The bond market did on Thursday what it has been threatening to do since Jackson Hole. The 10-year Treasury closed at 4.95% on the Treasury’s constant-maturity file, up 12 basis points on the day and, per CNBC, its highest since October 2023; the 2-year closed at 4.56%, up 13 basis points, the largest one-day rise among the September sessions the desk tracks (2 to 10 September) and a 52-week high; the 30-year closed at 5.37%, up 9. TheStreet, quoting CNBC’s feeds at 15:48 ET, listed 52-week highs at every maturity from two years out. Democracy Now headlined it as yields at their highest since 2007. The trigger was the August producer price index at 08:30 ET: +0.4% on the month, in line with consensus, but 5.4% on the year on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ unadjusted series, up from 4.8% in July by TheStreet’s account, with final-demand goods up 1.1% in a month, energy up 4.2% and diesel up 24.1%. West Texas Intermediate settled at $102.48, up 6.7%, and Brent at $107.63, up 5.9%, per Yahoo Finance. The S&P 500 fell 0.58% to 7,591.79, the Dow 0.60% to 52,064.46, the Nasdaq 0.65% to 26,081.73 and the Russell 2000 1.02%; it was the fourth consecutive decline for the major averages, and the VIX rose 8.7% to 17.89.
Bitcoin fell for a fourth day as well. Bitstamp’s 10 September candle opened at $78,281.65, printed a high of $78,526.26, a low of $76,452.89 and closed at $76,528.75, down 2.239%, on volume of 1,622.87 BTC. It is the lowest close since 20 August ($73,007.70), the 33rd-largest daily fall among the 131 declines of 2026’s 253 completed sessions, and the fourth straight down day — the twelfth run of four or more declines this year; the eleven before it lasted 5, 6, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 7 and 4 sessions. From Sunday’s $80,338.98 close bitcoin has given up $3,810.23, or 4.743%, in four sessions. Month-to-date is −2.599%; year-to-date is −12.535%. At 06:10 UTC on Friday the partial candle was $77,243.66, up 0.934%, and Binance spot was $77,274.36, down 1.401% over 24 hours.
The test the desk set on Thursday, graded on Thursday’s data
On Thursday this desk tested CoinDesk’s claim that bitcoin “trades with gold, not equities” and concluded it was tracking the 2-year Treasury instead. Thursday’s session is the cleanest data point yet. The 2-year moved 13 basis points, more than in the week’s two prior sessions combined (+2 on Tuesday, +4 on Wednesday; Monday was a holiday): 4.37 on Friday 4 September, then 4.39, 4.43, 4.56. Bitcoin’s four declines were −1.554% (Monday, no Treasury session), −0.811%, −0.213% and −2.239%. The largest bitcoin fall of the week came on the largest 2-year move; the middle two do not line up in size, since Wednesday’s +4 produced the week’s smallest fall. Gold futures were down 0.75% in early trading Thursday per TheStreet, so the “bitcoin with gold” reading is not refuted by Thursday — both fell — but it is not needed to explain it either. The equity comparison is simpler: four down days for the S&P, four for bitcoin, same calendar. The desk keeps its Thursday verdict and restates it more narrowly: on every Treasury session since 3 September — five of them — bitcoin’s close has moved opposite to the 2-year’s (−5bp and +5.127% on 3 September; +3 and −1.955%; +2 and −0.811%; +4 and −0.213%; +13 and −2.239%), and the two largest yield moves produced the two largest bitcoin moves. Field Guide #42 explains why the desk grades on the 3:30 PM CMT close and not the intraday print.
Where the yield move came from is the second half of the reading. The 10-year real yield on the Treasury’s real-curve file closed at 2.55%, up 9 basis points from 2.46%, so the 10-year breakeven moved from 2.37% to 2.40% — three basis points of the twelve. Three-quarters of Thursday’s 10-year move was real rate, not inflation expectation, on a day whose headline was an inflation print. That is the split Field Guide #39 exists to run, and its meaning for bitcoin is the uncomfortable one: a market repricing the path of the policy rate, not one buying inflation protection. It also settles a marker. I1 — 10-year real yield at or above 2.50% on any close to 16 September — PASSES, at 2.55% on 10 September, five basis points over the bar on the first close after the desk called it “4bp away.”
Leverage came back, the basis did not
Binance’s USDT-margined perpetual opened Friday 00:00 UTC with 106,858.934 BTC of open interest, up 1,752.97 coins (+1.668%) from Thursday’s 105,105.968, which had been the low of the 31-snapshot window from 12 August. In dollars the book shrank, from $8,227.21 million to $8,178.51 million, because the implied mark fell from $78,275 to $76,536; more coins, less money. Live open interest at 06:10 UTC was 106,998.889. Open interest is 6.86% above marker G1’s bar (below 100,000 at any September 00:00 snapshot); marker X1, set Thursday — open interest at 00:00 UTC on 17 September above 105,105.968 — is above its bar on day one. The global long/short account ratio jumped from 1.2707 to 1.6008, its highest since 17 August (2.2216); the top-trader position ratio eased from 2.1911 to 2.1224. Funding settled at 0.007869% at 08:00 UTC Thursday, 0.007199% at 16:00 and 0.003006% at 00:00 Friday — 3.292% annualised. Over the 128 settlements from 30 July 16:00 to Friday 00:00 there has been one negative print and 26 at the 0.0100% default; the mean is 6.996% annualised.
The number that moved most was the basis. With the Binance index at $77,277.89 at 06:10 UTC, the 25 September COIN-M quarterly traded at $77,396.4 — a 0.1534% premium that annualises to 3.977% over the 14.08 days to expiry. On Thursday morning the same contract annualised to 6.577%. The December contract, at $78,290.0, annualises to 4.549% over 105.08 days. Marker G2 — a September basis above 8.00% on 25 September — is 402 basis points short with two weeks to run and the desk regards it as effectively dead; it stays on the board only because a marker is graded on its date, not on the desk’s patience. Funding now sits 69 basis points below the September basis, down from 268 on Thursday: the gap between perpetual and quarterly leverage that Field Guide #37 reads as the signature of leverage moving between venues has mostly closed, and it closed from the quarterly side.
Mining, sentiment, ETFs
The difficulty retarget at block 967,680 is 801 blocks in (39.73%) with 1,215 to go, at an average interval of 9.71 minutes and a projection of +3.103%, up from +2.404% on Thursday; mempool.space’s estimate is about 10:50 UTC on Saturday 19 September. Marker P1 (a positive retarget) is on course. The end-stamped daily hashrate rows read 1,018.89 EH/s for Thursday’s stamp and 835.94 for Friday’s; the 31-row mean is 911.80 and the maximum remains 1,053.07 (31 August stamp). Over the week Foundry USA mined 25.2% of 1,032 blocks, AntPool 18.4%, F2Pool 14.2%, SpiderPool 9.7%, ViaBTC 8.7%, SECPOOL 5.3% and MARA Pool 4.6%. Fees were 3 sat/vB for next-block and 1 sat/vB for everything slower at 06:10 UTC. The Fear & Greed index printed 56 on Friday, still “Greed” and the 23rd consecutive Greed reading since 20 August, but the lowest reading of that run; Thursday was 69.
Farside’s table had not populated the 10 September row when the desk fetched it at 06:20 UTC Friday (the page’s own clock still read 10 September), so September’s tally stands where it did on Thursday: +$603.2 million over six sessions, and marker H2 (a positive September) is open and positive. The Thursday row will be folded into Saturday’s edition. Hyperliquid’s HYPE printed $78.56 at 00:00 UTC Friday on CoinGecko’s daily series, $4.04 below marker W1’s $82.60 bar, which settles at 00:00 UTC on Sunday 13 September; Zcash was $1,098.55 at 06:10 UTC, down 10.4% in 24 hours.
Today: CPI at 12:30 UTC, and three markers that grade on it
The August consumer price index prints at 08:30 ET. The Dow Jones consensus, per TheStreet, is +0.4% on the month and 3.4% on the year for the headline and +0.2% for core; Kiplinger and SpotGamma carry the same headline and core numbers. Governor Waller said last week he would vote to hold on a 0.2% core and support a hike on anything higher, and TheStreet’s James DePorre framed the day as a single tenth of a percentage point deciding it. CME FedWatch put a September hike at “nearly 70%” on Thursday morning per TheStreet and “roughly 70%” per SpotGamma; the European Central Bank, for its part, raised its deposit rate 25 basis points to 2.50% on Thursday, its second hike, with Bloomberg reporting officials expect more and FXStreet calling it the second and final. Three markers grade this evening. N1 passes if two major outlets carry FedWatch at 60% or more; on Thursday’s prints it would pass. O1, set in Field Guide #42, passes if the 2-year CMT closes at least 5 basis points above Thursday’s 4.56 — that is, at 4.61 or higher. U1, set on Monday, passes if Bitstamp closes at or above Strategy’s $80,318 tranche price; from Thursday’s close that requires +4.951%, a move bitcoin has made on one day this month (3 September, +5.127%, of which 40% was given back the next day). The desk grades U1 on the close and does not pre-grade it, but it notes that the tranche is $3,789.25 a coin under water, $17.44 million on 4,603 coins, and marker L1 (a 16 September close at or above $81,265) is $4,736.25 away.
One new marker from today’s data. AB1: the 10-year CMT closes at or above 5.00% on any day up to and including Friday 18 September. The 10-year has not closed at 5% on the constant-maturity series since 2007; at 4.95 it is five basis points away on the morning of a CPI print and five days before a Fed decision the market prices at roughly seven in ten for a hike. If it gets there, the desk expects the “since 2007” headlines to be right for once, and the long-end guide explains why it would matter more for bitcoin than the 2-year’s move did.
Sources: Bitstamp BTC/USD daily candles (253 completed 2026 sessions plus the 31 December 2025 base row) and Binance spot, USDT-M and COIN-M endpoints, pulled 06:10 UTC 11 September; mempool.space difficulty, hashrate, pools and fees; alternative.me Fear & Greed; Farside Investors’ table, fetched 06:20 UTC; US Treasury daily par yield and real yield curves for 10 September; BLS Producer Price Index release for August 2026; TheStreet’s 10 September live blog (closes, yields at 15:48 ET, FedWatch, CPI consensus); Yahoo Finance for oil settlements; CNBC for the 10-year’s “highest since October 2023”; Democracy Now headlines for 10 September; Bloomberg and FXStreet on the ECB; Kiplinger and SpotGamma for CPI consensus and hike odds; CoinGecko for HYPE and ZEC.
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, hashrate, pool shares, fees and individual Bitcoin transactions, blockstream.info’s Liquid API for sidechain block heights, hashes, timestamps and transaction counts, alternative.me for the Fear & Greed series, Farside Investors’ table for ETF flows and US Treasury CMT par yields 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, L-BTC or HYPE. Do your own research and consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.