Massive Week for Crypto Adoption! What’s Next for Bitcoin?

Crypto adoption continues to surge even as Bitcoin and the broader crypto market consolidate, setting the stage for the next major move.

Oct 03, 2026

Hey Thinkers 💡

It was a massive week for crypto adoption and regulatory progress, all while Bitcoin continues to consolidate and everyone waits for its next major move.

While Bitcoin’s price action may feel boring right now, what’s happening beneath the surface is anything but boring.

Wall Street firms are expanding deeper into digital assets. Banks are building stablecoin infrastructure. Regulators are proposing clearer crypto rules. And some of the world’s largest financial institutions continue integrating blockchain technology.

Let’s recap the biggest developments from the week before diving into what the Bitcoin charts are telling us.

🔥 Major Crypto News

🏛️ SEC Proposes New Crypto Custody Rules

The SEC proposed new crypto custody rules designed to give investment advisers and funds a clearer regulatory pathway for holding digital assets.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said the proposal:

“would provide a clear regulatory framework for the custody of crypto assets, giving investment advisers and funds a compliant pathway where none existed before.”

This could be an important step for institutional adoption.

Clear custody rules have been one of the biggest regulatory questions facing financial institutions looking to expand into crypto.

The more regulatory clarity institutions receive, the easier it becomes for traditional financial firms to build products and services around digital assets.

🏦 Morgan Stanley Launches Digital Asset Lab

Morgan Stanley has established a Digital Asset Lab to experiment with blockchain technologies including:

Stablecoins
Tokenization
Decentralized finance (DeFi)

This comes after the Wall Street giant expanded its crypto footprint through ETFs and crypto trading on its E*TRADE platform.

We’re continuing to see the same trend across Wall Street:

Experimentation → products → infrastructure → deeper integration.

🤝 BNY & Kraken Explore Major Partnership

Custody banking giant BNY is reportedly in discussions with Payward, the parent company of Kraken, about a potentially broad partnership spanning digital assets and financial-market infrastructure.

The potential collaboration could include:

Crypto products
Custody
Wealth management
Trading
Payments
Financial infrastructure

If finalized, this would represent another major connection between traditional banking infrastructure and the crypto economy.

💵 Citi Expands Stablecoin Partnership With Coinbase

Citi is expanding its partnership with Coinbase to support stablecoin payments for corporate clients.

The companies initially announced their collaboration in October 2025, focusing on fiat-to-crypto payment infrastructure.

The expansion into stablecoin payments is another sign that banks increasingly see stablecoins not simply as a crypto product, but as new infrastructure for moving money.

That’s the bigger story to watch.

💳 Open USD Launches With $1B+ in Committed Reserves

Open Standard has introduced Open USD (OUSD), a new stablecoin backed by more than $1 billion in committed short-term reserves, with Chainlink serving as an oracle partner.

OUSD is initially being made available across networks including:

Base
Ethereum
Solana
Tempo

Businesses will also be able to access OUSD through integrations involving major payment and financial companies.

The infrastructure is designed to allow businesses to convert U.S. dollars into and out of OUSD at a 1:1 rate without minting or redemption fees.

Stablecoins are rapidly becoming one of the clearest product-market fits for blockchain technology.

⚖️ Illinois Delays Crypto Transaction Tax

Illinois has agreed to postpone implementation of its controversial 0.2% crypto transaction tax for six months.

The Digital Chamber and Illinois Blockchain Association helped negotiate the delay while legal challenges to the tax continue working through the courts.

This remains an important issue to watch because state-level crypto taxation could have implications far beyond Illinois.

₿ What’s Happening With Bitcoin?

Now let’s get to Bitcoin.

From a macro perspective, the broader trend continues to point toward higher prices over time, with Bitcoin having transitioned out of its previous bear-market downtrend.

But that doesn’t mean we’re going straight up. In the short term, we could still experience volatility to the downside.

Bitcoin continues chopping within roughly the $83K–$87K range, while the daily MACD has flipped bearish.

That’s not surprising after the explosive move we recently experienced.

Bitcoin needs time to consolidate, cool off and determine its next direction.

🎯 $82,800 Is the Key Level

Despite the boring consolidation, Bitcoin continues to hold the critical $82,800 support region.

That’s important. This was previously a major resistance level, and we now want to see Bitcoin establish it as support.

Old resistance becoming new support is exactly what you want to see during an uptrend. If Bitcoin continues holding this region, the setup for another move higher remains intact.

If it loses the level decisively, we may need to prepare for a deeper short-term pullback. For now, the bulls continue defending it.

📈 Fidelity’s Jurrien Timmer Sees $100K

Jurrien Timmer, Director of Global Macro at Fidelity, shared some interesting thoughts on Bitcoin this week.

He wrote:

“I continue to like both gold and Bitcoin, but especially Bitcoin looks interesting right now.”

Timmer highlighted Bitcoin’s breakout through the $80,000 resistance level and identified $100,000 as a potential target.

That lines up with some of the technical models we’ve been tracking in this newsletter.

We’ve discussed the possibility of Bitcoin moving toward the $90K–$100K region if the key support levels continue to hold.

Again, that’s a target—not a guarantee.

🥇 Bitcoin vs. Gold

Timmer also highlighted Bitcoin’s strength when priced against gold as capital flows return to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

He noted that Bitcoin has relatively low correlation to the S&P 500 and little correlation to Treasuries, arguing that this can strengthen Bitcoin’s role as a portfolio diversifier if a new four-year cycle is beginning.

This is particularly interesting because gold and Bitcoin have increasingly become part of the same macro conversation.

Both assets can appeal to investors looking outside traditional fiat-based financial assets, but Bitcoin brings an entirely different risk and return profile.

📊 Weekly Bullish Divergence Continues Playing Out

And then we have the chart we’ve been following for months.

Bitcoin’s weekly bullish divergence continues to play out.

This was one of the most important signals we identified during the bottoming process.

Since then, we’ve seen:

Bitcoin break its previous downtrend
RSI momentum improve
MACD turn bullish on the higher timeframe
Bitcoin reclaim major moving averages
Former resistance levels begin turning into support

The daily chart may look indecisive right now.

But zoom out. The higher timeframe continues to look significantly more constructive.

🧩 Final Thoughts: It’s a Patience Game

This is where patience becomes important. Bitcoin doesn’t need to pump every day for the bull-market thesis to remain intact. After such a powerful move higher, consolidation is healthy.

Could Bitcoin pull back further?

Absolutely.

Could we chop sideways for a while longer?

Absolutely.

But the bigger picture remains the same. Bitcoin has broken out of its previous bear-market downtrend and established a broader uptrend.

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📈Crypto Market Metrics

Here are some key data points from Santiment

Top 10 Coins Trending via Social Media

Top Gainers in Social Dominance

Top Losers in Social Dominance

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📺 Recent Interviews

Reid Simon, President of Digital Assets at Figure, joined us to discuss Figure’s unique tokenized loan products, how blockchain is transforming lending, and the future of crypto lending.

J.W. Verret, Crypto Law Professor of Accounting & Corporate Securities Law, joined me to discuss the fallout from the CLARITY Act failing to advance, the growing regulatory pressure on DeFi, SEC and CFTC crypto rulemaking, and the future of Zcash and privacy coins.