Bitcoin Gives Back Its Overnight Gain As Brent Tops $100

Crypto's overnight advance did not survive the U.S. open on Wednesday. Bitcoin carried a gain out of the Asian and European sessions, gave all of it back in the first hours of New York trading, and by midday sat within $60 of where it closed on Tuesday.

The tape is waiting on two federal price releases. August producer prices publish Thursday and consumer prices Friday, both at 8:30 a.m. ET, and they are the last scheduled inputs before a Federal Open Market Committee meeting at which prediction-market traders now favor a rate increase. Zcash is trading on its own news, after Digital Currency Group put $100 million into Grayscale's listed fund on Tuesday.

Bitcoin last changed hands at $78,591.04, down 0.1% over 24 hours and up 2.4% over seven days, after trading between $78,308.42 and $79,701.36, CoinGecko data shows. Ether was at $2,497.54, down 0.2% on the day and up 4.1% on the week, on a range of $2,472.65 to $2,521.51.

XRP fell 1.2%, Solana fell 1.3%, BNB fell 2.1% and holds a 7.8% weekly advance.

Total crypto market value stood at $2.79 trillion, up 0.04% over 24 hours, on $87.67 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 56.5%. Thirty of the 123 largest non-stablecoin tokens rose and 93 fell.

"Spot has traded in very tight ranges to start this week, with the market largely in a cautionary mode ahead of the inflation data on Thursday and Friday," the derivatives trading desk of Laser Digital wrote in commentary emailed to reporters on Wednesday. "BTC is back around the high of $70K area, while ETH is holding around the mid-$2,000 area." The firm asks that the commentary be attributed to the desk rather than to an individual.

Sold At The Open

Bitcoin's 24-hour high of $79,701.36 came in the overnight window, above the $79,432.20 it reached on Tuesday. The low of $78,308.42 came after the U.S. open.

It is 37.7% below the $126,080 record it set on Oct. 6, 2025.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 66 on Wednesday, down from 69 on Tuesday and 74 on Sept. 4, according to Alternative.me. It has read above 60 every day since Aug. 29.

DeFi total value locked was $87.82 billion, down 0.17% over 24 hours, DefiLlama data shows. Stablecoin supply was $305.17 billion, up 0.54% over seven days and 1.55% over 30 days.

DCG Swaps Zcash For Shares

Zcash traded at $1,284.42, up 7.2% over 24 hours, 56.3% over seven days and 152.3% over 30 days, on $1.73 billion of volume against a $21.74 billion market value. It is the tenth-largest token and the only one of the 20 biggest higher by more than 2% on the day.

The fund disclosed the buyer behind part of that move. In an 8-K filed Tuesday, the Zcash ETF reported under Item 8.01 that "DCG acquired shares of the Trust having an aggregate value of approximately $100 million through an Authorized Participant, or its AP Designee, in exchange for 85,705.32563297 ZEC tokens."

The accompanying press release says the fund's assets under management have "grown to more than $500 million" two weeks after its Aug. 25 listing on NYSE Arca, with "cumulative inflows of more than $70 million in the two weeks since launching as an ETP." It describes the buyer as DCG International Investments Ltd. and states that ZCSH "is the only ETP in the world that allows investors to access ZEC exposure."

The exhibit also confirms the "launch of ZCSH options trading on NYSE Arca earlier today." The Defiant reported on Tuesday that Grayscale had announced the options listing without naming the venue, and that no corroborating exchange notice or SEC filing was retrievable at the time. Tuesday's 8-K is that document.

The swap is an in-kind creation rather than an open-market purchase: DCG handed over tokens it already held and received fund shares. DCG said in an amended filing last month that it was in non-binding talks to acquire about 200,000 ZEC. The Defiant covered Grayscale's original conversion filing in November 2025 and the Winklevoss disclosure of Cypherpunk Technologies' Zcash treasury.

A Hike Takes The Lead

Polymarket put a quarter-point increase at the Sept. 15-16 meeting at 55% and no change at 45%, on $106.5 million of volume. A quarter-point cut and a half-point increase each trade at 1% or below. The same contracts read 53% and 47% at midday, 54.5% and 45.5% at Tuesday's close, and 30.5% and 67.5% on Aug. 24.

"September appears balanced, and with Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh making clear that he is not particularly concerned about the labour market, inflation is likely to decide the meeting," the Laser Digital desk wrote. "The FOMC comes before the next PCE release, leaving PPI and CPI as the key remaining inputs."

The desk said the order of this week's releases matters. "What could make this week interesting is the PPI coming before CPI," it wrote. "Normally the market tends to look through PPI because it prints after CPI and adds relatively little new information, but this time it should carry more weight as the first read on inflation ahead of the meeting."

Options positioning has not followed spot lower, according to the same note. "Front-end risk reversals have also repriced meaningfully in favour of calls, with the move appearing at least partly flow-driven," the desk wrote.

Brent Clears The Hundred

Brent crude traded at $100.74 a barrel at 7:31 a.m. ET, up 2.88% from Tuesday's settlement of $97.92, on a range of $98.83 to $100.96. It last settled above $100 on July 23, and settled at $99.31 on Tuesday, its highest close since that date.

Gold futures were at $4,471.40, up 0.73%, in morning trading. S&P 500 futures were down 0.3% at 7,657.75 shortly after the open.

The 10-year Treasury par yield closed Tuesday at 4.80% and the 30-year at 5.25%, against 4.78% and 5.24% on Sept. 4, according to Treasury data. U.S. equities closed lower Tuesday, with the S&P 500 down 0.58% at 7,673.52 and the Nasdaq Composite down 0.32% at 26,421.41.

ETFs Break The Streak

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $46.6 million of net outflows on Tuesday, their first negative session since Sept. 1, according to Farside Investors. The three sessions before it took in $1.01 billion combined, including $730.8 million on Sept. 3. Farside's ether table shows no net flow recorded for Tuesday, after $25.9 million of inflows on Sept. 4. Wednesday's rows publish after the U.S. close.

Monday was the Labor Day holiday and produced no ETF row.

Raydium Takes The Morning

Raydium led without a dated announcement, trading between $1.12 and $1.47 on $179.4 million of volume against a $357.6 million market value. The Solana automated market maker settled $321.5 million of DEX volume over 24 hours against $1.13 billion of total value locked, and collected $1.61 million in fees and $296,349 in revenue, DefiLlama data shows. That places it second on Solana behind Pump's $737.1 million, on a chain that settled $2.52 billion of DEX volume, according to DefiLlama. Raydium's site carries no announcement banner.

Venice Token set a record $29.19 around 3:45 a.m. ET and gave back most of the move, ending the morning up 2.3% on $218.8 million of volume. The most recent post on the Venice blog is dated July 1 and covers a $65 million Series A. The tokenomics update carried on the same page sets emission cuts for Sept. 1 and Oct. 1 and a DIEM supply target for Sept. 14, dates fixed five weeks ago.

NEAR holds a 40.8% weekly gain on $620 million of volume against a $3.40 billion market value. The project's blog loads its posts dynamically and no dated September announcement was retrievable.

Cosmos Hub and Tezos continue the rotation into pre-2018 layer-1 tokens that The Defiant covered on Tuesday, when Polkadot, Cosmos Hub, Decred and Ethereum Classic all rose more than 8% without a shared catalyst. Polkadot and Ethereum Classic have each given back about 5% on Wednesday.

Akedo Gives It Back

Akedo fell hardest among the 150 biggest tokens for a second consecutive session, trading between $0.01418 and $0.02136, and still holds a 76.5% weekly gain. It ended Tuesday 8.6% lower after trading 21% higher at midday.

Arbitrum and Worldcoin both gave back roughly a tenth while holding weekly gains above 20%. Injective gave back part of the run that followed its Kraken and Robinhood listings on Monday and Tuesday. Aerodrome fell 7.6% on the day the deepest pool for Hunter Biden's LAPTOP token, which opened on Base late Tuesday, sat on Aerodrome Slipstream.

Laptop Skews The Board

CoinGecko's 24-hour losers list is topped by Hunter Biden's LAPTOP at minus 98.8%, ahead of every other token on the site. The figure is measured from the $199.51 print in the token's oldest Base pool at launch late Tuesday. On the Aerodrome pool holding the most liquidity, the same 24 hours reads as a gain. The token entered the top 100 by market value on its first day of trading. The Defiant covered the launch and is reporting the pool-by-pool numbers separately.

Prices and market data as of 12:45 p.m. ET on Sept. 9, 2026.