Live updates: Bitcoin remains under pressure as Iran denies report of peace progress

Michael Saylor’s Strategy’s MSTR$157.19·Market Closed high-yielding (12% currently) perpetual preferred stock STRC continues to edge higher, hitting $99.30 on Monday, its strongest level in about four months.

The price had plunged nearly all the way to $70 during the June panic and has been on a steady climb since, aided by the recovery in the price of bitcoin and Strategy’s repurchases.

The $100 level is important not just psychologically; it would also mean that Saylor and team can restart issuing STRC rather than repurchasing it, with proceeds used to buy additional bitcoin.

The preferred stock of Strategy’s far-smaller peer Strive ASST$29.02·Market Closed, SATA (yielding 13%), has been trading at or above $100 for several weeks, allowing that company to raise funds with issuance and make aggressive buys of bitcoin.

Crypto markets could have history on their side heading into the final quarter of the year.

Jim Ferraioli, head of crypto research at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, noted that the fourth quarter has historically been crypto’s strongest, following a September that tends to be weak.

Bitcoin’s rally has also come with rising futures open interest and leverage, though positioning remains below levels seen at some previous cycle peaks.

Altcoins have led much of the recent move, with more than 90% of the 25 largest cryptocurrencies beating bitcoin over the past 12 weeks. But cooling momentum and blockchain activity could set the stage for bitcoin to regain market leadership.

The relentless surge in Western bond yields is continuing in force on Monday, putting pressure on risk assets, crypto among them.

The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield is up 6.6 basis points mid-morning to 5.255%, a new near-20-year high. The 30-year yield is up 6.3 basis points to 5.565.

On the shorter end of the curve, the two-year yield is higher by 6.9 basis points to 4.933%, with traders now having priced in a 68.1% chance of a Fed rate hike at the next meeting on Oct. 28.

Yields are also higher across Europe, as well as in Japan and Australia.

U.S. stocks are at session lows, the Nasdaq down 1% and S&P 500 off 0.7%. Bitcoin has slipped back below $83,000, down more than 2% over the past 24 hours.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies BMNR$26.82·Market Closed bought another 17,362 ETH over the past week, worth about $46.6 million pushing its total holdings above the 6 million token mark.

The Ethereum-focused treasury firm sid Monday it held 6,001,302 ETH, equal to about 4.9% of the 122.1 million ETH in circulation, according to a Monday release. At current prices, the stash is worth roughly $16.1 billion. More than 5 million ETH are currently staked.

The firm reported $17.2 billion in total crypto, cash and marketable securities, including 213 bitcoin, $672 million in cash and marketable securities and stakes in Beast Industries and Eightco (ORBS).

Oil remains sharply higher after President Trump continued banging the war drums over the weekend, but it’s giving back some gains after some headlines hit the tape moments ago.

According to a Reuters source, mediators expect to hold separate talks with the U.S and Iran early this week. Said talks will focus on an amended version of the seven-day ceasefire proposal that Iran presented at the UN last week.

WTI crude oil has trimmed a 4% gain to about 3%, trading at $95.15 per barrel. Bitcoin has edged up from its lows, now at $83,300, down 1.8% over the past 24 hours.

Money launderers handling funds from the roughly $388 million Bitget exploit are coordinating in the open, according to onchain investigator ZachXBT.

In a post on X, he said Chinese laundering groups working for the alleged North Korean attackers were “openly asking for support with orders in public Discord servers and Telegram channels” belonging to the services they use. He published handles and transaction records for five of the accounts.

The stolen funds are being hopped across blockchains through bridges, which move assets from one network to another, and deposited into mixers such as Wasabi, a bitcoin wallet that pools users’ coins together to hide where they came from, he said.

ZachXBT said he has watched this laundering pattern after several exploits attributed to TraderTraitor, the name U.S. authorities use for a North Korea-linked hacking group. One of the five accounts also laundered funds from the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit earlier this year, he said, and he plans to publish more of his data on the groups in the coming weeks.

CoinDesk separately found that a wallet linked to the attacker swapped about $6.3 million of ether into bitcoin through THORChain on Monday.

A packed week of U.S. economic data comes as Treasury yields push to new highs. The 10-year yield is at 5.230%, while the DXY dollar index is around 101. The releases will test whether the U.S. economy remains strong enough to keep upward pressure on yields.

Friday’s September jobs report is the main event. Nonfarm payrolls are expected to rise by 84,000, down from 162,000 in August, while the unemployment rate is forecast to hold at 4.1%.

Before then, Tuesday’s JOLTS report is expected to show 7.24 million job openings. Wednesday brings August core PCE inflation, forecast to rise 0.3% month over month, alongside the final estimate of second-quarter GDP growth, currently at an annualised 1.5%. On Thursday, the ISM manufacturing PMI is expected at 54.9 and the final S&P Global manufacturing PMI at 57.