By Francisco Rodrigues (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Bitcoin BTC$111,538.33 rose just 0.6% in the last 24 hours, while the wider market as measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) Index added 0.4%. The gain is overshadowed by gold’s increase and a major government bond sell-off.

The precious metal broke through $3,500 per ounce for the first time on Wednesday, helping the tokenized gold market to top $2.5 billion in value as growing bets see the Federal Reserve cutting rates this month. Gold’s advance comes as investors are wary of swelling government debt, prompting a sell-off in long-dated government bonds.

The yield on Japan’s 30-year government bond rose to a record 3.28% following similar moves in the U.S. and U.K. The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield neared 5%, while British gilts reached levels not seen since 1998, at 5.7%.

The turmoil hasn’t added fuel to the crypto market, whose price action remains muted. Deribit’s bitcoin volatility index (DVOL) is now at 38.1, its lowest level since late 2023, while capital is seemingly rotating into ether (ETH).

While spot bitcoin ETFs saw $751 million in net outflows last month, spot ether ETFs brought in a net $3.87 billion. That rotation is also being seen on-chain.

Meanwhile, a joint statement from the SEC and CFTC clarified rules for compliant spot crypto trading in the agencies’ latest effort to clear a way forward for crypto in the U.S.

The statement failed to jolt the crypto market, seemingly as investors await Friday’s U.S. jobs report. A soft reading could nudge the Federal Reserve closer to lowering rates, which would boost the market and other risk assets.

A hotter-than-expected figure, however, could damp sentiment. September has historically been a negative month for the sector, with bitcoin recording a drop of 3.29% on average for the month according to CoinGlass data. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto
  • Sept. 3: First day of regular-hours trading on Nasdaq for American Bitcoin (ABTC). The company, backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., was formed through a reverse merger with Gryphon Digital Mining and listed after market close on Sept. 2.
  • Sept. 3, 10:15 a.m.: Tellor (TRB), a decentralized oracle network that operates as an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, will upgrade its mainnet to version 5.1.1. The upgrade improves network performance and node operation.
  • Sept. 4: Polygon will switch its mainnet token to POL from MATIC. Holders of MATIC on Ethereum, Polygon zkEVM or centralized exchanges may need to take action.
  • Sept. 10, 9:15 a.m.: Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould will talk about digital assets at the CoinDesk: Policy & Regulation Conference in Washington.
• Macro
  • Sept. 3, 8 a.m.: Brazil’s Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) releases July industrial production data.
    • Industrial Production MoM Est. -0.3% vs. Prev. 0.1%
    • Industrial Production YoY Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. -1.3%
  • Sept. 3, 9 a.m.: S&P Global releases August Brazil data on manufacturing and services activity.
    • Composite PMI Prev. 46.6
    • Services PMI Prev. 46.3
  • Sept. 3, 10 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases July labor market data (the JOLTS report).
    • Job Openings Est. 7.4M vs. Prev. 7.437M
    • Job Quits Prev. 3.142M
  • Sept. 4, 8:15 a.m.: Automatic Data Processing (ADP) releases August U.S. private-sector employment data.
    • Employment Change Est. 68K vs. Prev. 104K
  • Sept. 4, 9:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases August Canada data on manufacturing and services activity.
    • Composite PMI Prev. 48.7
    • Services PMI Prev. 49.3
  • Sept. 4, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases (final) August U.S. data on manufacturing and services activity.
    • Composite PMI Est. 55.4 vs. Prev. 55.1
    • Services PMI Est. 55.4 vs. Prev. 55.7
  • Sept. 4, 10 a.m.: The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases August U.S. services sector data.
    • Services PMI Est. Est. 51 vs. Prev. 50.1
  • Sept. 4, 1 p.m.: Uruguay’s National Institute of Statistics releases August inflation data.
    • Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 4.53%
  • Sept. 4, 3 p.m.: Colombia’s National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) releases August producer price inflation data.
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • Sept. 9: GameStop (GME), post-market

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Arbitrum DAO is voting on upgrading Arbitrum One and Nova to ArbOS 50 Dia, adding support for Ethereum’s Fusaka fork, new EIPs, bug fixes and a native mint/burn feature (for Orbit chains only). Voting ends Sept. 4.
  • Uniswap DAO is voting on deploying Uniswap v3 on Ronin with $1M in RON and $500K in UNI incentives to make it the chain’s primary decentralized exchange. Voting ends Sept. 6.
  • Lido DAO is voting on a proposal to migrate Nethermind’s ~7,000 Ethereum validators to infrastructure operated by Twinstake, a staking provider co-founded by Nethermind. Voting ends Sept. 8.
  • Sept. 2, 6 a.m.: Bybit and Centrifuge to host an ask me anything (AMA) session on X spaces.
  • Sept. 3: Stellar XLM$0.3653 to host vote on Protocol 23 mainnet upgrade.
  • Sept. 3, 10 am: Lido to host a Poolside Community Call.
  • Sept. 3, 10 a.m.: Zebec Network ZBCN$0.004202 to host spaces event on blockchain integrations.
  • Sept. 3, 12:30 p.m.: Aptos APT$4.3324 to host hangout on ecosystem updates.
  • Sept. 4, 10 a.m.: OlympusOHM$131.29 to host community call.
• Unlocks
  • Sept. 5: Immutable (IMX) to unlock 1.27% of its circulating supply worth $13.26 million.
  • Sept. 11: Aptos APT$4.3324 to unlock 2.2% of its circulating supply worth $48.18 million.
  • Sept. 15: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 5.98% of its circulating supply worth $16.39 million.
  • Sept. 15: Sei SEI$0.2889 to unlock 1.18% of its circulating supply worth $16 million.
  • Sept. 16: Arbitrum ARB$0.5025 to unlock 2.03% of its circulating supply worth $47.15 million.
• Token Launches
  • Sept. 3: Moonchain (MCH) to be listed on Binance Alpha, MEXC, Gate.io and others.

Conferences

The CoinDesk Policy & Regulation Conference (formerly known as State of Crypto) is a one-day boutique event held in Washington on Sept. 10 that allows general counsels, compliance officers and regulatory executives to meet with public officials responsible for crypto legislation and regulatory oversight. Space is limited. Use code CDB15 for 15% off your registration.

Token Talk

By Oliver Knight

• Bitcoin BTC$111,538.33 dominance, a key metric when assessing whether the crypto market is in “altcoin season” has ticked down another notch to around 58%, having been above 61% just 30 days ago.
• The drop-off demonstrates a change in trader behavior: Typically altcoins perform poorly when BTC enters a downtrend, this time, however, many have held their value while some have outperformed the market’s largest asset.
• Bitcoin is down by 2.91% in the past 30 days while the likes of ether (ETH) and solana SOL$211.08 are up by 21% and 27.5%, respectively.
• While the gains have been driven by the adoption of several altcoins in corporate treasuries, they can also be attributed to a recalibration of the entire market.
• During BTC’s rise to a $124,000 record high last month, the narrative was solely focused on bitcoin and it’s perceived correlation with the well-performing tech sector in equities.
• It’s worth noting that in previous cycles bitcoin dominance slumped all the way down to 39%, indicating that the altcoin resurgence still has some way to go.
• However, as liquidity flowed into BTC, several altcoins fell to record lows against bitcoin, leading to a number being “oversold” on technical indicators like relative strength index (RSI).

Derivatives Positioning

• The total open interest across all perpetual instruments increased overnight to $114 billion, data from Laevitas show.
• A liquidations heatmap for the BTC-USDT pair on Binance shows that bitcoin is trading between two significant liquidation clusters. Above the current price, a $90 million cluster of liquidations sits around the $112,200 mark. To the downside, the largest cluster is valued at $76.6 million, located around $110,000.
• According to Deribit options data, the 24-hour BTC put-call volume is 26.4K contracts, with calls accounting for 51.6% of the total. The contract with the highest volume is the $108K strike price put expiring Sept. 26.
• That’s followed by the call at a strike price of $114K expiring on the same day.
• The funding rate heatmap on Coinglass remains positive for most assets, indicating a general bullish sentiment. The one exception is TRX, which has a negative funding rate, reflecting a -10.2% APR.

Market Movements

• BTC is down 0.1% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday at $111,323.58 (24hrs: +0.92%)
• ETH is up 0.82% at $4,348.94 (24hrs: -0.89%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 0.59% at 4,046.65(24hrs: +1.01%)
• It’s worth noting that in previous cycles bitcoin dominance slumped all the way down to 39%, indicating that the altcoin resurgence still has some way to go.

Derivatives Positioning

• DXY is down 0.15% at 98.25
• Gold futures are up 0.36% at $3,605.20
• Silver futures are unchanged at $41.62
• Nikkei 225 closed down 0.88% at 41,938.89
• Hang Seng closed down 0.6% at 25,343.43
• FTSE is up 0.43% at 9,155.78
• Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.84% at 5,335.46
• DJIA closed on Tuesday down 0.55% at 45,295.81
• S&P 500 closed down 0.69% at 6,415.54
• Nasdaq Composite closed down 0.82% at 21,279.63
• S&P/TSX Composite closed up 0.18% at 28,615.62
• S&P 40 Latin America closed down 0.32% at 2,760.02
• U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is up 0.2 bps at 4.279%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.46% at 6,454.75
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.68% at 23,433.75
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index are unchanged at 45,352.00

Bitcoin Stats

• BTC Dominance: 58.59% (+0.04%)
• Ether-bitcoin ratio: 0.0389 (0.01%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,001 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $54.39
• Total fees: 4.97 BTC / $548,282
• CME Futures Open Interest: 133,410 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 31.4 oz.
• BTC vs gold market cap: 8.85%

Technical Analysis

• PUMP has been one of the strongest tokens in recent days, backed by strong fundamentals such as its buyback program and the recently announced Project Ascend — a series of updates that focuses on growing the Pump.fun ecosystem and infrastructure.
• After breaking the bearish trendline last week, PUMP has reclaimed the 20-day exponential moving average.
• Bulls are looking for the token to continue this upward trend and flip the $0.004 level, which has proven to be a tough resistance point over the last month.
• A successful breakout above this price would signal strong bullish momentum.

Crypto Equities

• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Tuesday at $303.56 (-0.32%), +0.74% at $305.80 in pre-market
• Circle (CRCL): closed at $120.14 (-8.97%), +2.22% at $122.81
• Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $24.16 (+2.85%), +0.99% at $24.40
• Bullish (BLSH): closed at $62.03 (+5.08%), -0.55% at $61.69
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.06 (+0.5%), +0.31% at $16.11
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $14.09 (+2.4%), +0.5% at $14.16
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14 (-2.44%), unchanged in pre-market
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $9.64 (+1.8%), +0.1% at $9.65
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $31.64 (+3.33%), +2.84% at $32.54
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $24.79 (-1.71%), -1.21% at $24.49

Crypto Treasury Companies

• Strategy (MSTR): closed at $341.62 (+2.16%), +0.66% at $343.88
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $29.37 (-0.91%)
• SharpLink Gaming (SBET): closed at $16.98 (-4.71%), +0.94% at $17.14
• Upexi (UPXI): closed at $6.89 (-4.7%), +3.48% at $7.13
• Mei Pharma (MEIP): closed at $4.85 (-0.21%), +1.44% at $4.92

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs

• Daily net flows: $332.8 million
• Cumulative net flows: $54.55 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~1.29 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flows: -$135.3 million
• Cumulative net flows: $13.4 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~6.56 million

Source: Farside Investors

Chart of the Day

• While BTC futures volumes on the CME exchange fell 17% to $148 billion in August, the ETH futures volume surged by 48% to $123 billion, an all-time high.
• The trading volume of SOL futures and XRP futures also surged to records, rising 41% and 51% to $8.60 billion and $7.32 billion, respectively.
• The figures highlight the heightened institutional interest in altcoins in recent weeks.

While You Were Sleeping

In the Ether