Friday, October 2nd

• Bitcoin closes its best Q3 since 2017

• Bitget's hack wasn't the keys

• Citi lifts its bitcoin target to $113K

• Hut 8 borrows $1 billion

• Maestro is going to Singapore for Token 2049

Market Prices

Markets: Bitcoin closed out a roughly 42% third quarter, its second-best Q3 on record behind 2017, then pushed toward $87,000 Friday when the September jobs report came in weak: just 29,000 jobs against 90,000 expected, with unemployment rising to 4.2%. October rate-hike odds fell to about 18%, down 45 points in a week, and Treasury yields eased after the 10-year closed Thursday at 5.33%, its highest since April 2002.

Market Updates

Bitget's Hack Wasn't the Keys

Bitget says attackers spoofed transaction data inside its own wallet system rather than stealing private keys, in a hack now put at about $388 million.

• When withdrawals reopened, customers pulled $463 million in 24 hours, the largest one-day outflow DefiLlama has recorded.

Citi Lifts Its Bitcoin Target to $113,000

Citigroup raised its 12-month bitcoin target to $113,000 from $82,000 as ETF demand returns.

• It now models about $5 billion of ETF inflows over the next year, after assuming none in July.

Hut 8 Borrows $1 Billion

Hut 8 closed a $1.07 billion credit facility at SOFR plus 175 basis points, led by JPMorgan, to fund its AI data-center campuses.

• Miners still raise capital in dollars. That fits an AI campus collecting dollar rent, but for a miner earning bitcoin it's a mismatch: when BTC falls, the debt gets heavier. In August, MARA pledged more than half its bitcoin for $600 million in loans.

Why It Matters

Wall Street got more bullish on bitcoin this week, with Citi raising its target and ETF flows turning positive for the year, and kept lending to miners, but in dollars, the denomination that makes a bitcoin drawdown dangerous for anyone who earns BTC. Bitget, meanwhile, was a reminder that custody risk doesn't only live in the keys. The capital is getting bigger. The plumbing hasn’t caught up.

By The Numbers

+$934M

U.S. spot bitcoin ETF flows for 2026 as of September 25, flipping positive for the year after sitting about $5.8 billion in the red in mid-July. The streak behind it ended September 30 with $148.7 million in outflows.

1,530 BTC

Miner reserves fell this much in a single week, to about 1.19 million BTC, as the seven-day average hashrate slid to a three-week low near 915.8 EH/s.

847,666 BTC

Strategy's holdings after a second straight weekly purchase: 1,665 BTC at $85,681 each, roughly $10,000 above its $75,437 average cost.

The Deep Dive

Bitcoin Rallied Through a Bond Rout

The Signal

Bitcoin just had its second-best third quarter on record. It did it while Treasury yields had their biggest quarterly jump this century.

The 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.34% on Thursday, its highest level since 2002, capping its largest quarterly rise of the century. That's the backdrop where a non-yielding asset is supposed to struggle. Instead, bitcoin gained roughly 42% in Q3, a third quarter beaten only by 2017.

The Numbers

What Changed

• On August 19, Treasury expanded its long-dated bond buybacks, raising operation sizes in 10-to-20 and 20-to-30-year bonds from $2 billion to at least $4 billion each, running September 9 through November 4.

• Since that announcement, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have taken in about $5.3 billion, and 2026 flows turned positive after a $2.4 billion week, the strongest since October 2025.

• Yields kept climbing anyway, with the 30-year hitting 5.65% on Wednesday, also a 24-year high.

• Then the Fed math moved. August core PCE came in at 3.0% against a 3.3% forecast, and October hike odds fell to about 18% by Friday afternoon, with a December hike still favored at 72%.

The Read

• The timing is suggestive, not proven. ETF analysts Nate Geraci and Eric Balchunas tied the inflow turn to the buyback announcement, but the first expanded operation on September 10 saw yields rise and bitcoin ETFs lose $282.7 million the same day.

• The buybacks are also smaller than the headline. Treasury has been accepting roughly half the bonds dealers offer, and offers have shrunk from $20-30 billion in earlier operations to $10.47 billion in the latest one.

• The market may be responding more to the direction of policy than to the level of yields. One soft inflation print cut October hike odds by 30 points in a week, even as the 10-year kept climbing.

• That cuts both ways. The buyback window closes November 4, the Fed meets October 28, and a December hike is still the market's base case. If liquidity support is what turned the flows, its calendar is short.

Watch Next

• Whether Friday's jobs miss, 29,000 jobs with wage growth of just 0.1% for the month, keeps the Fed on hold through December, where a hike is still priced at about 72%.

• The October 28 FOMC, and whether December hike odds hold.

• Whether Treasury extends or resizes buybacks past November 4.

• Whether ETF inflows resume after September 30 snapped a nine-day streak with $148.7 million out.

• Q4 seasonality: CoinGlass puts bitcoin's average fourth-quarter gain near 77%, an average that reaches back to 2013.

Maestro Updates

All Three Indexers Are Open Source

When we sunset the Developer API, we said we'd open source the infrastructure behind it. We did. The production indexers behind our Bitcoin, Cardano, and Dogecoin APIs are now public under Apache 2.0. Fork them. Audit them. Run them.

Maestro Heads to Singapore for TOKEN2049

We'll be at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, October 7-8. If you're a treasury operator, BTC allocator or mining financier in town for the week, email [email protected] to set up a meeting.

Book a Call: Here

Contact Us: [email protected]

Subscribe: Here