The market this morning

Bitcoin ETFs turn positive for 2026 as a $2.4 billion week caps a seven-day inflow streak

By Crypto Info News

Good morning. US spot bitcoin ETFs pulled 2026 back into the black. The Block reported a $2.4 billion weekly inflow, the funds' largest since October, lifting their year-to-date net flows above zero after they had sat roughly $5.8 billion in the red just two months earlier. Decrypt framed the same move as a seven-day winning streak, with the funds drawing nearly $3 billion over seven straight sessions and erasing post-Clarity Act losses.

The market itself was quiet by comparison. Bitcoin closed the day at $84,416.71, up 0.41% over 24 hours, with a market capitalisation of about $1.70 trillion. Ether was little changed at $2,695.60. XRP was the notable decliner among the majors, down 2.61% to $1.53. Tether and USDC held near a dollar.

Regulation and the courts dominated the rest of the day. Cointelegraph and The Block both reported that the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against prediction market Kalshi. Cointelegraph said the court sided with Ohio and Tennessee on regulating sports-event contracts under state laws, setting up a potential Supreme Court case. The Block reported the court found Kalshi had not adequately shown its sports-event contracts are swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, widening a circuit split. Separately, Decrypt argued that after the Clarity Act failed in the Senate, the SEC, CFTC and Fed moved within days to write crypto's rules themselves.

More agency activity followed. Cointelegraph reported that the Fed requested comment on two proposals for stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act, noting US agencies missed a rule-making deadline a year after the law was signed. Cointelegraph also reported that SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, known as "Crypto Mom," will leave her post on 2 October after about eight years, and that the CFTC sued Cash FX, alleging a $950 million crypto-linked forex scheme in which most participant funds were misappropriated.

In business, CoinDesk reported that Kraken parent Payward is unifying trading, payments, asset management and institutional services on common rails, and that analysts see a five-year Binance deal boosting Circle's USDC against Tether, whose liquidity advantage remains hard to dislodge.

On the security front, CoinDesk reported a Bitget hacker moving $83 million in stolen XRP that Ripple cannot freeze, with about $75 million remaining across five original holding accounts.

In technology, Decrypt reported that an open competition run by StarkWare, Yukon Research and Eigen Labs drove the estimated cost of a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction from about $320 to roughly $67, with AI models topping the leaderboards. CoinDesk reported that Solana's Alpenglow upgrade, targeting 150-millisecond settlement, reached a second public test network.

What to watch: whether ETF inflows hold, and how the Kalshi split and the Fed's stablecoin proposals develop.