Blog

Bitcoin is starting the week on the front foot. It still can’t clear the ceiling, but investors have reason to be optimistic.

The top crypto asset traded around $86,100 on Monday morning, up 1.14% in 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $1.73 trillion. The entire crypto market is worth $2.94 trillion, up 1.36% on the day, and the Fear & Greed Index sits at 68, still in “greed” territory and stabilizing sentiment after a dip from “extreme greed” readings last month.

The spark was Friday’s jobs report, and it was ugly—for the economy, that is. U.S. employers added only 29,000 positions in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly a third of what economists expected. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%.

Revisions made it worse. July was revised from a gain of 21,000 to a loss of 10,000 jobs, and August was cut from 162,000 to 133,000. Annual wage growth cooled to 3.0%.

Bad news for workers, good news for risk assets. That’s the weird math of this cycle.

The Federal Reserve raised rates a quarter point to 3.75%-4.00% on September 16 in a unanimous vote. A week before Friday’s report, bond traders gave an October hike a 64% chance. After it, those odds fell to roughly 16%-22%, depending on the snapshot.

It is the mirror image of last month. On September 4, a blowout August report sent Bitcoin sliding more than 2% to near $79,300 as hike bets rose. Bitcoin now trades about 8% above that level.

Stocks cheered too. The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,722.72, up 0.73%, while the Nasdaq gained 1.19% to 27,190.86 and the Dow added 0.49% to 51,176.96. Nvidia hit a fresh record high, and stock futures edged higher Sunday night.

Altcoins are mixed. Ethereum trades at $2,711, up 0.59%, and XRP is at $1.51, up 0.81%. Solana slipped 0.91% to $120.31. All the top 10 altcoins are in the green, but not a single one has moved more than 1%, except for Hyperliquid, which is up 3.68% on the day to $93.17 and 6% on the week.

ETF money is not fading either. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $189.84 million in net inflows on the latest daily reading, with total net assets at $101.1 billion, according to Decrypt data.

Bitcoin price: Rejected at the door, but pushing up with force

The chart explains the hesitation. On the daily time frame, the $87,354 high remains the line to beat.

Momentum is strong. The Relative Strength Index, which scores recent gains against losses on a 0-100 scale where readings above 70 are considered overbought, sits at 64.7 which is hot but not extremely overbought. The Average Directional Index, which measures trend strength regardless of direction and reads above 25 as a strong trend, is at 43.4.

Exponential moving averages, or EMAs, track the average price over a set number of days while giving more weight to recent days. A golden cross happens when a faster EMA climbs above a slower one. The chart shows the 50-day EMA (the average price of the last 50 days) above the 200-day EMA, the classic version of a golden cross. This happened in mid-September as Bitcoin registered the second best performance in that month, ever.

But an even stronger sign has just appeared as the 100-day EMA has now also crossed above the 200 day. You can see it in the following chart. The 100-day EMA being the dotted white line.

Why is the 100/200 cross even more bullish? Because it’s harder to fake. A sharp two-month bounce can drag the 50-day EMA over the 200 day. To pull the slower 100-day EMA over the 200 day, the price of Bitcoin has to stay elevated for months, which means BTC has not just bounced from the sub-$60,000 levels of July but rebuilt its medium-term trend.

Together, the two crosses mean the short-term and medium-term averages both sit above the long-term one. Think of it as a second confirmation of the same story. The catch: EMAs lag, so a golden cross confirms a move that has already happened rather than predicting the next one.

On Myriad, a prediction market built by Decrypt‘s parent company Dastan, traders are leaning bullish on a short-term push. In the October highs market, an $87,500 touch trades at 80%, $90,000 at 59%, $95,000 at 25%, and $100,000 at 12%.

As far as future catalysts, the week’s calendar is short but loaded. The Fed releases the minutes of its September meeting on Wednesday, October 7, at 2:00 p.m. ET, and the BLS publishes September CPI on October 14. The Fed’s next policy meeting runs October 27-28, with a press conference on October 28 at 2:30 p.m. ET.

The CFTC wants to give crypto exchanges a federal home, and leverage is the key that unlocks the door.

The agency is moving forward with further rulemaking proposals following the collapse of the Clarity Act, the legislation that would have established the ground rules for most cryptocurrency activity in the United States but last month fell short. The CFTC on Monday published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, an early step that seeks public input before formal rules are drafted.

Its proposal outlines two linked frameworks: Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions, or Regulation CTX, and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets, or Regulation CAM. The public will have 60 days to comment once the notice appears in the Federal Register.

The plan rests on a 2010 Dodd-Frank provision requiring retail commodity trades offered with leverage, margin, or financing to take place on a CFTC-registered exchange, as if they were futures.

Under Regulation CTX, the CFTC reads that rule broadly. Simply offering leverage, even through routine onboarding documents or terms of service, could pull fully paid trades under the agency’s watch, as long as the purchased crypto sits on the exchange’s internal books rather than in the customer’s own wallet.

Those trades escape federal oversight only through “actual delivery,” which the CFTC suggests could require customers to hold their private keys. On-chain trading protocols, which typically send tokens straight to users’ wallets, would usually clear that bar, the agency said.

BitcoinBTC · USD

$85,338+1.62%

24H7D1M1YYTD

Sep 29Oct 1Oct 2Oct 4Oct 6

$86.8k$85.6k$84.3k$83.0k

24h HighHigh$86,662

24h LowLow$85,010

VolVol$1.2B

Market projectionsOdds by Myriad

→

$50$100$500

Buy

Regulation CAM would create a “crypto asset market” license, a tailored version of the designated contract market status held by futures exchanges. Trades would run through futures commission merchants, brokers subject to anti-money laundering rules, and leverage could come only from those brokers or banks they sponsor. Exchanges could also register as their own broker and clearinghouse.

The CFTC is weighing proof-of-reserves requirements and standards against listing tokens prone to manipulation. Exchanges that don’t offer leverage could keep operating under state money transmitter licenses.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said the rules are “designed to prevent, rather than only prosecute after the fact, fraudulent schemes such as FTX.”

The notice also repudiates the agency’s past approach, describing its Biden-era cases against Kraken, Ooki DAO, and Uniswap as “regulation by enforcement.”

The CFTC sent the framework to the White House for review in September, days after the Clarity Act failed in the Senate. Selig had said in August that the agency would write its own crypto rules if Congress came up short. The CFTC has also sent the White House new prediction market rules.

The SEC has moved on a parallel track, proposing Regulation Crypto Assets in August and unveiling an innovation exemption for tokenized stocks last month.

The SEC approved a rule change on October 2 that lets the Cboe exchange list six funds built to deliver three times the daily price moves of Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, silver, crude oil, and natural gas, per the agency’s order.

The funds come from Volatility Shares, the firm behind existing 2x Bitcoin and Ethereum products. Shares will trade on Cboe’s BZX Exchange like a regular stock.

An ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is a basket of assets you buy and sell through a brokerage app like a share. A leveraged one uses debt and other financial tools to amplify returns, and losses.

These funds aim for triple. If Bitcoin futures rise 2% in a day, the fund aims to gain 6%. If they fall 2%, it aims to lose 6%.

The funds mainly get that exposure through futures, which are contracts to buy or sell an asset at a set price on a later date.

But there’s a catch in the word “daily.” These funds reset every day, so the 3x promise applies to one day at a time. Over longer stretches, results can drift far from three times the asset’s move.

So, for example Bitcoin futures drop 10% on Monday, then rise 10% on Tuesday. The asset ends down 1%, while a 3x fund falls 30%, gains 30% and ends down 9%. If you have $100 worth of Bitcoin, a 30% drop takes off 30% of $100, which is $30, leaving you with $70 net. A 30% gain adds 30% of $70, which is $21. You’re at $91, overall 9% down after the movement.

BitcoinBTC · USD

$85,346+1.63%

24H7D1M1YYTD

Sep 29Oct 1Oct 2Oct 4Oct 6

$86.8k$85.6k$84.3k$83.0k

24h HighHigh$86,662

24h LowLow$85,010

VolVol$1.2B

Market projectionsOdds by Myriad

→

$50$100$500

Buy

The SEC and FINRA have warned investors about exactly this. Their alert says returns over more than a day can differ significantly from the daily target.

Why the SEC had to vote

Cboe’s fast-track listing rules for commodity funds exclude products that chase a multiple of an asset’s return, so the exchange needed the SEC to approve these funds individually. Apart from the 3x target, the funds must meet all of Cboe’s other listing requirements.

The SEC leaned on existing guardrails. Brokers must act in a retail customer’s best interest under Regulation Best Interest, and FINRA, the brokerage industry’s self-regulator, requires tougher sales and margin (borrowing) rules for leveraged products.

Volatility Shares launched the first leveraged crypto ETF in the U.S. in 2023, tracking Bitcoin futures. Spot Bitcoin ETFs, which hold the coins directly, arrived in January 2024 after a decade of rejections.

Then the race for more leverage began. In October 2025, Defiance filed for 49 funds with 3x long and short exposure, and Volatility Shares filed for 5x products.

The SEC pushed back. In December 2025 it halted review of products above 2x exposure and sent warning letters to nine issuers, including ProShares. In March 2026, it asked issuers to avoid 5x products.

Volatility Shares kept shipping 2x funds anyway. In April 2026 it launched 2x funds on Cardano, Stellar, and Chainlink, adding to existing 2x products on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP.

These aren’t the first 3x products. Earlier ones tied to silver, crude oil and natural gas, from other issuers, have since left the market, per the order. A 3x gold product from another issuer still trades.

The order sets no launch date. According to Cboe’s filing, the shares can’t trade until each fund’s registration statement takes effect.