📈 Bitcoin's best quarter since late 2024 — and it's still not expensive

BTC gained 44% this quarter, beating gold (+8.7%), the S&P 500 (+2%) and even NVDA (+11%). Yet it's still 48% below its $126,000 all-time high — hard to call that stretched.

Altcoins kept pace: ETH, XRP, SOL and others are up 40–150%. The rally started with classic oversold mechanics, then got a regulatory boost — on September 17 the SEC granted a five-year exemption for venues trading tokenized U.S. stocks via blockchain. Tagus Capital sees ETH as the biggest beneficiary.

FxPro calls it a bull market but urges patience. CoinDesk notes bitcoin closed above its 50-week moving average for the first time in 45 weeks — historically, that's where bear markets end.

💸 Strategy is back in the game

Two weeks of silence — then Michael Saylor did exactly what everyone expected. Strategy picked up 950 BTC for $75.7 million last week, averaging $79,670 per coin.

The running total now sits at 846,000 BTC, acquired at an average of $75,416. With Bitcoin trading around $84,925, that's an unrealized gain of $8.05 billion — not bad for a "pause."

At the same time, the company bought back 1.77 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $174 million, with $875 million still available for more. The cash pile took a hit though: USD Cash dropped nearly 20% to $1.05 billion.

Strategy shares jumped 7.4% to $165.2 in pre-market trading Monday. The market, apparently, missed this.

Via CoinDesk.

Cointelegraph

💸 Crypto's back in Ohio — with $30 million and a long memory

Fairshake — the crypto super PAC backed mainly by Coinbase, Ripple and a16z — spent $40 million to unseat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown in 2024. It worked: with Brown gone from the Senate Banking Committee, a major stablecoin bill moved forward fast. Now he's running to return, and Fairshake has committed $30 million to stop him again.

Polls show Brown ahead 48% to 45%, Polymarket gives him 57%. The PAC sees those numbers and spends anyway — with $90 million+ still in reserve for the November 3rd finish line.

Not one ad will mention crypto. Just whatever argument moves an Ohio voter. The industry isn't selling itself — it's buying the outcome, per CoinDesk.

📈 $1 billion in a day — and that's only ninth place

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs pulled in $998.95 million on Monday — the biggest single-day haul since October 6, 2025, the day BTC hit its all-time high of around $126,200. Historically, it ranks ninth since the funds launched in January 2024.

The day's leaderboard:
🔸 IBIT (BlackRock) — $381.37M
🔸 ARKB (Ark) — $289.12M
🔸 FBTC (Fidelity) — $238.84M

What makes the number interesting: it landed just days after the Senate blocked the Clarity Act and the Fed hiked rates. Institutions, apparently, read the room differently than the headlines did.

BTC is up 44% this quarter to $85,000, outpacing every major asset including gold. Though spot ETFs are still $450M in the red year-to-date — so the champagne can wait.

Via SoSoValue data, as reported by CoinDesk.

💸 X is suing a Bitcoin account network for faking engagement

X's creator program paid out based on genuine audience engagement — someone treated "genuine" as a suggestion.

X filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, alleging they ran six Bitcoin-themed accounts that gamed at least £207,384 (~$278K) in payouts by liking, reposting, and mirroring each other's content. On August 5th, two accounts posted near-identical text within 11 seconds of each other.

X suspended the accounts on August 18th, shut down the old revenue program in September, and is now tacking on £75,000 in investigation costs — total claim: over £282,000.

A Bitcoin influencer ring caught gaming the platform of crypto's loudest CEO. The irony earned its keep.

*Cointelegraph has the filing.*

📌 Daily Recap · Sep 24

📈 BTC up 44% this quarter — still 48% off peak
💸 Saylor breaks silence, snaps up 950 more BTC
🗳️ Crypto PAC returns to Ohio with $30 million war chest
📈 Bitcoin ETFs nearly hit $1 billion in a single day
⚖️ X sues fake Bitcoin accounts gaming its creator payouts

Whoever had their head down in meetings today — this is the tab they should've had open

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News

🪙 Crypto check
₿ BTC $83,856 📉 -0.2% (24h)
Ξ ETH $2,671 📉 -0.4% (24h)

😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 71 — Greed

🤖 The robots are going to need a bank account

BlackRock published a paper this week arguing the next big crypto demand wave won't come from institutions — it'll come from AI agents paying their own bills.

The logic: agentic AI systems already book, pay, and call APIs with minimal human input. Problem is, traditional rails weren't built for this — no bank account without an ID, and card fees make no sense on a sub-cent API call. Stablecoins fit naturally: always on, no intermediary, instant settlement.

Adjusted stablecoin volume hit $11 trillion in 2025, growing ~80% a year versus 8.5% for bank transfers. Reality check from TRM Labs: AI agents currently drive just 0.6–7.5% of volume on Coinbase's x402 protocol — most traffic is still ordinary scripts.

BlackRock isn't saying the moment has arrived. It's saying the pipes are being laid before it does.

Decrypt

💸 This is starting to feel less like a bounce

Bitcoin is up 14% on the week, clearing $86,500, with total crypto market cap back above $3 trillion. Monday's spot BTC ETF inflows hit $999M — the biggest single day since October 2025.

🔸 ETH at $2,750 · SOL at $120 · HYPE, ZEC and VVV all hit new ATHs
🔸 Nasdaq closed at a record, +2.26%; AMD crossed $1 trillion in market cap for the first time
🔸 Oil slid on Iran reopening signals — Brent below $98, WTI below $93
🔸 CME launches BCH and UNI futures October 19

Those positioned for an early-October bottom are quietly capitulating. The market, as usual, didn't wait for consensus.

Decrypt

🎬 Nathan Fielder made a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes

Quick catch-up if you missed the saga: Holmes founded Theranos, convinced investors her tech could diagnose dozens of diseases from a single drop of blood, and — it couldn't. She was convicted of fraud in 2022 and has spent every moment since insisting she did absolutely nothing wrong.

Now Nathan Fielder, a filmmaker whose entire gift is staying in character long enough to make everyone around him question the fabric of reality, has pointed that energy directly at her.

The A24 documentary is called "You Can See Everything" and hits theaters October 16.

A woman who never breaks character meeting a man who never breaks character. Someone's going to blink first. The trailer is out — good luck watching it without immediately rethinking everything you know about performance and belief.

TechCrunch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGJSRFWALTI

📌 Daily Recap · Sep 25

🤖 BlackRock says AI agents will need their own wallets
📈 Bitcoin up 14% as crypto market reclaims $3 trillion
🎬 Nathan Fielder just made a documentary on Elizabeth Holmes

Somebody in your life definitely spent today offline — this is their catch-up

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News

🪙 Crypto check
₿ BTC $83,990 📈 +0.2% (24h)
Ξ ETH $2,690 📈 +0.7% (24h)

😨/🤑 Fear & Greed: 74 — Greed

💸 Dollar dominance, now with a blockchain layer

The Trump administration is weighing a plan to actively push dollar-backed stablecoins worldwide — joint ventures with private companies, with Treasury, State, and the USIDFC all potentially involved, per Bloomberg.

The logic is straightforward: stablecoin issuers must hold reserves in dollars and U.S. Treasuries. Their combined holdings already sit near $200 billion, ranking them among the top 20 holders of American sovereign debt. Every new USDC wallet opened abroad is essentially a fresh bid for U.S. government paper.

The IMF's concern is the flip side: in emerging economies, dollar-pegged stablecoins risk accelerating capital flight and stripping central banks of visibility over money flows — blockchain doesn't route through traditional channels.

One instrument, two outcomes — depending on which side of the flow you're on.

CoinDesk

💸 Bitget hacked for $352 million — "user funds are safe," they say

Two weeks ago, Liquid Network lost $320 million in a hack; the attackers later called themselves white hats. Now Bitget is September's entry.

CEO Gracy Chen confirmed unauthorized transfers from hot and warm wallets totalling up to $351.6 million — potentially 2026's biggest crypto hack. Arkham Intelligence traced ETH, BNB, AVAX and USDT0 consolidating into a single address. Cold wallets and user funds, she says, are untouched.

Withdrawals are paused; trading continues. The exchange's $464 million protection fund is on standby. BGB is down 2.9%.

Two "biggest hacks of the year" in one month. September has a type.

CoinDesk

🔥 Bitget confirms $351M breach — and says it's got it covered

Bitget, one of the larger crypto exchanges by trading volume, has confirmed unauthorized transfers draining $351.6 million from a portion of its hot and warm wallets. The incident was detected at 18:31 UTC on Thursday.

Withdrawals are suspended. Law enforcement and onchain security firms are involved, attacker addresses flagged. Cold wallets and the bulk of platform assets, the exchange says, were untouched.

CEO Gracy Chen says the full amount falls within Bitget's User Protection Fund — currently sitting above $464M. Hourly updates promised; a full root-cause report due within 24 hours.

How exactly the wallets were compromised? Still under investigation — and Bitget isn't speculating until it knows.

Via Cointelegraph.

💸 The Coinbase impersonator who stole $16 million

Ronald Spektor, 23, called Coinbase users pretending to be exchange support, warned them of a hacker, and guided them into moving funds to a wallet he controlled. Classic social engineering — $15,944,000 taken from roughly 100 victims across the US.

The money dissolved through exchanges into cash and gift cards; much of it went to crypto gambling. Spektor's own messages admit he lost $6 million at online casinos. He also ran a Telegram channel bragging about the thefts — apparently unbothered by irony.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT named him in November 2024. He pleaded guilty to all 31 counts; the judge sentenced him to four to 12 years over prosecutors' objection. Restitution: nearly $16 million. Some of the money is still missing.

Decrypt

🔓 North Korea's favourite pastime?

Crypto exchange Bitget lost $351.6 million on Thursday — attackers pushed straight through its hot and warm wallets, no forged requests, no stolen private keys. Cold storage stayed safe.

CEO Gracy Chen went live on X shortly after:

"We've identified IP addresses matching VPN choices of a certain DPRK group. The pattern looks very much like what they did before."

Worth noting: North Korean hackers have already taken an estimated $2 billion in crypto in 2025 alone, including the $1.5 billion Bybit heist the FBI formally attributed to Pyongyang. Withdrawals remain suspended; some funds recovered, amount undisclosed.

Cointelegraph

📌 Daily Recap · Sep 26

💵 Trump wants stablecoins to do dollar diplomacy now
🚨 Bitget lost $352M but pinky-swears your funds are fine
🔥 Bitget's hot wallets drained $351M in one Thursday evening
🎭 Fake Coinbase rep sweet-talked 100 people out of $16M
🇰🇵 North Korea fingerprints spotted all over Bitget's $351M breach

Someone in your life was offline today and missed all of this — do them a favour

CHEATKOTT - Your Daily News