Institutional crypto did not pause last week for the year's biggest exchange hack. Within days of Bitget absorbing a $388 million breach, the Federal Reserve published its first detailed capital rulebook for stablecoin issuers, SoFi moved its entire Mastercard card program onto blockchain settlement, and BlackRock's tokenization playbook reached two more managers, Ondo Finance and Cathie Wood's Ark Invest. Each thread ran on its own track: exchanges patched and paid out, regulators filled in the GENIUS Act's edges, and asset managers kept wiring more of their existing products onto public chains.
Welcome to a new week in crypto.
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Bitcoin's Iran-driven pullback ends a week of the strongest ETF inflows since 2025
Bitcoin opened last week by breaking above $85,000 on Sept. 21 for the first time since January, extending a recovery from the prior week's selloff to near $75,000. The strength fed into the best ETF week US spot funds have logged in nearly a year: bitcoin ETFs drew $2.4 billion in the week ending Sept. 25, enough to flip their 2026 net flows positive after sitting almost $5.8 billion in the red as recently as mid-July. BlackRock's IBIT led with $1.2 billion, Fidelity's FBTC added $701.7 million, and Monday alone brought a $999 million inflow, the ninth-largest single day since the products launched in January 2024. Ether ETFs reversed the prior week's $140 million outflow with $689.9 million in new money, and Solana funds set a daily record of $86.7 million on Friday, pushing their combined assets to $1.5 billion.
That strength gave way heading into this week. President Trump's rejection of an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz pulled risk assets lower on Monday, and the pressure has carried into Tuesday as the 10-year Treasury yield climbed to its highest level since 2007, near 5.25%, and Brent crude pushed toward $107 a barrel on fading hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough. Traders are also positioning ahead of Wednesday's PCE inflation data, the Fed's preferred gauge, with rate-hike bets building. Bitcoin was trading near $84,000 on Tuesday, Ether held around $2,700, and Solana sat near $119, with the global crypto market cap at roughly $2.9 trillion. Corporate treasuries including Strategy and Strive kept buying into the dip, treating the pullback as an accumulation opportunity even as retail sentiment cooled.
The year's biggest crypto theft gets its repayment plan
Bitget began a phased resumption of withdrawals on Monday, four days after confirming that $388 million was drained from its hot and warm wallet infrastructure on Sept. 24, the largest reported crypto theft of the year, ahead of exploits on KelpDAO and Drift Protocol. The exchange said the attacker exploited a vulnerability in a third-party security product to obtain high-level internal credentials, then used them to send fraudulent withdrawal commands that bypassed risk controls. Ether, USDT, USDC, AVAX, and BNB were among the assets taken, though Bitget said its private keys, cold wallets, and user balances were unaffected.
Withdrawals are returning in stages as each chain clears security checks: Bitcoin resumed Monday at 8 a.m. UTC, Ethereum and its layer-2s follow Tuesday, USDT networks resume Wednesday, and the rest, including fiat and P2P, are due back by Oct. 2. Bitget said losses will be fully covered by its User Protection Fund, which holds 5,500 BTC, and it has launched a bounty offering 5% of any attacker funds successfully frozen or recovered. The exchange has not confirmed an attacker but described them as "sophisticated" and "state-backed," and has told media it suspects North Korea.
Washington tightens stablecoin capital rules as SoFi goes live on Mastercard's network
The Federal Reserve on Thursday proposed that payment stablecoin issuers fully back their tokens with short-term Treasury bills or other highly liquid assets, alongside standardized capital requirements and a specific application path for board-supervised banks. The proposal is another step in implementing the GENIUS Act, which carries a January 2027 effective date after regulators missed an initial July deadline. Fed Governor Michael Barr said he backed the plan but wants a tighter standard limiting when the Board can bring enforcement action over anti-money-laundering gaps, warning the current "significant or systemic" threshold could weaken supervision.
The same week, SoFi began settling its entire debit and credit card program through SoFiUSD on Mastercard's global network, a migration expected to process more than $25 billion in annualized volume and the first stablecoin settlement live on Mastercard's rails. "In six months, SoFi and Mastercard took stablecoin settlement from an idea to a live product that materially improves how money moves for businesses," SoFi CEO Anthony Noto said. Merchants need no SoFiUSD or new systems to receive instant, round-the-clock settlement through the bank's Big Business Banking platform, and the companies are already in talks with large US merchants about further arrangements, an early test of the routing and settlement layer Finery Markets builds for institutional stablecoin and FX flow.
Binance buys into Circle as USDC's exchange alliances deepen
Binance bought a $100 million stake in Circle on Tuesday, purchasing 1,237,011 Class A shares at $80.84 each in a private placement tied to an expanded, five-year commercial agreement around USDC. Under the new deal, Circle will pay Binance a monthly incentive fee based on the USDC held through its Modular Smart Contract Wallet infrastructure, superseding agreements the companies signed in 2024 and 2025. Binance is barred from selling or hedging the shares for two years, except under specified termination conditions, though it retains voting rights over the stake in the meantime.
The purchase lands as Circle builds out USDC's infrastructure beyond the stablecoin itself. The prior week, Circle launched the public mainnet of Arc, its layer-1 blockchain that uses USDC for transaction fees, with more than 100 applications live at launch and a founding validator set that includes BlackRock, the DTCC, ICE, Mastercard, and Visa.
BlackRock's tokenization playbook extends to Ondo and Ark's venture fund
Ondo Finance launched three onchain portfolio tokens on Thursday built on model portfolio strategies designed by BlackRock, covering income, diversified growth, and high-growth allocations for eligible investors outside the US. Each token wraps a full basket into a single mintable and redeemable position, with holdings, weights, and every rebalance visible onchain and transferable across wallets, exchanges, and DeFi protocols. "By incorporating strategies drawn on BlackRock's longstanding portfolio construction experience into tokenized investment structures, eligible investors in supported jurisdictions can obtain exposure to diversified portfolio allocations through a single token," said Ondo Acting CEO Ian De Bode. BlackRock's Lisa O'Connor said the asset manager's role is limited to supplying the nondiscretionary model portfolios, not managing the onchain product itself.
The same week, Ark Invest brought its $1.3 billion ARK Venture Fund onchain through Securitize on Ethereum, the first of Cathie Wood's funds to be tokenized. The actively managed fund, which holds stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, and Databricks, keeps its existing strategy but moves investor access onto blockchain infrastructure. "Tokenizing the ARK Venture Fund puts our conviction in the evolution, if not revolution, of capital markets into practice," Wood said, extending a partnership that began with Ark's October 2025 investment in Securitize.
Canada's six largest banks line up behind a shared tokenized deposit system
Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank of Canada, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD said Tuesday they are jointly exploring a Canadian-dollar tokenized deposit system, with the first phase focused on moving tokenized deposits efficiently between institutions. The banks framed the project as a way to keep the country's payments infrastructure "competitive and secure" while preserving regulatory oversight, and said other deposit-taking institutions could join later.
The initiative follows guidance this month from Canada's Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, which said tokenized deposits are "not legally distinct from traditional deposits" regardless of the underlying technology. It also builds on Project Samara, a March pilot run by the Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, RBC, and TD that tested blockchain rails for government bond issuance and settlement.
Regulators tell issuers that buybacks and upgrades alone don't create a security
The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance updated its crypto FAQ on Friday to say that a token buyback program for an already-functioning network does not, by itself, turn the token into a security, though the answer can differ for a network that isn't yet live if issuers pitch the buyback as a source of returns. The staff also said that once a system is functional, services to secure, maintain, or improve it no longer count as the kind of managerial effort that triggers the Howey test, and that marketing a network's existing uses or future features generally would not create an expectation of profit either. The update builds on the SEC's March interpretive release and lands weeks after the Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate, leaving agencies to keep working under existing law.
The CFTC updated its own FAQ the day before, saying futures firms and clearinghouses may invest customer funds in tokenized versions of previously permitted assets if they meet investment and custody requirements, and that regulated firms can keep required records onchain as long as they can still produce them if a blockchain or its block explorer goes down.
California bars its own officials from launching memecoins, with Trump the target
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2409 on Sunday, barring the state's public officials from issuing memecoins and restricting companies from listing coins that use an official's likeness. Newsom used the signing to attack President Trump directly, saying nearly a million investors lost more than $3 billion on Trump's 2025 memecoin while the president made about $636 million from it. Trump's crypto businesses, which Democrats say generated over $1.4 billion in 2025 income from the TRUMP memecoin and World Liberty Financial, had been a central sticking point in the Clarity Act negotiations before the Senate blocked the bill 49-50 on Sept. 15.
Newsom also signed a bill setting clearer restitution rules for crypto scam victims and another establishing a legal framework for seizing crypto assets from transnational criminal networks, extending state crypto legislation that dates back to 2019 disclosure rules for officials' holdings.
Ethereum and bitcoin treasury companies keep pressing their bets
Tom Lee-chaired Bitmine added 27,562 ETH last week, bringing its holdings to 5,983,940 ETH, worth about $16.3 billion and equal to 98% of its "Alchemy of 5%" target for Ethereum's circulating supply. "We believe a crypto bull market is underway, having started in late June, driven by a multitude of factors including the rotation from AI back to crypto," Lee said, adding that ETH has outperformed other macro assets by 6,519 basis points quarter to date. Bitmine's staked ETH stands at 5.07 million, with annualized staking revenue now projected at $357 million. Michael Saylor's Strategy also added to its position the same Monday, taking its holdings to 846,000 BTC, worth about $71.9 billion and equal to more than 4% of bitcoin's supply cap, keeping Bitmine as the second-largest public crypto treasury behind it.
Strategy's board separately approved a proposal to move four of its preferred stocks, STRC, STRD, STRF, and STRK, to daily dividend record dates, subject to an Oct. 28 shareholder vote. The change would not alter dividend rates or total payment obligations. STRC, which shifted from monthly to semi-monthly payments just three months ago after falling below $75, closed at $98.31 last Thursday. "The proposed changes aim to support price stability, liquidity, and demand," Saylor said.
CME widens its crypto futures lineup as it fights the CFTC over perpetuals
CME Group plans to launch Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures on Oct. 19, pending regulatory review, adding standard and micro contracts to a single-asset lineup that already spans bitcoin, ether, XRP, Solana, Cardano, Chainlink, Stellar, Avalanche, and Sui. The exchange said its crypto futures and options averaged 279,800 contracts in daily volume in the first half of 2026, representing $8.3 billion in notional value, with its altcoin futures expansion alone generating more than $1 billion in notional this year. "As crypto markets continue to mature, participants require broader, regulated tools to navigate evolving digital asset related price risk," said Giovanni Vicioso, CME's crypto product lead.
The expansion comes as CME fights the CFTC in court over perpetual futures, arguing the agency's approval of Kalshi's and Coinbase's perpetual products violates the Commodity Exchange Act. CME CEO Terry Duffy has called those products a "disaster waiting to happen," citing retail speculation and high-leverage trading risk.
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