Brent Tops $106 And Hike Odds Reach 64% As Crypto Sells Off

Almost every large crypto token fell through the overnight sessions and into Thursday's U.S. open, as an oil shock drove long-dated Treasury yields to multi-year highs and traders raised the odds of a Federal Reserve rate increase next week to 64%.

Traders put a quarter-point September increase at 52.5% at 8 a.m. ET. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published August producer prices at 8:30 a.m. The same contract traded at 62.5% by 11 a.m. and 63.5% by early afternoon. Brent crude, up 11.7% in eight sessions, sits underneath both the inflation print and the yield move.

Bitcoin last changed hands at $77,120, down 2.1% over 24 hours and 5.1% over seven days, after trading between $76,748 and $78,774, CoinGecko data shows. Ether was at $2,448.88, down 1.9% on the day and 2.7% on the week. XRP fell 4.8% to $1.35; Solana declined 3.6% to $99.69; BNB dropped 4.4% to $708.37. Total crypto market value stood at $2.64 trillion on $94.2 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 58.5%.

Five Tankers And $106 Brent

Brent crude traded at $106.83 a barrel on Thursday afternoon, up 5.6% on the day and its highest level since May 19. The contract has risen 11.7% since Sept. 2, when it settled at $95.63.

U.S. Central Command said on Sept. 8 that its forces "destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers, Sept. 8, after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeted a U.S. Navy warship with ballistic missiles twice over the past two days," according to the command's public release. The release names the M/T Kaviz, M/T Charminar, M/T Horizon 1, M/T Riesco and M/T Derya. It places four of the strikes in the Gulf of Oman and one near Kharg Island, and says crews were directed to abandon ship before the vessels were hit. It does not mention the Strait of Hormuz. A Sept. 5 release describes three earlier tanker strikes.

The U.S. Maritime Administration published advisory 2026-011 on Sept. 9, stating that "Iran continues to threaten and conduct strikes on commercial vessels transiting the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz (SoH) and Gulf of Oman." The advisory replaced 2026-004, which expired the same day, so it is a scheduled six-month renewal rather than a response to this week's strikes.

The Energy Information Administration's Weekly Petroleum Status Report for the week ending Sept. 4 publishes at 12 p.m. ET Thursday, delayed from Wednesday by the Sept. 7 federal holiday, according to the agency. The most recent report, for the week ending Aug. 28, recorded commercial crude inventories down 4.5 million barrels to 424.5 million. It predates both sets of strikes.

Producer Prices Move The Curve

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that "the Producer Price Index for final demand moved up 0.4 percent in August, seasonally adjusted," against 0.1% in July and a 0.1% decline in June, in its Sept. 10 release. Final demand prices rose 5.4% over 12 months. Core prices, excluding foods, energy and trade services, rose 0.3% on the month and 4.7% over the year.

"The figures reinforced concerns that inflation remains persistent, particularly given the combination of elevated oil prices and a labour market that has proved to be more robust than anticipated," said Thadeu Dos Santos, regional director at brokerage Infinox, in commentary sent to The Defiant on Thursday morning.

Bond yields went with it. The 10-year Treasury yield reached 4.92% on Thursday, its highest since Oct. 25, 2023. The 30-year reached 5.34%, above every daily close of the past five years. Treasury's official daily curve put the 10-year at 4.83% and the 30-year at 5.28% at Wednesday's close, both the highest readings of the month.

Polymarket priced a quarter-point increase at the Sept. 15-16 FOMC meeting at 63.5% and no change at 36.5%, with a half-point or larger increase at 0.85% and a quarter-point cut at 0.35%, on $113 million of volume across the event. The quarter-point increase contract alone has traded $21.6 million. That contract was at 41.5% on Sept. 3 and first crossed 50% on Sept. 4. The Defiant reported on Aug. 31 that traders had made a September increase the favorite, when the same contract was at 55.5%.

The European Central Bank's Governing Council "decided to raise the three key ECB interest rates by 25 basis points" on Thursday, taking the deposit facility to 2.50%, the main refinancing operations rate to 2.65% and the marginal lending facility to 2.90%, effective Sept. 16, according to the decision.

Equities and gold also fell. The S&P 500 traded at 7,606 on Thursday afternoon, down 0.4% from Wednesday's close, and the Nasdaq Composite at 26,163, down 0.3%. Gold was at $4,405 an ounce, down 1.3%.

Breadth Goes One Way

One hundred and three of the 125 largest non-stablecoin tokens fell over 24 hours, 21 rose and one was unchanged, measured from a single snapshot at 1:10 p.m. ET. The count excludes stablecoins, wrapped assets and liquid-staking derivatives.

The decline concentrated in the mid-caps. Bitcoin fell 2.1% and ether 1.9%, while each of the ten largest decliners among the 150 biggest tokens fell more than 10%.

DeFi total value locked declined 1.6% over 24 hours to $87.13 billion, DefiLlama data shows, from $88.54 billion on Wednesday. It is still 1.9% higher than a week ago. Stablecoin supply barely moved, at $311.83 billion against $311.98 billion on Wednesday, for a 0.37% gain over seven days and 1.67% over 30 days — about $1.2 billion of net issuance on the week, or 0.4% of supply.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 69, or greed, on Thursday, up from 66 on Wednesday and down from 74 on Sept. 4, according to Alternative.me. The index has not left greed since Aug. 20.

ETFs Take Money Out

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $120.2 million of outflows on Wednesday and $46.6 million on Tuesday, according to Farside Investors. Thursday's figures publish after the U.S. close. The two days follow $174.6 million of inflows on Sept. 4 and $730.8 million on Sept. 3.

Spot ether ETFs took in $2.1 million on Wednesday after $24.3 million of outflows on Tuesday. Neither complex traded Monday, a federal holiday.

Buybacks Bid Ether.fi

The ether.fi DAO approved a proposal titled "Programmatic ETHFI Buybacks & Ecosystem Growth" in a Snapshot vote that opened Aug. 30 at 01:31 UTC and closed Sept. 3 at 01:31 UTC. It carried 1,141,999 votes for, none against and none abstaining, according to the proposal record. The text commits the foundation to buying ETHFI on a weekly cadence through automated TWAPs and states that "no new ETHFI is minted and circulating supply does not increase from this proposal."

Ether.fi has not published an execution date. Its blog carries no post since Aug. 13. The buyback program page records no completed purchases and no schedule. Whether any ETHFI has been bought under the mandate is unverified.

Ether.fi's total value locked fell to $4.87 billion on Thursday from $4.97 billion on Sept. 7, DefiLlama data shows, a 2% decline over three days. ETHFI gained 15.5% over the same week.

Falcon Finance's FF has the widest gap between price and collateral on the list. Its total value locked has held within 0.1% of $1.176 billion since Aug. 28 while FF rose 65.2% over seven days. Falcon's own news page carries nothing since Aug. 31.

VeChain's chain TVL rose to $1.58 million on Thursday from $1.22 million on Sept. 5. Against a $688 million market value, the DeFi footprint is too small to account for the move. VeChain's blog has published nothing since Aug. 6.

Ape and Pepe, the day's largest gainer, turned over $16 million against a $301 million market value, a 5% ratio. No project announcement accompanied the move.

Laptop Loses Two-Thirds

Hunter Biden's LAPTOP fell for a second day, losing 64.9% over 24 hours to $0.6088 and a $212 million market value. The Defiant covered the token's Sept. 9 launch.

Buyers outnumbered sellers as it fell. The three LAPTOP/USDC pools on Base recorded roughly 10,700 buys against 6,700 sells in the deepest pool and 13,200 against 10,400 in the smallest, on total pool liquidity of $1.33 million. The token's site shows zero tokens burned and zero dollars sent to charity. It has published no statement since launch.

Pons was the third-largest decliner, five days after reaching a record $0.971 on Sept. 5. Pons said on Sept. 3 that Uniswap Labs had bought PONS "for long-term alignment," without disclosing the size, price or wallet, which The Defiant reported. UNI fell 9.6% on Thursday alongside it. Pons' homepage carries an undated notice that "we are upgrading the backend ahead of a new rollout" and that "launches and market data may load slowly or read out of date."

Pump.fun's revenue rose while its token fell. Daily fees reached $1.41 million on Wednesday, the highest since Sept. 1 and 10.9% above Tuesday, according to DefiLlama, as PUMP dropped 20.1%. The protocol let creators launch coins priced in tokenized stocks on Wednesday, which The Defiant covered, and the token has fallen through the announcement.

The privacy names that ran hardest gave back the most. Dash fell 13.5% while holding a 17.4% weekly gain built around DashCon 2026 on Sept. 3, its first conference since 2019. Zcash fell 11.2% against an 18.3% week. Monero, which did not run, fell 0.5%.

Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap have no token-specific catalyst. "Bitcoin Cash" appears in six filings on the SEC's full-text search between Sept. 4 and Sept. 10, all fund prospectuses or corporate filings that mention the token in a list. None is an action on it. Uniswap's blog has published nothing since Aug. 24 and its Snapshot space has carried no proposal since July 26. Its daily fees have run between $6.89 million and $8.29 million every day this month, and rose to $7.81 million on Wednesday from $7.43 million on Tuesday, DefiLlama data shows.

Prices and market data as of 1:10 p.m. ET on Sept. 10, 2026. CoinGecko's aggregate 24-hour change in total crypto market value read -4.93% at the same moment, a figure inconsistent with its own component data, and is omitted.