Bitcoin Slides Below $84K as Fed Bets Resurface — MoonPay Bets $60M on Tokenized Securities
Bitcoin fell more than 2% Thursday as strong U.S. economic data revived Federal Reserve rate-hike expectations, even as MoonPay struck a $60 million deal for a U.S. broker-dealer to expand into tokenized stocks and bonds.
Bitcoin Retreats as Strong U.S. Data Reignites Rate-Hike Fears
Bitcoin opened Thursday, September 24, near $84,300, down roughly 2% from the prior day, after a stronger-than-expected reading on U.S. business activity sent bond yields sharply higher. The S&P Global flash composite PMI for September came in at 58.4, its strongest pace of expansion since 2021, prompting traders to price in a much higher probability that the Federal Reserve will raise rates again at its October meeting. According to CME Group's FedWatch tool, the odds of an October hike climbed to roughly 75%, with better-than-even odds of a follow-up increase in December.
The move pushed the 10-year Treasury yield back above 5%, a level that tends to pressure assets like Bitcoin that generate no yield of their own. The pullback came just days after Bitcoin had rallied past $87,000, with some analysts suggesting the broader "crypto winter" had ended. Ethereum moved lower in tandem, slipping toward the $2,650 range in early U.S. trading.
Institutional Demand Holds Steady Despite the Dip
Even with prices under pressure, institutional appetite has not disappeared. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in roughly $999 million in net inflows on Monday and another $714.7 million on Tuesday, underscoring that regulated investment vehicles continue to attract capital even as short-term sentiment sours. That divergence — falling spot prices alongside steady ETF demand — suggests the current move is being driven more by macro positioning around Fed policy than by a broad retreat from crypto as an asset class.
MoonPay Moves Deeper Into Regulated U.S. Securities
Separately, crypto payments company MoonPay announced an all-stock deal worth more than $60 million to acquire North Capital Investment Technology, a Utah-based financial infrastructure firm. North Capital holds a notable stack of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission registrations, including broker-dealer, alternative trading system (ATS), transfer agent, and investment adviser licenses. Its PPEX trading platform supports secondary trading across more than 1,250 approved assets and has processed north of $8.7 billion in combined primary and secondary transactions to date.
The acquisition gives MoonPay in-house control over custody, clearing, transfer agency, and secondary trading for tokenized debt and equity — functions it previously would have had to access through third-party partners. MoonPay founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright framed the deal as part of a push to build the regulatory groundwork needed for mainstream adoption of tokenized real-world assets. The move marks MoonPay's sixth acquisition of 2026, following earlier purchases of DFlow, Sodot, and Entendre, and comes as tokenized stocks remain a small but fast-growing corner of U.S. equity markets.
What It Means for U.S. Investors
Thursday's session captures two forces shaping the American crypto market right now: a macro backdrop where Fed policy expectations can swing Bitcoin's price by several percentage points in a single session, and a parallel infrastructure buildout in which established crypto firms are acquiring regulated securities licenses to compete directly with traditional finance. Short-term price action remains tied to incoming data — including jobless claims and the final September PMI readings due in early October — while deals like MoonPay's signal where the industry is positioning for the next phase of growth.
