A typical late bull market week we are up slightly on BTC ETH ~1.5% Wow while some alts were flying IMX +50% PUMP +28% and on the flipside revenue been punished UNI -6% and Ethena turning on fee switch -11%. In other news we have reports about Binance beeing close to getting DOJ compliance monitoring off their back, DeFi Llama stabbing back at Figure who just IPOed raising ~800mm. Gemini also IPOed at 3bn but then slid now trading under wanter, in a similar fashion as ~25% of all BTC DATs. Polymarket teaming up with Chainlink for price focused bets, the EF launching an AI team, and Metamask Token is coming ‘soon’. A lot of signs we are certainly not in the early stages of the cycle anymore. But you know usually crypto markets end with a bang not a quiet fade out. Enjoy reading!
Bat Tai Chi — btc21@mail.com
In what should not be a big surprise to anyone who’s been in the industry for long enough. Coinbase has teased a token for their L2. Base which was in what feels ages ago during Gensler area trouted as not needing a token now clearly does. Why well you can listen to Jesse Pollak who at Base camp made the case for a token. But of course we can sum it up pretty easily token is the best form of mass extract and Coinbase is accountable to its shareholders for doing exactly that. They also unveiled a Solana Bridge and tbh have obviously been at the pulse of what market wants. Base is one of the most successful L2s and with a token we could then see a Base DAT, I’m just kidding…am I?
Aave Labs has released its official launch roadmap for V4, laying out the final steps ahead of the major upgrade’s 4Q mainnet launch. Marc Zeller from ACI done a good write up on how we got to where we are now with AAVE and why their DAO process is generally considered as one of the more well functioning ones. V4 will bring in usage of ERC‑4626 share accounting and mainly consolidate featuring strategic pull backs from L2s and alt L1s, a return to the core focus of ETH L1 where 86% of rev comes from. The token AAVE barely reacted flat on the week at ~300. Marc’s piece is a good piece on the factions within DeFi and helps piece together the ‘behind the scenes’ negotiations with various protocols.
Turning up the head on USDC, Tether unveiled their launch of a fully compliant stablecoin for the US de facto covering the offshore market with USDT and the onshore US market with USAT. Former White House official Bo Hines will be the CEO of the new venture which is target to launch 4Q. USAT will be issued by Anchorage Digital and Treasuries will be custodied by — you guessed it — Cantor all fully compliant with the GENIUS act. This is not a surprising move but of course would impact Circle who till now had a de-facto monopoly for US compliant stablecoins. The competition is heating up and Circle already felt some of the heat from the DeFi side too where they are currently still the dominant force. HYPE chose Native Markets for USDH after a bit of saga (see ABC 12 Sep 2025) while USDC launched natively on HYPE.
Some personal news No, in all seriousness, I’m not involved with this at all — the name is yet another coincidence. The universe is quite literally trolling me at this point Again: I am not involved, neither is heliuslabs, nor Helium nor Helio nor Heliux nor Helicopter
Mert Mumtaz — Helius (Solana Dev Tools) CEO
If you were asked to invest in the Company that would build the power grid, the post office and finance markets one century ago in North America, would you take that bet? That’s what we’re doing in Africa. Building decentralized energy, communications and finances for the continent.
Paolo Ardoino — Tether CEO
Figure wants us to skip our due dilligence with them, so they are trying to pressure us by slandering us publicly and privately
0xngmi — DeFi Llama Dev
All Been Crypto — Week 19 Sep 2025 was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Also read: Lenovo annule toutes les précommandes de la Legion Go 2… mais la raison ne tient pas debout
