The Weekly Wrap: Trump Stimulus Talk, Clarity Act Odds at 18% and a Wild Week in Crypto

Listen to the Weekly Wrap on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It is a summary with the help of AI-voices. 

This Week’s Top Stories

“US President Trump pledged to send every American adult $5K if the Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections.” – Wednesday, 9 September 2026 

• Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas that “if the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000” and that “it will be called the Trump Dividend.”
• This stimulus check would likely cost more than $1T and would require congressional approval. It would, of course, further exacerbate the country’s annual budget deficit and existing concerns about US inflation.
• A $5K check would give each American more money than they received in direct government payments from COVID-19 relief measures during Trump’s first term. The White House did not announce any further information as of today.

“Odds for Clarity Act Passage in 2026 Are Down to 18%.” – Thursday, 10 September 2026 

• The Senate is expected to vote on the Clarity Act next week, on 15 September, and the market widely expects the legislation to fail, as securing the 60 votes has emerged as a key challenge, with ethics provisions among the issues under negotiation.
• While many industry figures, such as Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, still expect the Clarity Act to pass, it would not be the end of the world if it did not, because the SEC and CFTC have already publicly announced that they are ready to publish rulemaking in any case.
• The crypto market will get clarity anyway, be it with the Clarity Act or without. There are rumors circulating on X that many large financial asset managers in the US, such as BlackRock, have already been approved to launch their tokenized securities products in accordance with the new SEC innovation exemption on tokenization via a transfer agent.
• Chances are that while the Clarity Act fails, clarity for the crypto market will come through separate bills focusing on specific sectors, such as stablecoins, tokenization, perpetual futures, or prediction markets, instead of one massive, wide-reaching crypto bill.

“3 Macro Shifts Reshaping Portfolio Construction.” – Thursday, 10 September 2026 

• This Thursday, Bitcoin Suisse published its new Crypto Wealth Management Report, which can be read here.
• The Bitcoin Suisse Research team mentions that for two years, the AI trade has dominated investor attention, equity concentration has reached levels not seen since the dot-com era, and digital assets have been competing for a shrinking share of capital. In the report, they examine whether the conditions sustaining that dynamic are as stable as they appear. Three independent forces are converging to shape how a rotation could unfold.
• The AI investment cycle carries a vulnerability that the usual historical comparison obscures because the better parallel may not be the one the market expects. The case for hard assets is structurally stronger than it has been in decades, and Bitcoin sits at an unusual intersection within it. A Federal Reserve under new leadership has stopped smoothing the transitions between regimes, which means the rotation, when it comes, is likely to be faster and more selective than in previous cycles.
• The report follows the thread across all three and examines what they mean together for digital asset allocation.

A wild week in crypto once again 

While the price performance of Bitcoin might not suggest so, the crypto market has once more experienced a wild week. Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, launched his Laptop coin, but more on that later. Zcash broke above the magical $1K level, and the crypto x AI sector experienced a wild ride to the upside, with coins such as VVV and NEAR up between 24 and 40% on the week. 

Some OG crypto projects, such as Polkadot (DOT) or Cosmos (ATOM), also experienced sharp increases this week, while PUMP, ENA or PEPE took a breather and gave back some of their gains over the past few days. 

Bitcoin has been trading lower this week, sitting around $77K at the time of writing, while Ethereum is trading at $2.4K. The S&P 500 is also down this week as market participants are uncertain about the upcoming FOMC meeting and Fed interest rate decision next week. The odds on Polymarket are currently showing a 63% chance of a rate hike next week, while 37% expect the Fed to hold rates steady. Today’s inflation data in the US will certainly shed some light on this upcoming decision.

Crypto and AI 

Over recent weeks, the crypto and AI sector has been heating up, as projects such as Bittensor (TAO) and NEAR Protocol have reached the center of attention among crypto investors on X and other digital platforms. We recently published an article on the intersection of crypto and AI, as both are among the most significant technological developments since the turn of the millennium. 

For years, they have been the subject of intense debate and controversy, attracting attention, capital and talent on a scale rarely seen. At present, however, developments in artificial intelligence are overshadowing virtually everything else. Investment in models, semiconductors and computing infrastructure exceeds capital flows into the crypto sector many times over. 

Although the two technologies compete for capital and talent, we also see considerable potential in the ways in which crypto and AI can reinforce one another and drive broader economic change. You can read the article here.

Robinhood Chain, Hunter Biden’s Laptop & LBTC White-hat Hack 

On Sunday, Liquid Network said that purported white hat hackers withdrew approximately 4K BTC from its federation wallet, prompting the Bitcoin sidechain to pause network activity. The withdrawal represented roughly 95% of Liquid's reported bitcoin reserves, which stood at approximately 4.2K BTC before the incident. On Monday, the attacker who withdrew the 4K BTC from Liquid Network's federation wallet over the weekend returned around 85% of the funds after Blockstream said its bridge nodes had been patched, while retaining 598.5 BTC, worth roughly $47 million. 

In other news, the recent memecoin craze on the Robinhood Chain generated huge amounts of fees for the chain and the company Robinhood behind it. During the first few days of September, the Robinhood Chain generated around $3 to $5M in revenue every single day, with daily revenue peaking at $5.4M on 4 September 2026. Revenue has since dropped drastically over the past few days but remains high, at around $1 to $1.8M per day this week. 

About 90% of the revenue goes to Robinhood Chain itself, while the remaining 10% goes to its technology provider, Arbitrum. Uniswap was also able to profit from the recent Robinhood Chain hype, as the value of UNI burned reached more than $1.15M on 4 September, surpassing $1M worth of UNI burned in a single day for the first time in history. A total of 184K UNI was burned, the second highest daily amount on record, with Robinhood Chain accounting for 150K UNI. 

Last but not least, Hunter Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden, launched his memecoin Laptop on Wednesday this week. But first things first: at the beginning of the week, Hunter Biden had touted the launch of the Laptop memecoin, saying it was a way to reclaim a symbol that had defined news coverage about him when his father was president. He also suggested that the memecoin would be about building community, benefiting charity and helping those who had lost money on the Trump memecoin back in 2025. 

Instead, the value of Biden’s memecoin plummeted from a high of about $190 per token to less than $2 per token. About 80 percent of traders who bought Biden’s cryptocurrency token on Wednesday lost money. Nice try!

Strategy held, BitMine bought & insights into the HYPE ETF holders 

Strategy did not buy or sell any Bitcoin last week, leaving its total holdings unchanged at 845’050 BTC. Instead, the company opted to repurchase 1.81 million STRC preferred shares for around $176.3M and increased its digital credit securities repurchase program from $1B to $2B. 

The firm said it funded the repurchases via its USD Cash reserve. As of Sept. 7, the balances of its USD Reserve and USD Cash were $5.1B and $1.44B, respectively. 

Strategy CEO Phong Le also said last week that the company's sale of roughly 7K BTC between $60K and $65K over the past few months was "the right trade at the time" to fund preferred dividends. Strategy subsequently paused bitcoin purchases for about 10 weeks while it shored up its balance sheet. At the end of August, the company then bought around 4.5K BTC for roughly $370M at an average price of $80K, leaving many crypto investors wondering why it sold low and bought back higher. 

BitMine, on the other hand, once again bought ETH, almost 30K this time around. The company now holds 4.9% of the total Ether supply, bringing it closer to the 5% target. It has bought ETH every week since launching its treasury strategy in June last year. 

In the altcoin world, James Seyffart from Bloomberg analyzed the Hyperliquid ETFs and their 13F reporting, which revealed the known institutional investors with exposure to the three Hyperliquid spot ETFs. The combined exposure adds up to over 1.1M HYPE, with UBS, Jane Street and the Bank of Montreal among the top five holders. The top five holders had combined exposure of $53M, accounting for approximately 70.84% of the total disclosed exposure. 

Looking at the spot ETFs generally, this week is not looking too rosy at the moment. The BTC spot ETFs saw net outflows at the start of the week, while Ethereum managed to attract $35M on Wednesday. 

Looking at the YTD flows, Ethereum is already sitting on net inflows of almost $600M, having reversed the net outflows within a matter of weeks over the summer. BTC, on the other hand, is still down $1.6B in net outflows year to date. SOL, XRP and HYPE are also all positive YTD, with net inflows between $350M and $600M since the start of the year.

AAII Bulls and Bears in Equilibrium 

Members of the AAII, the American Association of Individual Investors, are split between bulls (38%) and bears (39%), with roughly 23% taking a neutral stance. The share of bullish members increased in the first week of September and has since remained stable, slightly above the historical average of 37.5%, while the share of bearish members is still well above the historical average of 31.5%, as seen in the graphic below.

When looking at the sentiment indices in the crypto and US stock markets, we are observing a wide gap between the two markets. Interestingly, the gap has completely changed direction compared to previous weeks and even months. While the crypto market stayed in fear or neutral territory throughout the middle of August, the stock market was already approaching greedier levels. This has now shifted in the opposite direction: the stock market is in fearful territory (36), while the crypto market continues to trade in greed (69) as of Thursday evening.

• Trezor said its third-party email provider has been breached. The company warned that an email titled “Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability” did not come from Trezor and is a phishing attempt. – Link 
• The U.S. Treasury will buy back up to $6B of 10- to 20-year Treasuries on Sept. 10, triple the size of its previous long-dated operation, as part of plans to expand buybacks. – Link 
• According to Bloomberg, Nasdaq is investing $100M in Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, through its venture investment arm. – Link  
• Germany plans 25% tax on crypto gains from 2027, ending the one-year tax-free holding period. – Link

All eyes on the Fed next week 

Next week, most market participants will watch the FOMC meeting and Fed interest rate decision on Wednesday very closely, followed by the BoJ interest rate decision on Friday.  

While the crypto market appears to have bottomed, things can turn around quickly, and next week could act as a catalyst for the coming weeks, if not months. It’s viewed as a positive sign that the crypto market has generally managed to hold its level this week after the runup over the previous weeks, and many are eyeing the $82.5K level as the next hurdle to attack. On the lower side, a break below $70K would likely be viewed as a negative sign by many market participants, and a move below that level could ignite a further correction to new lows. As of today, all eyes are on the Fed, and as long as the current levels hold, the market seems to want to go higher. 

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

Monday, 14 September 2026 

Switzerland – PPI 

Tuesday, 15 September 2026 

China – NBS Press Conference 

Wednesday, 16 September 2026 

USA – FOMC meeting, Fed Interest Rate Decision, Press Conference 

Thursday, 17 September 2026 

Eurozone – CPI, Core CPI 

UK – BoE Interest Rate Decision 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims 

Friday, 18 September 2026 

Japan – BoJ Monetary Policy Statement, BoJ Interest Rate Decision