(36/52) Weekly Market Insight | September Week 3 | Fed Week

Headline News: Fed Week

• Bitcoin posted a 3.81% gain last week due to softer inflation data. Meanwhile, Solana significantly outpaced both Bitcoin and Ethereum, fueled by two DATs announcements led by Pantera Capital and Galaxy Digital, raising nearly $3 billion to accumulate SOL as treasury asset.
• The upcoming FOMC meeting will dominate the landscape. With a 25bps rate cut widely anticipated, the market will focus on Chair Powell’s guidance during the press conference and the updated Economic Projections.

Macro-Outlook: Tamed Inflation Despite Reciprocal Tariffs

• Global trade policies remain highly uncertain as President Trump urged NATO nations to impose major sanctions on Russia and impose 50% to 100% tariffs on China.
• The US non-farm payrolls revised downward with record 911K lesser jobs in the 12 months through March 2025, indicating weaker than anticipated labour market. Notably, the weekly initial jobless claims also increased to 263K last week, the highest level since October 2021.
• The US PPI decreased by 0.1% in August, significantly lower than market expectations of a 0.3% gain. Meanwhile, the US core CPI increased by 0.3% in August, in-line with the market forecasts. The better than expected inflation data increased the probabilities of 75bps rate-cut by the end of 2025 from 65% to 74% last week.
• The Michigan consumer sentiment dropped to 55.4 in September, well below market expectations of 58.

Upcoming Economic Calendar including,

• Tuesday, September 16, 8:30pm: US Retail Sales in August
• Thursday, September 18, 2:00am: FOMC Meeting
• Thursday, September 18, 8:30pm: Weekly Initial Jobless Claims

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Big RWA moves by Nasdaq and Blackrock

• Nasdaq filed with the SEC to launch tokenised stocks on the exchange.
• Blockrock is reportedly seeking to tokenise ETFs to blockchain.
• WisdomTree launched its first tokenised private credit fund, CRDT, on Ethereum and Stellar networks with 11.23% dividend yield and minimum $25 to invest.
• Binance announced a partnership with Franklin Templeton to develop new digital asset products that bridge traditional finance and blockchain.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• The Ethereum validator withdrawal queue surged to an all-time-high with more than 46 days wait time and 2,673,349 ETH in the line.
• Native Markets won the Hyperliquid USDH stablecoin bidding, promising 50% reserve yield goes to HYPE buyback and the remaining goes to ecosystem growth. This creates a new opportunity for potential airdrop from the protocol.
• MegaETH partnered with Ethena to launch MegaUSD, USDm, the native stablecoin of MegaETH Layer-2. USDm is backed by USDtb, which is backed by Blackrock BUIDL fund. The team explained by internalising native stablecoin yield, MegaETH is able to run sequencer at-cost and maintain low gas fee.
• Linea has launched its LINEA token at approximately $2 billion in FDV with over $3 billion in TVL. 20% of ETH gas revenue will be burnt and 80% of it will be used to buy and burn LINEA.
• Story Protocol introduced IP Vault, enabling IP owners to store data offchain and key secured with IP Vault where IP Buyer needs to buy license tokens with approved conditions to access IP content through the vault.
• Upbit, the largest Korean crypto exchange, introduced Global Infrastructure for Web3 Access (GIWA), an Ethereum Layer-2 built on-top of OP Stack.
• WeBlock, a tokenised real estate protocol in Korea, announced adopting Avalanche to launch its Layer-1 network.
• Monero reportedly faced an 18-block reorganisation or 118 transactions.

Dapps

• Tether introduced USA₮, a GENIUS-compliant stablecoin that aims to strengthen institutional and businesses adoption.
• Pendle’s Boros has integrated Hyperliquid funding rate market, initially cap BTC and ETH open interest at 15 million and 20 million. Both liquidity vaults have hit the cap.
• Giza introduced Pulse, a Pendle agent that specialise to optimise users PT portfolios, taking slippage and maturity into account. This helps users to construct and rebalance PT-assets to maximise fixed returns.
• Pump.fun introduced MEXC Monday, aiming to list a pump.fun ecosystem token to MEXC exchange every Monday.
• LayerZero introduced OVault, enabling users to deposit and redemption into a DeFi strategy vault from different chains.
• Polymarket integrated Chainlink on Polygon to provide temper-proof asset pricing.
• Switchboard, an ultra-low latency oracle protocol (claimed better performance than Pyth), introduced its native token, SWTCH, as security deposit for oracle operators, governance and enjoys reward distribution at the end of each epoch.
• Holoworld AI launched its native token, HOLO, for protocol governance, payment currency in Holoworld Open MCP network, and staking for launches on HoloLaunch.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha 

• Binance integrated USDe to the exchange, enabling users to use it as collateral for futures trading or deposit into the Binance Earn program. Ethena also successfully onboard USDe on Avalanche and Hyperliquid. With the success of Binance integration, Ethena has fulfilled all the criteria of turning on the fee switch. The market cap of USDe has increased to over $13 billion.
• REX-Osprey DOGE ETF is expected to start trading on September 18 under the 40 Act similar to REX-Osprey SOL Staking ETF, according to Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst.
• Falcon Finance announced launching FF token community sale on Buidlpad, aiming to raise $4 million with valuation at $350 million and $450 million in FDV. Investors who are interested are required to complete KYC by September 19.
• Ethereum Foundation rebranded its privacy team to Privacy Stewards of Ethereum (PSE), aiming to create architecture for end-to-end private transfer and expected to deliver proof-of-concept in Devconnect November.
• World Liberty Finance has passed the protocol to allocate 100% of WLFI Treasury liquidity fees to buy and burn WLFI tokens.
• Ronin passed the proposal to utilise OP Stack for its Layer-2. RON will continue to be used as gas after migration.
• DYDX proposed ending protocol level trading rewards, potentially saving approximately 0.5% to 0.8% token annual emission and having a simplified incentive model.
• Scroll has paused DAO governance and shifted to its own organisation-driven.
• StakeWise proposed using 100% of DAO monthly earnings to buyback SWISE, which represents approximately 5% to 10% supply sink in a year.
• Bluefin, the largest DEX on Sui, passed a quarterly buyback programme with 25% of Bluefin net revenues. The purchased BLUE will be kept in DAO treasury.

Token Unlock

• ZK token unlocked on September 19, amount representing 2.4% of the token supply.
• KAITO token unlocked on September 20, amount representing 3.46% of the token supply.
• LISTA token unlocked on September 20, amount representing 15.4% of the token supply.
• LZO token unlocked on September 20, amount representing 10.3% of the token supply.
• PLUME token unlocked on September 21, amount representing 3.25% of the token supply.
• NIL token unlocked on September 24, amount representing 29.1% of the token supply.
• PARTI token unlocked on September 25, amount representing 39.7% of the token supply.
• RESOLV token unlocked on September 27, amount representing 9.14% of the token supply.
• IO token unlocked on September 30, amount representing 6.09% of the token supply.
• KMNO token unlocked on September 30, amount representing 22% of the token supply.
• MAV token unlocked on September 30, amount representing 7.2% of the token supply.