The Beta Desk · Hayloo Unchained · week of 16 September 2026
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.
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.
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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.
The Altcoin Tax
Five obsessives behind a spreadsheet have worked out, to four decimal places, exactly how much your favorite altcoin ETF fleeces you every time Bitcoin clears its throat. They will not — under any ci…
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.
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