The week of September 21 to 27, 2026 is a digestion week rather than a decision week. The Federal Open Market Committee has already raised the federal funds target by 25 basis points to a range of 3.75% to 4.00% on September 16; the US Senate has already failed to reach cloture on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act 49-50 on September 15, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has already issued a five-year Innovation Exemption for tokenized National Market System (NMS) stock on September 17.
What remains on the calendar is the first post-hike activity survey, a dense run of Fed speakers now that the communications blackout has lifted, one central-bank decision in Mexico and two Nordic rate announcements on Thursday, Solana’s last recommended validator-migration checkpoint before Alpenglow feature activation, and one of the year’s largest quarterly derivatives settlements on Friday.
Bitcoin enters the week trading near $81,300 on Coinbase, after a midweek slide below $76,000 and a Friday rebound that pushed the total crypto market capitalisation back toward $2.88 trillion. Liquidity this week is concentrated around Friday’s Deribit quarterly expiry and around how Wednesday’s flash Purchasing Managers’ Indices (PMIs) and the speaker circuit treat the Committee’s signal that another hike remains live before year-end. Here is what matters.
- Deribit quarterly Bitcoin options carry about $14.73 billion of open interest into the September 25 08:00 UTC settlement, with Ether adding a smaller but still large book, and max pain cited near $72,000.
- S&P Global flash PMIs for France, Germany, the euro area, the United Kingdom and the United States land Wednesday as the first full-month activity read after the September 16 rate hike.
- Plasma’s XPL cliff on September 25 is the week’s most cited supply event, with trackers putting the release near 1.76 billion tokens and roughly $158 million in dollar value at prevailing prices.
1. The Post-Hike Tape: Speakers, Flash PMIs and Friday Data
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the policy-making arm of the Federal Reserve, raised the federal funds target by one-quarter percentage point to 3.75% to 4.00% at 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, September 16, in a 12-0 vote. The implementation note set the interest rate on reserve balances at 3.90% and the primary credit rate at 4.00%, both effective September 17.
The accompanying Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) showed 16 of 18 participants penciling in at least one further 25-basis-point increase before year-end. Chair Kevin Warsh said in the official press conference that the Committee was not yet confident underlying inflation was moving to the 2% goal at sufficient speed. The Crypto Times covered the package in its FOMC preview and its rate-hike market wrap.
The communications blackout ended on Thursday, September 17. This week, the speaker calendar is the live Fed channel.
Monday, September 21
Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee speaks at 6:30 a.m. ET. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index for August is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. Japan markets are closed for a public holiday.
Tuesday, September 22
The Richmond Fed manufacturing index for September is due at 10:00 a.m. ET. New York Fed President John Williams speaks at 10:05 a.m. ET, Vice Chair Philip Jefferson speaks at 10:20 a.m. ET, and Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin at 1:00 p.m. ET. The Federal Reserve publishes the H.6 money stock measures at 1:00 p.m. ET. The euro area flash consumer-confidence reading is also scheduled.
Wednesday, September 23
This is the week’s largest data print. S&P Global releases the September flash PMIs in sequence: France at 07:15 UTC, Germany at 07:30 UTC, the euro area at 08:00 UTC, the United Kingdom at 08:30 UTC, and the United States at 13:45 UTC (9:45 a.m. ET).
Prior United States flash readings were 53.9 for manufacturing, 56.5 for services, and 56.0 for the composite. Consensus into the week clusters near a modest cooling, with the United States composite near 55.2 and the euro-area composite near 51.7. Fed Governor Michael Barr is also scheduled to speak. Japan is closed for Autumnal Equinox Day. Japan’s own flash PMI follows at 00:30 UTC on Thursday.
Thursday, September 24
The US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis release August new home sales at 10:00 a.m. ET and the second-quarter current account at 8:30 a.m. ET. Weekly initial jobless claims land at the same 8:30 a.m. ET print; the prior week’s initial claims were 196,000.
The Federal Reserve also publishes the Senior Credit Officer Opinion Survey on Dealer Financing Terms at 2:00 p.m. ET and the H.4.1 balance-sheet statement at 4:30 p.m. ET. Additional Fed speakers include Williams, Barkin, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack and Chicago Fed First Vice President Anna Paulson.
Friday, September 25
August advance durable goods orders are due at 8:30 a.m. ET. Consensus is for a decline of about 0.5% after a 1.1% rise in July, with core orders excluding transportation expected near a 0.5% increase. The University of Michigan final September consumer sentiment print follows at 10:00 a.m. ET, after a preliminary reading of 51.7. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and Williams are also on the speaker list.
A hotter-than-expected PMI or durables print that keeps October-hike odds bid would tighten financial conditions into the Friday options settlement. A clear miss that pulls the dollar and front-end yields lower would be the cleaner risk-on surprise.
Next week’s heavier US slate, with Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) data on September 29 and the Q2 gross domestic product (GDP) third estimate plus August personal income, spending and Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation on September 30, is the next official inflation and demand checkpoint. The FOMC minutes from the September 15-16 meeting are scheduled for October 7, and the next rate decision is October 28.
2. Agency Rulemaking After the CLARITY Cloture Failure
The legislative path is no longer this week’s binary event. It is the backdrop.
On Tuesday, September 15, the US Senate failed to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633, the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, by 49 yeas to 50 nays on Roll Call Vote 234. The motion needed 60 votes. Voting began at 2:19 p.m. ET and the result was announced shortly before 3:00 p.m. ET. Every Democrat present voted no.
Four Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also voted no. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware did not vote. Senator Tillis then entered a motion to reconsider, so the bill remains on the calendar, but floor consideration is stalled. The House had passed its version 294 to 134 on July 17, 2025. The Crypto Times recorded the 49-50 result and agency follow-through in an earlier report.
The agencies did not wait. On September 16, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Michael Selig said the Commission would use existing authority to write crypto market-structure rules. On September 17, the CFTC submitted a pre-rule, Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets (RIN 3038-AF80), to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, as covered in the Crypto Times report on the CFTC filing.
The same day, the SEC issued Press Release 2026-90, an order granting temporary, conditional exemptive relief known as the Innovation Exemption. The order creates a category of Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) that can trade tokenized NMS stock through permissioned automated market-maker liquidity pools. Qualifying venues receive relief from the Securities Exchange Act definition of exchange.
Certain liquidity providers receive relief from the definition of dealer. Issuers can opt out. The exemptions expire five years after publication. Chairman Paul S. Atkins and Commissioners Hester M. Peirce and Mark T. Uyeda each issued statements. The order solicits public comment. That comment window, not a new Senate vote date, is the live Washington process this week.
A separate House track also moved last week and is not finished. On September 16, the House Financial Services Committee voted 28 to 21 to report H.R. 8957, the American Reserve Modernization Act (ARMA) of 2026, as amended.
The Steil substitute locks qualifying federal Bitcoin in a Treasury-managed Strategic Bitcoin Reserve for 20 years from the date of enactment and replaces quarterly cryptographic attestations with annual public reporting. Committee passage is not floor passage and is not law. No full-House vote is on this week’s published calendar. The Crypto Times covered the committee markup preview and the full bill text at introduction.
Seven Senate Democrats have said that staff-level talks on a later path remain open. Comment letters on the Innovation Exemption and any House floor scheduling for H.R. 8957 are the items to watch, not a rerun of last Tuesday’s 60-vote test.
3. Friday’s Deribit Quarterly Expiry
Friday, September 25 at 08:00 UTC is the week’s largest crypto-native positioning event.
Under Deribit’s contract rules, quarterly Bitcoin and Ether options settle at 08:00 UTC on the last Friday of March, June, September and December. This is the 2026 third-quarter date. Open-interest snapshots into the week put the Bitcoin book near $14.73 billion in notional value across roughly 186,000 open contracts, with Ether adding about $1.92 billion across roughly 756,100 open contracts, for a combined figure near $16.6 billion.
The Bitcoin put-call open-interest ratio has been running near 0.52, a call-heavy book. Large call concentrations have been cited at the $70,000, $85,000 and $90,000 strikes, with sizable put open interest at $70,000. Max-pain estimates for the September 25 settlement have clustered near $72,000, well below spot.
A scheduled expiry does not dictate the price print. It does concentrate dealer hedging, gamma, and roll activity into Thursday night and Friday morning UTC, which is why the Crypto Times flagged this date in its previous week ahead. Daily expiries on September 21 through 24 are much smaller. The next large listed dates after Friday are October 30 and the December 25 quarterly.
United States stock-index triple witching already passed on September 18. This Friday is the crypto book.
4. Crypto-Native Events: Solana’s Alpenglow Checkpoint
Anza’s Agave 4.3 release schedule names Monday, September 21 as the general-adoption recommendation for validators, the last practical checkpoint before mainnet-beta feature activation, targeted to begin September 28. Alpenglow, approved as Solana Improvement Document (SIMD) 0326, replaces the existing TowerBFT voting system with a new component called Votor and is designed to cut finality from roughly 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds.
The first mainnet package is Votor only. Rotor, the planned block-propagation replacement for Turbine, is a later proposal. Agave 4.2 already contains Alpenglow code with activation off. Feature activation is not a single wall-clock hard fork. It is a feature-gate process after enough stake is on the new client.
The September 21 recommendation means operators still on Agave 4.2 would be running unsupported software into the activation window. This week is an infrastructure milestone, not the activation itself.
Zcash’s Network Upgrade 7 (NU7) is not this week. Ecosystem teams have aligned on an October 6 code-complete target and a November 5 activation target, with a final height decision around October 20. Zcash Improvement Proposal (ZIP) 218 would cut target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. That calendar belongs in October, not in this five-day window.
5. A Heavy Token-Unlock Slate, Led by Plasma
Unlock trackers disagree on dollar values because prices move, and a scheduled release does not establish that recipients will sell. The week’s most cited cliff and large linear events include the following.
- September 21: Akedo (AKE), Seeker (SKR), Plume (PLUME) and Trusta.AI (TA), plus widely tracked linear or calendar releases in Avalanche (AVAX) and Morpho (MORPHO). AKE is the largest Monday citation by dollar value.
- September 22: 0G (0G), River (RIVER), Space ID (ID), with Big Time-adjacent and MBG listings on some calendars.
- September 23: Meteora (MET), Zora (ZORA), Bless (BLESS), SOON (SOON), and an Arbitrum (ARB) line that appears on some September 23 calendars as a follow-on vesting print rather than a fresh cliff.
- September 24: SoSoValue (SOSO) and Worldcoin (WLD) linear or monthly emissions. SOSO is cited near $7 million to $8 million, or about 6% of circulating supply on some screens.
- September 25: Plasma (XPL) is the week’s largest widely cited cliff. According to the Plasma tokenomics documentation, one third of the team allocation and one third of the investor allocation are subject to a one-year cliff from the September 25, 2025 mainnet-beta launch and release on September 25, 2026.
- Independent trackers put the day’s combined release near 1.76 to 1.81 billion XPL, roughly 63% to 65% of circulating supply, and near $158 million in dollar value at prevailing prices. Treat the exact token count as project-disclosure dependent. Humanity Protocol (H) is cited near 266 million tokens on the same day. ChainOpera AI (COAI), Irys (IRYS), OVERTAKE (TAKE), Perle Labs (PRL) and Big Time (BIGTIME) also appear on September 25 lists.
- September 26: Toncoin (TON) linear or calendar emissions, GateToken (GT), Huma (HUMA) and STBL (STBL), with STBL cited near 210 million tokens.
- September 27: Smaller prints including Venice Token (VVV) and Walrus (WAL) on aggregator calendars.
Plasma is the event most worth sizing against float. Humanity Protocol is the next most cited percentage print. Impact depends on the release size relative to circulating supply, who receives the tokens, and whether those wallets distribute. Readers should verify final size and timing against each project’s official disclosure. Several trackers flag a very large Hyperliquid (HYPE) line around September 29 on next week’s calendar.
6. Other Central Banks, Conferences and the Rest of the Calendar
Thursday also brings three non-United States policy decisions that can move the dollar complex and, with it, crypto beta.
Banco de México (Banxico) announces at 1:00 p.m. Mexico City time. The overnight target has been 6.50% since May 7, and the last two votes were unanimous holds. Most survey desks expect another hold. Sweden’s Riksbank and Norway’s Norges Bank are also on Thursday’s European morning slate. Bank Indonesia is expected to hold at 5.75% on Wednesday. The People’s Bank of China’s Loan Prime Rate decision printed over the weekend, with the one-year rate left at 3.00% and the five-year rate at 3.50%.
Industry gatherings run through the week and may produce announcements, though market impact cannot be established in advance. ETHTokyo 2026 runs September 19 to 27. Freedom Tech DC meets September 22 to 23 at the National Press Club in Washington. The Digital Asset Summit is in Toronto on September 22, with Solana Summit Canada on September 23 to 24.
The Global Blockchain Business Council’s Blockchain Central program sits alongside United Nations General Assembly week in New York. The Midwest Bitcoin Summit is September 23 to 24 in Columbus, Ohio. Blockchain Week Bulgaria runs September 23 to 25 in Sofia. Pragma Tokyo is on September 24, with the ETHGlobal Tokyo hackathon September 25 to 27. BTCHEL and the European Mining Summit are September 25 to 26 in Helsinki.
The Proof Conference is September 27 in Vilnius. Sibos opens September 27 in Miami Beach and runs into October 1. Korea Blockchain Week is September 29 to October 1 in Seoul, and TOKEN2049 Singapore follows on October 7 to 8.
The Bottom Line
This is a positioning week after a policy week. Last Tuesday’s failed CLARITY Act cloture vote and last Wednesday’s Federal Reserve hike are already in the price. The live questions are whether Wednesday’s flash PMIs and the post-blackout speaker circuit keep October-hike odds elevated, whether comment letters and TSV applications turn the SEC’s Innovation Exemption into actual onchain stock flow, and how Friday’s Deribit book is hedged into an 08:00 UTC settlement that still has max pain well below spot.
Bitcoin enters the week near $81,300, with the federal funds target at 3.75% to 4.00% and another hike still on the official projection path. Individual tokens face their own calendars around the Plasma cliff, the Solana validator checkpoint, and dated unlocks. Event timings can shift, and markets often begin pricing these events before they arrive.
Also Read: SingularityNET Bridge Hack Widens: 260M AGIX, 53.8M WMTx Minted, $16.77M Held by Attacker
