(40/52) Weekly Market Insight | October Week 3 | Inflow Streak Snapped

Headline News: Inflow Streak Snapped

• Bitcoin fell 3.2% last week as the US 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 5.35%, a 24-year high, and renewed US-Iran tensions lifted Brent crude above $105. Two waves of long liquidations of roughly $400 million each pushed the price below $81,000 before it steadied after President Trump ruled out strikes on Iran before the midterm elections. Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $681 million in net outflows, snapping a three-week inflow streak.

Macro-Outlook: Yields at 24-Year High

• The US 10-year Treasury yield rose above 5.35% on October 7 for the first time in 24 years, up 143 basis points from its pre-Iran-war low and pushing mortgage rates to fresh three-year highs, before easing to 5.24% by the end of the week.
• The Federal Reserve’s September meeting minutes showed all 19 officials backed the September rate hike, with most expecting another increase by year-end and almost all seeing inflation risks tilted to the upside. Meanwhile, market pricing for a pause at the October FOMC meeting rose to 85%.
• The US ISM Services PMI for September fell to 54.9 from 55.4 in August, slightly below market expectations of 55.0, while remaining in expansion territory for a 27th consecutive month.
• The Pentagon instructed the US military to conclude preparations for potentially resuming “major combat operations” in Iran, sending Brent crude up 4.1% to $104.28 per barrel on October 8 after it touched $105.91 intraday. Oil held those gains even after President Trump said the US will not attack Iran before the November 3 midterm elections.
• The S&P 500 closed at a record high on October 6, before AI-linked stocks dragged the Nasdaq 100 down 1.4% on October 8 after OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was about $20 billion below expectations.

The Upcoming Economic Calendar includes,

• Wednesday, October 14, 8:30pm: US Inflation Rate in September
• Thursday, October 15, 8:30pm: US PPI in September
• Thursday, October 15, 9:30pm: US Retail Sales in September
• Friday, October 16, 11:30am: Fed Chair Warsh Speech

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Ledger Hardware Implant

• Strategy acquired 334 BTC and repurchased $176 million of STRC, bringing its holdings to 848,000 BTC and $5.7 billion of USD assets, while reporting a $21 billion gain on digital assets for Q3 2026.
• The CFTC published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking for Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions (CTX) and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets (CAM), seeking comment on a federal framework for retail crypto transactions, with Chairman Michael Selig citing BTC, ETH, SOL, XLM, XTZ, and XRP as examples of digital commodities.
• The US Treasury’s FinCEN withdrew its 2020 proposal that would have required financial institutions to report transactions above $10,000 involving unhosted crypto wallets, alongside a separate proposed rule targeting crypto mixing.
• OKX filed with the SEC to launch a tokenized stock trading platform through OKXICE LLC, its joint venture with Intercontinental Exchange, starting with 63 NYSE-listed companies, and raised new funding at a $25 billion valuation from Circle, Ripple, SC Ventures, and QRT.
• Securitize launched Securitize Stocks on Solana, offering eligible investors tokenized positions in Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, and other US equities backed 1:1 by actual shares with shareholder rights intact, with transactions settling in USDC.
• Wells Fargo held talks with Kraken parent Payward over a potential deal under which Payward would supply liquidity for crypto asset trading.
• Ledger confirmed that a device bought from Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis contained an unauthorized hardware implant, following wallet-draining reports with losses estimated above $86 million. Ledger said it has no indication its own infrastructure was compromised, while CryptoBilis ceased all hardware wallet sales pending the investigation.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), a framework built by Gnosis and ZisK to help L2s work better with each other and Ethereum, executed the first atomic cross-chain L1-to-L2 transaction on Ethereum mainnet, demonstrating atomic synchronous composability.
• Aptos introduced MonoMove, a rebuilt execution engine and its largest performance upgrade since mainnet, executing smart contracts up to 55x faster in internal tests, with mainnet rollout planned for 2027 subject to governance approval.
• Plume introduced nBND, a Plume Vault backed by the Fidelity Total Bond ETF (FBND), extending onchain investment products beyond short-duration Treasuries to an actively managed portfolio of investment-grade, high-yield, and emerging-market debt.
• Sui developer Mysten Labs partnered with Google Cloud on Verifiable Agent Arbiter (VAA), an evidence layer that lets enterprises prove their AI agents acted within their authority, with proofs anchored to Sui and Walrus.
• Abstract, the consumer-focused Ethereum Layer 2, announced it is winding down after almost three years, with the chain shutting down on December 15.

Dapps

• Polymarket introduced Protocol V2, a rebuild of its 2019 Gnosis Conditional Tokens Framework foundation that is formally verified by Certora and backed by a bug bounty of up to $5 million, with canary markets running through October 30 ahead of a tentative November 2 switchover.
• Hyperliquid received its first $14.58 million USDC payment under the AQAv2 framework, which routes roughly 90% of cost-adjusted reserve yield on its USDC supply to the Assistance Fund for HYPE buybacks.
• Ether.fi introduced ether.fi USD, its own dollar stablecoin powered by Ethena Whitelabel, which will manage reserves, minting and redemption, and compliance, with over $300 million of stablecoin deposits already held across the platform.
• Lido unveiled Lido Lend, a decentralized lending market built on a modified fork of Morpho Blue with isolated markets, deposit screening, and reliable exit paths for lenders, to be governed by the Lido DAO pending a governance vote.
• Ondo introduced Ondo Private Markets, giving eligible investors tokenized exposure to the economic performance of private companies before they go public, starting with a pre-IPO AI company with permissionless 24/7 secondary trading.
• Superform, an onchain investing and savings app, introduced Earn Stocks on Base, offering Aave-powered DeFi yield strategies on tokenized NVDA, TSLA, GOOGL, and other Magnificent 7 stocks while holders keep full exposure to the stock.
• Safe launched Safe Pro, a self-custody suite for teams that unifies all Safe accounts in one Workspace, monitors transactions continuously through Security Hub, and applies policy controls to every transaction.
• Virtuals Protocol enabled the Virtuals App to create and automatically rebalance user-defined token portfolios through its Butler agent, based on each user’s chosen tokens, budget, and rebalancing rules.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• Aero published its upgrade hub ahead of the October 21 launch, setting a 1:1 conversion for AERO and about 0.044 AERO per VELO, with deployment planned on Base, Ethereum, OP Mainnet, Arc, Ink, Robinhood Chain, and Arbitrum.
• Unichain announced its move to OP Enterprise to prepare for native interop across the OP Stack, letting users move assets, starting with ETH, between OP Stack chains without a bridge, with testnet migrating on October 13 and mainnet in late October.
• Starknet said it is actively considering becoming a Layer 1, which would make it the first fully quantum-resistant network, with 2027 as its target.
• Aptos Foundation committed to locking and permanently staking 210 million APT, about 37% of the APT it held at mainnet, under a tokenomics update that also proposes cutting annual staking rewards from 5.19% to 2.6% and capping total supply at 2.1 billion APT.
• Pyth committed 100% of the funds the Pyth DAO receives from Pyth products to accumulating PYTH in its reserve under OP-PIP-136, as its data business reached $11.5 million in annual recurring revenue.

Token Unlock

• 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.
• VANA token unlocks on October 16, representing 4.47% of the token supply.
• ZRO token unlocks on October 20, representing 6.44% 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.
• AVNT token unlocks on October 23, representing 7.07% of the token supply.
• XPL token unlocks on October 25, representing 5.02% of the token supply.
• RESOLV token unlocks on October 27, representing 21.6% of the token supply.
• FF token unlocks on November 1, representing 6.07% of the token supply.
• EDGE token unlocks on November 2, representing 4.25% of the token supply.
• ZAMA token unlocks on November 2, representing 4.5% of the token supply.