Prediction market traders now put a Federal Reserve rate increase ahead of a hold for the September meeting, after Chair Kevin Warsh told the Jackson Hole symposium on Friday that this summer's inflation readings had not convinced him underlying trends were improving. Bitcoin has given back less than a percent through that repricing and through a weekend exchange of strikes between the United States and Iran.
Brent crude is above $90, gold is lower for a second session and U.S. equities opened down. Bitcoin held above $78,000 and is on course to finish August with its largest monthly gain since November 2024. Breadth is worse below the majors: 88 of the 125 largest non-stablecoin tokens are down on the day, and total crypto market value has fallen faster than bitcoin.
Bitcoin last changed hands at $78,317, down 0.65% over 24 hours and unchanged over seven days, after trading between $77,162 and $79,347, CoinGecko data shows. Ether was at $2,464, down 0.61% on the day and 1.1% on the week. $XRP fell 2.4% to $1.37 and is 7.6% lower over seven days; Solana dropped 3.3% to $103.05 while holding a 9% weekly gain; $BNB fell 1.5% to $688.55. Total crypto market value stood at $2.65 trillion, down 2.6% over 24 hours, on $83.9 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 59.2%.
A Hike Takes The Lead
Polymarket priced a quarter-point increase at the Sept. 15-16 meeting at 55.5% and no change at 43.5%, on $70.9 million of event volume. A quarter-point cut trades at 0.65% and a cut of 50 basis points or more at 0.25%. The same market priced a hold at 69% and an increase at 28% on Friday afternoon, and a hold at 67.5% against an increase at 30.5% on Aug. 24. Event volume has risen from $56.2 million on Friday.
Warsh delivered the speech, titled "In Our Time," at 10 a.m. ET on Friday at the Kansas City Fed's symposium in Jackson Hole, his first as chair. Bitcoin fell 3% that afternoon, which The Defiant covered at the time.
"Each of these broad inflation measures has fallen significantly from their 2022 heights," Warsh said. "But progress over the past two years has been modest." He put the 12-month change in the PCE price index at 3.7% and the six-month change at 4.1%, and said 49% of goods and services in the PCE basket showed annualized price increases above 3%.
"While this summer's PCE and CPI readings were better than expected, they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved," he said. On the standard for policy: "We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed. Otherwise, we have work to do." He assigned blame directly — "The responsibility for 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the central bank. And that is where it belongs" — and declined to signal a decision: "I stand here today committed to a discipline, not to a decision."
Bond Market Moves
The bond market moved with the speech. The 10-year Treasury par yield closed Friday at 4.73%, from 4.67% on Thursday, and the 30-year at 5.22% from 5.19%, Treasury data shows.
The data Warsh is weighing points in two directions. July CPI, published Aug. 12, put headline inflation at 3.4% over 12 months against core at 2.5%. The July employment report, released Aug. 7, showed nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 and the unemployment rate at 4.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nigel Green, chief executive of deVere Group, argued in a statement issued Monday that the swaps market has moved too far. Green had said before the speech that Warsh needed to answer whether the Fed would raise rates if inflation did not come down.
"Warsh gave a tough speech in Jackson Hole, and markets reacted exactly as tough speeches make them react," Green said. "But a warning isn't a decision, and investors racing to price in a hike are getting ahead of a Fed chairman who left himself every route to hold."
Green pointed to the labor market. "You don't tighten policy into a labour market that just turned negative," he said. "A reversal like this changes the calculation entirely." On his final call: "Cooling inflation, a labour market that just rolled over, and an election-season Fed chairman under political pressure from both sides is not the backdrop for a surprise hike. We can't see him raising rates in September."
August CPI publishes Sept. 11, four days before the meeting opens.
Oil Up, Gold Down
The weekend's other input was military. Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Monday that a U.S. strike on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday killed and wounded Iranian servicemen, and that Iranian forces struck U.S. military bases in Jordan in response, according to a statement carried by Iranian state broadcaster Press TV. The ministry called the strike a violation of the United Nations Charter and invoked "the inherent right of self-defense."
U.S. Central Command has published no release on the strike. Its public releases page carries nothing later than Aug. 15, and the last CENTCOM statement on strikes against Iran is dated July 29. The most recent White House item on the region is dated Aug. 28.
Crude repriced. Brent rose to $90.48 a barrel on Monday, up 2.70% on the day, and West Texas Intermediate climbed above $86, up more than 3%, according to TradingEconomics. The dollar index edged down to 99.5 after a three-session rally.
Gold fell through both events. Spot traded below $4,450 an ounce on Monday, extending Friday's drop, and December COMEX futures were at $4,474.09, down 1.23% from a $4,529.90 close, investing.com data shows. Friday's move came in ten minutes: spot fell roughly $70 from a $4,626 peak to a $4,554 low as Warsh spoke, with the London afternoon fix at about $4,560, according to BullionVault. The session cut gold's August gain to 13.3% from 15.8%.
Equities went the same way. The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,711.76, down 0.25%, investing.com data shows, and the Nasdaq Composite at 26,402.42, down 0.52%, according to Nasdaq index history. The S&P was at 7,675.68 on Monday morning, down 0.47%, per TradingEconomics.
Bitcoin's Biggest Month Since 2024
Bitcoin opened August at $62,892 and trades at $78,317, a gain of 24.5% with one session left. The last calendar month with a larger open-to-close advance was November 2024, at 37.1%, based on monthly BTCUSDT candles from Binance.US. The 20 intervening months produced no gain above 14.3%.
Measured from the July 31 close of $64,743, the month-to-date gain is 21.2%, CoinGecko data shows.
The rally started in the bond market. Treasury said on Aug. 19 it would at least double the size of its buybacks in the 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year nominal sectors, to at least $4 billion per operation from $2 billion, effective Sept. 9 through Nov. 4. The Defiant covered the buyback expansion that day. Bitcoin has added nothing over the past seven days.
Other majors ran further. Measured from the July 31 close, Solana is up 38.9%, ether 28.6%, $XRP 27.1% and $BNB 16.6%. Monero gained 43.1% and Zcash 77.4%.
Bitcoin remains 37.9% below the $126,080 record it set in October 2025.
Breadth Turns Against It
Total crypto market value fell 2.6% over 24 hours while bitcoin fell 0.65%. Thirty-four of the 125 largest non-stablecoin tokens rose, 88 fell and three were unchanged.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 62 on Monday, down from 69 on Sunday and 73 on Friday, according to Alternative.me. The index has been in greed since Aug. 20.
DeFi total value locked stood at $87.27 billion, down 0.83% over 24 hours, DefiLlama data shows. Stablecoin supply reached $311.2 billion, up 0.33% over seven days and 1.30% over 30 days. Net issuance of $3.98 billion on the month amounts to 1.3% of supply.
ETFs Snap A Streak
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $201.9 million of outflows on Friday, ending five consecutive days of inflows, according to Farside Investors. ARK's ARKB accounted for $114.9 million of the total, Bitwise's BITB for $49.7 million and BlackRock's IBIT for $33.4 million; Morgan Stanley's MSBT took in $9.3 million. The week to Aug. 28 still netted $924.5 million.
Spot ether ETFs took in $102.1 million on Friday and $815.7 million over the week, with BlackRock's two products accounting for $126.4 million of Friday's gross and Fidelity's FETH losing $24.3 million. Monday's figures publish after the U.S. close.
Seeker Runs Without Announcement
Seeker, the Solana Mobile token, was the largest gainer among the 150 biggest non-stablecoin tokens, on $362 million of 24-hour volume against a $200 million market value. Solana Mobile has published no blog post since Aug. 19, and no dated announcement covers the move. Its Aug. 12 post said "Seeker Summer continues through August 30, with Round 4 still ahead," placing the end of the reward program on Sunday. The staking page shows 4.93 billion $SKR staked at a 16.4% yield and states that "$SKR inflation starts at 10% at TGE and decreases by 25% each year until reaching 2%."
Morpho rose 6.3% on $38 million of volume, taking its market value to $1.82 billion against $9.53 billion of total value locked. Curve's CRV added 3.8% and Lighter's LIT 3.3%.
Monero gained 2.35% to $513.40 and is 21.6% higher over seven days, the largest weekly move among the 20 biggest tokens. Uniswap's UNI is up 20.9% on the week and flat on the day.
Polygon Falls Without A Cause
$POL fell 14% to $0.0885 and is down 23.6% over seven days, with no announcement from Polygon dated to the move. Polygon's blog has published nothing on the token since an Aug. 26 post on a euro stablecoin launch. The most recent upgrade disclosure sits on the governance forum, posted Aug. 27, covering two mandatory hard forks that patch a state-sync gas-metering flaw and an unbounded wire field in Bor v2.10.0, plus five fixes in Heimdall v0.11.0.
A standing proposal to end $POL's 2% annual issuance and fund buybacks from the treasury remains a draft with no vote scheduled. Its last comment is dated October 2025.
Cronos fell 7.9% after validators restarted the chain by discarding almost 11,000 blocks. The chain said at 9:31 a.m. ET that "the Cronos Network is producing blocks again and is fully back online," and that "the chain state was restored to before the Tectonic exploit from this morning." Block production resumed from block 90,896,189, dropping the one hour and 54 minutes of transactions between the attacker's first contract deployment and the halt at block 90,907,150. Cronos's tracked total value locked stood at $228.75 million, down 13.4% over 24 hours, with Tectonic at $3.01 million against $117.45 million on Aug. 17.
Collector Crypt's $CARDS was the largest decliner. Solana Mobile's 20%-off Seeker promotion, which bundled a Collector Crypt pack and accepted $SKR as payment, ran through Aug. 30 according to the store. The project has published no statement.
Pump.fun fell 10.6% on $227 million of volume and is down 13.2% over seven days. Jito's $JTO is down 20.6% on the week, the second-largest seven-day decline among the 150 biggest tokens after $POL.
Prices and market data as of 11:23 a.m. ET on Aug. 31, 2026.