Binance News

Bitcoin treasury company Strategy (formerly known as MicroStrategy) sold 6,948 BTC between May and August at an average price of $62,150, then repurchased 5,553 BTC at an average of $80,207. According to NS3.AI, the roundtrip cost the company $100.2 million in foregone gains, and 1,363 of the sold coins remained unreplaced.
Executive chairman Michael Saylor and CEO Phong Le defended the sales as part of a two-way strategy. SEC filings said the proceeds were used to fund dividends.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said blockchain was originally a core tool that was open, neutral, and secure, but it was not scalable and had no privacy protection mechanism. According to ChainCatcher, he made the remarks in a keynote speech at the 12th Blockchain Global Summit.
Buterin said zero-knowledge proofs have changed that situation by enabling private transactions and scalable verification, and they have moved from planning into actual EIPs on Ethereum's roadmap. He also said fully homomorphic encryption is beginning to be applied, while indistinguishable obfuscation could also be used on-chain in the future.
Beyond privacy, Buterin said parallel block construction and proofs could make extreme scalability possible. He added that industry thinking has shifted from digital assets to digital assets plus information, from a purely on-chain model to a full pipeline involving users, transaction mempools, and the blockchain, and from asking who can send what to who can see what.
Buterin said blockchain has gradually evolved from a simple ledger into a cryptography-based secure computing network. He also said that as AI develops, providing cryptographic rules to AI for automated formal verification could greatly improve verification efficiency and allow blockchains to support more use cases.

NEAR Protocol announced that the NEAR token has been deployed to Hyperliquid's spot market, allowing users to trade the NEAR/USDC pair on the platform. According to Foresight News, the project said NEAR will take several more days to appear in Hyperliquid's Strict List on the platform interface, following Hyperliquid's process.

European Central Bank and EU national central banks said they oppose a proposal under the MiCA crypto rules that would require major stablecoin issuers to hold at least 60% of reserves in bank deposits. They said the measure could expose banks to stablecoin market volatility and weaken deposit stability. According to PANews, the central banking system suggested instead that a set share of reserve assets should be held in short-term assets maturing within one and five working days.
The central banks also said that although MiCA has taken effect, non-compliant crypto firms can still reach EU customers. They said enforcement faces major challenges and creates investor protection risks.

Binance Blog published a new article, announcing a $100 million equity investment in Circle Internet Group, Inc. and the renewal of their strategic partnership for a new five-year term. The updated agreement is centered on expanding USDC across Binance's global platform, with particular attention to emerging markets. Under the arrangement, Binance will lead distribution and adoption efforts, while Circle will continue providing the infrastructure services that support holding and using USDC. Binance said it purchased $100 million worth of Circle Class A common stock through a private placement at a purchase price reflecting a five percent discount to the market price of CRCL prior to closing. The move builds on the companies' existing relationship and adds a direct equity stake to their broader collaboration around the stablecoin.
Binance and Circle said the renewed partnership reflects a long-term commitment to increasing access to a stable, trusted digital dollar. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said Circle has earned its place as one of the most credible issuers in the world spanning USDC, Arc and the infrastructure reshaping how value moves across borders. He added that the $100 million investment and five-year commitment represent long-duration conviction and support a more inclusive, transparent, and compliant digital economy. Circle co-founder, chairman and CEO Jeremy Allaire said Binance has built one of the largest and most dynamic platforms in the world for using digital currency, creating the internet's largest financial super app, and becoming the most widely used wallets in the world for dollar stablecoins. He said the companies see opportunities to use USDC to expand dollar access, support savings and investment with digital asset products, and reach people and businesses throughout global emerging markets. Circle described its platform as one of the world's leading internet financial platform companies, with services including the world's largest stablecoin network anchored by USDC, Circle Payments Network for global money movement, and Arc, an enterprise-grade blockchain designed to become the economic operating system for the internet.

21Shares launched Europe’s first physically backed ETP tracking Zcash on Tuesday on Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam, giving investors ZEC exposure through brokerage accounts without directly holding crypto. According to ChainCatcher, the firm also introduced a physically backed ETP tracking ETHFI, the governance and utility token of Ether.fi, a decentralized finance protocol that offers staking and other crypto financial services.
Both products carry an annual management fee of 2.5%, which is higher than most European Bitcoin and Ethereum investment products. The Zcash ETP launch followed Grayscale’s U.S. listing of a Zcash ETF on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH.
Zcash has recently gained momentum, briefly topping $1,500 and rising nearly 1,100% over the past year, as interest in it as a Bitcoin alternative increased. Grayscale research head Zach Pandl said Zcash may benefit from a late-mover advantage that could help it overcome Bitcoin’s entrenched network effects.
Interest in Zcash has also extended to mining. Fortitude Digital Mining told Cointelegraph that it mined about 28% of the network’s ZEC in the first half of 2026 and said its Zcash strategy is based on the network’s proof-of-work model, supply cap, and privacy features.

According to the announcement from Binance, Binance Earn is launching a promotion for Simple Earn PLUME Flexible Products that includes a daily BNB giveaway for users who hold PLUME Flexible Products from 2026-09-23 00:00 (UTC) to 2026-10-22 23:59 (UTC). The total reward pool is 70 BNB, with daily rewards of 2.33333333 BNB. BNB APR Boost Giveaway rewards will be automatically distributed to eligible users’ Spot Accounts daily from 2026-09-24 10:00 (UTC), and the final rewards will be distributed by 2026-10-23 10:00 (UTC). Binance said users can check distribution records in their Spot Accounts. The announcement states that these BNB rewards are additional to the Real-Time APR from PLUME Flexible Products. It also says users can subscribe these BNB rewards to BNB Simple Earn Products. PLUME can be bought on the Buy Crypto page using payment methods including Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, account balances, and SWIFT Bank Transfer for corporate users, or users can deposit PLUME to their Binance account. To participate, users can go to Simple Earn, search for PLUME, select FLEXIBLE, and subscribe to PLUME Simple Earn Flexible Products. The announcement describes Plume as an institutional open finance platform that brings institutional assets into open, programmable, globally accessible markets. It says Plume Vaults provides compliant, non-custodial access to assets from Apollo, WisdomTree, Hamilton Lane, and other firms, and notes backing from Apollo Global Management, Galaxy Digital, and Brevan Howard, along with SEC transfer-agent registration via Kimber Transfer Agency LLC and a license from the Bermuda Monetary Authority.

Regulators need to prepare markets for "mass tokenization" while tailoring current markets for new technology such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig said, according to The Block. "With developments like tokenization, on-chain finance, and 24/7 trading, the next decade will likely bring more change to financial markets than the previous several decades combined," Selig said Tuesday during a US Treasury market conference at the New York Fed. He said the US will continue to lead, adding that across the Trump administration officials have already laid the groundwork by embracing innovation, encouraging competition, right-sizing regulation and maintaining the trust that has made US markets the global gold standard.
Over the past year, the CFTC has issued guidance and sought public comments on 24/7 trading for energy derivatives markets, reflecting its growing interest in round-the-clock markets. In February, it expanded its list of eligible collateral to include stablecoins issued by national trust banks, and Selig said the agency will look for more ways to encourage responsible stablecoin adoption among market participants, exchanges and clearinghouses.
Meanwhile, the CFTC's sister agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, released its long-anticipated "innovation exemption" last week to make room for on-chain trading of tokenized stock. Both agencies are pressing ahead after a broader bill to regulate the crypto industry stalled in the Senate.

According to CNBC, Iran has been negotiating with the United States through a Qatari mediator in New York and has outlined conditions for ending the seven-month war on all fronts. Tehran is seeking a halt to what it calls U.S. acts of aggression, an end to the naval blockade and economic warfare, and the release of Iranian assets, according to Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei. A senior Iranian official said the Strait of Hormuz could reopen within a week if the U.S. eases military pressure and lifts its blockade of Iranian ports.
President Donald Trump said in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday that he faced a choice between a deal and more aggressive military action, and later told reporters that U.S. officials held a "very good" three-hour meeting with Iranian envoys on the sidelines. He also said he expected an agreement after November's midterm elections. Shipping through Hormuz remains far below normal, with confirmed transits averaging 6.98 million barrels a day in the seven days to Sept. 20, or about 38% of the 18.3 million barrel pre-war baseline, according to Kpler. Iran's crude loadings fell to zero so far in September from 893,000 barrels a day in July, while Brent crude fell 0.9% to $98.37 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate dropped 1.5% to $89.16 per barrel.

Strategy CEO Phong Le said the company underestimated how much borrowed money would flow into STRC, its $9.3 billion preferred stock that lost a quarter of its value this summer. According to BeInCrypto, Le said investors borrowed against Bitcoin at about 6% to buy STRC for its 12% yield, and forced selling pushed the stock below $100. Strategy began buybacks in late July and now holds about $5.1 billion in reserves.

Bitcoin is becoming the institutional crypto trade while everything around it looks increasingly like retail territory, according to Benzinga, citing an exclusive interview with CoinMarketCap. The platform's latest data shows institutions piling into spot Bitcoin ETFs as retail attention spreads across meme coins, AI tokens and tokenized stocks, creating a widening divide in how different investors access crypto. "Institutions are buying Bitcoin through ETFs. Retail is trading everything else through a phone," Alice Liu, head of research at CoinMarketCap, told Benzinga. US spot Bitcoin ETF assets under management climbed from about $79 billion to $102 billion over the month through September 10, a roughly $23 billion increase, and Bitcoin's dominance held near 59% — close to the top of its 12-month range — suggesting institutional exposure is concentrating around the largest digital asset rather than spreading across the market.
Retail activity tells a different story, Liu said. CoinMarketCap's trending data recently placed a two-day-old meme token ahead of Solana, while AI projects, memecoins and tokenized equities kept drawing attention. As of September 10, memecoins represented about $28.8 billion in market value and $3.5 billion in daily volume, AI and big-data tokens $18.5 billion and $2.9 billion, and tokenized stocks just $2.3 billion in market value but roughly $2 billion in daily volume — turning over almost their entire market cap each day, versus about 12% for memes and 16% for AI tokens, pointing to retail traders increasingly focused on how and when they can trade, not just what.
Bitcoin's institutionalization has not eliminated speculation but may be creating a two-track market, with ETF flows offering larger investors a regulated route while retail moves between memes, AI tokens, tokenized stocks and leveraged products around the clock. Yet broad participation has not translated into a full altcoin rotation: CoinMarketCap's Altcoin Season Index stood at 37, well below the 75 threshold for an altcoin season, and funding rates had fallen by more than half over the preceding month even as open interest climbed 20% to $468 billion. The split matters because "crypto" is increasingly two trades — institutional capital building exposure through Bitcoin, retail driving the faster-moving experiments elsewhere — with the next catalyst likely being whether that retail activity broadens into a sustained altcoin rotation or flows back toward Bitcoin.

Bitcoin traded at $86,423 on Tuesday, up from below $76,000 a week ago, as Tom Lee and iTrustCapital CEO Kevin Maloney said the worst may be behind investors. According to BeInCrypto, Maloney said the crypto winter is over, while Lee argued the Fed cannot get more hawkish after a 0.25-point rate hike and a failed CLARITY Act vote. Maloney said a weekly close above $85,000 would leave Bitcoin in a good position.

On Sep 23, 2026, 07:13 AM(UTC). According to Binance Market Data, BNB has crossed the 790 USDT benchmark and is now trading at 790.099976 USDT, with a narrowed 0.34% increase in 24 hours.

According to the announcement from Binance, the company will migrate users’ crypto assets from Funding Accounts to Spot Accounts starting from 2026-09-29 to January 2027, with detailed dates to be shared later. The change is intended to simplify the user account structure and improve asset management. At the end of the migration period, Funding Accounts will be renamed Stocks Account and will be used only for stock and stock-options trading settlement. From 2026-09-29, Funding Accounts will no longer support on-chain deposits, while deposits and withdrawals for other crypto tokens will be supported through Spot Accounts. Binance said users will be able to use the six settlement assets, USD, USDC, USDT, USD1, U, and BNB, for stocks and stock-options trading through the renamed Stocks Account. A One-Click Migration button will be added to Funding Accounts so users can proactively move crypto assets to Spot Accounts, while assets not migrated manually will be moved automatically in batches from January 2027. Binance said no manual action will be required for automatic migration and aggregate asset balances will not be affected.
For Binance Alpha 2.0, stablecoins used for Alpha token purchases and sales on limit orders will be debited from and credited to users’ Alpha Accounts starting from 2026-09-29, and rebates under the Limit Order Liquidity Providers Program will also be credited to Alpha Accounts. For Binance Card and Gift Card, assets received from 2026-09-29 will be credited to Spot Accounts. For Pay, assets received from Binance Pay will also be credited to Spot Accounts from 2026-09-29. Binance said assets in Stocks Accounts will not be deducted for payment, while Funding Accounts will still be able to serve as a payment source temporarily before being removed. Existing recurring send plans that rely only on Funding Accounts will stop executing once Funding Accounts are removed as a payment source. In Convert, existing open Limit Orders with assets frozen in Funding Accounts will remain frozen and settle to Spot Accounts after 2026-09-29, expired Limit Orders will settle to Spot Accounts, and new Limit Orders created on or after 2026-09-29 will freeze and settle only into Spot Accounts. Recurring Orders will settle to Spot or Earn Accounts from 2026-09-29, and failed refunds will return to Spot Accounts. Binance also said API users should update account references from Funding to Spot Accounts, and P2P advertisers will continue using Funding Accounts as the default source until December 2026, when a new P2P Account will be introduced for advertisers.

ZEC rose above $1,600 and set a new recent all-time high, according to Coinglass data. According to ChainCatcher, liquidations over the past 4 hours reached $13.4 million, ranking first across the market, with short positions accounting for $12.9 million.

According to the announcement from Binance, Binance Margin now supports ARB/U and ENA/USD1 trading pairs on Cross Margin. The update expands the set of margin trading options available on the platform and adds two pairs to the Cross Margin offering. The announcement identifies ARB/U and ENA/USD1 as newly supported trading pairs, with the change focused specifically on Cross Margin rather than other trading products. No additional operational details were provided in the main announcement beyond the availability of these pairs.
The announcement also notes that newly listed trading pairs tend to be volatile, but it does not provide further trading guidance in the main body. It states that users can refer to Margin Data for the most updated marginable assets and for more information on specific limits, collateral ratio, and rates. The notice does not include any other product changes, launch timelines, or related service updates. It is presented as a general announcement about margin trading support, with the core update centered on the addition of ARB/U and ENA/USD1 to Cross Margin.

XRPL validators have placed BatchV1_1 on a conditional path to activate at 14:06:41 UTC on Sept. 29. According to NS3.AI, 30 of 35 trusted validators supported the amendment on Sept. 22.
Support must stay above 80% for two weeks for activation to move forward. Older nodes and clients may fail after activation.

Bitcoin ETFs Take Nearly $1 Billion, the Most Since October, as Price Nears $86,000US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted nearly $1 billion in inflows Monday, their largest single-day haul since October last year.Bitcoin traded near $86,000 after recovering from Asian-session lows around $85,000, having convincingly broken above its May high on Monday. The CoinDesk 20 Index rose 2.2% over 24 hours.The Missing Confirmation ArrivedThe inflow answers the main objection to the rally.Through last week, the move from below $75,000 leaned on short liquidations — roughly $300 million in a single hour Monday — rather than spot buying. CryptoQuant's spot demand metric sat at −145,000 BTC, and Nexo Dispatch's Ilya Kalchev named sustained ETF inflows or renewed spot buying as the signals that would confirm a breakout.A single $1 billion day is the largest institutional bid since October. For scale, the complex's previous standout was $731 million on September 3, and it shed $450 million on September 15 after the Clarity Act failed.One day does not make a trend. Kalchev's word was "sustained," and the next several sessions will show whether this was a start or a spike.The May High Was the Level That MatteredBitcoin's break above its May high removes a reference point that had been cited as the confirmation level for months.LMAX Group's Joel Kruger had identified $82,820, the May high, as the level that would confirm the recovery, with a path toward $100,000 above it. Bitcoin rejected below it on September 4 at $82,284.It has also cleared the $80,000-$82,000 band that held nearly 8% of supply, including the US spot ETF cohort's average cost basis.The next test is closer than it looks. Glassnode's Frederik Theissen placed a dense long-term holder supply zone between $83,000 and $86,000. At $86,000, Bitcoin sits at its upper edge — where holders who bought in that range can exit at breakeven after months underwater.Hormuz Is the Structural ChangeWTI crude fell more than 2% to below $90, extending its retreat from a recent high of $106.The trigger was a Kyodo report that Iran was willing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the US eased its blockade.That is different in kind from last week's moves. Diplomatic signals such as President Trump saying he would "probably" meet Iran's president lower the risk premium. A reopened Hormuz removes the physical constraint that cut Saudi output to 6.238 million barrels per day, the lowest since 1990, and pushed tanker rates above $1 million per day. Lower oil eases inflation pressure and weakens the case for more Fed hikes. The dot plot already signalled just one more increase in 2026."Falling oil prices and US government bond yields, rising global stock markets and optimism regarding US-China negotiations supported risk appetite," said FxPro chief market analyst Alex Kuptsikevich, pointing to a sharp rise in the Nasdaq.Derivatives Still Read as a Short SqueezeThe futures data tells a less conviction-driven story than the ETF flows.Total crypto futures volume jumped 38% to $292 billion over 24 hours while open interest rose just 1% to $157 billion, pushing the volume-to-open-interest ratio to nearly 2. Liquidations reached $768 million, mostly shorts.Every major — BTC, ETH, XRP and SOL — carries a negative 24-hour open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta, meaning aggressive sell-side flow outpaced buy-side flow even as prices rose. Tron was among the few exceptions.The two readings are not contradictory. ETF demand is spot buying through regulated vehicles; futures data captures leveraged traders. The spot bid arrived while the leveraged market was still covering shorts.Bitcoin futures open interest climbed to 716,000 BTC, the most since August 25 but still below the roughly 750,000 BTC average from April to July. Ether and Solana open interest remains in a downtrend that began in May, even though ether has outperformed Bitcoin this quarter.Memecoin Leverage Is the Warning SignPEPE, DOGE and SHIB were among the 10 best performers over 24 hours as Bitcoin paused.Dogecoin's open interest surged 10% in a day, the largest jump among the top 10 coins. A consistent rise in memecoin leverage has historically appeared near interim tops, as speculative appetite runs ahead of the underlying move.XRP open interest rose to 2.46 billion tokens from 2.2 billion, a 12% build on a smaller base.Coinglass whale bias reads extremely bullish on Bitcoin, bullish on ether and Solana, and bearish on XRP, Dogecoin and gold.Options Traders Are Reaching for $90,000 and $95,000Implied volatility remains contained. The 30-day BVIV and EVIV indexes sit within recent ranges and well below the February and early June peaks.Laser Digital noted the volatility curve has been flattening since last week as realised volatility picked up and spot-vol correlation turned firmly positive — volatility rising alongside price, the pattern of an upside move.Deribit's front-end risk reversals flipped strongly toward Bitcoin and ether calls late Monday as Bitcoin topped $85,000, though the call bias has since eased.The busiest Bitcoin options trades over 24 hours were calls at the $95,000 and $90,000 strikes, alongside ether calls from $2,500 to $3,000. Both Bitcoin strikes sit above the 100-week moving average near $89,000.ZetaChain Holders Voted to Retire Their Own BlockchainZetaChain holders voted Sunday to shut down the network and move the ZETA token to Solana — a rare formal decision by a blockchain to stop existing.The proposal passed with more than 99% in favour on 58% turnout, above the 40% required. One more governance vote is needed before anything moves.The chain launched in 2023 with $27 million in funding to move value between otherwise incompatible blockchains. Three years later, dozens of teams attack the same problem, and ZETA ranks 313th by market value at about $90 million.The team cited operating cost. ZetaChain runs on the Cosmos SDK, so every security flaw in that toolkit becomes its problem, requiring coordinated patches across independent operators. In August, Cosmos Labs disclosed attacks on six chains using related software, with about $6 million stolen. ZetaChain was not hit.Solana was chosen for Anuma, an AI app the team launched in February that carries user context between AI models, which it says has more than 300,000 users. Holders will lock ZETA for credits inside Anuma, turning the token from network security into prepaid app usage.ZETA doubled from roughly 4 cents into the vote, touched 7 cents, then fell 16% over 24 hours to just under 6 cents. Nearly $117 million traded against a $90 million market value — the entire float turned over more than once in a day.

Cardano officially joined the x402 payment standard on September 21, enabling applications and autonomous AI agents to pay for online services directly in ADA. ADA rose about 4% over the past 24 hours to a four-month high, according to BeInCrypto data. Cardano Foundation engineers built the client, server and facilitator components after the specification merged into the official x402 repository around September 9, and the facilitator has already processed a transaction on Cardano’s pre-production testing network.

According to a public financial disclosure filing, U.S. President Donald Trump bought up to $50,000 of SpaceX shares in July and sold up to $15,000 of shares. The filing, signed by Trump on September 8, said he bought SpaceX shares worth between $15,001 and $50,000 on July 10 and sold shares worth between $1,001 and $15,000 on July 17.
The latest trades created a new financial link between Trump and Elon Musk's rocket company, while his administration was making decisions that could affect the company's outlook. SpaceX priced its June 12 IPO, which set a U.S. record, at a valuation of $1.77 trillion. Reports had previously said Trump bought SpaceX shares in June.
Between July 10 and July 17, SpaceX shares fell 15%. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle had previously said the president's portfolio is independently managed by a third-party financial institution and mirrors the composition of "recognized indexes, such as the Charles Schwab 1000 Index."
The SpaceX share purchases and sales were part of more than 1,000 trades Trump made in July. The U.S. Office of Government Ethics, which collects ethics disclosure information for U.S. officials, posted the forms on its website on Tuesday.

Russia will push to establish a transparent and legal cryptocurrency market, Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov said. According to ChainCatcher, the country has about 20 million crypto users, with residents' related investments totaling about 3.7 trillion rubles and average daily trading volume of about 50 billion rubles.

Bitwise's NEAR staking exchange-traded product (ETP) launched in Europe has surpassed $100 million in assets under management. According to Foresight News, the product marks a new milestone for Bitwise's European offering.

Foresight News posted on X (formerly Twitter). Vitalik Buterin discussed privacy protection and how blockchain systems verify computation. He said traditional validation requires nodes to independently execute transactions and compare results, which allows verification but duplicates work and limits the amount of computation a network can handle.
Buterin described an alternative in which the party performing the computation generates a cryptographic proof after completing the work, and other participants verify that proof to confirm the computation followed the rules. He said proof systems such as SNARKs and STARKs can make verification more efficient than re-executing complex computations. When these systems also have zero-knowledge properties, they can confirm that a result is valid while hiding input information that does not need to be disclosed.
He said there are two related but different goals: reducing repeated computation and protecting privacy. Using proofs to scale a system does not automatically make transactions private, and privacy still requires application and protocol design.
Buterin also mentioned fully homomorphic encryption, or FHE, which allows a computing party to process encrypted data without first decrypting it. He said the technology offers a way to let others perform computation without handing over the original data.
He added that these tools expand the design space for applications by giving developers more flexibility over where computation happens, how results are verified, and who can see specific information.

The total cryptocurrency market cap briefly climbed back above $3 trillion on Tuesday as Bitcoin and the largest altcoins extended a broad rally.Bitcoin traded around $86,000, up about 4.5% over 24 hours, per CoinGecko. Total market value stood just below $3 trillion at the time of writing, up about 4.3% on the day.The market was at roughly $2.66 trillion on September 18. The move to $3 trillion is a gain of about 13% in four sessions.Leverage Is Back at Record-High LevelsThe rally has brought leverage with it.Open interest in perpetual futures across crypto climbed to nearly $160 billion, the highest since late October 2025, Bloomberg reported. More than $920 million in bearish positions were liquidated Monday as prices surged.The reference point matters. Late October 2025 was when Bitcoin last traded near its record above $120,000. Hyperliquid's trader long/short ratio touched 2.71 last week, also its highest since that period.Leverage at those levels amplifies moves in either direction. The same positioning that forced shorts out on the way up becomes forced selling if price reverses.CoinDesk data showed total futures volume up 38% to $292 billion over 24 hours against a 1% rise in open interest, pushing the volume-to-open-interest ratio to nearly 2 — the signature of a short squeeze rather than fresh conviction-driven positioning.Spot Demand Arrived Alongside ItThe leverage build is only half the picture.US spot Bitcoin ETFs drew nearly $1 billion on Monday, their largest single-day inflow since October 2025. That is spot buying through regulated vehicles, not borrowed exposure.Part of that bid may be mechanical. Ledn co-founder Mauricio Di Bartolomeo noted that dealers who sold calls on BlackRock's IBIT fund cover by buying shares, and new ETF shares require buying Bitcoin — so options hedging reaches the coin itself. The headline flow figure does not separate hedging from allocation.Roughly $14 billion of Bitcoin options expire on Deribit on Friday, the largest single date this year, with call concentrations at $85,000 and $100,000.Altcoins Are Taking Share From BitcoinEther gained about 2.3% to $2,745, XRP rose 5.7% to $1.53 and Solana advanced 3.6% to $117. BNB rose 1.6%.Dogecoin was among the strongest large caps, up about 11%.At around $86,000, Bitcoin's market value is roughly $1.7 trillion — about 57% of a $3 trillion market. Bitcoin dominance stood at 59.2% earlier in September, so altcoins have gained share through the rally.That rotation carries the warning sign. Dogecoin open interest jumped 10% in a single day earlier this week, the largest rise among the top 10. A sustained build in memecoin leverage has historically appeared near interim tops, as speculative appetite runs ahead of the underlying move.AKE Shows What Speculation Looks LikeAkedo's AKE token, an AI gaming and content project, has gained about 170% over seven days, lifting its market cap to roughly $1.2 billion, per CoinMarketCap.It hit an all-time high of $0.1467 on Sunday before plunging more than 60% from its peak. Traders exchanged $108.9 million worth of AKE over 24 hours.A 170% weekly gain and a 60% drawdown from the high in the same week describe a token being traded rather than held. It is the small-cap version of the leverage story playing out across the market.The Levels That MatterBitcoin has cleared the $80,000-$82,000 band that held nearly 8% of supply and the May high of $82,820.It now sits at the upper edge of the $83,000-$86,000 long-term holder supply zone, where holders who bought in that range can exit at breakeven. The 100-week moving average near $89,000 is the next marked resistance.Oil is supplying the macro tailwind. WTI fell to $89, roughly 15% below its September high, after reports that Iran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the US eased its blockade.

Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Eddie Yue said Hong Kong's stock, foreign exchange, and bond markets are mature, while digital finance is rising rapidly. According to PANews, Yue made the remarks in a speech at the Treasury Markets Summit.
Yue said the Central Moneymarkets Unit, or CMU, will launch new services by the end of this year. He said the services will provide on-chain 24-hour real-time settlement and support the digital Hong Kong dollar and central bank digital currencies. He added that the platform will also study accepting tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins for settlement.

A U.S. official familiar with the matter said U.S. President Donald Trump told advisers he would like to arrange a meeting with Iranian officials traveling to New York for the United Nations General Assembly if the conditions are right. According to Sina Finance, the official said no schedule has been finalized, and it is unclear whether Iran is willing to take part in the talks.
The official said there are internal questions about whether the proposed meeting, expected to take place on the sidelines of the General Assembly, could help the Trump administration find a way out of the U.S.-Iran war. The official also said it is unclear whether the Iranian officials attending the New York meetings have authorization from Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who is seen as Iran's ultimate decision-maker.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian are among the members of the reduced delegation traveling to the United States for the General Assembly. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz both signaled that the president is open to meeting with Iran.
Rubio said on Tuesday that no meeting has been arranged, but the U.S. would welcome such talks, especially if they could produce positive results and ultimately achieve the core goal that Iran must never have nuclear weapons. Waltz said on Wednesday that Trump has always been willing to engage in dialogue.

A whale bought 373,700 HYPE worth $36 million today. According to Odaily, the whale has bought a total of 4.7 million HYPE worth $400 million over the past month.

Pudgy Penguins rose 27% over the week after crypto chart analyst Ali Martinez pointed to several technical signals suggesting more upside may follow. According to NS3.AI, Martinez said a breakout from the current Bollinger Band squeeze could trigger a substantial move, with $0.025 as the first upside target and about $0.045 as the channel's upper boundary. He added that a move to $0.045 would represent roughly 430% upside from the levels referenced in his analysis.

The CLARITY Act fell 11 votes short of the 60 needed for Senate passage after a Sept. 15 cloture vote ended 49-50, with one senator not voting. According to NS3.AI, four Republican senators who supported the motion also backed a bank-supported amendment that would impose tougher restrictions on stablecoin rewards.
No new vote has been scheduled, while negotiators are also seeking Democratic support for stronger ethics provisions.

Dogecoin rose more than 15% to just above 10 cents in Tuesday's Asian morning, the largest gain among major tokens, CoinDesk data show.XRP added 7% to nearly $1.52 and Solana 5% to just under $117. Ether rose 3% to nearly $2,740, while BNB and Tron each gained between 1% and 2%.Zcash was the only large token to fall, down 4% to just above $1,450.Altcoins Outran BitcoinBitcoin added roughly 5% over 24 hours to just above $85,600. Dogecoin tripled that, and XRP beat it.The broader market reflects the same rotation. Total crypto market value briefly topped $3 trillion on Tuesday. With Bitcoin at around $1.7 trillion of that, its share has slipped to roughly 57% from 59.2% earlier in September.Altcoins gaining share during a rally is typical of the later, more speculative phase of a move, when capital that has already caught Bitcoin's gain looks for higher-beta exposure.Dogecoin's Leverage Is the Warning SignDogecoin's price move arrives with a build in borrowed positions behind it.Its open interest jumped 10% in a single day earlier this week, the largest rise among the top 10 coins. XRP's rose 12% over the same period, to 2.46 billion tokens from 2.2 billion.A sustained rise in memecoin leverage has historically appeared near interim tops. It signals speculative appetite running ahead of the underlying move, and it leaves those tokens exposed to sharper reversals when the leverage unwinds.Perpetual futures open interest across crypto reached nearly $160 billion, the highest since late October 2025, when Bitcoin last traded near its record above $120,000.The Forced Buying Has StoppedShort sellers funded much of the rally.Just over $1 billion of crypto positions were liquidated over the past day, per CoinGlass, and $844 million of that — 82% — belonged to shorts. Roughly 135,000 traders were closed out.Bitcoin accounted for about $608 million and ether $181 million, leaving roughly $250 million across the rest of the market.The mechanism is mechanical. When price rises far enough that a short seller's collateral no longer covers the loss, the exchange buys the token back on their behalf, lifting price and pushing the next tier of shorts past their threshold.That chain has now run its course. Liquidations over the past hour came to under $11 million, down from more than $300 million an hour at Monday's peak. For altcoins, the next leg depends on buyers choosing to buy.That is a harder test than it is for Bitcoin. Bitcoin drew nearly $1 billion into spot ETFs on Monday. Most altcoins have no comparable spot bid — and XRP's ETFs, the largest altcoin fund complex, lost about $5 million last Thursday.Zcash Turned After a 130% RunZcash's 4% decline stands out against a market where every other major rose.It follows a 130% gain over 30 days and a record high near $1,488. The single US Zcash ETF has drawn more than $230 million in September, including nearly $47 million in one session last week.A pullback in the month's strongest trade on a day the rest of the market rallied looks more like profit-taking than a change in view. Privacy remained firm elsewhere, with Monero up 13% on Monday.AI Tokens Have a New TailwindThe AI trade that drove equities higher overnight has a crypto channel.A week ago, AI and computing tokens took the heaviest losses after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the industry to slow development, with Internet Computer, Theta and NEAR among the worst performers.That has reversed. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has risen five straight sessions, gaining more than 4% on Monday, after Meta Platforms' new AI agent, Muse, overtook ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple's US App Store. AMD briefly topped $1 trillion in market value.NEAR led the 40 most liquid coins with a 30% gain last week, and Akedo's AKE, an AI gaming token, gained about 170% in seven days before falling more than 60% from its peak.The Next Test Is FridayRoughly $14 billion of Bitcoin options expire on Deribit on Friday, the largest single date this year.Altcoins tend to amplify whatever Bitcoin does. If dealer hedges unwind after settlement and Bitcoin pulls back, the tokens with the heaviest leverage — Dogecoin and XRP among them — carry the most exposure to the move.

According to the announcement from Binance, the exchange will close UAH deposits and withdrawals via Fiat Trade UAH and delist the USDT/UAH Spot trading pair. UAH deposits and withdrawals via Fiat Trade UAH will no longer be supported after 2026-09-28 09:00 (UTC+2), and the USDT/UAH Spot trading pair will be delisted on 2026-09-28 09:00 (UTC+2). All open orders on the USDT/UAH Spot trading pair will be automatically removed after trading ceases. Users are advised to manage their UAH balances and open orders before the stated deadlines. The announcement also says that all remaining eligible UAH balances will be automatically converted to USDT by 2026-09-30 18:00 (UTC+2), using a fixed conversion rate of 1 USDT = 46.5 UAH. No action is required from users who want their eligible UAH balances converted automatically.

Pyth has become an external distributor of Nasdaq Basic, Nasdaq's proprietary real-time U.S. stock quote and trade product. According to Foresight News, customers of the Pyth data market can now buy licenses directly from Nasdaq to access Nasdaq Basic data through Pyth.
Any customer that wants to use Pyth as its Nasdaq Basic data provider must obtain Nasdaq's written approval before using Nasdaq basic market data. Nasdaq Basic covers all securities listed on U.S. exchanges, regardless of where they are listed.
The product also provides Nasdaq official open and close prices, which are reference prices derived from Nasdaq's opening, closing, and IPO or trading halt cross points. Many institutions use these prices to assess the value of positions at the start and end of the trading day.

Lookonchain monitored two newly created addresses buying UNI. According to ChainCatcher, one address purchased 269,500 UNI, while another bought 138,400 UNI.

XRP Ledger's PermissionDelegationV1_1 upgrade has entered a 14-day activation countdown after 29 of the network's 35 trusted validators backed it. According to NS3.AI, the upgrade could go live on Oct. 5 at 11:18 UTC if support remains at or above 80%.

Stablecoin service provider BVNK has added support for Stellar, allowing users to make large payments or small payments of less than one cent through a single API. According to Foresight News, the integration is designed to let users use Stellar for both high-value transfers and very small transactions.

PEPE rose 20% over 24 hours, outpacing Bitcoin and XRP, while traders watched whether FLOKI would break higher. According to NS3.AI, analyst Lana Valentis said PEPE was forming an inverse head and shoulders pattern and cited target levels from $0.00000455 to $0.00001.
FLOKI was flat on Tuesday after rising 10% the previous day and reached the 200-day EMA at $0.0000293.

The Clarity Act failed to clear a Senate cloture vote, leaving regulators and lawmakers racing to fill the crypto oversight gap between the SEC and CFTC. According to BeInCrypto, Democrats objected to the bill’s ethics language, while Republicans revised the text hours before the vote to add state attorneys general to enforcement and keep federal enforcement inside the DOJ. The Trump family drew $1.4 billion in crypto profits last year, and Fairshake opened a $30 million campaign against Sherrod Brown.

Solana's Alpenglow upgrade has entered the public testnet, where developers will test reducing transaction finality from about 13 seconds to 0.15 seconds, or 150 milliseconds. According to ChainCatcher, the upgrade will replace Solana's current TowerBFT consensus system with Votor, allowing validators to confirm blocks through one or two rounds of direct voting while the way users send funds remains unchanged.
The first testnet migration requires Agave 4.3 and does not yet support Firedancer or Frankendancer. The planned mainnet update on September 28 remains tentative and is not a confirmed launch date for Alpenglow.

ETH could trigger $1.157 billion in cumulative short liquidations on major centralized exchanges if it breaks above $2,891. According to ChainCatcher, if ETH falls below $2,621, cumulative long liquidations on major centralized exchanges could reach $1.146 billion.

On Sep 22, 2026, 12:57 PM(UTC). According to Binance Market Data, BNB has crossed the 790 USDT benchmark and is now trading at 790.530029 USDT, with a narrowed 0.06% increase in 24 hours.