The Weekly Wrap: Bitcoin Spot ETF YTD Net Flows Turn Positive

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This Week’s Top Stories

“US Prosecutors Probe Binance Over Possible Iran Sanctions Violations.” – Tuesday, 22 September 2026 

• US federal prosecutors are investigating whether Binance violated US sanctions on Iran by knowingly allowing certain transactions to proceed, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
• The probe is being handled by the Manhattan US Attorney's Office and is focused on Binance's compliance controls and whether it was aware of the transactions.
• In response to reports that US prosecutors are investigating whether Binance allowed transactions linked to Iran, Binance said it has a "zero-tolerance policy for sanctions violations" and will fully cooperate with law enforcement.

 “Bitget hacked for $352M in crypto assets, suspects North Korea to be behind the attack.” – Friday, 25 September 2026 

• This morning, Bitget detected unauthorized transfers from some wallets, involving 19 transfers from parts of its hot and warm wallet infrastructure.
• CEO Gracy Chen said the team identified IP addresses whose VPN usage patterns matched those associated with a specific DPRK-linked group, making a North Korea connection very likely.
• She added that the attackers did not obtain private keys for Bitget's hot, warm or cold wallets, but instead breached the exchange's internal system and transferred funds directly.
• Bitget said its user protection fund exceeds $464 million, which it says is sufficient to cover the loss.

 “X partners with crypto and stock exchanges to allow trading from the timeline for US users.” – Monday, 21 September 2026 

• This week, X (formerly Twitter) announced that users in the US can tap the cashtags on X, view the live charts and directly access trading platforms to start trading the respective assets on exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken or Interactive Brokers.

BTC breached $82.5K key level on Monday 

If you remember the recent editions of the Weekly Wrap, we repeatedly mentioned that many market participants are looking very closely at the $82.5K level for Bitcoin. On Monday, Bitcoin managed to breach the level and traded at the highest prices since January, with a weekly high above $87K. Ethereum reached $2.8K on Monday, with Hyperliquid reaching a new all-time high on Tuesday, trading just below $98. 

NEAR (+30%), ONDO (+40%) and PENGU (+26%) are among the best performing large crypto assets this week, with LTC, TAO, BCH and other projects also putting in double-digit increases over the past seven days. 

Bitcoin and Ethereum both retraced some of their gains over the course of the week, with BTC currently trading at $84K at the time of writing and ETH sitting at above $2.6K. 

The traditional markets also started into the week on a positive note, but the S&P 500 has since retraced most of its gains and is trading just above $7.7K, up almost 3% from last week's low. Gold is trading at $4.3K and the DXY is up almost 1% this week.

BTC spot ETF YTD net flow turns positive 

This week, the Bitcoin spot ETFs attracted more than $2.2B in net inflows. At the end of last week, the YTD flows for Bitcoin were sitting at -$1.4B. Today, we are looking at more than $800M in net inflows this year. This shows how fast sentiment can change and how two single days with inflows of around $1B per day can turn around the flows of almost nine months.

Shielded Bitcoin, Kalshi drama, Onchain Portfolios by Ondo & perp DEX news 

Alloc Init, a group doing cryptography research and development for Bitcoin, released a paper titled "Shielded Bitcoin: Private Transfers on Bitcoin L1" in which they present Shielded Bitcoin, a protocol for private transfer of Bitcoin directly on the Bitcoin L1, requiring no changes to Bitcoin consensus. Inspired by Zcash's architecture, value is held as encrypted notes, spends are marked by public nullifiers, and validity is established by zk proofs. 

In the world of prediction markets, there was a huge drama surrounding Kalshi. Stealth Neolab co-founder and former quant trader Beni questioned Kalshi's crypto trading volumes, noting that ETH-PERP 24-hour volume reached approximately $539M while open interest stood at around $3.1M. He also questioned the platform's volume calculation and display methods. The discussion on X ended in an exclusive report by the Wall Street Journal titled "$5 Billion Flurry of Nearly Identical Kalshi Trades Draws Scrutiny." Kalshi itself says that the trades represent normal activity and rejects the claims of market manipulation as of today. 

Ondo Finance, one of the leading platforms for RWA trading, launched a suite of professionally designed investment portfolios, each built into a single onchain token. The first three portfolios launched are based on portfolio strategies developed by BlackRock for Ondo. A so-called "Ondo Intelligent Portfolio" is a designed onchain portfolio based on a specific investment strategy. Instead of assembling and maintaining a basket of individual positions themselves, users can mint or redeem a single token that gives them exposure to the designed portfolio of the underlying assets. 

Variational, one of the most talked about upcoming perp DEXs without a live tradable token, announced the tokenomics for $VAR and a TGE timeline for Q4 2026. The team communicated that it plans a 32% genesis airdrop to points holders, which will be fully unlocked at TGE, while the team and investors will have a 1-year lock and 3-year vesting schedule for their allocations. The weekly points distribution will continue until TGE, and Variational announced that 100% of the treasury revenue will go towards buyback and burn of the VAR token. They essentially copy the Hyperliquid playbook, and it will be interesting to observe whether this plays out the same way or not.

BTC Spot ETF YTD flows turn positive 

Strategy bought BTC again last week, as the company announced on Monday that it acquired an additional 950 BTC and repurchased $174M worth of STRC preferred stock. As of September 20, the company held exactly 846K BTC and approximately $6.09B in USD assets. 

Bitmine of course purchased an additional 27K Ether last week as well, as the company continues its buying spree and brings its total ETH holdings awfully close to 6M ETH, a milestone it will very likely reach next week if it continues its weekly buy strategy. 

This week, the CME Group announced plans to launch Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) futures on October 19, subject to regulatory review. The expansion aims to meet institutional demand for crypto risk management tools. CME's existing single-asset cryptocurrency futures lineup includes BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, ADA, LINK, XLM, AVAX, and SUI. 

Looking at the spot ETFs in the US, they managed to attract a lot of new money. The BTC products recorded their ninth largest net inflow day in history on Monday, with $999M of net inflows in a single day. So far, the Bitcoin spot ETFs are sitting on $2.2B in net inflows this week alone. As mentioned earlier, this week's inflows turned the BTC spot ETF yearly flow from a total YTD net outflow of $1.4B to a total net year-to-date inflow of $800M. 

The Ethereum spot ETFs also saw net inflows of $600M so far this week, further extending the year-to-date inflows into the products. The Solana and Hyperliquid spot ETFs are also looking back on net inflow days this week.

Crypto greedy, Stock market fearful 

In market sentiment, not much has changed since last week. The crypto market continues to sit in greed territory at 71, compared to last week's 56, having increased a little bit over the past couple of days. 

The CNN stock market sentiment index is still in fear (36) but also increased slightly compared to last week, when the index was just below 30. The AAII members continue to feel rather bearish about the stock market over the next six months, with 48% of members stating they feel bearish, compared to 32.7% who are feeling bullish.

• Coinbase and Stablecore are partnering to help community, and regional banks and credit unions offer digital asset custody, trading and stablecoin payments through their existing banking platforms. – Link 
• Raiffeisen Bank International will partner with Bitpanda to offer digital asset purchases to approximately 18 million customers across Central and Eastern Europe. – Link

Can Bitcoin hold the $82.5K level as support? 

For the coming week into the end of September, many market participants will likely keep an eye on Bitcoin and whether it manages to hold the $82.5K key level as support, which would certainly be a positive sign going into October, which would then have the possibility to turn into the good old Uptober. A loss and acceptance below $80K would, on the other hand, likely be a sign of weakness. 

The US employment data scheduled to be released next week will likely bring some light into the interest rate decision of the Fed in October, with the market pricing a hike in October at 67% on Polymarket at the time of writing. Time will tell, but at the moment market participants are likely looking for Bitcoin and crypto to either stabilize at the current levels to form a base to attack higher prices, or lose the current key levels, which would then likely lead to a deeper correction to the downside, with $75K as a potential next support. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Monday, 28 September 2026 

Japan – Monetary Policy Meeting Minutes 

Tuesday, 29 September 2026 

USA – JOLTS Job Openings 

USA – House Price Index 

Wednesday, 30 September 2026 

USA – GDP 

USA – Core PCE Prices, PCE Prices 

Thursday, 1 October 2026 

Switzerland – CPI, SNB Chairman Schlegel Speaks 

Eurozone – Unemployment Rate 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims 

Friday, 2 October 2026 

China – National Day 

Japan – Unemployment Rate 

Eurozone – CPI, Core CPI 

USA – Unemployment Rate