Good morning everybody.
It’s your Daily Crypto News for October 1st, 2026. My name is Matt.
I just spent the last half hour going down the gossip-tabloid rabbit hole because every morning when I open Microsoft Edge to do this podcast, it throws all this shit in front of me.
Apparently Tiffany Amber Thiessen, Kelly Kapowski from Saved by the Bell, is making the podcast rounds again. She’s still a smoke show. Some 19-year-old kid apparently told her that directly during an interview. He shot his shot. Total respect.
Also, Jim Carrey apparently got married.
Congratulations.
Now let’s actually talk about crypto because that’s why you’re here.
Bitcoin Is Holding, but the Bond Market Is Getting Crazy
Bitcoin is still hanging around the $83K to $84K range after briefly jumping above $85K yesterday.
And honestly, I’m okay with that.
The bigger story right now is the Treasury market.
The 10-year Treasury yield pushed above 5.3%, its highest level since 2002. The 30-year is around 5.67%, while the 2-year has actually backed off a little to roughly 4.91%.
That’s an insane bond market.
We also got August PCE inflation yesterday. Headline PCE came in at 3.4% year over year, while core PCE was 3.0%. On a monthly basis, headline increased 0.3% and core increased 0.2%.
That was softer than some expectations and took a little pressure off expectations for additional Fed tightening.
Bitcoin ETF flows finally turned negative after the recent streak, with roughly $139 million in net outflows.
But here’s what I keep thinking about with these Treasury yields.
At what point do people actually rotate?
If you can lock in almost 6% on long-duration government debt, that’s starting to become interesting. And there’s another side to that trade. If you buy long-duration Treasuries at these yields and rates eventually fall, the bonds themselves can appreciate substantially.
That’s a legitimate alternative.
I just don’t know how much money is going to rotate out of AI, technology and other growth assets right now.
People have made absolutely ridiculous amounts of money in AI.
If you’ve been holding Nvidia for years, congratulations on all your Lambos.
If you got private exposure to some of these frontier AI companies before their valuations exploded, you’re probably in a bidding war with the Nvidia people for the Lambos.
Eventually, some of that wealth is going to cash out and probably move into safer assets.
But I don’t think we’re there yet.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, keeps holding.
That’s what matters to me.
Citi Raises Its Bitcoin Target to $113,000
Citi just raised its 12-month Bitcoin target from $82,000 to $113,000.
It also raised its Ethereum target from $2,240 to $3,028.
Citi is raising its targets while Bitcoin is struggling against some of the highest Treasury yields we’ve seen in more than two decades.
That’s notable.
It tells you Citi doesn’t necessarily see these things as mutually exclusive.
Money can continue moving into Bitcoin, AI, gold and other assets even while government debt offers increasingly attractive yields.
And that’s basically the argument I’ve been making.
A 5% Treasury yield doesn’t automatically mean everybody wakes up tomorrow and dumps every growth asset they own.
Treasury Buybacks and the Stablecoin Connection
The Treasury buyback story is getting more interesting too.
Treasury increased the maximum size of certain long-duration bond buybacks from roughly $2 billion to as much as $6 billion, although the actual purchases have generally been much smaller than the maximum.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent continues to describe the program primarily as a market-liquidity tool.
There is a debate in the bond market about what else the Treasury might accomplish through these purchases. Some investors think Treasury can take advantage of discounted prices on older low-coupon debt. Others have questioned whether the expanded buybacks could also affect long-term yields.
We’ve talked about this before because it connects to the bigger stablecoin story.
Bravo’s Research did a really interesting breakdown of this, and the theory basically goes like this:
The United States has an enormous amount of debt.
Foreign demand for long-duration U.S. debt can’t simply be assumed forever.
At the same time, stablecoin companies need short-duration Treasury assets to back dollar stablecoins.
As stablecoins grow internationally, particularly in countries where people don’t trust their domestic currency, you potentially create another massive source of demand for short-term U.S. government debt.
Someone in a country with high inflation doesn’t necessarily need to open a U.S. bank account to gain dollar exposure anymore.
They can buy a dollar stablecoin.
The stablecoin issuer takes those dollars and holds reserves that include short-term Treasuries.
Now you’ve effectively created another international distribution system for the dollar and another buyer of Treasury debt.
That’s why I think stablecoins are much bigger than crypto.
They’re potentially part of the global dollar system.
And if stablecoin reserves eventually reach $1 trillion or more, we’re talking about a very significant pool of Treasury demand.
Binance Faces EU Scrutiny as Stablecoins Worry Central Banks
Binance is getting more regulatory attention in Europe.
EU authorities are examining whether Binance continued serving European customers after failing to secure authorization under the EU’s MiCA framework.
Binance has reportedly relied in part on a concept called reverse solicitation, which allows an offshore company to provide services when a customer independently approaches it.
European regulators say that’s supposed to be a narrow exemption, not a general way around MiCA licensing requirements.
Imagine if Binance is serving millions of people and they’re like, “They all asked, bro.”
And Switzerland is raising another issue we’ve been talking about.
The Swiss National Bank has warned that widespread stablecoin adoption could weaken the traditional transmission of monetary policy.
If people move significant amounts of money out of commercial-bank deposits and into privately issued stablecoins, banks potentially lose deposits that support lending. Central banks could then have less influence over borrowing conditions through their traditional interest-rate tools.
That’s the fight.
Stablecoins aren’t just another payment application.
At sufficient scale, you’re talking about privately issued representations of currencies potentially moving enormous amounts of money outside the conventional deposit system.
That can be useful.
It can also create an entirely different relationship between consumers, banks, stablecoin issuers and central banks.
I think you’re eventually talking about a partially privatized currency system.
That’s why central banks care.
Prediction Markets Are Heading Toward a National Regulatory Fight
The White House is considering new rules dealing with prediction markets and event contracts as the legal fight over whether these products are federally regulated derivatives or gambling continues.
And there are a couple ways I look at this.
I’ve previously raised concerns on my Angry Democrat and Angry Ohioan channels about apparent coordinated wallet activity in political prediction markets.
I want to be clear that those are allegations based on wallet activity I’ve examined, not a proven finding that somebody illegally manipulated an election market.
What I’ve been looking at is activity involving what appears to be a master wallet seeding other wallets, which then make bets across political markets.
My concern is whether coordinated activity could be used to distort the apparent odds for particular candidates, including progressive candidates.
If regulators find actual manipulation, insider trading or coordinated activity designed to distort markets, then investigate it.
But there’s another regulatory problem here.
If every state starts creating completely different rules around prediction markets, you can end up with the same mess crypto exchanges dealt with for years.
You live in one state, you can use something.
You live in another state, you can’t.
Another state has completely different licensing requirements.
We saw this in crypto years ago. Hawaii was a pain in the ass. New York was a pain in the ass. Depending on where you lived, your access to exchanges could be completely different.
So there is also an argument for creating a consistent federal framework.
What that framework should look like is a different question.
MetaMask Has a Validator Problem, but User Wallets Aren’t the Issue
MetaMask is withdrawing affected Ethereum validators after discovering that some block-production rewards were being sent to unexpected wallets.
Ethereum security researcher Kaden estimated that roughly 0.36 ETH in rewards was diverted.
The larger precautionary response is much bigger. The researcher estimates roughly 17,000 validators containing approximately 523,000 ETH may be involved in the exits, although MetaMask has not confirmed those exact figures.
Importantly, MetaMask says it has found no immediate threat to MetaMask user wallets.
Lido also says stETH holders don’t need to take action.
So this isn’t half a million ETH disappearing.
It’s a validator infrastructure issue involving misdirected rewards and precautionary validator exits.
That’s a very important distinction.
Dogecoin Is Getting Smart Contracts
Here’s something I wasn’t expecting to talk about today.
Dogecoin is getting an EVM-compatible application layer.
DogeOS launched a testnet designed to allow developers to build Ethereum-compatible DeFi applications and other smart-contract software around Dogecoin without changing Dogecoin’s base layer.
That potentially turns Dogecoin into something more than a payment and meme asset.
And of course my brain immediately goes back to Elon Musk and X.
I’ve been saying for a while that I don’t necessarily think Elon is done with Dogecoin.
Could Dogecoin eventually connect somehow with payments inside X?
Maybe.
That’s speculation. I have no evidence that’s what they’re doing.
But honestly, if I were building the “everything app,” I’d also be looking pretty hard at stablecoins.
Why wouldn’t X issue an X stablecoin?
If you’re operating a giant payments ecosystem and users are holding your stablecoin while you earn yield on the reserve assets, that’s potentially an enormous business.
Then you’ve got X, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink and everything else sitting around this broader ecosystem.
Again, I’m just thinking out loud.
Don’t go buy Dogecoin because Matt said Elon is secretly building something.
I don’t know.
Crypto Prices
Bitcoin is sitting around $83,864, basically flat from yesterday.
And yesterday’s intraday move was hilarious.
Bitcoin went from roughly $83,900 to around $85,500 in less than an hour and then basically gave the whole thing back.
Paul McNeil texted me and told me to look at the candle.
By the time I looked, Bitcoin was already back around $83K.
I was like, “Cool, bro. Twenty bips. Awesome.”
I completely missed the entire thing.
Ethereum is around $2,695, basically flat.
USDT remains number three.
BNB is around $769, basically unchanged.
XRP is approximately $1.48, down around 1.6%.
USDC remains number six.
Solana is around $117, down approximately 1.5%.
TRON is approximately $0.332, down around 2%.
Zcash is around $1,380, down approximately 3%.
Hyperliquid is around $89.60, up approximately 3.2%.
Total Crypto Market Cap: approximately $2.87 trillion, basically flat.
Fear & Greed: 67, Greed.
My Take
Bitcoin is doing exactly what I want it to do right now.
Nothing.
We’re sitting around $83K to $84K while the 10-year Treasury yield is at its highest level since 2002.
That’s not nothing.
We briefly touched $85,500 yesterday and immediately came back down, which tells me we’re still in the same range.
So my levels haven’t really changed.
I want the $80K to $82K area to hold.
Then I want Bitcoin to get through $87K.
If $87K eventually becomes support instead of resistance, then we can start talking seriously about $90K and whatever comes after that.
But I’m increasingly interested in the stablecoin story because I think people are underestimating what this actually is.
Central banks are worried about it for a reason.
Banks are fighting over it for a reason.
The Treasury cares about stablecoins for a reason.
This isn’t just Circle and Tether making digital dollars for crypto traders.
If hundreds of millions of people eventually hold dollar stablecoins, those stablecoins become part of the international monetary system.
The issuers become enormous holders of government debt.
People in countries with unstable currencies gain easier access to dollars.
Commercial banks potentially lose deposits.
Central banks potentially lose some influence over how money moves through their economies.
That’s a much bigger story than crypto.
And that’s why I’m going to keep watching it.
For Bitcoin, though, just hold.
$80K to $82K.
That’s what I care about.
Have a great day.