Crypto Corner

Thursday, 2026-10-01 · covering the last 24h

Market signal

Bitcoin and ether open the fourth quarter flat after closing their best Q3 in years, as yields drop ahead of Friday's jobs report. Bitcoin held little-changed just under $85,000 Thursday (up about 1% on the day to roughly $84,800 in US afternoon trade) and ether hovered just above $2,700, both essentially flat on the first trading day of Q4 after bitcoin's 42.7% third-quarter gain — its best since Q1 2024's 68.7% — and ether's 70.8% quarterly gain, its best since Q1 2021. The move came as the 10-year Treasury yield fell 9.4 basis points to 5.217%, with traders positioning ahead of Friday's labor-market report. CoinDesk

Markets & flows — ETFs, stablecoins & on-chain

Bitcoin ETFs' nine-day inflow streak snaps with a $148.7m outflow as every US fund bleeds on the same day. US spot bitcoin ETFs recorded a net outflow of roughly $148.7–149m on September 30, with all 12 funds in the red for the first time in this run; Fidelity's FBTC led redemptions at about $126m, with Bitwise's BITB losing a further $13.6m. Spot ether ETFs posted a far smaller, $822,300 net outflow the same day — BlackRock's ETHA still took in $11.0m, more than offset by an $11.8m redemption from Grayscale's ETHE. KuCoin, via SoSoValue

The industry — exchanges, miners & infrastructure

No material industry news in the last 24 hours. Bitget's phased withdrawal resumption (reported here Wednesday) remains on track for its 08:00 UTC Friday target to reopen peer-to-peer withdrawals, the last frozen asset class from its hot-wallet breach.

Policy & regulation

SEC proposes letting investment advisers and funds self-custody crypto, widening who can act as a qualified custodian. The Commission on Thursday proposed a new framework that would permit advisers to directly custody client and fund crypto assets under certain safeguards and would let state-chartered trust companies qualify as custodians alongside the narrow existing roster, with a 60-day public comment period; Chair Paul Atkins said the current regime leaves many assets with no qualified third-party custodian available at all. The move follows the SEC's innovation exemption and CFTC rulemaking push from earlier in September, and marks the most structurally significant crypto-custody step from either agency this quarter. The Block

The Chatter

Nothing from the usual crypto-research voices cleared the bar in this window: the Au79 Macro Research and Bitcoin News Digest newsletters cited here on recent days hadn't published fresh crypto-focused dispatches as of this edition, and no other independent analyst or fund essay stood out above today's trade-press coverage of the Q3 close and the SEC's custody move. Fewer items beats padding — we'll pick the thread back up tomorrow.