(39/52) Weekly Market Insight | October Week 2 | Range-Bound

Headline News: Range-Bound

• Bitcoin spent the week consolidating within a tight range, closing up a modest +1.61%. While softer PCE and labor market prints offered initial tailwinds due to decrease of rate hikes probabilities, upward momentum was capped by stubborn Treasury yields. This institutional hesitation was clearly mirrored in spot ETF demand, which registered an anemic net inflow of just $51 million.

Macro-Outlook: Cooler Inflation and Labor Data

• The US PCE price index for August stayed at 3.4%, below consensus of 3.7%. The BEA revised its PCE inflation methodology across portfolio management fees, computer software, and legal services, shifting portfolio advice to employment-based volume rather than asset-value-based fees and lowering measured Core PCE inflation readings by up to 20 to 30 basis points.
• The US personal income for August increased by 0.2%, coming in below market expectations of 0.4%, while personal spending for August rose by 0.9%, exceeding consensus estimates of 0.8%.
• The US Nonfarm Payrolls for September rose by 29,000, missing market expectations of 90,000 following a downwardly revised 133,000 gain in August. Meanwhile, unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%, higher than market expectations of 4.1%.
• Market pricing for an immediate quarter-point Federal Reserve rate hike in late October collapsed from roughly 64% down to 22%, following Friday’s weak jobs data.
• The US real GDP for Q2 was finalized at an annualized rate of 2.2%, higher than market expectations of 1.5% but revised down from the second estimate of 2.5%.
• The US ISM manufacturing PMI for September printed at 54.5, modestly below expectations of 55.0, remaining in expansion territory.
• The US and China announced a reciprocal “$30-for-30” trade agreement cutting tariffs on $30 billion of goods each.

The Upcoming Economic Calendar includes,

• Monday, October 5, 10:00pm: US ISM Services PMI in September
• Thursday, October 8, 2:00am: FOMC Minutes

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Week of Token 2049

• Strategy acquired 1,665 BTC and repurchased $152M of its STRC preferred shares.
• Coinbase received CFTC approval as a Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO), completing an end-to-end, vertically integrated US derivatives platform alongside its exchange (DCM) and broker (FCM) licenses.
• Citi and Coinbase partnered to enable corporate clients and multinational corporations to accept stablecoin payments through Citi’s merchant acquiring services.
• HSBC named its upcoming Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin “HSBC RedCoin,” planning a phased rollout beginning with retail P2P and merchant payments via PayMe before expanding into institutional and corporate settlement under its HKMA license.
• The US SEC approved Cboe BZX’s proposed rule change to list and trade six triple-leveraged (3x) commodity and crypto ETPs, spanning Bitcoin, Ether, gold, silver, crude oil, and natural gas.
• Fiserv launched its institutional digital asset platform with Bank of North Dakota’s Roughrider Coin, a USD-backed stablecoin, to provide 24/7 bank-to-bank settlement across 90+ participating financial institutions.
• Bitwise launched the Bitwise NEAR ETF (NRR) on NYSE with staking underlying holdings to pass staking yields through to shareholders.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• Avalanche integrated Goldman Sachs’ $100B flagship Financial Square Treasury Instruments Fund (FTIXX) via Lynq, a private, permissioned Avalanche L1 utilized by over 30 institutional digital asset firms, enabling idle capital allocate into yield-bearing US Treasuries between trades without leaving their digital asset execution workflows.
• Aztec Network relaunched zk.money as a self-custodial privacy wallet operating natively on the fully decentralized Aztec Network with private-by-default cryptocurrency transactions.
• NEAR Intents resolved a $3.8 million security exploit stemming from a smart contract interaction flaw in its Omni bridge deposit and withdrawal infrastructure, patching the vulnerability and successfully recovering 100% of stolen funds in under 24 hours via its SHIELD AI security layer.

Dapps

• Hyperliquid Labs unstaked $320M worth of HYPE tokens for its monthly scheduled team unlock, confirming the tokens will be sold OTC directly to an institutional buyer to avoid open-market impact.
• Chainlink launched CCIP 2.0, introducing additive security via customizable Cross-Chain Verifiers (CCVs), native compliance policy checks through the Chainlink Automated Compliance Engine (ACE), faster-than-finality execution, and programmable token transfers across institutional and DeFi.
• Aave integrated Coinbase Tokenized Stocks onto Aave V4 on Base, enabling non-US users in eligible jurisdictions to deposit and borrow against tokenized traditional equities directly onchain.
• Uniswap partnered with SMBC Nikko to build a compliant onchain trading venue on Uniswap scheduled for a mid-2027 launch, utilizing Uniswap v4 hooks to enforce Japanese regulatory requirements directly within liquidity pools.
• Ostium unveiled Gateway, a rebuilt institutional prime liquidity layer and API for RWA perpetuals featuring sub-100ms pricing, sub-500ms onchain settlement, stablecoin cross-margining, unified positions, and native handling of corporate actions ahead of a Q4 beta rollout.
• Open Standard launched its OUSD stablecoin protocol with direct integrations across Coinbase, Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa, offering fee-free 1:1 conversions between digital dollars and fiat.
• MetaMask exited roughly 17,000 staking validators holding approximately 523,000 ETH as a precaution following a breach of its staking infrastructure where an attacker altered fee recipient addresses on 18 validators to divert 0.36 ETH to Tornado Cash, confirming non-custodial user withdrawal keys were never compromised.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• TOKEN2049 geared up for its flagship Singapore conference on October 7 and 8.
• Aero unveiled its unified Ethereum cross-chain liquidity layer, the merger of Aerodrome and Velodrome, scheduled to launch October 21 on Dromos Labs’ MetaDEX03 OS with a consolidated AERO token, Slipstream V3 concentrated liquidity, and predictive fee allocations.
• Blast announced it is winding down operations, cutting withdrawal delays to 24 hours while unwinding Lido collateral and advising users to withdraw assets to Ethereum mainnet before its standard interface shuts down on October 26.
• Ethena eliminated all token incentives and token inflation for USDe going forward effective at the end of the month, completing an ~85% reduction in subsidy emissions.
• Quant partnered with The Clearing House to power its On-Chain Money Initiative, providing an interoperability and orchestration layer linked to RTP and CHIPS to enable US financial institutions to clear and settle tokenized bank deposits starting in the first half of 2027.
• NEAR Protocol introduced a community governance proposal to reduce annual NEAR token issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% over a 24-month period.
• Lighter announced plans to launch onchain options trading and “Lighter EVM” at Korea Blockchain Week, expanding its high-speed decentralized order book architecture.

Token Unlock

• ENA token unlocks on October 5, representing 13.97% of the token supply.
• HYPE token unlocks on October 6, representing 4.46% of the token supply.
• LINEA token unlocks on October 10, representing 3.33% of the token supply.
• BB token unlocks on October 13, representing 10.9% of the token supply.
• ZKC token unlocks on October 15, representing 8.17% of the token supply.
• ZRO token unlocks on October 20, representing 7.28% of the token supply.
• KAITO token unlocks on October 20, representing 7.29% of the token supply.
• SCR token unlocks on October 22, representing 49.2% of the token supply.
• XPL token unlocks on October 25, representing 5.02% of the token supply.