally. In the simulation data released by MSCI, Strategy—boasting a float-adjusted market capitalization exceeding $23.9 billion among the flagged entities—accounts for the vast majority of the affected market value.
The financial stakes of index inclusion for a company of this scale are frequently misunderstood. Critics of corporate Bitcoin strategies often assume that index exclusion triggers a terminal liquidity catastrophe. Yet empirical analysis of trading volumes reveals a more nuanced picture. Industry estimates indicate that passive funds tracking MSCI GIMI indexes hold roughly 3.1 percent of Strategy’s basic shares outstanding, amounting to approximately 13 million shares. When measured against Strategy’s robust trading velocity—where daily volume regularly absorbs hundreds of millions of dollars—that passive exposure represents less than a single average trading day.
Consequently, the true threat of MSCI’s proposal is not a mechanical liquidity shock, but rather a structural and narrative penalty. Index exclusion closes doors to specific institutional mandates, benchmark-restricted pension pools, and broad-market ETFs that are legally or contractually bound to replicate MSCI indexes. It penalizes a company not for operational failure, but for balance-sheet structure.
The Accounting and Legal Clash: GAAP versus Index Discretion Strategy launched an aggressive counter-offensive in late August 2026, led by founder Michael Saylor and CEO Phong Le. In formal communications to MSCI and public filings, the company blasted the consultation as a “misguided,” “flawed,” and “discriminatory” pretext designed to achieve through backdoor ratio screens what MSCI failed to accomplish with its direct digital asset proposal in 2025.
The core of Strategy’s legal and accounting argument hinges on the definition of an operating business. Strategy noted that its terminology—dividing issuers into “operating” and “non-operating”—has no formal grounding in U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), or any recognized statutory securities framework.
Furthermore, Strategy underscored that it reports its Bitcoin activities as an official operating segment under U.S. GAAP, a classification arrived at through extensive engagement and alignment with staff at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). By treating Bitcoin treasury operations, capital markets issuance, and asset management as core segments of an enterprise that employs over 1,500 people globally and generates hundreds of millions in software revenue, Strategy argues that MSCI is substituting its own arbitrary policy judgments for established regulatory and accounting standards.
In a particularly sharp rhetorical turn, Strategy’s pushback weaponized MSCI’s own historical regulatory positions. The company highlighted a 2022 SEC concept release examining whether information providers and index administrators exercise sufficient market power to bring them within the purview of the Investment Advisers Act. By forcing index providers to judge whether an asset class like Bitcoin belongs inside an operating business, MSCI risks undermining its foundational claim to absolute neutrality—the bedrock principle that index providers merely reflect market reality rather than passing moral or strategic judgment on corporate balance sheets.
The Double Standard of Asset Concentration Beyond technical accounting definitions, the institutional debate centers on consistency. Critics of MSCI’s methodology argue that the proposed financial ratios are applied unevenly across asset classes.
Consider the treatment of real estate investment trusts (REITs) and mortgage REITs (mREITs). MSCI benchmarks routinely include entities whose balance sheets are overwhelmingly concentrated in a single asset class—commercial real estate, residential mortgages, or physical property portfolios—and whose revenues and valuations are driven entirely by external market cycles, rental yields, and continuous capital raises via debt and equity markets. These entities rely heavily on external capital dependence to scale their portfolios, mirroring the capital-raising mechanics utilized by Bitcoin treasury companies.
Yet under MSCI’s proposed framework, asset concentration and capital dependence in real estate are deemed fully compatible with index inclusion, whereas identical structural strategies executed in digital assets are classified as disqualifying non-operating traits. This disparity exposes the fundamental vulnerability of MSCI’s criteria: they rely on subjective definitions of “operations” that can easily be tailored to exclude disfavored asset classes while sheltering traditional ones.
The Structural Crisis of Private Governance The confrontation between MSCI and Bitcoin treasury companies transcends the crypto asset ecosystem. It illuminates a broader institutional crisis concerning the unaccountable power of private index providers.
Over the past two decades, the migration of capital from active management to passive index-tracking funds has concentrated immense economic leverage in the hands of a small oligopoly of index administrators, dominated by MSCI, FTSE Russell, and S&P Dow Jones. These firms operate as private, for-profit entities, yet their methodology documents function with the force of public law for corporate issuers.
When an index provider unilaterally alters its inclusion rules to penalize specific corporate treasury models, it engages in private market governance. Unlike regulated public exchanges or statutory securities regulators, index committees operate behind closed doors, subject to limited public transparency, no formal administrative procedure acts, and virtually no recourse for aggrieved issuers other than public lobbying.
If MSCI succeeds in establishing the precedent that holding non-traditional reserve assets on a corporate balance sheet strips a public company of its operating status, it creates a dangerous chilling effect. Today, the target is Bitcoin; tomorrow, it could be corporate holdings of physical commodities, strategic technology stakes, gold, real estate, data centers or alternative monetary reserves that conflict with the prevailing preferences of institutional ESG or benchmark committees. Corporate directors lose the sovereign right to optimize their balance sheets for shareholder value if doing so risks excommunication from the passive capital ecosystem.
The Timeline, the Stakes, and the Regulatory Reckoning The immediate resolution of this conflict is rapidly approaching. The public consultation period for MSCI’s non-operating company proposal closes on September 30, 2026, with a final determination expected by October 16, 2026. If adopted in its current form, constituent reclassifications will be published on November 11, 2026, and implemented on December 1, 2026.
Yet for institutional investors, asset managers, and corporate executives, the stakes extend far beyond the ticker symbol MSTR. The outcome will test whether public companies retain the autonomy to innovate their balance sheets in an era dominated by passive gatekeepers, or whether benchmark administrators have officially crossed the line from measuring markets to regulating them.
The solution does not lie in government micromanagement of index design, but in statutory accountability. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and global securities regulators must stop treating index providers as invisible software plumbing. When an index committee’s discretionary classifications can dictate corporate access to capital, distort price discovery, and bypass standard administrative notice-and-comment safeguards, that committee is acting as a de facto market regulator.
Regulators must revisit the framework governing dominant index providers under the Investment Advisers Act, demanding transparent due process, strict standards against arbitrary discrimination, and formal accountability for decisions that alter capital formation.
Until market authorities recognize that index providers have become systemic gatekeepers, the free market for corporate control will no longer be governed by shareholders, boards, and public statutes—it will remain at the mercy of unelected private arbiters in New York and London.
Take Action to Protect Index Neutrality The boundary between measuring market value and regulating corporate behavior is being erased. MSCI’s proposed “non-operating company” screen threatens to penalize balance-sheet innovation, misclassify legitimate operating businesses, and set a dangerous precedent for private governance in capital markets.
Don’t let private index administrators dictate corporate treasury strategy behind closed doors. The public consultation window closes on September 30, 2026.
Join business leaders, institutional investors, and advocates for open capital markets:
Sign the Open Letter: Add your voice or your organization’s signature to demand that MSCI withdraw the proposed screen and publish all market feedback at msci.bitcoinforcorporations.com. Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.
Michael Saylor said US crypto markets can continue developing even as the CLARITY Act remains stalled. He expects the SEC, CFTC and Treasury to pursue regulatory measures under existing law, alongside an expansion of bank services involving Bitcoin custody and lending against the crypto asset.
Saylor said he also expects greater capital allocation toward Bitcoin and digital credit, while the GENIUS Act provides support for stablecoin adoption. He said progress across these areas does not have to wait for Congress to pass additional legislation.
The vote that wasn’t On September 15, 2026, the Senate held a cloture vote on the CLARITY Act. It failed 49–50, well short of the 60-vote threshold required to advance the legislation.
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The bill, formally known as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633), was designed to draw clear jurisdictional lines between the SEC and CFTC over digital assets. The CFTC would oversee digital commodities like Bitcoin, while the SEC would retain authority over tokens which function more like investment contracts.
The House passed the bill with bipartisan support on July 17, 2025. The Senate Banking Committee advanced it in mid-May 2026. But negotiations over stablecoin provisions and ethics requirements ground the process to a halt, and the final vote reflected a chamber that couldn’t agree on the fine print.
Saylor’s contrarian take
Saylor doesn’t see it that way. In his September 16 remarks, he argued that the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury already possess sufficient authority to establish rules governing digital assets without Congress handing them a new playbook.
His more memorable framing came a month earlier. On August 7, Saylor stated: “Bitcoin doesn’t need CLARITY. America needs clarity.”
He went further, forecasting that banks would expand Bitcoin custody services and Bitcoin-collateralized lending in the current environment.
Strategy’s massive Bitcoin position Strategy Inc. holds 845,050 BTC, purchased for approximately $63.73 billion at an average price of roughly $75,412 per coin as of mid-September 2026.
Saylor also pointed to the GENIUS Act, which focuses specifically on stablecoin regulation, as evidence that Washington isn’t entirely gridlocked on crypto policy. The stablecoin framework has continued to advance on a separate legislative track, suggesting that Congress can make progress on narrower, more targeted bills even when broader market-structure reform stalls.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Key Takeaways Senate rejected the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act with a 49-50 vote, falling short of the 60 votes needed Bitcoin declined approximately 4% within 24 hours, momentarily dropping under the $76,000 threshold Coinbase shares plummeted close to 9% during Tuesday’s session, with Circle experiencing an 11%+ decline ARK Invest liquidated more than $61 million in cryptocurrency-related assets one day prior to the Senate decision Market experts indicate that regulatory agencies can still move forward with crypto oversight through traditional rulemaking processes A significant cryptocurrency regulation bill stalled in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, sparking widespread selling pressure throughout digital asset markets and related equities.
🚨BREAKING: The CLARITY Act has FAILED its Senate procedural vote, short of the 60 votes needed to advance.
The setback stalls the crypto market structure bill but leaves open the possibility of another vote. pic.twitter.com/gDGCYG3Hir
— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) September 15, 2026
The proposed Digital Asset Market Clarity Act required a supermajority of 60 votes to advance but secured just 49 in favor. Had it passed, the legislation would have expanded the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s jurisdiction over cryptocurrency spot trading and established more transparent guidelines for regulating blockchain-based ventures across the United States.
Cryptocurrency-Related Equities Experience Sharp Declines Coinbase shares tumbled nearly 9% during Tuesday’s trading session, completely reversing Monday’s 9% advance. Circle’s stock collapsed by more than 11%, wiping out the majority of the previous day’s 7.5% surge. Galaxy Digital shed 8% while Gemini declined 7%.
Coinbase Global, Inc., COIN
Robinhood’s shares decreased 3%, Bullish experienced a 5% reduction, and eToro slid 4%.
Digital currency mining companies weren’t spared from the downturn. Riot Platforms saw a 5% drop, while MARA Holdings, CleanSpark, IREN, and Core Scientific each registered losses ranging from 3% to 4%.
Strategy, which holds the largest corporate Bitcoin position, retreated 5.4% on Tuesday.
Bitcoin declined roughly 4% across a 24-hour period and momentarily approached the $75,000 level. Ethereum recorded a 3.1% loss while XRP tumbled 8%. Year-to-date, Bitcoin has fallen approximately 13% and currently trades about 45% beneath its record peak of $126,199.
Digital asset markets had experienced gains on Monday following the publication of a revised bill version. However, sentiment shifted dramatically once lawmakers rejected the measure.
ARK Invest Reduces Cryptocurrency Holdings Just 24 hours before the Senate decision, Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest divested over $61 million worth of cryptocurrency-linked positions.
ARK liquidated 36,628 Coinbase shares from its ARK Innovation ETF, representing more than $7 million in value. The firm also reduced its Circle holdings across two exchange-traded funds, disposing of 142,350 shares valued at roughly $13.86 million.
Additionally, the investment manager decreased its position in its proprietary ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF, selling approximately 1.53 million shares for more than $40 million.
The legislative outcome wasn’t the sole factor weighing on markets Tuesday. Market participants were also exercising caution before an anticipated Federal Reserve announcement expected to feature an interest rate increase. Both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indices closed lower.
Morgan Stanley’s Felix Stratmann noted that while the bill’s immediate prospects have diminished significantly, it hasn’t been completely shelved. He emphasized that the SEC and CFTC retain the ability to push forward digital asset regulations through standard administrative procedures.
Needham’s John Todaro observed that the unsuccessful vote effectively concludes attempts at comprehensive crypto market structure legislation this year but characterized it as “business as usual for crypto exchanges.” He suggested the market correction might present an attractive entry point for investors considering Coinbase and Robinhood.
The Clarity Act’s rejection means cryptocurrency firms must continue operating without the comprehensive regulatory clarity they’ve been seeking from U.S. lawmakers.
Bitcoin Core 32.0 has entered its final release-candidate testing cycle after developers tagged v32.0rc1 on Sept. 14, bringing fee estimation, block-validation performance and security fixes closer to a planned Oct. 10 release.
Summary
Bitcoin Core 32.0 entered release-candidate testing September 14, with final tagging targeted for October 10. New fee estimation combines block history with current mempool conditions and may recommend lower fees. Block validation now prefetches previous outputs across eight worker threads by default, reducing disk waits. A wallet notification flaw could let authenticated users execute commands on affected non-Windows node systems. Testing found sixteen unauthenticated REST connections could drive memory use to roughly three gigabytes quickly. The Bitcoin Core project’s official GitHub release shows v32.0rc1 at commit d0231bb, signed with a verified maintainer signature on Sept. 14 at 12:58 UTC. The project’s release schedule still targets Oct. 10 for the final v32.0 tag, although the date remains subject to testing and further fixes.
Version 32 focuses on node software behavior, wallet interfaces, fee calculation, networking and performance. The draft release notes do not list a change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules, meaning the update does not redefine which transactions or blocks the network considers valid.
Bitcoin Core 32 targets Oct. 10 after RC1 tag Developers entered feature freeze on Aug. 20, limiting work to fixes needed before release. On Sept. 14, they split the 32.x branch from the main development branch and started the release-candidate cycle while development work for version 33 resumed separately.
The first candidate is intended for node operators, wallet developers and other users to test before developers decide whether the code is ready for a stable release. Bitcoin Core opened a dedicated 32.0 release-candidate testing feedback issue on Sept. 15, one day after RC1 was tagged.
The project asks testers to use the testing guide for RC-specific checks and report software problems through separate GitHub issues. No final v32.0 binary has been released as of Sept. 16.
Bitcoin Core does not update automatically. Operators choose when to install new versions, meaning older releases can remain active after newer software becomes available.
That manual upgrade model has mattered in previous security disclosures. As crypto.news previously reported, Bitcoin Core disclosed CVE-2024-52911 in May after the vulnerable 28.x branch reached end of life. The bug had already been fixed in Bitcoin Core 29.0 before technical details became public.
New fee estimator blends mempool and block history One of Bitcoin Core 32’s more visible user-facing changes affects estimatesmartfee, the RPC used by wallets and applications to calculate transaction fees.
Until now, Bitcoin Core’s main estimator has relied on observed confirmation behavior from transactions included in past blocks. Version 32 adds a separate estimator based on transactions currently waiting inside the node’s mempool.
The new mempool estimator produces both economical and conservative estimates from current pending transaction conditions. Bitcoin Core checks recent block activity before using it and can reject the estimate when the mempool appears too sparse or unhealthy.
When both systems produce valid results, estimatesmartfee returns the lower fee estimate. The new method therefore cannot push the existing block-policy recommendation higher through the combined default mode; its role is to lower the recommendation when current mempool conditions support doing so.
That design can respond more quickly after a period of expensive block space ends. A block-history estimator may continue incorporating recently confirmed high-fee transactions, while the mempool may already show fewer transactions competing for confirmation.
The software preserves a way for applications to use the previous method. An added fee_rate_estimator option lets users request block_policy, mempool_policy or the combined default behavior. Bitcoin Core stores the new mempool estimator’s statistics in a separate data file so they can be reloaded after restart.
Wallet fee calculations will use the combined default estimator. The response can identify which estimator produced the selected fee, while higher verbosity levels expose mempool-health statistics for applications that need more detail.
Block validation gets parallel disk prefetching Bitcoin Core 32 changes how nodes retrieve transaction data while connecting blocks, particularly when the needed information must be read from storage.
The software can now prefetch previous transaction outputs, known as prevouts, from the chainstate database across several worker threads while block validation continues. The default is eight prefetch threads, with operators able to raise the setting to 16 or disable parallel fetching by setting it to zero.
Prevouts identify the coins being spent by transaction inputs. Nodes need that information to check whether inputs exist, have not already been spent and satisfy the applicable validation rules.
The improvement is intended to cut time spent waiting for disk reads when a node processes blocks containing inputs not already available in faster memory caches. The effect will vary with storage hardware, cache behavior and node configuration.
Bitcoin Core 32 exposes the setting through -prevoutfetchthreads=<n>, giving operators control over how many threads take part. The draft notes describe the feature specifically as a block-validation performance improvement.
Separate RPC changes give operators more information during AssumeUTXO background validation. After a snapshot-based node reaches the chain tip, getblockchaininfo can now report the progress of the historical chain validation still running behind the active node state.
Security fixes close wallet and HTTP memory flaws Bitcoin Core 32 fixes a wallet notification flaw affecting non-Windows systems under a narrow set of conditions.
The draft notes state that an authenticated RPC user with permission to create wallets could craft a wallet name containing special replacement characters when the node was configured with -walletnotify. Under those conditions, the name could cause arbitrary commands to execute with the privileges of the Bitcoin Core process.
Version 32 changes wallet-notification placeholder replacement so wallet names are treated as literal text. The release tightens wallet naming as well by rejecting certain relative-path names containing . or .. path elements.
A second issue emerged during review of Bitcoin Core’s rewritten HTTP server, which is replacing libevent in version 32.
Developer Matthew Zipkin submitted pull request #36123 after an audit using Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 model identified a memory-exhaustion path. While the server handled one request, it could continue reading and queuing data sent by the same connection without an effective size limit.
The first analysis suggested the condition mainly required an authenticated client capable of keeping a request busy. Further testing found that REST traffic created a similar problem without authentication.
A reviewer reported that 16 unauthenticated REST connections pushed one test process from 46 MB of memory to roughly 3 GB in around one minute. After the revised fix, the same test increased memory use by roughly 3 MB over 90 seconds, compared with 3.2 GB before the patch.
The patch was merged Sept. 5, before v32.0rc1 was tagged. Because the rewritten HTTP server is new to version 32, the specific flaw was caught before the server appeared in a stable Bitcoin Core release.
The use of Kimi K3 fits a recent pattern of AI-assisted security review across Bitcoin software. As crypto.news reported in August, Bitcoin Red Team had logged 7,958 potential findings after scanning hundreds of Bitcoin-related open-source projects, though many required human verification before they could be treated as confirmed vulnerabilities.
Resource-exhaustion problems have appeared in other Bitcoin software this year. In related coverage, crypto.news reported that Core Lightning confirmed security flaws after reviewing AI-generated reports and warned operators to upgrade or temporarily use offline mode.
PSBT version 2 becomes the default for four RPCs Bitcoin Core 32 changes the default format created by four commands used with Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions.
createpsbt, walletcreatepsbt, converttopsbt and psbtbumpfee will produce PSBT version 2 by default. Developers added an optional psbt_version argument so applications can explicitly request another supported version when necessary.
PSBTs let several wallets, applications or hardware signing devices exchange transaction information before the completed Bitcoin transaction is broadcast. Moving the default to version 2 may require testing by software that assumes Core’s RPC output will use the older format.
The update does not remove the ability to request the previous version. Applications built around the affected RPC commands can set the format explicitly while they test version 2 compatibility.
Wallet tooling receives other changes in the same release. A new exportwatchonlywallet RPC creates a descriptor-wallet file containing public descriptors, transaction history and address-book data without private keys. Bitcoin Core’s offline-signing tutorial now uses that command for creating an online watch-only wallet.
Another new command, derivehdkey, lets a wallet derive an extended public or private key through a path containing at least one hardened step, while addhdkey lets a BIP32 extended key be added without immediately using it to generate output scripts.
PrivateBroadcast receives continued maintenance as well. Crypto.news reported in June that Bitcoin Core 31.1rc1 fixed a network condition that could expose an originating IP address when PrivateBroadcast was used. Version 32 contains further PrivateBroadcast RPC and transaction-relay changes documented in its draft release notes.
The current Bitcoin Core schedule still lists Oct. 10 as the target for tagging v32.0. The RC testing feedback thread opened Sept. 15 remains active, with developers directing testers who find actual Bitcoin Core defects to file separate issues before the final release.
H.R. 8957, the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill, heads to the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday for its first formal Congressional consideration.
What the Bill Actually DoesBitcoin analyst Tim Kotzman laid out the key provisions in a thread on X Monday, calling the committee consideration “extraordinary” given where the conversation stood five years ago. The bill’s core provisions:
How We Got HereAs Benzinga has reported since late 2024, the reserve concept moved from campaign promise to reality faster than most expected.
Trump signed the executive order in March 2025, funding the reserve entirely with Bitcoin already held through criminal and civil asset forfeiture, worth roughly $17 billion at the time.
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The government now holds 328,372 BTC worth over $30 billion.
On the legislative side, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) has pushed the BITCOIN Act since late 2024, calling for purchasing 1 million BTC over five years and holding it for at least 20 years.
The momentum carried into 2026, with White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt teasing a “big announcement” on the reserve’s legal framework at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas in February, pointing to Congressional approval as the final remaining hurdle.
Why Wednesday’s Hearing MattersThe CLARITY Act’s Senate defeat Tuesday removed the biggest crypto legislative catalyst of the year.
Wednesday’s committee hearing on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill gives Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) bulls a fresh reason to watch Washington, with the bill representing the next potential policy tailwind for the asset.
Kotzman framed it plainly on X: “We are watching the monetization of Bitcoin happen in real time. Slowly, then suddenly.”
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Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Shiba Inu (SHIB) has pulled back to the $0.000005 range, bringing the token back to a significant technical level after multiple failures to achieve a sustained breakout. Recent analysis identifies $0.0000051 to $0.0000052 as a critical zone that will likely determine whether SHIB can find stability or continues to move lower.
SHIB’s Struggle to Break ResistanceEarlier this month, SHIB attempted to break through a resistance area around $0.00000536, with analysts pointing to $0.00000568 as the main upside target. Despite these attempts, the breakout did not develop with enough momentum, and the price fell back below resistance.
The uncertainty has led to the core question for traders: is SHIB forming a bottom, or is another breakdown imminent?
Macro Factors and Market SentimentThe overall cryptocurrency market environment has done little to support SHIB’s efforts. Bitcoin has been trading near four-week lows following the failed CLARITY Act vote, and Treasury yields have risen above 5%. Market expectations of tighter Federal Reserve policy continue to weigh heavily on risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.
For SHIB, the recent Bitcoin selloff after the CLARITY Act failure remains a crucial factor. Meme coins like SHIB are typically more volatile when investors take a cautious approach and begin reducing exposure to riskier assets.
Token Burns and Supply DynamicsToken burns are among the most closely monitored aspects of the Shiba Inu ecosystem. However, recent on-chain data highlights that reductions in supply do not guarantee stronger prices. SHIB’s burn rate recently dropped by approximately 62%, just as the token’s technical trend weakened further.
Coinpaper has previously reported on a 637% surge in SHIB’s burn rate, which raised market hopes for a breakout. Nevertheless, price performance relies on both demand and supply-side forces, with sustained demand proving crucial for any lasting rally.
Industry changes are also shaping the way investors manage their digital assets. While SHIB’s price action remains a focus, a broader shift is underway as Wall Street moves to Web3. Investors now access tokenized shares of major U.S. companies, gold, and silver directly from their crypto wallets via platforms like 1stepSwap, which removes intermediaries by automatically finding the best available prices for real-world assets.
Key Levels and Near-Term OutlookLooking ahead, if SHIB manages to reclaim the $0.00000536 level, bullish participants may target a short-term move toward $0.00000568. A decisive breakout above this range could significantly improve the token’s near-term technical outlook.
However, if the current support fails to hold, the next important downside target stands at approximately $0.00000467. Market participants continue to closely monitor these zones for clearer direction.
Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor has predicted the stalled CLARITY Act could shift more capital toward Bitcoin as regulators move ahead without Congress. His comments came after the Senate failed to advance the bill, leaving the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury to shape the next phase of U.S. crypto rules.
Michael Saylor Sees More Bitcoin Activity Without CLARITY Act Saylor said regulators could continue using existing law even if Congress does not pass the CLARITY Act. He expects the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury to move forward with crypto rules under their current authority.
He anticipates that banks will increase their Bitcoin custody offerings and Bitcoin-backed lending. According to Saylor, those changes could direct more capital toward Bitcoin and other forms of digital credit.
“With CLARITY stalled, I expect the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury to advance rules under existing law,” Saylor wrote. “But progress does not have to wait for Congress,” he added.
Additionally, Saylor referred to the GENIUS Act, which already offers a structure for stablecoins. He further wrote in another post, “The only clarity you need is Bitcoin.”
Coinbase CEO and Bernstein Look to SEC and CFTC Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said something similar after the vote by the Senate. Although he was disappointed with the failure to move forward with the CLARITY Act, he noted that regulators already have tools in place to establish better rules.
Armstrong said the SEC and CFTC could begin working more directly under existing authority. He also said that bipartisan discussions could proceed, with the possibility of another CLARITY Act vote still.
Bernstein analysts also expect the two agencies to become more active. The firm, in a note led by Gautam Chhugani, said in months of legislative negotiations, the rulemaking could be “aggressive and swift”.
The analysts believe that token classification, decentralized finance, self-custody and tokenized equities are four areas that regulators will focus on. They also believe they will get some movement on real-world asset perpetual futures and single-stock perpetual products.
CLARITY Act Could Still Return to the Senate The Senate procedural vote went 49-50, with the bill falling 11 votes short of the 60 required to move forward. Negotiations had reportedly stalled over ethics provisions tied to President Donald Trump’s crypto interests.
However, the failed cloture vote does not automatically remove the CLARITY Act from consideration. The measure can be placed on the Senate calendar and could be given another vote if sufficient numbers of supporters come forward.
Crypto industry figures have also continued reacting to the setback, with Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse blaming politics for overtaking the policy and noting a post-mortem was needed.
The market’s reaction to CLARITY could be a reality check for crypto.
After the downtick, the total crypto market cap shed more than $120 billion, dropping to $2.54 trillion. This also marked its lowest wick since the mid-August cycle. However, the bigger risk could come over the next 24 hours, with the FOMC meeting now in focus.
The key takeaway? Rate expectations are starting to line up in a way that could put more pressure on crypto. As seen in the chart below, central bank watchers now overwhelmingly expect not only a rate hike this week, but another hike before the end of the year. If this comes to pass, another wave of crypto selling could occur.
Source: Wall Street Journal Adding to the pressure, analysts expect U.S. Treasury yields to rise while the dollar weakens. That could naturally push capital toward safer assets and keep liquidity away from risk assets. The weakness in the S&P500 also suggests that investors may already be positioning themselves for this scenario.
In this context, the last 24-hour crypto sell-off could just be the beginning. Bitcoin [BTC] dropped below $75k for the first time since August, adding to the broader selling pressure. Top-cap altcoins followed, with XRP declining by 9.2% to $1.29, and Ethereum [ETH] falling 4.3% to $2,402, while Solana [SOL] fell to $97.10 as of writing.
Therefore, the question arises: If FUD builds around the FOMC, could this correction extend even further?
$300 million in liquidations raise risk of a deeper crypto sell-off The last 24 hours have been a liquidation bloodbath.
According to CoinGlass data, almost $600 million was wiped out across the crypto market, with more than $570 million coming from long positions alone. That was the biggest long-liquidation wave since the 22nd of August, when Bitcoin peaked near $80,000 before selling pressure took over the next few sessions.
This brings the $75,000 level back into focus as a possible local top. But there is one interesting detail: crypto is still showing some resilience. Treasury yields have pushed above 5%, ETFs saw more than $450 million in outflows on the 15th of September alone, and the CLARITY setback added another layer of uncertainty.
Yet BTC was down only about 3%, with around $195 million in long positions liquidated.
Source: CoinGlass In essence, leverage still looks relatively controlled, which could be an important divergence for the market. With speculative positioning remaining measured and crypto showing resilience, another round of higher yields, ETF outflows, and even a rate hike could potentially be absorbed without triggering a deeper sell-off.
If this resilience holds, the current correction could just be a healthy reset, suggesting that a broader market top could still be some distance away.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
ProCap Financial (Nasdaq: BRR) sold approximately 50 Bitcoin to fund a share buyback, picking up its own stock at roughly 22% below net asset value. The September 16 transaction is the latest in a series of moves that have reduced the company’s outstanding share count by about 12.2% since it launched its repurchase program back in December 2025.
After the sale, ProCap still holds around 5,254 BTC across 84,937,392 outstanding shares, putting the estimated NAV per share at approximately $3.62.
A pattern, not a one-off This isn’t the first time ProCap has trimmed its Bitcoin stack to scoop up discounted equity. Earlier in September 2026, the company executed a similar trade, selling roughly 50 BTC to repurchase over 2% of shares at an even steeper discount, around 40% below NAV.
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Go back further to June 2026 and the pattern is even more pronounced. ProCap sold approximately 52 BTC to buy back 2 million shares at about a 50% NAV discount. The trend line here is actually encouraging for shareholders: the discount has been narrowing with each successive buyback, from 50% to 40% to 22%.
The company retains a $100 million authorization for repurchase activity, giving it substantial dry powder to continue this strategy if the discount persists.
The accretion logic Management’s thesis is elegantly simple. When shares trade below NAV, selling a small amount of Bitcoin to retire those shares increases the Bitcoin-per-share ratio for everyone who stays. You’re essentially buying Bitcoin at a discount by buying your own stock.
The company, led by well-known Bitcoin advocate Anthony Pompliano, currently ranks around 20th among public companies by Bitcoin treasury holdings. The company says it can sustain operations for nearly 20 years at current expense levels without generating any new revenue or benefiting from Bitcoin price appreciation.
What this means for the Bitcoin treasury playbook ProCap’s strategy represents a refinement of the Bitcoin treasury model that MicroStrategy (now Strategy) popularized. Rather than simply accumulating BTC through debt issuance and equity raises, ProCap is running the playbook in reverse when conditions favor it: selling small amounts of Bitcoin to buy back equity when the market undervalues the company’s holdings.
ProCap has sold roughly 152 BTC across three disclosed transactions. That’s a modest amount relative to its 5,254 BTC position, barely 3% of holdings. Buying shares at a 22% discount to NAV is equivalent to acquiring Bitcoin exposure at 78 cents on the dollar.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which aims to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the US, failed to gain the necessary support to pass in the Senate.
In the vote, 49 senators voted in favor and 50 against, failing to reach the 60-vote threshold required for the bill to proceed.
Following the negative outcome of the vote on the Clarity Act, Bitcoin fell by approximately 3%, dropping to $75,000.
In response, after the US Senate failed to pass the ‘CLARITY Act’, XRP lost approximately 10% of its value, recording the biggest drop among major cryptocurrencies.
XRP fell by approximately 10% to around $1.28. While other altcoins also experienced declines, the drops were more limited compared to XRP. Ethereum fell by about 5% to around $2,400, and Solana also dropped by 5% to around $97.
A Huge Disappointment! The lack of progress on the Clarity Act has caused great disappointment in the cryptocurrency sector, and significant assessments have also come from prominent figures.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong expressed his disappointment that the Clarity Act was not progressing in the US Senate, in a post on his X account. However, he noted that bipartisan negotiations could bring the bill back to the agenda.
SEC and CFTC Highlights! Armstrong said that Congress shouldn’t be waited for and that the SEC and CFTC could create clearer regulations for cryptocurrencies with their existing powers. He predicted that regulatory clarity would still be achieved.
Armstrong, stating that the industry made some concessions during the Clarity Act negotiations, suggested that the bill’s failure might have been a better outcome. He emphasized that the crypto sector will continue to transform the financial system through regulatory bodies.
Statement from the White House! White House official Patrick Witt described the unsuccessful Senate vote on the Clarity Act as a “great disappointment.”
Witt argued that the outcome poses a risk to the U.S.’s global leadership in finance, and that the decision could weaken the U.S.’s influence over global financial standards, adding that all eyes are now on the next steps to be taken by the SEC and the CFTC.
Witt argued that this was a failure on the part of American leadership.
Witt stated that if the law does not progress, the influence of Brussels or Beijing-based regulators on global financial markets could increase in the future. He also thanked President Donald Trump, David Sacks, Senator Cynthia Lummis, and other senators for their contributions to the process.
A Call to Regulatory Bodies! Witt, who also praised the cooperation between the Treasury, SEC, and CFTC administrations, specifically addressed SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, stating that the next step lies with the regulatory bodies.
Finally, crypto journalist Brady Dale argues that following the failure of the procedural vote in the US Senate that would have allowed the Clarity Act to proceed, the responsibility lies primarily with certain political actors, including President Donald Trump.
Dale argued that Trump’s launch of the TRUMP memecoin negatively impacted the process. He also claimed that Senator Tim Scott stifled legislative momentum by insisting on a separate Senate text instead of directly advancing the House bill after the GENIUS Act.
*This is not investment advice.
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Mutsamudu, Comoros, September 16, 2026 – MEXC, a pioneer in 0-fee digital asset trading, has released its July–August 2026 security report. The report shows that MEXC successfully intercepted all 215 reports involving risk-related funds during the period, covering approximately 38.66 million USDT. The total balance of the Futures Insurance Fund rose to 792 million USDT. Meanwhile, the reserve ratios for BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC all remained above 100%.
In July and August 2026, the crypto industry recorded 184 security incidents, with reported losses totaling approximately $535 million. Phishing and fraud incidents, together with endpoint and supply-chain security incidents, accounted for approximately 48% of the total. At the same time, a growing number of attackers are using AI to auto-generate phishing content and help write malware, increasing the efficiency of their attacks. As attack methods become more diverse, promptly identifying and intercepting risk-related funds and strengthening cross-platform investigation have become increasingly important to reducing user losses.
All 215 Reports of Risk-Related Funds Successfully Intercepted, Covering 38.66 Million USDT In July and August, MEXC assisted with 215 reports involving externally stolen or fraud-related funds flowing into the platform. All 215 cases were successfully intercepted, covering 38,655,490 USDT. Of these cases, 42 involved assistance with judicial freezes. Compared with the previous reporting period, the number of successfully intercepted cases increased by approximately 2,971%, while the value of intercepted funds increased by approximately 12,646%.
In tracking and handling risk-related funds, MEXC shared suspicious addresses with major industry participants, assisted in identifying fund flows, and supported verification and freezing procedures under established joint-investigation and law-enforcement cooperation procedures.
Over 20,000 Risk-Related Accounts Identified and Restricted, With More Than 600,000 USDT in Misdirected Assets Returned In account risk identification, MEXC identified and restricted 20,752 accounts associated with risk-related activities during the period, an increase of 118.03% from the previous reporting period. The platform identified 5,288 risk groups, up 20.35%. By region of origin, these groups were concentrated primarily in the Commonwealth of Independent States (1,803), Nigeria (1,099), and Indonesia (976).
For user asset recovery, MEXC manually processed 818 applications for the return of misdirected assets, returning the equivalent of 602,225 USDT, an increase of 75.31% from the previous reporting period.
Futures Insurance Fund Reaches 792 Million USDT, Strengthening Protection Against Negative Balance Risk As of September 1, 2026, the total balance of the MEXC Futures Insurance Fund reached 791,696,422 USDT, an increase of 5.44% from the previous reporting period.
The Futures Insurance Fund covers negative balances that may arise during liquidation, providing a risk buffer during extreme market conditions and helping reduce the likelihood of auto-deleveraging (ADL). When a liquidated position is closed at a price better than the bankruptcy price, the remaining funds are credited to the fund. Users can view the real-time balance on the MEXC Proof of Trust page.
Reserve Ratios for Four Major Assets Remain Above 100%, With BTC at Approximately 288% According to the proof of reserves disclosed for this period, MEXC maintained reserve ratios above 100% for four major assets, as follows:
Bitcoin (BTC): reserve ratio of approximately 288%, with total wallet assets of 12,312.75 BTC against 4,282.20 BTC in user assets; Ethereum (ETH): reserve ratio of approximately 113%, with total wallet assets of 66,227.79 ETH; USDT: reserve ratio of approximately 115%, with total wallet assets of approximately 1.940 billion USDT; USDC: reserve ratio of approximately 114%, with total wallet assets of approximately 194.85 million USDC. The on-chain addresses corresponding to these reserve assets have been disclosed, allowing users to verify through the Merkle Tree whether their individual account balances were included in this proof of reserves.
As an additional layer of user asset protection, the MEXC Guardian Fund maintains a dual-reserve structure of USDT and BTC: USDT provides immediate liquidity support, while BTC serves as a long-term reserve asset across market cycles. MEXC plans to expand the fund from $100 million to $500 million, continuing to strengthen user asset protection. The relevant holding addresses are listed below:
Guardian Fund Wallet Addresses:
USDT: 0x469AfE803C54A36674C55231489Cf4b61da8c1bC BTC: 1MDVjZdX8QD212pT8Z8EMP7DuFQHKqN3mx MEXC CEO Vugar Usi said, “Trust is the true reserve currency of this industry. Protecting user assets means moving decisively the moment risk emerges, while giving users something they can verify for themselves, not just our word for it. We will continue to strengthen our ability to identify and intercept risk-related funds, deepen cooperation across platforms and with law enforcement, and help affected users recover their losses wherever possible. Our bi-monthly security reports are part of that commitment, allowing our security performance to be measured and tracked over time.”
About MEXC
Founded in 2018, MEXC is a leading global multi-asset trading platform built as your 0-fee gateway to infinite opportunities. Serving users across 170+ markets, MEXC provides simple and efficient access to crypto, stocks, tokenized assets, derivatives, and a growing range of TradFi-linked opportunities through one account and one gateway.
With 0 trading fees, deep liquidity, broad asset coverage, and a high-performance trading experience, MEXC is designed for retail users who want to discover earlier, act faster, and trade with fewer barriers. As crypto and traditional finance continue to converge, MEXC is committed to making global opportunities more accessible, helping users trade freely and MEXCmize every opportunity.
MEXC Official Website｜ X ｜ Telegram ｜How to Sign Up on MEXC
Bitcoin trades near $75,000, hitting a September low after the CLARITY Act failed to clear the Senate cloture vote 50-49, effectively ending its chances of becoming law this year. The cryptocurrency was trading at $75,743 mark.
In the past 24 hours, Bitcoin was down 1.55% and Ethereum was down 3.03% to trade at $2,398 mark. Among the major altcoins, BNB, XRP, Solana, Tron, Hyperliquid, Dogecoin, Cardano corrected upto 8.05%.
Prateek Gupta, Head of Business, Mudrex said Bitcoin has slipped below $75,000, marking a September low after the CLARITY Act failed its Senate cloture vote 50-49, effectively ending its chances of becoming law this year. The setback landed on top of a historic global bond selloff, with the US 10-year Treasury yield hitting its highest since 2007.
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Sentiment has also cooled, with Fear & Greed falling from 81 to 67. However, rising realized cap and 30 straight days of short-term holders in profit offer some support, Gupta further said.
The global crypto market capitalisation edged down 2.13% to $2.57 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin experienced a significant selling pressure and marked the local lows below $75,000, while trading around $76,000 at the press time, said CoinDCX Research Team.
Crypto stocks tumbled after the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate, with Circle and Coinbase down about 10% and Bitcoin miners and Treasury firms also sliding, CoinDCX Research Team further said.
Over the last week, Bitcoin was down 4.69% and Ethereum was down 4.42%. Among the major altcoins, BNB, XRP, Solana, Tron, Hyperliquid, Dogecoin, and Cardano corrected upto 12.59%.
BTC briefly slipped below $75K before recovering above $76K, as rising bond yields, tighter monetary policy expectations and regulatory uncertainty pressured crypto markets, said CoinSwitch Markets Desk.
Sentiment weakened further after the U.S. Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act, delaying hopes for a comprehensive crypto regulatory framework. The sell-off triggered nearly $100 million in long liquidations, while the Fear & Greed Index fell from 81 to 67, CoinSwitch Markets Desk further said.
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Market perspective
Nischal Shetty, founder, WazirX: Bitcoin trades near $75,547 in a neutral-to-consolidative daily structure, with RSI near 48, indicating balanced momentum. Immediate support sits around $73,500-$75,000, while resistance lies near $76,200-$77,300.
Avinash Shekhar, Co-Founder & CEO, Pi42: Crypto markets are witnessing a broad risk-off move, with Bitcoin slipping towards the $76,000 level after falling nearly 3%, while the pressure has been sharper across major altcoins. The immediate trigger has been the failure of the US Senate to advance the Clarity Act, which has renewed concerns around the pace of regulatory clarity for digital assets. At the same time, investors are approaching the upcoming Federal Reserve policy decision cautiously, adding another layer of uncertainty for risk assets.
Riya Sehgal, Research Analyst, Delta Exchange : Crypto markets remain volatile after a sharp deleveraging move, with Bitcoin around $75,900 and Ethereum near $2,400. More than $600 million in leveraged positions were liquidated over 24 hours.
Vikram Subburaj, CEO, Giottus: Investors should avoid excessive leverage around the Fed decision. BTC holding $75,000-$76,000 would keep the market above an important support zone, while a sustained break below it could expose the low-$72,000s.
(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)
U.S. spot Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) ETFs bled a combined $591.80 million Tuesday, their worst single-day outflow in months ahead of Wednesday’s Fed decision.
What the ETF Data ShowsBitcoin ETFs led the retreat with $450.33 million in net outflows, their largest single-day withdrawal since June 25 according to SoSoValue. The breakdown by fund:
Bitcoin ETF trading volume climbed to $4.35 billion despite the outflows. Combined net assets now sit at $95.72 billion with cumulative net inflows at $54.86 billion.
Meanwhile, Ethereum ETFs posted their largest single-day outflow in 155 trading sessions at $141.47 million.
Trending
BlackRock’s ETHA (NASDAQ:ETHA) drove most of the damage at $97.97 million, with Bitwise’s ETHW (NYSE:ETHW) losing $34.40 million.
Why the Fed Decision Makes This TrickyCoinDesk reported Wednesday that Brookings Institution senior fellow Robin Brooks warned Wednesday’s Fed meeting is a “nightmare” for Chair Kevin Warsh.
Markets have fully priced in a 25-basis-point hike to a 3.75% to 4% target range, and nearly every major investment bank expects at least one more hike before year-end.
The problem is that Warsh cannot realistically deliver a message hawkish enough to match what markets have priced in.
“Tomorrow’s Fed meeting is a nightmare for Warsh. There’s no way he can live up to all the hikes priced, so the press conference will likely disappoint markets. The dollar is likely to fall and long yields likely to rise,” Brooks said.
A weaker dollar typically supports Bitcoin and gold, both of which carry a well-documented negative correlation to the US Dollar Index.
Bitcoin and Ethereum Price Analysis: Key Levels to WatchBitcoin holds around $76,000 Wednesday, pulling back under pressure from two back-to-back catalysts: the CLARITY Act’s Senate defeat Tuesday and today’s Fed rate decision at 2:00 p.m. ET.
The 20-day EMA at $76,866 sits just overhead as immediate resistance, with RSI at 49.19 showing a bearish divergence that formed when price hit $82,000 in early September while momentum failed to confirm.
Ethereum holds at $2,402 with the Supertrend flipping bearish right at current price, adding to the cautious setup ahead of the Fed.
BTC and ETH levels to watch: BTC: $76,866 resistance (20-day EMA), $73,551 support (50-day EMA) ETH: $2,431 resistance (20-day EMA), $2,350 trendline support Photo via Shutterstock
The market faces a mix of fading selling pressure, leveraged positions, and renewed inflation concerns that could shape Bitcoin’s next major move.
Bitcoin (BTC) is stuck in a narrow price range as investors wait for the U.S. Federal Reserve to announce its interest-rate decision on Wednesday. Selling has slowed, but buying has not been strong enough to push BTC clearly higher.
According to Bitfinex Alpha, Bitcoin has traded within a 5.5% range for more than 24 sessions, keeping the market quiet. The report says the next move could depend on whether new demand returns after the Fed decision, as traders have built positions at both ends.
Selling Eases, but Buyers Remain Cautious About 840,000 BTC have a cost basis within this narrow range, meaning they were bought at prices inside it. Glassnode’s sell-side risk ratio has fallen to seven basis points, showing that long-term holders are taking fewer profits.
Newer investors now account for most of the remaining supply, but trading activity remains low. In other words, sellers have become less aggressive without a strong wave of new buyers stepping in.
Leverage has also built up around the current price levels, which could make any breakout more volatile. CoinGlass data show about $1.95 billion in possible short liquidations near $82,000, while long positions are concentrated around $75,000 to $76,000.
Institutional demand has also weakened, adding another obstacle to a sustained move higher. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw over $460 million in outflows last week, selling approximately 5,900 BTC, while Ether ETFs took in $196.9 million. September ETF flows remain positive, but recent outflows show weaker institutional demand could limit Bitcoin’s upside.
Inflation Keeps Pressure on the Fed Inflation is adding another challenge, with August prices rising 0.4% from the previous month and 3.4% over the year. Core inflation eased to 2.4%, but gasoline prices rose 3.9%, and diesel reached $5.65 per gallon.
You may also like: Bitcoin Holders Capitulate After CLARITY Act Failure: What the Data Shows Bitcoin’s Price Plunges to $75,000 as Senate Votes Against Advancing Crypto CLARITY Act This Crypto Sector Is Up 213% Since Bitcoin’s 2025 Peak – One Coin Is Driving It Higher energy costs could keep inflation elevated, especially as Brent crude trades above $100 a barrel and U.S. strategic reserves fall to 285.4 million barrels. This could reduce expectations for easier monetary policy and keep pressure on interest rates.
Markets now see an 88.5% chance of a 25-basis-point rate hike on September 16. The U.S. 10-year real Treasury yield has risen to 2.55%, making non-yielding assets such as Bitcoin less attractive to some investors.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
The Crypto market fell 1.65% over 24 hours, reducing its total value to $2.59 trillion on Wednesday ahead of the FOMC decision.
The Fear and Greed Index reads 63, showing greed despite the latest market corrections.
Bitcoin price hovered near $75,000, Ethereum remained below $2,400, and XRP slipped beneath $1.30. That backdrop has kept market participants increasingly defensive.
Crypto Market Dip Ahead of FOMC Decision as Rate Hike Fears Rise The Federal Reserve will make its decision at 2:00 p.m. ET, and then Warsh will speak 30 minutes later.
According to FedWatch data, there’s a 92.5% chance of a 25-basis-point increase. That move would lift the target range from 3.50%-3.75% to 3.75%-4.00%.
Fed watch data Higher rates typically squeeze speculative assets, drive up the cost of borrowing and increase the appeal of safer assets.
A hold would indicate relief buying, while strong calls for more gains would lengthen the Crypto Market Slide.
The outlook is further complicated by crude oil prices pushing above $100.
Persistent Middle East tensions have supported oil, strengthening arguments for tighter monetary policy.
CLARITY Act Senate Setback Deepens Regulatory Uncertainty On September 15, the Senate voted 49-50 to reject cloture on the CLARITY Act. Approval of the proposal required 60 votes to go to a full debate.
The failure left the hopes of near-term trading and oversight of digital assets hit a setback.
XRP was more impacted by policy-sensitive tokens, which saw an 8.18% drop during the general sell-off in the Crypto Market.
CLARITY Act failed, but crypto isn’t stopping.
We have 2 more important crypto bills today:
🇺🇸 Crypto Tax Bill:
Could make small crypto transactions and fees easier to use without triggering taxes.
🇺🇸 Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill:
Could lock the US government’s…
— Ash Crypto (@AshCrypto) September 16, 2026
The measure lives on a procedural level but has been whittled down in its chances before the November midterm elections.
House committees will now be considering two very different measures that may provide some support.
Qualifying transaction fees of $10 or less would be exempt under the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act.
The American Reserve Modernization Act will leave approximately $25 billion worth of Bitcoin in government hands, at least for 20 years.
BTC, ETH and XRP ETFs Show Weakening Institutional Demand U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $450 million in net outflows on Tuesday. One day earlier that was reversed by $160 million in inflows.
Ethereum took a loss of approximately $141 million after moving in for a sum of $121 million on Monday and $216 million on Friday.
XRP ETF trading volume did not see any notable activity since the ETFs garnered approximately $11 million worth of trading volume last session.
According to SoSoValue data, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw total net outflows of $450 million on September 15 Eastern Time, led by Fidelity’s FBTC with a net outflow of $215 million. Meanwhile, spot Ethereum ETFs recorded total net outflows of $141 million, led by BlackRock’s ETHA… pic.twitter.com/pgvStAykyH
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 16, 2026
They continue to receive $1.71 billion in total inflows and $1.41 billion in assets under management.
Some short-term pressure can be expected to increase in the Crypto Market due to more and more redemptions, which can affect the support of institutions.
Bitcoin, ETH, and XRP Price Predictions: Key Levels to Watch Bitcoin price needs to protect the 75,000 to ensure that the momentum does not go to low support areas.
A recovery of over 76,000 would manage to stabilize sentiment before traders can test harder resistance.
Ethereum price must regain $2,400, which has shifted from support to near-term resistance.
A drop below that might leave Ethereum vulnerable to further fall since the liquidity is still hesitant.
XRP price has to regain lost ground around $1.30 following a sharp decline on Monday around the $1.50 mark.
Coin 360 data If the token is not secured, it remains at risk, particularly if there is continued uncertainty in Washington.
If the dovish camouflage becomes a reality, it could lead to any of the three assets having rebounds.
However, a hike paired with hawkish guidance may extend losses and increase volatility throughout the Crypto Market.
As cryptocurrency adoption continues to grow worldwide, Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, has announced it is preparing to launch a cryptocurrency custody service for its corporate and business clients later this year.
Deutsche Bank Offers Cryptocurrency Custody Service to Corporate Clients! Deutsche Bank announced in an official statement that it is preparing to offer digital asset custody services to its corporate clients in Europe.
According to the statement, the service will be available to initial customers after the necessary regulatory processes are completed. The bank, however, emphasized that the exact launch date has not yet been determined and that the launch depends on the relevant regulatory requirements.
Bitcoin and Ethereum Included! According to Deutsche Bank, the service will initially support Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as select stablecoins. These include USDC, EURC, and EURAU. However, the bank states that the scope of supported digital assets may be expanded in the future.
Under the new system, Deutsche Bank will manage wallets and private keys on behalf of clients. This will eliminate the need for institutional clients to establish and operate their own in-house cryptocurrency custody infrastructure. Clients will also be able to transfer their stored digital assets to third parties.
Who Can Benefit? The service’s initial target audience will not be individual investors, but rather Deutsche Bank’s corporate and business clients. The bank is targeting diverse client groups within the scope of the service, including corporations, asset managers, hedge funds, custodians, brokerage firms, and government agencies.
Customer acceptance will be carried out in accordance with the bank’s criteria, due diligence requirements, and risk assessments.
*This is not investment advice.
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A recent working paper from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS argues that many of the headline figures used to describe cryptocurrency and decentralized finance activity can mislead more than they illuminate.
Drawing on roughly 100 billion records from Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron, the researchers conclude that widely cited indicators of transfer volume, market size and on-chain usage are highly sensitive to how raw blockchain data are cleaned and interpreted.
As a result, they say these numbers should be treated as noisy approximations rather than precise gauges of real economic activity.
The most striking illustration involves Bitcoin.
Because the network uses an unspent-transaction-output model, a typical payment often returns unused funds to the sender as change.
Whether that change is counted as economic transfer value, excluded, or treated under a conservative lower-bound rule produces monthly estimates that can differ by as much as a factor of six.
Unadjusted totals therefore risk inflating the impression of how much value is actually changing hands between distinct economic parties.
Conventional market-capitalization figures can also diverge sharply from realized capitalization, which values coins at the price of their last movement; at times the gap has reached a factor of four.
Ethereum presents a different set of problems.
Programmability allows a single transaction to trigger many contracts and emit numerous events, making it hard to separate genuine economic use from technical by-products.
Researchers classified about 13 million active contracts, including some 1.4 million tokens, yet tens of millions of additional contracts defied straightforward categorization.
Token tickers themselves are unreliable: thousands of contracts have used the “USDT” symbol without any connection to the well-known issuer.
Trading remains highly concentrated and heavily oriented around stablecoins, further complicating attempts to read raw volumes as a map of underlying demand.
Stablecoins illustrate the cross-chain comparability problem. The same token can play different roles depending on the network.
On Ethereum, a sizable share of USDT has sat inside smart contracts, consistent with use in lending, liquidity pools and other DeFi operations.
On Tron, holdings have more often remained outside contracts, pointing toward simpler transfer and store-of-value motives.
Aggregating activity across chains without accounting for these differences can therefore mix distinct economic functions and overstate, or mischaracterize, overall usage.
Earlier related work on Ethereum stablecoin event logs reached a similar conclusion: a large fraction of recorded transfers occur inside complex, multi-step transactions rather than as standalone payments.
Treating every transfer as an independent payment therefore overstates both counts and volumes.
The authors identify three structural sources of divergence: how transactions are aggregated on a given chain, the open-ended nature of smart contract code, and the difficulty of comparing use cases across networks.
Simple sums, they argue, frequently blend genuine economic activity with technical artefacts.
For researchers, market monitors and policymakers, the practical implication is caution. On-chain dashboards remain valuable, but only when accompanied by explicit methodological choices and an understanding of what those choices leave out.
Deutsche Bank, one of Europe’s largest banks with $1.7 trillion in assets, on Wednesday said it plans to launch a crypto custody service later this year. The offering will initially cover Bitcoin, Ethereum and selected stablecoins such as USDC for institutional and corporate clients.
Deutsche Bank Announces Crypto Custody Launch in 2026 The German multinational investment bank is set to launch its digital asset custody solution this year, according to an official announcement on September 16. The new custody service is still pending regulatory approval.
The bank will provide institutional and corporate clients in Europe with secure and regulated custody services for digital assets. At launch, Deutsche Bank will support Bitcoin and Ethereum as well as selected stablecoins or e-money tokens, including USDC, EURC and EURAU.
The bank plans to widen the crypto assets over time, with tokenized financial instruments on the roadmap. The crypto custody service will further grow based on client demand, regulatory requirements and the bank’s risk appetite.
“Digital assets are not a replacement for the traditional financial system but an important complement to it. We see them as new rails that can coexist with existing market infrastructures while benefiting from the trust, security and safeguards,” said Gerald Podobnik, co-head of corporate bank at Deutsche Bank.
Deutsche Bank will hold wallets and private keys on clients’ behalf. That is meant to prevent institutions from building and running their own custody stacks while keeping the service inside a regulated bank framework.
The Bank Joins Global TradFi’s Push into Bitcoin, Ethereum and Stablecoins The initial target market is clients of Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Bank and Investment Bank in Europe. That includes corporates, asset managers, hedge funds, custodians, brokers and sovereign institutions. Onboarding will follow the bank’s existing due diligence and risk standards.
Since MiCA came into force, several major European financial institutions have expanded their crypto custody, trading or tokenization initiatives. This includes BBVA, Société Générale-FORGE, Deutsche Bank, DekaBank, and Standard Chartered, which also secured MiCA approval.
$3 trillion Wall Street giant Citi is preparing institutional digital asset custody services later this year, starting with Bitcoin. Moreover, the US SEC sent its proposed crypto rules for investment firms to the White House, addressing how these firms can custody crypto assets.
Notably, Deutsche Bank made a case for Bitcoin earlier, stating that the US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve could offset national debt. US House Committee will markup the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve bill today, with a slight amendment proposed by Representative Bryan Steil.
Here are the best institutional custody solutions for tokenized assets, RWAs, and securities in 2026, with the top 8 providers reviewed by us.
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The Motley Fool has identified Bitcoin, Zcash, and Hyperliquid as potential leaders in a forthcoming crypto bull market. Bitcoin is currently between $76.7k and $77.7k, Zcash between $1.06k and $1.21k, and Hyperliquid between $79 and $84. Recent market behavior has shown Zcash and Hyperliquid nearing all-time highs, while Bitcoin, though below its 2025 peak, remains significantly above its early-year levels. This suggests heightened market interest in these cryptocurrencies, especially as privacy-focused and derivatives-related assets gain traction.
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Key Takeaways Market activity suggests that Bitcoin, Zcash, and Hyperliquid are seen as key players for a potential bull market. Hyperliquid’s market odds for reaching $100 by year-end have decreased, reflecting cautious sentiment despite recent optimism. The cryptocurrency’s recent price movements may indicate strong momentum in the altcoin sector, consistent with speculative growth outlooks. What to Watch Market participants are monitoring Hyperliquid’s performance closely, given its recent peak activity. Any major partnership announcements or institutional investments could further influence its market odds. Conversely, security breaches or regulatory actions could negatively impact its prospects. Observers should note that the current pricing trends may indicate potential volatility ahead as the market reacts to new developments in the crypto space.
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Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 46.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 3.7% — — View market → January 1 2027 2.6% — — View market → January 1 2027 4.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 4% — — View market → January 1 2027 72.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 11% — — View market → January 1 2027 6.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 5.5% — — View market →
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) spot ETFs shed a combined $592 million on September 15. Both products posted their deepest single-day outflows in months.
The outflows landed as the CLARITY Act failed to advance in the US Senate. The setback pulled prices lower, and capital followed them out.
Ethereum ETFs Record Their Worst Session Since JanuaryEthereum (ETH) funds lost $141.47 million, their largest daily outflow since January 30, according to SoSoValue data.
Nothing in that stretch came close. The worst session in between drained $136.4 million on March 19.
The selling followed four straight weeks of inflows. ETH products took in $1.94 billion over that run, peaking at $824.4 million in late August.
Bitcoin funds gave up $450.33 million, their worst session since June 25. Outflows hit $462.7 million last week, the heaviest since early July, after three weeks of heavy buying.
Trading volume told the same story. Bitcoin products saw turnover of $4.35 billion, compared with a 30-day average of $2.74 billion. Ethereum volume more than doubled its own baseline.
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Altcoin Funds See Mixed PerformanceHyperliquid (HYPE) was the only altcoin product to record an outflow. Its funds lost $3.89 million, extending a September decline of $18.04 million.
Four funds drew money in. Solana (SOL) ETFs led with $1.35 million. Tron (TRX), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Hedera (HBAR) added less than $500,000 each.
Crypto ETFs’ Performance on September 15. Source: BeInCrypto/SoSoValueSix funds recorded no activity at all. BNB (BNB) XRP (XRP), Chainlink (LINK), Avalanche (AVAX), Polkadot (DOT), and Litecoin (LTC) all logged zero flows. The 11 altcoin funds ended the day with a combined net outflow of $1.66 million. They hold $3.55 billion between them.
Both ETH and BTC ETFs still sit in positive territory for September. Bitcoin funds hold a $17.1 million net gain month to date, while Ethereum funds carry $307.4 million. One session, however heavy, has not erased the month.
The Federal Reserve announces its rate decision on Wednesday, a second policy test within 24 hours.
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Alongside its fast-moving short-term contracts, Zoomex Prediction Markets has always carried a deep Long-Term category, a full slate of event contracts that let traders take a position on some of the industry’s most debated multi-month and multi-year questions.
That category is a direct expression of Zoomex’s core philosophy, giving users a platform that is Easy to Use, Transparent by Design, and built on Fair Access & Rule-Based Execution, whether they are trading derivatives, spot, or real-world outcomes.
A Marketplace Built Across Every Time HorizonZoomex’s Prediction Markets are organized into four time horizons: 5 Minute, 15 Minute, 4 Hour, and Long-Term. Across the platform, 70 markets are currently live, with the Long-Term category alone accounting for 49 of them, by far the largest segment.
That balance reflects where user interest concentrates: away from pure short-term speculation and toward markets that track how the crypto industry evolves over the coming year and beyond.
Prediction Markets Source: ZoomexThe shorter time frames still play an important role in the Zoomex ecosystem. The 5 Minute “Up or Down” markets, for instance, let traders react instantly to price momentum on major assets. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s 5-minute market showed 28% sentiment toward Up with $11M in trading volume, the most active market on the board.
Ethereum and XRP each sat at 13% Up, with $356K and $55K in volume, respectively. Solana and Dogecoin were both trading at 6% Up, on $154K and $13K in volume, while HYPE stood out with 56% sentiment toward Up on $533 in volume. These fast-moving markets are a useful entry point, but they are only a fraction of what Zoomex offers.
Long-Term Markets: Where the Real Conviction Trades HappenThe Long-Term category is where Zoomex Prediction Markets show their real depth, giving users a rule-based way to express views on questions that will take months or years to resolve, all settled transparently against clear, published criteria rather than opaque or discretionary outcomes.
Long Term Markets. Source: ZoomexSeveral markets illustrate the breadth of what is now tradable on Zoomex:
Will HYPE flip SOL by December 31? Currently pricing Yes at 9%, this market has already attracted $224K in trading volume as traders weigh whether Hyperliquid’s native token can overtake Solana by market capitalization before year-end. Will China unban Bitcoin by 2027? One of the platform’s largest Long-Term markets by volume at $1M, priced at just 2% Yes, reflecting how unlikely traders view a near-term reversal of China’s crypto policy stance. Bitcoin vs. Gold vs. S&P 500 in 2026, a multi-asset market with $917K in volume, where Bitcoin is priced at 19% and Gold at 25% for their respective Yes outcomes, giving users a direct way to position on which asset class performs best over the year. Will MicroStrategy announce bankruptcy before 2027? Priced at 3% Yes with $203K in volume, this market lets traders express a view on the durability of one of the most closely watched corporate Bitcoin treasury strategies. Adam Back confirmed to be Satoshi by December 31? and the broader Will Satoshi’s identity be proven? market, priced at 2% Yes each, with volumes of $23K and $2M respectively, show that even crypto’s oldest mystery now has a liquid, tradable market attached to it. Each of these markets displays a live probability gauge alongside simple Yes/No or Up/Down entry buttons and a running trading volume figure, giving users full visibility into market sentiment before they trade. That level of transparency is central to how Zoomex designs every product on the platform, prediction markets included.
To put the payoff structure in concrete terms, each Long-Term contract is priced as a share of its eventual full payout, so the entry price effectively sets the potential return. A trader who commits roughly €100 to the China unban Bitcoin by 2027 market, currently priced at 2% Yes, would be positioned for a payout near €5,000 if the outcome resolves Yes, reflecting how thin the market judges that probability to be. The same €100 stake on the MicroStrategy bankruptcy market, priced at 3% Yes, would target a payout close to €3,233 in profit, while a position on the HYPE flip SOL by December 31 market, priced at 9% Yes, would return roughly €1,011 in profit on the same stake. On the three-way Bitcoin vs. Gold vs. S&P 500 in 2026 market, a €100 stake on Bitcoin’s 19% Yes price would target about €426 in profit, compared with roughly €300 on Gold’s 25% Yes price.
It is worth noting that these figures are illustrative, based on the price at the moment a position is entered, and do not account for fees or spread, so they should not be read as a guaranteed outcome. Because Zoomex Predict World lets users adjust or exit their prediction shares before an event resolves, actual returns depend on how a trader manages the position over time, not solely on the final Yes or No result, another expression of the platform’s Fair Access & Rule-Based Execution standard.
Why Long-Term Prediction Markets Fit the Zoomex ModelPrediction markets are a natural extension of Zoomex’s positioning as a platform Focused on Derivatives. Just as futures and perpetuals let traders express a view on price direction, Long-Term prediction contracts let them express a view on the events that ultimately drive those prices, regulatory shifts, competitive dynamics between assets, corporate solvency, and even the unresolved lore of the industry itself. Instead of forcing users to piece together multiple instruments to hedge or speculate on these themes, Zoomex consolidates them into single, clearly priced contracts.
That consolidation is only useful if the execution behind it can be trusted, which is why every Zoomex Prediction Market runs on the same Fair Access & Rule-Based Execution standard that governs the exchange’s core trading products. Odds update in real time based on actual market activity, not a black box, and settlement follows clearly defined resolution criteria rather than subjective judgment calls. Combined with the platform’s Refined Brand & Trading Experience, traders move between derivatives, spot, and prediction markets inside one unified interface, without needing to learn a separate tool or manage liquidity across disconnected venues.
About Zoomex
Founded in 2021, Zoomex is a global cryptocurrency trading platform focused on derivatives trading. The platform serves over 3 million users across 35+ countries and regions, offering access to 700+ trading pairs. Built around easy to use, transparency, fairness, and speed, Zoomex provides a clear and efficient trading experience for users worldwide.
Through its high-performance matching engine, clear asset and order displays, and transparent fee and rule mechanisms, Zoomex helps users better understand their account status, order execution, trading costs, and results. Zoomex maintains registrations, licenses, and regulatory statuses across multiple jurisdictions, including the U.S. MSB, Canada MSB, U.S. NFA, and Australia AUSTRAC, and has completed security audits conducted by blockchain security firm Hacken. The platform also continues to strengthen its trust framework through Proof of Reserves, Security & Transparency, Compliance Information, and Fees / Rules Transparency initiatives.
Beyond trading, Zoomex builds a refined brand experience through elite sports partnerships, including the TGR Haas F1 Team, World Cup-winning goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez, and world-class tennis events such as Wimbledon. The values of speed, precision, discipline, fair play, and rule-based execution are closely aligned with Zoomex’s approach to derivatives trading.
At Zoomex: Easy to Use. Transparent balance. Fair access to your earnings.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Zoomex? Zoomex is a global crypto derivatives platform founded in 2021, serving over 3 million users across more than 35 countries and regions with 700+ trading pairs. How does Zoomex work? Zoomex operates through a high-performance matching engine with transparent asset and order displays, allowing users to execute trades and track outcomes with full visibility into their balances and results. What can you trade on Zoomex? Zoomex offers 700+ trading pairs spanning cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, and SOL, as well as stock-linked contracts like NVDA and AAPL and gold exposure through XAUT. How does Zoomex compare to other exchanges? Zoomex differentiates itself by not issuing a platform token, avoiding venture capital or incubation deals, and holding security certifications from Hacken alongside regulatory licenses in multiple jurisdictions, positioning the platform around transparency and fund safety rather than token incentives. Where is Zoomex headquartered? Zoomex operates as a global cryptocurrency exchange with regulatory registrations including Canada MSB, U.S. MSB, U.S. NFA, and Australia AUSTRAC, reflecting its multi-jurisdictional compliance approach. Is Zoomex available in my country? Zoomex serves users across more than 35 countries and regions. Availability can vary by local regulation, so traders should check the official Zoomex website for country-specific access and requirements. Disclaimer
This third-party press release is published substantially as received and does not reflect BeInCrypto's editorial views. BeInCrypto has not independently verified its claims or assessed the suitability, legality or appropriateness of any referenced asset, product or service; publication is not an endorsement. The content is general information, not investment research, financial, investment, legal or tax advice, a personal recommendation, offer or solicitation. Verify all information and seek professional advice where appropriate before acting. Crypto-assets may result in total loss.
TLDR The Senate rejected a cloture vote on the CLARITY Act 49-50, falling 11 votes short of the 60 needed to advance. Bitcoin fell below $76,000 around the vote, dropping as much as 4.3% from earlier levels near $78,250. Ethereum, XRP and Solana also declined sharply, with XRP down more than 10% during the session. Ethics provisions covering crypto interests held by federal officials remained the main unresolved dispute. Former CFTC Chair J. Christopher Giancarlo said the SEC and CFTC can keep building crypto rules without new legislation. The Senate failed to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on September 15. The cloture vote came in at 49-50, missing the 60 votes required to move the bill toward formal debate.
The official tally was recorded at 2:19 p.m. ET. One senator, Chris Coons of Delaware, did not vote.
Crypto prices moved lower around the result. Bitcoin dropped below $76,000, falling as much as 4.3% from an earlier level near $78,250.
Bitcoin Price on CoinGecko Ethereum fell more than 5% to around $2,397. XRP dropped over 10%, and Solana declined more than 4%.
What Held Up the Vote Ethics rules covering crypto holdings by government officials were the central sticking point. Republicans had revised the bill after President Trump agreed to parts of a bipartisan ethics proposal from Senators Thom Tillis and Ruben Gallego.
The updated draft added restrictions on crypto financial interests and gave state attorneys general more enforcement power. Democrats said the changes still did not go far enough on divestment rules.
Stablecoin rewards and decentralized finance rules also complicated talks. Banks argued that interest-like rewards on stablecoins could pull deposits from traditional institutions, while crypto firms pushed back on limits they see as too broad.
Four Republicans voted against the motion alongside all participating Democrats. Susan Collins, Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran voted no, while Thom Tillis switched his vote to no for procedural reasons, which preserves his ability to file a motion to reconsider.
Regulators Say Work Continues Without Congress Former CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo said the SEC and CFTC can move forward under their existing authority even without the bill. He said both agencies remain prepared to build digital asset frameworks under current law.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the industry cannot keep waiting on Congress and pointed to regulator action as the next path forward. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse called the result disappointing and urged the SEC and CFTC to fill the gap left by Congress.
The CLARITY Act didn't advance in the Senate today, which was a disappointment. While it's possible bi-partisan conversations continue and it lives to fight another day, we can't wait on Congress anymore.
The SEC and CFTC have the tools they need to create clear rules under…
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) September 15, 2026
Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott asked regulators to set clear rules until lawmakers pass legislation. Senator Cynthia Lummis blamed Democrats for the outcome, while Democrats maintained that ethics concerns were not adequately addressed.
The SEC has already proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, a 402-page framework with registration exemptions and a safe harbor for some token offerings. The CFTC has said it is preparing its own market structure proposals as well.
The House passed its version of the bill in July 2025 by a vote of 294-134. The Senate developed its own text through committee talks before the cloture vote failed.
What Happens Next The vote does not remove the bill from the Senate calendar. Tillis’s procedural no vote leaves an opening for reconsideration.
Senator John Kennedy said the bill could return during a lame-duck session after the November elections. Senator Ted Cruz described the measure as mostly dead for now.
House Republicans have also cut short their September calendar, leaving less time for further action. Markets are now weighing the bill’s failure alongside the Federal Reserve’s September 16 rate decision.
Bitcoin price traded near $75,900 on Sep 16, 2026, as investors faced key Washington events. Ethereum stood at $2,400, XRP at $1.29, and Solana near $97.20 as crypto prices saw a slight correction.
The crypto market fell 1.82% to $2.58 trillion after Tuesday’s Senate setback accelerated risk reduction. Traders now await a reserve bill review and the Federal Reserve’s policy decision.
House Committee Takes Up Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill The House Financial Services Committee will consider the American Reserve Modernization Act during Wednesday’s markup session. H.R. 8957 would create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a separate stockpile for other digital assets.
Lawmakers will debate the proposal, review Bryan Steil’s amendment, and decide whether it should reach the full House. The measure would preserve government-held Bitcoin for 20 years, limiting administrations’ ability to sell those assets.
Most holdings came from federal forfeiture cases, rather than purchases on markets. Large Bitcoin acquisitions would require separate authorization, including legislation such as the proposed BITCOIN Act.
CRYPTO HAS FAILED ITS FIRST MAJOR TEST.
The Crypto Clarity Act failed to advance in the US Senate today.
That doesn’t mean it’s all over, but now the chances of approval in 2026 are very low.
Now, there are two big events to look forward to tomorrow.
The Fed’s interest rate… https://t.co/WBjCVVYiME pic.twitter.com/L8LNOkFCDy
— Crypto Rover (@cryptorover) September 15, 2026
The committee’s decision follows the Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act on Tuesday. Markets also await the Federal Reserve’s rate decision, scheduled for 2 p.m. Eastern Time.
Traders expect a 25-basis-point increase, which would mark the first rate hike since 2023. Chair Kevin Warsh’s comments may influence the dollar, liquidity conditions, and cryptocurrency prices later Wednesday.
CLARITY Act Still Has a Narrow Route Senators rejected cloture 49-50 on September 15, missing the 60 votes required to advance H.R. 3633. The result stalled debate on a framework for digital asset oversight.
Senator Thom Tillis filed a reconsideration motion, preserving a procedural route for another attempt. That mechanism keeps the legislation alive but offers no guarantee leaders will schedule another vote.
November’s midterm elections compress timing and make agreement on ethics provisions difficult. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong called the outcome disappointing.
U.S. Senate Fails to Advance CLARITY Act as Cloture Vote Falls Short of 60-Vote Threshold
Just In: The U.S. Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633) after falling short of the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture. The measure received just 49 votes in favor, crypto… pic.twitter.com/oOLAeYy020
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 15, 2026
Armstrong said the SEC and CFTC still possess tools to deliver clearer rules. Crypto markets responded as traders removed positions tied to near-term legislative progress. XRP price dropped hardest among assets, reflecting its sensitivity to regulatory developments.
Crypto ETFs Record Heavy Outflows U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted $450 million in net withdrawals on September 15, according to SoSoValue. Fidelity’s FBTC led losses with $215 million, indicating institutional investors reduced exposure before the Fed decision.
BTC ETF Spot Ethereum ETFs lost $141 million, while BlackRock’s ETHA recorded $97.97 million in withdrawals.
Bitcoin Price Prediction: Will Bears Push BTC Below $75,000? Bitcoin price is testing support around $75,000 after touching a low near $74,900. A daily close beneath that zone could expose $73,500, followed by the psychological $70,000 area.
However, holding support and receiving a measured Fed message could encourage recovery toward $77,500. Stronger momentum above that level may reopen $80,000 as per the future Bitcoin outlook, although ETF outflows could limit follow-through.
Source: BTC/USDT 4-hour chart: TradingView The bear case is prevailing below $77,500, and a sustained retake will favourably impact the immediate downside scenario.
Tonkeeper, a prominent self-custodial wallet in The Open Network (TON) ecosystem, has officially rebranded to Keeper and expanded its platform to support Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum, and Base, in addition to TON.
Rebranding marks shift to multichain focusWith this move, Keeper transitions from being a single-chain wallet to a comprehensive multichain solution for managing digital assets. The wallet, previously known for its TON focus, now aims to cater to a global user base engaging with several leading blockchain networks.
Andrew Rogozov, founder and CEO of the Open Platform, emphasized that this change reflects a broader vision. He stated that after becoming a trusted wallet for millions within TON, Keeper aims to extend its hallmark simplicity to the wider crypto economy.
“Tonkeeper earned its place as the home of TON, trusted by millions of people around the world. Keeper is the next chapter: taking the simplicity we’re known for beyond TON and into the broader crypto economy.”
Nikita Monastyrskiy, CMO of Keeper, noted that rising multichain activity among users drove the decision to rebrand. Monastyrskiy explained that many users manage USDT on Tron, Bitcoin, ETH, and assets across layer 2 networks, often with multiple apps. The Tonkeeper name, he said, no longer reflected these evolving needs.
“The signal came from our own users. The people who trusted Tonkeeper stopped living on a single chain. They hold USDT on Tron, Bitcoin, ETH, and assets on the L2s, and they were managing all of it across four or five apps while keeping their most important one for TON.”
Expanded features and future roadmapKeeper plans to add new functions including cross-chain swaps, decentralized finance (DeFi) products, a decentralized-app browser, spending tools, a loyalty program, and perpetual-futures trading. However, the company has not yet specified dates for these feature rollouts.
The wallet also offers a feature called Battery, intended to let users pay transaction fees without holding each network’s native token. This capability is expected to expand to all supported chains within a year, although initial compatibility was not disclosed.
Self-custodial wallets like Keeper give users direct control of their assets, unlike custodial platforms that rely on intermediaries or exchanges.
Mini dictionary: The Open Platform is the company behind Keeper and several other TON-related products. It supports the development of financial tools and wallets integrated with the TON blockchain.
Growing multichain movement in the TON ecosystemKeeper’s announcement comes as part of a wider multichain shift among TON ecosystem projects. In June, MyTonWallet was renamed to My Wallet after expanding to support 11 different blockchains. TON-based decentralized exchange STON.fi also introduced cross-chain swaps in July, linking TON with Tron and various Ethereum-compatible chains.
The TON ecosystem has experienced significant developments. Telegram, the messaging platform, designated TON as the exclusive blockchain for its crypto-enabled mini apps in January 2025 and increased its involvement in directing TON’s development the following year.
The Open Platform, backer of Keeper, raised $28.5 million at a $1 billion valuation in 2025. It also develops TON Wallet, a self-custodial option embedded within Telegram. Additional initiatives in the ecosystem include a lower-barrier staking service launched through Telegram and a $500 million tokenized Telegram bond fund introduced by Libre and the TON Foundation.
User-centric expansion and network integrationMonastyrskiy highlighted that the multichain upgrade will allow existing users to consolidate assets in one application while offering newcomers access to TON-specific features. He explained that Keeper remains closely connected to the TON ecosystem while supporting a broader range of assets and networks.
“We are expanding beyond TON ecosystem while staying closely connected to it,” Monastyrskiy said. “This way users finally get one app for everything. Everyone else gets to find out why we are the number one self-custodial wallet on TON.”
Wallet NameSupported Blockchains (2025)Key FeaturesKeeperTON, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum, BaseCross-chain support, Battery fee payments, upcoming DeFi toolsMy WalletTON plus 10 other blockchainsMultichain support, rebranded in JuneTON WalletTON (Telegram integration)Self-custodial, integrated with Telegram
Bitcoin miners faced a challenging environment in the second quarter of 2026, as CoinShares reported that their weighted average ex-tax cash cost climbed to approximately $75,500 per Bitcoin. This figure remains well above the quarter-end Bitcoin price, which closed at $58,400. As a result, listed mining firms are rapidly reconsidering their capital allocation strategies to adapt to this tighter margin landscape.
Q2 mining costs push major operators below cash breakevenMining profitability reached record lows in June, with CoinShares data indicating Bitcoin’s monthly average hash price dropped to $27.7 per PH/s/day during the month. This sharp decrease meant that, for a period, most operators were earning below their cash breakeven points, placing additional stress on the sector.
Hash price has since rebounded to around $38 per PH/s/day, supported by a rise in Bitcoin’s own price towards $77,000. This recovery brought many miners back above the cash cost threshold, providing some relief to operators who endured an especially difficult June.
Mining companies are facing historically high costs and thinner margins, forcing them to reevaluate their exposure to Bitcoin as hash prices remain volatile and monthly difficulty levels limit revenue potential.
Transaction fees continued to account for less than 1% of total block rewards, indicating that mining companies remain heavily reliant on Bitcoin price appreciation or operational cost reductions to maintain profitability.
MetricQ2 2026Latest (July 2026)BTC price$58,400$76,370Average hash price (per PH/s/day)$27.7$38Weighted average cash cost$75,500N/ABitcoin price recovery improves mining outlookBitcoin’s price improved markedly since the end of June. At the time of writing, Bitcoin traded around $76,370, supported by a total market capitalization near $1.53 trillion and daily trading volume of about $32.68 billion according to CoinMarketCap. Rising prices have benefited miners and driven the average hash price back up, temporarily lifting margins across the sector.
CoinShares stated that should Bitcoin remain above $70,000 through the third quarter, this could help stabilize mining profitability. However, operators remain vigilant, balancing operational costs against Bitcoin’s price fluctuations as they plan for the rest of 2026.
Miners diversify with AI data center investmentsSome leading mining companies are reducing their reliance on cryptocurrency production and shifting capacity toward artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, which is now considered more profitable. Core Scientific, a major US-based miner, reportedly paid $41.9 million to cancel contracts for approximately 15 exahashes per second (EH/s) of next-generation Bitcoin mining hardware. In total, at least 35 EH/s is expected to exit the group of publicly listed miners in the coming months.
CoinShares identified at least 225 regulatory or developmental restrictions on data center construction across 30 US states, with 151 restrictions currently active. At the same time, the US energy grid’s interconnection queue has reached nearly 2,600 gigawatts (GW), greatly boosting the value of sites with existing, energized grid access for mining or data services.
Mini dictionary: Core Scientific, a prominent US-based publicly listed Bitcoin mining company, is known for operating large-scale crypto mining facilities and increasingly advancing into AI data center management and infrastructure development.
The appeal of AI has driven a recent surge in data center leases. Recent transactions show that three fully leased AI data centers sold for approximately $27 million per megawatt, compared with valuations below $3 million per megawatt for some miners’ energized but unleased capacity. CoinShares noted that pre-existing grid connections are difficult to reproduce, making them highly valuable assets for both mining and AI operations.
Despite this trend, transitioning power capacity to data centers and AI applications carries risk. Contracted power capacity must be monetized to generate meaningful revenue. CoinShares estimated there is over $100 billion in publicly disclosed AI and high-performance computing (HPC) backlog, supporting about $1.1 billion in annualized revenue across nearly 550 megawatts currently being billed, far less than the 4 gigawatts already contracted.
Leased AI data centers have surged in value due to grid connection scarcity and high demand for compute resources, but monetizing contracted capacity remains a critical challenge.
Deutsche Bank has confirmed plans to launch an institutional digital-asset custody service later in 2026 with support for Bitcoin, Ether and selected regulated stablecoins, subject to completion of its regulatory process.
Summary
Deutsche Bank plans to launch crypto custody for institutional and corporate clients later this year. Bitcoin, Ether, USDC, EURC and EURAU are among digital assets planned for initial custody support. The service remains subject to regulatory completion, internal approvals, risk management and client onboarding requirements. Deutsche Bank will manage client wallets and private keys using warm and cold storage environments. Tokenized financial instruments remain on Deutsche Bank’s roadmap as the supported asset range expands gradually. Deutsche Bank said the platform will let institutional and corporate clients safeguard digital assets and transfer them to third parties while the bank manages their wallets and private keys. Initial support is planned for Bitcoin, Ether, USDC, EURC and EURAU, according to details released on Sept. 16.
The service will initially focus on clients in Germany, Gerald Podobnik, co-head of Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Bank, told Bloomberg. The target group includes asset managers, hedge funds, custodians, brokers, sovereign institutions, corporates and companies working with blockchain technology.
Deutsche Bank crypto custody will launch with five assets At launch, Deutsche Bank plans to support a selected group of digital assets instead of opening custody to a large number of tokens. Bitcoin and Ether form the crypto component, while USDC, EURC and EURAU are listed among the stablecoins or e-money tokens expected to be supported.
The asset list remains subject to Deutsche Bank’s product approval, risk management and regulatory processes. The bank said future additions will depend on client demand and its internal requirements, meaning the five named assets should not be treated as a fixed long-term list.
EURAU carries a direct German regulatory connection. AllUnity, a joint venture between DWS, Flow Traders and Galaxy, launched the euro-backed token in July 2025 after receiving an electronic-money institution license from BaFin. AllUnity describes EURAU as fully reserved and compliant with MiCA requirements.
USDC and EURC are Circle-issued dollar and euro stablecoins, while Deutsche Bank’s own recent research has examined stablecoins, tokenized deposits and central-bank digital currencies as separate forms of digital money. In a May paper, the bank said financial institutions could eventually help clients navigate between those forms depending on the transaction involved.
Podobnik described digital assets as part of the financial system Deutsche Bank expects to serve through established banking controls. “Digital assets are not a replacement for the traditional financial system but an important complement to it,” he said.
The bank will hold private keys for institutional clients Deutsche Bank’s custody model places responsibility for wallet and private-key management with the bank, reducing the need for institutional clients to develop their own key-management infrastructure. The service will permit transfers to third parties as well as safekeeping.
Its planned security structure includes hardware-based key protection, secure key generation, segregation of duties and multi-person approval for transactions. Deutsche Bank said separate warm and cold storage environments will form part of the architecture, supported by redundant systems and controlled backup and recovery arrangements.
The bank had already disclosed technical work on the platform before the Sept. 16 announcement. A Deutsche Bank recruitment posting for its Digital Asset Custody platform described infrastructure built for Bitcoin, Ether and regulated stablecoins, with security work covering hardware security modules, cryptographic key management, audit trails and incident response.
On Sept. 9, Deutsche Bank published a separate review of institutional digital-asset custody in which Paul Maley, its global head of Trust and Securities Services, said regulated custodians provide security, governance and post-trade infrastructure needed by financial institutions entering blockchain markets. Deutsche Bank’s digital-asset custody report
The same report identified hardware key protection, key fragmentation, multi-person authorization and offline storage as techniques used by institutional custodians to protect cryptographic assets. Deutsche Bank published the report one week before announcing the planned service.
MiCA process still stands between the plan and launch Deutsche Bank has not given an exact launch date. Its Sept. 16 announcement says the custody platform is expected to start later this year once the applicable regulatory process has been completed, while the bank cautioned that timing, geographic availability and asset coverage may change.
For EU banks, MiCA provides a specific route to crypto services. The European Securities and Markets Authority states that a credit institution can provide crypto-asset services through the notification process established by Article 60, provided it submits the required information to its competent authority. ESMA’s guidance for credit institutions under MiCA
Required information includes the proposed program of operations, internal controls and procedures dealing with asset segregation, custody, anti-money laundering requirements and information and communications technology systems. ESMA notes that the notification must remain consistent with the institution’s existing banking authorization under national law.
Germany’s Bundesbank states that institutions submitting Article 60 MiCA notifications send them to BaFin and the Bundesbank. BaFin has separately cautioned that an institution cannot begin a crypto service when its required notification remains incomplete. Bundesbank’s MiCA information
Deutsche Bank previously applied to BaFin for regulatory permission related to digital-asset custody in 2023. The current announcement does not state that all remaining regulatory steps have been completed, which is why the bank continues to condition launch timing on the applicable process.
Taurus and Bitpanda have been part of the custody buildout Deutsche Bank’s current announcement says the platform will use selected external technology and infrastructure companies for defined technical components but does not name those providers. Earlier disclosures offer more detail about companies involved in the bank’s digital-asset work.
In September 2023, Deutsche Bank signed a global agreement with Swiss infrastructure provider Taurus to use its custody and tokenization technology for cryptocurrencies, digital currencies and tokenized assets. Taurus and Deutsche Bank’s original partnership announcement
Deutsche Bank selected Taurus after a due-diligence process as it prepared to offer institutional digital-asset services. The Swiss company continues to identify Deutsche Bank among financial institutions using its technology.
A later Bloomberg report said Deutsche Bank was working with Bitpanda Technology Solutions to build its planned 2026 custody service while continuing its Taurus relationship. Crypto.news reported the planned 2026 launch in July 2025.
Bitpanda has since renamed its institutional operation Bitpanda Enterprise. Its current custody infrastructure supports Bitcoin, Ethereum and major stablecoins and uses hardware security modules, policy-based approvals and audit logs for institutional clients. Deutsche Bank did not identify Bitpanda by name in the Sept. 16 service announcement.
Deutsche Bank already works with Bitpanda in another part of the digital-asset market. Since 2024, the bank has provided German IBAN and real-time payment infrastructure for Bitpanda customers, while serving the company in Austria and Spain for cross-currency banking services. Deutsche Bank and Bitpanda’s existing partnership
Tokenized financial instruments remain on the roadmap Deutsche Bank says the custody platform may later extend beyond cryptocurrencies and stablecoins to tokenized financial instruments, subject to demand, regulation and its internal approval framework. No date has been announced for adding those instruments.
The bank has spent several years testing tokenization infrastructure. In 2024, it joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian to test an interoperable blockchain platform for tokenized and digital funds. The project included work on servicing digital funds and developing standards for regulated tokenized markets. Deutsche Bank’s Project Guardian work
A June 2024 Deutsche Bank initiative examined interoperability between tokenized assets on public and private blockchains and existing financial infrastructure. The bank said its experiments covered blockchain and tokenization from an asset-servicing perspective.
In its Sept. 9 custody report, Deutsche Bank cited tokenized equities, government bonds, corporate credit and real estate as examples of traditional financial assets that can be represented on blockchains. The bank’s current custody roadmap places such instruments after the initial cryptocurrency and stablecoin offering.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Christopher Phelan, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), said a Fed rate hike would be a mistake. The Federal Reserve is set to announce its rate decision today.
Phelan made the comments on CNBC’s Closing Bell Overtime, citing recent inflation data as the reason a hike is unnecessary. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Fed’s rate-setting body, meets this week.
Inflation Data Undercuts the Case for a HikePhelan argued inflation has trended lower over the past three months. He pointed to every major gauge, including the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index.
He noted the Fed held off on raising rates months ago when inflation ran hotter. That makes a hike now harder to justify, he said.
The debate comes as President Donald Trump has pushed the Fed to lower interest rates. A hike would move policy in the opposite direction Trump has publicly favored.
“No matter how you measure it, inflation is coming down. They didn’t choose to raise rates 3 months ago when inflation was higher. It doesn’t make sense to raise rates now in my view.”
Christopher Phelan, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, via CNBC
What a Hike Would Mean for MarketsPhelan’s comments land as Bitcoin faces rising odds of a Fed hike this week. Traders have priced that scenario as a headwind for risk assets.
Higher rates tend to pressure Bitcoin (BTC) by making non-yielding assets less attractive next to bonds.
Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh has said the cheap-money era is ending. He has also signaled the Fed still has work to do on inflation, a stance Phelan pushed back against.
Fed watchers expect the committee to be closely divided again. A similar split emerged at the FOMC’s July meeting, when the panel held rates steady by a nine-to-three vote.
Whether Warsh sides with Phelan’s inflation reading, or with FOMC members favoring a hike, will shape borrowing costs. It will also shape risk appetite across markets in the sessions ahead.
Markets will watch Warsh’s press conference closely for signals on the final vote.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded their largest day of outflows since late June after a major crypto bill stalled in the Senate.
The 13 US-listed funds saw a net $450.4 million outflow on Tuesday, after attracting $159.9 million on Monday, according to data from Farside. It marks the largest outflow since June 24, when Bitcoin ETFs lost $469 million as a tech stock sell-off pressured risk assets.
Data shows Fidelity’s FBTC saw the biggest outflows, shedding $214.8 million, followed by $161.7 million from the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust, $44.1 million from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), $17.4 million from ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and $12.4 million from Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB).
Bitcoin is trading at $75,700, down 2.5% over the last 24 hours at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Cryptocurrencies face renewed pressure after the US failed to advance a key regulatory bill, bruising industry sentiment just ahead of a potential interest-rate hike from the Federal Reserve.
Bitcoin, which fell 4% in US trading, declined further in Asia Wednesday before stabilizing at around $75,700 at 11:50 a.m. in Singapore. The broader cryptocurrency market was also weaker in early Asia trading after steep declines in the US.
Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded their largest day of outflows since late June after a major crypto bill stalled in the Senate.
The 13 US-listed funds saw a net $450.4 million outflow on Tuesday, after attracting $159.9 million on Monday, according to data from Farside. It marks the largest outflow since June 24, when Bitcoin ETFs lost $469 million as a tech stock sell-off pressured risk assets.
Data shows Fidelity’s FBTC saw the biggest outflows, shedding $214.8 million, followed by $161.7 million from the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust, $44.1 million from Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), $17.4 million from ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) and $12.4 million from Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB).
Bitcoin is trading at $75,700, down 2.5% over the last 24 hours at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
Real Vision co-founder Raoul Pal says Bitcoin (BTC), not gold, is the better long-term hedge against currency debasement, arguing the asset’s earlier adoption stage gives it more room to grow than the metal.
Pal made the comparison during a September interview on the Wolf Financial Show. There, he laid out his broader framework for how debasement quietly erodes savings and wages.
Debasement Erodes Savings Every YearDebasement, Pal says, is the dominant force behind rising asset prices over time. He ties it directly to liquidity cycles that central banks and governments largely control.
He describes debasement as the steady loss of a currency’s purchasing power as central banks expand the money supply.
He estimates this process reduces the value of fiat currencies globally by roughly 8% annually. Wages, he adds, typically track economic growth of around 3%.
That gap, Pal argues, explains why homes and other scarce assets have grown harder to afford for average earners. Bitcoin recently traded near $75,900, according to BeInCrypto data, down about 2% over the past day.
Why Bitcoin Beats Gold, According to PalPal frames gold as base money with no ability to compound in value beyond what the broader economy already reflects. Bitcoin, he says, functions as digital gold with the same scarcity but a much earlier adoption curve.
Pal summarized the idea in one line.
“[T]he digital gold is Bitcoin, but Bitcoin’s earlier in its adoption.”
He made the remark during the interview.
Pal argues that only two asset classes have consistently outpaced the debasement rate. Those are crypto and technology stocks, tracked through the Nasdaq.
He pointed to the Nasdaq’s roughly 19% annual return over 15 years. Crypto, he estimates, has compounded between 45% and 110% annually.
Gold, real estate, and other traditional assets, he said, tend to only track the debasement rate rather than beat it. Pal’s comments echo a wider narrative among macro investors. They increasingly link Bitcoin’s price moves to gold as the debasement trade gains traction.
Whether Bitcoin can sustain that adoption curve remains an open question. Gold’s renewed strength may shape how investors weigh the two assets through 2026.
Marathon Digital Holdings, the publicly listed Bitcoin miner known by its ticker MARA, picked up 1,292 BTC for roughly $98.6 million, working out to about $76,347 per coin. The purchase was executed through FalconX, an institutional prime broker, and surfaced via on-chain analytics from Lookonchain before any formal company announcement.
The timing matters. MARA spent the first quarter of 2026 offloading a substantial portion of its Bitcoin reserves, selling approximately 20,880 BTC for around $1.5 billion. The company channeled proceeds toward operational expenses, liquidity management, and a strategic push into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure.
From seller to buyer: MARA’s shifting treasury strategy The Q1 sales cut deep into MARA’s holdings. The company entered late 2025 holding roughly 53,822 BTC, a figure that ranked it among the largest corporate Bitcoin holders in the world. By March 2026, that number had dropped to approximately 35,303 BTC, a reduction of more than a third.
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The September 15 purchase is not MARA’s first move back toward accumulation. The company quietly bought 1,000 BTC through the same FalconX channel back in June 2026, signaling that the sell-heavy posture was transitional rather than permanent.
As of early 2026 filings, MARA’s Bitcoin treasury was valued somewhere between $2.4 billion and $2.7 billion depending on where prices sat at any given moment. That range places MARA in rarefied company, occasionally trading the title of second-largest public Bitcoin holder with MicroStrategy depending on the week and the market.
What FalconX’s role tells us about how big players actually move The fact that both the June and September purchases flowed through FalconX is worth pausing on. Institutional prime brokers exist precisely to let large buyers move serious capital without immediately tipping off the open market. FalconX allows MARA to source liquidity across multiple counterparties simultaneously, keeping slippage low and execution cleaner. The repeated use of the same broker across two separate purchase events suggests this is now a deliberate operational playbook rather than a one-off arrangement.
Lookonchain’s on-chain identification of the transaction is a reminder that even when institutions use off-exchange execution, the final Bitcoin settlement still lands on a transparent public ledger.
Reading the signals for the broader market What to watch: whether MARA follows this purchase with additional disclosures about its revised treasury target, how its AI and HPC infrastructure bets are maturing alongside the renewed Bitcoin accumulation, and whether other major miners interpret this as a cue to rebuild their own reserves ahead of the next potential demand cycle.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
A self-custodial wallet with more than 77 million users on the Telegram-linked TON blockchain is expanding to Bitcoin, Ethereum and four other networks.
Tonkeeper rebrands to Keeper, adds Bitcoin, Ethereum and four more chains
Posted September 15, 2026 at 4:21 pm EST.
Tonkeeper, the wallet built for the Telegram-linked TON blockchain, has rebranded to Keeper and expanded into a multichain wallet, the company announced on Tuesday. The wallet, which the company says has more than 77 million registered users, now supports six additional networks alongside TON: Bitcoin, Ethereum, TRON, BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum and Base.
The wallet was built as a dedicated home for TON, the blockchain tied to Telegram. But holders increasingly keep assets on several chains at once, which usually means moving funds across different apps, bridges and gas tokens. Keeper is pitched as a single place to hold and move funds across all seven networks while users keep their own keys.
New owner, new name The rebrand caps a change in who runs the wallet. The Open Platform, the company behind Wallet in Telegram, said last month that it had assumed day-to-day control of the product, while co-founders Oleg Andreev and Oleg Illarionov kept equity in it. Andrew Rogozov, who founded and runs The Open Platform, oversaw the handover.
“Keeper is the next chapter: taking the simplicity we’re known for beyond TON and into the broader crypto economy,” Rogozov said in a statement. Rogozov said the company’s ambition is “to build the default self-custodial wallet for a multichain world.”
Gasless, for now Keeper keeps the feature Tonkeeper called Battery, which covers a transaction’s network fee so the user does not have to hold the gas token native to each chain. Keeper says someone can move USDT and other tokens without first acquiring TRX or TON to pay the fee.
The bulk of the roadmap is still ahead. The Open Platform plans to extend Battery across every supported network and add native DeFi, cross-chain swaps, a built-in browser for onchain apps and, eventually, perpetual futures within the next year.
The launch pushes a wallet with tens of millions of users into a crowded field of multichain products. It also ties Keeper more tightly to The Open Platform, which has pitched itself as the infrastructure layer for crypto inside Telegram’s billion-plus user base. MetaMask, meanwhile, is splitting into a standalone company as consumer wallets increasingly compete as full financial products rather than storage.
Related Listen: Zcash, Ethereum, Aztec, Canton and More: Which Chain Will Win the Privacy Race?
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
Keeper, previously known as Tonkeeper, has announced its rebranding and expansion into a multichain cryptocurrency wallet. The company said the new version now supports seven networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, TRON, BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum, and Base, alongside the original TON blockchain. Keeper reportedly serves more than 77 million registered users.
Broader multichain access and user controlOriginally created as a dedicated wallet for the TON blockchain, Keeper now aims to address the growing trend of users managing assets across several networks. Existing crypto wallets often require moving funds between multiple apps, navigating bridges, and handling different gas tokens. With the expanded support, Keeper positions itself as a unified solution that allows users to hold and move funds across all compatible networks while maintaining full control of their private keys.
The company stated that these changes are part of its effort to simplify multichain asset management and make self-custody more accessible. Users can transfer digital assets seamlessly without needing to switch between wallets or services.
Management handover and ongoing developmentKeeper’s rebrand concludes a recent transition in operational leadership. The Open Platform, the company behind ‘Wallet’ in Telegram, took over day-to-day management from the original founders, Oleg Andreev and Oleg Illarionov, who continue to hold equity in the product. The Open Platform is a project aimed at building crypto infrastructure for Telegram’s vast global audience. Andrew Rogozov, its founder and CEO, directed the operational transition.
In an official statement, Rogozov described the rebrand as “the next chapter: taking the simplicity we’re known for beyond TON and into the broader crypto economy.” He outlined the company’s goal “to build the default self-custodial wallet for a multichain world.”
Battery feature and upcoming roadmapKeeper retains its signature feature, previously called Battery. This mechanism covers transaction fees on behalf of users, allowing them to send assets such as USDT without needing to hold the specific gas tokens required by each supported network, for example TRX for TRON or TON for the TON blockchain.
Mini dictionary: Battery, a feature in Keeper that pays blockchain transaction fees for users so they do not need to own network-specific gas tokens for each transaction.
Rogozov expressed that the ambition behind Keeper is to become the primary self-custodial wallet for an interconnected, multichain crypto environment, emphasizing the expansion of existing user-friendly features like Battery beyond TON.
Looking ahead, The Open Platform plans to extend the Battery feature to every supported network and introduce additional tools, including built-in decentralized finance (DeFi) options, cross-chain swaps, an integrated browser for onchain applications, and, within the next year, perpetual futures trading.
Competitive landscape and industry contextKeeper’s multichain launch positions it among an increasingly competitive field of cryptocurrency wallets offering similar services. The move also strengthens Keeper’s integration with The Open Platform, which markets itself as the infrastructure layer delivering crypto experiences to Telegram’s audience of more than a billion users worldwide.
MetaMask, another major player in the sector, has recently started transitioning into a standalone company as many consumer wallets look to provide comprehensive financial products rather than solely serving as crypto storage solutions.
WalletSupported NetworksSignature FeatureKeeperTON, Bitcoin, Ethereum, TRON, BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum, BaseBattery transaction fee coverageMetaMaskEthereum, BNB Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Polygon, and othersBrowser extension, DeFi integrationThe company’s push for multichain compatibility and enhanced user experience is part of an evolving effort among wallet providers to support a broader range of assets and financial services.
Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements found that estimates of Bitcoin onchain transfer values can vary by as much as sixfold depending on how transactions are measured.
The finding concerns onchain Bitcoin transfer values, rather than trading volume on crypto exchanges. The sixfold gap reflects differences between measurement methods, including how change outputs and other transfers back to the sender are treated.
The discrepancy stems largely from Bitcoin’s transaction structure. When users spend Bitcoin, unspent funds are often returned to the sender as change, which can be counted as another output even though it does not represent funds being transferred to another party.
Breakdown of blockchain records analyzed in the BIS study. Source: BIS
“Metrics such as transaction volumes, market capitalisation and total value locked often suggest a degree of accuracy that is not supported by the nature of the underlying data,” the researchers wrote.
The measurement problem also extends to Bitcoin’s market capitalization. The researchers found that the conventional measure has at times been as much as four times higher than realized capitalization, which values each coin at the price when it last moved.
The study, based on 100 billion blockchain records across Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron, found that similar measurement challenges extend across the broader crypto ecosystem.
Ethereum and stablecoins present additional challengesEthereum presented a separate measurement challenge because of the proliferation of smart contracts. Of roughly 67.5 million active contracts examined, about 54 million could not be categorized using the classifications in the study.
Interpreting stablecoin activity presents another challenge, as the same asset can serve different purposes across blockchains. USDT on Ethereum was more closely linked to DeFi activity, while USDT on Tron was associated more with payment-like and store-of-value purposes.
The differences were particularly stark in smart contract holdings. The share of USDT held by smart contracts on Ethereum exceeded 20% in 2022, compared with around 1% on Tron. Because of the different use cases, the researchers said aggregating USDT activity across blockchains can conflate different types of economic activity and obscure how stablecoins are actually being used.
The BIS researchers concluded that onchain indicators should be treated as “noisy approximations rather than direct measures of economic activity.”
Visa filters stablecoin data to reflect economic activitySome analytics providers already distinguish between raw blockchain activity and adjusted measures intended to better represent economic activity.
Visa’s Onchain Analytics dashboard, powered by data from Allium Labs, displays both total and adjusted stablecoin transaction volumes. Visa says its adjusted methodology aims to remove potential distortions from activity including high-frequency trading, bots, bridge routing and internal exchange operations.
The dashboard currently shows $6.4 trillion in total stablecoin transaction volume across the networks it tracks over the past 30 days, compared with $313.1 billion in adjusted volume.
Stablecoin transaction volumes. Source: Visa Onchain Analytics
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Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP hit fresh selling pressure following the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass CLARITY Act. A process vote on the bill was unsuccessful with fewer than 60 votes. The defeat follows months of talks between Republicans and Democrats on the digital-asset market structure bill. According to the latest market data,
XRP Takes The Heaviest Hit As Bitcoin, Ethereum Also Dip As of writing, Bitcoin price hovered near $75,976.10 with a 3.7% dip, while Ethereum plunged 5.2% and stood at $2,404.20. Furthermore, XRP saw a huge drop of 7.3%, currently trading at $1.31 at the time of writing.
Bitcoin price chart today. Source: TradingView For context, the CLARITY Act Senate vote failure came as it was just 11 short of the 60 votes required to advance with 49 Yes votes and 50 No votes. Four Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in opposing the measure.
Not invoked, 49-50: Motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to Cal. #423, H.R.3633, Clarity Act.
— Senate Cloakroom (@SenateCloakroom) September 15, 2026
One point of contention was the ethics language of the bill. Democrats pointed out that the provisions didn’t go far enough to protect the interests of federal officials in the crypto market, especially those of Trump and his family.
Before the vote, Republicans had added ethics restrictions and enforcement changes. But negotiations fell short of securing necessary support for the procedural motion.
Crypto Liquidations Surge To $669.71 Million The crypto market’s bearish move led to massive liquidations across the industry. According to CoinGlass, total 24-hour liquidations of $669.71 million as the CLARITY Act stalled. Long positions totalled $571.64 million and short ones $98.06 million. During the period 116,199 traders were liquidated.
Crypto market liquidations data today. Source: CoinGlass On its liquidation heatmap, it also revealed that there were approximately $231.63 million in Bitcoin-related liquidations and approximately $220.77 million in ETH-related liquidations.
Meanwhile, the 4-hour liquidation was $28.76 million, with $24.23 million representing long liquidations.
For regulatory-compliant crypto trading, visit our page on Best Regulated Crypto Exchanges in the USA.
