GSR Weekly - September 28, 2026

Overview

• BTC slipped ~3% to $84k after opening the week at an eight-month high, with ETH ~2% lower, alts ~3% higher, and gold down ~6% after falling 3% today to its lowest since early August.
• ETF flows swung from -$0.4B to +$3.4B, the largest weekly inflow of 2026, while stablecoin issuance jumped from +$0.1B to +$2.8B, and funding fell from +7.5% to +2.4% annualized.
• Odds of another hike at the October 27-28 FOMC rose from 58% to 70% on CME FedWatch over the week, with the dollar index at an eight-week high and Brent near $108 on the Strait of Hormuz standoff.
• All eyes are on Wednesday's August PCE and quarter-end, Friday's September jobs report, and DoubleZero's $114M unlock on Friday, equal to 48% of circulating supply.

The Week in Review

This week’s rally faded from Tuesday's high as odds of another hike at the October 27-28 meeting climbed from 58% to 70% on CME FedWatch through a week of hawkish Fed commentary, with the dollar index reaching an eight-week high and BTC sitting ~5% below its Wednesday peak at Thursday's low of $82,557. Spot ETF demand held through the pullback, with $999M of inflows into Bitcoin funds on Monday and $2.4B over the week. Alts decoupled from Thursday, rallying ~10% to Sunday's high as QNT (+240%) and NEAR (+22%) squeezed while BTC sat flat. Today brought the week's sharpest move, as gold fell 3% to $4,156, its lowest since August 5, after Brent climbed toward $108 on Tehran's refusal to soften its demands for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and BTC fell 2.7% to $82,780 with roughly $500M liquidated market-wide. BTC finished down ~3% at $84k, ETH ~2% lower, alts up ~3%, gold down ~6%, and the S&P ~1% lower.

Market Pulse

ETF flows swung from -$0.4B to +$3.4B, the largest weekly inflow in 2026, and stablecoin issuance jumped from +$0.1B to +$2.8B, both near one-year highs. Funding fell from +7.5% to +2.4% annualized, back to neutral, and open interest ticked down from 2.7% to 2.6% of total market cap, with onchain yield consistent at 3.6%. Altcoin performance held at 54 of the top 100 beating Bitcoin, down 2 from the week prior. External flows arrived in size while funding and open interest came down.

Chart of the Week: Perps Market Shows Signs of Recovery

Crypto perpetual open interest reached an 11-month high near $155B this week per Coinglass, up from a low near $90B in February and the highest since the weeks following October 10 last year, when a $19B liquidation cascade cut open interest from roughly $220B to $150B in a single session. Despite the rise in OI, the market is not yet close to the levels of leverage seen around October 10 of last year, relative to the aggregate market cap of crypto assets. Our Market Pulse OI gauge, which weighs futures against total market cap, actually fell from 2.7% to 2.6% this week, well below the top of a one-year range that includes the run-up to 10/10. Positioning also looks less one-sided, with funding falling from +7.5% to +2.4% annualized even as dollar open interest rose against last October, when $16.7B of the $19.1B liquidated was longs. Our measures show that leverage relative to market size sits in the middle of its one-year range. 

 

Sector Breakdown

Eight of 15 sectors closed green this week, with most of the gains concentrated in a single name. Infra (+38.6%) and RWA (+18.9%) both rode QNT (+240%) after The Clearing House said on Wednesday it had chosen Quant to power its On-Chain Money Initiative, a tokenized deposit clearing and settlement network. Social (+12.0%) rose on PUMP (+15%), and AI (+8.7%) and DePIN (+8.7%) extended on NEAR (+22%) and GRASS (+59%), leaving AI up +103% on the month.

Perps (-6.8%) and DEX (-4.1%) fell with HYPE (-8%), CEX (-3.8%) followed BNB (-5%), and L1 (-2.8%) tracked BTC (-3%). L2 (-2.8%) gave back part of ARB's run as the token fell 16%, and Privacy (-2.4%) slipped on XMR (-8%) while ZEC held above $1,500, leaving the sector up +67% on the month. XPL fell 5% through Friday's token unlock, after a team and investors cliff increased circulating supply by 63%. 

Data appendix. Each Market Pulse tile shows where a gauge sits in its own trailing one-year range: the bar runs from the year's low to its high, the dark marker is this week's reading, and the colored span behind it is the week's move, green when the gauge climbed its range and red when it fell. Tags mark position in that range: HIGH above the 65th percentile, LOW below the 35th, NEUTRAL between, with the tag's color carrying the read. Funding is BTC perpetual funding, OI-weighted across major venues and annualized; onchain yield is Aave v3's USDC market on Ethereum; stablecoin flows is the 7-day net change in supply of all USD-pegged stablecoins across all chains per DeFiLlama; open interest sums futures in the twelve largest futures assets (roughly 95% of all crypto futures OI) against total crypto market cap; ETF flows combines US spot Bitcoin and Ethereum funds on a rolling 7 days; and altcoins is the share of the top 100, excluding stablecoins and wrappers, beating BTC over 7 days. Sector returns are cap-weighted CoinGecko categories, top ten constituents each. Sources: GSR Research, Glassnode, Deribit, CoinGecko, DeFiLlama, FRED, Tokenomist.

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