2026.9.5 Daily Crypto Market News Analysis

What matters most today is not a sudden shift in capital, but that the strong inflow on September 3 continued to record net inflows on the next full trading day, though the pace clearly cooled. For ordinary holders, this is more reliable than a one-day rebound, yet it still is not enough to prove that market-wide liquidity has strengthened in sync. My view is: institutional support is continuing, TVL and the nominal supply of stablecoins are rising, but trading demand has not kept up.

As of the latest full data for September 4, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs (exchange-traded funds that directly track spot prices) saw net inflows of about $174.6 million, while spot Ethereum ETFs saw net inflows of about $25.9 million, for a combined total of about $200.5 million. Both asset classes posted inflows in the same direction for a second straight day, indicating that the roughly $872.2 million surge in buying on September 3 did not immediately reverse; however, the combined size has fallen by about three-quarters, so “consecutive” should not be misread as “continuously accelerating.” In this snapshot, Bitcoin and Ethereum were both up about 0.21% and 0.26% over 24 hours, respectively, and the mild volatility did not provide any new decisive trend confirmation.

The signals from on-chain data are slightly better than in the previous period, but they are still mixed. The total value of assets locked in on-chain protocols (TVL) increased by about 1.58% over seven days, and stablecoin supply increased by about 0.49%; the former may partly come from price changes, and the latter alone does not prove that funds have already entered the relevant protocols. What can be confirmed is that both nominal scales are rising, while decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume over the past seven days is still about 12.87% lower than in the previous seven days, indicating that active trading demand has not yet expanded to the same degree. Over the next 24 to 72 hours, the more prudent interpretation is: “the recovery has received a second day of confirmation, but breadth still needs to be verified by trading volume.”

Another point that needs separate attention is the risk in Notional’s legacy contract. DeFiLlama added a record of about $1.728 million in losses; QuillAudits’ on-chain review says the attacker exploited a boundary error in integer conversion, causing a very large liability to be read as zero during collateral checks, and then withdrew about $1.73 million in DAI and USDC from the legacy custody contract. A boundary must be kept here: Notional has not issued an official statement, QuillAudits points to the V1 legacy contract, while the DeFiLlama entry is marked as V2, so at this stage what can be confirmed is only the abnormal outflow size and the arithmetic issue; we cannot confirm the specific affected version on behalf of the project.

The lesson for ordinary users from this incident is not that all DeFi is unsafe, but that “legacy” does not mean the attack surface has disappeared. Anyone who has used the protocol should verify the contracts they actually interacted with and any approvals that are still in place, and wait for the project’s official statement before judging the scope of impact; do not assume the legacy contract risk has nothing to do with you just because the project homepage shows a new version.

Next, I will watch two sets of evidence: over the next one to two full trading days, whether the BTC and ETH ETFs can continue to see inflows in the same direction, and whether stablecoin supply, TVL, and DEX trading volume can shift from divergence to synchronized growth; at the same time, I will wait for Notional to confirm the affected contract, losses, and response measures. If ETF inflows turn negative or DEX trading volume continues to shrink, the current picture looks more like a recovery with support but lacking breadth; if the three on-chain indicators expand together, then there is reason to upgrade the judgment to a broader liquidity trend. The easiest mistake to make is to treat the second day of inflows as the start of a new acceleration, and not to write an open-ended security review as if it were already settled.

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