The new ASSX fund offers 2x daily exposure to Strive shares, giving traders a leveraged way to bet on the Bitcoin treasury company.
Zcash mining has become significantly more profitable than Bitcoin mining for individual operators, according to a new analysis from Grayscale Research, even as Bitcoin continues to dominate the mining industry in overall scale.
The report, led by Grayscale Research director Zach Pandl, highlights a sharp difference between the two proof-of-work networks. Bitcoin generates far more money for miners collectively, but Zcash currently offers substantially higher returns per machine and per unit of electricity consumed.
The shift comes as Zcash (ZEC) has staged one of its strongest rallies in years, pushing its price above $1,000 and attracting more computing power to the network.
Bitcoin dominates the reward pool
Bitcoin remains in a different league when measured by the total value distributed to miners.
Grayscale estimates that Bitcoin miners collectively generate around $35 million in daily rewards, compared with roughly $2 million for Zcash miners. The difference reflects Bitcoin’s much larger market capitalization, network activity and mining infrastructure.
But the comparison changes when looking at individual machines.
According to Grayscale, a typical Zcash mining rig currently generates about twice the daily revenue of a comparable Bitcoin mining machine. The advantage becomes even more pronounced when electricity consumption is considered.
Zcash mining produces approximately four times as much revenue per megawatt-hour as Bitcoin mining under Grayscale’s assumptions. The research firm said Zcash mining can currently generate higher revenue per unit of electricity than some artificial intelligence and high-performance computing cloud services.
That does not mean Zcash mining is four times more profitable in every market. Electricity prices, hardware costs, cooling, maintenance, pool fees and network difficulty can significantly change the economics for individual operators.
Zcash mining activity is up ~2.5x this year (Source: Grayscale)
ZEC’s price rally changes the equation
The improvement in Zcash mining economics has largely followed the cryptocurrency’s dramatic price appreciation.
ZEC recently climbed to around $1,155, its highest level in roughly nine years, extending a powerful rally that has made it one of the strongest-performing large-cap cryptocurrencies.
The token was up more than 14% over the week at one point, while Bitcoin declined by nearly 3% over the same period. ZEC’s market capitalization reached approximately $19.5 billion.
The rally has also pushed Zcash well beyond its levels earlier in 2026. Grayscale said ZEC’s price gains have encouraged miners to deploy more computing power, with the network’s total mining activity increasing more than 2.5 times since the beginning of the year.
That creates an important feedback loop for the network. Higher ZEC prices make mining more attractive, which encourages additional miners to participate. More mining power increases competition but also strengthens the security of the blockchain.
Pandl described the relationship as potentially reinforcing, with stronger mining economics supporting greater network security and potentially helping sustain investor interest.
Zcash (ZEC) 1Y Price Performance (Source: CoinGecko)
The machines cannot simply switch networks
There is an important limitation to any direct comparison between Bitcoin and Zcash mining.
The two networks use different mining algorithms and specialized hardware. Bitcoin relies on SHA-256 ASICs, while Zcash uses the Equihash algorithm. As a result, a Bitcoin miner cannot simply redirect a Bitcoin ASIC to Zcash when ZEC becomes more profitable.
Grayscale’s analysis compares a Bitmain S23 Hydro Bitcoin miner with a Bitmain Z15 Pro Zcash miner. Its calculations assume electricity costs of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour, full uptime and no transaction-fee revenue.
The estimates also focus on mining revenue rather than an operator’s final net profit. Hardware depreciation or financing, facility costs, cooling, maintenance and pool fees can materially reduce actual returns.
Electricity is particularly important. A miner operating in a region with expensive power may find that the apparent advantage disappears once operating expenses are included.
Zcash’s smaller reward pool creates a catch
The biggest question for prospective Zcash miners is whether the current advantage can last.
Zcash’s daily mining rewards are only a fraction of Bitcoin’s. With approximately $2 million distributed across its mining network each day, the pool of available rewards is relatively small.
As more miners enter the market, the same reward pool must be divided among more computing power. Rising hashrate and network difficulty can therefore reduce the amount earned by each machine, even if the price of ZEC remains unchanged.
This dynamic is already visible in Zcash’s rapidly expanding hashrate. The more than 2.5-fold increase in mining activity this year demonstrates how quickly miners can respond when economics improve.
Bitcoin faces the same basic mechanism, although its much larger mining ecosystem and reward pool operate on a vastly different scale.
ZEC hashrate (Source: 2miners.com)
Institutional demand adds another layer
The mining boom is unfolding alongside growing institutional interest in Zcash.
Grayscale’s own Zcash investment product, ZCSH, began trading on NYSE Arca on August 25. The asset manager said the fund attracted about $179 million in net assets during its first 11 trading days, taking assets under management above $700 million.
Grayscale said ZCSH ranked among the top 1% of nearly 4,000 exchange-traded products by net asset growth and described it as the fastest-growing altcoin exchange-traded product by net assets. Those figures are based on the issuer’s own data.
The combination of rising institutional demand, stronger prices and improving mining economics has therefore created a much more favorable environment for Zcash than it had earlier in the year.
Efficiency, not size, is the key takeaway
Grayscale’s research does not suggest that Zcash has overtaken Bitcoin as a mining business overall. Bitcoin remains overwhelmingly larger in total mining revenue and infrastructure.
Instead, the analysis highlights a different metric: how much revenue an individual mining machine can generate relative to the electricity it consumes.
On that measure, Zcash currently has a clear advantage.
Whether that advantage persists will depend on ZEC’s price, electricity costs, mining difficulty and the amount of new hardware entering the network. The rapid growth in Zcash hashrate suggests miners are already responding to the opportunity.
For now, however, Grayscale’s conclusion is straightforward: Bitcoin remains the bigger mining network, but Zcash is offering considerably better mining economics for individual machines and electricity consumption.
Bitcoin (BTC) is starting the third week of September below key weekly support levels as traders eye volatility cues.
- The US Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates by 0.25% on Wednesday amid stubborn inflation and a mounting oil-price squeeze.
- The Senate will vote on whether to advance the crypto CLARITY Act on Tuesday — a key moment for market sentiment.
- Bitcoin finished last week below its 50-week moving average near $77,400, although a bullish RSI divergence continues to play out.
Fed’s Warsh seen hiking rates despite Trump pressure
The Federal Reserve takes the spotlight for risk-asset traders this week as Wednesday’s decision on interest rates dictates the mood.
On the back of high inflation and cautious words from chair Kevin Warsh, the Fed is widely expected to hike benchmark rates by 25 basis points to 3.75-4% despite several dissenting officials in favor of holding them at current levels. The setup echoes that of the Fed’s July rate decision, when Warsh held rates while several voices argued for a hike. Now, Warsh faces pressure from US president Donald Trump not only to avoid a hike but to enact rate cuts.
The latest data from the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool puts the odds of rates staying at their current levels at just 13.3% at the time of writing. A week ago, the implied probability of a rate pause was above 40%, but it pulled back in the face of recent inflation data and oil-price gains from escalation in the Middle East.
Fed target rate probability comparison for September FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
While the August print of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) both avoided major upside surprises, markets reacted hawkishly as oil prices returned above $100 per barrel with no end to the supply crisis in sight.
CFDs on WTI crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Commenting, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter warned of the severity of the resulting energy shock, as 30 million barrels per day will be unable to transit through the Strait of Hormuz or Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, with the Bab el-Mandeb Strait now also at risk.
“Even after accounting for some overlap between these routes, the scale of the potential disruption is enormous relative to the ~100 million barrel per day global oil market,” it wrote in a post on X.
Kobeissi noted increasing inflation expectations among US consumers, who saw price increases hitting 4.6% over the coming year — 1.1% more than their outlook at the start of 2026 — with gas prices and trade tariffs frequently referenced.
US consumer inflation expectations data. Source: The Kobeissi Letter on X.com
CLARITY Act rewrite faces crucial vote
On Tuesday, a day prior to the Fed decision, crypto markets will face their own reckoning as US officials debate the CLARITY Act.
On Monday, Senate Republicans released what they called their “last, best and final offer” for the text of the Act, part of bipartisan negotiations that seek to provide the industry with a clear legal framework in the US.
“After a year of intense daily bipartisan negotiations, this bill is ready,” Senator Cynthia Lummis, who released the 635-page updated proposal, said in an official release.
“President Trump voluntarily agreed to unprecedented ethics restrictions, holding every federally elected official, judge, and their spouses to some of the toughest ethics restrictions in US history.”
CLARITY now faces a procedural vote at 2:15 pm on Tuesday, requiring 60 votes to pass. Snap volatility could ensue on the back of the result. If the bill passes in its latest form, it can advance to the floor for Senate debate.
“A no vote on Tuesday means opposing real ethics reforms on politicians’ personal investments, handing American leadership in digital assets to our foreign competitors, and leaving Americans with zero protections in the digital asset markets,” Lummis added.
Speaking to podcast host Kyle Chasse on Saturday, crypto policy insider Tyler Williams, formerly a crypto adviser to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, was upbeat about Tuesday’s prospects.
“What are the odds? I think they are better than they have ever been. We are closer — we are on the precipice of this becoming law,” he said.
Among Polymarket users, the odds of CLARITY being signed into law in 2026 remain low. At the time of writing, there was a mere 34% chance of that outcome. Higher odds were last seen at the start of August.
Betting odds for CLARITY Act passing into law. Source: Polymarket
Crypto traders de-risk in advance of CLARITY, Fed
The latest market analysis indicates that traders are removing risk prior to Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s headline events.
Examining changes in open interest (OI) across exchanges, crypto sentiment platform Santiment argued that markets are already prepared for volatility ahead of both the CLARITY Act vote and Fed interest-rate announcement.
“Everyone is watching Tuesday’s cloture vote and Wednesday’s Fed. The positioning data says the market already made its move,” it commented on Monday.
Santiment data shows that OI in BTC terms, calculated from USD-denominated OI divided by the BTC price, fell 13.5% in the week through Sept. 11, from 321,497 BTC to 278,151 BTC, subsequently rebounding only modestly. At the same time, spot price itself fell by 5%.
“Positioning sits about 20% below where it was before the mid-August rally,” Santiment added.
Bitcoin OI data. Source: Santiment
Funding rates repeat bullish trends
Funding rates continue to build bullish sentiment as BTC/USD trades near $80,000, new research from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant argues.
Since the end of May, aggregate funding rates across exchanges have gradually increased, following the end of a negative-rate period that began in early March. Funding rates reflect the balance of long and short interest among traders.
“After a disbelief phase, during which funding rates reflected one of the most bearish sentiments ever seen in Binance derivatives, the buildup of shorts that followed a -52% drawdown ended up fueling May’s rally,” CryptoQuant commented in a blog post on Sunday.
“It’s particularly interesting to observe how this bearish consensus has consistently shown up whenever Bitcoin was nearing the end of a correction.”
CryptoQuant data shows that negative cumulative 30-day funding rates on Binance have accompanied the final stages of Bitcoin bear markets, as well as major corrections within bull markets.
Bitcoin 30-day summed funding rates (Binance). Source: CryptoQuant
Previously, Cointelegraph reported on the ongoing lack of spot-market participation in Bitcoin’s recent upside, with analysis warning that the derivatives-led market momentum was unlikely to last.
Bitcoin weekly support slips from bulls’ grasp
Bitcoin’s price failed to defend a key support level during Sunday’s weekly close, ending around $76,800.
Related: Here’s what happened in crypto today
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
In comments on Sunday, trader and analyst Rekt Capital reiterated that $78,300 was necessary to hold at the weekly close. Failure to do so, he warned, would open the path for Bitcoin to repeat its failed breakout from early May.
An accompanying chart shows BTC/USD continuing to form a pattern of lower highs, keeping the long-term bear-market structure intact.
BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com
Bitcoin also closed below its 50-week exponential moving average (EMA) at $77,380, a trend line necessary to clear as part of a sustainable bullish trend change. Rekt Capital eyed the 21-week EMA at $72,270 as bulls’ next line in the sand.
“Both of these EMAs tend to act as support in a Bull Market. So if they can’t hold sustainably as support then that would be a confirmation of the trend not being in a full-blown Bull Cycle yet,” he told X followers.
The close nonetheless preserved a weekly bullish divergence on Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI), which continues to see higher lows through 2026.
BTC/USD one-week chart with 21, 50 EMA; RSI. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) posted $462.7 million in net outflows last week, reversing after three consecutive weeks of inflows, while Ether ETFs moved the other way with nearly $197 million in net inflows.
According to Farside Investors, the withdrawals ran across all four trading sessions from Tuesday to Friday. The outflows followed the strongest three-week inflow run of 2026, which ended after the funds shed $166.8 million in the first two days of the holiday-shortened week.
The selling deepened on Thursday, when US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net outflows of $282.7 million, their largest daily withdrawal since July. Friday’s outflow slowed to $13.2 million, but still extended the negative streak to four trading days, according to SoSoValue.
Related: Bitcoin fails to reclaim $80K as Bessent fuels yen strength around 153 per dollar
ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF led weekly withdrawals with $234.2 million in net outflows, followed by Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust ETF with $129.1 million. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF recorded $52.5 million in net outflows over the week, while Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund lost $50.7 million.
Despite the weekly reversal, spot Bitcoin ETFs remain in positive flow territory for September, with about $307.3 million in net inflows through Friday.
Ether ETFs record weekly inflows
On the flip side, US spot Ether ETFs recorded $196.9 million in net inflows over the same four-day period, according to Farside Investors.
The Ether funds had mixed flows earlier in the week, with $24.3 million in outflows on Tuesday, $34.7 million in inflows on Wednesday and $29.9 million in outflows on Thursday. The week turned positive on Friday, when the funds drew $216.4 million in net inflows.
BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF led Friday’s inflows with $148.8 million, followed by 21Shares Core Ethereum ETF, which added $29.1 million.
Magazine: Metaplanet equity backlash, SE Asia crypto funding doubles: Asia Express
Bitcoin sidechain Liquid Network has been paused after roughly 4,000 BTC worth about $320 million was withdrawn from the federation wallet backing its L-BTC token, in an incident that appears to have exploited a vulnerability in the network’s underlying software rather than compromised its cryptographic keys.
Liquid confirmed on Sunday that purported “white-hat hackers” had removed around 4,000 BTC from the federation’s reserves. The network subsequently disabled its bridge nodes, preventing new transactions, while exchanges were asked to suspend L-BTC deposits and withdrawals.
The withdrawal represented about 95% of the roughly 4,200 BTC held in the federation wallet before the incident. Bitcoin’s main network was not affected.
Liquid Network’s Statement on X (Source: X)
A legitimate-looking peg-out
The incident unfolded through Liquid’s normal peg-out process, making the exploit particularly significant.
SideSwap, a Liquid federation member that operates a peg-out service, said a customer sent 4,000 L-BTC to its service at approximately 14:05 UTC on September 6. The tokens were burned under a valid Peg-out Authorization Key (PAK) authorization.
About 23 minutes later, the Liquid Federation released approximately 3,996 BTC to the customer’s Bitcoin address.
Liquid said the transaction used SideSwap’s PAK but stressed that the key itself had not been compromised. SideSwap likewise said none of its systems had been breached.
Instead, the L-BTC used in the transaction appears to have been created through a vulnerability in Elements, the open-source software that underpins Liquid.
That distinction is central to the incident. The attacker did not apparently need to steal a federation key or break into SideSwap’s infrastructure. Instead, the vulnerability allowed L-BTC that should not have existed to enter the normal redemption process. Once those tokens passed the required checks, the federation paid out real BTC against them.
The federation wallet, which held more than 4,200 BTC before the transaction, was left with roughly 200 BTC afterward.
The precise technical root cause has not been publicly detailed by Blockstream or Liquid. A fix for the underlying vulnerability had already been added to the software codebase before the incident, but the issue had not been fully resolved across the network when the exploit occurred.
The hackers call themselves white hats
The party controlling the withdrawn bitcoin later left an on-chain message saying, “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.”
They left a message. (Source: memepool)
Blockstream responded through a signed Bitcoin transaction, providing an email address for contact. The two sides subsequently exchanged additional messages, including PGP-signed communications recorded on-chain.
The purported hackers offered to return most of the funds but attached a condition: Liquid must first patch the vulnerability and ensure that every node running the network is updated.
The actors also reportedly sent encrypted technical details about the vulnerability to Blockstream, according to Galaxy Digital research head Alex Thorn.
Blockstream subsequently acknowledged the hackers’ condition and worked to patch the affected infrastructure. However, the withdrawn bitcoin had not been returned at the time of publication.
The “white-hat” characterization has nevertheless been disputed.
Ledger Chief Technology Officer Charles Guillemet questioned whether the actors should be considered security researchers, arguing that taking hundreds of millions of dollars before disclosure differs substantially from conventional white-hat practice.
The debate highlights an increasingly difficult distinction in crypto security incidents: whether an actor who exploits a vulnerability, takes control of funds and later offers to return them after remediation should be treated as a security researcher or an attacker demanding conditions for restitution.
Liquid remains frozen
Liquid has kept its bridge infrastructure offline while federation members work on the vulnerability. Exchanges have also suspended, or prepared to suspend, L-BTC deposits and withdrawals.
Other assets issued on Liquid, including USDT, DePix and tokenized real-world assets, were reported to be unaffected by the incident. However, the network-wide pause has disrupted services that depend on Liquid’s ability to move assets between the sidechain and Bitcoin.
Liquid is a federated Bitcoin sidechain developed with Blockstream that is designed to enable faster, more confidential transactions and support the issuance of digital assets. BTC is locked on Bitcoin’s mainnet and represented as L-BTC on Liquid, with federation members responsible for managing the bridge between the two networks.
That architecture means the incident raises a broader question about where security risks sit in sidechain systems. In this case, the federation’s keys appear to have remained secure, yet a flaw in the software governing transaction validation was enough to put a substantial portion of the underlying reserves at risk.
For Liquid, the immediate priorities are clear: fully patch the vulnerability, update every affected node, determine whether the withdrawn bitcoin will be returned and establish that the bridge can safely reopen.
As of September 7, the funds remained outside the federation’s control, while Liquid itself remained paused. The incident is still developing, and the full technical explanation of how approximately 4,000 BTC was able to leave the reserve wallet has yet to be made public.
A Sept. 2, 2026 analysis by New York Fed researchers shows how a few large reserve portfolios can lower the global dollar share without a broad retreat from dollars. For investors assessing future sovereign demand for Bitcoin, the distinction is between a changing average and an investment decision.
Linda S. Goldberg, Oliver Hannaoui and Sneha Parthasarathy report that the dollar share of global official foreign-exchange reserves fell from 64% at year-end 2015 to 56% at year-end 2025, using IMF COFER data.
Their country-level evidence points to concentrated decisions and changes in reserve sizes.
Countries can change the currency mix of their portfolios, the “preferences” channel. Alternatively, their total reserves can grow or shrink, changing their weight in the global average.
When a country with a below-average dollar allocation accumulates reserves, it can pull down the worldwide dollar share without cutting its own allocation. Switzerland did that between 2015 and 2019: its reserve growth pushed the aggregate share down even as its own dollar allocation rose.
For that period, 76 countries had complete endpoint data within a 79-country exercise. Their preferences and reserve-size contributions declined by 1.2 and 1.5 percentage points, respectively.
For 2019-2023, the 62 countries with complete data contributed a positive 0.3 percentage point through preferences and a negative 0.5 percentage point through reserve-size changes.
China, Russia, Mexico and Morocco lacked 2023 dollar-allocation data. Under assumptions matching the observed 2.3-percentage-point global decline, the researchers inferred a combined negative 2.0-percentage-point preferences contribution for that group.
A Bitcoin allocation needs its own evidence
The underlying Staff Report 1087, issued in March 2024 and revised in February 2026, separates reserves needed for liquidity from an investment portion above those needs. Trade payments, foreign-currency debt, and currency stabilization sustain the need for liquid reserves.
The paper models that investment portion using short-term external debt or three months of imports as alternative measures of liquidity needs.
Diversification is more prevalent when reserves can satisfy those needs. Its earlier decomposition covers 2015-2020, while its broader country panel spans 1999–2023.
The distinction also applies when a central bank actually buys Bitcoin. On Nov. 13, 2025, the Czech National Bank announced a $1 million digital-asset test portfolio including Bitcoin, with a dollar stablecoin and tokenized deposit also part of the project.
The amount covered the whole portfolio, and the purchase was explicitly outside international reserves.
Applied to Bitcoin, the reserve research supports a limited inference: diversification beyond liquidity needs does not identify the money’s destination. Neither New York Fed source measures sovereign Bitcoin purchases or estimates a Bitcoin price effect.
A sovereign Bitcoin demand case needs separate evidence: a disclosed allocation, its funding source, and executed purchases, with official reserves distinguished from holdings outside them. A shrinking dollar share supplies none of those details.
In brief
Coldcard ‘Wave 3’ exploiter continues to move funds
In wave 3, the exploiter created 293 2-of-2 multisig vaults for each victim’s coins.
The first movements on 9/2 sent coins over THORChain to Ethereum.
Tonight’s movements are going into coinjoins rounds. pic.twitter.com/H7HIpcI7ah
— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) September 7, 2026
BitcoinBTC · USD
$79,396−0.73%
11:15 AM05:15 PM11:15 PM05:00 AM11:00 AM
$80.4k$80.0k$79.7k$79.3k
24h HighHigh$80,494
24h LowLow$79,081
VolVol$827.6M
Market projectionsOdds by Myriad
A flaw shipped in 2021
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The Liquid Network said Sunday that purported white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 bitcoin, worth about $320 million, from the federation wallet that backs L-BTC. Bridge nodes were disabled, and the sidechain was paused. Other issued assets, including USDT, DePix and RWAs, were unaffected, the official account said on X.
The Liquid Network is a federated sidechain of Bitcoin, founded by Adam Back’s Blockstream. The Liquid chain issues a variety of assets such as LBTC, which it backs with BTC on the Bitcoin main chain, held in a large multisig of 15 corporate and known members. 11 of the 15 members need to sign a valid multi-signature transaction to move coins from the treasury. Before the hack, the treasury held over 4200 BTC; after the hack, Blockstream’s proof of reserves page reports a little over 207 BTC left.
The hackers withdrew 4,019.4 BTC from the reserve address in a peg-out transaction using the SideSwap Peg-out Authorization Key. SideWap is a bridge exchange and a member of the Liquid Federation. While details on the mechanism of the hack are not confirmed yet, it appears an inflation bug on the LBTC side chain was exploited by the hackers to create over 4,000 LBTC that did not exist before, and cash them out for on-chain bitcoin from the federation. Because the transaction appeared as valid, given the consensus bug, the federation members’ HSM security servers signed the BTC withdrawal transaction, worth roughly 320 million at the time.
The hacker moved the funds to an address ending in 6gyqjlte, from which they quickly signed a new transaction with a message on the OP_RETURN arbitrary data field saying “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.” Those coins were still at that address at the time of writing.
A small mainnet transaction to the hacker address followed by an OP_RETURN saying “Please contact [email protected]”, presumably from a Blockstream public address, though that remains unconfirmed. A later OP_RETURN spend from the hacker address carried “Please contact us on Signal @m671aw.70”, however, this may be spam and does not share a link to the address with the stolen funds.
In response to the breach, exchanges were told to pause L-BTC deposits and withdrawals. Bridge nodes on the Liquid Network have been paused, limiting access to the side chain, which continues to produce blocks.
JAN3 CEO Samson Mow said Aqua’s Liquid features were affected and that on-chain bitcoin still worked. Other wallets in the industry that use the Liquid Network are expected to be affected. Users holding LBTC now effectively have their savings at risk, since the underlying BTC is currently not redeemable. Given the private nature of the Liquid chain, user onchain analytics are scarce and not much public information is known about how much LBTC is held by retail users versus corporations of Blockstream itself. Nevertheless, should the funds not be returned, it would be a heavy blow to the Liquid Network’s user base.
Users of LBTC don’t have many options but to wait for conversations with the hackers to resolve. Given the size of the hack, it would be difficult for the hackers to get away with stealing all that bitcoin, though perhaps not impossible. What may happen is that the hackers ask for a finder’s fee and return the majority of the funds.
US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have recorded their strongest three-week inflow stretch of 2026 as Bitcoin traded around $80,000.
The funds attracted $986.9 million in the week ending Friday, bringing net inflows over the past three weeks to $3.8 billion, according to SoSoValue data.
Total net assets across the funds stood at $101.3 billion on Friday after briefly rising to $103.3 billion a day earlier, while cumulative net inflows reached $55.6 billion.
ETF demand marks a sharp turnaround from heavy outflows earlier in 2026, though year-to-date net flows remain roughly $1 billion negative.
Bitcoin ETF inflows cool after Thursday surge
US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $174.6 million in net inflows on Friday, down sharply from the nearly $731 million recorded a day earlier.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), the largest spot Bitcoin ETF by assets, drew $117.4 million on Friday, accounting for about 67% of the day’s total net inflows, according to Farside Investors data.
Daily spot Bitcoin ETF flows from Monday through Friday. Source: SoSoValue
Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) was the only other fund to record net inflows, attracting $57.2 million, while all other US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded no net flows for the day.
Related: Surprise nonfarm payrolls print sends Bitcoin back below 80K
The slowdown came as Bitcoin fell from around $81,200 to briefly below $79,000 on Friday. Bitcoin traded at $79,716 at the time of publication, still up about 2.6% over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko.
Bitcoin ETF demand strengthens as Ether, XRP flows fade
Compared with the previous week, Bitcoin ETF inflows increased about 7%, while inflows into US spot Ether and XRP ETFs fell about 74% and 83%, respectively.
Spot Ether ETF inflows dropped to $218.4 million from $824.4 million, while XRP ETF inflows declined to $19 million from $110.5 million, according to SoSoValue.
Despite weaker inflows, Ether and XRP ETFs remain in positive territory for the year. US spot Ether ETFs have recorded about $863 million in net inflows year-to-date, while XRP ETFs have attracted roughly $515 million.
Magazine: BTC will hit $1M by 2030… but Arthur Hayes is buying ETH instead
In brief
BitcoinBTC · USD
$79,962+0.53%
04:15 AM10:15 AM04:15 PM10:00 PM04:00 AM
$80.1k$79.9k$79.7k$79.5k
24h HighHigh$80,147
24h LowLow$79,459
VolVol$732.1M
Market projectionsOdds by Myriad
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
