When the week closed on Sunday, October 11, Bitcoin settled at $83,687.50, down 3.24% on the week. One week earlier it had settled at $86,511, and we wrote that the break would fail inside four weeks. The prediction came to fruition in only one week. Hayloo is short 929.2 Bitcoin.

Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) lost more than $600 million last week, and the Ether funds sold on nine straight days. Holders kept booking profit as crypto fell: on October 10, with price already 3% off its high, the coins that moved still sold at a profit.

The band that argued hardest against us last week, the densest Bitcoin supply in five years on Glassnode’s supply heatmap, is now above price instead of below it. Bitcoin’s drop last week was only 3%. The amount of coins that are looking at a red Bitcoin number today, however, is much higher. Our lead trader says, the tides have turned. The bears are in control. Our team still splits on Jordi’s read, and both sides argue it below.

The MOVE index (the Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate), the price traders pay to protect against swings in U.S. Treasury bonds, closed a third straight week above its 200-week line, so the risk-off trigger we named stands.

On our use of AI:

We’re Hayloo Unchained by JFederer, a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is published by Hayloo INC., our AI startup in Panama. It is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine. What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC. hayloo.org

Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any coin discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

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Every call Hayloo has made on this Substack this summer is below. When we made the same call again, only the first one is listed. The misses stay in.

Here’s the short version.

We closed 7 trades with a printed result, and all 7 made money. We sold Bitcoin, Solana, and XRP into the rallies of August and September, harvested our shorts into the June lows, and banked profits on the longs that hedged our Solana and Bitcoin shorts.

We called the May drop in Bitcoin and won. Then we stayed bearish through the summer relief rally, and that call lost. Bitcoin went from just above $60,000 in early July to a weekly close of $86,511 on October 4.

We took profits on our hedges, and pulled up our shorts. We begin printing profits on the latest marks. A trade call is decided when we close it. We hold the Bitcoin short until $87,397 breaks on volume.

How We Score

A call is one of our trades, or a forecast we publish. A trade stays open until we report it closed.

A forecast is won when its target is reached, and lost when the thing we said would prove it wrong happens. When its window ends first, the first close after that day decides it.

A call we repeated counts once. When we made the same call again and it ended the same way, only the first one is listed.

Every week, each open call is marked 🟢 winning or 🔴 losing against the newest close. Hayloo, our Neurosynchronic Compound AI System, does the math. But humans made every call.

The Trades

The Forecasts

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine. What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC. hayloo.org

The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Beta measures how far a coin moves for each 1% Bitcoin moves. We split it in two. Up-capture is the beta on Bitcoin’s up days. Down-capture is the beta on its down days. The gap between them is Hayloo’s Altcoin Tax. When down-capture is the larger one, the coin gives back more on Bitcoin’s bad days than it gains on the good ones. This week three of the four major altcoins pay the tax. Which coin still charges Bitcoin for a positive asymmetry, in today’s read. And for our free subscribers, our focus coin of the week: XRP.

XRP’s flag is the only one changing state this week. Its gap to Bitcoin also moved more than any other altcoin major, from −0.20 to −0.57.

◆ FOCUS COIN · THE ONLY FLAG THAT CHANGED THIS WEEK

XRP: We Gave You This Desk’s Warning Light in September. The Damage it Signaled has Arrived

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, XRP captured 171 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, XRP gave back 228 cents. That is 1.3 times more downside than upside, and XRP has paid Hayloo’s Altcoin Tax for 15 days straight.

The two capture lines crossed on 22 September. For the 100 days before that, from 14 June, XRP caught more of Bitcoin’s upside than its downside. Since the cross, down-capture has pulled away. It rose from 1.93 to 2.28 this week. Up-capture eased from 1.73 to 1.71. XRP’s Tax gap is −0.57, its widest on the downside since December 2025.

Why the flag cleared. XRP’s flag had been on since August, on two different tests. XRP’s beta jumped more than 0.15 in 20 trading days. Then the gap shrank fast and was 0.10 smaller than 20 trading days earlier. The claring of these flags suggests a new downside, Altcoin Taxed regime for XRP. The flag came first. This was the Signal. Then the gap started growing to the downside.

The 60-day beta is 1.64: 0.59 above XRP’s Outperform line at 1.05 and 1.15 under its Extreme Outperform line at 2.79. The 30-day (1.54) and 120-day (1.44) agree. The run is 49 days, past the median Outperform run of 16 days. Outperforming happens to the upside, as well as to the downside.

A beta desk from Hayloo’s sources you can plug into your cross-margined exchange data is being built. Join the waitlist.

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine. What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

The cross-section: XRP Swings Hard to the Downside

Each coin’s regime lines are custom to their own backtested history. This week every coin’s 30-, 60- and 120-day windows agree, no divergences on the board.

Bitcoin dominance

Bitcoin’s share of the whole crypto market (BTC.D) is 58.7%, and rising. Rising means two things hold at once: the level is above its 50-day average, and above where it stood three weeks ago. Both hold, barely. Rising dominance means Bitcoin is gaining share of the digital asset market.

Divergence check: none this week. The broad altcoin basket, TOTAL3ES, is Trailing Bitcoin, and dominance is rising. Both point the same way: Bitcoin is gaining market share and altcoins are losing it. For ETH, SOL and XRP, BTC.D is backdrop only. Dominance tracks the whole market, not one coin’s beta.

TOTAL3ES: Altcoins Keep Paying a Tax to Bitcoin

TOTAL3ES is the altcoin market without Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins. Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, the basket captured 110 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it gave back 147 cents. That is 1.3 times more downside than upside, and the basket has paid the Altcoin tax for 22 days straight.

The 60-day beta is 0.88, inside Trailing: 0.59 above the Decoupled line at 0.28 and 0.40 under the Outperform line at 1.27. The 30-day beta (0.84) and the 120-day beta (0.90) say Trailing too. The trailing run is 251 days old, against a median of 61 days.

ETH: ETH Is the Last Altcoin Charging Bitcoin the Tax

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, ETH captured 120 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, ETH gave back 106 cents. ETH is the only coin on the board still catching more upside than downside. It has done so for 64 days straight.

Down-capture rose from 0.98 to 1.06 this week, up-capture held at 1.20. The gap fell from +0.21 to +0.13. Twenty trading days ago it was +0.37, and a fall that size trips the contraction flag. This is the third weekly read in a row with the flag on. Ethereum’s relationship to Bitcoin is changing fast.

The 60-day beta is 1.18, 0.06 under ETH’s Outperform line at 1.24. The 120-day beta crossed under that line on 3 October. With the 30-day at 0.95, all three windows now say Trailing. This Trailing run is on day 16, against a median Trailing run of 8 days.

SOL: Falls Harder Than It Climbs

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, SOL captured 99 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, SOL gave back 161 cents. SOL had 1.6 times more downside than upside this week, the heftiest Altcoin tax on Hayloo’s board. SOL has paid the Altcoin Tax for 40 days straight.

Down-capture jumped from 1.40 to 1.61, and the gap widened from −0.39 to −0.62. That is its most negative reading since August 2025.

The 60-day beta is 1.19: 0.31 above SOL’s Trailing line at 0.88 and 1.03 under its Extreme Outperform line at 2.22. The 30-day (1.39) and 120-day (1.19) say Outperform too. At 932 days this is the longest Outperform run in SOL’s record. The longest before it lasted 808 days. Outperformance in beta does not pick side. A coin can outperform Bitcoin to the downside, as well as to the upside.

What’s solid, what’s soft

• Every coin’s 30-, 60- and 120-day windows agree on its tag.

• ETH: the positive gap is 0.57 standard errors from zero and rests on 19 August, which leaves the window on 18 October. The flag is on, so reads past about three weeks are shaky.

• SOL: the down-capture level leans on three days when Bitcoin barely fell. Without them it is 1.30.

The Beta Desk measures how altcoins move with Bitcoin. It does not call direction or take positions. Daily closes through 6 October 2026. Hayloo Unchained.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

The calm this bond volatility breaks is the collateral holding up global liquidity. On Michael Howell’s October 6 count, global liquidity set yet another record number, while the collateral base underneath keeps shrinking at an accelerating pace. Currently, the Shadow Monetary Base serving as collateral for this record headline liquidity sits at its lowest in 16 months. Since August, record headline liquidity comes from more lending against the same base collateral. This collateral multiplier churns liquidity into the economy on calm bonds. The calm is over. Sustained higher bond volatility could impact global liquidity negatively in Q4 2026.

The long end did not wait for the data to confirm the collateral troubles. On October 5 the ten-year Treasury yield rose to 5.34% and the thirty-year to 5.7%, both the highest since 2002. The Federal Reserve (Fed) spent the week asking for more time. We remember asking the market for time at Hayloo several times. The market never listened.

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine. What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

This week’s read opens on the test our team set in September and what happened when it landed. It carries the collateral base’s third negative report, impacting liquidity in Q4 2026. We’re talking about the long end at 2002 highs, a war that reached the Red Sea, the Gulf building a detour around a closed strait, gold’s worst week since June, yet stocks a third of a percent from their record, carried by a narrow group of AI companies, now facing higher borrowing cost.

A newsreader that ranks each morning’s news from Hayloo’s sources and keeps six months of it for your AI is being built. Join the waitlist.

Our Team Splits on Whether Loud Bonds Will Break the Record

Since September our team has read the record liquidity headline two ways. Julian Harlow, our Global Liquidity Director, reads a headline held up over a shrinking base as a plateau. Priya Sandoval, our Capital Flow Analyst, reads the same headline as fuel for risk assets this quarter. What we like about granular liquidity measures beyond the M2 money supply is the crystal ball they give us. Liquidity takes time to reach markets. In September we wrote that a weekly close in bond volatility above 100 would threaten record liquidity, because volatile bonds raise the haircuts lenders take on collateral, and higher haircuts pull the collateral multiplier down.

Bond volatility has now closed above 100 twice: 104.58 for the week of September 27 and 110 for the week of October 4. But the collateral multiplier has not moved yet. The rise in bond volatility has yet to feed through the system to reach collateral haircuts. Equities sit 0.32% from their own record. Their liquidity cushion is intact. But the record sits on a one-legged foundation that just started to shake.

— Global Liquidity Director (Julian Harlow) · Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval)

Liquidity Tape: The Base Shrank Again Under Another Record

Michael Howell‘s October 6 update puts global liquidity at another record, a little above the week before. Its three-month annualized growth picked up and its annual growth held steady, both well below their mid-summer pace. The base underneath, central-bank money plus high-grade collateral, sits at its lowest in 16 months. Both of its growth rates sank further below zero. Howell puts the latest dip down to weaker bond collateral values and a firmer dollar.

Both of the collateral base’s growth rates were negative three weekly reports in a row. We call a rollover only when that happens and the headline itself falls. The headline set a record, so the test isn’t met.

We read the global liquidity setting as a squeeze. The base is contracting while the cost of debt rises: the thirty-year Treasury closed its week at 5.63%, the U.S. mortgage rate stood at 7.30% in the week to September 25, and euro-area inflation rose to 3.8%. Policy has no room to ease into that.

— Global Liquidity Director (Julian Harlow)

Macro Tape: The Long End Broke Out While the Fed Asked for Time

The thirty-year Treasury closed the week to October 2 at 5.63%, from 5.49%. The ten-year real yield, what the bond pays after inflation, closed at 2.92%, from 2.83%. Citadel Securities’ Nohshad Shah wrote on October 5 that almost all of September’s rise in the ten-year came from real yields, with inflation expectations steady. In our read, a strong economy is pushing long rates up.

The rest of the world sold along the U.S.. Britain’s thirty-year gilt touched 6% on October 1. France’s ten-year spread over Germany reached 137 basis points on October 5, against 85 a month earlier, and U.S. municipal bonds had their worst month in nearly two decades. Japan set the coupon on its new ten-year bond at 3.1%, against 2.1% in January to March, and bidders still covered the auction 3.76 times against a 12-month average of 3.21. That money has been funding foreign governments’ deficits, the U.S. included, in the past, and it now earns better at home.

At the Fed, Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said on October 1 that it may take more time to judge whether more hikes are needed. Odds of a move at the October 28 meeting fell to 30% from 70%, and odds of at least one hike by year-end to 80% from 95%, as CoinDesk reported. Markets tend to remind the laggards that it’s the markets that set the clock, not the Fed.

After September payrolls came in at 29,000, bond traders priced a later start to further hikes. Currently, the two-year yield is pricing up to three more quarter-point hikes over the next year, which leaves the Fed behind the curve.

— Chief Macro Strategist (Theodore Brennan)

Geopolitical Tape: Three Carriers Sail, and the War Reached the Red Sea

Carrot and stick are both present at the same time around Iran. A U.S. official told Al Jazeera that three aircraft carriers and two amphibious groups will be in position by the end of November. In the same week Iran’s foreign minister offered, in private talks, to restore nuclear inspectors’ access in exchange for sanctions relief, and the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Iran’s rail and auto groups. Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the Strait of Hormuz stays shut until seven conditions from a June interim agreement are met. The fighting now reaches the Red Sea route as well as Hormuz.

At home, support for the war is thin. In an Associated Press survey, 70% of U.S. adults say the war has not been worth fighting, and a Reuters poll has registered voters preferring Democrats 44% to 37%. The November 3 midterms stay the war’s last remaining dated gate.

— Geopolitical Intelligence Officer (Margaux Lindqvist)

Commodity Tape: The Gulf Built a Detour Around a Closed Strait

WTI, the U.S. crude benchmark, read $89.23 on October 5. That is 21.60% above its 100-week average of $73.38, and that average rose 2.97% over thirteen weeks. The weekly close of $90.80 on October 4 was the twelfth straight above it, in a run that started on July 17. Brent traded at $100.88 on October 6.

The Gulf is moving its oil around the shut strait. Kpler counted Middle East crude exports of 19.5 to 22.5 million barrels a day on four days in the last week of September, against about 18 million before the war, and Gulf flows excluding Iran ran above 81% of pre-war levels in September.

In our read the shrinking gap between crude and its long average comes from barrels rerouted around a strait that is still closed. One strike would reverse it.

— Inflation & Real Asset Analyst (Sienna Whitfield)

Hard Assets: Gold Fell to the Dollar, and Bitcoin Closed Above 20×

Gold read $4,169 on October 5, 2.23% under its 20-week average of $4,264.23, as traders weighed the stronger dollar and higher yields.

Our team splits on what moved gold. Julian Harlow sides with Michael Howell: a People’s Bank of China (PBoC) liquidity print through the third quarter should lift gold into the fourth. Marcus Vasquez, our Hard Asset Strategist, reads September’s fall as a dollar and real-yield story, unconsidered what the PBoC is buying.

Gold priced in oil reads 46.72×. The ratio that must give in for a healthy economy stopped falling, and it sits at more than twice the long-run level of about 20×.

Bitcoin priced in gold closed the week of October 4 at 20.75×, an early-bull level, challenged by macroeconomic reallocations and geopolitical turmoil. We respect the ratio, but we can’t ignore the fact that the move came as much from gold falling as from Bitcoin rising.

— Hard Asset Strategist (Marcus Vasquez)

Equity Tape: A Third of a Percent From the Record, Every Long Line Rising

The S&P 500 closed at 7,774 on October 5, 0.32% below its August 13 record close of 7,798.99. The Nasdaq 100 set a record, and Nvidia’s market value reached $5.76 trillion. Volume on October 5 was 3.47 billion shares against a 20-day average of 3.23 billion.

Lukas Marchetti, our Technical Analyst, reads the structure as intact. The 50-, 100-, and 200-day averages are all rising and the index sits above each of them. The index’s lead over the long averages, however, narrowed, and the 20-day average is still falling.

A narrow group carries the entire index, as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) keeps rising. The money for the AI build keeps flowing, at a higher price. JPMorgan is marketing a $5 billion loan for Volta Infrastructure at a yield of about 11%. Stonebriar sold $869 million of asset-backed securities, about 15% of them backed by AI chip loans. OpenAI is seeking $30 billion at a value of about $1.4 trillion, and Anthropic is targeting an initial public offering as soon as mid-November. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told the U.K. to prepare for market shocks from an AI correction.

— Technical Analyst (Lukas Marchetti)

What We’re Watching

We’re curious about the upcoming reads of the collateral multiplier, after bond volatility briefly hit 114. Our risk-off trigger stands until the MOVE index closes a week back under its 200-week average. The September consumer and producer price prints will give insight into whether refined fuel is driving inflation and test the thirty-year above 5.5% on weekly closes. We’re looking out for prints of Japanese net selling of foreign bonds, and we’re watching gold at $4,000, currently 4.22% above.

Our Sources This Week

This week the desk read Michael Howell’s Global Liquidity update of October 6 and his pieces of October 2 and October 5. Subscribe to Howell’s research for his full data.

Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any asset discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

So we dug through the data. Nobody bought the close. Coinbase and Binance, the two big spot exchanges, both sold over last week. The spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), last month’s buyer, took in $241.1 million in the week to October 2, against $2.39 billion the week before. When the week was over, holders booked $16.68 of profit for every dollar of loss.

The MOVE index (Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate), the price traders pay to protect against swings in U.S. Treasury bonds, closed a second week above its 200-week line. Last week we wrote that a second close would be our short risk-asset confirmation trigger.

A line drawn months out becomes a zone when price gets there, and we are in that zone now. When Bitcoin broke below a head-and-shoulders pattern in January at $88,000, we drew that line in the sand: This is where a relief rally will be tested. Nine months later, we have arrived.

We keep our short positions open to reassess should Bitcoin break its new local high at $87,397 on volume. Our team splits on the one level that argues hardest against us: the heaviest band of Bitcoin supply in five years formed at current price. Holders at today’s levels bought a little under a year ago, and now their nerves are tested. In today’s article, both sides of our team’s aisle will argue their case.

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine. What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any coin discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

On-Chain Tape: Bitcoin Broke Out and Both Exchanges Sold

On the desk’s market data, Coinbase sold about $105 million net over September 27 to October 4, the week that produced the close, and Binance sold about $419 million. On Monday morning, October 5, Bitcoin traded back under $86,000.

Holders sold into the move. On October 4, holders booked $16.68 of profit for every dollar of loss. Over the seven days before, that ratio ran between 1.27 and 5.12. Supply moved from long-term holders to short-term ones, and supply in profit rose to 78.11% from 71.21%. Coins kept leaving the exchanges: their balance fell by about 6,544 Bitcoin over the week.

Glassnode’s analysts reported on October 2 that the sell wall near $85,000 had cleared. Our venue data shows it cleared with no net spot buying behind it. On our reading, the sellers at $85,000 ran out of coins and no buyer took their place.

Spot at $86,464 on October 4 sits above every cost level on the desk’s ladder, from the cost of the coins that actually move, $84,751, down to the realized price, $53,718, the average cost of every coin on the chain. The True Market Mean is the level where we read a bull-repair turning into a bear-reversal. It sits about 11% below spot.

The strongest evidence against us sits much closer to today’s Bitcoin reality. The densest band of Bitcoin supply in five years sits right below spot. It formed when Bitcoin broke down through that level a little under a year ago, and those holders sat through the drop to about $58,000. The steel in their nerves will determine Bitcoin’s mid-term trajectory. Above spot the bands stay light until about $95,000, with heavy 2025 supply between $95,000 and $115,000.

Our team splits on what that red-hot supply band reads. Priya Sandoval, our Capital Flow Analyst, reads it as the floor a failed break has to cut through. Lukas Marchetti, our Technical Analyst, says it is a breakout-base. He reads yesterday’s close above as the market choosing a bullish side: price sits above every cost level, and the 50-, 100-, and 200-day averages are one crossover from lining up bullish. Jordi Federer, our Lead Trader, says last week showed supply running out of demand, with no net buying on either of the world’s two largest exchanges. He reads an 89.9% drop in fund flows, and long-term holders distributing. The fund keeps its short positions open.

The options market is holding price steady. Dealers are positioned to sell rallies and buy dips, with their two floors at $86,000 and $85,000, and max pain on the nearest expiry, the price that pays option buyers least, sits at $85,000. Last week price rested on the point where dealers stop cushioning moves. That point is gone this week. Calls now price above puts, a turn from last week. Use of the chain stays soft: active addresses sit near the bottom of their range since mid-July, and transfer volume fell 2.5% on the week.

Solana Lagged Bitcoin’s Week

On our weekly Solana read from October 4, new capital added 0.31% to Solana’s value over the prior seven days. Solana trades at $121.52, 3.37% above its realized price of $117.56, so the average holder sits barely in profit. Supply in profit reads 56.56%, the gains sit with older holders, and recent buyers sit overhead. That overhead supply is what a short wants. The U.S. spot Solana funds took in $2.4 million in the week to October 2, against $188.2 million the week before. Solana’s weekly close slipped 0.36% while Bitcoin’s rose 2.44%.

Ether Holders Took Profits as Users Thinned

Ether trades at $2,725.91, 15.75% above its realized price of $2,355.04. On the desk’s October 4 read, holders who sold booked about $42 of profit for every dollar of loss. The U.S. spot Ether funds sold $138.0 million in the week to October 2, after taking in $689.9 million the week before, and they sold on four of the five days. Active addresses fell 8.9% in the week to October 4 and transfer volume fell 11.0%. The staking-reward burn proposal we watch was pulled from the Hegota upgrade on October 2, and the queue of Ether waiting to leave staking reached about 851,000 coins after MetaMask’s validators exited.

XRP Got a $1 Billion Treasury and Didn’t Move

Evernorth’s $1 billion XRP treasury deal was approved on October 2, and XRP’s weekly close moved 0.21%. The U.S. spot XRP funds took in $4.7 million in the week to October 2, against $75.6 million the week before. XRP trades at $1.5197, 1.24% above its realized price of $1.5010. On the desk’s October 4 read, the coins that moved sold a little above what their holders paid, and profits outweighed losses. New capital stayed positive, 0.41% of XRP’s value in the week to October 4. Active addresses sit in the bottom fifth of their range.

Doge Is Losing Money

Doge trades at $0.0958, 18.61% under its realized price. Money is leaving the chain, 0.55% of its value in the week to October 4, and Doge carries the most leverage of major altcoins, compared to its size. Its one-week volatility fell to 42.6 from 111.9 a week earlier. Doge is our gauge of speculative appetite, and the appetite is absent.

Price Rotated to Bitcoin, and the Money Picked Two Alts

Bitcoin’s share of the whole crypto market closed the week at 59.31%, up from 58.75%. The altcoin market without Bitcoin, Ether, and stablecoins closed the week 0.72% lower, while Bitcoin rose 2.44%. On the chains it ran the other way: new money came in fastest for its size on XRP and Solana, with Bitcoin at 0.20%. Price tells us who won the week, and realized cap tells us where new cost basis landed. They answer different questions.

— Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval) · Fundamental Research Analyst (Charlotte Donovan)

Hayloo’s Perp Book: In the Zone, Short Until $87,397

Size and direction. Our book is short 929.2 Bitcoin (BTC) from $79,139.80, 972,200 Solana (SOL) from $106.42, and 31,268 Ether (ETH) from $2,575.70. No long legs are open.

The zone. We drew $86,000 as our relief line months out. A line drawn that far ahead becomes a zone when price reaches it, and Sunday’s settled close put us inside that zone. We keep all three shorts until Bitcoin breaks its new local high at $87,397 on volume. Through it, we are on the wrong side of the market. Below it, we put the odds at 60/40 that we are on the winning side.

Funding rate carry. The book averages $24,527 of funding rate income per day. Annualized, that is a 22.78% yield on the book’s equity.

Position against thesis. Our line in the sand gave way on price, and the demand a lasting break needs never arrived. We are short above the heaviest supply band in five years, and that band is the read most likely to determine the outcome of our short positions.

— Lead Trader (Jordi Federer)

Forward Thesis: A Failed Break Inside Four Weeks

Last week we wrote that Bitcoin would fail to complete a weekly close at or above $86,000 inside four to twelve weeks. It closed there on October 4, 0.59% over the line. Our read is that the $86,511 close is a break the market cannot hold. Bitcoin settles back under $86,000 inside four weeks and works down toward the ETF deposit cost at $81,842, 5.35% under spot, and the True Market Mean about 11% below spot.

The reasons are on this week’s tape. Neither spot exchange bought. Fund flows fell 89.9%. Holders took sixteen times as much profit as loss on the day of the close, and supply moved to weaker hands. Options dealers sell strength around $85,000 to $86,000. The MOVE index closed the week of October 4 at 110, its second weekly close above its 200-week line of 97.45, and that fires our risk-off trigger. On Michael Howell’s measure, the base under the world’s liquidity shrank at a 7.9% three-month rate in his September 29 update, from 2.6%.

The path down runs first through the heaviest supply band, at about $84,500 to $85,000, and a weekly close under $84,000 breaks it. Below the True Market Mean sit the short-term holders’ cost at $75,370. The realized price at $53,718 is our floor of this multi-month range Bitcoin is trapped in.

What changes our mind, each against where it stands now:

1. A break of the new local high at $87,397 on volume. It sits 1.08% above spot. Through it, our book is on the wrong side of the market, and the shorts will be challenged.

2. A second settled weekly close at or above $86,000 on October 11, with Coinbase or Binance net buying that week. That turns a price break into a demand break. Both exchanges sold over the week to October 4.

3. A weekly close above $80,000 with both exchanges net buying. Neither bought this week.

4. Howell’s three-month rate turning clearly positive, with his annual rate rising. On his September 29 update, both are negative: −7.9% and −1.4%.

5. Fund demand returning: ETF flows above $1 billion a week, with realized cap growing more than 0.5% a week. This week they read $241.1 million and 0.32%.

6. Bond volatility reversing: a MOVE weekly close back under 97.45. It closed the week of October 4 at 110.

Watchlist: $84’000 Decides the Shorts

• $87,397, the latest local high. A break on volume takes our shorts off.

• $86,000 on the daily closes and the October 11 settled close. A daily close under it is the first sign the break fails. A second weekly close above it, with either exchange buying, turns the break into demand.

• $84,000, the bottom of the heaviest supply band. A daily close under it is the first sign the band gives way.

• Coinbase and Binance, October 4 to 11. One exchange turning to net buying changes the read.

• Spot ETF flows. A week above $1 billion is the fund-demand condition. Their deposit cost at $81,842 is the first level down.

• The dealers’ floors at $85,000 and $86,000. A dealer flip point reappearing below spot means dealers stop dampening moves.

• Holders’ profit-taking. Another spike in profit booked, with supply moving to newer hands, confirms distribution.

• The MOVE index’s weekly close against 97.45. Our risk-off trigger stands until it closes back under.

• Howell’s next print, read in this week’s Macro Tape.

• Solana’s next read. Its realized price at $117.56 and supply in profit at 56.56% are the two lines.

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Where We Read It

This week the desk read Glassnode’s Cost Basis Distribution Heatmap and Michael Howell’s Global Liquidity update of September 29. Subscribe to them for their full data.

Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any coin discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

On September 4 we wrote down what would end that short. Bitcoin had to close a week above $80,000 with Coinbase and Binance, the two big spot exchanges, both buying that week.

Price has now done its part twice in a row. On the desk’s market data, Coinbase bought in the week to September 27, but Binance sold far more. The test didn’t fire. A price can rise on thin buying for a while. This Sunday’s close gives the rally one more try to put a buyer behind the rally.

The spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were the ones supporting this run. At Hayloo, we see ETFs as dumb money institutionalized. But even their buying stalls and Futures traders closed positions too. The bulls that carried Bitcoin through $80,000 are running out of steam.

The MOVE index (Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate) is the price traders pay to protect against swings in United States (U.S.) Treasury bonds. The gauge closed the week of September 27 above its 200-week line, for the first time in about half a year. We treat one close above that line as an alert. A second close makes it our trigger to position for a world that reprices itself ahead of central bank decisions.

Both tests settle on Sunday, October 4. A Bitcoin weekly close at or above $86,000 ends our short thesis outright. A close above $80,000 with Coinbase and Binance both buying over the week will rob our sleep. The bond gauge’s close the same day decides whether its alert becomes our trigger.

Our fund added to the Solana short this week, and our Capital Flow Analyst, Priya Sandoval, did not sign off on the trade. Below are both sides of the aisle.

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine. What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC. hayloo.org

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Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any coin discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

Hayloo’s weekly reads are being packaged for use in your AI system. Join the waitlist.

We Hold the Read, and we doubled Solana Short

Our call is that Bitcoin fails to complete a weekly close at or above $86,000 in the next four to twelve weeks, and gives ground toward the levels below price. The buyers who carried the breakout were ETF buyers, crypto tourists that are known to end rallies; they don’t start them. On Glassnode’s data, long-term Bitcoin holders sold their coins into ETF buying, a classic smart money exit play. Above current spot, there’s a massive Binance sell wall waiting for any attempts to turn this rally into a bull. Below spot, on the desk’s options data, price is resting on the level where dealers stop cushioning down moves and start feeding them with gasoline. It’s game-time.

On-Chain Tape: The Breakout Held and the Buyers Walked

On Glassnode’s data, new money kept arriving on the Bitcoin chain this week. Glassnode’s realized cap is the dollar value of every coin at the price it last moved. It kept rising in the seven days to September 30, at about half the rate of the week before. Two weeks ago we named the weekly rise that would tell us demand had returned. It had not. It’s dwindling.

While we wait for the market to battle this 80K level out, our shorts get paid funding fees by leveraged long-traders. In perpetual futures, one side pays the other a fee to keep its position open. Our book collected $22,371 a day over nineteen sessions since September 3, 19.09% of equity annualized.

The spot ETFs were the buyer of this rally, and they went quiet. This week’s ETF buying dropped to well under half of the bullish week before. Over the latest window, September 23 to 30, Coinbase turned seller and Binance kept selling, this time on a bigger scale. Futures traders closed positions, and open interest, counted in coins, fell sharply.

Holders frosty enough to buy when there was blood on the streets took large profits two weeks ago. As we announced in an earlier edition, Hayloo sold into the rally, offloading 600 Bitcoin, and we’re prepared to buy back below $60,000. In the past seven days, the selling came mostly from salad-hands with cold feet that bought a minute ago and got rid of their coins merely above break-even.

Our team splits on what these on-chain patterns read. Priya Sandoval, our Capital Flow Analyst, reads the long-term holders’ share, the Binance selling and the fund fade as a story of institutional buyers dumping their coins on ETF-Retail.

Charlotte Donovan, our Fundamental Research Analyst, reads the same cohort as a healthy change of guards, proven by the coins that kept leaving the exchanges all week.

We agree with both positions. The reason why we remain short risk assets is the liquidity read for Q4 2026. For assets at the right end of the risk curve, there’s not enough juice in the tank of a world that refinances at a higher rate than its defense spending.

Solana Holders Are Back at Break-Even, With the Most New Money of the Five

New capital added more to Solana’s value this week than to any other major altcoin. Solana trades at $118.03. On Glassnode’s data, that sits a hair above its realized price, the average cost of every coin on its chain, so the average holder is at break-even. But the gains sit with older holders, leaving recent buyers trapped above price already.

Ether Took in Money and Lost Users

Ether trades at $2,684.09, comfortably above its realized price on Glassnode’s data, and new capital added as much to its value as to Solana’s. Holders who sold booked far less profit for every dollar of loss than at the September 21 peak, so the profit-taking burst is over, and the users are leaving. Active addresses fell on the week and sit under their median; Ethereum’s transfer volume is falling.

Institutions Use the XRP Ledger Without Buying the Coin

Brazil’s securities depository began writing fund ownership records to the XRP Ledger this week, and no XRP demand printed on the news. This is the crypto story of the new cycle: When the U.S. Commerce Department put America’s gross domestic product (GDP) on nine blockchains in August 2025, it hired two data networks, paid its fees through three exchanges and bought no coin at all.

Institutions will happily rent the rails, and skip the token. We held Hedera as our proof: Their tech got adopted, the tokenization wave is here, but the coin never collected rent.

XRP trades at $1.4890, on Glassnode’s data that sits almost exactly on its realized price, and two of its balance points crossed back under break-even. The coins that moved sold a hair under what their holders paid, and holders booked less than a dollar of profit for every dollar of loss. New capital turned slightly negative.

Doge Rose 11% on Money Leaving

Doge’s weekly close rose 10.97% while money left the chain. Doge carries the heaviest leverage of the five coins we track. At $0.09449 Doge sits well under what its holders paid on average. Doge is our gauge of speculative appetite, and it reads as borrowed money chasing price.

The Price Followed Bitcoin, and the Money Picked Two Alts

Bitcoin’s share of the whole crypto market rose to 58.7473% on the September 27 weekly close, from 58.2051%. The altcoin market rose 2.55% that week, against Bitcoin’s 4.04%. On price, alts bled. On the chain, however, it split. Ether and Solana each took far more new money for their size than Bitcoin did, while XRP and Doge lost money. Alt money is still arriving on the two largest chains and leaving the rest.

— Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval) · Fundamental Research Analyst (Charlotte Donovan)

Hayloo’s Perp Book: One More Solana Add, and a Loud Dissent

Size and direction. Our book is short 929.2 Bitcoin (BTC) from $79,139.80, 972,200 Solana (SOL) from $106.42, and 31,268 ETH from $2,575.70. No long legs are open.

Why we doubled Solana. Hayloo’s Altcoin Tax read from September 28 has Solana catching 100 cents of every dollar Bitcoin gains and handing back 140 cents of every dollar Bitcoin loses. A short on that shape collects 1.4 times when bitcoin falls. The average Solana holder sits at break-even, and recent buyers are trapped above it. The path to pain on the Solana chain has already begun.

The dissent. Priya Sandoval, our Capital Flow Analyst, fades the add. On the desk’s market data, U.S. spot Solana funds took a record week of money to September 26, with every fund in the group buying. On Glassnode’s data, Solana’s new capital matched Ether’s at the top of the five major altcoins. On the desk’s market data, Solana’s funding turned negative on September 30, which means our short now pays the longs, and the short side is getting crowded.

Jordi, our Fund Manager, ruled for taking the short based on the Beta, the macro environment, and history, which proves that ETF inflows signal local tops more cleanly than breakouts.

Funding rate carry. Our book averaged $22,371 a day over nineteen sessions since September 3, 19.09% of equity annualized.

The spot side. We have sold our spot holdings into this rally. We’re stabled out, holding only 100 BTC, 10 million XRP, and 2,158,500 Chainlink (LINK).

Position against thesis. Bitcoin made two weekly closes above $80,000, and our kill condition held because the buyers a sustained move requires never arrived. We are at the upper band of a narrow window, without reason to believe sustained buying could reasonably continue. To us, this is a perfect short entry, and we see our thesis play out in real time.

— Lead Trader (Jordi Federer)

Forward Thesis: Sunday Settles Two Tests at Once

We hold the read. Bitcoin fails to complete a weekly close at or above $86,000 inside four to twelve weeks, and gives ground toward lower levels, the True Market Mean, the cost of the coins bought in 2026, the short-term holders’ cost, and the realized price of the whole market, which sits in the fifties. That’s where we’ll buy back.

The liquidity engine points the same way. On Michael Howell’s measure, the shrinking base under the world’s liquidity picks up speed. Its yearly rate is negative, and the base sits at its lowest in more than a year. Bond volatility made its first weekly close above its 200-week line in half a year. A second close turns that alert into our trigger, pointing into the early-November and early-December windows where Howell’s liquidity lag lands the headwind for risk assets.

What changes our mind, each against where it stands now.

1. A completed weekly close at or above $86,000. The September 27 close sits 1.80% under it.

2. A weekly close above $80,000 with both Coinbase and Binance net buying over that week. On the desk’s market data, both sold from September 23 to 30.

3. Michael Howell’s three-month liquidity read turning clearly positive, with his yearly rate rising. On his measure, both are negative now.

4. The MOVE index closing the week of October 4 back under its 200-week line, which cancels the alert. On ICE’s index, its latest reading sits well above that line.

5. Fund inflows back near their breakout pace, with Glassnode’s realized cap growing at size, two weeks running. On the desk’s market data and Glassnode’s, neither is close now.

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Watchlist: What We’re Watching Into Sunday

• Bitcoin’s October 4 weekly close. At or above $86,000 ends our short thesis. Above $80,000 with both venues net buying from September 27 to October 4 fires our flags. On the latest window, neither venue is buying.

• The MOVE index’s October 4 weekly close. A second close above its 200-week line triggers our bond-volatility signal. A close back under it cancels the alert.

• The wall of Binance sell orders just above price. On Glassnode’s data, a break through it on rising volume, with fund inflows returning, is the first real threat to our short thesis.

• The options dealers’ flip point, right at spot. Below it, hedging feeds the move down.

• The ETF’s average entry, just under spot. A daily close under it puts the average fund dollar back in pain.

• Glassnode’s True Market Mean. A daily close below it restores the bear read in full.

• Solana’s holders’ break-even, a hair under spot. A daily close back under it puts the average holder under water, which supports the short.

• Solana funding. It turned negative on September 30. A run of days with shorts paying longs is the crowding Priya Sandoval warns about.

• Spot fund flows. A return to the breakout pace reopens the demand case. A slide toward a trickle confirms the fade.

  Thanks for reading! Subscribe to receive new posts and support Hayloo’s work.

  ---

Where We Read It

This week the desk read Glassnode’s on-chain data and Michael Howell’s Global Liquidity research. Subscribe to them for their full data.

Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any coin discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Hayloo Unchained by JFederer – Q3 2026, Rapperswil-Jona, Switzerland, September 30, 2026

01 Kimmel Is Still On

Jimmy Kimmel is still on the air. I checked. Monday night, same orange tie, same falling empire, the same dozen eggs pinned on the same man, the Donald. The audience laughs on cue, the man on stage screams for money on cue, and the trick still works for the reason it worked in June: it’s easier to be angry at the magician’s left hand than studying what the right hand does.

In June we asked you to watch the other hand. We handed you the one price on this earth that no president, no Fed chair and no late-night host can set by decree, the thirty-year Treasury bond, and we made you a deal. If the war ended, and oil collapsed, and the long end still wouldn’t come down, then the thing setting the price of money was never the war and never the economy. It was the debt.

Now a second promise, and I’ll keep it by the last line of this quarterly. I’m going to show you what the right hand did for thirteen weeks. By the end, the dullest number in finance will read like the only honest witness left in the building.

02 Who’s Really Setting The Price of Money

Here’s the deal from June, and here’s where it stands. We set a clean test: war over, oil flat, long end still high. The war didn’t stay over. By mid-July the Strait of Hormuz was shut again, and by September crude was back above a hundred dollars. So anyone who wants to say the war did it after all has a case. Hello, Donald.

We don’t buy it, and here’s why. For nine days in September, oil fell and the thirty-year rose anyway. The barrel said relief. The price of money said otherwise. When the thing that supposedly drives inflation drops and the cost of borrowing climbs regardless, you’ve found out who’s really setting the price of money.

And the barrel lies twice. What lands on people’s heating bill this winter isn’t crude. It’s diesel, and American diesel set an all-time record above $6.50 a gallon on September 21, on crude’s fourth straight down day. The energy shortage isn’t in the strait of Hormuz anymore. It’s in the refineries. No peace treaty builds a refinery, and no rate hike puts gas in your car. Two central banks hiked into a supply shock that’s out of their hands anyway, because the alternative was letting the bond market do it for them. They’ve had enough of that already.

04 The Borrower Can’t Fire The Lender

On June 26, the thirty-year closed the week at 4.87%. Last Friday it closed at 5.49%, the highest weekly close since 2002. Nobody who put on a red hat to make America great again voted for that number. Here's how the Trump administration lost control of it, week by week, because the path is the argument.

July 29

• The Fed held rates, nine votes to three, the most rebellious room since 2016.

• The Fed said nothing, exactly as the Donald ordered them to do.

• The bond market said it for them: inside an hour the thirty-year was at a nineteen-year high.

July 31

• The yen was bleeding, and it took Tokyo and the New York Fed working the phones together to stop it.

• A currency that needs two treasuries to hold it up is broken.

• Here’s the part that keeps Washington up at night: Japan is America’s biggest foreign lender. When Tokyo needs dollars, it sells Treasuries.

August

• Washington ran a record $432 billion deficit in a single month, a quarter of it interest.

• The interest bill for the year passed what America spends on its military.

• Their lenders read the papers too.

August 19

• Scott Bessent doubled the Treasury’s buybacks of its own long bonds.

• Six days later Stanley Druckenmiller, the man who taught Bessent to trade, went to the Wall Street Journal under the headline “Let the Bond Market Speak” and told his old pupil, in public, to stop rigging the price of his own debt.

• The relief lasted eight trading sessions. Then the thirty-year was back where it stood before the first dollar was spent.

September

• Bessent wasn’t putting out fires anymore. He’d signed up for a Netflix subscription, in Japanese and in English, and the bill comes every month.

• He tripled the buyback of his debt. Long yields rose anyway, and the whole planet went with them: British gilts at their highest since 2007, German Bunds back to 2011, Japan’s ten-year through 3% for the first time since 1996.

• The bond market stopped telling governments apart and started grading them as one class, the class raised on debt, promises and mirages. Its ruling is in. The debt economy is about to meet its bastard child: refinancing.

September 15

• The ten-year hit 5.04%, its highest since 2007.

September 16

• The Fed hiked a quarter point, twelve votes to none, its first hike in more than three years. Two days later the Bank of Japan hiked too.

Read that order twice. The market moved on Tuesday. The Fed moved on Wednesday. To borrow a line from the movies: the bond market is the captain now. The Fed countersigned. And the price of money it set will reach into everything that happens in the next four years.

05 The Don Is Acting Like A Rich Kid

Michael Howell is an Englishman who publishes the most forward-looking indicator we use at Hayloo. His Substack, Capital Wars, measures the world’s pool of money, and by his count that pool hit a record in September. Look underneath the record and the base of it, the central-bank money and the collateral the whole system borrows against, shrank for a third straight week.

So where did the record come from? One lever. A bond market so calm that lenders ask for less collateral against more debt. In plain English: the dollars printed under Obama and Biden are now being borrowed against harder than ever under Trump. In the printing department the Don looks almost decent. What he does instead is worse. He stacks new debt on old debt on a foundation that’s getting smaller, like a rich kid who gets bailed out by daddy every time a repayment plan goes sour.

The calm that makes all this possible was bought and paid for, with those bond buybacks. In our September 23 piece we drew a line under the bond market’s fear gauge and made a call: if it breaks through, the record pile of money comes down with it. Last week it broke through. That’s a big fu*$ing deal. The biggest pile of money in the history of this planet, the thing behind pension funds, Elon Musk’s rocket promises and Nvidia’s circular financing, everything priced in dollars and leveraged with debt, is standing on a shrinking pile of collateral. And the foundation just started to shake.

06 Who Buys America’s Future?

Donald Trump has lived in debt his whole life. Kevin Warsh took the impossible chair and hiked into a war no interest rate can fight. Scott Bessent opened his wallet again and again and bought eight days of calm before the storm. And Jimmy Kimmel keeps pointing at all three for your entertainment. All four are clowns on a stage.

Watch the other hand. Every Friday it closed a little higher: 4.87, 5.06, 5.27, 5.35, 5.49. It didn’t care who won an argument, who got fired or who got blamed. It answered to $40 trillion of debt and to the one question no clown in the West can answer: who buys the next thirty years of America?

I promised you the dullest number in finance would read like the only honest witness in the building. It can’t be fired. It can’t be jawboned. It can’t be bought for longer than eight sessions. It’s the first thing I read every morning, before the news and before the day begins. The thirty-year Treasury bond is the captain now. It will reprice everything you consume, trade, and throw away.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Here is what that flow looks like from the inside. A Japanese insurer that can earn more on a bond at home can sell a U.S. Treasury to buy it. In our reading that choice turns on Tokyo’s yields, and nothing the Federal Reserve (Fed) does or says will change it. Tokyo also sent a signal the other way. On September 29 Japan’s 40-year auction drew its strongest demand in six years. Our team reads that auction two ways. The number that settles it is the size of Japanese net selling of foreign bonds.

The selling in long bonds ran around the world. Britain paid its highest yield since 1999 at a ten-year auction. France’s premium over Germany reached 120 basis points, with a record €340 billion of bonds planned for 2027. Australia’s central bank raised its rate to 4.6% on September 29, its highest since 2011.

The Fed spent the week talking. Governor Michael Barr said again on September 29 that further rate increases are likely needed. John Williams of the New York Fed said on the same day that his base case is one more increase this year, with no urgency. The two-year Treasury yield slipped to 4.88% from 4.96%, and the thirty-year barely moved.

We run a crypto fund, and our team reads the bond market before anyone at the desk opens a Bitcoin chart. Treasuries are the collateral much of the world borrows against. In our read, a large seller of them reaches every market built on that borrowing, crypto included.

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine.

What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

hayloo.org

This week’s read opens on both sides of our split over Japan, and on what the bond market’s gauge of calm did this week. It gives the date that fires our trigger, and the windows when we expect the pressure to reach risk assets. It carries the rest of the desk’s week as well: Washington’s answer on Hormuz, diesel at records, gold under its line, and the junk bonds now paying for the artificial intelligence (AI) build.

Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any asset discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

A newsreader that ranks each morning’s news from Hayloo’s sources and keeps six months of it for your AI is being built. Join the waitlist.

Our Team Splits on How Big Japan’s Flow Is

Priya Sandoval, our Capital Flow Analyst, reads this week’s news from Japan as the start of a Treasury-market event, because a Japanese insurer selling Treasuries to buy a bond at home doesn’t care what the Fed says next. Margaux Lindqvist, our Geopolitical Intelligence Officer, wants a size before she calls it a flow. She reads Japan’s 40-year auction on September 29, its strongest demand in six years, as money staying home. The number that settles it is the size of Japanese net selling of foreign bonds, including the largest foreign stash of U.S. Treasuries.

— Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval) · Geopolitical Intelligence Officer (Margaux Lindqvist)

Liquidity Tape: Why Tokyo Reaches a Crypto Fund

Record global liquidity stands on one lever, and a large seller of Treasuries would pull it. On Michael Howell‘s count, the world’s money hit a record this week, while the base underneath it, central-bank money and collateral, shrank to its lowest in more than a year. We ran the split on Howell’s own weekly table. Since mid-July the base has shrunk by about as much as the headline has grown, and every dollar of the headline’s growth came from the collateral multiplier, which now sits at a record in his data going back to 2010. The multiplier lives on calm bonds, because lower Treasury volatility means smaller haircuts and more lending against the same collateral.

This week Treasury volatility closed a week above its line. The MOVE index (the Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate), which Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) publishes, prices the swings traders expect in Treasuries. On ICE’s index, Treasury volatility closed the week of September 27 above its 200-week average for the first time since March, after about half a year of weekly closes under it. One weekly close above that line is our alert. A second, in the week ending October 4, is our trigger.

By our own test, the world’s money hasn’t rolled over yet. We call a rollover only on three weekly prints in a row that show both of the base’s growth rates negative and the headline itself lower. The headline sits at a record, so the test isn’t met. We read the setting around it as a squeeze. Inflation expectations, government bond yields around the world, and mortgage rates are all rising, so policy has no room to ease a stalling engine. On Howell’s September 29 update, the base’s three-month rate sank further this week and its annual rate went deeper below zero. We expect pressure on risk assets in Q4 2026.

— Global Liquidity Director (Julian Harlow)

Macro Tape: The Long End Kept Selling While the Fed Talked

The thirty-year Treasury closed the week of September 25 at 5.49%, its highest weekly close since May 2002, and printed 5.56% on September 28. The ten-year closed September 23 at 5.11%, up 15 basis points in a session after a weak $70 billion five-year auction. The ten-year real yield, what the bond pays after inflation, reached 2.90% on September 28.

The market’s odds of a hike in October fell from better than two in three to about even. Theodore Brennan, our Chief Macro Strategist, reads the two-year as a bet on the Fed’s next move. In his read the thirty-year is pricing the supply of government debt and the price of energy.

Long Treasuries could pay a strong return over the next twelve months, because history shows the real economy breaking as long rates approach the level the thirty-year just printed through. Julian Harlow, our Global Liquidity Director, reads the next large move in yields as down, delivered by a growth scare. Sienna Whitfield, our Inflation and Real Asset Analyst, says the inputs haven’t turned. One-year consumer inflation expectations jumped to 4.6% from 4.0%. Diesel set records on both sides of the Atlantic, Spain printed 4.9% inflation and France 3.0% in September, and Barclays and RBC both put a 6% thirty-year yield in range. Our reading is that both roads to lower yields run through weaker growth, and neither is kind to risk assets this quarter.

The real economy is splitting in two. On S&P Global‘s flash survey, the U.S. composite purchasing managers’ index reached 58.4 in September, its highest since July 2021, and jobless claims fell to 197,000. Households went the other way. Consumer confidence fell to its lowest since 2014 on the Conference Board‘s survey, sentiment fell to 48.1 from 51.7 on the University of Michigan‘s, and the thirty-year mortgage rate reached 7.12%, its highest since May 2024. Output runs hot while households pay the energy bill and the borrowing cost, and in our read housing and the consumer break first. Job openings fell to a five-month low in the same stretch.

— Chief Macro Strategist (Theodore Brennan)

Geopolitical Tape: Tehran Named Its Price, and Washington Passed

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian told the United Nations General Assembly on September 23 that Hormuz stays closed while sanctions and the U.S. blockade stand. That made the blockade the price of the strait. On September 24 negotiators were reported to be exploring that exact trade, the strait for the blockade. The same day the Houthis claimed strikes on Saudi Aramco facilities at Yanbu, the Red Sea end of the kingdom’s pipeline around the strait. On September 26 President Trump rejected Iran’s seven-day proposal, and explosions were reported near Qeshm Island within hours. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi asked for Washington’s final answer by September 29, and a U.S. official said no agreement comes without the nuclear program on the table. That being said, the November 3 midterms remain the war’s dated gate.

Trade brought no relief. Washington and Beijing extended their truce by two months, to January 10, after a state visit that released no concrete agreements. Soybeans stayed off the lists of goods recommended for tariff cuts, and rare earths were pushed to another round. Talk about getting sh*t done.

— Geopolitical Intelligence Officer (Margaux Lindqvist)

Commodity Tape: Saudi Pipes Moved the Barrel, and Diesel Set Records

West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the U.S. crude benchmark, closed at $89.28 on September 29. That is 12.9% under its $102.45 weekly close of September 13, and the war has not ended. It still sits 22.0% above its 100-week average of $73.18, and that average is 2.6% higher than it was thirteen weeks ago. Eleven straight completed weekly closes sit above it, from July 17 through the $93.39 close of September 27.

Plumbing moved the barrel. Saudi Arabia restored about half the flow through its East-West pipeline, which runs around Hormuz, and then resumed flows through it. The recovery rests on infrastructure one strike can take out again, and the Houthis hit its Red Sea end on September 24.

Diesel is where the war lands on prices. U.S. retail diesel topped $6.50 a gallon on September 23, a record. Europe’s diesel premium over Brent crude passed $95 a barrel the same day, a record in data back to 2011, and the European Union’s average pump price for diesel hit a record €2.23 a liter. Sienna Whitfield reads the shortage as one of refining capacity, so an export ban would reshuffle the queue for diesel and add no volume to it. The White House denied a report of such a ban, and President Trump then said he is still considering one.

— Inflation & Real Asset Analyst (Sienna Whitfield)

Hard Assets: Gold Slipped Under Its Line on Real Yields

Gold reads $4,191, 2.2% under its 20-week average of $4,283.81, and its September 27 weekly close of $4,260.93 also finished under the line. Spot fell 3.3% to $4,146.51 on September 28, its lowest since August 5. Our floor sits at $4,000, 4.8% below, with a deep floor at $3,700.

Marcus Vasquez, our Hard Asset Strategist, reads a rate story first. The ten-year real yield rose to 2.90% and the dollar had its best month since June, and both raise the cost of holding a metal that pays nothing. Beijing is the second leg. Gold follows the liquidity the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) pumps, and the injections have slowed. If gold falls on rates while the Chinese tap stays open, our floor holds. A slowing tap puts the floor in play. The PBoC’s record overnight lending window from September 28 to October 8, capped at 1 trillion yuan a day, is the next read on the tap.

Gold priced in oil reads 46.94×. On weekly closes it fell from 53.13× at the end of August to 42.73× on September 13, then climbed back to 45.63× at the September 27 close, because crude has fallen 12.9% since the September 13 close and gold only 4.3%. Howell expects the ratio to keep falling toward a long-run center near 20× as industrial demand takes over. We agree on where it ends up and part ways on the last fortnight: the driver right now is Saudi logistics, and one strike can send it back the other way.

Bitcoin priced in gold reads 19.96× on live marks and 19.82× on the September 27 weekly close. Last week’s live print touched the 20× line our desk calls early-bull, and on a weekly close it still hasn’t crossed. Outside gold the commodity run continues, with copper and the broad commodity index having very large years.

— Hard Asset Strategist (Marcus Vasquez)

Equity Tape: Stocks Hold Above Rising Lines While the AI Build Borrows From the Junk Market

Lukas Marchetti, our Technical Analyst, reads the S&P 500’s structure as intact. The index hasn’t made a new high since its August 13 record, and it has gone nowhere since then while its long averages kept rising. It sits just above its 20-day average and above rising 50-, 100-, and 200-day averages, and it hasn’t closed under the 100-day or the 200-day since April. More than half of this month’s sessions, however, closed under the 20-day average, and the gap to each of the three longer lines keeps shrinking.

Earnings are holding the index up while valuation multiples compressed. Theodore Brennan points to what the index hasn’t priced. Long rates at two-decade highs raise the bar for those earnings. Wells Fargo cut its year-end target for the index to barely above where it closed on September 28. U.S. industrial stocks fell hard over the past month, and Citigroup’s earnings-revision index turned net negative on September 23 for the first time in 23 weeks.

The AI bill is on paper now, and junk bonds are paying it. SoftBank sold $11.1 billion of high-yield bonds on September 23, the largest such sale on record, to fund a stake in OpenAI. Anthropic’s initial public offering prospectus sets out $518 billion of planned spending against a 2025 net loss of $42 billion. Goldman Sachs’s credit strategists say the supply has pushed high-yield risk premiums to a five-month high. Protection on Nvidia’s debt changed hands for $6.9 billion in six months, against $640 million in the six months before. Oracle sent a force-majeure notice to a New Mexico data-center developer on September 27. Capital spending financed through credit reprices in credit first, and we will judge it by what that paper trades at a month from now.

— Technical Analyst (Lukas Marchetti)

What We’re Watching

A second weekly close in bond volatility above its 200-week average on October 4 is our trigger. Howell’s next flash print tells us whether the multiplier held its record or came off it. The size of Japanese net selling of foreign bonds settles the split between Priya Sandoval and Margaux Lindqvist. The PBoC’s overnight window runs to October 8 and tells Marcus Vasquez whether the Chinese tap is open. Gold’s floor sits at $4,000. The strait stays the war’s open question until the November 3 midterms, and the price of the AI build’s junk bonds a month from now tells us how credit is taking it.

Our Sources This Week

This week the desk read Michael Howell’s Global Liquidity update of September 29 and his piece of September 27. Subscribe to Howell’s research for his full data.

Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any asset discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

A newsreader that ranks each morning’s news from Hayloo’s sources and keeps six months of it for your AI is being built. Join the waitlist.

The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Hayloo’s Beta Desk — September 28, 2026.

On September 21 Bitcoin rose 6.5% and Ether rose 4.8%. Ether’s holders made money that day. Measured against Bitcoin, they caught about three-quarters of the move.

The Altcoin Tax is what a coin catches when Bitcoin rises against what it hands back when Bitcoin falls. We measure the major altcoin’s beta, how far a coin moves for each 1% Bitcoin moves. Hayloo’s Beta Desk reads beta over 30, 60, and 120 days of daily moves, and splits the 60-day read by direction. For Ether, 1.24 is the line its own history backtest draws between leading Bitcoin and trailing it.

September 21 pulled Ether’s 60-day beta from 1.27 to 1.20, under the line. Ether had led Bitcoin since July 2, for 81 days.

Hayloo has money on this. Last Thursday we set the test for our Ether short: a second week of the 30-day beta under 1.24, with the 60-day following it down. The 30-day now reads 1.00 and the 60-day reads 1.19. Both are under the line, and the 120-day is the only window still above it. We’re happy with our short position.

Ethereum’s trailing tag is seven days old, and it rests on September 21. Without that session, Ether’s 60-day beta would still read 1.26, narrowly inside the lead. The same day lit Ether’s warning flag. It cut up-capture, what Ether catches when Bitcoin rises, from 1.30 to 1.18. The gap between catching and handing back fell to +0.20 on September 24 before closing the week at +0.21. Twenty trading days earlier Ethereum lead with +0.38. Down-capture, what Ether hands back when Bitcoin falls, held near 0.98 the whole time, so Ethereum’s upside is shutting down.

Ether is still on the good side of the tax, and it has stayed there since August 4, for 55 days. One August session holds it there. On August 19 Ether rose 16.1% while Bitcoin rose 6.9%. Take that day out and Ether’s up-capture reads 0.86, its gap turns to −0.13, and its 120-day beta reads 1.14, which is trailing. A warm day doesn’t make for a good fall. Ethereum’s up-day will leave the 60-day window on October 18.

Ether has spent 78.0% of its recorded history trailing Bitcoin and 22.0% leading it, with no other regime in its record.

This week major altcoins proved to be more volatile when Bitcoin barely moved. Take these quiet days out of the equation, and some of the week’s altcoin tax bills disappear. Below you will read which of the major altcoins still pay the altcoin tax, and if we traded these signals this week.

Our book is exposed to the crypto markets. People behind Hayloo may hold any coin discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

The Beta Desk’s readings behind this post are being packaged for use with your proprietary AI solution. Join the waitlist.

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine. What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

hayloo.org

The Cross-Section: Three of Four Now Pay the Altcoin Tax

Three of the four major altcoins the Beta Desk reads now pay the tax: Solana, XRP, and the altcoin market without Bitcoin, Ether, and stablecoins. Ether is the only one left on the good side of the line, which sits at zero.

Clean out Bitcoin’s flat days from this week and XRP’s tax disappears. On September 22, 24, and 25 Bitcoin dipped less than half a percent and XRP rose more than 2%. Take those three days out and XRP’s down-capture, what it hands back when Bitcoin falls, reads 1.68. Its up-capture, what it catches when Bitcoin rises, reads 1.73, so buys itself another week on the good side - one eye closed.

Solana’s tax does not survive the same cleaning. Even with this week’s two flat Bitcoin days out, Solana hands back 119 cents of every dollar Bitcoin loses and catches 100 of every dollar Bitcoin gains. We doubled our Solana short at $120.

Solana: The Tax Holds

This week Solana caught 100 cents of every dollar Bitcoin gained and handed back 140 cents of every dollar Bitcoin lost. Last week’s read had it at 104 caught and 117 handed back. It has sat on the costly side of the line for 31 days straight.

Solana’s down-capture rose from 1.17 to 1.40 this week, and the two quiet days wrote most of that rise. Without them it reads 1.19.

Solana’s 60-day beta is 1.18, and all three windows read leading: 1.31 over 30 days and 1.23 over 120. The line down to trailing sits at 0.88, 0.30 below. Solana has led Bitcoin for 88.0% of its recorded history. Its current run as a leader has lasted 923 days, when the median run lasts 331. The regime is stable and the flag is clear. The gap, however, widened to −0.39. Which is why this desk doubled down on a short position on Solana this week.

XRP: The Flip Rests on Four Days

On September 9 we wrote that XRP’s edge had a maturity date. On September 22 XRP’s gap crossed zero, the first time since June 13, and that ended 100 days on the good side. XRP now catches 173 cents of every dollar Bitcoin gains and hands back 193 cents of every dollar Bitcoin loses, 1.1 times as much, and it has been on the costly side for six days running.

Down-capture did XRP’s moving. It rose from 1.63 to 1.93 while up-capture eased from 1.77 to 1.73. This week’s three flat Bitcoin days carried most of it, and one real selloff carried the rest. On September 15 Bitcoin fell 3.4% and XRP fell 10.4%, and without that day alone down-capture reads 1.42. Remove either the flat days or that selloff, and XRP is back on the good side of the tax. But XRP’s flag is lit for the third week running, on a shrinking gap. We sold our remaining 10 million XRP into this rally, and we are waiting in cash.

XRP carries the highest 60-day beta on the board at 1.62, and all three windows read leading: 1.58 over 30 days and 1.37 over 120. The line down to trailing sits at 1.05, 0.57 below. XRP has led Bitcoin for 35.1% of its history, with a median run of 16 days, so its current 40-day run is long for XRP. XRP is the only major altcoin we measure whose history holds four regimes, with stretches of moving independently of Bitcoin and two episodes of extreme outperformance.

The Altcoin Market: The Widest Tax Sits on the Noisiest Numbers

The altcoin market without Bitcoin, Ether, and stablecoins caught 85 cents of every dollar Bitcoin gained and handed back 147 cents of every dollar Bitcoin lost. That is 1.7 times as much on the way down, 13 days straight. Down-capture jumped from 1.18 to 1.47, its highest since December 2025, and the gap widened from −0.32 to −0.62. But these are also the noisiest numbers on the board.

The 60-day beta is 0.91, the only series on the board below one, and all three windows read trailing: 1.02 over 30 days and 0.94 over 120. The line up to leading sits at 1.27, 0.36 above. The altcoin market has trailed Bitcoin for 76.9% of its history with a median run of 61 days, so its current 242-day run is long. The regime is stable and the flag is clear, and the widening gap is the opposite of the narrowing that has come before past market turns.

Bitcoin’s share of the whole crypto market reads 58.7% and is flat. It sits above its 50-day average of 58.3% and below its 150-day average of 59.0%.

What’s Solid, What’s Soft: Single Days Carry the Week’s Biggest Calls

Solana’s gap is the one tax on the board that clears its own error. This week’s biggest calls rest on single sessions. Ether’s trailing tag is seven days old and rests on September 21, and its 120-day beta sits 0.002 above the line. Ether’s positive gap rests on August 19. XRP’s flip to the costly side rests on September 15. Much of the widening down-capture on Solana, XRP, and the altcoin market came from days when Bitcoin barely moved.

The Beta Desk measures the relationship between each coin and Bitcoin. It does not forecast direction.

Our book is short Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. People behind Hayloo may hold any coin discussed here, in either direction. Nothing here is advice to buy or sell.

The Beta Desk’s readings behind this post are being packaged for use with your proprietary AI-System. Join the waitlist.

Subscribe now

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

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On-Chain Tape: Bitcoin’s Buyers Showed Up Just as the Bonds Broke

Credit where it is due: Bitcoin buyers came back this week, and they actually had real money in their pockets. Realized cap, the dollar value of every coin at the price it last moved, rose $5.73 billion in the seven days to September 23, a gain of 0.54%. Last week we named a weekly rise above 0.5% as the sign that demand had returned, and it printed. There is genuine Bitcoin demand taking shape. Spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) swallowed $2.01 billion over seven days, against $706.6 million walking out the week before, with $999.0 million landing on September 21 alone.

Both big exchanges turned buyer. Net taker buying on the spot books ran +$290.18 million on Coinbase and +$8.69 million on Binance from September 16 to 23, a week after both exchanges net sold. Coinbase meant it. Binance is barely off zero, and that sliver is the crack in the bull bowl. Asia is not committed yet.

Bitcoin closed September 23 at $84,386.17, up 10.82% on the week, and cleared every cost basis on the chain but one. The active realized price, the average paid for coins that still move, sits at $84,403.04, seventeen dollars overhead. The average ETF deposit at $81,823.83 is back in profit after a week under water. Beneath that the ladder drops through the True Market Mean at $77,022.32, the 2026-cohort basis at $72,702.70, and the short-term-holder basis at $71,100.67, down to the realized price at $53,494.28. Market-to-realized value reads 1.61 against a euphoria line of 3.33. That is a recovery, not a mania. Supply in profit rose to 72.75% from 64.39%.

But then the holders cashed out. Bitcoin closed above $86,000 on September 21 and 22, and on the 22nd holders booked $17.07 of realized profit for every dollar of loss. On the 23rd the ratio sank back to 1.84, under its thirty-day mean of 3.30. On our own estimate, 96.9% of short-term-holder supply now sits in profit, against 61.9% a week ago and a distribution line of 54.2%. Nearly every recent buyer has a reason to sell, and for the last two sessions, they ran for the exit.

Bitcoin’s rally was paid for in cash, not borrowed money. Futures open interest fell 2.2% in coins to 460,572 while spot bought. Funding on our Bitcoin exchange ran between 0.020% and 0.029% a day through the move and collapsed to 0.0017% on September 23. Options are pricing less action than the market is delivering: implied volatility sits at 35.81 against one-week realized volatility of 47.63. Friday’s quarterly expiry carries $15.9 billion of Bitcoin options, heavy in calls at $85,000, $90,000, and $100,000, and max pain sits at $85,000.

Ether Holders Cashed Out $33.79 for Every Dollar Lost

The money didn’t stop at Bitcoin. It reached every major we track, and Ether pulled in the most. Measured by realized cap, which values every coin at the price it last moved, $7.82 billion of new capital came into Ether this week, 2.39% of its market value and the biggest share of any major altcoin. Ether’s spot price of $2,685.01 sits 15.84% above its realized price of $2,317.90, the average cost of every coin on its chain, so the average holder is comfortably in the green. They acted like it. On September 21, Ether holders who sold booked $33.79 of profit for every dollar of loss. Existing holders handed their coins to newcomers at a fat profit. We use Ether every day, and using the chain gets cheaper every day. Ether is the greatest token we see absolutely no value in holding.

Solana Holders Hit Break-Even and Our Short Stares Them Down

On September 21, with Solana at $118.80, its market-to-realized value, spot divided by the average holder’s cost, read 1.02, up from 0.88 a week earlier. Below 1.0 the average holder is losing money, and above it the average holder is making dough. Supply in profit that day stood at 56.65%, from 46.97%. Two days later Solana closed at $114.98, 1.09% under its realized price of $116.25, so the average holder is about 1% under water again. The price also ran further ahead of the money than on any other major: Solana rose 16.63% from September 16 to 23, while new capital added only 0.90% to its value.

XRP Flipped Every Gauge to Green in One Week

XRP had the cleanest turn on the board. All four of its balance points, the gauges that separate a coin whose holders are winning from one whose holders are losing, crossed to the winning side in the same week: market-to-realized value at 1.06, supply in profit at 58.07%, and both measures of whether sellers are booking gains now read above break-even. $2.14 billion of new capital came in, and spot at $1.50 sits 0.77% over its realized price. XRP also built leverage faster than any other major, with futures open interest up 9.35% in coins on the week.

Dogecoin Is Still Under Water and the Bond Market Pushed It Deeper

Doge is where the story breaks. It is the market’s cleanest read on speculative appetite, and the appetite never came. Spot sits 21.51% under its realized price, so the average Doge holder is still under water, and new money added only 0.41% to its value. It also carries the second-heaviest leverage of the five, at 7.35% of supply. When the bond market broke on Wednesday, Doge fell 7% by Thursday morning, the worst of the major altcoins. On Thursday, Doge showed what a bond market in revolt does to crypto.

Every Major Outran Bitcoin, and the Money Lagged on Two

On price, the alts ran the table. The altcoin basket closed the week to September 20 up 15.03%, against 5.66% for Bitcoin, and from September 16 to 23 all four majors outran Bitcoin’s 10.82%: Solana 16.63%, XRP 15.53%, Doge 14.64%, and Ether 11.13%. The money did not keep pace everywhere. On Solana and Doge the price sprinted far ahead of the new capital, and those are the two coins whose holders need hopium to break even.

— Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval) · Fundamental Research Analyst (Charlotte Donovan)

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On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine. What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

hayloo.org

Hayloo’s Perp Book: We Held Every Short and Want More Solana

Size and direction. The Bitcoin book is short 929.2 BTC from $79,139.80 and 496,100 SOL from $93.42. The Ether book is short 31,268 ETH from $2,575.70.

Why Solana, and how much. We want more of the Solana short, and the case sits in the data. Solana catches 104 cents of every dollar Bitcoin gains and hands back 117 cents of every dollar Bitcoin loses, so a Bitcoin fall takes it lower than a rally lifts it. It has paid that tax for 24 days straight. Its holders touched break-even on September 21 and were back about 1% under water by the September 23 close. Its price ran further ahead of its new money than any other major altcoin: up 16.63% from September 16 to 23 on only 0.90% of new capital. Our next add level at $116.14 sits eleven cents under the chain’s break-even at $116.25. The desk’s call is 25% of the leg, 124,000 SOL, and only if Sunday’s close leaves the thesis standing.

The levels we passed. The rally ran through three Bitcoin add levels, at $80,800, $82,300, and $83,300, and two Solana levels, at $104.53 and $110.33. We added at none of them. You don’t catch a falling knife, even when it falls to the upside. One level is left on each coin: Bitcoin at $86,000, 1.91% above spot, and Solana at $116.14, 1.01% above. We will look at volume, flows, and on-chain levels, deciding if we add to our positions on another attempt to break higher.

Funding Rate Carry. The Bitcoin book’s four-week mean reads $13,162.70 a day over seventeen sessions, 23.99% of equity annualized. On September 23 it fell to $513, as Bitcoin funding dropped to 0.0016% and Solana’s turned negative. The Ether book collected $10,704 that day. The longs kept paying us dream-like yields for weeks to hold our short legs.

The spot side. We stabled out. Our spot book holds 100 BTC, 10 million XRP, and 2,158,500 LINK, and no Solana. Equity sits in stables.

Position versus thesis. For months we have said that record global liquidity was standing on a bond market held artificially quiet, and that the day the bonds stopped being quiet the money would start to drain. On Wednesday the music skipped. Sunday’s close will hand the market a check, and our Lead Trader will rule on it Monday morning.

— Lead Trader (Jordi Federer)

🔴 Short three legs with a Solana short-add waiting on Sunday’s close.

Forward Thesis: The Calm That Held Liquidity Up Just Broke

This is the thesis we have been writing since the summer, and on Wednesday it played out on a single tape. Four blows landed inside twenty-four hours. Iran’s president told the United Nations General Assembly that Hormuz stays shut while the U.S. blockade stands, and Brent crude jumped more than 4% to nearly $104 a barrel. S&P Global’s flash U.S. composite purchasing managers index printed 58.4, the hottest reading since July 2021. The Treasury’s $70 billion sale of five-year notes drew weak demand. Then Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr said further policy adjustments are likely to be needed, and in this market that means more hikes. The ten-year Treasury yield closed at 5.11%, up 15 basis points in a day, five-year yields broke 5% for the first time since 2007, and the thirty-year hit its highest since 2004.

The MOVE index (Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate, the bond market’s price for Treasury swings) went from 78.56 on September 23 to 95.45 on September 24. That is the lever. Michael Howell’s collateral multiplier, published on his Substack Capital Wars, set a record because bonds were quiet, and quiet bonds let lenders stretch every dollar of collateral further. When bond volatility jumps, the stretch snaps back, and the liquidity engine underneath has nothing to replace it: Howell’s Shadow Monetary Base printed a three-month rate of −2.6% from +1.2%, an annual rate of −0.4%, and a level of $109.2 trillion from $109.4 trillion, a third straight week of shrinking. His thirteen-week lag lands the headwind in early November and early December.

Crypto felt the storm by morning. By Thursday in Asia, Bitcoin traded near $83,900, down more than 2% in twenty-four hours after touching nearly $87,300.

Our read of the next four to twelve weeks is a rally that does not complete. Bitcoin fails to close a week at or above $86,000 and gives ground toward the True Market Mean at $77,022.32, 8.73% below spot, as bond volatility reprices the one lever that held liquidity at a record. The ladder down runs through the ETF deposit basis at $81,823.83 (−3.04%), dealer support at $82,000 and $80,000, the True Market Mean, the short-term-holder basis at $71,100.67 (−15.74%), and the realized price at $53,494.28 (−36.61%).

What changes our mind, each against its current value.

1. A completed weekly close above $86,000 with both Coinbase and Binance net buying over that week.

2. Howell’s three-month rate turning clearly positive with the level rising and the annual rate turning up. Now −2.6%, −0.4%, and a falling level.

3. The MOVE index back under 85 on a weekly close, which would restore the multiplier’s support. Now 95.45.

4. Realized cap rising more than 0.5% a week for two more weeks with fund flows positive over each seven days. This week printed +0.54% and +$2.01 billion, so the first of three weeks is in.

Watchlist: Five Days, One Expiry, and a Bond Market on Fire

• Sunday’s September 27 weekly close against $86,000, with both exchanges’ seven-day buying. A close above with both venues net buying fires our flag. Binance at +$8.69 million was the thin leg this week.

• The MOVE index against its 200-week line at 97.36. It sits 1.96% under the line. A first weekly close above is an alert, a second is the trigger.

• Five-year Treasuries above 5% and the ten-year at 5.11%. A second weak auction or another hawkish Fed voice pushes the MOVE through its line.

• Brent near $104 and the Hormuz terms. Tehran has named the blockade as its price, and every leg higher in crude feeds the inflation print the Fed is hiking against.

• Friday’s September 25 quarterly expiry at 08:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). $15.9 billion of Bitcoin options, calls stacked at $85,000, $90,000, and $100,000, and max pain at $85,000. Watch the pin into the expiry and the release after it.

• Ether’s 30-day beta against 1.24 on the next Beta Desk refresh. A second week under the line, with the 60-day following, backs the Ether short we hold.

• The active realized price at $84,403. A daily close back under $84,000 brings the True Market Mean at $77,022 back into view.

• Solana at $116.14, our last add level, against its realized price at $116.25. We may add to our Solana short if Sunday’s close leaves the thesis standing.

• XRP open interest. Up 9.35% in coins this week, the fastest leverage build of any major. A broad jump in alt leverage is an overheating sign.

• Howell’s next print. A positive three-month rate on a rising level would support risk assets. A third negative print on a lower level hardens our short thesis.

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The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

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Liquidity Tape: The Money Machine Is Running on Fumes

Global liquidity set a record at $196.2 trillion in Michael Howell’s September 22 Global Liquidity Index (GLI) update, and the Shadow Monetary Base under it fell for a third straight week. The base, central-bank money plus the collateral the system borrows against, slipped to $109.2 trillion from $109.4 trillion. Its three-month rate went to −2.6% from +1.2% and its annual rate to −0.4% from −0.1%, so both legs are negative for the second time this month. The headline’s three-month rate picked up to 4.3% from 3.2%.

We ran the split from the weekly rows of Howell’s own table. From August 21 to September 18 the headline rose 0.25% and the base fell 0.36%, and the collateral multiplier, headline over base, moved to 1.797 from 1.786. Howell puts it at 1.80, the highest in his records back to 2010. The month’s headline growth came entirely from each dollar of base carrying more borrowing, with no new money.

The multiplier rests on quiet bonds. The MOVE index (the Merrill Lynch Option Volatility Estimate, the market’s price for Treasury swings) touched 84 before the Fed’s September 16 decision and fell back to 76 after it, inside the 70-to-80 range it has held since April and well under its average near 100 since 2022.

Howell’s September 20 essay puts a price on that calm. Advanced-economy debt runs at about twice system liquidity. Moves above roughly 2.2 times have come before financial stress, and moves toward 1.8 times have come with bubbles. The first warnings on his list are repo spikes and jumps in bond volatility, with wider credit spreads confirming later. A record multiplier held up by suppressed bond volatility sits on the first item of that list.

The Hayloo team reads the record liquidity number two ways. The Global Liquidity Director reads a headline standing on one lever over a shrinking base as a plateau. The Capital Flow Analyst points to the series Howell charts the headline against, world equities about a quarter ahead, where the headline’s three-month growth just accelerated, and reads support for risk assets into the fourth quarter. The lever settles it: a MOVE close above 100 pulls the multiplier down, and with the base already shrinking, the headline follows.

— Global Liquidity Director (Julian Harlow)

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and approved by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine.

What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

hayloo.org

Macro Tape: The Thirty-Year Kicked the Door Down

The Fed raised its range to 3.75%–4.00% on September 16, and its regional presidents spent the week arguing for more. St. Louis’s Alberto Musalem said further increases may be needed and policy may still be stimulating the economy. Richmond’s Tom Barkin said elevated pressure risks becoming entrenched. Chicago’s Austan Goolsbee said the Fed cannot ignore repeated supply shocks and may have to cause hardship. Minneapolis’s Neel Kashkari said the pressure has broadened beyond oil. Traders are buying protection against the Fed hiking less than priced and moving money into short-dated Treasuries, and Goldman Sachs expects another hike in October.

The ceiling our September 10 watchlist carried at 5.27% broke. The thirty-year’s weekly close was 5.35% for the week of September 11 and 5.34% for the week of September 18. Pimco says thirty-year yields above 5% are leading it to trim its underweight, and Canada sold long bonds at the highest yield in 19 years.

Abroad the week added tightening. The Bank of Japan went to 1.25% on September 18 on a 7–2 vote, and the dollar went above 157 yen on the split. Economists expect a final European Central Bank hike in December.

The real economy gives them no reason to stop. U.S. initial jobless claims were 196,000 for the week to September 12. The Philadelphia Fed’s factory index fell to 37.8 from 47.4 and August manufacturing output slipped 0.3%. But Germany’s and France’s September activity beat, U.K. retail sales rose 0.5% in August, India’s flash survey accelerated, and South Korea’s early-September exports set a record. Demand does not need cuts. And a strong real economy pulls money out of financial markets.

The desk splits on crude. The Chief Macro Strategist reads its drop from $101.61 on September 16 to $89.67 on September 22 as the first input in months that gives the Fed room, which would ease the squeeze before year-end. The Inflation & Real Asset Analyst reads the record diesel price on the same tape as the committee’s real problem, and Kashkari’s line as proof the Fed sees it. The next consumer and producer price prints settle it, along with whether diesel follows crude down.

— Chief Macro Strategist (Theodore Brennan)

Geopolitical Tape: Tehran Set a Seven-Day Clock and Washington Called

Iran put a clock on the strait on September 22. A senior Iranian official said Tehran can reopen Hormuz within seven days if Washington eases military pressure and lifts its blockade of Iranian ports. The same day Donald Trump repeated his annihilate-or-deal framing at the United Nations General Assembly, and his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner spent three hours with Iranian officials through Qatari mediators. By September 23 no breakthrough had been reported, and the strait is still shut.

Ukraine fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia on the night of September 19 and hit the Moscow Oil Refinery, and Russia is set to extend its ban on most diesel exports. Kyiv’s strikes now show up at American pumps.

— Geopolitical Intelligence Officer (Margaux Lindqvist)

Commodity Tape: Crude Crashed, Diesel Partied, and Nobody Got Relief

West Texas Intermediate fell to $89.67 on September 22 from $101.61 on September 16, and the war did not end. It still sits 22.92% above its 100-week line at $72.95, and the line has climbed 2.21% over thirteen weeks from $71.37. Ten completed weekly closes now sit above it, the latest $95.89 for the week ended September 20.

What moved the barrel was plumbing. Saudi crude has been loading ship-to-ship off Oman’s Sohar port since the East-West pipeline shut on September 11. Aramco told Asian refiners they will soon load at Yanbu on the Red Sea again, and on September 23 the kingdom moved to restart the pipeline. The Hormuz counts disagree: shipping data reported by Reuters showed a dozen commodity vessels through over the September 19–20 weekend against 35 the weekend before, while a U.S. regional commander said oil and liquefied natural gas shipments over the past two weeks were the highest in six months.

U.S. retail diesel topped $6.50 a gallon on September 21, a record, on crude’s fourth straight down day, after setting a record at $5.85 on September 4. The refinery constraint now sits in Russia, in the Gulf, and in the U.S. itself, and a cheaper barrel does not reach a freight bill. Qatar’s central bank governor says its gas plants could take two to three years to repair, and marine insurance costs are up 30% to 40% on the year, per the insurer AXIS.

— Inflation & Real Asset Analyst (Sienna Whitfield)

Hard Assets: Bitcoin Touched 20× Gold and Nobody Rang the Bell

Gold held while oil moved both ratios. The metal reads $4,304 on our live mark, 0.27% under its 20-week line, and its completed weekly close of $4,385.89 sits 1.63% above that line.

Beijing is still the buyer. China’s gold imports passed 1,000 tons this year, and the yuan held at 6.709 per dollar in Howell’s cross-rates while the dollar firmed against every other major. New York copper futures set an all-time high on tight Chinese supply.

Gold over oil widened to 48.00 barrels an ounce from 41.95 a week earlier, and the move came from the oil side. That is more than twice the healthy long-run level of about 20.

Bitcoin over gold reads 20.02× on our live marks, from 17.86× a week earlier, the first print at the 20× line this desk calls early-bull. On completed weekly closes, $81,169 over $4,385.89 reads 18.51×. The Hard Asset Strategist calls the line crossed only on a weekly close.

— Hard Asset Strategist (Marcus Vasquez)

Equity Tape: AI Went Shopping in the Junk Aisle

The S&P 500 spent nine straight sessions under its 20-day line into September 18, then closed September 21 at 7,764.70, 1.32% above the line at 7,663.41 and 0.44% under its August 13 high of 7,798.99. The Nasdaq 100 set its first record since June the same day, led by chipmakers after early success for Meta’s Muse agent, and the same agent sent banks, insurers, and online travel names lower on disruption fears. The S&P 500 closed flat on September 22.

The 20-day line is still falling while the 50-, 100-, and 200-day lines rise, and 71.4% of the last 21 closes sat under the 20-day.

The financing under the rally moved further down the credit ladder. SoftBank is seeking more than $11 billion in one of the largest junk bond deals ever to fund its OpenAI stake, and Goldman Sachs launched a $1.1 billion junk bond for a Blue Owl data center leased to CoreWeave. Apollo capped redemptions from a private credit fund for a third straight quarter after 14.7% of investors asked to leave. Two initial public offerings were delayed to wait for Anthropic’s debut. The Bank of England’s Sarah Breeden says regulators are running out of time on the risk of AI agents triggering a market meltdown, and Nvidia trades at half its 2025 multiple.

— Technical Analyst (Lukas Marchetti)

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Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Hayloo’s Beta Desk — September 21, 2026.

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Beta answers one question: for every 1% Bitcoin moves, how far does the other coin go? Above one, the coin amplifies Bitcoin. Below one, it damps it. The desk measures that over rolling windows of daily moves and splits it by direction. Up-capture is what a coin catches on Bitcoin’s up-days, down-capture is what it hands back on the down-days, and the gap between the two is Hayloo’s Altcoin Tax. Hand back more than you catch and you are paying the tax. Four series are read against Bitcoin, chosen by history rather than preference: ETH, Solana, XRP, and the altcoin basket (TOTAL3ES, the market without Bitcoin, ETH, and the stablecoins).

ETH’s three measurement windows disagreed this week for the first time in its 81-day run as a leader. On September 18 the 30-day beta fell from 1.32 to 1.04 in one session and finished the week at 1.10, under the 1.24 line that separates leading Bitcoin from trailing it. The 60-day window still reads 1.27 and the 120-day 1.28, so on the two longer clocks ETH remains the amplifier we have been describing since July. On the short clock it is a laggard. The beauty about viewing markets through cyclical timeframes is: you get a heads-up. We said last week, we’re short ETH. This week, we’re looking to double down on the bet.

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ETH Has Led for 81 Days Against a Median of Four and a Half

ETH has led Bitcoin’s moves since early July. Across the 24 leading runs in its record the median lasts four and a half days, and this one is the second-longest since 2018, behind only the 316-day run from March 2025 to January 2026.

ETH’s run, historically speaking and backtested, is (too) long. We cut ETH short a week ago, and we were too early. This week, the beta cracks, the flag on ETH is lit, and we’re comfortable with our short position. But the entry could have been much better.

The Cross-Section

Five weeks ago XRP’s 60-day beta sat at 0.95, a hair under Bitcoin’s own pace; today it reads 1.67, its highest since September 2025.

Solana rose from 1.08 to 1.24 in two weeks and altcoins without ETH or stables from 0.84 to 0.95. ETH held between 1.26 and 1.29 the whole time. Solana, while outperforming Bitcoin, does so more violently to the downside. For 24 days, Solana has been paying the altcoin tax, a gap of −0.13, and the basket without ETH or stables pays −0.32.

ETH at +0.34 and XRP at +0.13 are the two majors charging Bitcoin for the ride. One wonders how long this could last.

XRP’s Edge Closed From the Bottom

Two weeks ago XRP had the widest edge over Bitcoin, and we said it had a maturity date. This week, XRP’s upside over Bitcoin narrowed to 13 cents on the dollar, its narrowest since June 18. Two weeks ago, XRP caught 75 cents more of every up-dollar than it handed back of every down-dollar. At the August 27 peak it was 115 cents. XRP still catches more upside than it hands back to Bitcoin. But the edge is closing. We sold all but 10 million XRP into this run.

Solana and the Altcoin Basket Bleed on Bitcoin’s Down-Days

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, Solana caught 104 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it handed back 117. That is 1.1 times more downside than upside, and the 24th straight day on the wrong side of the line. Solana keeps paying the altcoin tax, and so does the altcoin basket without ETH or stablecoins. Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, the basket caught 86 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it handed back 118. That is 1.4 times more downside than upside, with the gap widening to −0.32 this week. This is the opposite of the contraction that precedes a turn in regime.

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and written by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine.

What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

hayloo.org

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What’s Solid, What’s Soft

The numbers are tighter than the stories sitting on top of them. The three single-coin betas carry the smallest errors on the board, 6% for XRP, 7% for ETH, and 8% for Solana, and Solana’s 916-day run and XRP’s 33-day run have all three windows agreeing. XRP’s flag fires on contraction: its gap is closing. ETH’s fires on the contraction and on the split across its timeframes. A lit flag means the relationship with Bitcoin is moving. Every figure in this post measures the window it names. None of them says what comes next.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

On-Chain Tape: Friday Printed $128 of Market Value For Every Dollar Anyone Committed

Bitcoin added $91.9 billion of market value on Friday. The capital newly committed to the chain in the same session was $716 million. That is $128 of market capitalisation for every dollar that actually went in, and it is the whole story of this bulltrap. Across seven days the chain’s cost base grew 0.083% while price rose 4.78%. Leverage took Bitcoin from $75,590 on Tuesday to $80,896.90 on Friday, not people buying coins and keeping them.

Notional open interest grew 7.8% on the day against a 1.8% rise in the contract count, so the only size that arrived was borrowed money. Funding rose as price rose, Bitcoin to 7.7% annualised and Solana to 10.9% after more than doubling in a session, which is longs paying a ridiculous prime to hold a bulltrap that’s going to be short-lived. One-week realised volatility went from 26.8 to 37.4 and now sits above implied volatility at 35.46. A move that outruns its own options market is a liquidation mechanic, just wait for it.

Holders sold into this pump like hotcakes. By dollar weight the realised profit-and-loss ratio printed 3.35, a local top-signal in our own book. The long-term holders were not among the ones taking profit: they realised $322.7 million of losses, 1.58 times their own 30-day pace, on a session Bitcoin rose 5.9%.

Where the rally stopped matters as much as how far it ran. Price halted at $80,897, underneath the fund deposit basis at $81,763 and the active-investor mean at $84,001. Those are the two cohorts that need higher prices to get whole, and both are running for the hills. Supply in profit jumped 7.4 points in one session to 71.7%, which means 7.4% of every coin in existence has its cost basis inside the $4,526 band the price just crossed. That is the densest block of overhead supply on the chain and it now sits at breakeven. We are not the only fund selling into this strength. Holders are getting their money back with little motivation to hold Bitcoin any longer.

The venue and fund data say the same thing more quietly. The seven-day fund sum is still $440.1 million negative even after Thursday’s $159.5 million inflow. Coinbase sold $282.8 million net across the seven days to Friday. Binance bought $335.9 million over the same window, which is the one genuine change on the demand side and the reason to watch this rather than dismiss it. Exchange balances fell by 329 coins, which is noise. Speculative capital in motion rose 29.4% to $38.8 billion, and that is the signature of coins moving into short-term leveraged hands rather than new money arriving to pump Bitcoin into Valhalla.

So the question for next week is whether realised capital starts growing, ahead of where the price goes. Longs are paying 7.7% and 10.9% annualised to carry positions that no committed capital has shown up to support. Either buyers arrive and the cost base begins rising, which is the invalidation we wrote down and will honour, or the funding bill comes due on the people carrying it.

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Majors On-Chain: Everything Rallied, Every Chain Lost Money

The four major altcoins put in 3% to 11% weeks. Three of the four lost capital over those seven days and the fourth barely registered. Ether shed 0.28%, XRP 0.50%, Doge 0.29%, and Solana added 0.02%. Bitcoin added 0.08%. Every one of these rallies was financed by leverage rather than by buyers.

Ethereum. Closed at $2,610.06, up 3.8% on the week and 15.6% above the market’s average cost of $2,257.59. Its movers remain the best-behaved in the set, a realised profit-and-loss ratio of 4.43 and a spent-output ratio of 1.02 with 55.4% of supply in profit, and its cost base still shrank 0.28%, the largest outflow of the majors we track. It carries 7.6% of its own supply in open futures against Bitcoin’s 2.4%, which is how a chain moves 6.7% in a day on money leaving the chain. Our Ethereum short sits at $2,600 and the close is 0.4% above it. We will be sleeping well tonight.

Solana. Rose 10.1% to $112.69, the strongest of the four and more than double Bitcoin’s move, on funding that went from 0.013% to 0.030% a day. The holders who bought at $116.27, the chain’s average cost, are now 3.1% under water. Solana’s cost base grew 0.02%, so nearly all of that 10% came from borrowed money paying an escalating rate. We are short 496,100 coins at $93.42.

XRP. Closed at $1.3965, up 3.0%, still 4.8% below the $1.4664 its holders paid on average, with 45.8% of supply in profit. Its cost base shrank 0.50%, the worst of the four, and open futures are the lightest in the set at 1.4% of derived value. A coin that rallies on the least leverage available and still bleeds capital is a coin nobody is accumulating. We sold 46.1 million coins above $1.40 this week and we’re glad they are gone.

Doge. Rose 3.8% to $0.0874 and remains 25.8% below the $0.1178 its holders paid. Only 22.6% of supply is in profit, its movers sold at a loss harder than anything else in the set at a realised profit-and-loss ratio of 0.02, and its cost base shrank 0.29% while its open futures stayed the heaviest at 7.4% of derived value. That is the exact combination that produces a 7% day, before giving it all back.

— Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval) · Fundamental Research Analyst (Charlotte Donovan)

Hayloo’s Perp Book

Size and direction. Net short Bitcoin, Solana, and Ethereum. Bitcoin: 929.2 coins short from a blended $79,139.80, the leg doubled to full size this week. Solana: 496,100 coins short from $93.42, unchanged, and Ethereum: 31,000 coins short from $2,600. All three legs are notional $212.0 million short.

Funding rate carry. All legs are receiving. Today’s print is $28,048 and the seven-day mean is $16,645 a day on current notionals, which annualises to $6.08 million. We are being paid by the same leverage that cost us patience, which is the trade working the way we like.

Position versus thesis. We doubled the Bitcoin short into the pump, and the reason is realised capital growth at 0.083%. No invalidation has fired: $86,000 on a completed weekly close is 6.3% away, and the last completed close reads $76,819.

What has changed is that our cushion is now our trapdoor. The true market mean at $76,633, the 20-day line at $78,143, maximum pain at $78,000 and the dealer floors at $80,000 and $79,000 all sit beneath the price.

On the spot side the selling is all but done. We sold 39.1 million XRP on September 14 at $1.456 and, on September 15, 400 Bitcoin at $78,208, 238,000 Solana at $102.60 and 7 million XRP at $1.425. Friday overtook two of the four: Bitcoin trades 3.4% above the $78,208 fill and Solana 9.8% above the $102.60 fill. The XRP fills still sit 2.1% and 4.3% above the mark. What is left is 100 Bitcoin, worth $8.09 million at the close, and 10 million XRP.

The XRP plan was to sell into a Clarity Act pass. There was no pass: cloture failed 49 to 50 on September 15, eleven votes short of sixty, XRP fell 10% to $1.30 with about $571 million of long futures liquidated, and two days later the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a five-year blanket exemption for venues listing tokenised securities. The agency did in one letter what the Senate could not do in a year, and it did it with a clock attached. Rules written that way can be unwritten the same way. We sold 46.1 million coins at $1.43 to $1.46 into a catalyst that never arrived, and the average price every XRP holder has paid now sits at $1.4664, above our sell line.

— Lead Trader (Jordi Federer)

Forward Thesis

We expect this to resolve downward over four to twelve weeks. Our case did not weaken this week. A rally that prints $128 of market value per dollar committed, on rising funding, into the densest overhead supply on the chain, is the mechanism our short thesis describes rather than the one that refutes it.

The first rung on the downside is the short-term-holder basis at $71,685, 11.4% below spot, with the 2026-cohort basis at $71,347 marking the same shelf. Between here and there sit the 7.4% of supply that crossed into profit in a single session and that crosses back out of it on a $4,500 retrace, which is the trapdoor under this price. The realized price at $53,270 is the named rung far below, 34.2% down, where the support test for a market bottom lives.

What changes our mind, each against its current value.

1. Michael Howell’s next liquidity print with the three-month rate positive, the level rising with it, and the annual leg turning up. Now +1.2% from −0.3%, with the level down a second consecutive week and the annual leg at −0.1%. Untouched by this week’s crypto tape.

2. A completed weekly close above $80,000 with Coinbase and Binance both net buying on the same window. The price limb is live for the first time, the running week marking $80,897 against a last completed close of $76,819. The demand limb is half-met: Binance bought $335.9 million, Coinbase sold $282.8 million. Sunday’s close settles the first half.

3. A completed weekly close at or above $86,000, which ends this short thesis outright and needs nothing else with it. Spot is 6.3% below it, against 12.6% a day ago.

4. Two daily closes above the active market’s mean at $76,633 with realised capital growing more than half a percent on the week. Friday is the first such close and realised capital grew 0.083%. This is the test holding the thesis together, and it is holding on the money limb rather than the price limb.

Watchlist

• Realised capital, weekly. The one number that separates a funded advance from a leveraged one. It needs more than half a percent in a week to invalidate us. It has grown 0.083% in seven days.

• Funding on Bitcoin and Solana. 7.7% and 10.9% annualised, both rising. Longs paying up to hold an unfunded rally is a cost with a clock on it; funding collapsing back to zero says the leverage has been cleared.

• Bitcoin $80,000 and $79,000. The dealer hedging floors, 1.1% and 2.3% under spot, and the switch between cushion and accelerant.

• Bitcoin $76,633 and $76,371. The active market’s mean and Thursday’s close. Back under both and the 7.4% of supply that just turned profitable turns loss-making again.

• Bitcoin $86,000 on a completed weekly close. Our thesis ends there, 6.3% above spot. Our own line is $96,013.70, so the thesis is reached well before the account gets margin called.

• The fund window. Seven-day sum still $440.1 million negative after Thursday’s $159.5 million inflow. Two weeks of both venues buying with that sum above $1.5 billion positive is the demand invalidation.

• Solana $116.27. The average price Solana holders paid, 3.1% above spot. Through it and the chain’s entire under-water cohort is whole and free to sell.

• Ether $2,600. Our own entry, 0.4% under the close.

• The September 25 quarterly expiry. Max pain $78,000, 3.6% below spot, 429,745 contracts at a put-to-call ratio of 0.56, the call wall at $85,000 with a second at $90,000.

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The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Tape of the Week

The ten-year Treasury yield reached 5.04% on September 15, its highest since 2007. The Federal Reserve met the next morning and raised a quarter point, twelve votes to none. Long money repriced itself ahead of the Fed. The board only got to confirm with a vote. The ten-year gave nine basis points back on the 17th, to 4.95%. The mechanics are working.

The Treasury did try to hold the long end down, and it failed publicly: a buyback three times the usual size, and the long end has since reached its highest yield in nineteen years 5.35% on the weekly close.

The prices doing all the damage are set outside Washington: crude is $101.19 and headline inflation is 3.4%. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline is shut, a tanker on the Gulf-to-China run was hired at $1.035 million a day, and American retail diesel set a record at $6.29 a gallon. A quarter point on the funds rate reaches none of that. The Federal Reserve does not move tankers, does not move oil, does not run refineries. It moves money overnight. Moving money overnight does not solve any of the problems at hand.

Headline global liquidity, collateral values, bond volatility, and the dollar peaked higher without a dollar being printed this week. A quiet bond market allows for the same collateral to support more borrowing, jacking up a headline number arithmetically, while global liquidity itself fell for a second consecutive week.

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Macro Tape: A Unanimous Hike Into a Supply Shock

The Fed raised a quarter point to 3.75%–4.00% on September 16, its first increase since July 2023. The market had the move priced in. Producer prices rose 5.4% on the year against a 5.1% forecast and core consumer inflation rose 0.3% on the month against 0.2% expected – proof for every board member that a hike was needed. What president Trump won in return, is someone else to blame for his policy missteps.

The question is what the Fed interest rate actually reaches. The barrel is priced by bombed infrastructure and expensive underwriting of passage through a war zone. The Fed can not produce, transport, or refine oil.

Long money is priced by the bond market; and the ten-year hit 5.04% before the Fed even sat down to cast a vote. The Fed’s overnight rate is not an input that keeps economists up at night these days. The bond market is the captain now.

Goldman expects the Fed to hike again in October. It would land with the war’s inflation bill still unpaid: a congressional scorekeeper puts the Iran conflict at $38 billion and half a percentage point of inflation in early 2027. So far, the Fed only rose interest rates by half of that. To be continued…

— Chief Macro Strategist (Theodore Brennan)

Liquidity Tape: The Headline Number Turned Up on Arithmetic, Liquidity Kept Falling

Headline global liquidity set another record this week, but growth has been slowing noticeably since summer. The record headline number is coming from cheap collateral, enabled by an artificially quiet bond market.

More dollars get borrowed against the same collateral, and that multiplier is where all the growth in this summer’s liquidity data comes from. No new money entered the economy, liquidity creation stalled in February and has not restarted.

After the Fed raised the overnight interest rate, the dollar took back its 20-week moving average, which removes one of the pillars these arithmetically fabricated record liquidity numbers are standing on. What is left is bond calm, and we are entertaining the possibility that the calm has a deadline. It may very well be the precursor of a bigger storm.

The slowing liquidity cycle adds pressure to risk assets through the fourth quarter of 2026. We do not expect a liquidity floor from Fed or Treasury to be poured before spring 2027.

— Global Liquidity Director (Julian Harlow)

Geopolitical Tape: The Strait’s Broken Bypass

Saudi Arabia built the East-West pipeline so that its crude would never have to pass Hormuz. That line has been shut with heavy damage. The repair is quoted at about a month.

So the Saudi kingdom’s barrels went back into the strait. Riyadh spent six months keeping its cargoes out of that water. It is the only route left. That hands the pricing of Saudi crude to the people underwriting insurance for these voyages. Tankers on the benchmark Gulf-to-China route were hired this week at $1.035 million a day.

— Geopolitical Intelligence Officer (Margaux Lindqvist)

Commodity Tape: The Oil Shortage ends up in the Headline Print the Fed Votes on

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) sits at $101.19, which is 38.9% above its 100-week average of $72.83, and that average has itself climbed 1.96% over thirteen weeks. Brent held above $107 for most of this week, and WTI closed at $102.45, its 10th consecutive weekly close above the average.

The shortage has moved down the chain, ending up in the headline print the Fed just voted on. American retail diesel set a record at $6.29 a gallon on September 17, on a morning crude actually fell. This is a shortage in refining capacity. No pipeline repair builds a refinery.

— Inflation & Real Asset Analyst (Sienna Whitfield)

Hard Assets: Gold Competes with Attractive Yields

Gold was flat this week, and the ratio over oil compressed anyway: 42.95 barrels an ounce: crude’s completed weekly close rose 11.2% while gold’s fell 1.2%. The ratio is still more than twice its long-run mean, and has a long way to travel. Bitcoin over gold reads 17.58×, short of the 20× we treat as an early-bull signal.

The People’s Bank of China stays on the support side of gold, but its liquidity injections are decelerating. Michael Howell’s Capital Wars puts Chinese liquidity growth at modestly positive, which is still enough to keep pouring a $4000 floor under gold. But the line any gold bug should really watch is the one of real yields: The ten-year comes in at an attractive 2.60%. It’s the dollar competing with gold.

— Hard Asset Strategist (Marcus Vasquez)

Equity Tape: The AI Build-out and Who is Lending to It

The S&P 500 closed at 7,638 on September 17, up 1.1% on the day the Fed moved. The shape underneath equities, however, changed this week. Weakness reached the 50-day line with the 20-day line falling.

The bear case on the artificial-intelligence trade has always been that demand would disappoint. This week’s objection came from the supply side, when the heads of Anthropic and OpenAI called for a slowdown in frontier development.

We read that call as a negotiating position. Two companies whose largest input cost is silicon have threatened the industry to buy less of it.

— Technical Analyst (Lukas Marchetti)

On our use of AI:

We’re a private crypto fund out of Switzerland. We built a Neurosymbolic Compound AI System for our own desk: it follows our strategies, it reads the news that affect our portfolio, it sits on a database going back decades, and brings math to our everyday emotions. We call it Hayloo. It’s our best hire. This Substack is compiled by Hayloo and written by us.

Humans have written machine-assisted for centuries. What never changes is who decides.

Nothing at Hayloo INC. was ever decided by a machine.

What we publish is what we defend as a team. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong because humans signed it.

Jordi Federer, Founder, Hayloo INC.

hayloo.org

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under license.

Beta is the answer to one question: when Bitcoin moves one percent, how much does the other asset move? Hayloo’s Beta Desk measures it on a rolling 60-day window, splits it into up-capture (Bitcoin’s up days) and down-capture (Bitcoin’s down days), and calls the difference the altcoin tax. A positive gap means the coin charges Bitcoin the tax. A negative gap means the altcoin pays the tax.

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This week, XRP, Ethereum, and the Altcoin basket without ETH or Stables (Total3ES) outperformed Bitcoin, Solana was the only major to pay the Altcoin Tax.

XRP’s contraction flag fired after an impressive one-month outperformance of Bitcoin into September 15th’s Clarity Act Nay. At Hayloo, we wrapped up our selling into strength of XRP, SOL, and BTC, taking profits on all three coins, and we added a short position for Ethereum to the existing Bitcoin and Solana shorts.

As we’re giving the market time to absorb regulatory unclarity and inflationary pressure, we are rebuilding our book for a hyperliquid (pun intended) blockchain adoption in times of regulatory unclarity. We are positioned to buy HYPE, ZEC and AAVE on weakness, while building out our LINK position, and repurchasing Bitcoin below $60K, XRP below $0.88, as well as SOL below $70.

The four-coin cross-section: Solana carries the desk's only negative gap this week

TOTAL3ES — This week, Alts outside Ethereum stopped paying the Altcoin Tax

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained this week, the altcoin basket captured 82 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it gave back 69 cents. That is 1.2 times more upside than downside. The gap has sat on the favourable side for two days.

The basket carries three of the four regimes. It has never printed an Extreme Outperform cluster. Trailing has held 229 days against a median run of 61; all three windows agree.

Solana has fallen harder than Bitcoin for 18 straight days

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, SOL captured 88 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, SOL gave back 106 cents. That is 1.2 times more downside than upside, and SOL has bled asymmetrically against Bitcoin for 18 days straight. At Hayloo, we sold all SOL above $100, this week’s beta confirms our decision. The 60-day beta of 1.12 sits 0.24 above the Trailing cut, all three windows agree, and the flag is clear.

SOL has no Decoupled cluster. The Outperform run stands at 910 days against a median run of 331.

Ethereum's Outperform run is 75 days old against a median of four and a half

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, ETH captured 134 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, ETH gave back 81 cents. That is 1.6 times more upside than downside, and ETH has caught more of Bitcoin’s upside than its downside for 42 days straight.

ETH carries only the two structural regimes, Trailing (78.0%) and Outperform (22.0%), and neither tail. The Outperform run stands at 75 days against a median run of 4.5, with all three windows agreeing. This is the environment we like to short into at Hayloo. We opened an ETH short at 2.6K, 31.000 coins heavy, nominal $74.5M. Our price target is $1.400.00

XRP outran Bitcoin into the Clarity Act vote and Hayloo sold into the run

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, XRP captured 185 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, XRP gave back 115 cents. That is 1.6 times more upside than downside, and XRP has held the favourable side of the gap for 93 days straight.

At 1.61 the 60-day beta is at its highest since November 2025 and has been in Outperform for 27 days against a median run of 16. XRP’s outperformance triggered our final tranche of XRP sells this week. Beta neither confirms nor denies our trade. We’re prepared to buy back XRP below $0.88.

XRP carries all four regimes: Decoupled (3.8%, three episodes), Trailing (60.5%), Outperform (35.1%) and Extreme Outperform (0.6%, two episodes). The current 1.61 sits 0.56 above the Trailing cut and 1.18 below the Extreme cut.

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What’s solid, what’s soft

Solid: the regime tags, the sign of each coin’s gap, the direction word on dominance, and the ordering of the four betas all reproduce from the workbooks after recalculation, on every prior computed row to within one part in a billion.

Soft, by coin:

• TOTAL3ES. The positive gap is within noise.

• SOL. Down-capture’s error bar is 25% of the estimate.

• ETH. The 60-day beta is 0.03 above the Trailing cut.

The Beta Desk measures the Bitcoin–altcoin relationship. It does not call direction.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Bitcoin closed a week above $80,000 for the first time since May, and we were closely observing sustained spot demand. Demand did not come. Coinbase’s cumulative spot flow fell by $245.4 million and Binance’s fell by $387.2 million. The US bid from earlier in the week, likely into Clarity hopium or Warsh-dove rumors, has gone. This is not how sustained spot demand looks.

The Shadow Monetary Base, central-bank liquidity plus the collateral the system borrows against, measured by Michael Howell’s Capital Wars, printed both its legs under zero for the first time since mid-August: the three-month rate at −0.3% against −1.1%, the annual rate at −0.1% against +0.2%, and liquidity slipping to $109.4 trillion from a revised $109.5 trillion.

Overhead, the bitcoin sell-wall held. Three sources that do not share a method draw it in the same place, between $83,000 and $86,000: roughly 1.07 million coins of long-term-holder cost basis with the heaviest bucket near $85,000, a shelf of short liquidation levels that grew 21% since the August 19 squeeze while the whole liquidation map shrank by a third, and a spot fund complex that breaks even near $86,000 after 228 consecutive sessions below it. Spot printed a higher high than August on September 3 and stopped 1.5% short of the bottom of the band.

Then there is the absence, and it argues against our short position. Nobody is selling into that range high. Sell-side risk has fallen to 7 basis points a day against 16 at the August peak, and against 35 and 23 at the July and October 2025 highs. Long-term holders’ share of realized profit fell to 47% from 88%. The sellers up here are recent buyers, and even they are selling less.

The rest of the week came from the barrel and the long end. Brent reached $105.26 and American crude went through $100 for the first time since May, with the Houthis holding a Red Sea port 75 kilometres from Bab al-Mandeb and Saudi output at a 1990 low, while a Treasury buyback triple the size of the original intent failed to hold a ten-year that reached its highest since October 2023.

Hayloo’s crypto book did not trade. We remain short bitcoin and solana for a third week, with leveraged longs paying us 23.31% of equity annualized to sit still.

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Liquidity Tape

The liquidity engine put both of its legs under zero. The Shadow Monetary Base, central-bank money plus the collateral the system borrows against, printed a three-month rate of −0.3% against −1.1% and an annual rate of −0.1% against +0.2%. Its level came in at $109.4 trillion from a revised $109.5 trillion, against a February peak above $112 trillion. The three-month rate improved by eight tenths of a point this week and is still under water. The annual rate crossed back below zero. All these numbers come from Michael Howell’s Global Liquidity Index (GLI).

Headline global liquidity set a record in the same week at $195.4 trillion, with three-month momentum picking up to 2.3% from 1.8%. The two halves of one measurement now point in opposite directions, and the man who built it says why in his own words: the benign funding background is volatility suppression, not liquidity creation.

The lever under that suppression is bond volatility. Our book reads it live at 76.14 against a 200-week line of 97.86, with 23 consecutive completed weekly closes under that line since April 5. The collateral multiplier did the work again at 1.78 from 1.77, which is what a quiet bond market pays you: smaller haircuts, more borrowing on the same collateral, and a headline that reads full while no new money gets made.

— Global Liquidity Director (Julian Harlow)

Macro Tape

The Treasury tripled the size of the operation and the long end went up anyway. A $6 billion buyback, against $2 billion originally, and the ten-year reached 4.856% on September 9, its highest print since October 2023. The thirty-year closed at 5.28% on September 9 against a completed weekly close of 5.24% from 5.22%. Scott Bessent said the expansion was aimed at cooling a fever in the bond market. We would label it a more severe disease than a bit of temperature.

The inflation print underneath it split in the worst direction for a Federal Reserve board that meets on September 16. Producer prices rose 0.4% on the month and 5.4% on the year, the core soft and the headline hot, and the gap between them is the fuel bill. Energy is not supposed to be the deciding variable at a meeting about services inflation, and this week it is. Hike odds sat at 58% to 60% early in the week, we’d put them higher.

The labour print did the same thing from the other side. Employers added 162,000 jobs against a 56,000 forecast and July was revised to a gain, so the number that was supposed to hand the doves their case handed the hawks a freebie instead.

Everyone else is tightening into the same barrel. The European Central Bank raised its deposit rate a quarter point to 2.5% with Christine Lagarde flagging inflation risks, the German ten-year printed a seventeen-year high inside a European selloff, and sources put the Bank of Japan at a quarter-point rise to 1.25% at the meeting ending September 18, with the yen already “out of control” (?).

— Chief Macro Strategist (Theodore Brennan)

Geopolitical Tape

The Houthis took the Red Sea port of Mocha and now sit about 75 kilometres from Bab al-Mandeb, the strait at the bottom of the Arabian peninsula. The Houthis do not need to close Bab al-Mandeb to charge for passage through it. For six months this war has been an argument about the strait at the top of the same peninsula, Hormuz, and now there are two of them. Ask the war-risk underwriters on Monday what a Red Sea voyage costs.

Washington changed method. For six months its answer to Iranian oil was to stop anyone from buying the cargo. On September 9 American forces destroyed five Iranian tankers, which takes those barrels off the water permanently instead of parking them, and those barrels are the one asset still funding Tehran.

Half a world away, Ukrainian drones hit Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, killing four, nine days after burning Ust-Luga on the Baltic. Novorossiysk and Ust-Luga are Moscow’s two seaborne exits for crude and for grain, and there is no third coast to move either cargo to.

— Geopolitical Intelligence Officer (Margaux Lindqvist)

Commodity Tape

Brent went to $105.26 and American crude passed $100 for the first time since May. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) sits at $103.81, 43.14% above its 100-week average line at $72.52, and the line itself has climbed 1.51% over thirteen weeks. Nine consecutive completed weekly closes now sit above it; the last bar under the line was July 3, at 2.33% below.

The pump ran ahead of the barrel again. American retail diesel set an all-time record at $5.85 a gallon on September 4. A haulier paying a record for fuel on September 4, while crude still sat below its July high, was being taxed by distillation capacity rather than by geopolitics, and no ceasefire fixes a refinery.

The supply side is being destroyed while the demand side firms into it. Saudi output fell to a 1990 low and Aramco halted operations at several southern energy facilities after attacks, with nobody saying how long they stay down. Chinese refiners are back looking for barrels at the same time American aircraft are sinking the tankers that carry them, and the hulls do not come back.

The cleanest measure of the strait anyone has published in a month came from a government’s accounts rather than a freight rate: Qatar posted its widest quarterly deficit in almost a decade because the closure shut its gas trade. Crude has found its way out of that water at a price; the liquefied cargoes have not.

— Inflation & Real Asset Analyst (Sienna Whitfield)

Hard Assets

Copper set an all-time London Metal Exchange high twice this week and a broad metals gauge printed a record with it, and the refined-copper tariff that is supposed to justify the move has still not been announced. A metal that sets an all-time high on an anticipated policy already contains the decision in its price, which turns the decision itself into a downside event.

Gold’s floor is still poured in Beijing. The metal reads $4,364.50, 0.49% above its own 20-week line, on a completed weekly close of $4,428.35. China’s central bank added the most gold to its reserves since 2023 in August, in the same week Beijing pushed 360 billion yuan into eight state-owned banks and insurers.

The ratios say what the vehicle question has been saying for two months. Gold over oil compressed to 42.04 barrels an ounce from 49.45, most of it from the oil side again, though gold gave back 2.7% since Tuesday as well. Bitcoin over gold rose to 17.55× from 17.23×, still under the 20× early-bull band this desk measures.

— Hard Asset Strategist (Marcus Vasquez)

Equity Tape

The S&P 500 sits at 7,636.36, 0.83% under its 20-day average line at 7,700.13, after closing beneath it on September 8 and 9.

Occupancy reads 38.10% below the 20-day line and zero below the 50-, 100-, and 200-day. What did change is the shape: the 20-day line has turned down, the other three still rise, and all four trajectories are negative, at −12.77, −9.03, −14.58, and −8.40 index points. Last week the lines were rising with falling slopes. This week the nearest one started falling. A car-crash in the making?

— Technical Analyst (Lukas Marchetti)

Our Short-Kill Condition Came in Half-Baked

Bitcoin closed a week above $80,000 for the first time since May, but Coinbase and Binance sold into it.

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On-Chain Tape

The big fat bitcoin sell-wall between $83,000 and $86,000 we pointed at for months is drawn in the same place by three sources that do not talk to each other, and that is the finding of the week.

1. Roughly 1.07 million coins were acquired in that band, almost all of them by long-term holders, with the heaviest bucket near $85,000, and that block has barely moved in thirty days.

2. On the futures liquidation map, the shelf of short liquidation levels between $82,000 and $86,000 has grown 21% since the August 19 squeeze while the map as a whole shrank by a third, which puts it close to the largest share of modelled liquidation mass it has ever carried.

3. The American spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) complex, measured on the coins it has created since launch, breaks even in that zone: it has now closed below breakeven for 228 consecutive sessions, with its paper loss narrowing from about $18 billion in February to about $3.9 billion. Corporate treasuries break even near $80,500, and the average dollar deposited into the spot funds carries a cost basis of $81,776, so a bitcoin rally has several walls to clear before it even reaches the one that matters.

Spot printed a higher high than August on September 3, and stopped 1.5% below the bottom of the band. Underneath it the floor moved. Supply acquired between $76,000 and $82,000, mostly by recent buyers, has grown, while the accumulation floor between $62,000 and $65,000 thinned as coins bought there rotated out. The long-liquidation cluster between $60,000 and $63,000 is intact. The market rebuilt its floor directly beneath the price and left the wall where it was.

The part that argues against our short thesis is an absence rather than a number. Sell-side risk, which reads realized profit and loss against realized cap, has fallen to 7 basis points a day on a seven-day basis, less than half the 16 printed at the August peak and well under the 35 and 23 at the July and October 2025 highs.

Long-term holders’ share of realized profit fell to 47% from 88%, and September’s realized-profit spike came in under half of August’s. The sellers up here are recent buyers, and even they have slowed down.

— Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval) · Fundamental Research Analyst (Charlotte Donovan)

Hayloo’s Perp Book

Size and direction. Net short bitcoin and solana, unchanged in size and entry for a third week, and nothing traded. Bitcoin: 465 coins short from $78,749, both long legs closed since August. Solana: 496,100 coins short from a blended $93.42. At the mark that is $35.6 million of Bitcoin and $48.9 million of Solana.

Funding Rate Carry. The four-week smoothed mean reads $8,328 a day across sixteen populated sessions, which annualizes to $3.04 million and 23.31% of equity, the best rate of this cycle.

Position versus thesis. One of the three conditions that kills this trade printed half of itself, and that is the honest headline on our own perp book. Against it, the engine put both legs under zero, the wall held with spot a point and a half short, the barrel went through $100 while the long end refused a tripled bid, and Solana is now catching 86 cents of every dollar Bitcoin gains while handing back 111 of every dollar it loses (see Hayloo’s Altcoin Tax – Week 37).

What we are watching is the absence: nobody is selling into the range high, and that is the part of this tape that does not fit our position. Our size is unchanged and our conviction is lower than it was seven days ago.

On the spot side we sold 35,000 Solana and 8 million XRP on September 7.

— Lead Trader (Jordi Federer)

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Forward Thesis

Our direction reads lower to range-bound over the next four to twelve weeks with the balance of risk still down. What justifies full size is not the global liquidity engine topping. It is the regime it is topping inside. A liquidity top in disinflation is a pause the market can buy, and this one arrives with producer prices at 5.4% on the year, the thirty-year back at 5.24%, and a buyback that could not hold the long end.

The cost of carrying government debt is rising while the money to service it has stopped growing, so the policy response the market wants is the one that cannot come. Two dated liquidity pressure windows remain, early November and early December, and the path down runs from the true market mean at $76,591, where spot sits tonight, to the realized price at $53,222, which is 30.5% below spot and the level this trade has always been built toward.

What changes our mind, each against its current value.

1. A second completed weekly close above $80,000 with both exchange venues’ (Coinbase & Binance) seven-day flow positive on the same window. The price limb printed on September 6. The demand limb now has both venues selling on the trailing week. One limb from firing, and the closest any of the five has come.

2. Michael Howell’s next GLI-print with the three-month rate clearly positive and free of a base effect, while the annual rate turns up with it. Now −0.3% from −1.1%, with the annual leg back under zero. The three-month improved and the annual crossed the wrong way, so the pair is no closer than it was.

3. The S&P 500 taking up residence below its 20-day line instead of dipping under it and stepping back. Occupancy reads 38.10% on that line and zero on the 50-, 100-, and 200-day, with every trajectory negative, so the index is leaning without having moved in.

4. A sustained close beyond $86,000 with sell-side risk still subdued, which would say the wall was absorbed rather than respected.

Watchlist

• Sunday’s Bitcoin weekly close against $80,000. The price limb is already met on the prior bar. A second close with Binance and Coinbase buying fires our warning flag.

• Both venues’ seven-day spot flow on the same window. Coinbase at minus $245.4 million and Binance at minus $387.2 million, both selling on the trailing week, and the number to watch is Binance.

• Bitcoin at $76,197. The first decision on the leg: harvest the short, add the long, or pass.

• The band from $83,000 to $86,000. A settled close beyond $86,000 with sell-side risk still subdued is absorption rather than respect.

• Solana at $104.53. Inside the escalation band and watched daily.

• The August inflation print on September 11, the Federal Reserve on September 16, and the Bank of Japan on September 18. Hike odds near 60% with a barrel above $100 in the print, and a quarter point to 1.25% is the reported plan in Tokyo.

• The September 25 quarterly expiry. The largest on the board, with open interest stacked above $80,000, which pins the tape under the wall for a fortnight.

• Howell’s next print. The three-month is eight tenths of a point from zero and the annual leg is a tenth under it. The highest-information number of the coming weeks.

• The thirty-year against 5.27%. A weekly close above it breaks the year’s ceiling, and the buyback has already failed once.

• The Clarity Act cloture vote on September 15. A pass is the strength we sell XRP into.

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The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Hayloo’s Beta Desk. Beta is one number: when Bitcoin moves one percent, how far does the other coin move? Above one, the coin amplifies Bitcoin. Below one, it damps Bitcoin’s moves. The desk splits that number by direction, measuring what a coin catches on Bitcoin’s up-days against what it hands back on the down-days. Hand back more than you catch and your portfolio is paying Hayloo’s altcoin tax.

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Ether has spent this year as the dependable amplifier. Bitcoin moves, Ether moves further, and the holder gets paid for carrying the extra swing. That trade is thinning from the top down. Of every dollar Bitcoin gained this week, Ether caught 137 cents, off a peak of 205 in August. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost it handed back 99, down from 124 over the same stretch. Both sides came in. But what matters to us is this: The side that pays JohnDoe.eth came in nearly three times as far.

The beta itself now reads 1.28 against a cut at 1.24, four hundredths from the point where Hayloo’s Beta Desk stops calling Ether a leader and starts calling it a laggard. Four hundredths is less ground than Ether covers in a quiet week, so the label can change without the relationship underneath it changing at all. What has already changed is the shape of the payout, and that is the number we are trading off.

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The Cross-Section

XRP reads 1.52 and Ether 1.28, both above parity, so both still travel further than Bitcoin in either direction. Solana at 1.08 barely clears it. The altcoin basket without Bitcoin, Ether, and stables (TOTAL3ES) reads 0.84, which we read as a maturing process from the “Everything Blockchain Buy My Token Trust Me Bro”-bubble to projects actually solving problems and making dough with blockchain tech, which is what Hayloo’s portfolio is structured for.

Ether Has Held This Tag Fifteen Times Longer Than It Usually Does

When we backtested Ether, its history showed only two states: Trailing and Outperform. It has spent 78.0% of its recorded life trailing Bitcoin and 22.0% leading. It is sixty-nine days into the leading state against a median run of four and a half days. The reading itself is ordinary for Ethereum. The duration is not.

All three measurement windows still agree on the tag, at 1.30 over thirty days, 1.28 over sixty, and 1.28 over a hundred and twenty, so nothing inside the measurement disagrees about where Ether sits today.

XRP’s Edge Has a Maturity Date

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, XRP caught 180 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it handed back 105. That is 1.7 times more upside than downside and eighty-seven straight days on the favorable side, the longest run on the board.

Eighteen of those 180 cents belong to two sessions. On August 20 and 21 Bitcoin ran 5% and 7% while XRP ran 13% and 14%. Take either day out of the window and up-capture falls from 180 cents to roughly 162.

XRP’S edge over Bitcoin is already closing. It peaked at 1.15 on August 27 and reads 0.75 twelve sessions later. This week both sides moved toward each other, with down-capture rising from 93 cents to 105 and up-capture easing from 187 to 180. The beta itself did not move at all, 1.5164 to 1.5156, so nothing changed in how far XRP travels with Bitcoin. What changed is who gets paid for the travelling.

Solana Is Failing on Bitcoin’s Up-Days

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, Solana caught 86 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it handed back 111. That is 1.3 times more downside for Solana over Bitcoin’s upside, and it has held on that side for twelve days.

Which side moved is the whole story. Up-capture fell from 97 cents to 86 across the week and more than half of that landed in a single session, September 3, when Bitcoin ran 5.0% and Solana took 69 cents of it. Talking about a top-signal. We sold SOL spot two weeks ago, closed the long hedge, and doubled the short. This week’s reading does not argue with that position and does not yet prove it.

The TOTAL3ES Basket Is Thirty-Five Days on the Wrong Side

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, the basket caught 79 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it handed back 95. That is 1.2 times more altcoin downside than upside, and thirty-five straight days of it.

What’s Solid, What’s Soft

Solid. The three single-coin betas are the tightest numbers on the board, Solana and XRP sit well clear of their cuts, and the direction of Ether’s beta is confirmed; it has fallen at each of the last three weekly marks.

Soft. Ether’s tag sits inside a single week’s normal movement of its cut, so the label can change while nothing underneath it does.

Horizon. These relationships are moving fast enough that any read beyond about three weeks is on shaky ground. Every figure above measures the window it names and claims nothing about what comes next.

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Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Tape of the Week

Michael Howell’s liquidity engine printed a negative three-month rate for the first time since the late-May trough, −1.1% from +0.8%, and Bitcoin was rejected at its local cycle top in the same week. Those two facts are not a coincidence. The Shadow Monetary Base, central-bank liquidity plus the collateral the system borrows against, has stopped creating money while the Global Liquidity Index (GLI) headline sits flat at a record $194.9 trillion. A stalled level with its rate going negative is an engine running out of gas.

What kept the gauge reading full was a bond market held quiet by the Treasury buying its own long debt, and the quiet lasted eight sessions. Scott Bessent hopefully got some sleep during them. Then the thirty-year returned to 5.27%, the exact level it held the moment before the buyback was announced and the year’s ceiling on its third test. The ten-year went to 4.81%. The selloff went global: gilts at 5.29%, the highest since 2007; Bunds at a 2011 level; Japan’s ten-year through 3.000% for the first time since 1996. Kevin Warsh, Donald Trump’s pick at the Fed, told Jackson Hole that policy is not restrictive enough. Central banks in Asia and Europe are already signaling higher rates. All the while US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admits to actively controlling the interest rates of the country of Japan.

Nothing on the ground says they can do otherwise. No ship has been counted through Hormuz in six consecutive days, two seafarers are dead on a Saudi hull in water Washington says it controls, and no insurer writes the next passage. Crude fell three sessions anyway, and American diesel set a four-year high at $5.783 a gallon on distillate stocks that have never been this low for the season. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) sits 27.2% above its 100-week line with heating season weeks away. The shortage is in the refinery, no reopened strait fixes it, and every central bank pricing energy into its rate path is pricing this.

Bitcoin ran on the same borrowed calm and stopped where it always stops. The rally’s best daily close came in last night at $81,268, the exact level that makes the average ETF-dollar whole, and the supply met it there. The band between $83,000 and $86,000 is the big green sell wall this book has pointed at for months, more than a million long-term-holder coins that sat through the entire drawdown. It was never touched. The buyers were headline money: spot funds absorbed a peak $290 million a day, the average deposited dollar now sits at breakeven and see that, both Coinbase and Binance flipped to net sellers. Bitcoin profit ratio fell from 3.72 to 1.21 in three sessions, and now there are no buyers left.

Hayloo’s crypto book remains short, leveraged longs are paying us 18.3% of equity in annualized funding fees to sit still.

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Liquidity Tape

Capital Wars’ Global Liquidity Index sits at $194.9 trillion, same as last week, the largest pile of money ever assembled. It’s the only number on the board that did not move. Everything else repriced: bonds moved, oil up gold up and bitcoin up. Global liquidity sat still but underneath it every rate rolled over: three-month momentum slowed down to 1.8% from 2.7%, the annual rate to 5.8% from 6.2%.

The foundation this record liquidity is standing on is the Shadow Monetary Base, central-bank money plus the collateral the system borrows against, and its three-month rate crossed from +0.8% to −1.1%. The base is creating nothing under a headline that has stopped growing.

What props headline liquidity up is the same trick as last week: a bond market kept quiet so lenders take less collateral for the same loan and the same collateral carries more borrowing power. The Treasury bought that silence by paying for its own long debt, but this week the bill came due.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent thought this through and it looks like he underestimated the task. The ten-year is back at 4.81%. The buyback relief, and the rally it produced that this book refused to join, lasted eight trading sessions.

Meanwhile, the dry liquidity through Michael Howell’s Capital Wars called three months ago is here. The late-May liquidity trough hit markets in late August and delivered the first rejection. The deeper trough lands early November. This week’s −1.1% starts a third clock that lands early December, on top of the November one. Howell still has the cycle low in January 2027. We are waiting for him to push it out.

— Global Liquidity Director (Julian Harlow)

Macro Tape

Bessent’s increased buying of his own debt bought eight trading sessions and, we hope, a few nights of sleep. The ten-year is back at 4.81%, near a three-year high. The thirty-year is back at 5.27%, the exact print it held the moment before the operation was announced. Nothing was repaid. Nothing was refinanced cheaper. The Treasury showed up with money, the long end took it, and eight sessions later asked for more.

We would not want the job. Whether Bessent flies to Tokyo or buys his own paper, every time he opens his wallet the free trial becomes a subscription, and it cannot be cancelled before his boss’s term runs out. The fiscal system sitting underneath the world’s strongest economy has become a clown-show, no wonder the Dutch asked for their gold back.

Bessent is not alone in his grief. Gilts in London 5.29%, the highest level since August 2007. German Bunds go for 3.39%, last seen in 2011. France is at 2008 levels. Japan’s ten-year through 3.000% for the first time since October 1996. This planet’s bond market has stopped telling sovereigns apart. It is grading the sum of everyone’s policy errors that lead to a barrel of oil nobody can sustain and shipping lanes nobody can afford.

Kevin Warsh, Donald Trump’s pick at the Fed, told Jackson Hole that inflation is not meaningfully slowing and that policy does not look restrictive enough. Sounds like a pretty clear forward-guidance to us. September hike odds went from 35% to 60% before he left the stage, so we’re not alone in the camp of those who believe that rates will go up globally.

The U.S. Treasury has admitted to pressuring Japan into rate hikes and an end to big stimulus. Bluntly: the Treasury intervened to keep Japan’s currency from blowing up. The intervention failed. But at the same time, Washington now virtually dictates Japan’s rate path.

— Chief Macro Strategist (Theodore Brennan)

Geopolitical Tape

No ship has been counted through the Strait of Hormuz in six consecutive days. That is the one fact that matters. The rest was announcements, threats and gunfire: after a month of sanctions Washington went back to shooting, and one of the things it shot was a goddamn wedding.

Two supertankers were hit leaving the strait. Saudi Arabia confirmed two seafarers dead on the Saudi-owned Sidr. A Saudi ship, a Filipino crew, hit in water Washington says it controls, water that’s arguably seeded with Iranian mines, no insurer will underwrite the next “safe” passage through Hormuz on those terms.

The president spent a day talking the campaign’s length down while his aides told Reuters the next escalation waits until after the 3 November midterms. Shorter clock, wider map, same afternoon. These days, nobody in Washington seems to know what the man beside him is thinking, let alone the pace of the rollercoaster they have all strapped into.

Half a world away a Ukrainian drone set Ust-Luga on fire, the Baltic terminal Moscow moved its oil exports to to get away from the Black Sea. The alternative route for Russian oil is now burning, and that cost lands on top of the Iran war.

— Geopolitical Intelligence Officer (Margaux Lindqvist)

Commodity Tape

Crude fell three sessions this week. American diesel set a four-year high anyway, $5.783 a gallon, on distillate stocks that have never been this low for the season. WTI sits 27.2% above the 100-week average line, and the line itself has climbed 1.16% over thirteen weeks.

Last week this desk split. One side read the barrel loosening: Gulf neighbors filling the Iranian gap, a good chunk of pre-war export flow moving while Tehran was still drafting laws around the strait. The other side read the refinery, the distillate shortage rebuilding underneath. The week settled it the hard way. The barrel came back up, the product spread widened with it, and refineries are not ready for heating season in the northern hemisphere.

— Inflation & Real Asset Analyst (Sienna Whitfield)

Hard Assets

Gold’s concrete floor is poured in Beijing. China’s sovereign issuance ran at 65% of quota through August, a third of the year’s paper still to sell in four months, and the liquidity that rides with that paper issuance ends up in gold.

Hence, gold has grounds to stand on, while everything around it reprices. Oil ran, Bitcoin ran, and both ratios moved with them. Gold/Oil came in to 49.23×, which looks like progress, and BTC/Gold reads 17.97×, still under the 20× early-bull band this desk measures.

The move that matters came from Amsterdam. De Nederlandsche Bank confirmed it shifted 86 tonnes of gold out of New York and Ottawa to London, citing geopolitical unrest. Until this summer New York held the largest single share of Dutch gold. It now holds the smallest. A central bank does not move seven tonnes a month across an ocean for convenience. Where do you stash your wealth?

— Hard Asset Strategist (Marcus Vasquez)

Equity Tape

The S&P sits 0.55% under its 20-day average line after four sessions running closed beneath it, Wednesday’s half-percent bounce included. The 20-week line is still 2.26% below price, and nothing structural has broken. However, all four horizon slopes turned negative inside one week: that is what a market looks like before it breaks.

The fast money did not wait to find out. Goldman’s prime desk has hedge-fund net leverage at 47.6%, the first percentile on a year; the nimblest book in the market went defensive before the counter started, not in response to it. JPMorgan put a 5% to 8% correction on the table before the midterms and blamed rising yields.

Under the index the AI trade is being marked. Broadcom is $520 billion off its June high. Nvidia raised $3.5 billion in convertibles through MediaTek. Roughly a trillion dollars of investment-grade paper trades wide for its own rating, which is where compute financed as infrastructure debt shows up first, while the index-level spread looks serene.

The link to our crypto book is a rule, not a view. Bitcoin’s thirty-session correlation with the S&P fell toward zero through this squeeze; Glassnode calls that transient, local exhaustion during sovereign selloffs rather than regime change. The institutional book that holds Bitcoin against a fixed allocation band sells it when equities shrink, and nobody at those desks decides anything. The mechanism is not firing today. It is one drawdown from arming, and JPMorgan and Goldman look positioned for exactly that drawdown in the fourth quarter.

— Technical Analyst (Lukas Marchetti)

Bitcoin Stopped Short of the Wall We Sold

The rally's best close landed on the $81,796 deposit-weighted ETF cost basis, and both Coinbase and Binance sold into the strength.

On-Chain Tape

Even after yesterday’s +5.2% close, this Bitcoin rally has yet to touch the wall: more than a million coins sitting green between $83,000 and $86,000, the cluster this book has named for months. The other boundary sits between $62,000 and $65,000, where short-term holders defend the entries they bought this summer. Bitcoin walked into this range in January, and nothing about either zone is new or exciting. The only thing worth mentioning is: We’re at the upper band of the range.

What is new is the profit overhang, and it explains why $80,000 failed on a weekly close so far. When Bitcoin traded near $78,000 in May, about 65% of supply was in profit. When it came back to the same price in late August, 68% was. Summer accumulation reset the short-term-holder cost basis, so the identical number on the screen now wakes a bigger pool of profitable coins, and every one of them is a seller with a reason. The same $80,000 level costs more to get through now than it did on the first attempt four months ago.

Who bought the rally matters more than how far it went. Spot funds absorbed a peak $290 million a day through the move while secondary turnover sat near $3 billion a day, well under earlier expansions: a lot of buying and very little trading. The deposit-weighted cost basis of every dollar in those funds sits at $81,796, so in addition to a sell-wall waiting at $83,000, Bitcoin must first clear an exchange-traded fund (ETF) wall sitting above spot.

This week, the seven-day volume delta went negative on both Coinbase and Binance, and the options crowd went home. Short-dated skew swung to −1.84 on August 30 and is back at +4.51, a full round trip, while 180-day skew never moved: long-dated optionality intact, short-dated enthusiasm gone.

The number that moved most this week moved against the bull case. The profit ratio reads 1.21, after 2.21 on the 31st and 3.72 on the 30th, against a thirty-day mean of 1.78. Seven prints above 2.0, and then the collapse. That is holders taking profit at a level that says distribution, not accumulating at a floor. Price sits above max pain, between two boundaries it has tested neither of, and the people who can are selling.

— Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval) · Fundamental Research Analyst (Charlotte Donovan)

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Hayloo’s Perp Book

Size and direction. Net short both legs, unchanged in size and entry for a second week. Bitcoin: 465 coins short from $78,749, long leg closed since August 24. Solana: 496,100 coins short from a blended $93.42.

Funding Rate Carry. The four-week smoothed mean reads $7,035 a day over sixteen populated sessions, which annualizes to $2.57 million and 18.3% of equity. Today’s print is $9,084. Leveraged longs are still paying us the best rate of this cycle to hold still.

Position versus thesis. The thesis is intact and it did not need defending this week; it needed nothing but the calendar. The engine printed negative on the leg that matters, the rally keeps meeting overhead supply, both spot venues turned sellers, the fund window flipped, and the long end took the Treasury’s relief back. Two of the three conditions that kept us up last week are putting us to sleep seven days later. We have said for a month that our money was on the wall rather than on Bitcoin. The wall never had to even take a punch. We remain short Crypto.

— Lead Trader (Jordi Federer)

Forward Thesis

Our direction is unchanged over the next four to twelve weeks and the ground under it is firmer than it was seven days ago. There are now three dated liquidity pressure windows stacked up: now, early November, and early December from this week’s −1.1% print. Bitcoin’s Realized Price sits at $53,112 and is the deep floor this trade has always been built toward.

What changes our mind, each against its current value.

1. Michael Howell’s next GLI weekly prints the three-month clearly positive without a base effect, with the level rising alongside it. Now −1.1% from +0.8%, and the annual leg at +0.2% is a rounding error that counts for nothing. This one moved further away than at any point in the window.

2. A completed weekly close above $80,000 with both spot venues’ seven-day volume delta positive on the same window. Both limbs read unmet: the completed close printed $77,659, and both Coinbase and Binance turned negative.

3. The profit ratio sustained above 2.0 with confirmed accumulation. Now 1.21 with a thirty-day mean of 1.78, after seven prints above the line.

Watchlist

• Bitcoin at $76,406, 6.0% below spot. The True Market Mean. A close back through it restores the bear regime read.

• Sunday’s weekly close against $80,000 with the venue bid. Both limbs are unmet today: spot is 1.6% above the line tonight, and the close that counts is Sunday’s.

• The profit ratio at 1.21. Read on its thirty-day mean at 1.78. Three-fold swings inside a week make the single print useless.

• The thirty-year against 5.27%. The year’s ceiling, tested a third time. Above it breaks the year, and the Treasury has already shown what its bid is worth – too little too late.

• The Bank of Japan on September 18. A rise with the dollar 0.76% under its 20-week line is the carry-stress path, and it removes one of the four supports holding record liquidity up.

• Capital Wars’ next weekly read. The three-month against zero on a basis with no base effect in it. The single highest-information number of the next month.

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The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

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Hayloo’s Altcoin Tax. Beta is one number: when Bitcoin moves one percent, how far does the other coin move? Beta above one is an altcoin amplifying Bitcoin. A beta below one damps Bitcoin’s moves. The desk splits that number by direction — what a coin catches on Bitcoin’s up-days against what it hands back on the down-days. Hand back more than you catch and your portfolio is paying the altcoin tax.

One session did most of this week’s work. On August 28 Bitcoin fell 3.1%. The altcoin basket fell 3.1% with it, Solana and XRP both fell 4.7%, and Ether fell 2.7%. Three of the four measurements moved because of it.

The cross-section spread out.

The distance between the lowest (Total3ES) and highest (XRP) reading is 0.67 against 0.59 a week ago. XRP did the moving: its sixty-day beta was 1.04 twenty trading days ago and reads 1.52 now, a shift of 0.47 that took it from the middle of the board to the top. We used XRP’s outperformance as an exit signal from our spot positions.

Solana crossed , and it is the coin we are short.

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, Solana caught 97 cents. Of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it handed back 113 cents. Four Bitcoin down-days entered the window and Solana over-dropped on every one of them. This is why we sold our SOL last week, why we closed our long-hedge, and doubled our short. It was in the Beta. This week, we get confirmation.

The level itself is unremarkable for Solana. At −0.16 the gap sits at the fifty-first percentile of the coin’s own history, the median across that history is −0.17, and Solana has spent two-thirds of its life on the negative side of the beta.

XRP is top of the board and underwater on its own chain.

187 cents caught against 93 handed back, two times more upside than downside, and eighty straight days on the favorable side. Then look at the coin itself: spot sits at realized price of $1.47, roughly half of supply is in profit, and the coins that moved this week moved at a loss. A coin can amplify Bitcoin’s percentage moves beautifully and still be a place where the average holder loses money, and XRP is currently both. After selling 50% of our spot at a 500% profit a week ago, we flagged another 30% for selling into strength. Even with another cloture vote on the Clarity Act coming up in a little under two weeks, our book is currently being repositioned for a world of unclarity. And we’re looking for entries into LINK, HYPE, AAVE, PYTH and ZEC.

The TOTAL3ES basket’s gap reopened.

Of every dollar Bitcoin gained, the altcoin complex caught 76 cents; of every dollar Bitcoin lost, it handed back 89. That is 1.2 times more downside than upside and it has held on that side for twenty-eight days.

Down-capture is what moved, from 75 cents to 89, while up-capture barely shifted. The basket has been Trailing for 216 days against a 61-day median across two dozen historical runs, and Trailing is where it spends 76.9% of its life. This is not a rotation failing to arrive. It is the ordinary state of the complex reasserting itself.

Ether still catches more than it hands back.

146 cents caught against 102 handed back, 1.4 times more upside than downside, and it has held the favorable side for twenty-nine days. Both numbers fell this week and down-capture fell faster, which widened the gap to 0.44 — and the reason matters. The gap widened because the weaker number weakened faster, not because Ether’s upside improved. Ether’s own history populates only two states, Trailing at 78% and Outperform at 22%, and it is sixty-two days into an Outperform run whose median length is four and a half days.

Bitcoin is taking share back.

Bitcoin’s portion of total crypto market value reads 59.1%, above its 50-day average of 58.4% and a tenth of a point under its 150-day at 59.2%. It is three points above the 56.1% low set on August 14. Rising dominance means Bitcoin is taking share and everything else is losing it, and the basket’s capture data points the same way.

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Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.

Tape of the Week

Global liquidity, according to Michael Howell’s GLI, hit $194.9 trillion this week, the largest pile of money ever assembled, and nobody created any of it. The engine underneath it grew at −0.1% over twelve months. What lifted the headline was a bond market so quiet that lenders now accept less collateral against the same loan, which lets every dollar already in the system be borrowed against harder. That ratio is the collateral multiplier, it sits at 1.78, and it is the closest thing this week had to a printing press.

The bond market was quiet because it was bought. On August 19 the Treasury doubled its buyback cap to $4 billion and aimed the money at the long end. Then Stanley Druckenmiller, who taught Scott Bessent how to trade, took the argument to the Wall Street Journal and named the operation for what it is. A government managing the price of its own debt, and filing it as liquidity work.

Bitcoin ran on the same kind of fuel. The move began on August 19 with the biggest dollar day of short liquidations since 2019, which is a rally made of sellers rather than buyers. Real money did follow, $2.23 billion of it across seven sessions, and all six Bitcoin wallet cohorts have been accumulating for twenty days. Underneath that, long-term holders posted the largest realized loss of the run. The oldest money on the chain used the strength to leave.

So the week handed us a record, a rally, and a re-rating, and not one of the three was paid for with new money. The one figure nobody engineered sits 5% overhead of current spot Bitcoin: 1.05 million coins bought between $83,000 and $86,000 that have not moved through the entire drawdown. Bitcoin came into this range in January, failed at the top of it in May, and is back at that top now with nothing underneath it changed. We doubled the short into that local top and took both hedges off.

Liquidity Tape

Global liquidity is at an all-time high and the creation rate is zero. That is this week’s read.

Michael Howell’s Global Liquidity Index flashed $194.9 trillion, the largest pile of money the world has ever assembled. Near-term momentum slipped to 2.7% annualized. The annual rate stabilized at 6.2%, which sounds respectable until you remember that stabilized is what a number does when it has stopped going anywhere, while rates and inflation move.

The Shadow Monetary Base is central bank liquidity plus the collateral the system borrows against, the foundation the whole $194.9 trillion stands on. It printed $109.7 trillion, a hair above last week’s revised $109.6 trillion. Its three-month rate remained at 0.8%, and the annual rate is −0.1%, which confirms that the underlying liquidity creation has stalled. Twelve months of work by the five largest central banks on earth, and the foundation is fractionally smaller than when they started.

Follow the money, and you will find that bond volatility is low, very low. This means lenders demand less collateral against the same loan. Smaller haircuts mean every dollar of collateral carries more borrowing on its back. That ratio is the collateral multiplier and it sits at 1.78. So a slice of the money holding that record headline liquidity up was never created by anybody. It was manufactured by a quiet bond market letting the same collateral be borrowed against harder, which is exactly what an annual rate of −0.1% says from the other side.

— Global Liquidity Director (Julian Harlow)

Macro Tape

The Treasury has become the marginal buyer at the long end, and this week that worked.

The thirty-year came in to 5.17% on the weekly close from 5.27%. That 5.27% is the high of the past year, and the market has now put its shoulder to it twice without getting through. What moved it back was not a change of heart about American debt. On August 19 the Treasury doubled the cap on its buyback operations, from $2 billion to $4 billion, and pointed the money at the long end.

Then on the 25th, Stanley Druckenmiller, who taught Scott Bessent how to trade, took the argument to the Wall Street Journal editorial page under the title “Let the Bond Market Speak.” His charge is not that the buying fails. It is that the buying is a fraud on the tape. The Treasury is managing the price of its own debt and filing it as liquidity work, and in doing so it is jamming the most important price signal in global finance. Drop the buybacks, Druckenmiller says, and shrink the primary deficit, because that is the only repair that holds. A thirty-year clearing at 5.5% is not an insult Bessent can talk down. It is an invoice, for a subscription, and just like your Netflix bill, it keeps coming back.

The July inflation print gave everyone room to argue. Core PCE rose 0.2% on the month and 3.3% on the year. Headline came in at 3.7% against a 3.6% forecast. Real spending was flat.

The Bank of Japan’s Ryozo Himino backed continued rate rises with the policy rate already at a thirty-one-year high, and in the same week the Finance Ministry said it will seek a record ¥36.6 trillion to service the debt. The rate rise that steadies the yen impacts the budget. Tokyo can’t have both at once. In Frankfurt, Isabel Schnabel said rates must rise further and tied the euro-area path explicitly to energy prices, which quietly makes the Strait of Hormuz a European Central Bank (ECB) variable.

— Chief Macro Strategist (Theodore Brennan)

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Geopolitical Tape

Kpler counted 236 crossings of Hormuz in the first nineteen days of August. Before the war, that lane ran roughly 130 a day.

Washington made five Iranian sectors sanctionable and stopped short of the Chinese banks that clear the oil money. Tehran priced that inside the hour and so did crude.

Beijing has been told it is exposed and has answered that it is not moving, which leaves the next escalation resting on a question nobody wants to hear: do some folks in Washington actually want a war with China?

— Geopolitical Intelligence Officer (Margaux Lindqvist)

Commodity Tape

Seven consecutive completed weekly WTI closes above the 100-week line, and the line itself is rising.

American diesel supplies are at the lowest seasonal level ever recorded, and Europe reached all the way to Mexico for cargoes for the first time in seven years. A cheaper barrel does not fix a shortage of refining capacity, and heating season starts shortly in the northern hemisphere.

Our desk splits on which half is the signal. We read the pillar reloading from the refinery. The geopolitical desk reads the barrel side genuinely loosening, with Gulf neighbors filling the gap and the war premium bleeding out on flows nobody had to negotiate. What settles it is a fortnight of transit counts, supplies at normal levels, and not another truth or dare.

— Inflation & Real Asset Analyst (Sienna Whitfield)

Hard Assets

Gold sits at $4,604, 4.90% above its 20-week line, enabled by renewed People’s Bank of China liquidity injections.

The Bank of Russia cut its gold holdings to a six-year low, selling the reserve asset into strength. That is not a new Russian view on gold, it is a funding decision: a country that needs cash borrows it. A country that desperately needs cash borrows it at any price. And a country that is isolated sells the reserve asset.

BTC/Gold rose to 17.16× from 16.18×, all of it from Bitcoin’s attempt at closing the week above, and standing on an $80,000 floor. It is still under the 20× early-bull band, but the gap narrowed. Gold/Oil widened to 56.26× from 51.81×, and that one is the barrel’s doing.

— Hard Asset Strategist (Marcus Vasquez)

Equity Tape

The S&P sits on its 20-day line at 7,730.84, closing on a cushion it held through the AI hype. The index is still above its 20-week line, and all four structural lines are still rising, but the slopes flattened across the week. Nothing has broken. But there is almost no daylight left between the index and the first line that will fire the flags at overleveraged positions.

Nvidia was this week’s story, reporting $96.2 billion against $92.27 billion and guiding to $108 billion against $103.9 billion, with margin guided down to 74%.

On the same morning, Australian businesses cut June-quarter investment, and data-center spending sat at the heart of the slowdown. Australia is far away for most people on the globe, and one country is not a trend.

But the signal we read is that while the supplier beat expectations, the buyer expresses caution. Weakness on the side writing the checks always travels to the side cashing them.

— Technical Analyst (Lukas Marchetti)

1 Million Coins Sit Between Bitcoin and a Breakout – Hayloo’s Crypto Board Week 35

Real money flowed into Bitcoin this week, and the move still stopped at the wall we pointed at for weeks.

On-Chain Tape

The buyer changed mid-move, and that is the part that matters.

The first half of Bitcoin’s miraculous rise from the ashes was shorts being run over into a squeeze. August 19 was the biggest dollar day of short liquidations since 2019.

The second half was real money flowing in: $2.23 billion of exchange-traded fund (ETF) inflows, the strongest seven-day intake of the year. Futures open interest fell 11% in coin terms over the same window and funding barely left neutral, so there was no crowded short base going in and no leveraged long chasing it out.

Glassnode’s accumulation measure has held for all six wallet cohorts across twenty days since August 5, the most persistent all-cohort buying since late 2024. The realized profit-loss ratio reads 3.115 and has printed above 2.0 on six consecutive days, five of them above 3.0, after a fortnight that sat under 1.0.

Long-term-holder realized loss on a thirty-day average made a run high at $355.8 million. Old money is still leaving into strength.

The wall above is the one we’ve pointed at for weeks: $83,000 to $86,000 is the level of 1.05 million coins that sat through the entire drawdown. Below, the $62,000 to $65,000 band holds 1.44 million coins, many of them short-term holders defending recent entries.

This on-chain read bids for patience. Bitcoin came into this range in January and has not closed above the top of it since. It tried in May and failed there. It is back at that same top now, and nothing underneath it has changed. We doubt that the current landscape warrants a breach to the upside.

— Capital Flow Analyst (Priya Sandoval) · Fundamental Research Analyst (Charlotte Donovan)

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Hayloo’s Perp Book

Size and direction. Net short Bitcoin and Solana, and no longer hedged on either. Bitcoin: 465 coins short at $78,749.00, long leg closed. Solana: 496,100 coins short at a blended $93.42, long leg closed. Net notional across the book is $82,963,947 short.

Solana ETFs rose to a record cumulative Total Net Inflow of $1.32B, front-running three validator proposals, two of them aimed squarely at the supply. All three passed, and the outcome was never in doubt. Rumor buyers now run into a wall of news sellers, and they are paying steep funding to stand there.

We closed the long hedge and rolled into the short leg, banking roughly $500,000, a 112% profit on a position held since June.

With the Solana vote behind us, Bitcoin sets the pace from here. And Bitcoin has gone nowhere for seven days. We’re short both legs.

Position versus thesis. The thesis is intact and the foundation under it got firmer. What changed is the exposure. We are at the top of a multi-month range, we doubt any liquidity will reach Bitcoin anytime soon, and we doubt that the equity tape supports it any further.

That last one is mechanical, and it is worth walking slowly. Equities are slowing down. The institutional book that holds Bitcoin against a fixed allocation band suddenly finds Bitcoin too large a share of a smaller portfolio. Nobody at those desks decides anything. The rule sells Bitcoin. And it sells into a band already holding 1.05 million coins of long-term-holder supply, with a short-liquidation shelf running all the way to $86,000.

We have been pointing at that wall for weeks. Here we are, and our money is on the wall, not on Bitcoin.

— Lead Trader (Jordi Federer)

Forward Thesis

Our direction is unchanged over the next four to twelve weeks and the foundation under it is stronger than it was seven days ago. Global Liquidity Index (GLI) weakness from the late-May trough lands in financial markets now, followed by an even deeper window in early November, and nothing points up yet.

Our short book filled up through a move where all six wallet cohorts have been accumulating for twenty days. We buy weakness and sell strength, so twenty days of everyone buying is our signal to be on the other side. That’s how we trade perps at Hayloo.

We’ve also cut our XRP spot exposure in half. We’re rebuilding the spot book for a market that adopts the technology fast and usually skips the coin that runs on it.

What would change our mind, each against its current value.

1. Liquidity inflows clearly positive without a base effect, with the annual leg back above zero. Now 0.8%, with the base effect named by Michael Howell of Capital Wars, and the annual leg at −0.1%. Further away than at any point in this window.

2. A Bitcoin close beyond $83,300 with inflows holding, which would absorb the wall rather than respect it.

3. The profit-loss ratio holding above 2.0 through a pullback, with cohort accumulation intact. Now 3.115, six prints deep. We flag this, and look at the pullback.

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The Team

Jordi Federer — Lead Trader. Owns the book and the publication. Sizing, staging, and every decision that moves capital.

Theodore Brennan — Chief Macro Strategist. Central-bank reaction functions, the dollar, and the rate path.

Julian Harlow — Global Liquidity Director. The liquidity engine, the collateral multiplier, and the transmission lag into price.

Margaux Lindqvist — Geopolitical Intelligence Officer. State behavior, escalation mechanics, and the tails that reprice commodities.

Marcus Vasquez — Hard Asset Strategist. Gold, the debasement basket, and the hard-money ratios.

Sienna Whitfield — Inflation & Real Asset Analyst. Energy, the inflation impulse, and the real-asset complex.

Priya Sandoval — Capital Flow Analyst. Fund flows, positioning, derivatives, and where the marginal dollar comes from.

Charlotte Donovan — Fundamental Research Analyst. On-chain cohorts, cost bases, and the structural read beneath the tape.

Lukas Marchetti — Technical Analyst. Market structure, moving-average regimes, and the levels that fire.

Disclaimer

The information is provided for information purposes only and on the basis that it will not be relied upon. No information contained herein constitutes a personal recommendation or investment advice.

The information (including any expressions of opinion or forecast) has been obtained from, or is based on, sources believed by the author to be reliable, but are not guaranteed as to their accuracy or completeness and should not be relied upon. The information is provided without obligation on the part of the author and on the understanding that any person who acts upon it or changes his investment position in reliance on it does so entirely at his own risk. The information does not constitute an offer to buy or sell or an invitation to make an offer to buy or sell any financial instrument.

Information is current only as at the date it is first posted and may no longer be true or complete when viewed by you. All information may be changed or amended without prior notice.

No representation, warranty or undertaking is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information by the author and no liability is accepted by the author for the accuracy or completeness of such information. In no event will the author be liable to any person for any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages arising out of any use of the information, including, without limitation, any lost profits.

You should be aware that the Internet is not a completely reliable transmission medium. The author does not accept any liability for any data transmission errors such as data loss or damage or alteration of any kind, including, but not limited to any direct, indirect or consequential damage, arising out of the use of the product or services referred to herein.

The materials provided here including text, photographs and other images, are protected by copyright and/or other intellectual property rights. All copyright (and any other intellectual property rights) in these materials is either owned by the author, or is used by the author under licence.