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This Week’s Top Stories

“The Federal Reserve decided to cut 25 bps, without any large surprises in Powell’s speech” – Wednesday, 17 September 2025 

• On Wednesday, the Fed announced its interest rate decision in line with expectations. The 25-bps cut had been anticipated by the market for a couple of months and did not bring much volatility to the market. The September meeting also included the dot plot, which relays what FOMC members project for key macro variables in the months and years ahead. While the dot plot in June projected two cuts for 2025, the September dot plot now shows three total cuts in 2025, aligned with market expectations.
• Overall, the interest rate decision, the FOMC statement, the dot plot, and Powell’s press conference did not surprise many market participants, and the rather positive price action of risk assets reveals that some uncertainty has been removed. The Fed does not seem to want to mess with the current market rally at this point in time.
• The Fed remains committed to monitoring the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook and would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if risks emerge. As they put it in their statement: Recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year. Job gains have slowed, and the unemployment rate has edged up but remains low. Inflation has moved up and remains somewhat elevated.

A Quick Crypto Overview: Stocks at ATHs, Gold Flat, DXY Bottoming?

The crypto market has been trading to the upside this week, but it has been a choppy ride. The market corrected into the FOMC decision on Wednesday evening and then reacted positively to the interest rate decision alongside the U.S. stock market. Bitcoin reached a new multi-week high, at around $118’000, with Ethereum trading back above $4’600. 

How does the bigger picture look? Well, the U.S. stock indices reached new all-time highs yesterday, gold traded at all-time highs earlier in the week, and has now corrected a bit lower. The U.S. Dollar Index took a hit after the interest rate decision on Wednesday, but is now trading higher, in what could be an attempt to form a bottoming pattern on the higher time frame. The DXY is certainly something to keep in mind, as a bottom could indicate some trouble for risk assets, but it’s currently a little too early to tell, and current macro trends seem to contradict this thesis and make it rather contrarian. 

The total market cap excluding Bitcoin is flirting with a new all-time high, while Bitcoin dominance is showing the first signs of a bottom formation in the lower time frames, and Ethereum dominance is fighting to not lose too much of its strength – we are at an inflection point. A shift back into Bitcoin, for it to make a fresh attempt at breaking out to a new all-time high, would certainly be a good sign for the overall crypto market. 

Chart of the Week: Altseason, or will BTC take back over in the short term?

While the crypto Fear and Greed Index is still at neutral levels, there was some euphoria in the market yesterday, with altcoins attempting to break out of their ranges, especially against BTC. This morning, the sentiment is muted again, and as mentioned earlier, Bitcoin dominance could be in the process of bottoming in the short term, with ETHBTC also looking heavy in the lower time frames. 

Below, we are looking at the ETHBTC chart on the daily time frame. A move lower toward 0.035 could pose an interesting dynamic before another potential attempt to break above the 0.042 level.

What’s Happening Onchain? Base Token Announcement, MetaMask Token is Close & Other OnChain News 

This week, Jesse Pollak announced at BaseCamp that Base is currently exploring the possibility of issuing a network token. This comes only a couple of years after previously denying the possibility of a Base token multiple times. It seems that Base is also exploring new opportunities with Trump in office, and regulations around token issuance easing significantly. 

This potential Base token opens a lot of questions: a) How would this affect ETH? b) How would it affect ARB or OP? c) Would it serve a similar utility as BNB, FTT, or now MNT for Binance, FTX, and Bybit? d) Or would it be a utility-less meme token? Oh, and could there be an airdrop? Time will tell. 

Monday, September 15, marked three years since the Ethereum Merge. At the Japan Developer Conference, Vitalik presented his current short-, mid-, and long-term focus for Ethereum: increasing the gas limit for L1; enabling interoperability between the different L2s and faster settlement times; and building a safe, simplistic, quantum-resistant, and formally verified lean Ethereum. Vitalik also spoke about how they plan to deliver on Ethereum’s privacy roadmap. 

In the world of Hyperliquid, Native Market secured the USDH ticker in the auction we mentioned in last week’s wrap. They plan to deploy USDH HIP-1 along with its ERC-20 contract within days. 

At the same time, Circle announced that native USDC and CCTP v2 are now live on HyperEVM, and that Circle has become a direct stakeholder in HYPE – with a hint that this is only the beginning, and more is to come. Additionally, they announced their interest in becoming a Hyperliquid validator. 

To finish off this week’s onchain chapter, Joe Lubin, the CEO of Consensys, said in an interview that the MetaMask token is likely coming a lot sooner than most expect. Will we someday wake up to a MetaMask token airdrop quietly sitting in our wallets? 

Digital Asset Fund Flows: Net Inflows of $3.3 billion last week & a Polymarket token? 

Last week, digital asset investment products saw net inflows of $3.3 billion, rebounding strongly from a week with net outflows. Bitcoin reported $2.4 billion inflows, followed by Ethereum with $646 million and Solana with a strong week of almost $200 million net inflows. 

Regionally, sentiment was broadly positive. The U.S. led with $3.2 billion of inflows, while Germany recorded $160 million. Notably, Friday saw the second-largest daily inflows on record for Germany, although this was partly offset by $92 million of outflows from Switzerland. 

This week, the spot ETFs are on track for another week with net inflows, with BTC sitting around $700 million of net inflows, compared to $500 million for ETH, following its bigger brother closely.

Polymarket announced last week that they are targeting $3 billion in their latest funding round, tripling their valuation and even receiving term sheets of up to a $10 billion valuation from VCs. In their latest filing with the SEC, they showed “other warrants” offered, which typically used to mean tokens. There have long been rumors of a potential Polymarket token launch; this rumor now has some more meat on the bone. 

In other news, the CME Group announced plans to launch options on Solana and XRP futures on October 13, 2025, pending regulatory review. The new contracts will cover standard and micro-options and support daily, monthly, and quarterly expiration dates. 

Market Sentiment: Crypto Market Neutral, Stocks Greedy 

The CNN Fear and Greed Index has moved into greed territory (62), while the Crypto Fear and Greed Index is still at neutral levels (53) – which makes sense, as crypto seems to be lagging the stock market in terms of price action. 

We mentioned the AAII Members Sentiment Survey last week and how almost 50 percent were bearish on the stock market for the coming six months. This has dramatically changed this week, with the biggest weekly jump into bullish sentiment this year: 41.7 percent are now bullish, up from 28 percent last week. Interestingly, the number of bearish members only decreased to 42.4 percent, as many neutral members shifted over to the bullish side. 

Crypto sentiment is not yet worrisome and suggests that there could still be room to the upside in the coming weeks.

Other Relevant News 

• Google has released an AI payments protocol with support for stablecoins, partnering with Coinbase and Salesforce.

• Stephen Miran was sworn in as a Federal Reserve Governor, with his term on the Board set to end on January 31, 2026.

• The UK and U.S. are set to announce closer cooperation on digital assets, including stablecoins, following a meeting between Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

• Binance is negotiating with the U.S. Department of Justice to remove the three-year external compliance monitor required under its $4.3 billion 2023 settlement.

• Banco Santander, the largest bank in Spain and the fourth largest in Europe, has launched retail crypto trading via its online bank Openbank.

Looking Ahead: Septembear almost over – is it time for Uptober? 

We all know seasonality is more meme than metric, and September is on track to be a bullish month for Bitcoin and crypto – unless we see some downward price action in the next two weeks, which of course remains a valid possibility. October has historically been a bullish month for crypto. Will history repeat? 

There is less uncertainty in the market now, with the much-anticipated first rate cut of 2025 behind us and possibly two additional cuts coming by year's end. Is this enough to keep the market rally going? 

One should be wondering what other possible news catalysts could influence the crypto market in the coming months. M2 continues its path up and to the right. There is still a possibility that the Trump administration will announce some budget-neutral strategies to acquire additional BTC for its strategic reserve. Altcoin spot ETFs are likely to be approved in October, and there are interesting developments on the fundamental side as well. 

On the other hand, the current crypto market cycle is already longer than previous ones. Is this time different? U.S. stocks are trading at all-time highs and will face a correction eventually. Gold is also trading at all-time highs, while the DXY is sitting on historic support and attempting to bottom. 

Time will tell, and the price action in the coming weeks should be monitored closely, as it will offer hints about the path into year-end. 

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

Thursday, 25 September 2025 

• Switzerland – SNB Interest Rate Decision and Press Conference 
• USA – Continuing Jobless Claims, PCE and Core PCE Prices, GDP, Initial Jobless Claims 
• Japan – Tokyo CPI and Core CPI 

Friday, 26 August 2025 

• USA – PCE and Core PCE Price Index