Monthly Market Update (September)

Stablecoins have moved from being a crypto-native use case into one of the most contested payment infrastructure markets in fintech. Stablecoin adoption has accelerated meaningfully, with total supply rising by more than 56% since the start of 2025 to reach $322 billion.

April marked a month where risk-on capital re-entered the market despite headlines still being dominated by the Iran war as investors increasingly came to terms with a future defined by heightened geopolitical conflicts and repositioned their capital for the new normal. Equity markets surged with the S&P 500 rising 10.4%, Nasdaq up 15.3%, Dow Jones up 7.1%. Globally, the MSCI Asia Pacific Ex Japan index rose 15.1%, while the MSCI Emerging Market gained 14.7%, largely driven by a rebound in capital inflows led by the tech sector as investors recalibrated their attention to the fundamental demand for AI hardware and services that remains even as the Iran war rages on. Evidently, investors have looked beyond geopolitical tension to consider other fundamental factors such as corporate earnings which led to a repricing of the stock market.

Tokenized commodities scaled rapidly over the past year, expanding its AUM from $1.37B to $5.46B YoY, representing an annual growth of ~300%. While the sector growth has accelerated, this expansion is largely attributed to increased demand for precious metals, specifically gold. The top 2 tokenized gold assets XAUT by Tether and PAXG by Paxos, collectively hold ~95% market share of total tokenized commodities. That concentration is not a weakness in itself. It is the clearest signal that the asset class has found product-market fit onchain, fuelling its recent growth. The question is no longer whether tokenized commodities will sustain — it has shifted to when they become a mainstream asset for retail investors and institutions alike. In this report, we examine the growth trajectory of tokenized commodities, the structural case for why the trend is durable, and the challenges and opportunities that will define its next phase.

On March 30, 2026, Google Quantum AI published an academic whitepaper titled “Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities: Resource Estimates and Mitigations.” The paper’s co-authors include Google Quantum AI core researchers Ryan Babbush and Craig Gidney, as well as Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake and Stanford cryptography professor Dan Boneh. Google Research’s blog simultaneously published a public-facing article titled “Safeguarding Cryptocurrency by Disclosing Quantum Vulnerabilities Responsibly,” explaining the motivations and methods behind this disclosure to general readers.

Digital asset trading entered 2026 having crossed a structural inflection point supported by larger institutional flows and entry of a new class of corporations building digital asset treasury. Bitcoin treasury companies now hold more than 1M Bitcoin, representing more than 5% of all supply. The passage of the U.S. GENIUS Act in 2025 established a federal stablecoin framework; the launch of regulated crypto investment vehicles such as spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs are also instrumental in driving sustained, deep institutional liquidity.

February’s crypto markets were defined by a severe macro-driven deleveraging event on February 5, when Bitcoin plummeted over 14% — one of the steepest single-day declines on record — triggering $2.1 billion in liquidations. Unlike crypto-native shocks, this crash stemmed from Trump’s escalating tariff rhetoric and heightened U.S.-Iran geopolitical tensions, driving capital rotation from risk assets to safe havens as spot gold surged past $5,172/oz.