Markers Friday: H1 Settled at $81,265 and I3 Settled at a 2.85% Basis, the ETFs’ $730.8 Million Was the Largest of 14 Sessions and Flipped September Positive, and 5,065 Coins of Perpetual Leverage Arrived Overnight

Thursday settled two markers, moved a third from negative to positive, and pulled the difficulty retarget forward by four hours. This is the running scoreboard as of 06:10 UTC on Friday 4 September 2026, every figure pulled at that clock unless a source and date say otherwise. Two things settled: H1, the Strategy tranche marker, on a $81,265.00 close; and I3, the September basis marker, on a 2.849% annualised reading. Nothing failed. The context is in today’s lead; this piece is the arithmetic.

The ETF column, printed with its headers

The 3 September row of Farside Investors’ table, read left to right with every column named: IBIT +$454.0m, FBTC +$74.4m, BITB +$24.8m, ARKB +$137.7m, BTCO 0, EZBC 0, BRRR 0, HODL −$19.6m, BTCW −$5.2m, MSBT +$7.7m, GBTC +$8.2m, Grayscale mini BTC +$48.8m. Net +$730.8 million; gross creations $755.6 million against $24.8 million of redemptions. We print the whole row because yesterday’s first draft misread the second-to-last column as GBTC when it is the mini trust, and the standing rule since is that any named-fund claim comes from a print of that column with its header.

US$ millions, Farside Investors, fetched 4 September 2026, 06:10 UTC. Columns not shown (BITB, BTCO, EZBC, BRRR, HODL, BTCW, MSBT) are included in the totals. September-to-date is the sum of the 1, 2 and 3 September rows.

Superlatives, each with its window: $730.8 million is the largest session of the fourteen visible on the table (17 August to 3 September), ahead of 20 August’s $606.3 million. ARKB’s $137.7 million is the largest ARKB print in the same fourteen rows, its previous best being $77.7 million on 19 August, and it comes four sessions after the fund’s $114.9 million redemption on 28 August. GBTC’s $8.2 million is its first inflow since 19 August (+$21.2 million) and follows three redemptions in six sessions. IBIT was 62.12% of Thursday’s net and is 77.80% of the fourteen-session total ($2,843.2 million of $3,654.4 million), down from 81.72% of the thirteen-session total yesterday: a big day in which BlackRock’s share fell is a day in which the other issuers took in money, which has been rare since mid-August. H2 — September’s Farside net above zero on 30 September — is now +$595.4 million after three of the month’s 21 sessions (Monday 7 September is Labor Day; yesterday we counted 20 sessions remaining after two, which omitted the holiday — the correct count is 18 remaining). The first-session rule we tested on Wednesday, which had the month’s sign matching its first session in 16 of 32 cases, is a coin flip, and this month is so far on the other side of it.

H1 settled: $81,265.00 against a bar of $80,318

H1 was set on 1 September: a Bitstamp daily close at or above $80,318, Strategy’s disclosed average for its 24–30 August tranche, on or before 30 September. From Wednesday’s close of $77,301.83 the bar required +3.902%; Thursday delivered +5.127% and closed at $81,265.00, 1.179% above the bar. It is the first close above $80,318 since the marker was set and, on our Bitstamp series, the first above $81,000 since 14 May. The 3 September candle ran from $76,940.96 to $82,280.62, a 6.94% range, on 2,498.55 BTC of Bitstamp volume. The tranche is examined in today’s Strategy update. The marker was designed to be as hard as the question “did they buy well”, and the answer it returns is: at Thursday’s close, yes, by $4.36 million, three days after the desk said no by $6.00 million. Both were true when written; the marker existed so that the second could be printed without argument.

Two figures for the month. September to date is +3.429% from the 31 August close of $78,571.17. And Thursday’s gain is the eighth-largest of 2026’s 246 daily changes; the seven larger ones are 6 February (+12.319%), 21 August (+7.283%), 19 August (+7.129%), 4 March (+6.373%), 25 February (+6.143%), 20 August (+5.354%) and 13 April (+5.231%). Four of the top eight have come since 19 August. The year is still negative: $81,265 against the 31 December 2025 close of $87,496 is −7.121%.

Open interest: 5,065 coins arrived, and the identity closes

Binance USDT-margined perpetual open interest at the 00:00 UTC snapshot went from 107,652.063 BTC on 3 September to 112,717.545 BTC on 4 September, +4.705%, or 5,065.48 coins of new contracts — the largest one-day addition in the ten daily snapshots we hold (26 August to 4 September; the previous largest was +3,168 coins into 28 August). The dollar figure went from $8,321.78 million to $9,156.55 million, +10.031%. The implied mark rose 5.086%, from $77,302.61 to $81,234.44, and the identity closes: 1.04705 × 1.05086 = 1.10031, which is the dollar ratio to five places. Live open interest at 06:10 UTC was 112,687.59 BTC. Guide #37’s August finding was that the month’s $1.44 billion of new dollar open interest was entirely revaluation, with the coin count falling. Thursday was the opposite: of the $834.77 million dollar increase, $411.49 million (49.3%) was new coins at the new mark and $423.27 million (50.7%) was the revaluation of coins already open. This rally, unlike August’s, was partly bought with leverage. G1 (perpetual OI below 100,000 BTC at any September 00:00 snapshot) moved from 7.65% away to 12.72% away.

Own pull, 4 September 2026, 06:10 UTC. Funding annualised as rate × 3 × 365. Account and position ratios are Binance’s daily-period series at the 00:00 UTC row.

Funding: Thursday’s three settlements were 0.005866%, 0.008893% and 0.008558% per eight hours — 6.4%, 9.7% and 9.4% annualised — and the 00:00 Friday print of 0.008558% is 9.371% annualised. Across the 100-row window we pulled (2 August 00:00 to 4 September 00:00) the mean is 0.006802%, 7.448% annualised, against 7.468% yesterday over a window that started two days later; 25 settlements printed at the 0.01% cap and none was negative. The crowd measure moved sharply: Binance’s global long/short account ratio at 00:00 was 0.7816, down from 1.2148 — the lowest of the five daily rows we hold (31 August onward) and the second below 1, after 1 September’s 0.9948 — while the top-trader position ratio barely moved, 1.9774 to 1.9261. Retail accounts, by this measure, sold into the move; the largest positions did not. Five rows is not a series and we do not draw a rule from it; it is printed because it is the lowest reading we have recorded, and the date is attached.

I3 settled: the September basis fell to 2.85%, below the Treasury bill

With the COIN-M index at $81,055.17, the 25 September quarterly at $81,188.5 carried a 0.1645% premium over 21.08 days, 2.849% annualised, against 4.306% a day earlier. I3, set on 1 September, was a September basis below 4.00% at any 06:00 UTC snapshot before 25 September; it settles as a pass with three weeks to spare. On 1 September the same reading was 5.468%. The December contract at $82,080.4 is 1.2649% over 112.08 days, 4.119% annualised, down from 4.500%. On Thursday morning September’s annualised basis sat 19bp below December’s; on Friday morning the gap is 127bp, almost all of it from the front contract falling. The September future now yields 104bp less than the 3-month Treasury bill (3.89%); December yields 13bp more than the 4-month bill (3.99%). A cash-and-carry into the front contract pays less than a bill for the first time in this series, which is what a 5% spot rally does to a contract three weeks from expiry when the dated buyers do not follow. The perpetual, funding at 9.371%, pays 652bp over the September future. G2 (September basis above 8.00% annualised on 25 September) is now 515bp short and, with 21 days left, is close to arithmetically dead.

Difficulty: the projection tripled overnight and the retarget is now Saturday evening

At 06:10 UTC the current period was 88.54% complete with 231 blocks remaining, an average block interval of 591.65 seconds and a projected adjustment of +1.468%, from +0.234% on Thursday morning and +0.796% on Wednesday, per mempool.space. The estimated retarget moved from Sunday 6 September 00:14 UTC to Saturday 5 September 20:08 UTC. This is the third consecutive morning the projection has moved by more than half a point (+1.415 → +0.796 → +0.234 → +1.468: −0.62, −0.56, +1.23), which is the behaviour of a 231-block tail in which two fast hours change the sign. Thursday’s daily hashrate average was 853.78 EH/s, the lowest of the six daily figures since 30 August, and the partial Friday figure is 987.32 EH/s; mempool.space’s one-month estimate stands at 929.78 EH/s at a difficulty of 125.81 T. D2 (retarget between −1.50% and 0.00%) is failing by 1.47 points; F1 (retarget at or above 0.00%) is passing by the same, and both grade at the retarget block, 965,664, on Saturday. Recommended fees: 2 sat/vB fast, 1 sat/vB economy.

Sentiment and rates

The Fear & Greed index printed 74 on 4 September, up nine from 65, equal to 25 August’s 74 and the highest since then. It is the sixteenth consecutive Greed reading in a run that began on 20 August (19 August was 46, Fear). The rates block is in the lead: 2-year 4.34 (−5bp), 10-year 4.77 (−2), 30-year 5.25 (−2), 10-year real 2.42 (−3), 10-year breakeven 2.35 (+1). H3 (30-year CMT at or above 5.25% on 17 September) is passing by exactly zero basis points, and a further 1bp fall on any day between now and then is irrelevant to it — only the 17 September close counts. I1 (10-year real at or above 2.50% on any close through 16 September) is 8bp away, having been 5bp away on Wednesday. I2 (BOJ hikes on 18 September) has new information in its favour: the yen’s move to 156.15 on Thursday was attributed by CNBC to hawkish BOJ comments and rate-check speculation, but that is a currency reading, not a vote, and the marker stays open.

The scoreboard

Two settled, both passes; ten open; one grading tonight. J1 deserves a note on its own terms. It was written to test yesterday’s thesis that the rates market was “waiting for Friday, not ignoring jobs.” Thursday then moved the 2-year 5bp on a speech, before Friday arrived. That does not grade J1 — the marker is specifically about today’s close against 4.34 — but it does complicate the thesis, because a front end that was waiting for payrolls turned out to be at least as willing to move on a governor. If today’s close is within 4bp of 4.34, J1 fails and the honest reading is that the speech, not the data, was the week’s event.

Method: prices, funding, open interest, basis and on-chain figures in this article are pulled directly by Bitcoin Mastery at the timestamp stated — Bitstamp BTC/USD daily candles for closes, Binance BTCUSDT spot and USDT-margined perpetual for intraday, open interest, funding and account ratios, Binance COIN-M quarterly contracts for basis, mempool.space for difficulty and hashrate, alternative.me for the Fear & Greed series, Farside Investors’ table for ETF flows (every named fund column is read from a print of that column with its header) and US Treasury CMT par yields, nominal and real, for rates. Where a third-party figure is cited we name the source and its date; where two sources disagree we print both. Every streak or extreme figure is published with the first date of its series in the same sentence.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Cryptocurrencies are volatile and you can lose money. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security, digital asset or exchange-traded fund, including MSTR. Do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.