Equities update - September 28th 2026

Week 39 saw an increasingly stark divergence between bond and equity markets, with equities remaining resilient despite a materially more challenging rates backdrop. US Treasury yields pushed back towards multi-decade highs, with the 10-year approaching 5.2%, alongside a stronger dollar and still-elevated oil prices. Importantly, the sell-off in bonds reflects more than simply expectations for further Fed tightening: persistent inflation, stronger economic activity and growing concerns around fiscal deficits and the supply of government debt are also pushing term premia higher. Markets currently expect further rate increases over coming meetings, while several Fed officials have continued to emphasise that policy may need to become more restrictive.

Equities, however, continue to discount a more constructive medium-term outcome, supported by resilient earnings, continued AI-related investment and the possibility that any de-escalation in the Middle East could eventually reduce energy-driven inflation and ease pressure on rates. This leaves an important tension between the two markets, if bond yields remain around current levels for an extended period, higher discount rates and financing costs should eventually become more meaningful for equity valuations and capital-intensive growth companies; alternatively, equities may be correctly anticipating that today's inflation and geopolitical pressures prove temporary. For now, financing markets remain open, although the widening dispersion in AI infrastructure credit suggests investors are already becoming more selective around leverage, customer quality and contracted cash flows.

Week 39 key developments in Blockchain Equities:

• Index performance: The Index rose 1.9% over the week, underperforming Bitcoin’s 3.8% gain, in what was ultimately a resilient week for broader equities. This came despite a relatively challenging macro backdrop: the US dollar strengthened to an eight-week high, while 10-year Treasury yields moved above 5.2% to their highest level since 2007 and 30-year yields reached levels last seen in 2004. September’s flash US Composite PMI rose to 58.4, its strongest reading since July 2021, while oil remained elevated amid continued Middle East tensions. Despite these traditional headwinds for long-duration growth assets, equities remained comparatively resilient, supported by continued strength in AI-related names and expectations for robust corporate earnings. 

• Block Index key movers: 7-day top performers: Strategy Inc (+22.2%), SharpLink Gaming (+20.5%), Metaplanet (18.9%) 7-day worst performers: Oracle (7.3%), Nextera Energy (-7.0%), Mercari (-4.9%)

• This week saw a further broadening of blockchain adoption, with developments spanning payments, stablecoin distribution and capital-markets infrastructure: Firstly, NYSE and Blockchain.com agreed to explore 24/7 access to tokenised US-listed equities and ETFs, alongside a two-way data partnership between ICE and Blockchain.com. This is particularly notable given NYSE is already developing its own regulated 24/7 tokenised-securities platform, suggesting that incumbent market infrastructure providers increasingly view onchain distribution as an extension of existing financial markets rather than a separate crypto ecosystem. Second, Circle expanded its five-year partnership with Binance, alongside a US$100m strategic investment aimed at increasing USDC distribution globally. Finally, SoFiUSD is now being used to settle SoFi’s entire card programme across Mastercard’s network, representing more than US$25bn of expected annualised payment volume. Taken together with the SEC’s recent Innovation Exemption, these developments reinforce the view that blockchain adoption is continuing to progress despite the recent setback of the CLARITY Act failing to advance, with companies increasingly investing in and expanding partnerships across the infrastructure underpinning payments, trading and settlement.

• AI infrastructure financing came increasingly into focus this week as the scale of capital required for the buildout collided with a higher-rate and increasingly selective credit environment: Around US$18bn of debt tied to Oracle’s Project Jupiter data centre in New Mexico has come under pressure, with the loans reportedly trading at around 89–91 cents on the dollar as investors scrutinise Oracle’s rising leverage, the project’s execution risks and delays around supporting power infrastructure. Oracle subsequently issued a force-majeure notice to the project developer, although importantly this does not represent an attempt to exit the project; rather, it preserves Oracle’s ability to delay payments if the campus fails to meet its planned 2028 opening, while Oracle continues to state that the project remains on schedule.

  This comes as miners and former miners continue to access sizeable project-finance markets to fund their transition into AI/HPC infrastructure. CleanSpark recently priced US$2.276bn of senior secured notes due 2031 at a 7.875% coupon and 98.5% of par, with proceeds earmarked for the remaining construction of its Sandersville data-centre campus. The implication is that the broader credit market is also becoming more selective. spreads on AI-related bonds have widened to around 115bps versus roughly 78bps for the broader corporate market, while hyperscaler debt issuance is expected to increase materially as infrastructure spending accelerates. As rates remain elevated and the volume of AI-related debt increases, financing quality itself should become a more important competitive differentiator, with the market increasingly separating speculative power pipelines from projects backed by strong counterparties, long-duration contracts and credible refinancing pathways.

Other news - Index constituents:

• Cipher extended the Barber Lake lease with Fluidstack to a 20-year term, replacing the previous structure of a 10-year base lease plus two five-year extension options. The amendment increases the durability and visibility of contracted cash flows from the 300MW campus, which is backed by Google and supports Anthropic workloads, while further strengthening the asset’s financing and refinancing profile as Cipher transitions toward long-duration HPC infrastructure.

• Strategy’s 21 September disclosure showed purchases of 950 BTC for US$75.7 million, bringing holdings to 846,000 BTC, alongside US$174 million of STRC preferred-share repurchases. Strategy also urged shareholders to respond to MSCI’s consultation on the treatment of digital-asset treasury companies and separately proposed moving STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD to daily dividend payments, aimed at improving liquidity and reducing price volatility around ex-dividend dates.

• Galaxy added US$100m of Sky Protocol's sUSDS to its corporate treasury and approved sUSDS as collateral across its institutional trading business, which has an approximately US$1.4bn average loan book. Galaxy also purchased an undisclosed amount of SKY.

• Coinbase expanded its onchain lending offering by introducing fixed-rate, Bitcoin-backed USDC loans through Morpho Midnight, alongside its existing variable-rate product. Coinbase said its existing Morpho-based lending business has already grown to more than US1.4bnofloansagainstroughlyUS3bn of collateral, suggesting onchain credit is becoming a meaningful product rather than an experimental offering.

• Bullish and Equiniti launched the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, joined initially by Alpaca, Apex Fintech and DriveWealth, to develop standards and infrastructure for tokenised public securities that preserve shareholder rights and remain interoperable with traditional markets. This fits particularly well with Bullish’s pending US$4.2bn acquisition of Equiniti, which is intended to create an end-to-end infrastructure stack spanning issuance, shareholder registry and trading of tokenised securities.

• GMO Internet agreed to sell its entire interest in GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics (Thailand) to BTGT Management (Thailand), completing its planned withdrawal from Thailand’s digital-asset business. The loss-making subsidiary generated roughly ¥50m of revenue and a ¥338m operating loss in 2025; consideration was undisclosed and completion is expected by 31 October.

• CME announced plans to launch Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures on 19 October, including both standard and Micro contracts. CME’s crypto futures and options averaged around US$8.3bn of daily notional volume in H1, and therefore, continued expansion into additional tokens is another indication that regulated institutional derivatives are moving beyond BTC and ETH.

• Hut 8 emerged as the winning bidder for bankrupt miner Poolin’s Pyote and Tarbush data-centre sites in Texas, offering US$140m, nearly three times the combined US$52m stalking-horse bid.

Other news – Non - Index constituents:

• ARK Invest tokenised the ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX) through Securitize, bringing exposure to a portfolio including private companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe and Databricks onto blockchain infrastructure. Tokenised ARKVX will initially be available on Ethereum, adding another established investment product to the growing pool of regulated onchain assets.

• The ECB launched Pontes for wholesale settlement in central-bank money. The 21 September launch connected distributed-ledger transactions with central-bank-money settlement, initially involving 13 market participants and four DLT platform operators. Services and operating hours will expand progressively, with the fuller offering targeted for 2028.

• UK banks moved tokenised deposits into live customer transactions. UK Finance announced the first live customer transactions under the Great British Tokenised Deposit initiative, involving Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander. Initial activity included two remortgage completions and a conditional marketplace-payment test. The practical benefit is the ability to reserve and release funds when agreed conditions are met, potentially reducing reconciliation and settlement friction.

• Canaan said its 8MW Nordic heat-reuse project is now fully operational, using hydro-cooled Avalon miners to produce roughly 80°C water for district-heating networks.