Summary
ETF buyers are back, and fundamentals are leading. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $2.39 billion last week, their strongest week since October 2025, with ether and Solana ETFs adding $690 million and $188 million. Bitcoin still trades 61% below its long-term trend line, the widest gap since 2015.
Regulation is not impacting the market. CLARITY stalled in the Senate on September 15, and digital assets rallied anyway. Two days later the SEC issued the Innovation Exemption for tokenized stocks, and Reg CA, the first U.S. framework built for token offerings, closes comments October 20.
Latest on Tokenization and Prediction Markets. Pantera’s State of Tokenization Report (published Sept 28) tracks 671 assets worth more than $330 billion and finds freely transferable assets process 99.8% of spot trading. Ondo put BlackRock model portfolios onchain, and Novig cleared $1.1 billion in six weeks as the fight over who regulates event contracts heads toward the Supreme Court.
Crypto spent most of 2026 as the asset class everyone wrote off. Last week, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $2.39 billion, their strongest week since October 2025. Money came in all five trading days, and year-to-date flows are positive again.
The bid was broad with Ethereum ETFs adding $690 million and Solana ETFs adding $188 million the same week. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have taken in about $4.6 billion since mid-August, and bitcoin is back above the average ETF buyer’s cost basis of roughly $82,000.
Fundamentals look even better. Through late September, the S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index is up 3.2% year-to-date, while bitcoin is down 4.5%. Revenue-backed tokens fell less in the selloff and led the recovery.
Index returns shown do not represent the results of actual trading of investable assets/securities. S&P Dow Jones Indices maintains the index and calculates the index levels and performance shown or discussed but does not manage actual assets. Index returns do not reflect payment of any sales charges or fees an investor may pay to purchase the assets underlying the Index or investment funds that are intended to track the performance of the Index. The index’s launch date was July 20, 2026. Please see additional disclosures at the end of this report relating to hypothetical index performance.
Bitcoin trades 61% below its long-term trend line, the widest gap since November 2015. If the four-year cycle holds, I believe we can see a rally to start late this year.
Regulation: The Parallel Track Is Now the Main Track
On September 15, the Senate voted not to advance the CLARITY Act. Prediction markets had already priced it in, with odds of passage this year in the single digits. What many didn’t expect is that digital assets rallied anyway.
As Dan said on CNBC, “blockchain has already created close to $3 trillion of value without Congress.” We’d have welcomed CLARITY, but the industry doesn’t need it to keep building. Last year’s stablecoin bill mattered, and the SEC and CFTC are now writing most of what the market-structure bill would have covered.
The Innovation Exemption. Two days after the vote, the SEC issued a five-year order letting qualified venues trade tokenized versions of U.S. listed stocks through permissioned liquidity pools. Holders keep shareholder rights, including dividends and voting, issuers can object, and volume is capped at launch. Chairman Atkins called it a bridge to “durable rulemaking.”
Regulation Crypto Assets (Reg CA). That rulemaking arrived in August, and comments close October 20. It’s the first framework under U.S. securities law built for token offerings. It separates the investment contract from the token, so the contract can end while the asset keeps trading. Issuers can raise up to $75 million in twelve months with token-specific disclosure instead of IPO paperwork, and Form TR gives them an explicit exit once managerial efforts are complete.
For a decade, raising in the U.S. meant Reg D or Reg S: accredited U.S. investors or offshore. Reg CA is the first serious attempt to open the door to domestic capital.
The midterms will decide whether CLARITY comes back. Until then, builders who wait for Congress will watch builders using Reg CA and the Innovation Exemption take the market.
Pantera Tokenization Report - September Edition
The Pantera Research Team published our latest State of Tokenization Report. We track 671 tokenized assets worth more than $330 billion, with an updated Tokenization Progress Index scoring each on issuance and redemption, transferability, and composability. In this edition, the team outlines new onchain trading and ownership data showing where liquidity, volume, and participation actually sit.
The clearest finding is that native assets win. Among tokenized assets above $10 million, freely transferable ones hold 41% of value but process 99.8% of spot trading. Meanwhile, equity demand is arriving through derivatives: June equity perp volume hit $67.8 billion, roughly 16 times the $4.2 billion in tokenized-equity spot volume. On Robinhood Chain, weekly RWA trading climbed from $5 million to $887.5 million by late August. We are seeing progress since our last Tokenization Report this year; the industry is moving from putting assets onchain to building new markets around them.
New Products
Ondo brings BlackRock portfolios onchain. In September, Ondo launched three tokenized portfolios developed by BlackRock model strategies: High Income, Diversified Growth, and High Growth. Each is a single token holding a weighted basket of tokenized assets, with holdings and rebalancing visible onchain and full portability across wallets, exchanges, and DeFi. Most tokenized products are single funds; these put a whole portfolio in one token, available to eligible investors outside the U.S.
Prediction Markets: Novig scales fast. Novig launched nationwide on August 4 and passed $2 billion in under 2 month, with NFL opening week alone bringing in $317 million, up 33% from the week before. The Third and Ninth Circuits split on whether the CFTC or the states regulate sports event contracts, and the question is likely headed to the Supreme Court. The answer decides who regulates new financial products, not just prediction markets. Our Research Director Danning Sui visualizes the growth:
What I’m Watching
October 20. Reg CA comments close. If the startup exemption and exit rule are usable, teams raising offshore get a U.S. path. If not, it’s another framework only incumbents can use.
The Supreme Court. A CFTC win nationalizes event contracts. States win fragments. Either way, licensed venues with real users and trading come out ahead.
November. CLARITY runs through the midterms. If you’re a builder, use The Innovation Exemption that were published on September 17, 2026.
Business
Bitcoin ETFs Post Their Best Week Since October 2025
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $2.39 billion last week, the strongest stretch since October 2025 and above the previous 2026 high set in August. The run pushed year-to-date flows to roughly $926 million, recovering from a deficit near $5.55 billion in early July. Regulated demand is back, and it is buying through the noise.
Goldman Sachs Puts Its $100 Billion Treasury Fund on Crypto Rails
Goldman made its roughly $100 billion FTIXX Treasury fund available to institutional crypto firms through Lynq, a settlement network on a private, permissioned Avalanche Layer 1, without tokenizing the fund itself. More than 30 institutional firms are onboarded. Wall Street is plugging its biggest products into blockchain workflows instead of rebuilding them.
Visa’s Stablecoin Settlement Tops $20 Billion
Visa’s stablecoin settlement volume passed a $20 billion annualized run rate, more than 15 times the level a year earlier, and payment volume on its stablecoin-linked card programs grew nearly 200%. Visa is also funding daily settlement through a stablecoin-denominated revolving credit facility built with Credit Coop. Stablecoins are becoming part of the card network’s plumbing.
Regulation
Senate Blocks the CLARITY Act, Markets Shrug It Off
The Senate’s procedural vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act failed 49 to 50, well short of the 60 needed to advance, and with Congress recessing ahead of the midterms, the bill is effectively shelved.
SEC Issues the Innovation Exemption for Tokenized Stocks
On September 17, the SEC granted temporary, conditional relief letting certain automated market makers and liquidity pools trade tokenized U.S.-listed stocks on a permissioned basis, with both exemptions running through September 17, 2031.
Reg CA Comments Close October 20
Regulation Crypto Assets proposes two registration exemptions: offerings up to $5 million over four years, and up to $75 million in each 12-month period, plus a conditional safe harbor from the term “investment contract.” The release includes more than 150 discrete requests for comment, and final rules are not expected before the first quarter of 2027.
New Products & Deals
Ondo Launches Intelligent Portfolios Powered by BlackRock Ondo’s first three portfolio tokens are High Income (BLKHIon), Diversified Growth (BLKDIGon), and High Growth (BLKGRWon), each built on strategies BlackRock designed for Ondo, with rebalancing that can run automatically through smart contracts.
Novig Tops $1.1 Billion in Six Weeks
Novig generated $317.1 million in volume from September 10 to 16, up 32.7% week over week, and passed $1.1 billion in cumulative volume within roughly six weeks of its nationwide launch.
Stock Tokens Take Over Robinhood Chain’s RWA Volume
Daily RWA trading on Robinhood Chain hit a record $85.1 million on August 25, with stock tokens accounting for $66 million. Memecoin-stock pairs fell to 12% of RWA volume in August while stand-alone stock token trading rose to 78%. Users are starting to treat tokenized stocks as investments, not novelties.
Pantera News
State of Tokenization: September 2026
Our latest report analyzes a roughly $332 billion tokenization market across 671 assets, and finds that issuing tokens has become straightforward while compliant, liquid secondary markets are now the frontier. J.P. Morgan, HSBC, and Fidelity launched onchain products this quarter, and BlackRock’s BUIDL saw $441 million in onchain transfers in June and is now accepted as collateral. Open assets are winning the liquidity battle.
Dan Morehead on CNBC: Macro and CLARITY Act
On Squawk Box after the Senate vote, Dan said “The industry doesn’t need Congress,” arguing the SEC and CFTC are enacting what CLARITY would have covered anyway, and that investors stay bullish on bitcoin because the Fed remains behind on inflation. The regulatory calendar and the market calendar have separated.
Inside the S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index
Cathy Clay, CEO of S&P Dow Jones Indices, joined Dan, Cosmo Jiang, and S&P’s Michael Orzano on September 22 to walk through the index the two firms built. Its constituents generated over $3 billion of annualized revenue in the trailing two quarters, from Hyperliquid to Solana to Aave. Revenue is becoming the benchmark institutions use to underwrite digital assets.
Let’s Meet Up
Austin, October 9
Los Angeles, October 23
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The shift from putting assets onchain to actually building better markets around them feels like the more important evolution. Liquidity, transferability, and composability are increasingly becoming the real differentiators in the tokenization thesis.
Curious, Paul - what do you think is the biggest bottleneck to this next phase: liquidity, distribution, or the infrastructure needed to make these markets truly interoperable?