Bitcoin whipsaws as geopolitics and the Fed pull markets in opposite directions
Crypto had another volatile week ending 4 September. Bitcoin began the week around $78,000 but fell below $76,500 as renewed US strikes on Iran sent oil prices sharply higher and investors moved away from risk assets. Sentiment then reversed after Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller indicated he could support keeping rates unchanged if inflation continued to cool. Bitcoin rebounded above $81,000, although a much stronger-than-expected US jobs report on Friday briefly knocked it back below $80,000. Despite all the drama, Bitcoin was only around 1% higher over seven days, while Ether and XRP were roughly flat.
Institutional money comes flooding back into Bitcoin
One of the clearest bullish signals came from the ETF market. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $730.9 million of net inflows on Thursday alone, their largest single-day haul since January, with approximately $454 million going into BlackRock's IBIT. August as a whole had already been the ETFs' strongest month since September 2025, attracting around $3.5 billion. Elsewhere, traditional finance continued moving onto blockchain rails: the London Stock Exchange announced plans to work with Kraken parent Payward to bring major UK shares on-chain, while Standard Chartered launched institutional spot Bitcoin and Ether trading through its UAE operation.
Banks make a coordinated push into stablecoins and tokenisation
Perhaps the week's most important longer-term development came from traditional banking. A group of major global banks and asset managers, including Citi and Goldman Sachs, joined forces on a stablecoin initiative, illustrating how quickly tokenised money is moving from a crypto-industry experiment towards mainstream financial infrastructure. Singapore, meanwhile, proposed particularly strict stablecoin rules requiring 100% reserves and prohibiting issuers from paying yields. Tokenisation also accelerated: NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange invested in tZERO, while South Korea advanced plans for a fully fledged tokenised-securities market. Taken together, the developments suggest the next phase of crypto adoption may increasingly be driven by banks, exchanges and regulated tokenised assets rather than cryptocurrencies alone.