Category: Markets

The Hashgraph Group (THG) on Sept. 23 announced that its IDTrust self-sovereign identity platform — built for AI agents, devices, and humans — has been validated and listed on the IBM Cloud Catalog. THG also said it qualified for IBM Silver Partner status and signed a global Embedded Solution Agreement covering Cloud and AI. The company frames the listing as among the first commercial Hedera-based enterprise applications purchasable as SaaS through a major cloud marketplace, putting verifiable AI-agent identity (“Know Your Agent”) in front of IBM’s enterprise client base. IBM has been a Hedera Governing Council member since 2019.

IDTrust issues decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials anchored on Hedera’s ledger, with MCP servers designed so agents connected to IBM watsonx Orchestrate can obtain credentials and leave an auditable trail. Stefan Deiss, Co-Founder and CEO at THG, said enterprises are deploying AI agents that can negotiate contracts and execute financial transactions, and that the core question is how to know an agent is authorised — a problem IDTrust is meant to address via the IBM Cloud Catalog path. Naemi Benz, Vice President IBM Partner Ecosystem DACH, said IBM recognized the enterprise potential of Web3 solutions and that THG’s agent-ready identity work on Hedera made the partnership a natural fit. Those are primary-source quotes from the Sept. 23 PR Newswire release — useful for who is wiring identity rails, not a holdings recommendation.

Secondary Markets tape into Tuesday’s Asian session: Bitcoin traded just above about $83,100 overnight, with the U.S. 10-year yield near multi-year highs around 5.25% in Asia and Brent near $107 ahead of Wednesday’s PCE print (CoinDesk, Sept. 29). For Sept. 28 ETF daily net inflows (SoSoValue via CoinGabbar, Sept. 29): bitcoin funds about $31.07 million (the smallest September daily print cited), ether about $17.10 million, XRP about $3.96 million (Canary only), and solana about $12.70 million. Cumulatives cited on the same print: bitcoin about $57.58 billion, ether about $13.96 billion, XRP about $1.79 billion, solana about $1.62 billion, with XRP ETF NAV around $1.68 billion. Separately, Strategy Inc.’s Sept. 28 Form 8-K reported purchases of 1,665 BTC from Sept. 21–27 for about $142.7 million at an average of $85,681, bringing holdings to 847,666 BTC as of Sept. 27, plus roughly $151.7 million of STRC preferred repurchase. Secondary screens also show HBAR with a sharp roughly 20–27% 24-hour outperformance into Sept. 29 (Global Banking & Finance / market screens) — cited here as secondary tape with a range, not as proof that the IBM listing alone caused the move.

What this piece does not claim: that an IBM Cloud Catalog listing equals finished U.S. market-structure law, that overnight HBAR outperformance is solely attributable to the THG announcement, or that ETF daily prints validate any single vendor. The measurable Markets fact is narrower. A Hedera Governing Council member’s cloud marketplace is now distributing a Hedera-anchored identity SaaS for AI agents, with THG at IBM Silver Partner status under a global Embedded Solution Agreement.

Sources:

• PR Newswire

• CryptoBriefing

• CoinDesk

• SoSoValue

• CoinGabbar

• Strategy / SEC Form 8-K

The Clearing House on Sept. 24 announced it has selected Quant to power its On-Chain Money Initiative, an interoperable payments network meant to let financial institutions of all sizes clear and settle tokenized deposit transactions. Quant’s stack is described as the network’s interoperability, orchestration, and transaction-management layer, with connectivity to existing fiat rails institutions already use — including the RTP® and CHIPS® networks. The network is expected to become available to participating institutions in the first half of 2027, with more detail on participation and use cases to follow as development continues.

That is bank infrastructure news, not a retail tape print. The Clearing House operates U.S. payments networks that clear and settle more than $2 trillion each day across wire, ACH, check image, and real-time payments. The On-Chain Money Initiative was announced in June and is framed as a response to demand for faster, more automated money movement — payments that settle immediately and transactions that can trigger once agreed conditions are met. Tokenized deposits, as The Clearing House describes them, remain deposit liabilities under existing protections and oversight, recorded and moved on the shared network rather than as a separate product each bank builds alone.

Quant’s founder and CEO, Gilbert Verdian, called the selection “a defining step in the global transition to programmable money,” noting The Clearing House’s position at the center of the U.S. banking system. Sal Karakaplan, Chief Strategy Officer of The Clearing House, emphasized proven, scalable technology for interbank tokenized-deposit infrastructure. Those are primary-source quotes from the Sept. 24 release — useful context for who is wiring the rails, not a holdings recommendation.

Secondary Markets context for the same week: U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in about $2.39–2.4 billion in net inflows in the week ending Sept. 25, the largest weekly haul since October 2025, flipping 2026 year-to-date net flows positive (SoSoValue via The Block; Farside/crypto.news prints $2.39 billion). Spot ether ETFs added roughly $690 million the same week. Spot XRP ETFs added about $75.6–76 million for the week (SoSoValue). Separately, CoinDesk reported Sept. 26 that the XRP Ledger’s BatchV1_1 upgrade slipped after validator support briefly fell below the 80% threshold — earliest activation around Oct. 9 if support holds. Those figures sit beside the Clearing House lead; they do not replace it.

What this piece does not claim: that H1 2027 availability is a hard launch date for every institution, that tokenized deposits equal a finished U.S. market-structure statute, or that ETF weekly prints validate any single vendor choice. The measurable Markets fact is narrower. The operator of core U.S. bank clearing infrastructure has named Quant as the technology partner for an interoperable tokenized-deposit network tied to RTP and CHIPS, with access expected in the first half of 2027.

Sources:

• The Clearing House

• Quant

• The Block

• SoSoValue

• crypto.news

• CoinDesk

U.S. spot XRP exchange-traded funds recorded $22.65 million in net inflows on Friday, Sept. 25, according to SoSoValue data cited by CoinGape and secondary desks including KuCoin News. Bitwise’s XRP ETF led with $18.39 million — about 81% of the day’s total — while Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ added $4.26 million. The other three listed products showed no net movement in that print. Cumulative net inflows across the five funds rose to about $1.79 billion, with combined net assets near $1.77 billion, or roughly 1.80% of XRP’s market capitalization. Session trading value across the products reached about $57.75 million, including roughly $37.07 million from Bitwise.

Spot XRP itself was reported near $1.55 into Saturday morning after tagging about $1.60 earlier in the week, with CoinGape placing immediate resistance at $1.60 and support near $1.50. That is tape context, not a target. The ETF print is the measurable Markets fact: another green session in a non-bitcoin wrapper after a multi-day stretch that already included roughly $38 million across Sept. 23–24 in earlier SoSoValue snapshots.

Bitcoin remained the larger regulated channel. SoSoValue put U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs at about $134.5 million net on Sept. 25 — a seventh straight inflow session in CoinNess’s readout — with BlackRock’s IBIT leading near $97.0 million and Fidelity’s FBTC near $49.3 million, while Bitwise’s BITB showed an outflow of about $11.8 million. CryptoSlate’s week-to-date frame through Thursday still had roughly $3.04 billion into U.S. crypto ETFs across bitcoin, ether, Solana, XRP, and Zcash, with nearly $800 million outside bitcoin. Those figures sit beside the XRP line; they do not replace it.

Separately, Arbitrum remains one of the L2 rails where tokenized-equity activity has been printing in volume this month. Robinhood Chain — built with Arbitrum Orbit technology under the Arbitrum Expansion Program — has routed a contractual share of net protocol revenue back to the Arbitrum ecosystem (reported as 10% of net protocol revenue, with the bulk of that share to the Arbitrum DAO treasury). Offchain Labs and secondary desks have also covered Arbitrum’s move to replace Timeboost with per-transaction priority auctions that route about 97% of that stream to the DAO. That is a positive rails note, not a holdings call: institutional product experiments and L2 settlement design are moving in parallel with the ETF tape.

What this piece does not claim: that Friday’s XRP ETF print predicts a break of $1.60, that staff FAQs classify XRP, or that L2 revenue share equals a completed U.S. market-structure statute. The measurable news is narrower. A non-bitcoin spot ETF complex took in $22.65 million in one session, Bitwise carried most of it, cumulative XRP ETF inflows sit near $1.79 billion, and Arbitrum-linked rails continue to host real tokenized-activity volume while Washington’s statute clock stays separate.

Sources:

• SoSoValue

• CoinGape

• KuCoin News

• CoinNess

• CryptoSlate

• CoinDesk

• Arbitrum

Ondo Finance launched Ondo Intelligent Portfolios on Thursday, Sept. 24, delivering three portfolio strategies developed by BlackRock for Ondo as single onchain transferable tokens, according to a company release carried by PR Newswire. The products are aimed at eligible investors outside the United States in permitted jurisdictions — not a U.S. retail ETF wrapper.

The three tokens named in the release are BLKHIon (Ondo High Income Powered by BlackRock), BLKDIGon (Ondo Diversified Growth Powered by BlackRock), and BLKGRWon (Ondo High Growth Powered by BlackRock). Ondo Global Markets issues the portfolio tokens; Ondo Finance handles tokenization. Holding one token is described as economic exposure to a weighted basket of tokenized underlying assets, with mint and redeem at the portfolio-token level rather than buying and rebalancing each line item by hand. The release says holdings, weights, and every rebalance are visible onchain, and that the tokens are transferable peer-to-peer across wallets, exchanges, and DeFi protocols.

BlackRock’s Lisa O’Connor, Global Head of the Model Portfolio Solutions team and Co-CIO for Global Solutions within Multi-Asset Strategies, framed the launch as delivering diversified portfolio strategies through tokenized investment products. Ondo’s Acting CEO and President Ian De Bode called it the first time eligible onchain investors can access such strategies through a single token. Neither statement is a U.S. regulatory approval. The products are not described as ownership of the underlying securities themselves; they are Ondo-issued tokens backed by tokenized exposure structures Ondo already runs for non-U.S. investors.

That distribution boundary matters for Hardwire readers. The same week U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs finalized another green Farside Investors session — Sept. 24 net inflows of $190.7 million, led by BlackRock’s IBIT at $162.6 million — the BlackRock name also appears on an onchain portfolio product line that explicitly targets non-U.S. eligible investors. Separately, SoSoValue’s U.S. spot XRP ETF dashboard shows three consecutive inflow sessions: $20.02 million on Sept. 22, $18.04 million on Sept. 23, and $14.89 million on Sept. 24, about $52.95 million across the three days, with Bitwise’s XRP ETF and Franklin’s XRPZ carrying the Sept. 24 print in secondary reporting. Those flow prints are regulated U.S. wrappers. Ondo’s Intelligent Portfolios are a different rail: tokenized multi-asset portfolios issued for investors who already sit outside U.S. fund distribution.

What this piece does not claim: that the tokens replace ETFs inside the United States, that BlackRock is the issuer, or that onchain transferability equals a completed U.S. market-structure statute. The measurable news is narrower. A major asset manager’s model-portfolio strategies are now packaged as transferable portfolio tokens by Ondo for eligible non-U.S. investors, with named tickers, onchain visibility of weights and rebalances, and a stated path to expand the product line. Whether that channel deepens or stays a niche distribution experiment is the open question for later flow and AUM prints — not a forecast here.

Sources:

• PR Newswire

• Ondo Finance

• Farside Investors

• SoSoValue

• TokenPost

Bitcoin traded under $84,000 in overnight and Asian hours on Thursday, Sept. 24, as U.S. Treasury yields repriced sharply higher. CoinDesk had the token near $83,502 at fetch; Cointelegraph put it near $83,200, still under the $84,000 handle. Ether was near $2,648 on CoinDesk’s tape. The move tracked a fixed-income shock, not a vacuum in regulated bitcoin demand.

The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield closed Wednesday at 5.11% — the highest since 2007 — after jumping about 15 basis points from 4.96%, according to Cointelegraph’s markets coverage. CryptoSlate put the real yield move from roughly 2.63% to 2.76%. The proximate trigger was a hotter S&P Global September composite PMI at 58.4, up from 56.0. CME FedWatch odds, as relayed by Cointelegraph, clustered near 75% for an October hike into a 4.00–4.25% funds range. The Treasury also flagged a roughly $6 billion ceiling for Thursday’s long-bond buyback operation — a calendar fact on the same day the yield tape was already stretching.

Against that macro bid for cash-like duration, spot bitcoin ETFs kept printing green on Wednesday’s finalized Farside Investors table. Net inflows totaled $346.9 million on Sept. 23, led by BlackRock’s IBIT at $166.3 million and Fidelity’s FBTC at $143.2 million, with Morgan Stanley’s MSBT at $32.4 million and ARKB at $5.0 million. TokenPost, citing flow feeds, put Wednesday near $347 million and described a five-day inflow streak with aggregate AUM around $108.663 billion. Stacked with Monday’s $999.0 million and Tuesday’s $714.7 million, the three-session bitcoin-ETF haul for Sept. 21–23 is about $2.061 billion. Thursday’s Farside row was still incomplete at fetch — dashes and zeros — so today’s flows are not claimed here.

Breadth inside Wednesday’s bitcoin table mattered as much as the headline total. IBIT and FBTC again carried the session; MSBT’s $32.4 million kept a newer issuer in the green print; ARKB’s $5.0 million was small but positive. TokenPost’s five-day streak framing and ~$108.663 billion AUM figure put the regulated wrapper bid in a multi-session context even as spot price gave back the $84,000 handle on the yield move. The Farside Sept. 24 row remaining incomplete is why this piece stops at Wednesday’s finalized numbers.

Derivatives added a calendar marker rather than a directional call. CoinDesk flagged roughly $17 billion of bitcoin and ether options set to expire Friday on Deribit, with open interest down about 6%, short-heavy taker flow in the recent tape, and implied volatility described as calm. Glassnode levels, via CryptoSlate, place a long-term-holder supply cluster in the $84,000–$85,000 zone, with a True Market Mean near $77,000 cited if that band fails — on-chain context, not a price target.

The measurable tension is simple: three strong ETF sessions totaling roughly $2.06 billion into spot bitcoin products even as the 10-year clears multi-year highs and Fed-hike odds reprice. Price has slipped under $84,000 on that yield shock. Whether Friday’s options expiry and the next finalized Farside prints keep that split intact is the open question — not a forecast.

Sources:

• Farside Investors

• CoinDesk

• Cointelegraph

• CryptoSlate

• TokenPost

U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds took in $714.7 million net on Tuesday, Sept. 22, according to Farside Investors’ finalized fund-level table, as relayed by FinanceFeeds. That follows Monday’s $999.0 million print and lifts the two-session bitcoin-ETF haul to about $1.714 billion. Cointelegraph, citing SoSoValue, put Tuesday near $715 million and the two-day total above $1.7 billion — the same order of magnitude on a second data feed.

BlackRock’s IBIT led Tuesday with $350.3 million, Fidelity’s FBTC added $257.4 million, and Morgan Stanley’s MSBT posted $99 million — its largest daily inflow since launch, Farside shows. No bitcoin fund reported a net outflow in the session summary. Across Friday’s $433 million and the Monday–Tuesday prints, the latest three sessions total roughly $2.147 billion into spot bitcoin products.

The bid was not bitcoin-only. Spot ether ETFs added $162.2 million Tuesday after about $270 million Monday, led by BlackRock’s ETHA at $88.1 million, with Fidelity’s FETH at $33.6 million and Grayscale’s Ethereum Mini Trust at $27.3 million (FinanceFeeds / Farside). Solana ETFs took in $28.9 million, slightly above Monday’s $26 million, with Bitwise’s BSOL accounting for $26.4 million. Combined bitcoin, ether, and solana ETF inflows for Sept. 21–22 are about $2.20 billion on that table.

Price context stayed elevated even as the tape cooled from the week’s highs. Cointelegraph had bitcoin near the mid-$86,000s into Wednesday after briefly tagging above $87,000, with total net assets across U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs around $111 billion on Tuesday. Bloomberg Intelligence’s James Seyffart had said Monday that the average bitcoin ETF holder was back above water versus an estimated cost basis near $81,722 — a holder-level fact, not a forecast.

Policy tape moved in parallel, not as a floor catalyst. Cointelegraph reported CFTC Chair Michael Selig urging markets to prepare for “mass tokenization” at a U.S. Treasury Market Conference appearance, after the Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act on Sept. 15 and the CFTC sent a crypto-markets regulatory action to White House review at the prerule stage on Sept. 17. The SEC’s temporary Innovation Exemption for tokenized U.S. stock trading, also dated Sept. 17 in that coverage, remains a separate agency track. Tuesday’s ETF numbers are measured. Whether the next few sessions keep that breadth is the open question.

Sources:

• Farside Investors

• FinanceFeeds

• Cointelegraph

• SoSoValue

U.S.-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds took in $999.0 million net on Monday, Sept. 21, according to Farside Investors’ fund-level flow table — the largest single-day total since Oct. 6, 2025, and among the biggest prints since the products launched in January 2024. CoinDesk, citing SoSoValue, put the same session at $998.95 million and ranked it the ninth-largest daily inflow on record.

BlackRock’s IBIT led with $381.4 million, followed by Ark’s ARKB at $289.1 million and Fidelity’s FBTC at $238.8 million, Farside shows. Spot ether ETFs added $270.0 million the same day, led by BlackRock’s ETHA at $110.1 million.

Bitcoin traded near $86,000 into Tuesday after Asian-session lows around $85,000, CoinDesk reported, with the CoinDesk 20 Index up 2.2% over 24 hours. The ETF print follows a rough stretch for flows: CoinDesk notes September month-to-date inflows near $1.31 billion, yet spot bitcoin ETFs remain about $450 million negative year to date. That gap matters for readers who treat one strong session as a regime change.

Futures structure still argues for caution. CoinDesk’s markets desk said crypto futures volume jumped 38% to $292 billion in 24 hours while open interest rose only 1% to $157 billion, with about $768 million in liquidations, mostly shorts. Negative open-interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta across major coins is consistent with short covering pushing prices higher rather than a clean build of conviction-driven longs — metrics CoinDesk itself flags as noisy and exchange-dependent.

Named corporate demand showed up on an SEC filing. Strategy Inc’s Form 8-K dated Sept. 21 said the company bought 950 bitcoin for $75.7 million between Sept. 14 and Sept. 20, lifting holdings to 846,000 bitcoin at an aggregate purchase price of $63.80 billion. It also reported $174.0 million of STRC preferred repurchases, no sales under its at-the-market equity program, and USD Cash and USD Reserve balances of $1.05 billion and $5.04 billion as of Sept. 20.

Separately, unverified talk of a Clarity Act floor revote on Tuesday does not match the public Senate calendar for Sept. 22, which lists only Sen. Tillis’s motion to reconsider the earlier cloture failure on H.R. 3633 — not scheduled floor action. Monday’s ETF bid is real. Whether it replaces forced covering is the open question for the next few sessions.

Sources: • Farside Investors • CoinDesk • Strategy Inc (SEC Form 8-K)

Digital-asset prices rose across the board on Monday, not only in bitcoin.

By early U.S. afternoon, trade and market reports put bitcoin briefly above $86,000 — its highest print since late January — with ether above $2,750. Seeking Alpha’s tape read also showed XRP, solana, and dogecoin advancing several percent in the same window, while a basket of crypto-exposed equities (miners, exchanges, treasury names) moved higher with the tokens. Cointelegraph timed bitcoin’s Bitstamp high near $86,300 and linked the session to a firmer U.S. equity open as oil prices eased.

Three explanations circulate. Only some clear the bar for published fact.

First, leverage. CryptoSlate, citing CoinGlass, reported roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars in liquidations over 24 hours, with the large majority short positions. That is forced buying: shorts covering into strength, which can lift majors and then cascade into smaller names. The Big Whale’s Monday brief made the same distinction — Friday’s exchange-traded product inflows were real, but hour-by-hour tape looked more like a squeeze than a cash stampede.

Second, regulated fund flow from last week’s close. Farside Investors’ figures, carried by Cointelegraph and Bloomberg, show U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs taking in about $433 million on Friday, enough to leave the week barely net positive after midweek outflows. Spot ether products finished the same week with roughly $140 million in net outflows despite a strong Friday print — a reminder that “inflows” and “broad risk-on” are not the same thing. Secondary aggregators on Monday afternoon also floated same-day ETF intake figures; those prints should be treated as provisional until issuer-style tables settle.

Third, narrative. Posts on X again pushed a claim that the Senate would hold a Clarity Act vote at 2:15 p.m. ET Tuesday. No official Senate schedule or leadership notice supports that timing. The clock matches the cloture vote that already failed on Sept. 15. A motion to reconsider can exist without a scheduled floor vote. Separately, desks have pointed to post-Clarity agency steps — including the SEC’s Innovation Exemption and a CFTC prerule at White House review — as a possible confidence backdrop. Those filings are real; they are not a substitute for statute, and they do not by themselves explain Monday’s liquidation cascade.

For risk-averse readers, the clean split is this: treat the multi-asset price move, the short-covering totals, Friday’s ETF rebound, and the absent Tuesday calendar as the sourced story. Treat “new bull market” labels and recycled vote clocks as commentary until spot demand and official schedules say otherwise. Holding the advance will require bids that are not forced.

Sources:

• Cointelegraph

• Seeking Alpha

• CryptoSlate

• Bloomberg

• The Big Whale

• Crypto Times (rumor vs schedule)