BITCOIN BOX SCORE

Exchange Rate: $79,790
Market Capitalization: $1.60T
Hash Rate (90 days): 911.7EH/s
Transactions (30 days): 20,052,882
Network Fees (economy): 1 sat/vB
Bitcoin Dominance: 59.78%

What do these numbers mean?

On this Labor Day weekend, we thought a quick audit of who actually worked this week was in order.

First, we find that the Fed worked against itself. Chair Kevin Warsh, fresh off taking responsibility at Jackson Hole for "65 months of sustained, elevated inflation," watched the 10-year yield close Thursday at 4.77%, near a three-year high. Vice President Vance said it "would be nice to have some help from the Federal Reserve." Governor Christopher Waller asked markets to "give disinflation a chance," and September hike odds fell to a coin flip.

Then Friday's jobs report came in at 162,000, triple the forecasted number, and the President posted: "LOWER THE RATE OR I'LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT."

Meanwhile, Brussels decided the savings of Europeans aren't working hard enough (surpise, not surprised). Ursula von der Leyen called the €10 trillion sitting in bank accounts “idle” and wants to “put these savings to work for its companies.” Marty Bent had a great response: “Savings are stored labor. They are the product of time, restraint, and consumption deferred. Calling them idle is… a moral inversion.” His conclusion: “This is why bitcoin exists.”

What did the only free market monetary network do? Bitcoin's miners produced roughly 1,000 blocks, on schedule, without a press conference, and bitcoin closed out its third-best August ever, up 25%.

Enjoy the long weekend. Bitcoin isn't taking one!

NEWS

Britain's biggest broker caves: Hargreaves Lansdown opens bitcoin to two million clients

Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest retail investment platform with roughly £172 billion in client assets, began offering bitcoin exchange-traded notes on Thursday, listing six physically backed bitcoin ETNs (plus three for ether) from BlackRock’s iShares, WisdomTree, 21Shares, Invesco, CoinShares and Bitwise. Under FCA rules, clients must pass an appropriateness test and wait out a 24-hour cooling-off period before their first trade. HL was the last major UK platform to hold out after the FCA lifted its four-year retail ban last October, when the firm was still telling clients that bitcoin "is not an asset class."

The last holdout

11 months ago, HL wrote a case against bitcoin; this week it started earning a fee on every purchase. Roughly a third of Britain’s self-directed investors just got one-click access to it inside their pensions.

Remixpoint sells every altcoin and keeps 1,506 bitcoins

Tokyo-listed Remixpoint sold its entire altcoin portfolio on September 1, consisting of 901 ETH, 13,920 SOL, 1.19 million XRP and 2.8 million DOGE, for ¥878.8 million (about $5.5 million) and a ¥117.8 million gain over book value, the DOGE being the only loser. The energy-and-digital-assets company said the move would “clarify its investment strategy and improve capital efficiency,” leaving roughly 1,506 bitcoins, worth about $115 million, as its sole holding.

Marie Kondo, but for balance sheets

A public company looked at four of the most popular tokens in the world and decided none of them sparked joy like bitcoin. Expect more tidying up as information asymmetry about bitcoin continues to smooth out.

The sheriffs stand down: law enforcement drops its CLARITY Act opposition

The National Sheriffs’ Association, which in May warned that the CLARITY Act’s Section 604 would hand mixers and DeFi platforms “a blanket exemption” from anti-money-laundering rules, shifted its position to neutral, writing that “the most appropriate course is to step back and allow the legislative process to proceed to establish a clear, effective, and much-needed regulatory framework.” 

House Financial Services Chair French Hill said the Senate will take up the bill on September 15, with the ethics provision the “one remaining significant issue,” while House Majority Whip Tom Emmer noted the House passed it a year ago and it “still sits in the Senate without action.” SEC Chair Paul Atkins said this week he “anticipate[s] and hope[s] that it will be passed by the Senate, and sent ultimately to the president’s desk for signature.”

One fewer reason to say no

Market-structure rules matter less to bitcoin than to everything else in the bill, but a settled framework is what many of the pension consultants and bank compliance desks have said they’re waiting on.

Standard Chartered becomes the first too-big-to-fail bank to offer spot bitcoin trading

Standard Chartered launched institutional spot bitcoin trading on Thursday through its Dubai International Financial Centre-regulated entity, calling itself the first Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB) to do so. Eligible institutional clients in the UAE can trade through the bank's existing electronic channels; the bank launched digital-asset custody in 2024 and signed an on- and off-ramp banking agreement with CoinMENA in June.

The G-SIBs are here

For a decade the too-big-to-fail banks explained why they couldn't touch bitcoin. Now one of them trades it on the same screens as dollars and euros, and its peers have a template they can use if they choose to follow suit.

BITCOIN ADOPTION CONTINUES

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $730.9 million on Thursday, their best day since January 14, with BlackRock’s IBIT absorbing $454 million and total ETF assets topping $103 billion.

IBIT has now returned 71% since its January 2024 launch versus 66% for Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF, per Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas, who compared its path to “the El Toro roller coaster at Great Adventure.”

Cornell University”s new Bitcoin Adoption Index, built on interviews with 25,880 people in 25 countries, found El Salvador, Venezuela and Nigeria lead the world in the share of people who have owned bitcoin.

Coinbase launched regulated bitcoin futures in Canada with up to 10x leverage for advisers, dealers and investors with at least $5 million in financial assets, a first for a major exchange in the country.

Lightning infrastructure provider Voltage reported 475% growth in payment volume over the past six months, with many business customers doubling volumes month over month.

Club Orange, a bitcoin-only social network with 20,000 members in 71 countries, launched in-app bitcoin purchases across 29 European countries through Bringin, with sats delivered straight to self-custody wallets.

HOW BITCOIN WORKS

Learn one key idea about bitcoin each week. This week:

The case for 10%

For half a century, the default portfolio was 60% stocks and 40% bonds, and it worked because bonds zigged when stocks zagged. Between 1980 to 2020, the two were negatively correlated; a bad year for one was cushioned by the other.

Since 2020, however, that relationship has flipped. In 2022, with inflation averaging 8%, stocks fell 19%, bonds fell almost as much, and a 60/40 portfolio lost more than a quarter of its purchasing power in a single year. The hedge stopped hedging.

That is the setup for River's new report, The Case for a 10% Bitcoin Allocation, published Wednesday. Its argument comes in three parts.

The floor. Bitcoin is about 0.5% of the world's financial assets, and “a truly neutral portfolio would simply hold the world's financial assets in proportion to their size.” Owning less than 0.5% is an active bet against bitcoin. Yet the median allocation among registered investment advisors is 0.10%, even though 29 of the 30 largest RIAs now own it. This is news you can use – RIAs are systematically under-allocating because they do not understand bitcoin as well as readers of this newsletter.

The math. Over the past decade, carving 10% out of the bond sleeve for bitcoin, rebalanced quarterly, “more than doubled the ending value of the portfolio ($60,595 versus $25,368) while the worst peak-to-trough loss grew by just six percentage points.” As River puts it, “At a 10% weight, bitcoin's volatility has been a manageable cost attached to a substantial benefit.”

The insurance. Bitcoin's supply is fixed at 21 million, and its price shows little medium- or long-term correlation with stocks or bonds. It is built for the scenario in which both fail together, which is exactly what we already saw in 2022 and will inevitably see again.

A 10% allocation is River’s base case, not what it recommends as the upper limit. The right number depends on your time horizon, your conviction, your cash cushion, and whether you already own hard assets. But the report’s main takeaway is simple: In the new era of finance, the riskiest allocation of all might be zero.

COIN CHECK

Since 2013, which calendar month has been bitcoin's weakest on average?

A. January
B. June
C. September
D. December

Check your answer at the end of the page.

FROM THE MEME POOL

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ANSWER

Answer: C. September. Since 2013, bitcoin has averaged a 2.97% decline in September, finishing red in eight of thirteen years. But, the curse may be lifting: the most recent three Septembers all closed green, including a 5.16% gain in 2025.

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