Is bitcoin on track to hit $100k?

There’s never a dull moment onchain. Here’s what you need to know this week:

Bitcoin

$83,781.29

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2.74%

Ethereum

$2,579.35

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4.93%

Tether

$0.9996

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0.01%

BNB

$767.88

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1.97%

XRP

$1.45

󰍾

3.77%

USDC

$1.00

󰍲

0.00%

See the latest prices

MARKET BYTES

After September to remember, is BTC on track to break $100,000?

The conventional wisdom says that September is usually a slow month for crypto — but in the last few weeks bitcoin has emerged as one of the best-performing of all asset classes, even though the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in three years. 

In the last 30 days, spot BTC ETFs saw $2.95 billion in inflows, according to SoSo Value data. As of Monday, they’d seen nine straight days in the green. In the same 30-day period, Ether ETFs added $982.5 million, Solana ETFs $278.2 million, and XRP ETFs $127.05 million. 

Bitcoin is even currently outperforming gold, surprising some analysts given that interest rates are on the rise, the Iran conflict shows no signs of ending, and bond yields remain near multidecade highs. 

(On Tuesday, crypto and stocks both got a bounce after softer-than-expected inflation data lowered fears that the Fed will raise interest rates at the next meeting in October.)

As of Tuesday, options markets show that many traders are optimistic about further gains. “The $90,000 call is the most popular bitcoin option bet on [the Coinbase-owned] crypto exchange Deribit, with $2.45 billion in open interest,” notes CoinDesk. “The $95,000 call follows with $2.33 billion, and the $100,000 call holds $1.79 billion.” 

Here’s more news you should know about…

Bond yields continue to surge

As the Iran conflict has dragged on, energy prices have remained high, and markets anticipate further interest-rate hikes, the yields on U.S. Treasury bonds have continued to spike. On Tuesday, 30-year bonds climbed to levels last seen in 2002 and 10-year bonds hit levels last seen in 2007. 

Why are they important? Because U.S. Treasury bonds are backed by the federal government and thus viewed as essentially risk-free, their yields set the baseline interest rate that all other financial assets and consumer loans compete against.

High yields lead to higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses (including mortgage rates). On the flip side, they also lead to higher interest rates on cash savings, potentially incentivising investors to pursue a “risk off” strategy — moving capital out of stocks and crypto and into cash. 

TOKENIZE THIS

Everything is getting tokenized — even your favorite sports team

We’re still in the early stages in the “tokenization of all assets,” as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink describes Wall Street’s current blockchain push. The overall tokenized asset market cap still sits just below $40 billion, but momentum is growing and the breadth of assets being tokenized is expanding to include smart-contract managed portfolios and sports teams. As Wall Street’s push to tokenize the global financial system picks up, here’s what you need to know. 

BlackRock is designing tokenized “Intelligent Portfolios"

In a partnership with the tokenization platform Ondo Finance, BlackRock has designed three investment portfolio templates that will be tokenized by Ondo and made available for non-U.S. investors. The templates will include a mix of stocks, bonds, and bitcoin ETFs, and Ondo will issue tokens that track the underlying assets in each portfolio. When investors buy a token representing an Intelligent Portfolio, smart contracts will automatically execute buys of the underlying assets in that investor’s crypto wallet that can be traded 24/7 or used as collateral for loans. 

Portfolio templates are already employed by 87% of financial advisors, according to a recent survey from Broadridge Financial Solutions, and hold nearly $10 trillion in assets as of June. Beyond providing a template, Ondo’s Intelligent Portfolios will automatically implement institutional investing strategies. Instead of investors needing to worry about when to rebalance assets, how to time sales, or how to manage taxes, the portfolios will follow preset rules on a defined schedule — essentially providing professional-level investing guidance.

“For a long time, many people in the world have not had access to BlackRock strategies, " said John Hoffman, Ondo’s head of product portfolios.

Securitize is tokenizing sports teams and venture capital funds

Securitize, the first publicly-traded tokenization firm, will be working with the fan engagement platform Socios to tokenize minority stakes in pro sports teams. Socios already has “fan tokens” with more than 70 teams, granting voting power on certain matters, VIP rewards, and exclusive club access. 

But the partnership with Securitize, which will be launched under the EU’s tokenization pilot, will include regulated securities issuance and ownership records. With the global sports franchise market estimated to be worth $500 billion, tokenized equity could create new levels of accessibility to a growing alternative asset class.

"Professional sports teams represent a significant asset class that has remained largely private and difficult to access," Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said in a statement. "Securitize's regulated infrastructure in the United States and Europe can provide teams and their owners with a new way to issue and administer equity while preserving the investor protections and ownership rights that should come with a regulated security."

Securitize also announced last week that it was tokenizing ARK Invest’s $1.3 billion ARK Venture Fund — ARK’s first onchain fund. It includes stakes in public and private companies including OpenAI and Anthropic, and will be available on Ethereum to eligible investors.

The world’s largest banks just partnered with an altcoin to tokenize bank deposits 

The Clearing House, a payments organization owned by banks including Citi, JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank, announced last week that it was tapping the blockchain platform Quant to power a new onchain payments infrastructure. The Clearing House settles more than $2 trillion in payments daily, and Quant will be the backbone of their OnChain Money Initiative, an interoperable network that will allow financial institutions of all sizes to clear and settle tokenized deposits. 

Historically, banks have sent deposits to each other via a complex system of networks. Quant’s role is to connect those systems to each other and enable 24/7 trading and near-instantaneous settlement times. After the partnership announcement, QNT, the native token for Quant, surged nearly 300%. 

"This marks a defining step in the global transition to programmable money," said Gilbert Verdian, Quant's founder and CEO. "Tokenized deposits are now the de facto way banks move money onchain, and The Clearing House sits at the heart of the U.S. banking system, meaning this partnership sets a standard for the rest of the world to follow."

NUMBERS

$1 trillion

The cumulative amount of loans processed by the DeFi platform Aave since its founding in 2017. The platform announced that investors can now use tokenized stocks from Coinbase as collateral for USDC loans. The included Coinbase-issued stocks are Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. 

$593.8 billion

The value of crypto activity registered in Latin America in the 12 months prior to June, according to Chainanalysis’ most recent crypto adoption index. Brazil, the largest economy in the region, was ranked as the top country for grassroots crypto adoption.

$518 billion

The amount that Anthropic reportedly plans to spend over the next decade building AI infrastructure across partnerships with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, XAI, Broadcom, and Nvidia. The sum is among the largest AI commitments on record, and 80% of the total is uncancellable even if the infrastructure is no longer necessary.

TOKEN TRIVIA

What's a tokenized deposit?

Find the answer below.

Trivia Answer