Spot Bitcoin ETFs Recorded $999M of Inflows on Monday, the Most in a Single Day Since October 2025

In Today's Note

• St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said the Fed may need to raise rates further to reach its 2% inflation target, calling the current 3.75%-4% range still "on the accommodative side" after last week's hike.
• Bitmine bought another 27,562 ETH last week, taking its holdings to 5.98M ETH, more than 4.9% of ETH's circulating supply, with about 85% of it staked.

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Macro & Markets

• A rally across risk assets continued yesterday with BTC topping $86K and US technology giants sending the S&P 500 to its best day since early August and within 0.4% of its record high.
• Meanwhile, Brent crude oil prices continued to fall, settling around $100 a barrel, amidst hopes of a diplomatic off-ramp to the US-Iran war.

• BTC is up more than 9% over the past week alone and is currently trading around levels last seen in late January earlier this year.
• The rally yesterday past $86K was also supported by a huge inflow from spot exchange-traded funds which purchased $999.0M worth of bitcoin, that marks the largest single-day of inflows since Oct 6, 2025 when the ETF products saw inflows of $1.2B, the same day BTC reached its all-time high.
• Interestingly, options markets have not backed the most recent leg of the rally in BTC’s spot price. The 25-delta put-call skew ratio for short-dated BTC options rose to as much as 6.4% over the weekend when BTC broke above $81K, however through the move from $81K to $86K, the premium towards OTM call options has declined from 6% down towards a neutral 0%.

• The S&P 500 closed the session up 1.49%, while chipmakers surged for another day to close up 4.29% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 also rallied close to 3%.
• Part of the broad-based rally in risk-sentiment has been driven by a drop in oil prices which are down around 8% over the past week. President Trump told Fox News that he’d “probably” be open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the UN General Assembly, opening up the way for potential diplomatic efforts to end the Middle East conflict. Trump is set to deliver a speech later today at the General Assembly in New York and will also host a summit with China’s leader Xi Jinping later in the week.
• Another driver was an easing in the selloff of US Treasuries. The yield on the closely-watched 10-year Treasury fell to 4.95% yesterday from 5.01% last Friday after crossing the 5% mark for the first time since 2023.

• In an interview with Reuters yesterday, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem, a non-voting member this year, indicated that the Federal Reserve may need to hike interest rates further in order to reach its 2% inflation target, "Both persistent demand and recurring supply forces are continuing to contribute to keeping inflation risks elevated, and I judge that without further policy restraint on inflation it is more likely to be substantially above our 2% target in 18 months than at target".
• During the press conference that followed last week’s decision to raise rates, Chairman Kevin Warsh described the move as removing a "dose of accommodation". Musalem claimed that in spite of the hike, the Fed's current benchmark range of 3.75% to 4% is still "on the accommodative side".

• Meanwhile, Musalem’s colleague, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee also warned that persistent and repeated supply shocks must warrant a response from the central bank.
• In prepared remarks at an event in London, Goolsbee said “supply shocks have come more frequently, hit harder and lasted longer. And once supply shocks to inflation become persistent, some of the logic behind ‘looking through’ no longer holds”, that mirrors similar messaging from Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari.
• Goolsbee added that “this is exactly the painful trade-off between employment and inflation that stagflationary shocks always impose on a central bank. Unfortunately, in environments like that, the only way back is the hard way.”

DeFi / Web3 / Altcoins / Crypto

• Coinbase is giving eligible U.S. retail customers access to IPO allocations directly through its app, starting with Oura’s public offering.
• Customers can request shares at the IPO offer price before trading begins, although allocations may be full, partial or zero depending on demand.
• The product is offered through Coinbase Capital Markets, with Apex handling execution, clearing and custody.
• The launch expands Coinbase beyond crypto and secondary-market stock trading into the primary market, where newly issued shares are sold to investors.
• It also follows Coinbase’s rollout of pre-IPO perpetual futures for eligible non-U.S. users, which provide synthetic price exposure to private companies but do not represent actual ownership.
• Coinbase is positioning the product as part of its broader “Everything Exchange” strategy, which includes stocks, ETFs, options and other traditional financial products alongside crypto.
• The company is also seeking regulatory approval to offer equity perpetual futures in the U.S.

• Strive purchased another 1,355 BTC for about $107.7M last week, bringing its total holdings to 26,355 BTC.
• The company paid an average of $79,475 per BTC between Sept. 14 and Sept. 18, with its BTC holdings worth more than $2.25B with BTC trading around $85,600.
• Strive remains the fifth-largest public BTC holder and would need another 17,160 BTC to overtake Twenty One’s 43,514 BTC, assuming Twenty One does not add to its holdings.
• The company also raised about $21.2M through the exercise of nearly 786,000 warrants, while SATA preferred stock accounted for about 58% of capital raised during the week.
• TD Cowen raised its ASST price target from $32 to $44, citing faster BTC accumulation and stronger BTC-per-share growth.
• The firm now expects Strive to end 2026 with 32,105 BTC, up from its previous estimate of 27,156.
• Meanwhile, Strategy also resumed buying, adding 950 BTC for about $75.7M and bringing its total holdings to 846,000 BTC.

• Bitmine bought another 27,562 ETH last week, bringing its total holdings to 5.98M ETH, worth about $16.3B at current prices.
• The company now holds more than 4.9% of ETH’s circulating supply and is on the way toward its target of owning 5%.
• Bitmine’s total crypto, cash, marketable securities and other investments stood at $17.1B.
• Around 5.07M ETH, or roughly 85% of its ETH holdings, is currently staked.
• The company said its staking operations are generating an annualized yield of about 2.62%, with projected annual staking revenue of around $357M at current levels.
• Bitmine also holds 212 BTC, alongside stakes in Eightco Holdings and Beast Industries and about $714M in cash and marketable securities.
• Chairman Tom Lee said he believes a crypto bull market began in late June, citing stronger crypto fundamentals, rotation from AI stocks and what he described as the end of the traditional four-year crypto cycle.
• Bitmine remains the largest public ETH treasury company and the second-largest public crypto treasury overall, behind Strategy.

This Week's Calendar

Charts of the Day

Figure 1. Block Scholes BTC Risk-Appetite Index (white, left-hand axis) and BTC spot price (orange, right-hand axis). Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Figure 2. Block Scholes ETH Risk-Appetite Index (white, left-hand axis) and ETH spot price (purple, right-hand axis). Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Figure 3. BTC at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Figure 4. ETH at-the-money implied volatility across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Figure 5. BTC 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Figure 6. ETH 25-delta put-call skew ratio across selected tenors. Source: Deribit, Block Scholes.

Block Scholes is an FCA-regulated institutional crypto derivatives analytics platform. Live data, IV surfaces, and backtesting available via blockscholes.com.

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