BeInCrypto Global

Crypto whales added three altcoins in the first 30 hours of September, a month Bitcoin has closed lower in five of the last eight years.
Bitcoin September Record: BeInCrypto
The market opened it 2.2% below Tuesday’s high, so the buying went against the broader market .
Uniswap (UNI)
Nansen-labelled crypto whale wallets lifted UNI holdings from 3.20 million to 3.46 million on September 2, a 257,777-token increase worth about $1.62 million. The cohort grew from eight wallets to nine, so a new large holder joined.
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The flows around it agree. Fresh wallets took in $2.91 million and exchange balances fell by 351,274 UNI, per Nansen wallet data. UNI is up 9% in 24 hours and 47% on the week, and it returns to this list after whales bought it in July.
UNI Whales Versus Perp Traders: BeInCrypto
Usage backs the move. Uniswap handled $2.69 billion in daily volume and $10.7 million in fees, per DeFiLlama protocol data, and those fees feed the UNI burn mechanism approved last December, so heavier trading removes UNI from circulation.
Usage and Price: BeInCrypto
Two groups hedged instead of following. Derivatives traders cut $854,910 of UNI exposure while staying net long, and the whales themselves were net DEX sellers of $130,256 even as balances grew, which reads as locking in part of the gain.
Orca (ORCA)
Orca is the cleanest contrarian setup of the three. Labelled crypto whale balances rose from 160,325 to 201,097 ORCA, a 25.4% jump, while the token fell 1.3%.
The cohort stayed at 10 wallets, so existing holders did the buying. Exchanges lost $263,753 of ORCA in 24 hours, the second-largest outflow in 30 days, pulling sell-side supply off the market. It seems that retail and whales are unified on this one.
ORCA Price Versus Whale Balance: BeInCrypto
Yet, the weekly picture is weaker. Whale flow over seven days is still negative $417,113, so one strong day has not undone a week of selling.
Pump.fun (PUMP)
PUMP carries the most disagreement. Whale balances rose 62.75 million tokens, worth about $272,000, and fresh wallets added $1.83 million while the price fell 3.5%.
PUMP Whale and Trader Split: BeInCrypto
The other side is heavier. Smart traders sold $475,249, top-profit wallets sold $1.80 million, and exchange flow flipped from an $885,645 outflow to a $739,671 inflow inside the same window, and tokens moving onto exchanges are usually about to be sold.
Pump.fun has a huge built-in buyer of its own. The company says it spends half of everything it earns buying PUMP on the open market and destroying it, so those tokens can never be sold again. It burned $997,700 worth in the latest day.
That has shrunk the supply, but it has never stopped the price falling when holders sold faster than the company bought. Whale wallets held 4.745 billion PUMP when September began. If they fall back below that, the sellers have won.
PUMP Buyback Ledger: BeInCrypto
Analyst’s View: This is not an altcoin season. It is a bet on three tokens with a built-in buyer, made in a month Bitcoin usually loses.
Three Buyback Engines: BeInCrypto
A buyback creates one steady buyer, not proof anyone else wants the token. And in all three cases the whale cohort sold on DEXs while its balances rose, so a rising balance means large wallets hold more, not that they bought on the open market.
Whales Inventory Versus DEX Trades: BeInCrypto
UNI has the deepest confirmation, ORCA the sharpest divergence, PUMP the loudest counter-argument.

Adam Back has put €7.6 million into the Capital B Bitcoin treasury, funding the purchase of 376 more coins.
Capital B sits in Puteaux, a business district west of Paris, and trades on Euronext Growth Paris. It priced the new shares at €0.58 apiece. That level sits 15.4% above Tuesday’s close.
Why the Capital B Bitcoin Treasury Wants 3,521 Coins
Net proceeds should reach roughly €7.3 million once fees clear. Together with ongoing operations, that sum could lift holdings to 3,521 BTC.
🟠 Capital B announces a €7.6 million capital raise with strategic investor Adam Back to accelerate its Bitcoin Treasury Company strategy⚡️Full Press Release (EN): https://t.co/aCL9WZuSGaFull Press Release (FR): https://t.co/uB3vvq666cBTC Strategy (EN):…
— Capital B (@_ALCPB) September 2, 2026
Capital B. Source: X
Capital B calls itself Europe’s first Bitcoin Treasury Company. Its stated goal is more bitcoin per fully diluted share, rather than a bigger raw coin count. Back co-founded Blockstream and now runs the Bitcoin infrastructure firm.
The raise arrives with Bitcoin trading near $76,577, down 1.66% in a day. Renewed US strikes near the Strait of Hormuz pushed it below $77,000 on Tuesday.
However, Back subscribed above the market price, matching the terms Capital B set on August 28. Meanwhile, larger peers have turned cautious. MicroStrategy ended a 10-week pause only last week.
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Warrants Could Lift Back’s Ordinary Stake to 27.8%
Each new share arrives with four warrants. Two carry a €0.75 strike, one €0.98, and one €1.27, all maturing in five years.
Full exercise would create 52,724,120 shares and raise a further €49.4 million. Back’s ordinary stake would then climb from 14.82% to 27.80%. On a fully diluted basis, it reaches 23.36%.
Capital B also disclosed the dilution effect. A holder with 1% before the issuance moves to 0.97% on an ordinary basis. That figure falls to 0.85% if every new warrant converts.
Capital B can also force the pace. It may open an accelerated exercise window whenever the 20-day average price beats 130% of a tranche strike.
A 10-for-1 reverse split lands September 8 and will rescale every warrant ratio. The placement closes September 3 at the earliest.
Other treasury companies are tapping markets on similar terms. A Solana vehicle priced a preferred stock offering last week. Capital B’s next disclosure should show whether the 376 coins actually landed.

European natural gas prices climbed to their highest level in over 3 years, as renewed US strikes on Iran deepened concerns over prolonged disruption to energy flows from the Persian Gulf.
Europe’s benchmark, Dutch front-month futures, surged to 73.85 euros per megawatt-hour in early European trading. It has gained roughly 25% over the past month. At press time, it stood at 72.2 euros.
Dutch Front Month Futures Chart. Source: TradingView
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Storage Shortfall Leaves Europe Exposed
The front-month contract has not traded this high since the end of 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal. The rally reflects a supply problem that predates this week’s escalation.
EU gas stocks were 63% full in the final week of August. That sits well below the 80% average for late August in recent years.
Storage operators normally refill throughout the summer, when both demand and prices are lower. Gas analyst Greg Molnar said continued injection at the current pace could leave EU gas storage at just 72 bcm.
That would put inventories 20%, or 19 bcm, below the five-year average. It would also mark the lowest storage level since 2013.
“Low storage levels are naturally increasing the risk of heightened winter price volatility,” he said.
Energy Costs Reach Consumer Prices
The shock has already landed in the eurozone inflation data. Inflation rose 3.3% in the year to August, up from 2.9% in July. Energy inflation drove the move, accelerating to 14.3%. Core inflation eased to 2.4%.
Escalation around the Strait of Hormuz has also clouded prospects for a recovery in regional liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. Roughly 20% of global LNG shipments cross the waterway.
Analysts at ING said Europe currently outbids Asia for cargoes once shipping costs are counted. However, they expect competition between the two regions to intensify if Qatari volumes remain absent through year-end.
Goldman Sachs analysts said the benchmark may need to move above 100 euros per megawatt-hour should Middle East exports normalize only gradually through 2027. Meanwhile, Morningstar analyst Tancrede Fulop told CNBC that a cold winter could drive prices into the 90-120 euro range.
The squeeze is spilling into risk assets. Asian equities slid after strikes on Iran, while Bitcoin (BTC) reacted to the same escalation.
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Two Thai businessmen have sued Tether over a $42.4 million freeze of Tether (USDT). They say the issuer locked their wallets almost four months before a seizure warrant existed.
The complaint landed in the Southern District of New York on August 31. It asks whether an issuer can immobilize tokens bought on the open market without legal process.
A Freeze That Arrived Before the Warrant
Nutthawat Rukthammachalern and Natthawat Kasamvilas say Tether blacklisted 10 Ethereum addresses on October 30, 2025. Those wallets held 42,417,785.62 USDT.
Tether has just been sued over a $42.4 million USDT freeze by Two Thai businessmen in the SDNY.Nutthawat Rukthammachalern and Natthawat Kasamvilas say Tether blacklisted their wallets on October 30, 2025 (42,417,785.62 USDT) after an informal request from an HSI agent. No… pic.twitter.com/hDDgMZRrIv
— Ariel Givner (@GivnerAriel) September 1, 2026
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They emailed the company two days later. Tether replied by pointing them to a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent. However, it gave no legal basis, the filing states.
A magistrate judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina then issued seizure warrant 5:26-MJ-1267-JG on February 19, 2026. It directed Tether to burn the frozen tokens and reissue them to a government wallet.
Five days later, prosecutors there announced a $61 million USDT seizure traced to romance investment fraud. Corporate and intellectual property counsel Ariel Givner surfaced the filing. She noted the plaintiffs never dispute that the government calls those coins scam proceeds.
Reserve Yield Becomes the Sharp Edge
The two men plead five claims, among them conversion, trespass to chattels, and unjust enrichment. They bought the tokens secondhand, never opened a Tether account, and never accepted its terms of service.
“An informal request from a law enforcement agent is not legal process of any kind under federal law,” the plaintiff’s complaint filed in the Southern District of New York.
The enrichment count targets interest. Tether holds roughly $130 billion in Treasury securities through Cantor Fitzgerald, the filing says. It keeps collecting the coupon while frozen holders cannot redeem.
Meanwhile, the relief sought covers restored transferability, a ban on any burn, disgorgement of that yield, and punitive damages.
Freeze timing has drawn scrutiny before. Funds have escaped before blacklists complete, while the company moved within hours on OFAC sanctions requests. Circle, by contrast, refused to reissue frozen USDC absent clear legal authority.
Tether has not answered, and no judge has ruled. Yet USDT’s $183 billion market value puts far more than ten wallets in scope.
Two filings will shape what follows. Tether’s response comes first, then a North Carolina ruling on the plaintiffs’ July 31 return application.

Two US investment firms have asked a New York court to compel disclosure over the £450 million loan that shifted most of Aston Martin’s brand rights to an outside owner.
Arini Capital Management and Tresidor Investment Management want documents from the lenders and their advisers. The Aston Martin bondholders are preparing a separate claim in London.
Why Aston Martin Bondholders Want the Documents
Aston Martin borrowed £450 million ($606 million) in July from a group led by HPS Investment Partners, one of the largest private credit lenders. An arm of Authentic Brands Group, the licensing house behind Reebok, lent alongside it.
A further £100 million carries one condition. Authentic Brands must take a 50.1% stake in the unit that holds the carmaker’s non-automotive brand rights. No price for that stake has appeared publicly.
Those rights cover licensing, merchandise, and lifestyle products. Moreover, they earn money while the car business loses it. Therefore, the creditors argue the deal pushed value beyond their reach.
The application targets HPS, which BlackRock owns, along with Authentic Brands’ UK arm and the advisers Moelis and Lazard. Aston Martin itself withheld most of the material the creditors requested.
A Loss-Making Carmaker With a Valuable Name
The creditors have flagged two routes. One rests on the New York law governing the bonds. The other invokes Section 423 of the UK Insolvency Act, which lets courts unwind transfers made at an undervalue.
They want the transfer reversed, or compensation instead. However, nothing has been filed in London so far.
Aston Martin closed at 33.20 pence on Tuesday, more than 99% below its 2018 debut. September’s index review also costs the carmaker its place in the FTSE 250, Britain’s index of mid-sized listed companies.
Aston Martin Lagonda share price, all time. Source: TradingView
Other consumer brands have suffered similar damage, and Nike’s 12-year low shows how quickly a famous name stops supporting a share price.
Rising global bond yields have made refinancing harder for weak borrowers. Until a valuation surfaces, neither side can prove what the brand stake was worth.

Luke Dashjr’s Bitcoin hard fork went live on September 1, and it arrived almost empty. The new BLAKE2b chain drew little hashrate, while Blockstream CEO Adam Back reduced the whole episode to one line.
Dashjr broke away from Bitcoin (BTC) by swapping its mining algorithm, a change meant to let ordinary computers mine again. Miners and exchanges largely ignored him.
Why the Bitcoin Hard Fork Collapsed Within Hours
BIP-110 is Dashjr’s proposal to strip non-financial data out of Bitcoin blocks. His camp calls the main network “Spamcoin.” Meanwhile, most of the community treated the September 1 chain split as a non-event.
The pattern repeats. An earlier BIP-110 chain died after two blocks in August. Mining pool OCEAN then faced calls to replace its leadership after routing customer hashrate to that chain without clear consent.
The algorithm swap also cut Dashjr off from the industry’s hardware base. BLAKE2b replaces SHA-256, so the specialized rigs that secure Bitcoin cannot touch the new chain. Computing power on the fork fell right after launch.
Adam Back Delivers the Punchline
Back needed seven words to sum up the result.
Live by the fork, die by the fork.
Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, posted on X.
Dashjr, however, still frames the minority chain as the genuine article. On X he claims the BTC ticker has belonged to Bitcoin for over a decade, and that Bitcoin has now moved to BLAKE2b. Chain data contradicts him.
Bitcoin just changed to BLAKE2b.The only recent fork is Spamcoin, which this isn't talking about.
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) September 1, 2026
Bitcoin Knots, the node software Dashjr maintains, pushed similar arguments in August. David Schwartz, Ripple’s former chief technology officer, called them nonsense at the time.
Traders barely reacted. The original network produced blocks without interruption. BTC changed hands near $76,942, down roughly 1.33% in 24 hours.
No major exchange has listed the coin. One small beta platform opened deposits under the ticker BTCB2, since no official symbol exists yet.
BTCB2 bids there topped out at $82, roughly 900 times below BTC, while the lowest ask sat at $190. That 131.7% spread signals almost no real trading.
A chain without miners, listings, or bids still needs buyers who value its blocks.

Stock perpetual futures on centralized crypto exchanges traded $665.42 billion in August, according to WuBlockchain Data Center. 3 underlying names produced more than half of that activity.
The total rose 4.6% from $636.19 billion in July. Still, the figure is 56.5 times higher than January’s $11.58 billion.
Chip Stocks Still Control the Equity Perp Market
SanDisk (SNDK) led all underlying assets in August volume, with $193.58 billion. SK Hynix (SKHYNIX) followed at $75.89 billion, and the SpaceX-tracking SPCX contract added $65.93 billion.
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Monthly Stock Perp Futures Volume. Source: WuBlockchain Data Center
Together, the three represented 50.4% of the market. That concentration echoes what CryptoQuant documented in July, when memory and semiconductor names dominated exchange flows.
Notably, SNDK perpetual volume equaled 62.4% of the stock’s US spot turnover on August 19, the highest reading on record in WuBlockchain’s tokenized equities data. The ratio eased to 38.0% by August 26.
No other equity-linked perpetual comes close. Circle (CRCL) ranked second at 47.2%, while Nvidia (NVDA) and Meta both sit below 3%.
Exchanges Widen Their Stock Derivatives Lineup
Meanwhile, Binance reported roughly $433.4 billion in traditional finance (TradFi) perpetual volume for August, about 15 times January’s $29.5 billion. Equity-linked contracts generated $342.9 billion of that figure, or close to 79%.
The exchange is now adding options on more than 1,000 US stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for eligible users outside the United States.
Rivals are moving in parallel. Bybit plans to start 24/7 options trading on September 17, using SpaceX and Nvidia perpetuals as the underlyings.
Whether the market broadens beyond memory chips will determine if September repeats August’s narrow structure.
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Goldman Sachs has added three stocks to its European “Conviction List – Directors’ Cut” list. The list tracks the bank’s buy-rated European equities.
The inclusions are the payment processing company Adyen, the German energy firm RWE, and the German insurer Talanx. All three arrive with different setups.
Adyen Draws the Biggest Upside Call
The bank sees 77% upside for Adyen, the largest call among the three additions. Adyen closed at €1,006.80 on September 1, down 3.88% for the session.
The Dutch payment processor sits roughly 37% under its 52-week high of €1,600.80. It also remains down nearly 28% in 2026.
Adyen Stock Performance. Source: Google Finance
Analyst Mohammed Moawalla credits Adyen’s integrated platform for its edge. He points to new client ramps, including the Toast partnership in the US and Shopify’s European expansion.
Goldman also expects Adyen to benefit from agentic commerce. The bank flagged tie-ups with OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft.
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RWE and Talanx Round Out the Additions
Next, RWE closed at €58.58 on September 1 and has gained roughly 30% so far this year. Goldman set a €75 target, implying 28% upside.
Analyst Alberto Gandolfi expects the grid spending and possible data center deals to lift the valuation. He also flagged stronger US renewable returns and potential LNG profits.
Lastly, Talanx carries a €141 target, representing 13% upside. The stock traded near €125, close to a 2026 high. It has gained 12% yeat-to-date.
Analyst Andrew Baker described its Retail International arm, which sells policies outside Germany, as an “underappreciated growth engine” and projected that premiums there would rise 8% to 10% annually through 2030.
Goldman dropped Hannover Re, along with Enel, Wise, and Zalando from the list. Two of Goldman’s three September calls lean on AI.
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OpenAI has confirmed that its upcoming model Astra meets the Critical cybersecurity threshold under its Preparedness Framework. The company plans to release it with safeguards and restricted access to advanced cyber capabilities.
Astra is the first model OpenAI has placed at that tier. The designation means the model can identify unknown flaws in hardened systems and craft working exploits without step-by-step human guidance.
What the Critical Rating Covers
The Preparedness Framework sets two conditions for the Critical threshold. A model qualifies if it can identify and develop functional zero-day exploits across many hardened real-world systems without human intervention.
It also qualifies if it can plan and execute novel end-to-end attacks against hardened targets based solely on a high-level goal.
Astra scored 100% on ExploitBench, according to the company’s assessment. On an internal set of 20 high-severity V8 vulnerabilities, it reached higher code-execution rates than GPT-5.6 Sol while using far fewer tokens.
During that run, Astra found and used two previously unknown vulnerabilities. OpenAI said it is disclosing both to the affected maintainers.
Expert testers also watched the model build a browser compromise chain. It escaped the sandbox and executed commands on the host machine.
“Astra represents a significant increase in cybersecurity capabilities compared to GPT‑5.6 Sol: it is both significantly more token efficient and more capable at vulnerability identification and exploit development,” OpenAI said.
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Over the summer, we have been sprinting on safety priorities; it's more important than ever for capabilities and safeguards to advance together. We have more to do but have made a lot of progress. We are also going to be launching our next model soon.There is an obvious tension…
— Sam Altman (@sama) September 1, 2026
OpenAI Layers Guardrails Before Release
The company paused parts of Astra’s development while it strengthened protections. It restarted a large frontier reinforcement learning run on August 28 once new safety and security requirements took effect.
OpenAI said that Astra rejects 91.5% of requests in its cyber jailbreak evaluations. GPT-5.6 Sol refused 59% on the same set. Accounts assessed as higher risk face a stricter refusal boundary.
OpenAI also deployed chain-of-thought monitoring to detect and halt potentially misaligned actions. In honeypot tests, GPT-5.6 Sol, without production safeguards, attempted to compromise surrounding infrastructure in 56% of samples. Astra made no such attempts.
The firm plans to make Astra available soon. Access to its most advanced cybersecurity capabilities will be more limited, going first to a group of testers, then expanding through Daybreak Blue to support defensive use.
The company conceded that the safeguards will create friction at launch.
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OKX is cracking down on gambling-linked crypto deposits, founder and CEO Star Xu said. Deposits from high-risk addresses can now trigger anti-money laundering (AML) reviews lasting 15 days or longer.
During that window, account functions and funds may be restricted. OKX will cut off users entirely if their activity is confirmed illicit, Xu added.
AML Review Targets Gambling-Linked Channels
Xu made the comment on X earlier Wednesday. He was responding to a user question about how OKX handles betting platforms that send funds directly into exchange wallets.

Bitcoin (BTC) has given some of its gains from the sharp August rally, and the retreat is now tracing a familiar outline on the chart.
Analysts have flagged a Bart Simpson pattern forming on BTC. The formation has drawn concern that the decline still has room to extend.
The Bart Simpson Pattern Is Forming on Bitcoin, Here’s What It Means
Bitcoin gained 25% in August and pushed through $80,000 late in the month. The asset traded near $77,281 on Wednesday, down 1.42% over 24 hours.
Bitcoin (BTC) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto Markets
Several analysts flagged the shape on the 4-hour chart. The pattern takes its name from the cartoon character because it resembles his hair.
Price moves sharply in one direction, trades sideways in a narrow range, then snaps back toward the earlier level.
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pic.twitter.com/aFXhmo6HbU
— Benjamin Cowen (@benjamincowen) September 1, 2026
The setup becomes particularly important if Bitcoin loses the $75,800 level, which another analyst identified as a key threshold. A break below it could confirm the bearish pattern.
On the other hand, holding above $75,800 could invalidate the bearish setup and give buyers room to regain momentum. In that case, Bitcoin could turn higher and retest the May high near $83,000.
Still, the Bart Simpson pattern should not be treated as a definitive bearish signal. The formation can emerge during normal consolidation after a sharp price move and does not necessarily lead to another leg lower.
Spot Demand Contracts as Long-Term Holders Sell
The flow data carries more weight than the pattern. Analyst CW8900 said spot demand has turned negative during the sideways move.
Negative readings appeared on two consecutive days. In contrast, futures demand stayed solid across the same stretch.
“Without the support of spot demand, there is no bullish rally,” the analyst said.
Meanwhile, analyst Axel Adler Jr reported that long-term holder distribution rose 61.5% between August 18 and August 28. The 30-day sum climbed from 174,500 BTC to 281,900 BTC.
That marked the highest reading since the start of 2026. Adler said the rebound after the short squeeze opened a window for profit-taking.
He added that inflation and labor figures due over the next few days will shape the Fed’s September decision. Whether current demand can absorb that growing supply now decides where Bitcoin price action heads next.
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Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora said companies must build an entirely new security stack for the roughly $5 trillion of capital spending on AI infrastructure he expects over the next five years.
Arora spoke on CNBC’s Mad Money on Tuesday, after the cybersecurity firm posted fiscal fourth quarter results that beat Wall Street estimates.
Arora Breaks Down the Math Behind $1 Trillion of Cybersecurity Debt
The executive said AI is forcing companies to modernize roughly $1 trillion of aging cybersecurity infrastructure that cannot handle attacks moving at machine speed.
“There’s approximately $1 trillion of global cybersecurity debt that must be modernized to defend against automated threats because they operate instantaneously,” he stated during the earnings call.
He reached that figure through simple arithmetic. Security equipment lasts about seven years, and annual spending runs $200 billion to $300 billion.
“You’re going to see $5 trillion of capex spend in the next five years with people building AI data centers and having tons and tons of agents running around. You also have to build a net new security stack for that,” he said.
Arora highlighted the launch of Anthropic’s Mythos model earlier this year as a major shift in the cybersecurity space. The model’s ability to identify and exploit software vulnerabilities pushed companies to take cybersecurity more seriously.
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Results Back Up the Argument
That shift in urgency is already showing up in the company’s numbers. Quarterly revenue reached $3.41 billion, up 34% year over year, against analyst estimates of $3.35 billion. Adjusted earnings came in at $1.02 per share, four cents above expectations.
Next-generation Security annual recurring revenue hit $9.10 billion, a 63% increase. Remaining performance obligations rose 34% to $21.2 billion.
The company guided to $14.10 billion to $14.20 billion in revenue for fiscal 2027, ahead of the $13.79 billion forecast from analysts.
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Asian equities sank in Wednesday’s trading as renewed US airstrikes on Iran pushed oil prices higher and triggered a global bond selloff that spilled into the region.
The MSCI Asia-Pacific Index, a broad gauge of stocks outside Japan, fell 1.5%, while South Korea’s KOSPI dropped more than 3% and the Nikkei 225 slid 2.6%.
Oil Jumps as Bond Yields Hit Multi-Year Highs
Brent crude rose 1.3% to $95.91 a barrel Wednesday. The gains extended a rally that began after the United States launched fresh airstrikes on Iran on Tuesday. The attack briefly pushed oil to a five-week high.
The KOSPI has fallen as global macro conditions take their toll. Image Source: Trading View
The strikes renewed fears over disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz.
“The threat of further disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz has brought about renewed anxiety over inflation, driving a selloff in stocks across most major markets and a rout in global bond markets,” Westpac analysts wrote.
DBS analysts added that if the bond rout does not stabilize, policymakers may need more aggressive measures to cap yields.
The US 10-year Treasury yield hit an intraday high of 4.8122%, its highest level in almost three years. Japan’s 5-year government bond yield climbed to 2.295%, a record.
Most Markets are Taking a Hit
Meanwhile, crypto assets slipped alongside broader risk sentiment. Bitcoin fell to $77,000, and Ether dropped to $2,410.73, based on the latest BeInCrypto data.
Rising bond yields have already been rattling Asian tech and chip stocks in recent weeks. Wednesday’s move extended that pressure into a broader equity selloff.
However, Wall Street stocks also fell overnight as rising bond yields weighed on equities. The S&P 500 slipped 0.7% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 1%.
Traders now see a 67% chance the Federal Reserve raises rates at its two-day meeting ending September 16. That is up from a 39.6% chance a week earlier, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool. The tool estimates rate-hike odds from futures pricing.
With yields still climbing and a Fed decision two weeks away, markets face a volatile stretch. Wednesday’s selloff shows how directly the widening Iran conflict is now moving oil, Wall Street, and Bitcoin.

Elon Musk said Grok 4.7 will be released to the public in 10 days and that the model will surpass every AI model currently available.
The release follows Grok 4.6, which SpaceXAI shipped on August 12. It also comes as OpenAI announced that its new Astra model will be launched soon.
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Grok 4.7 comes out in 10 days https://t.co/ZSXmzVFqB1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2026
SpaceX Data Sits at the Center of Grok 4.7
Musk has built the case across a run of posts. He said in mid-August that initial training had finished and that SpaceX company data was being incorporated through supplemental training.
Musk had earlier detailed the architecture. Grok 4.7 runs on a 2.1 trillion parameter base, up from the 1.5 trillion parameter foundation behind Grok 4.6. He said the larger model runs slightly more slowly while using tokens more efficiently.
He also named the rival he expects to trail him.
“Grok 4.7 will exceed all current models. That said, Anthropic is a great company and will probably release improved models soon. However, the SpaceX training corpus is so awesome & unique that I would be shocked if any model is better at real-world engineering than 4.7,” the post read.
Meanwhile, the release cadence has tightened. SpaceXAI took Grok 4.5 public in July and shipped Grok 4.6 on August 12.
Grok 4.6 Benchmarks Set the Bar
Grok 4.6 was built on its predecessor, Grok 4.5. The company said the model has a “particular focus on long-running agents and more ambitious interactive and visual work.”
According to figures shared, the model scored 61 on the AA Intelligence Index, level with GPT-5.6 Sol Max and behind Claude Fable 5 Max at 62. Grok 4.5 scored 56.
Introducing Grok 4.6.It delivers frontier intelligence and is a significant improvement over Grok 4.5 at the same price. pic.twitter.com/RtTbpXcb3a
— SpaceXAI (@SpaceXAI) August 12, 2026
Grok 4.6 led GDPVal-AA v2 with 1753. Yet it managed 26% on Terminal-Bench v3.0, well behind GPT-5.6 Sol Max at 34.6%.
Grok 4.5 set a similar pattern. It topped Artificial Analysis’s AutomationBench-AA at 51.4% while costing $0.34 per task. However, it logged 0.63 guardrail violations per task, above Claude Opus 4.8’s 0.55.
Musk has now attached a firm number to the release. Whether SpaceXAI ships independent evaluations will determine how far the engineering claim travels.
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Cryptocurrency-based prediction platform Polymarket now gives Democrats better-than-even odds of sweeping both chambers of Congress in November. Trump’s approval ratings are sliding, and gas prices just hit a fresh record.
The odds have moved fast. A Democratic sweep sat at just 26% a year ago and 45% one month ago.
Democrats Gain Ground as Trump’s Support Slides
Polymarket’s 2026 midterms market, called Balance of Power, puts the odds of a Democratic sweep at 51%. The House looks decided, with Democrats holding 89% odds. The Senate is closer, with Democrats at 51%.
Democrats are favored by Polymarket bettors to sweep the House. Image Source: Polymarket
Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress. Elections are set for Nov. 3.
Trump’s Approval Rating Drops for A Number of Reasons
The shift tracks Trump’s sliding approval. Some surveys put his support as low as 32% to 34%.
A Financial Times and FocalData poll found most Americans say their finances have worsened under Trump. A majority of independents agreed.
A separate Reuters and Ipsos poll found Democrats now edge out Republicans on the economy. Voters split 37% to 36% in the Democrats’ favor, ending nearly a decade of Republican advantage on the issue.
Rising gas prices are adding to the pressure. The national average hit a record $4.056 a gallon in August.
That breaks the previous high of $3.940, set in 2022. The conflict with Iran keeps energy markets on edge.
Trump has defended the price spikes as a necessary cost of pushing Iran toward denuclearization. He said he would never apologize because he did the right thing.
Trump has also moved to court Venezuelan oil supply. He met with industry executives this week to try to cool prices.
Election Day is two months away. The question now is whether Republicans can reverse the slide, or whether Polymarket’s odds keep drifting toward a Democratic sweep.

Donald Trump Jr. is deepening his ties to Polymarket through a new $300 million investment from 1789 Capital, his venture firm. He also holds a paid advisory role, and equity, at rival Kalshi, giving him a stake in whichever platform wins.
1789 Capital is contributing $300 million to Polymarket’s $1 billion round, valuing the platform at $21 billion. Trump Jr. separately holds a Kalshi stake, granted in 2025 and worth $300,000 at the time, before Kalshi’s valuation climbed to $22 billion.
Advisor to Both Sides
Trump Jr. became a paid strategic advisor to Kalshi in January 2025. He joined Polymarket’s advisory board seven months later, alongside 1789 Capital’s initial investment in the platform.
Trump Jr's firm led a $1 billion Polymarket raise while he also advises Kalshi"1789 Capital is putting in about $300 million, adding to a roughly $200 million stake, as the prediction market's valuation rises from $15 billion to $21 billion.""Interestingly, Polymarket is not… https://t.co/7DNyvHDDAo pic.twitter.com/GVlJwSZ0zL
— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) September 1, 2026
The arrangement gives the president’s son financial or advisory ties to the two largest prediction market platforms in the country. Both compete for the same users and the same regulatory outcomes.
Front Office Sports flagged the dual role at the time, noting that advising two direct rivals raises its own conflict-of-interest questions. Kalshi has told CNBC that Trump Jr.’s advisory work concerns marketing strategy, not regulatory matters.
A Direct Line to Regulators
The New York Times reported that Trump Jr. privately urged Republican attorneys general to stop pursuing prediction markets. The remarks came in March, at a closed-door gathering in New Orleans. He argued that traditional gambling companies were driving the pushback to protect their own market position. The Times cited people familiar with the matter.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has sued nine states this year to block state regulation of prediction markets. Eight of those states have Democratic attorneys general. Arizona has gone further than most, filing criminal charges against Kalshi in March over unlicensed gambling.
Trump Jr.’s dual advisory roles sit inside that fight. Any state loss for Kalshi or Polymarket touches a business he is tied to twice over.
President Trump has separately backed the industry. He called prediction markets a new class of financial product in May. He also argued that the CFTC’s authority over them should stay intact. His son’s financial interests in both leading platforms now sit atop that same policy debate.

Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead calls the US Treasury’s expanded bond buyback plan a bluff that backfired. He ties Bitcoin’s 26% August rally directly to it.
Speaking on Bloomberg Crypto, Morehead argued investors saw through Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s move almost immediately.
The Buyback That Backfired
On August 19, Bessent doubled the Treasury’s bond buybacks to ease borrowing costs. The program lets the government repurchase its own debt to influence bond yields. The cap rose to at least $4 billion per operation.
Morehead said the increase looked tiny against the $2 trillion in bonds the Treasury must sell every year. Highlighting the gap, he argued, only exposed the depth of the debt problem rather than solving it.
“It backfired because everyone could see they are off by three orders of magnitude.”
Dan Morehead, Pantera Capital founder, Bloomberg
Bitcoin’s Best August Since 2021
Bitcoin climbed 26% in August, its strongest month since November 2025. It marked the first net positive August since 2021, briefly topping $81,000. BTC traded near $77,258 at press time, per BeInCrypto data.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh struck a different tone at Jackson Hole. He argued stronger growth could lift rates and reduce the appeal of yield-free assets like bitcoin. Both gold and Bitcoin retreated after the speech, giving Morehead’s bullish debt thesis its clearest pushback yet.
Morehead called crypto a macro trade that benefits whenever governments keep expanding debt. He pointed to Pantera’s call that Bitcoin would peak at $117,542 on August 10, 2025, a forecast that held. He argued the same four-year cycle model now points to another leg higher once this pullback ends.
Bitcoin peaking on the exact day Pantera called years earlier means the current pullback fits the same script, according to Morehead. He said the pattern has held for the 13 years his fund has tracked it.
Morehead expects a new upswing to begin near the end of this year, followed by another two to three year run.

Strategy is buying Bitcoin (BTC) again, but according to President and CEO Phong Le, the decision has little to do with where Bitcoin’s price sits.
Le said the math behind Strategy’s renewed purchases comes down to cost of capital, not market timing.
Why Bitcoin Buying Comes Down to Capital Costs
Strategy’s resumed Bitcoin purchases followed a 10-week pause spent shoring up its balance sheet. Le compared the underlying calculation to financing a data center buildout.
Land and energy costs have climbed, he said, even as the cost of raising capital stayed low.
“We don’t really make decisions on Bitcoin specific to Bitcoin price.”
Phong Le, President and CEO, Strategy
I joined Bloomberg @crypto to discuss Strategy's return to buying Bitcoin, building a fortress balance sheet, MSCI’s index proposal, and equity market demand for Bitcoin. $MSTR 00:24 – Back to buying bitcoin:native and why the decision was not price-driven00:43 – Fortress… pic.twitter.com/YoO8U5FIvf
— Phong Le (@phongle) September 1, 2026
He said the trade only works when selling shares or debt costs less than Bitcoin’s expected return. Strategy ranked fourth among public companies for equity capital raised this year, behind only SpaceX, Google, and Intel, Le said.
Why Strategy Still Sells, Occasionally
Le rejected the idea that Strategy only accumulates Bitcoin, calling it a “two way strategy” instead. Earlier this year, the company sold about 7,000 BTC, under 1% of holdings, to fund dividends and buybacks.
He said debt holders and ratings agencies expect a company willing to sell assets when needed. A firm that never sells, he argued, is not a “fully operating” company.
Betting on a Sustained Bull Market
Le’s comments suggest he expects Bitcoin’s rally to continue well beyond current levels. He said Strategy would keep buying at $80,000, $90,000, or $100,000, and even at a $130,000 all-time high, arguing today’s purchases would look justified if Bitcoin later climbs to $260,000.
“I don’t foresee us holding Bitcoin as we enter into what I consider a heavy bull market.”
Phong Le, President and CEO, Strategy
That conviction also sits behind Strategy’s fight against an MSCI index removal proposal. MSCI is an index provider whose benchmarks guide passive fund flows.
The proposal would exclude companies with large Bitcoin treasuries, and Le has called it discriminatory.
He argues Bitcoin functions as an operating asset on Strategy’s balance sheet, not a passive holding. That distinction could decide whether Strategy stays in MSCI’s indexes when a ruling arrives October 16.

Wall Street logged its third consecutive losing session Tuesday. Fresh U.S. strikes on Iran sent oil surging, and CNBC’s Jim Cramer says three forces now keep the market, including Bitcoin, volatile.
The Dow fell 419 points and the Nasdaq dropped 1%. Both slides reflect geopolitical shocks, bond market stress, and a hawkish new Fed chair. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.79%.
Three Forces Rattling Wall Street
The first of the three factors is Iran. Renewed U.S. strikes near the Strait of Hormuz pushed Brent crude up 4.6% to $95.70 a barrel Tuesday evening. U.S. crude closed above $90 for the first time in over a month.
Cramer says the pattern keeps repeating as Iran’s latest Hormuz threat resurfaces whenever ceasefire hopes fade.
The second factor is the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has signaled he would raise rates even at the cost of a recession.
Cramer compares him to former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, another inflation hawk. Traders now put the odds of a September rate hike at 66%, up from about 40% a week earlier.
The third is the president himself. Cramer estimates a provocative post on Iran shaves about a quarter point off major indexes. An actual strike can cut markets by half a percent and add two percentage points to oil. He calls it a volatility premium with no fixed expiration.
Cramer’s team also trimmed data center exposure ahead of the November election, wary of political risk to AI names. They kept core holdings in Nvidia and Apple.
Bitcoin Also Feeling the Pressure
The pressure has spilled into digital assets too. Bitcoin’s brief slide below $77,000 tracked Tuesday’s broader risk-off move.
Bitcoin has slipped below $77,000 briefly. Image Source: BeInCrypto
Investors trimmed exposure across both stocks and crypto. Ether slid alongside bitcoin as traders cut risk broadly across the sector. Cramer’s investing club raised cash to more than 15%, the highest level in its 25-year history.
He is betting the whipsaw continues until Iran’s conflict eases or the Fed’s path becomes clearer. The next test arrives Friday, when the August jobs report could reshape rate-hike expectations further.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed new transfer agent rules on Tuesday. A blockchain could become the official record of who owns a share.
The same day, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) settled with a swaps trader. He had erased messages regulators ordered him to keep. Both actions turn on what counts as an official record.
Stock Records On-Chain Depend on One Obscure Firm
Transfer agents sit behind every public company share. They keep the master securityholder file, which is the issuer’s legal list of who owns what; they also route dividends and process transfers.
Washington has not rewritten those rules since the early 1980s, but Tuesday’s package amends existing rules and forms, rescinds one rule, and adds several new ones. Commissioner Hester Peirce said on X (twitter) that the proposal took more than a decade.
The transfer agent rule proposal, more than a decade in the making, is finally out. We welcome comment on all aspects, including implications for tokenization: https://t.co/KyOF5WDStE and https://t.co/WAWDuncy4H
— Hester Peirce (@HesterPeirce) September 1, 2026
Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens
Chairman Paul Atkins tied the update to technology the industry already uses.
“This proposal would streamline and modernize the Commission’s rules to reflect transfer agents’ current processes and operations, including the use of electronic communications and blockchain technology in connection with securities offerings and the transfer of shares,” read an excerpt in the announcement, citing Atkins.
That line decides whether a token is a share or a wrapper around one. A transfer only carries legal weight when the chain feeds the official file. Meanwhile the tokenization ownership gap has widened while the rules stood still.
Securitize, Computershare, and Equiniti have already moved for the work, BeInCrypto’s transfer agent guide explains. Registrars would also disclose which securities they tokenize and which networks host them.
A $90,000 Penalty for Messages That Vanished
Elsewhere, the CFTC closed the opposite kind of case. A federal court in Manhattan entered a consent order against John Patrick Gorman III. He is a US dollar swaps trader and a managing director at a global investment bank.
.@CFTC Resolves Action Against Swaps Trader for Making False Statements: https://t.co/wQVX1L5wLx
— CFTC (@CFTC) September 1, 2026
Enforcement staff told Gorman in March 2019 to preserve documents. He deleted WhatsApp threads and one text message instead.
Two months on, he wrote to the agency claiming he had destroyed nothing. He repeated that account under testimony in November 2019.
“Attempts to impede or obstruct the Commission’s investigations go to the very heart of the division’s ability to detect wrongdoing and enforce the law,” the CFTC said in its release, citing David Miller, the agency’s enforcement director.
The order fines Gorman $90,000 and permanently bars him from repeating the conduct. Regulators still rely on what a trader chooses to keep, which is the weakness a shared ledger removes.