The Hashpoint for September 23, 2026

Bitcoin Hashpoint, September 23, 2026

STRC closed Tuesday at $99.06. That clears the $99.00 line this publication set on September 19 as the test of its own escalator thesis, and it clears it six sessions before the October 1 coupon reset. The instrument gained 28 cents on a day its common stock fell 0.69% and the 10-year held 4.96%, which leaves it 94 cents under par on day 135 since it last closed at or above $100. Bitcoin trades at $86,171, up 0.3% in 24 hours and 13.4% over seven days, putting price at 1.35 times the power-law floor of $63,945 and 0.57 times the median of $152,251.

The preferred clears the line

Four sessions ago the instrument sat at $97.07. It has climbed $1.99 since, and Tuesday's close carries the first nine-nine handle of this entire series. The $12.00 annual rate yields 12.11% at that price. The at-the-market program stays shut through the September 30 ex-dividend date, and the coupon resets October 1, which leaves six sessions at a rate the market set in July.

The direction of Tuesday's divergence matters more than its size. Monday the common gained 9.47% to $168.50 while the preferred moved 27 cents, a ratio this publication read as the repricing lag working exactly as described. Tuesday the common gave back 0.69% to $167.33 and the preferred rose anyway. An instrument that ignores its issuer's equity in both directions answers to something other than the equity, and in this case that something has a name and a dollar figure.

No 8-K arrived in the last 24 hours. Monday's filing stands as the record: 950 coins at $79,670 and 1,771,238 STRC shares retired in the week ending September 20, and the company paid for both out of cash without issuing a share. Holdings reach 846,000 BTC against $63.80 billion of aggregate cost, which marks the position at $72.90 billion this morning, $10,755 a coin above cost. The buyback runs near $1.125 billion since July 20, with roughly $875 million of the $2.0 billion authorization left.

A second session near the billion mark

Spot Bitcoin ETFs absorbed $714.7 million Tuesday. BlackRock's IBIT took $350.3 million, Fidelity's FBTC $257.4 million and Morgan Stanley's MSBT $99.0 million. No fund posted a redemption for a second consecutive session. Two days of buying now total $1.714 billion, three days total $2.147 billion, and cumulative flow since launch reads $56.943 billion.

Monday's $999.0 million bought roughly 11,530 coins, which CryptoSlate counts as the largest single-day intake since November 11, 2024. One outsized session invites a squeeze explanation. Two consecutive sessions above $700 million, with every fund on the same side, describes allocation instead.

The curve gave none of it. The 10-year sits at 4.96%, unchanged to within a rounding error and still near a 19-year high. The 2-year reads 4.76% and the 30-year 5.29%. The 10-year real yield rose two basis points to 2.65%, and the dollar index climbed 0.26% to 100.859. Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr speaks on the economic outlook and housing at 10:05 this morning in Chicago, jobless claims land Thursday, and the Trump-Xi summit convenes tomorrow.

Price against bands that stopped moving six days ago

Bitcoin ranged between $85,555 and $87,251 over the last day and holds $86,171, with market value at $1.731 trillion. Against the bands the dashboard last published on September 17 that reads 1.35 times a $63,945 floor and 0.57 times a $152,251 median, against 1.24 and 0.52 when this series opened September 9. Take the direction and discount the decimal. The dashboard refused all seven endpoints for a sixth consecutive morning, a failure inside this publication's automation rather than at the site, and a floor that climbs daily sits frozen in those numbers.

The hashrate estimator printed 832 exahashes Tuesday after reading 1.08 zettahashes Monday, a swing no fleet can produce in a day. Read the retarget instead. Difficulty holds 132.76 trillion, up 4.16% on the week, and adjusts October 3 at 05:45 UTC by an estimated 2.07% to 135.5 trillion, revised down from 3.58% on Tuesday. Blocks arrive 12 seconds inside the ten-minute target, and block 968,255 puts halving cycle four at 61.1% complete with 81,745 blocks left.

The Bull View

• Farside Investors: Spot ETFs took $714.7 million Tuesday, a second straight heavy session, $1.714 billion across two days.
• CryptoSlate: Monday's $999 million bought about 11,530 coins, the largest one-day intake since November 2024.
• Bitcoin Magazine: Price crossed its 365-day moving average for the first time since March 2023, which CryptoQuant marks as the start of past bull cycles.
• Decrypt: The year-to-date loss narrowed to under 3% after Monday's run to $86,332.
• Bloomberg: Total crypto market value returned above $3 trillion.
• CoinDesk: A $3.2 million options trade positions for $95,000 by the end of October.

The bulls lean on two sessions of creations that no fund fought and on a moving-average cross with a three-year wait behind it. Several of the loudest voices in that column run the funds taking the money.

The Bear View

• Bloomberg: Bitcoin retreated from its eight-month high after a 13% rally.
• CryptoTicker: Open interest rose through the squeeze to about $81.1 billion in perpetuals, with funding positive on 24 of the 25 largest and costing longs 10% to 11% a year.
• Cryptonews: The daily RSI printed 75 near $86,550 with a bearish divergence warning.
• Cryptonews: Short-term holders sent 47,600 coins to exchanges.
• Trading Economics: The 10-year holds 4.96% near a 19-year high, the real yield rose to 2.65%, and the dollar index climbed to 100.859.
• KuCoin: The Fear and Greed index reads 78, inside extreme greed.

The bears lean on borrowed money and on a real yield that rose while the coin did. Their strongest point concerns the funding bill, because longs paying 10% a year need the trend to keep paying them.

The Hashpoint read

Price sits at 1.35 times the power-law floor and 0.57 times the median. A coin 35% above its floor and 43% below its median still has room in both directions.

This publication set a specific test on September 19 and lost it. A close at or above $99.00 before October 1 retires the escalator question for this cycle, and Tuesday delivered $99.06 with six sessions to spare. The coupon will most likely reprice near the July rate on October 1 rather than escalate, and readers of the last two weeks should mark that against everything this series wrote about an impending escalation.

What survives is narrower and more interesting. The repair came out of Strategy's own cash. The company retired $174 million of its preferred in one week and has spent about $1.125 billion since July 20 to move the instrument from the low nineties to $99.06. Market demand did not close that gap. A corporate bid closed it, and roughly $875 million of authorization remains before that bid runs out. Hashpoint's own reading holds that the monthly repricing lag leaves the instrument impaired longer than a real-time mechanism would, and Monday's 35-to-1 move ratio confirmed the lag. Tuesday complicates the story: the preferred rose while the common fell, which tells you the buyback sets the price now, not the lag and not the coin.

The bulls get the flow right this time. A single billion-dollar session proves nothing, and two consecutive sessions with no fund redeeming proves a good deal more. The bears get the cost of money right and its effect wrong for this stretch. The 10-year has not moved off 4.96%, the real yield rose two basis points, and Bitcoin gained 13.4% across seven days anyway, which weakens the capital-pull half of this publication's thesis exactly as much as Tuesday's close weakens the escalator half.

Two markers carry into the reset. If STRC holds above $99.00 through the September 30 ex-dividend date and the October 1 coupon lands near the July rate, the escalator mechanism never fires and the throttle argument loses the machinery underneath it. If the instrument slides back under $98.00 the day after that ex-dividend, Tuesday's print was a dividend-capture bid rather than a repair, and $1.125 billion of corporate cash bought eight sessions.

Data: Bitcoin Hashpoint dashboard (bands of September 17; all seven endpoints refused this morning on a run network failure), CoinGecko, CoinDesk, CoinWarz, Farside Investors, StockAnalysis, CryptoSlate, Bloomberg, Trading Economics, FRED H.15, Federal Reserve Board, Bitcoin Magazine, Decrypt, Cryptonews, CryptoTicker, KuCoin, Fortune, and Strategy's 8-K of September 21, 2026. Nothing here is investment advice.