Get Ready for Alt Season as Traders Eye Fed Cuts: Crypto Daybook Americas

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

A day after the U.S. CPI report, market sentiment remains bullish with traders expecting the Fed to cut interest rates three times this year, starting next week.

Crypto pundits expect bitcoin BTC$108,783.53 to reach a new lifetime high. Don’t forget, it’s less than a month since it hit a record around $124,500. However, the real excitement centers on altcoins such as XRP and SOL which are likely to outperform the market leaders, BTC and ether (ETH).

“The bull market is far from exhausted. Strong public asset treasuries and expectations of Fed rate cuts provide a supportive macro backdrop, while institutional inflows and growing regulatory clarity continue to add fuel,” Ryan Lee, the chief analyst at Bitget, wrote in an email.

“The potential approval of XRP and SOL spot ETFs could serve as a major catalyst, unlocking billions in fresh demand and reinforcing confidence in digital assets as a mainstream asset class,” Lee wrote.

They’re not the only ones, with Le Shi, the managing director at market making firm Auros, flagging BNB and HYPE as tokens of interest after they hit all-time highs.

“Beyond that, the broader [digital asset treasury] narrative continues to attract both capital and conviction, with SOL, HYPE and CRO among the key tokens to track,” Shi said.

Other observers highlighted DeFi protocol Ethena’s ENA as a standout coin as the Fed cuts rates in the coming months.

Speaking of institutional demand, Polygon Labs, the team behind the Polygon ecosystem, is working with Cypher Capital, a digital assets investment firm, to expand institutional access to its native token, POL.

“We are seeing sustained demand from institutional investors for yield-generating digital assets backed by real network activity,” Aishwary Gupta, global head of payments, exchanges and real-world assets at Polygon Labs, said in a statement.

In other key news, the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note looks set to drop below 4%, a bullish development for markets.

“… We target 3.80%,” the founders of crypto newsletter service LondonCryptoClub said on X. “This is quite the reversal in the narrative of recent weeks and is another nice tailwind for bitcoin and risk generally.”

Meanwhile, blockchain sleuth Lookonchain noted continued whale buying in HYPE, which has already gained over 5% in seven days to hit a record above $56.

In traditional markets, the dollar index is hovering in recent ranges despite the growing odds of faster Fed rate cuts. Is the expected easing already baked in? Stay alert!

• Crypto
  • Sept. 12: Gemini Space Station, the Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange, begins trading on Nasdaq Global Select Market under ticker GEMI.
  • Sept. 12: Rex-Osprey Dogecoin ETF begins trading on Cboe BZX Exchange under ticker DOJE.
• Macro
  • Sept. 12: Uruguay Q2 GDP growth Est. N/A (Prev. 3.4%).
• Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
  • None scheduled.

• Governance votes & calls
  • Hyperliquid to vote on who issues its USDH stablecoin. Voting takes place Sept. 14.
  • Curve DAO is voting to update donation-enabled Twocrypto contracts, refining donation vesting so unlocked portions persist after burns. Voting ends Sept. 16.
• Unlocks
  • Sept. 15: Starknet (STRK) to unlock 5.98% of its circulating supply worth $17.09 million.
  • Sept. 15: Sei SEI$0.3324 to unlock 1.18% of its circulating supply worth $18.06 million.
• Token Launches
  • Sept. 12: Unibase (UB) to be listed on Binance Alpha, MEXC, and others.

• Day 1 of 4: ETHTokyo 2025 (Tokyo, Japan)

By Oliver Knight

• One of the founders of Thorchain, a decentralized network that allows users to send assets across blockchains, was hacked this week after being duped by a deepfake video call on Zoom.
• “Ok so this attack finally manifested itself. Had an old metamask cleaned out,” JPThor wrote on X.
• Peckshield noted that $1.2 million was stolen from a Thorchain user, with ZachXBT adding that the perpetrator is linked to North Korean hackers.
• Thorchain emerged as one of North Korea’s most popular laundering tools earlier this year; researchers estimated that 80% of the proceeds from a $1.4 billion hack on Bybit had been siphoned through Thorchain and protocols like Vultisig.
• The thorchain token (RUNE) is trading around $1.28, having lost 14% of its value in the past month and more than 90% since hitting its March 2024 high of $12.95.
• The hack involved a mixture of social engineering and phishing, two techniques that contributed to the $2.5 billion stolen by hackers in the first half of 2025.

• Open interest in futures tied to the top 10 cryptocurrencies increased 3%-5% in the past 24 hours as strengthening expectations of Fed rate cuts prompt traders to take more risk.
• Still, the market does not appear overheated, with annualized perpetual funding rates for major coins continuing to hover around 10%. Positive funding rates indicate a bullish bias among traders. Extremely high values typically signal market froth.
• OI in PENGU, one of the best-performing tokens of the past seven days, hit a record high 7.78 billion coins, validating the price rise. Funding rates for the coin are slightly elevated at around 15%.
• Smaller tokens, like SKY and PYTH, have deeply negative funding rates, a sign of bias towards bearish, short positions.
• CME’s bitcoin futures are finally seeing an uptick in OI, ending a multiweek decline while ether OI has pulled back to a one-month low of 1.78 million ETH. These diverging trends could be a sign of renewed trader focus on BTC. Options OI in BTC and ETH remains elevated at multimonth highs.
• On Deribit, BTC and ETH options continue to show a bias toward puts up to the December expiry, despite traders pricing roughly five U.S. interest-rate cuts by July next year.

• BTC is up 0.53% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday at $115,049.85 (24hrs: +0.79%)
• ETH is up 2.21% at $4,515.82 (24hrs: +1.89%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 1.82% at 4,289.35 (24hrs: +1.72%)
• Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 6 bps at 2.86%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0085% (9.2549% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is up 0.22% at 97.75
• Gold futures are up 0.23% at $3,682.20
• Silver futures are up 1.68% at $42.85
• Nikkei 225 closed up 0.89% at 44,768.12
• Hang Seng closed up 1.16% at 26,388.16
• FTSE is up 0.32% at 9,327.33
• Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.3% at 5,370.54
• DJIA closed on Thursday up 1.36% at 46,108.00
• S&P 500 closed up 0.85% at 6,587.47
• Nasdaq Composite closed up 0.72% at 22,043.07
• S&P/TSX Composite closed up 0.78% at 29,407.89
• S&P 40 Latin America closed up 1.31% at 2,859.93
• U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is up 2.5 bps at 4.036%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.12% at 6,584.75
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are unchanged at 24,013.25
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index are down 0.2% at 46,049.00

• BTC Dominance: 57.95% (-0.55%)
• Ether to bitcoin ratio: 0.03930 (1.75%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,046 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $53.67
• Total Fees: 3.96 BTC / $453,051
• CME Futures Open Interest: 139,355 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 31.6 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 8.94%

• XRP’s price is looking to establish a foothold above the upper end of a monthslong descending triangle consolidation pattern.
• Should it succeed, momentum chasers will likely join the market, accelerating the rise toward record highs.

• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Thursday at $323.95 (+2.73%), +0.66% at $326.10 in pre-market
• Circle (CRCL): closed at $133.7 (+17.6%), +0.88% at $134.88
• Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $28.87 (+10.7%), +1.7% at $29.36
• Bullish (BLSH): closed at $53.99 (+2.6%), +2.2% at $55.18
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $15.71 (-0.95%), +0.57% at $15.80
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $15.65 (-4.57%), +0.58% at $15.74
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $15.55 (-2.75%), +0.64% at $15.65
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.2 (+1.69%), +0.1% at $10.21
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $35.67 (+0.51%)
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $28.86 (+4.98%), -1.18% at $28.52

Crypto Treasury Companies

• Strategy (MSTR): closed at $326.02 (-0.13%), +0.81% at $328.65
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $28.54 (+1.86%), +1.51% at $28.97
• SharpLink Gaming (SBET): closed at $16.36 (+1.68%), +3.06% at $16.86
• Upexi (UPXI): closed at $5.68 (+4.03%), +13.73% at $6.46
• Lite Strategy (LITS) (formerly Mei Pharma): closed at $3.07 (+10.43%)

Spot BTC ETFs

• Daily net flow: $552.7 million
• Cumulative net flows: $56.15 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.30 million

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: $113.1 million
• Cumulative net flows: $12.97 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 6.42 million

Source: Farside Investors

• The chart shows the the percentage of dogecoin’s (DOGE) circulating supply that has been active in the trailing one-year period.
• The number of coins that have moved or been transacted within the past year remains at multimonth lows near 43%. The tally peaked at nearly 75% in November 2021 and has been dropping ever since.
• The decline indicates an investor shift to holding strategy and reduced speculative trading.

• BofA Says Investors Back Fed’s Credibility With Rate-Cut Timing (Bloomberg): Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett said rising bank stocks and narrowing credit spreads show investors trust the Fed’s timing on rate cuts as growth momentum picks up.
• Crypto Pundits Retain Bullish Bitcoin Outlook as Fed Rate Cut Hopes Clash With Stagflation Fears (CoinDesk): Despite rising inflation and labor market weakness in the U.S., optimism persists with crypto gaining traction as a hedge against fiat debasement and traders expecting Fed cuts to start on Sept. 17.
• World Liberty Financial Token Holds Steady as Community Backs Buyback-and-Burn Plan (CoinDesk): WLFI holders voted nearly unanimously to use all liquidity fees for buybacks and burns across Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana, establishing a scarcity model for the Trump-linked token.