Pause For Thought

Bitcoin has enjoyed a steady week, helped along by some favourable data prints that markets were only too happy to see. Cooler inflation and a limp jobs report have both raised the odds that the Fed will sit on its hands at the end of the month. Today's forward guidance looks at what a pause would mean for crypto and where the next test will be.

Away from the macro, the talk of the town is tokenised real-world assets, with Wall Street giants and crypto natives alike rushing to get involved and regulators waving them merrily on through. However, a look at what's happening onchain paints a rather less flattering picture: plenty of these assets are being issued, but precious few are being put to work. We dig into why that is and what has to change. Full story below.

✈️ Flight Mode ✈️

The world's rich are on the move. They aren't making much noise about it, but fortunes that have sat in the same financial capitals for generations are being packed up and shipped off to places that are rather more pleased to see them.

But upping sticks is only half the battle, because their money has to make the journey too - and the system it travels through can be switched off at the drop of an unfriendly politician’s hat. So, in today's video, we break down where all this wealth is heading, what's driving it out of its old haunts, and the financial rails competing to carry it across borders - including the one option that doesn't need anyone's permission. Just remember though, wealth is only really yours if you can take it with you.

You can watch that video here.

📈 Crypto Market Forecast 📈

The major data releases this week had two things in common: both came in softer than expected and both raised the odds that the Federal Reserve has finished tightening. The first was August’s PCE figures, released on Wednesday, which showed core inflation falling to 3.0% - below the 3.3% consensus. The second was the September jobs report, which added just 29,000 nonfarm payrolls with the unemployment rate holding at 4.2%. The September NFP was soft on all three key metrics. Bitcoin is around $84,500 at the time of writing, holding firmly above the $80-$81k support zone that has absorbed every significant test since late August.

The two data points together make a compelling case. Core PCE at 3.0% shows inflation continuing to trend lower after the September rate hike. A jobs print of +29,000 shows the labour market deteriorating in a way that gives Warsh genuine political and economic cover to pause in October. The FOMC meets on the 28th October, and the probability of another hike has now fallen materially. Before the PCE print earlier this week, markets had the October hike at nearly 50/50. After Friday's NFPs, the consensus view is now that the Fed will hold on the 28th.

What the market is reading correctly is that the Fed has now delivered one hike and watched both inflation and employment move in a direction that justifies pausing. A pause does not mean a pivot - rates at 3.75%-4.0% are still restrictive - but the removal of the hike risk removes the primary headwind that has kept Bitcoin in the $80-$87k range for the past month. The next meaningful question becomes whether a pause signals that the tightening cycle is over, which would bring rate cut expectations back onto the table for 2027 and accelerate the debasement trade.

ETF demand has remained positive throughout the consolidation. Daily inflows have normalised from the September peaks but have stayed consistently positive - the institutional demand that was confirmed by the record single-day inflows in September has not reversed. This is the key difference between this cycle and previous ones: the institutional floor under the market means each pullback is absorbed faster than it was before ETFs existed.

In sum then, the week delivered the two data points needed to remove the October hike as the base case. Bitcoin has digested significant macro risk and emerged above key support levels. The setup heading into October now points toward $90-$95k as the next target if the October CPI (due on the 11th) confirms the deflation trajectory. A hot CPI would bring uncertainty back quickly, but the labour market data today argues strongly that the economy is slowing fast enough that inflation should continue moderating. The bull case has strengthened this week - patience remains the position, but the horizon is getting clearer.

⚙️ Productive RWAs ⚙️

Tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) are shaping up to be one of the more dominant narratives of this cycle. From crypto natives to TradFi suits, the number of investors getting excited over this sector seems to grow by the day.

In fact, a research report published by Bernstein earlier this year claimed that 2026 was likely to mark the start of a “tokenization supercycle.” Since then, the speed at which the RWA sector has been growing has only lent credibility to Bernstein's forecast.

Notably, TradFi institutional players like JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton and WisdomTree have all rolled out new tokenised funds this year. Even DTCC, a key player in the US financial system, is expected to launch its own tokenisation service later this month.

Similarly, crypto native/adjacent players like Circle, Kraken, Coinbase and Robinhood have also been busy building and promoting their own RWA-focused infra layers. The best part is that this is happening during one of the more crypto-friendly regulatory regimes in the United States. Case in point, just a couple of weeks ago, the SEC granted its long-promised innovation exemption, allowing tokenised US stocks to trade through onchain liquidity pools for the next five years. Likewise, the CFTC has issued a clarification allowing futures brokers to invest customer funds in certain tokenised money market funds and Treasuries.

On the face of it, it looks like RWAs are only set to grow from here. Yet, a closer look at the onchain data reflects a different reality, one where much of this current growth seems to have been driven by hype and anticipation of future demand rather than any real existing demand. Allow us to explain.

You see, one of the main reasons why many see RWAs as a promising crypto category is because of the idea that they will bring in a new cohort of investors and capital that was previously disengaged from onchain markets. As Wintermute explains in its recent report, this has been the case for parabolic rallies in all previous bull markets. For instance, ICOs, stablecoins and crypto ETFs have all contributed to increasing the demand and interest in crypto from previously sidelined capital. This was largely due to each of them unlocking better access, capital efficiency or new financial primitives for investors.

In other words, for this to be true of RWAs, they must offer something similar that creates real onchain demand. The easiest evidence of this would be high capital velocity across RWAs.

However, the latest Dune quarterly report found that only 6.1% of all tokenised RWAs are being actively utilised in onchain finance despite the market cap of RWAs having grown roughly 140% this year. Put simply, while there is more issuance of tokenised RWAs, much of it sits idle in crypto wallets. This is not a healthy sign for a growing crypto category.

As we see it, there are two broad sources of demand for RWAs – institutional and crypto-native. Both require RWAs to be more productive assets. After all, tokenisation is an additional layer that comes with its own set of risks (hacks and solvency failures chief among them).

For investors to be willing to take on this risk, tokenised RWAs need to offer greater capital efficiency or access beyond what the investor is likely to get from holding the underlying RWA in a traditional brokerage account. In our opinion, this includes higher yield and better lending support in permissionless markets.

For example, ‘looping’ is one of the more popular DeFi yield strategies. To explain it simply, this involves compounding the base yield on any asset by buying more of it through borrowing stablecoins against the underlying asset. Yield farmers often repeat this borrowing-buying cycle multiple times. However, for this to be a profitable strategy, you need the underlying yield to be higher than the borrowing costs on stablecoins.

The reason this strategy has failed to gather traction in RWAs is because much of the RWA growth has been in Treasury funds, which on average earn about 4% before fees. Borrowing costs on stablecoins on average have been around 4.4% at best. This also explains why tokenised private credit accounts for many of the productive RWAs onchain today. Notably, Pantera's latest tokenisation report shows 44.7% of tokenised private credit is posted as DeFi collateral vs just 2.1% of tokenised Treasuries. After all, credit tokens on average pay yields in the high single digits (~9%).

On that note, there are few venues where investors can borrow against RWAs today. The biggest among them is Morpho, which holds about $1 billion of RWA deposits. Together with Aave and Solana's Kamino, it accounts for 83% of all RWA lending.

That said, another reason why RWA lending has been slow to grow is because of the delay in redemption against the underlying asset. You see, a tokenised fund typically takes a day or more to pay out when you redeem it, while many lending markets need to sell collateral within minutes if a loan goes bad. This creates a new liquidity risk unique to the asset.

Thankfully, this also creates opportunity for new business in the sector. For instance, Grove is working on this with Basin, a facility launched in May with up to $1 billion of daily liquidity. It hands over stablecoins immediately against BUIDL and JTRSY redemptions and waits for the fund to settle in the background.

Besides treasury funds, tokenised equities have also been one of the more prominent growth categories in tokenised RWAs. Not to mention, they are yet another RWA category that could benefit from better lending and margin support. Notably, while few would have any reason to borrow against a Treasury fund, plenty would like to borrow against their Nvidia shares without having to sell them.

In fact, Aave recently announced that it began accepting seven Coinbase-issued stock tokens as collateral on Base. While the initial rollout caps it at $21 million pool capacity, we’ll likely see support grow as teams figure out how to better manage liquidity risks during weekends when TradFi markets remain closed. That said, there’s a long way to go before we reach this point.

In the meantime, there’s a chance this short-term growth trend can be sustained forward by more crypto-native interest. As we’ve seen recently on Robinhood Chain, there’s clear retail demand for tokenised equities in crypto-native yield engines.

Beyond that, if you’re betting on RWAs being the defining category of this cycle, it’s important to remember there’s much work to be done. Until then, play the narrative conservatively.

🔥 Hot Deal Of The Week 🔥

Want to know what the Coin Bureau team is researching before it reaches our public channels?

Coin Bureau Club gives members access to premium research, in-depth market analysis, exclusive reports and insights from our research team, helping you understand the trends, narratives and opportunities shaping the markets. Instead of spending hours piecing together information from dozens of sources, the Club brings Coin Bureau’s research and analysis together in one place.

Whether you’re trying to identify promising trends, understand where the market could be heading or simply make better-informed decisions, Coin Bureau Club gives you the research and insights to stay ahead of the noise.

👉 Join Coin Bureau Club today and put our research team in your corner.

🏆 What's New at CoinBureau.com This Week? 🏆

* CoinTracking vs Koinly vs CoinLedger: Which Crypto Tax Software Is Best in 2026?
* Best Crypto Derivatives Exchanges in 2026: Futures, Options and Perps Compared
* Best AI Crypto Projects in 2026: Top Projects With Real Utility
* How Do Hardware Wallets Work? Crypto Signing and Cold Storage Explained
* Most Common Smart Contract Attacks: How They Work and How to Prevent Them
* Chainlink Review: Smart Contract Solutions for any Blockchain
* CoinMarketCap API Guide: REST, DEX Data, MCP, x402 and AI Agent Tools
* What Is Copy Trading? How It Works, Risks and How to Choose a Trader
* Dollar-Cost Averaging Crypto: How to Build a DCA Strategy in 2026

📖 Quote of the Week 📖

“Losers average losers.”  - Paul Tudor Jones

Team Coin Bureau

Disclosure: Authors may own cryptoassets named in this newsletter. These are unqualified opinions, and a Coin Bureau newsletter, is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult with your investment, tax, or legal advisor.