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An anonymous whale withdrew an additional 55,800 HYPE from Coinbase, worth about $4.65 million. Exchange outflows are typically interpreted as a sign of holding intent. Over the past nine days, the whale increased its HYPE holdings to 107,940 tokens, worth $9.11 million.

Chainlink added 97,500 LINK worth $1.1 million to its strategic reserve, Onchain Lens reported. Over the past 30 days, Chainlink has added a total of 487,000 LINK worth $5.5 million to the reserve.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan said the company has hired Jacob Horne, the former CEO of multichain social platform ZORA, as head of product development. Horne will focus on building out Polymarket’s DeFi business.

The Bitcoin-based digital lending market, now worth about $16 billion, could eventually grow to a scale comparable to Bitcoin’s $1.5 trillion market capitalization, Dan Hillery, vice president at Bitcoin-focused asset manager UXTO Management, said in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine. Hillery said the Bitcoin-backed lending market barely existed two years ago and has since become one of the fastest-growing segments, adding that a range of new financial products is likely to emerge in the market over the next five years.

CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index came in at 42, up eight points from yesterday. The index compares the price performance of Bitcoin with that of the top 100 coins by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins and wrapped coins. A reading is considered altcoin season when 75% of the top 100 coins have outperformed Bitcoin over the past 90 days, while the opposite is considered Bitcoin season. The closer the index is to 100, the stronger the signal for altcoin season.

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, directly intervened to block Binance from obtaining a Greek crypto service provider license for entry into the European Union, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Binance had applied through Greek financial authorities for a license that would have been recognized across the EU, and Greek authorities told the European Securities and Markets Authority’s digital finance committee in early June they planned to approve it, the report said. A Greek Capital Market Commission official then told Binance that Lagarde had asked Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis not to approve the license, according to the WSJ. The WSJ said Lagarde was concerned not only about Binance’s past compliance issues but also that the large exchange could strengthen the dominance of dollar-denominated stablecoins in Europe and affect the push for a digital euro. The ECB, however, does not hold the authority to approve crypto exchange licenses under MiCA. Binance withdrew the application in mid-June before the HCMC issued a formal rejection, and by July, after failing to secure the license, stopped promoting services to EU users, the report said. Separately, the HCMC said it reviewed Binance’s application independently under relevant EU and Greek regulations.

South Korean payments company Danal has begun a joint technical integration with Mongolian payment firm KKTT LCC to expand the global reach of its digital-asset payment platform Paycoin (PCI) and commercialize two-way cross-border payment services between South Korea and Mongolia. The company plans to connect Paycoin with QPay, Mongolia’s largest QR payment network, and build infrastructure in South Korea that will allow Mongolian users to pay with QPay, expanding the payment ecosystem between the two countries.

The spot CVD chart is an order-book analysis chart for the BTC/USDT spot trading pair. The upper section shows the volume heatmap, while the lower section shows cumulative volume delta, or CVD. - The volume heatmap tracks trading volume at each price level. The background color becomes brighter when the price stays in a specific range for an extended period or makes a large move. Brighter areas may act as support or resistance levels. - The cumulative volume delta indicator in the lower section reflects buy and sell orders by order size. As buy orders increase, the line for the corresponding color rises. The yellow line represents orders between $100 and $1,000, while the brown line represents large orders between $1 million and $10 million, among others.

CoinMarketCap’s in-house crypto fear and greed index came in at 64, unchanged from yesterday, indicating that the market remained in the greed zone. The index signals extreme fear as it approaches zero and extreme optimism as it nears 100. CoinMarketCap calculates the gauge based on price movements among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, market volatility, derivatives-market indicators such as put/call ratios, the stablecoin supply ratio, and its own search data.

According to crypto options exchange Deribit, $1.72 billion in Bitcoin options is set to expire at 8:00 a.m. UTC today. The put/call ratio stands at 0.77, and the max pain price, the level at which the largest number of option buyers lose their premiums, is $77,000. At the same time, $360 million in Ethereum options is also set to expire. The put/call ratio is 0.49, and the max pain price is $2,500.

As BTC tries to establish support above $76,500, on-chain analytics firm Swissblock said a risk gauge tracking market sell pressure has started rising again. Swissblock said the risk gauge stayed at zero while BTC was climbing but has recently begun moving again, reaching 16. The firm stressed the current reading should be seen as an early warning of potentially increasing sell pressure rather than a sign that market structure has broken down. It added that if the risk gauge remains above 25, it could more clearly signal that sell pressure is spreading across the broader market.

BTC deposits to Binance increased, but there is still no clear evidence they are leading to large-scale selling, on-chain analyst CryptoOnChain said in a CryptoQuant contribution. CryptoOnChain said 4,617.90 BTC was deposited to Binance on Sept. 15, the largest amount during the review period. Across all exchanges, net inflows averaged 877 BTC per day. Even so, the analyst said the large deposits did not translate into actual selling. Net realized profit stood at $31.8 million, down 89% from a week earlier, while perpetual futures funding rates stayed in the 0.00-0.01 range, indicating leverage has not expanded significantly. Sellable BTC supply is increasing, but there is still no clear direction in leverage or U.S. spot demand, CryptoOnChain added.

Stablecoin settlement volume between South Korean companies and overseas counterparts reached about $620 million, or 853.9 billion won, from January 2021 through September this year, IT Chosun reported. The figure excludes exchange deposits and withdrawals as well as investment-related transactions, covering only payments for goods and services such as raw materials. The report indicates corporate demand for stablecoins is expanding beyond investment use into real-world payment and settlement activity.

Zest, a Stacks-based Bitcoin lending protocol, has launched a Bitcoin-backed leverage staking vault on Stacks, Crypto Briefing reported. The protocol’s first automated Stacks vault product, the zvstBTC vault, aims to put Bitcoin to work in DeFi to generate yield. Users can deposit assets such as stBTC or BTC into the vault to earn rewards, after which the vault automatically runs the leverage strategy.

Bitcoin Core developer Niklas Gögge warned on X that AI-driven vulnerability detection is changing Bitcoin’s security landscape. As large language models lower the cost of finding flaws, attackers may be able to uncover critical vulnerabilities with computing costs of only a few hundred dollars, Gögge said. In the case of Bitcoin Core, Project Loop and individual developers have so far generated more than 1,000 vulnerability-related reports, although no high-risk or critical-severity flaws have been found so far.

The three major U.S. stock indices closed higher today. - S&P 500: +1.14% - Nasdaq: +1.69% - Dow Jones: +0.61%

Billionaire investor Kevin O'Leary said Congress is likely to revisit the CLARITY Act next year after the Digital Asset Tax Clarification Act (H.R.10357) was passed, CoinDesk reported. O'Leary said the bill had a 0% chance of passing this time, and that is what happened. He expects discussions on the measure to resume as early as the first quarter of next year. With tax rules for digital assets now in place, Congress will face pressure to revive the CLARITY Act, he added, stressing that once taxes are imposed, policy is necessary.

San Francisco startup Bloxtel has built onchain private 5G infrastructure on Avalanche (AVAX), according to Crypto Briefing. The company aims to decentralize private 5G networks, and disclosed the development alongside the launch of its AP201 equipment.

StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson said on X that Zcash's recent rise was partly driven by concerns that Bitcoin has become overly rigid. Ben-Sasson added that some Bitcoin supporters may not welcome the view, but said he was making the point as someone who loves and cares deeply about Bitcoin. Ben-Sasson previously took part in the Zcash project as its Founding Scientist. According to CoinMarketCap, ZEC was trading at $1,464.1, up 9.27%.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has imposed sanctions on Iranian cryptocurrency exchange BitBank. The Treasury said the exchange processed transit fee payments for vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz and supported transfers worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Treasury said the exchange is owned by Iranian financier and OFAC-sanctioned figure Babak Zanjani. The sanctions also cover the exchange, its developer, and associates linked to Zanjani. The sanctioned Iranian BitBank is a separate company from Japan’s cryptocurrency exchange bitbank.

Dubai-based crypto trader Royal Kane, who has about 32,000 followers on X, said he would not invest in Ripple’s XRP at this stage, arguing its market capitalization is excessively large at more than $81 billion despite having no clear product or revenue. Kane added he personally prefers to invest in coins with what he sees as undervalued market caps and strong narratives. He had previously pointed to Solana’s 500-fold rise from its lows in 2021 on the “Ethereum killer” narrative, PEPE’s 1,000-fold gain from its lows in 2024 on the “next SHIB” narrative and community strength, and ZEC’s 70-fold climb from its lows this year on a “next Bitcoin” narrative tied to limited supply and privacy advantages. Kane stressed investors should look for coins with narratives that can capture market attention over the coming years.

Bitcoin could see relatively stronger investor support than gold if investors scale back hedge positions tied to Bitcoin ETFs, The Block reported, citing JPMorgan analysts including Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou. The analysts said inflows moved into Bitcoin and gold ETFs after the Fed’s late-July meeting. Gold ETFs have fully recovered the outflows seen earlier this year, while Bitcoin ETFs have regained only about half, according to the report. Institutional positions in gold and Bitcoin futures remain elevated, but the gap between the two assets is more visible in ETF short positions. Despite recent inflows and a rise in futures positioning, Bitcoin still shows stronger investor caution and more conservative positioning than gold, which the analysts said may reflect greater hedging demand for Bitcoin. If those hedge positions are reduced, Bitcoin could receive relatively greater support than gold, they added.

The next phase of the real-world asset tokenization market depends on demand and participation from traditional finance investors, Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said at the Avalanche summit in New York on Sept. 17. Existing crypto investors alone cannot take the tokenization market to the next stage, Domingo said, adding that broader RWA adoption will require attracting buyers from traditional finance, including investors who have never used a hardware wallet.

The expansion of trading in tokenized real-world assets such as stocks and bonds is pushing the crypto market into a more mature stage, Dragonfly Capital Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi said in an interview with The Block. Qureshi added that meeting institutions’ regulatory compliance requirements now calls for a structure in which multiple specialized blockchains coexist, rather than a single general-purpose blockchain such as Ethereum, Solana, or Avalanche dominating the market. He said blockchains have network effects similar to cities, but cannot scale indefinitely.

Grayscale assessed the latest Federal Reserve rate hike as a mid-cycle adjustment rather than a cyclical shift, and said a similar rate increase in 1997 also had only a limited effect on asset markets. The firm said the latest hike is unlikely to have a major impact on the cryptocurrency market, while stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether warrant closer attention. Grayscale explained these companies derive a large share of earnings from interest income on reserve assets, giving them a structure in which profits rise as interest rates increase.