Gm, and happy Friday!

The macroeconomic backdrop is flashing warning signs, and institutional capital is taking notice. ETF buyers are accelerating purchases of both Bitcoin and Gold ETFs as investors seek refuge from a cornered Fed. Plus, we break down the parabolic rise of Fomo, a social trading app pulling in over $13M in monthly revenue that may be crypto's breakout consumer application. 

Let’s get into it.

Grouping daily ETF flows into regimes by the sign of trailing 30-day flow shows the turn began earlier than price did. The distribution phase that ran from May 20 through July 29 drained ~88.5k BTC (the deepest of the past year) before flipping to accumulation on July 30. This regime has now pulled in ~53k BTC in roughly five weeks, nearly matching the ~48k BTC accumulated across the ten-week spring phase and at more than twice the rate. Notably, the regime turned three weeks before BTC broke out on August 19, so ETF demand led the price move rather than chasing it. 

An explanation for the return of demand is that BTC is trading as part of a broader monetary hedge, and the flow data offers some evidence for it. Net flows into gold and Bitcoin ETFs have broadly trended in the same direction. While gold and BTC often diverge, their correlation has now reached a 6-year high (after the monetary stimulus for COVID).

Both series bottomed within weeks of each other in mid-2026 and are recovering in tandem, with running totals since launch back near $55B for BTC and $50B for gold. With inflation above target, debt issuance expanding and long-term borrowing costs elevated, portfolios can allocate to both a traditional safe haven and a risk asset since both express the same view on the monetary environment. 

This is happening as the monetary backdrop has grown less favorable over the past month. The US 10-year Treasury yield closed at 4.79% on September 1, up from 4.28% a year earlier and 82bp off its February low of 3.97%. The move is global as rates in Europe are also on the rise and Japan's 10-year yield crossed 3% for the first time in three decades. While one interpretation of yields shows inflation expectations flat to down and a sign of US growth reaccelerating, the sell-off also reflects the need to get deficits under control.

The data the Fed is actually weighing points in two directions at once. July's labor readings all missed to the downside, and average hourly earnings growth slowed. While the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%, it was for the wrong reason: the labor force shrank by 264k and participation fell to 61.4%, its lowest outside the Covid era since 1976. Inflation came above consensus across the board with no monthly disinflation to show.

In this paralyzed policy environment, the accelerated accumulation of both Bitcoin and gold ETFs makes perfect structural sense. If the central bank is genuinely cornered, unable to ease due to sticky inflation and unable to hike without breaking a deteriorating labor market, then traditional sovereign debt offers little sanctuary. Instead, ETF investors are shifting capital toward non-fiat stores of value.

— Marc Arjoon

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Feeling the Fomo

Last month, one of our newsletters featured a section about social trading app Fomo “going mainstream.” In the roughly three weeks since, Fomo’s traction has only accelerated, and a serious case could be made that it is the breakout crypto consumer application that many of us have been waiting for. 

In August, Fomo recorded $13.8M in revenue ($165.6M annualized), eclipsing the previous record set in July of $6.4M. Furthermore, this pace has continued in September with $1.1M in revenue on September 1, its most ever in a single day. To showcase just how parabolic Fomo’s growth has been, its monthly revenues are up nearly 30x YoY from last August’s $450k.

Perhaps what's most notable about this growth is that it’s not being driven by a few “whales,” but by a surge of new users signing up for the platform. In June, Fomo had an average of 7.5k daily active users. In the subsequent months, user count has exploded, and over the last week, Fomo averaged 101k daily active users. Alongside this user growth, Fomo has risen to #15 on the US Apple App Store’s Finance category, signaling that Fomo is onboarding net new users to crypto. 

Once again, new users are being driven to this space by memecoins. Looking at Solana spot volume by pair category on Fomo, it’s clear that users are primarily using Fomo to trade memecoins. Memecoin pairs represent anywhere from 40% to 60% of Fomo Solana volume, with SOL-Stablecoin pairs also representing a similar amount. Given that Fomo denominates in stablecoins, the dominance of SOL-Stablecoin pairs is also likely to be driven by memecoins, as any time a user buys a memecoin on Fomo, the flow of funds is USDC -> SOL -> Memecoin. 

While the overwhelming presence of memecoin activity has led many to deride Fomo as just another memecoin app, there is reason to believe that Fomo users are expanding their horizon beyond just memecoins. Earlier this year, Fomo integrated with Hyperliquid builder codes, allowing non-US users to trade on Hyperliquid through the app. Although initial adoption was slow, Hyperliquid volumes on Fomo picked up in August, totaling $1.3B in notional volume for the month. Comparatively, there was only $448.5M in notional volume for July. 

Underpinning most of Fomo’s recent growth has been the emergence of Robinhood Chain, which just eclipsed $2B in daily spot DEX volume for the first time ever. A significant portion of this volume is, of course, attributable to memecoins, and Fomo has been one of the primary beneficiaries as it has essentially served as a “front-end” for Robinhood Chain. 

It’s been an impressive stretch for Fomo, and the overall trend is showing no signs of slowing down. 

— AJC

When throughput is not enough: What financial markets need from blockchains

While blockchain throughput has exponentially increased, raw speed alone is no longer enough to win over global financial markets. As institutions move onchain, they are demanding the rigorous standards of traditional finance: guaranteed transaction predictability, fair and deterministic sequencing to prevent front-running, and resilient network access free from single-operator bottlenecks. Additionally, pre-execution privacy has emerged as a critical requirement to protect trading intent before execution, even if post-trade data remains fully auditable. For blockchains to evolve into core market infrastructure, protocol developers must now prioritize these strict reliability, ordering, and confidentiality guarantees over mere transaction volume.

ETH August 2026 Update: Flows Recover, Fundamentals Don't

August extended July's reversal, with ETH gaining ~32.6% after the US Treasury announced increased buybacks and triggered the largest short-liquidation month on record. ETFs took in $1.8 billion, the strongest month since August 2025 and more than the eleven preceding months combined, while total futures OI rose ~31% to over $115 billion. Nine of ten ecosystem index constituents finished higher, led by ENA (+85%), CRV (+49%) and ENS (+36%). REV rose 28% to $12.6 million from July's lowest print since April 2020, spot DEX volume gained ~12% to ~$34 billion (but sits ~64% YoY), and treasury-company purchases recovered 62% to ~$265 million.