Arbitrator Clears Gemini in Earn Lending Collapse

Gracy Chen, Managing Director of Bitget, a leading global cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 company, said Bitcoin's price has been supported by a much weaker-than-expected nonfarm payrolls reading, leading the market to expect the US Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee to cut interest rates at its October meeting. Meanwhile, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of 2.65 billion dollars in September, the second-highest monthly inflow on record since October 2025, and the Crypto Fear & Greed Index rose to 69, placing it in the greed zone and reflecting stronger market confidence. Gracy Chen noted that in the 13 years Bitcoin has been trading, October has delivered positive returns about 77% of the time, with an average return of 18.64%, and that positive momentum tends to carry through into November. In the short term, resistance stands at 87,300 dollars and support at 82,500 dollars. However, a risk lies ahead in the US midterm elections in November, since historically stocks and Bitcoin have risen ahead of elections and then fallen sharply every time. To handle rising client trading activity, Bitget has replenished its user protection fund back above 300 million dollars within a week of the security incident on September 24, having used the fund to cover roughly 388 million dollars in financial impact so clients could withdraw funds normally. In addition, the latest Proof of Reserves transparency report as of September 29, 2026, showed a total reserve ratio of 131%, confirming that the platform's reserve assets remain above the 1:1 benchmark against all user assets.

Cryptocurrency wallets believed to be linked to the US government moved more than $100 million worth of crypto on Tuesday, according to data from blockchain analytics firm Arkham. The government sent 833.599 BTC, worth about $71.6 million at the time, to two wallet addresses that Arkham did not label, and within a few hours both addresses forwarded the coins to deposit addresses at Coinbase Prime. A separate wallet identified as belonging to the government also sent roughly 40,285 BNB, worth $31.63 million, to an unlabeled address, which then forwarded it to another address. The BTC came from assets seized in the Potapenko / Turogin case, totaling 568.7 BTC, and from the Bitfinex hack case, totaling 264.9 BTC. The BNB came from assets seized from Alameda Research. The US government currently holds a total of about $27.5 billion in cryptocurrency, all of it assets seized through legal proceedings. Market critic Jose Rosell said on the X platform that a transfer does not mean the same thing as a sale. Under an executive order issued in March 2025, Bitcoin forfeited to the government is intended to be preserved in a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

The SEC granted temporary, conditional exemptive relief on September 17 allowing approved venues to trade tokenized exchange-listed stocks onchain, sending Robinhood Markets Inc. shares up just over 9% on September 18 after a 5% gain the previous session. The relief exempts qualifying venues from the Exchange Act's definitions of "exchange" and, for certain liquidity providers, "dealer," but it requires full shareholder rights including voting and dividends, meaning Robinhood's existing stock tokens, which are synthetic products offering economic exposure rather than actual ownership, do not qualify. The order also lets listed companies object to third-party tokenization within 30 days, a provision directly at odds with the public stance of CEO Vlad Tenev, and the relief remains temporary and subject to public comments, with Coinbase and the NYSE's planned 24/7 digital venue potentially entering the compliant space first. Robinhood traded roughly 31.7 million shares, about 1.37 times its one-month average, though the stock sits about 28% below its 52-week high, with a forward P/E of 45.46x against a sector median of 10.88x. Hedge fund holders rose from 84 at the end of the first quarter of 2026 to 87 at the end of the second quarter of 2026, and short interest stood at 4.54% of float as of August 31, 2026.

Coinbase has completed its integration of Deribit, the world's largest crypto options exchange, which it acquired for about $2.9 billion, creating Coinbase Global Exchange, the first and only crypto exchange with a unified global liquidity pool. Liz Martin, co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, announced the completion of the integration at Token2049 in Singapore, saying the new exchange brings US and international customers into one place and combines the company's US retail base with its international base alongside an upgrade of its professional trading tools, Coinbase Advanced. Martin said Coinbase is launching spot margin and options for pro traders in a unified portfolio offering maximum buying power and lower fees, and that the company has "super ambitious" volume growth plans. She said Coinbase is diversifying revenue through an "everything exchange" that now includes equities, equity options, perpetual futures, pre-IPOs, commodities and prediction markets, and that the company announced last week a clearing platform for prediction markets in the US along with intentions to launch its own prediction markets. On tokenization, Martin said Coinbase recently launched tokenized equities for customers outside the US, giving holders the same shareholder rights as actual stock ownership, and cited a survey finding that about 60% of its institutional clients are excited about tokenization and investing in tokenized assets. She said Coinbase sees the APAC region as a major growth area, having opened a new headquarters in Singapore about two months ago and acquired licenses in Australia and India.

Institutional stablecoin settlement moved onto four live production rails within a single month, with stablecoin-linked card spending reaching $1.2 billion in September 2026, roughly triple the year-earlier figure, according to PaymentScan data cited by CoinDesk. SoFi and Mastercard went live on September 22 with SoFiUSD, the first stablecoin issued by a U.S. nationally chartered bank deployed for live card-settlement production, with $25 billion in annualized card volume migrating to blockchain-based settlement on Mastercard's global payments network. Visa is already operating at a $20 billion annualized run rate for stablecoin settlement as of September 8, a 15x increase from $1.3 billion a year earlier and up from $7 billion in April, while Stripe announced October 1 that it is expanding its stablecoin card programs to more than 100 countries by year-end, up from 18. The Solana DvP standard, launched October 5-6 with JPMorgan advisory input, cuts settlement finality from T+2 days to roughly 400 milliseconds and cost from $50-500 to less than one cent, though it launched with no production settlement volumes yet. Separately, the DTCC's tokenization service, supported by a working group of over 50 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and State Street, is planned for October launch, and OKX closed a funding extension at a $25 billion pre-money valuation with backing from Circle, Ripple, Standard Chartered's SC Ventures, and Qube Research.