A Bank Charter, a Nasdaq Stake in Kraken, and a Vote Washington Can't Delay Again

Jack Dorsey's Block asked federal regulators for a bank charter so it can custody its own Bitcoin. Nasdaq bought a stake in Kraken's parent to build tokenized equities together. Robinhood bought into Crypto.com to get a regulated home for its fastest-growing business line. None of that needed an act of Congress, but Congress moved anyway: Senate Republicans released what they are calling a final Clarity Act draft last week, with President Trump agreeing to ethics restrictions his own party had resisted, ahead of Tuesday's cloture vote. Prices, by comparison, did almost nothing. Bitcoin spent the week failing to clear the resistance band CryptoQuant flags as confirmation of a new bull market, and spot ETFs logged their heaviest weekly outflow in about ten weeks. The rails got built regardless.

Welcome to a new week in crypto.

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A hot inflation print, a stalled rally, and the biggest ETF outflow in ten weeks

Bitcoin traded near $77,800 on Monday, holding a range it has struggled to escape for two weeks after an August rally of roughly 24% ran into resistance between $77,100 and $80,200, where CryptoQuant says long-term holders sold 539,000 BTC over the past month. "The trend is still constructive, but a wall of resistance stands in the way," said Julio Moreno, the firm's head of research, pointing to $81,700, Bitcoin's 365-day moving average and the level that has historically marked confirmation of a new bull market. Ether traded around $2,480 and Solana held just below $100.

The stall coincided with a hawkish turn in rates. August's core CPI rose 0.3% month over month, hotter than the 0.2% economists expected, and pushed the market-implied odds of a Federal Reserve rate hike at this week's meeting to roughly 90%, up from about 70% before the print. "For crypto, the print provides less of a directional catalyst from rates," said Lewis Huang of Bitget, though the repricing was enough to knock Bitcoin off a brief intraday high near $79,800.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs bore the weight of the shift, recording $462.7 million in net outflows over four sessions, their heaviest weekly withdrawal in about ten weeks and a reversal of a three-week inflow streak. Altcoins fell harder than Bitcoin as traders cut speculative positions first, and Bitcoin's share of total crypto market value rose to 58.9%. Attention now turns to the Fed's decision on Wednesday and Tuesday's Senate cloture vote on the Clarity Act.

Senate Republicans call it a final draft, and Trump gives ground on ethics

Senate Republicans released a revised Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on September 14, incorporating 126 changes sought by Democrats and folding in the bipartisan Tillis-Gallego ethics proposal, which gives state attorneys general enforcement authority over conflict-of-interest rules. President Trump agreed to what Senator Cynthia Lummis called "unprecedented ethics restrictions," covering federally elected officials, judges, and their spouses, though not extending to children or other family members. The draft also lets the Treasury secretary impose an 18-month circuit breaker on stablecoin rewards, addressing bank-industry concerns, voiced by American Bankers Association CEO Rob Nichols, about deposit flight through an interest-paying loophole.

The bill faces a cloture vote at 2:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday, September 15, which needs 60 votes and therefore at least seven Democratic senators, since Republicans hold 53 seats. Lummis warned that failure this Congress would push passage out to 2030 given the shrinking legislative calendar before the November midterms. Polymarket's odds of the bill becoming law this year rose to 32% from 22% after the draft's release, still reflecting real doubt that Tuesday's vote clears the floor.

Nasdaq buys into Kraken's parent to build tokenized stock trading

Nasdaq Ventures agreed to invest $100 million in Payward, the parent of Kraken, valuing the exchange at $21 billion and expanding a partnership the two firms began in March. Payward will adopt Nasdaq's market surveillance technology across its crypto, equities, tokenized-equity, futures, and options venues, while the companies jointly build Nasdaq Equity Tokens, a tokenized-equities product targeted for a second-quarter 2027 launch that would link Payward's xStocks ecosystem to regulated settlement rails. "More than $2 trillion of stock trades run through the U.S. clearing system every day. Onchain settlement removes the wait," said Payward co-CEO Arjun Sethi. Nasdaq president Tal Cohen said the investment reflects the exchange's conviction that Payward can help build infrastructure connecting capital markets to blockchain networks while preserving shareholder rights.

Tether and Fasanara launch a $400 million private-credit fund

Tether and asset manager Fasanara launched a $400 million fund on September 9 to originate private credit using stablecoins for settlement, extending Tether's push beyond reserve management into direct lending infrastructure. The structure lets borrowers and lenders settle in stablecoins rather than wiring fiat through correspondent banks, a mechanic increasingly used to compress settlement times in trade and working-capital finance, and the kind of routing layer Finery Markets builds for institutional stablecoin and FX flow. The launch adds to a year in which Tether has moved steadily from a reserve manager into a broader financial institution, with credit, equity stakes, and infrastructure investments alongside its core stablecoin business.

Block applies for a bank charter to bring its BTC business under one roof

Block filed for a national trust bank charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on September 4, proposing an uninsured, non-depository entity called Builders Bank & Trust to consolidate digital asset operations currently spread across more than 50 state money transmitter and virtual currency licenses. The proposed bank would custody Bitcoin and other digital assets, execute customer buy and sell orders on a riskless principal basis, and facilitate stablecoin settlement, while accepting no deposits and making no loans. It would operate out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with no physical branches. Lee Woolley, Block's digital asset strategy lead and a former Northern Trust and BNY Mellon executive, would chair the board and serve as chief executive; Jack Dorsey appears in the filing only as co-founder. Block handled roughly $10.7 billion in Bitcoin transaction volume in 2025 and serves about two million monthly crypto users through Cash App.

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Robinhood buys into Crypto.com to power its prediction-markets push

Robinhood announced a multi-year partnership on September 8 in which it takes minority equity stakes in Crypto.com and its spinoff OG.com, at valuations aligned with Citadel Securities' July funding round: $20 billion for Crypto.com and $5 billion for OG.com as a standalone entity. OG.com becomes the clearing engine for Robinhood's prediction markets, processing trades through its CFTC-regulated exchange in a phased rollout that began the same day for eligible U.S. customers. The deal formalizes a business that has outgrown Robinhood's crypto-trading line: prediction markets revenue surged more than tenfold year over year to $156 million in the second quarter of 2026. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek called the arrangement a step toward making OG.com "the most liquid venue globally for innovative derivative instruments."

Strategy's return to buying Bitcoin lasted exactly one week

Strategy disclosed zero Bitcoin purchases for the week ending September 7, one week after resuming buying with a $370 million purchase, its first since June. Instead, the company drew $176.3 million from its USD cash pool to repurchase 1.81 million shares of its STRC preferred stock and doubled its buyback authorization to $2 billion from $1 billion. The company's holdings stand at 845,050 BTC, bought for a total of $63.73 billion at an average price of $75,412, against a current portfolio value of roughly $65.7 billion, a 3% unrealized gain. Strategy still holds $1.44 billion in its cash pool available for future deployment. The pause underlines how a business built around continuous accumulation is now managing its balance sheet in both directions, buying Bitcoin in some weeks and defending its preferred stock in others.

Bitwise shuts its Dogecoin ETF less than a year after launch

Bitwise will liquidate its spot Dogecoin ETF, with a final NYSE trading day of October 14 and cash distributions to remaining shareholders on October 22, roughly ten months after the fund launched in November 2025. The ETF drew about $3 million in daily trading volume in its first week and accumulated only around $300 million in cumulative volume over its life, with net inflows of just $318,000 last month. Bitwise said it is "liquidating the Fund as it continues to optimize its product range to meet evolving investor needs." The closure highlights how thin the demand has proven for single-asset altcoin ETFs beyond a handful of winners: competing funds tied to Hyperliquid and Zcash have posted $2.1 billion and $1.5 billion in trading volume respectively, while Dogecoin itself has fallen outside the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, trading near $0.084.

Consensys splits MetaMask from its institutional infrastructure business

Consensys is separating into two companies by the end of 2026: MetaMask, spun out as its own entity under chairman and CEO Joe Lubin to focus on consumer self-custodial finance, payments, and savings, and a renamed Consensys built around the Protocols Group, which will pursue Ethereum and institutional blockchain infrastructure, including the Linea network and the Besu and Teku clients, under CEO Mike Kriak. Lubin said MetaMask, now past 100 million downloads across roughly 190 countries, "grew out of that work into the world's most widely used self-custodial wallet, and today it's becoming something larger." Consensys president David Cunningham framed the split around the institutional side's own momentum, noting that "financial institutions and market infrastructure are moving to always-on operations with tokenization at the core."

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