Polkadot Leads A Rotation Into Old Layer-1s As Hike Odds Widen

A group of layer-1 tokens that launched before 2018 carried Tuesday's crypto tape while bitcoin and ether finished lower, and traders extended their bet that the Federal Reserve raises rates next week.

Only one of those tokens has a dated event behind it. Polkadot holders are voting on a proposal to give the network its own stablecoin, submitted to OpenGov on Monday and running 97.5% in favor. Cosmos Hub, Decred and Ethereum Classic produced no filing, release or governance action in the window, and the four moved together on a week when bitcoin gained 1.6%.

Bitcoin last changed hands at $78,539, down 0.83% over 24 hours and up 1.6% over seven days, after trading between $77,666 and $79,432, CoinGecko data shows. Ether was at $2,484.83, down 0.29% on the day and up 2.8% on the week. XRP rose 1.53% to $1.42; Solana fell 0.59% to $103.24; BNB gained 1.66% to $751.92 and holds a 10.5% weekly advance. Total crypto market value stood at $2.70 trillion on $91.54 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 58.36%. Fifty-seven of the 125 largest non-stablecoin tokens rose and 66 fell.

A Round Trip

Bitcoin peaked at $79,432 shortly after 10 p.m. ET Monday, during Tokyo's morning, and sold off through the European session. The 24-hour low of $77,666 came in the 10 a.m. ET hour. It recovered to $78,833 by midday and gave that back through the afternoon, ending the U.S. session near where it opened.

The token is 37.7% below the $126,080 record it set in October 2025.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 69 on Tuesday, down from 71 on Monday and 74 on Sept. 4, according to Alternative.me. It has read above 60 every day since Aug. 29.

Polkadot Wants A Stablecoin

Polkadot rose 16.7% to $1.25 and 42.5% over seven days, a second consecutive double-digit day after Monday's 13.85% gain, on $420 million of volume against a $2.13 billion market value. It is the largest weekly gain among the 50 biggest tokens.

The proposal driving it went on-chain at 11:49 a.m. ET Monday. OpenGov Referendum 1944, "dotUSD: A Native Stablecoin for Polkadot," sits on the Root track and is in its deciding period. "This proposal signals the intent of the DAO to introduce dotUSD, Polkadot's native stablecoin, as the protocol's primary stable-value instrument," the text reads.

The referendum lists seven actions, among them creating the dotUSD asset "owned by the protocol," opening a DOT-dotUSD liquidity pool on Asset Hub, designating dotUSD a sufficient asset and setting peg stability module parameters. It commits treasury funds: "$2.5M in USDT will be used to mint dotUSD and $2.5M in DOT will be allocated initially to the pool."

The Polkadot Community Foundation submitted it and disclaims operational control. "dotUSD is a decentralized, protocol-native stablecoin project," the text reads. "It would have no issuer and would instead operate autonomously via on-chain logic."

Voting stands at 2,343,074 DOT in favor against 59,896 opposed, with 558,519 DOT of support against an electorate of 1.67 billion DOT. A second referendum, 1942, upgrading system chains to runtime 2.5, went on-chain Sept. 5 and is also deciding.

No U.S. product filing accompanies the move. EDGAR full-text search returns one document mentioning Polkadot between Sept. 1 and Sept. 8, a Canary Staked TRX ETF prospectus that uses the word in passing. Polkadot's own account has posted nothing about dotUSD.

The Old Guard Moves

Cosmos Hub, Decred and Ethereum Classic rose alongside Polkadot without a dated catalyst.

The Cosmos Hub's most recent governance proposals, 1052 and 1053, were submitted Aug. 25 and finished voting Sept. 1. Decred's last substantive release is the v2.1.6 consensus security patch from late August; its account's most recent post, dated Sept. 7, is a marketing message. Ethereum Classic's core-geth has not shipped a release since Hermes v1.12.22 on March 28, and the project's repositories show no September activity. None of the three appears in Binance's listing announcements for Sept. 4 through Sept. 8.

VeChain added 10.6% to $0.008006 and 19.5% over seven days. Its Aug. 6 post on the Interstellar upgrade and its Aug. 24 statement that the VIP-255 vote passed give no mainnet activation date.

Hike Odds Reach 54.5%

Traders widened their bet on tightening for a third session. Polymarket put a quarter-point increase at 54.5% and no change at 45.5% on $104.6 million of volume. The same contracts read 52.5% and 45.5% at midday Tuesday, 50.5% and 49.5% on Monday, and 30.5% and 67.5% on Aug. 24. A quarter-point cut trades at 0.45%. The Federal Open Market Committee meets Sept. 15-16, one of the four meetings a year that carries a Summary of Economic Projections.

Friday's labor data set the direction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that "total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 162,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent", with June and July revised up by a combined 55,000. August producer prices publish Sept. 10 and consumer prices Sept. 11, both at 8:30 a.m. ET, the last two federal releases before the committee meets.

Brent Closes Near $100

Brent crude settled at $99.31 a barrel, up 3.15% from Friday and its highest close since July 23, when it ended at $100.69. West Texas Intermediate rose 3.03% to $94.25. The yen traded at 153.97 per dollar, its firmest since Feb. 18, and the dollar index fell 0.31% to 98.85.

"Higher oil prices on the back of continued geopolitical escalations between the US and Iran and a rally in the Japanese yen to a 7-month high have taken the spotlight in the past 24 hours," Thahbib Rahman, research analyst at Block Scholes, wrote in a note emailed to reporters on Tuesday. "Both events weighed on risk assets across US equity markets and crypto markets alike."

Rahman said options positioning has not followed spot lower. "While not near the highs of mid-August and early September, after the US Treasury's bond interventions and Fed Governor Waller's dovish speech, short-dated BTC put-call skew remains tilted towards call options," he wrote. "This means investors are leaning more bullish than bearish and is an indication that traders are willing to pay more for upside exposure to spot price than downside protection."

U.S. equities closed lower. The S&P 500 fell 0.58% to 7,673.52 and the Nasdaq Composite 0.32% to 26,421.41. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.81% and the 30-year to 5.26%. Gold futures fell 0.67% to $4,400 an ounce.

Zcash Gets Options

Zcash rose 0.82% to $1,166.37 and 39.2% over seven days after touching $1,210.35, holding tenth place at a $19.73 billion market value, above Hyperliquid at $18.79 billion and Dogecoin at $14.01 billion. It remains 63.4% below the $3,191.93 record set on Oct. 28, 2016.

Grayscale said on Tuesday that "$ZCSH, the world's first Zcash fund, is now available for options trading on @NYSE." The post links to the fund's prospectus and does not name the options venue; the shares list on NYSE Arca, and NYSE American Options and NYSE Arca Options are separate venues. No exchange listing notice or SEC rule filing corroborating the options listing was retrievable, and the most recent document under the trust's EDGAR record is the Aug. 25 prospectus.

The fund completed its uplisting from OTCQX to NYSE Arca on Aug. 25 under the ticker ZCSH, registering the shares through a Form 8-A12B filed Aug. 24 and changing its name to The Zcash ETF the same day. Grayscale's fund account said on Sept. 4 that ZCSH "just crossed $400,000,000 in AUM." The Defiant covered the original conversion filing in November 2025.

Monero fell 4.3% to $497.42 after trading as high as $525.33, and is down 0.7% over seven days against Zcash's 39.2%. Monero's official blog has published nothing since the July 21 GUI release, and no Monero item appeared on the announcement pages of Binance, Kraken, OKX or Bithumb on Monday or Tuesday. The token has no U.S. listed vehicle.

Injective Lists Twice

Injective rose 5.25% to $6.45 and 33.8% over seven days after trading 12.7% higher at midday, on $190 million of volume against a $650 million market value.

Three dated announcements sit behind it. Injective said on Tuesday that "native USDC on Injective is now live on @krakenfx," allowing deposits and withdrawals of the stablecoin directly between the exchange and the chain. On Monday it said that "$INJ is now live on @RobinhoodCrypto"; Robinhood's own asset page lists the token as tradable without stating a date. Also on Monday, the project said that "over 58.8 Million INJ tokens are now staked onchain," which it called a record. Injective's public node reported 58,461,008 INJ bonded against a total supply of 122,781,894, or 47.6%, slightly below the figure the project gave. INJ trades 87.7% below the $52.62 record it set in March 2024.

The chain's most recent blog post, dated Sept. 4, says Pineapple Financial has moved more than $1 billion in residential mortgage records onto Injective.

Korea Bids Useless

Useless Coin gained 24% to $0.2791 on $174 million of volume, against a $279 million market value, after two Korean exchanges opened trading in it on Tuesday.

Bithumb's market list carries a KRW-USELESS pair whose hourly candles begin at 1 a.m. ET. Upbit's market list carries BTC and USDT pairs whose candles begin at 8 a.m. ET, with the USDT pair flagged for price volatility and cross-venue price gaps; Upbit did not open a won pair. The listings account for Tuesday's move. The 138.5% seven-day gain predates both, and no project statement covering that period is available.

Venice Token led the day at 30.2%, reaching a record $25.49 before easing to $24.18 and a $1.15 billion market value on $177 million of volume. The most recent post on the Venice blog is dated July 17, carrying an Aug. 5 update that cuts VVV emissions to 2.5 million a year on Sept. 1 and to 2 million on Oct. 1, and raises the DIEM supply target to 40,000 on Sept. 14. Those dates were set five weeks ago. The project's changelog has not been updated since July 30.

Falcon Finance rose 25.6% to $0.1495 and 51.9% over seven days. Its most recent blog post is dated Aug. 31 and its account's Sept. 8 posts respond to the price rather than explain it. Pons added 17.7% to $0.8265 and 93.8% over seven days; Uniswap Labs bought PONS tokens on Sept. 3.

ETFs Skip A Session

U.S. spot bitcoin and ether ETF flows for Tuesday had not published as of 5 p.m. ET. The last completed session is Friday, when bitcoin funds took in $174.6 million and ether funds $25.9 million, according to Farside Investors. BlackRock's IBIT accounted for $117.4 million of the bitcoin total and Fidelity's FBTC $57.2 million; among ether funds, BlackRock's two products drew $74.2 million while Fidelity's FETH lost $48.3 million. No row exists for Monday, when U.S. markets were closed for Labor Day, which means Monday's altcoin advance ran with the ETF and equity markets shut.

DeFi total value locked stood at $87.94 billion, down 0.7% over 24 hours and up 1.57% over seven days, DefiLlama data shows. Stablecoin supply was $311.71 billion, down 0.1% on the day, up 0.49% over seven days and 1.35% over 30 days.

Hyperliquid fell 0.79% to $84.50 and trades 5.7% below the $89.60 record it set on Sept. 6. Its account has posted nothing since Aug. 31. WhiteBIT Coin rose 6.16% to $81.35 and 14.3% over seven days after touching a record $81.98 at 12:40 p.m. ET; its blog has published nothing since July 28.

Venice Takes The Day

Akedo Gives It Back

Akedo traded 21% higher at midday before ending 8.6% lower. It holds a 76.7% weekly gain.

Hedera was the largest token among the decliners at a $3.46 billion market value, and is still up 6.8% over seven days. Its most recent blog post, dated Sept. 4, covers new council partners, and its Tuesday statements concern an insurance consortium building on the network. Monero's 4.3% decline falls just outside the table.

Prices and market data as of 5:11 p.m. ET on Sept. 8, 2026.