Yes, it's been a few weeks between Bulletins — the market didn't wait for us, and neither did the Senate. Tuesday 15 September was the day the CLARITY Act (the one issue #5 said had its procedural vote "pencilled in") finally got its moment, and lost it. The Senate needed 60 votes just to open debate; more than 40 senators voted against, and the bill that was supposed to settle who regulates crypto is, for 2026, effectively done. Bitcoin slid to about $75,850 (down roughly 4.2% on the day) with the US 10-year Treasury yield sitting at a 19-year high of 5.04% and a rate hike all but locked in. On Wednesday the Federal Reserve delivered it: a 25-basis-point hike to 3.75%–4.00%, the first since 2023, with 16 of 18 officials now pencilling in another before year-end. And Bitcoin's reaction? It went up — from about $75,350 to over $76,100 within minutes — because odds of the hike were already around 93% and everybody had positioned for it. Priced in, mate.
Then came Friday, and the shorts got cooked. The Bank of Japan lifted its rate to 1.25%, the highest in 31 years, and Bitcoin ripped 5.9% in a day — from about $76,349 to $80,875 — to reclaim $80,000 for the first time since 7 September. Roughly $603 million of positions were liquidated in 24 hours, $523 million of it shorts, forcing out more than 110,000 traders, while US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in about $433 million on the day after shedding $592 million the Tuesday. Bitcoin finished the week around $80,500, up somewhere between 4% and 5% depending on where you start the clock; Ethereum sat near $2,575, up roughly 2%. Total crypto market cap was about $2.74 trillion with Bitcoin dominance near 58.9%, and the Fear & Greed Index had swung into "Greed" — 73 on Milk Road's reading, 78 on the one Benzinga quoted. All that after the Fed and the Senate both handed the market a reason to panic. Positioning beats headlines, every time.
Unlike the casino-corner lottery tickets above, this week's leaders mostly came with an actual product update, fee mechanic or regulatory hook attached — which is a nicer story, though not a guarantee of anything:
| # | Coin | Price | Move | Poida's take |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NEAR (NEAR Protocol) | $3.56 | +55.24% | A Hyperliquid integration for confidential perps and confidential TVL past $70M. Real product news doing the job a leverage casino usually has to. |
| 2 | ARB (Arbitrum) | $0.2129 | +54.13% | Robinhood Chain revenue-sharing and an upgrade lit it up. Heads-up though: 139.15M ARB unlocks on 23 September, most of it to team, insiders and private investors — a party with a bill attached. |
| 3 | Pieverse | $1.75 | +48.58% | Payments plumbing for AI agents — two things the market can't say no to this month. Newer name, so do the homework before you get excited. |
| 4 | ENA (Ethena) | $0.2036 | +45.42% | The synthetic-dollar (USDe) crowd got a proper seat at the party. Stablecoin narratives are having a moment. |
| 5 | UNI (Uniswap) | $9.00 | +40.86% | Protocol fees pointing at token buybacks, plus SEC Innovation Exemption chatter. Sat out the August rally in issue #5; this week it made up for it. |
Every rally has its wreckage — pour one out for these, and check none of them are in your portfolio without a stop (Chapter 4 exists for a reason):
| # | Coin | Price | Move | Poida's take |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LAPTOP (Hunter Biden's Laptop) | ~$0.085 | −65% | A political meme coin reportedly ~99.9% off its peak. When the name is the whole pitch, the pitch has a use-by date. |
| 2 | LSK (Lisk) | — | −50% | Squeezed more than 500% in a day, then handed most of it back — about $41M of liquidations on the way. That's not a chart, that's a rollercoaster. |
| 3 | AIC (AI Companions) | — | −46% | The momentum went cold fast. Attention is the one thing this market prices faster than it disappears. |
| 4 | STABLE | <$0.025 | −16% | Slid under its $0.025 support, back near its early-Q1 lows. Called "Stable". The irony writes itself. |
| 5 | PI (Pi Network) | <$0.10 | −11.5% | Protocol upgrades shipped, price didn't care — sitting near record lows through a week when most of the board was green. |
Not tips. Not targets. Just three established, heavily-used networks trading a long way below their old highs — the kind of thing a Chapter 6 DCA-and-hold Boganster researches while everyone else chases this week's 400%. The usage data below is not all good news on purpose. Do your own research, size by the 2% rule, and remember: cheap can always get cheaper.
Roughly 48% below its all-time high of $4,946 (24 August 2025). On the usage side, Ethereum's mainnet held around $157 billion of stablecoins in mid-June and roughly 53% of all DeFi TVL — it's still the road many of this newsletter's coins are built on. Spot Ether ETFs took in about $197 million in the week to 13 September. The honest counterpoints: DeFi TVL is down about 37% year to date, and USDT and USDC balances on Ethereum shrank in early August. Usage is big, but the recent trend isn't clearly up — that's the risk, not just the opportunity.
About 62% below its all-time high of $293.31. Solana consistently tops the daily-active-address charts, processes on the order of 150 million transactions a day, and has posted DEX volumes above $100 billion over recent 30-day windows, with stablecoin supply hitting record highs. A network upgrade (SIMD-0525) is trimming slot times from 300ms to 250ms. Worth remembering: more stablecoins on a chain doesn't automatically mean more demand for the coin itself — much of that value accrues to issuers and apps. An 11% day like Friday's can reverse just as fast.
Roughly 64% below its $3.65 high from July 2025. The case for the watchlist is institutional: seven US spot XRP ETFs now hold about $1 billion in assets, and August's $150 million-plus of inflows was their best month of 2026. The case against is on the ledger itself — active accounts on the XRP Ledger are reported down about 51% year to date and real-world-asset transfer volume down 80% over 30 days, even as active addresses rose 35% in August. Mixed data is exactly why it's a watchlist entry rather than a conclusion. That's what "do your own research" is for.
Market data: figures as reported by the sources below, snapshots at time of writing. News & context: NPR — Senate rejects the Clarity Act · CoinDesk — Clarity Act fails in Senate, sending crypto lower · Yahoo Finance — CLARITY Act vote, Fed decision and BOJ collide · Yahoo Finance — the Fed hiked, so why is crypto up? · 24/7 Wall St — Solana rose 10% and Bitcoin 5% · Mitrade — Bitcoin squeezes back above $80,000 · CoinCodex — daily market update, 20 Sep 2026 · BTCC — Crypto Weekly Report, 14 Sep 2026 · Milk Road — Fear & Greed Index · Benzinga — Fear & Greed Index jumps. Winners & losers: AMBCrypto — weekly winners and losers · CryptoTicker — Bitcoin back above $80,000 and the 5 altcoins that went vertical · CoinGecko — gainers & losers · BeInCrypto — Lisk short squeeze · The Market Periodical — Pi Network nears record low. Value Shelf: Axis Intelligence — Ethereum statistics · CoinLaw — DeFi market statistics · Blockchain Magazine — Ethereum stablecoin supply · CoinMarketCap — Solana · Phemex — Solana on-chain demand · BitKE — Solana in 2026 so far · Yahoo Finance — XRP ETFs record over $150M in August. Prices are snapshots and move constantly.
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