An old Disney beef gets new attention... September 25, 2026 Presented By Pour yourself a cup of ambition. Cities across the US and the whole state of California have declared today Dolly Parton Day (it’s 9/25, get it?). So today, in honor of the late icon, consider taking your boss hostage. Hope your day isn’t all takin’ and no givin’. — Molly Liebergall, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Dave Lozo, Holly Van Leuven, Neal Freyman, Abby Rubenstein In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: News outlets returning to the White House after a legal fight Oracle’s data center issues The quarterback giving financial advice Markets Nasdaq 26,939.37 +0.01% S&P 7,704.13 -0.03% Dow 51,349.98 -0.31% 10-Year 5.162% +5.0 bps Bitcoin $84,311.01 -0.29% Darden $207.24 -3.02% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 6:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: The Dow had its third down day in a row yesterday, while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq ended mostly flat. But it could have been worse: Stocks fell early in the day as investors warily watched rising bond yields, but pared some losses amid hope for a potential deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Stock spotlight: Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse, fell after investors weren’t as impressed with the company’s quarterly results as diners are with their breadsticks. START THE PRESSES Reporters return to White House after weeklong ban Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Saul Loeb/Getty Images President Trump can’t keep CNN, MS NOW, and Politico off his US taxpayers’ lawn, at least for now. Nearly a week after he barred them from the White House, journalists from these outlets regained access yesterday following a judge’s early morning order to temporarily block Trump’s ban. To refresh: Trump announced last Friday that he was revoking White House credentials for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico (Politico and Morning Brew have the same parent company, Axel Springer), initially saying it was “a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” but later calling their reporting a national security risk. The outlets sued to get back in. Now, things are looking up for the press: “The Court is skeptical—at least on this record—that Defendants’ interest in safeguarding national security is the actual motivation for, or is even advanced by, the revocation” of the outlets’ press passes, US District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote : Kelly granted the outlets a 14-day restraining order against Trump’s media ban, while their First Amendment lawsuit challenging it progresses. The administration’s examples of “objectionable reporting” by CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were “so vague it hardly does the trick,” Kelly’s order said. The judge added that the outlets have a good shot of proving in court that the administration violated their constitutional due process rights. The judge issued his order in the wee hours of yesterday morning, but reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were still turned away until around noon, though it wasn’t immediately clear why. No eyes on Xi CNN’s TV pool peers—ABC, CBS, Fox News, and NBC—suspended their White House video coverage all week in solidarity with the excommunicated outlets, which meant that no American network aired live footage yesterday when Trump hosted China’s President Xi Jinping, who’s here to discuss AI, Iran, and Taiwan. Looking ahead… the networks have said they won’t resume presidential pool coverage until the administration reassures them that CNN will not only regain White House access, but also be readmitted to the pool. —ML World Tour de headlines Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images 🏛️ At state dinner, Xi said he and Trump reached “common understanding on many issues.” China’s president started the day with good news, announcing that a new pair of pandas would arrive at Zoo Atlanta in the coming days. The leaders held bilateral talks in the Oval Office yesterday before their much-anticipated state dinner. The guest list was heavy on business and tech executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Today, Trump is expected to take Xi to the National Archives to tour an exhibit of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights before China’s leader heads home.— HVL 🏠 Mortgage rates hit 7% for the first time since January 2025. Abstaining from avocado toast probably won’t be enough to help you buy a house: The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped to 7.03% on Thursday, Freddie Mac said yesterday. That’s up from 6.3% a year ago and represents the first time mortgages have breached the psychologically significant 7% mark in 20 months. That’s likely to hit the already stagnant housing market hard. With inflation remaining elevated and the war in Iran driving up oil prices, the bond market—which mortgage rates tend to follow—has seen large yield spikes. The 10-year bond, which is closely tied to consumer borrowing costs like mortgages, leaped above 5%, and yesterday the 30-year bond had its highest yield since 2004. —AR ⚖️ New York accuses Polymarket of running an unlicensed gambling operation. If you had money on New York suing Polymarket about two months after it went after rival prediction market Kalshi, it’s time to cash in. The lawsuit filed against Polymarket US yesterday is similar to the one the state lodged against Kalshi, asking a judge to block the platform from operating in the state and order it to pay fines because it’s not licensed by New York’s gambling regulator. Prediction markets have argued that they’re not subject to state gambling regulations because they instead fall under the federal regulation of the CFTC (and the agency agrees), but the question is being put to the test in multiple lawsuits. Polymarket plans to fight the suit. “We believe in New York and we’re staying here,” its chief legal officer said. —AR Spons

Why accuracy, connectivity and advisor expertise matter more than ever September 25, 2026 PRESENTED BY Good morning. Wealth management firms spent years buying systems for their tech stack, and rather less time getting them to talk to each other. Client records sit in one system, the plans in another, the tax and estate work somewhere else. They’re each usually pretty confident in their own expertise, and when they disagree about the same client, you tend to find out with the client sitting right there in front of you. Tim White, co-founder and chief growth officer at Wealth.com, thinks the fix starts with accuracy that has been engineered rather than prompted. A general-purpose model asked the same estate planning question three times will happily produce three answers, each delivered with the poise of a tenured professor, which is charming in a chatbot and considerably less charming when a client is asking who makes their medical decisions if they can’t. Wealth.com builds deterministic systems underneath its AI so the answer holds still, then invests heavily in APIs so the neighboring platforms tell the same story. The company works with more than 2,600 firms and raised $65 million in Series B funding this spring. Here are the highlights from our conversation with Tim at Future Proof Festival 2026. PRESENTED BY WEALTH.COM The New Standard for AI in the Advisor’s Tech Stack Photo via Damon Butler The Daily Upside: AI tools are multiplying. What separates a tool that serves advisors from one that actually changes the wealth management equation? We went to market with our own AI, Ester, several years ago, before generative AI went mainstream. Our background came from machine learning and AI. What we were able to do with our technology was read existing plans, take that workload and build efficiencies for these firms and these advisors. What we’ve seen over the last several years, especially with these FutureProof events, is there are so many awesome technologies coming out. The big thing is this. We need to understand exactly the day-to-day of advisors. You need to sit with the firms, you need to sit with the advisors, understand their problem statements and come to them with solutions. The firms we work with, and today we partner with over 2,600, are really pushing the innovation of Wealth.com. The Daily Upside: You’re known for the work you do in estate and tax planning. Where are you taking the platform from here? We just completed our Series B, and how we’re deploying our dollars is a real focus on engineering, AI and design. We have a very rigorous roadmap, but we always like to say we did not buy estateplanning.com, we bought Wealth.com. There are some areas we’re really excited about, but we don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, because those are areas we will be heading very soon here. We’re teeing up to launch them at our own event in January. The Daily Upside: AI can be confidently wrong. How do you handle that in a category where being wrong is expensive? Everyone has access to their own LLMs. Ask the same question three times, you’re going to get three different answers. What is unique about Wealth.com, especially in estate planning and tax, is how we built out these sophisticated deterministic systems. They are in place to make sure that accuracy is there. So when you ask that question the first time, the second time, the third time, you’re getting the same accurate answer. That’s what’s been really important for us in building the brand, because there’s been so much incredible word of mouth, and that’s been a big driver in our marketing. Accuracy is everything. We live and breathe it, and it’s a pillar of our company. The Daily Upside: How much does a firm’s data infrastructure determine what it can get out of these tools? Data is incredibly important, and clean, actionable data. It’s a layered approach, from how you are managing your data lakes all the way to the systems and partners that you have, that they’re interconnected and that they’re talking with each other. That’s an important piece. One thing we do pride ourselves on is those partnership relationships. We are not only an application solution, but we really put a lot of energy behind our APIs and the relationships we’ve built within this ecosystem. You have to have these systems talking to each other, because if you have one system saying this and another system saying the opposite, that client conversation is going to get really awkward really fast. The Daily Upside: Where does AI actually earn its place in an advisor’s day? I absolutely love it. It builds efficiency, allows them to serve their clients at scale, but also with better outcomes. I think about it a lot with healthcare today. What AI is doing in healthcare, being able to source cancer or disease early on and giving those tools to doctors and physicians, that’s the same way I look at advisors. We’re not replacing advisors. That relationship is too important, but let’s give you the tools to be a superhero. The Daily Upside: Some voices in the industry say AI will replace advisors eventually. You don’t buy it. I am betting against that. We believe that client relationship is too critical. I’ve lived through life, you’ve lived through life, and that personal relationship and that trust, you’re never going to replace that. It is such a core part of that family dynamic. I’m a big believer that advisors are only going to be able to do more in this new era. The Daily Upside: If we sit down a year from now, how will the advisor’s world have changed? I think it’s going to be all about connectivity. That’s going to be the true unlock. You’re going to see a lot of different players rise to the top, and there’s some consolidation with some of the technologies you’re seeing today. Being a part of that best-in-class ecosystem is going to be a big part of what you see over the next several years. Watch the full Q&A with Tim White. Our Other Newsletters The Daily

Plus: The world loves U.S. stocks | Friday, September 25, 2026 Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Sep 25, 2026 😻 Friday. It seemed this day would never come. 🧘🏽♀️ The stock market is managing to maintain an eerie calm despite the tumult in the bond market (more on bonds below). The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 5.19% yesterday, but stocks ended the day essentially flat. 📈 This morning, stock futures are slightly higher, Treasury yields have steadied, and oil prices have retreated, helped by Iran's proposal for a seven-day ceasefire . 🗓️ Today, we look at a booming segment of the bond market — AI debt — where Oracle has rekindled questions about the potential perils of the data center borrowing binge. And foreign investors: They love us! They really love us! Well, they love U.S. stocks and other non-government investments, as new data shows. Let's do this: 1,264 words, a 5-minute read. 1 big thing: This Oracle situation has everything By Emily Peck Data: FactSet, Tradeweb; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips The risks of the ballooning AI borrowing binge rose to the surface yesterday, courtesy of Oracle. The tech giant, which is up to its ears in AI-related debt, is trying to put off paying its lease commitments on a much-delayed data center project. Why it matters: Oracle is the weakest of the hyperscalers, with the lowest credit rating and a stock that's down 30% for the year — but with AI investment driving much of the economic growth in the U.S., its wobbles mean a lot. Where it stands: Oracle sent the developer of a data center project in New Mexico known as Project Jupiter a notice citing force majeure — reserving its right to delay payments in the event something major goes down. (Axios' Nathan Bomey has more on that .) By the numbers: Markets aren't loving it. Oracle bonds set to mature in 2055 are now trading at 77 cents on the dollar, according to data from PitchBook. Another stress signal: The cost of buying a type of bond-market insurance, known as a credit default swap, on Oracle debt rose yesterday. (See the chart above.) News of the maneuver rippled through the ballooning ecosystem of data center-related debt yesterday morning, with spreads on notes financing AI infrastructure bonds in which Oracle would be a tenant briefly blowing out — typically seen as reflecting rising worries among investors — before re-tightening somewhat by the end of the day. (See chart below.) Data: Tradeweb; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips Between the lines: The force majeure notice doesn't mean Oracle's obligations to pay the lease are canceled — it's like an FYI to the developer. The notice "signals the company's own risk assessment has shifted enough to warrant legal cover," per a note yesterday from RBC Capital Markets. Oracle says Project Jupiter remains on schedule. Follow the money: The move may make stock investors anxious about their expectations for Oracle's future revenue. But the idea that the hyperscalers can back away from data center commitments should give bond investors some comfort that these companies have some leverage. "You don't want to be making lease payments on a project that doesn't currently exist and you're not earning anything from it," says Johnathan Owen, a portfolio manager at TwentyFour Asset Management who covers investment-grade debt. The big picture: The Oracle situation hits all the boxes on the AI investment bingo card: Bond binge. Oracle helped kick off a scramble among the hyperscalers to borrow money when it issued a long-dated bond last year, John Atkins, who covers bonds for PitchBook, wrote in a note. Off-balance sheet debt. Beyond bonds, the hyperscalers have also committed billions of dollars in future payments for data centers that haven't been built yet . Think of it like signing a lease for a vacation home that a contractor says he'll have done by 2030. Oracle's commitment to lease the New Mexico data center, as part of a massive buildout called Stargate, helped get the developers some $18 billion in loans from about 20 banks in 2025. Circular financing. A lot of the AI players are extremely interconnected . Stargate was spearheaded by OpenAI and SoftBank and announced by President Trump on his first full day back in office last year. Data center backlash. New Mexicans have been fighting this project since at least 2025, as the New York Times detailed. This summer, the state land commissioner rejected part of the project's plans, forcing delays. That setback and others led to Oracle's notice. It's as if your vacation home contractor had to put down tools and wait for permits — you might balk at making rental payments. The bottom line: Force majeure? More like zut alors! 2. Bond sell-off continues as 10-year yield hits 5.19% By Matt Phillips Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips Another day, another tough session in the bond market, with yields on U.S. government debt continuing to push toward levels seldom seen in decades. The latest: The yield on the 10-year note rose to roughly 5.19% in late afternoon trading in New York, the highest closing level since July 2007. Driving the news: It's the same old story. The Iran war and associated energy shocks — diesel at about $6.50 a gallon and regular gasoline at $4.50 a gallon , according to AAA — are feeding what seem like serious inflationary pressures. As a result, traders are growing more confident that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its next two meetings. Elsewhere, the deteriorating profile of the U.S. government's finances and competition for bond investor dollars from AI are adding to pressure. What we're watching: If and when the stock market will start getting indigestion as rates keep climbing. What they're saying: JPMorgan market analysts recently looked at the relationship between key interest rates — like the yield on the 10-year — and the valuation of the S&P 500. "Based on ~80 years of historical analysis, there is an inverted 'U' relationship between the

Plus: Absent AI guardrails, a stampede to cybersecurity firms. September 25, 2026 PRESENTED BY CFO UPSIDE Good morning and happy Friday. You didn’t need insider knowledge to see this one coming. The state of New York sued Polymarket Thursday, painting it as an illegal, unlicensed gambling operation. It’s the fourth case Attorney General Letitia James has brought against prediction market operators this year, with Kalshi, Coinbase and Gemini facing similar accusations. Operators and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have argued event contracts should be considered a derivative subject to federal regulation. But federal appeals courts are split. The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the CFTC and platforms in an April case brought by New Jersey, but last month, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against prediction markets in a Nevada case and ordered them to stop offering sports event contracts. This could set up a Supreme Court showdown: Traders on Polymarket currently put the odds of the nation’s top court taking up a sports event contract case by the end of the year at 22%. Just remember, if you have a sudden, uncontrollable urge to take that bet, you’re hooked on derivatives, not gambling. MARKETS S&P 500 7,704.13 ▼ -0.02% DJI 51,349.98 ▼ -0.31% ORCL $139.54 ▼ -3.47% Stock data as of market close on September 24, 2026. INFLATION & PRICES Treasury Yields Touch 20-Year Highs, Fueled by Sticky Inflation, US Debt Photo via Xinhua/Sipa USA/Newscom You know the deal by now. US bond yields are rising because investors are worried about persistent inflation , fueled by higher oil prices , which could drive up interest rates. At the same time, the rationale for rate hikes has been strengthened by a surprisingly resilient American economy that looks like it can absorb them. Meanwhile, the rapidly growing, supersized US debt pile means the Treasury has to keep issuing large amounts of bonds, whose higher yields could lure investors at the expense of equities. On Thursday, this bundle of macroeconomic forces drove yields to the highest in decades. The 10-year US Treasury yield surged more than 10 basis points to 5.223%, the most in 19 years, while the 30-year yield hit 5.501%, the most since 2004. The Yield Appeal This week offered new evidence that the US economy has the wherewithal to withstand higher interest rates, a key tool for the Federal Reserve to curb inflation. S&P Global released data showing US business activity surged at the fastest rate in more than five years in September. That strengthened the odds that the Fed will raise interest rates in October to about 70%, up from 55% a week ago, according to CME FedWatch. Bond yields tend to track interest rates, and there are concerns about what a 5% or higher yield on the 10-Year Treasury means for markets. Because Treasurys are backed by the US government, they’re considered virtually risk free. When yields surge, investors are forced to rethink their rationale for choosing between stocks and bonds. Equities with 5% to 6% annual yields, which aren’t guaranteed and are subject to stock market volatility, are suddenly a lot less appealing to long-term investors who can lock in guaranteed returns through higher bond yields. The resulting concern is that investors are incentivized to move money into the Treasury market at the expense of stocks. In reality, it may not be so simple: Investment bank Jefferies forecasts earnings at S&P 500 companies will climb 35% this year. Growth like that is more than enough to keep investors from decamping for bond yields. For small-cap companies, which are sensitive to higher rates because they are much more reliant on short-term bank loans and floating-rate debt, the road ahead looks much steeper. Unlucky Number Seven: While the US economy remains resilient, there is one notable weak spot. The 10-year yield strongly influences consumer borrowing rates, and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 7.03% on Thursday, the highest in 20 months, according to Freddie Mac data. The annualized pace of US home sales had already slowed for the past three months, and it’s hard to imagine people lining up for 7%+, 30-year mortgages. Written by Sean Craig PRESENTED BY CFO UPSIDE Reporting That Goes Beyond the Press Release Major corporate calls often arrive pre-explained: the acquisition is strategic, the CFO exit is mutual, the layoffs are a restructuring for growth. The real reasons rarely make the announcement. We’re launching CFO Upside to report the story behind these calls and everything that influences them, surfacing the news and intelligence the modern finance leader needs to stay ahead. Every week, you’ll get insights on deals and capital raises, comp negotiation, board dynamics, the technology rebuilding finance functions, and the policy shifts that reach the numbers. From the team behind the briefing you are currently scrolling, CFO Upside is built for finance leaders who cannot afford to just track the headlines but need to understand what comes next. BIG TECH Google Takes Data Centers to the Stars to Solve Earthbound Problems Photo via Stanislav Kogiku / SOPA Images/Sipa USA/Newscom Google has famously branded its high-risk, high-cost megaprojects moonshots. That label applies almost literally to its latest one. The tech titan yesterday announced plans to launch a satellite into space that will attempt to process AI queries above the Kármán Line. Eventually, the goal is to launch dozens of satellites that together will act like an AI data center. The lofty ambitions are grounded in harsh realities down on the ground, as tech companies fight for data-center real estate and vast amounts of water and electricity — and as a growing number of constituencies fight them off. The Brave Little Refrigerator Google’s satellite, roughly the size of a refrigerator, contains four AI chips called tensor processing units that together have about as much compute power as a single server at a da

Hot growth killed the easy-Fed story, and BTC is still taking the institutional bid. Global Bond Yields Are Ripping While BTC is Holding its Own Hot growth killed the easy-Fed story, and BTC is still taking the institutional bid. Sep 25 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . GM Investors Global bond markets are flashing red across every major economy today. The entire United States yield curve is going completely parabolic. The benchmark 10Y yield punched straight through 5% this week. At the same time, #0Y mortgage rates climbed to 7.45%. Economic expansion is accelerating rather than cooling down under restrictive conditions. The S&P Global United States Composite PMI jumped 2.4 points to 58.4 in September. Yet, crypto is behaving like an entirely independent asset class. Bitcoin is currently tracking green for three consecutive months. Institutional capital poured $2.3 billion into spot exchange-traded funds through Thursday alone. Investors are fleeing long-dated paper to secure provably scarce digital collateral. Traditional macro correlations between bond yields and risk assets are shattering in real time. Liquidity is seeking safety where balance sheets cannot be diluted by government spending. Here’s what our desk is watching. This Is The Only "Buy The Dip" That Matters In September. TOKEN2049 ticket prices go up Sept 23. The discount code expires with your window. You wouldn't fade a 10% discount on a trade. Don't fade it on the one conference where Vitalik, CZ, and BlackRock share the same stage. $539 with code CRYPTOBANTER. Sept 23 is your cutoff. GET 10% discount and register Macro Trading and Fed Policy: Global Yields Ripping Across Equities The sovereign bond rout is no longer an isolated American phenomenon. Our research reveals synchronized yield spikes across every tier-one developed economy. Global investors are aggressively dumping sovereign paper at an alarming pace. 10 year forward government bond yields in Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom are surging rapidly. Similar violent spikes are unfolding across France, Italy, Canada, and Australia. Bondholders are demanding higher term premiums to fund endless government budget deficits. In the United States, the entire Treasury yield curve is ripping vertically. The thirty-year bond yield reached 5.40 percent, while benchmark ten-year yields crossed five percent. This historic curve steepening reflects raw fiscal anxiety rather than sustainable economic optimism. Macro trading desks received another jolt from resilient domestic business activity this week. The S&P Global Composite PMI jumped to 58.4 in September, marking its highest reading since July 2021. That unexpected economic expansion completely upends baseline expectations for upcoming Fed policy. Tighter monetary conditions are hammering interest-rate-sensitive corners of the economy. Average 30 year mortgage rates surged to 7.45 %, effectively freezing residential real estate transactions. Concurrently, small-cap stocks are seeing massive outflows as refinancing risks mount for indebted balance sheets. Broader equities are masking severe underlying stress beneath a narrow mega-cap advance. Benchmark semiconductor stocks face aggressive valuation multiple compression against 5% risk-free cash yields. Meanwhile, elevated oil prices near $74.50 compound operating margin pressures across corporate supply chains. Geopolitical risk remains elevated even as Washington and Beijing extended their bilateral trade deal until January 2027. Traditional sovereign bonds no longer protect investor portfolios during equity market downturns. This failure of conventional diversification is accelerating a structural rotation into mathematically scarce digital assets. 25,000 People. One Building. 48 Hours. Zero Excuses. TOKEN2049 Singapore is where the next cycle’s partnerships get signed. If You’re Not At Marina Bay Sands Oct 7–8, You’re Reading The Recaps. Two Weeks To Lock $539 Entry To The Biggest Crypto Room Of The Year. Use code CRYPTOBANTER at checkout for 10% off the $599 . Crypto Market Analysis: Bitcoin Reserve Momentum and On-Chain Data While legacy debt markets suffer historic liquidations, digital assets are demonstrating relentless structural strength. Our crypto market analysis confirms institutional allocators are treating digital scarcity as a primary macro hedge. Massive ETF Inflows: Spot Bitcoin ETFs bought $2.3 billion in net purchases through Thursday alone. This relentless institutional accumulation has propelled the asset to three consecutive green monthly closes. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve: A White House official confirmed there is a “fairly good chance” the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve gets signed into law. Sovereign adoption would permanently reprice digital collateral across global central banking reserves. CFTC Tokenization Rules: The CFTC now lets United States brokers invest customer funds in tokenized assets and keep compliance records on-chain. This regulatory breakthrough unlocks immense institutional collateral mobility across decentralized financial plumbing. State Cyber Warfare: North Korea’s Lazarus Group is suspected of carrying out the recent Bitget exchange security breach. Persistent geopolitical risk reinforces the urgent necessity for decentralized settlement and cryptographic self-custody. On-Chain Supply Drain: On-chain data indicates that liquid exchange reserves have dropped to multi-year lows across major trading venues. Circulating supply is evaporating while long-term holder cohorts aggressively absorb available liquidity. Altcoins Squeezed: Speculative altcoins continue to lag as market liquidity concentrates almost exclusively into top-tier Bitcoin collateral. Broad ecosystem rotations will require clear Bitcoin price discovery before secondary risk appetite trickles down. Poll of the Day ( Powe

Uptober is five days away. The bond market is already setting the terms. 🚨5 Setups While Bond Market Tightening The World Uptober is five days away. The bond market is already setting the terms. Sep 25 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . Hey Traders, The tape is digesting a growth shock, not a truce. Washington rolled the China deal into January, but a hot PMI print kept the easy-Fed story dead. Yields are still rising at home and abroad. Equities are drifting with duration, not leading it. Oil faded after Thursday’s spike as diplomacy headlines mixed with Middle East supply risk. Crude is off the highs. It is not cheap, and it is not settled. Xi’s Washington visit bought time on tariffs. It did not take the war premium out of energy. Bitcoin is holding the low $80,000s after failing the recent high. ETFs are still buying even as price stalls, while policy talk around a strategic reserve and tokenized collateral sits against another exchange hack. Crypto is trading the same stack as stocks: tighter-for-longer policy, a bond market that will not ease, and geopolitics that can reprice oil in a session. The risk bid is selective. It has not rolled over. Here is what we are watching. Poll of the Day ( Presented by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL When does institutional liquidity finally rotate into altcoins? 🎯 After new Bitcoin ATHs 🖨️ Only after Fed rate cuts 💀 Altseason isn't coming Today’s Charts: Chart #1 – Lighter(LTCUSDT) 1-Day Chart #2 – Morpho(MORPHOUSDT) 1-Day Chart #3 – Aerodrome (AEROUSDT) 4-Hour Chart #4 – Worldcoin(WLDUSDT) 1-Day Chart #5 – Rocket Lab(RKLB) 1-Day Chart #1 – Lighter(LTCUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Lighter is executing an ascending structural retest following a multi-month trend expansion out of its consolidation floor, absorbing pullbacks above the $3.8842 horizontal support shelf to trade near $4.8504 on the daily timeframe. Operating as a high-performance decentralized perpetual futures exchange built as an application-specific zero-knowledge rollup on Ethereum, Lighter delivers CEX-grade execution speed with sub-millisecond order matching, verifiable on-chain settlement via zk-SNARKs, and zero trading fees for retail participants. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $6.2442 overhead resistance target as long as the $3.0152–$3.8842 support base holds.exhaustion. Trade Levels: Entry: $3.89 Stop Loss: $3.01 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $6.22 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Morpho(MORPHOUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Morpho has initiated an impulsive bullish expansion following a rounded bottom recovery off the $2.032 base, breaking out to retest local structure near $2.812 on the daily timeframe. Built on Ethereum as a permissionless, governance-minimized lending primitive, Morpho Blue separates core infrastructure from risk curation, allowing users to deploy isolated, immutable credit markets with custom oracles and liquidation parameters alongside risk-managed Morpho Vaults. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $2.971 overhead resistance target as long as the $2.032–$2.313 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $2.3 Stop Loss: $2.0 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $2.9 Chart #3 – Aerodrome (AEROUSDT) 4-Hour Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Aerodrome has executed an impulsive breakout above its multi-week consolidation range, establishing buyer absorption above the $0.7051 horizontal pivot to trade near $0.7802 on the 4-hour timeframe. Serving as the central automated market maker (AMM) and primary liquidity hub on Coinbase's Base Layer-2 network, Aerodrome utilizes a vote-escrowed tokenomics model (veAERO) adapted from Velodrome to direct protocol emissions, incentivize liquidity pools, and distribute 100% of trading fees to participants. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.9328 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.6344–$0.7051 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.705 Stop Loss: $0.634 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.816 This Is The Only “Buy The Dip” That Matters In September. TOKEN2049 ticket prices go up Sept 23. The discount code expires with your window. You wouldn’t fade a 10% discount on a trade. Don’t fade it on the one conference where Vitalik, CZ, and BlackRock share the same stage. $539 with code CRYPTOBANTER. Sept 23 is your cutoff. GET 10% discount and register Chart #4 – Worldcoin(WLDUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Worldcoin has initiated an impulsive bullish continuation following an extended double-bottom accumulation base, reclaiming the $0.4510 horizontal pivot to trade near $0.4613 on the daily timeframe. Co-founded by Sam Altman, Worldcoin provides a privacy-preserving global digital identity network (World ID) leveraging iris biometrics via the Orb and zero-knowledge proofs to solve proof-of-personhood in the era of artificial intelligence, integrated natively with the World Chain Layer-2 network. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.6124 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.3965–$0.4510 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $0.45 Stop Loss: $0.39 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.61 Chart #5 – Rocket Lab(RKLB) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) (RKLB refers to the forex currency Rocket Lab and not a cryptocurrency.) Rocket Lab has accelerated its bullish expansion following its breakout above the descending trendline, extending gains through the $68.33 horizontal pivot to print $73.61 with pre-market pricing climbing to $74.46 on the daily timeframe. Vertically integrated across dedicated small-lift launch with Electron, hypersonic testing via HASTE, and satellite bus m

PLUS: 10Y yield spikes past 5%. 🥛 Oil picked up. Bitcoin is feeling it. 😩 PLUS: 10Y yield spikes past 5%. Rohit Chauhan GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that reads the bond market so you don’t have to. Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ Oil picked up. Bitcoin is feeling it. 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: The Perps Market Could Grow 100X - Here’s How Lighter Plans to Win . 🍪 BlackRock is launching tokenized investment portfolios powered by Ondo's infrastructure. Securitize is the company quietly powering BlackRock, Apollo and KKR's move onchain. Here's what you need to know about Securitize. Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. WE GOT OUR ANSWER 😩 Yesterday we left you with a fork: If oil stays below ~$95, the Bitcoin rally continues, a break above ~$100, and the rally faces headwinds. Then Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian told the UN General Assembly that his country "will not surrender". That was enough for the oil traders to decide their next move. Brent crude oil closed at $103.08, up ~4% and snapped a five-day losing streak. Bitcoin fell 2.1% to ~$84.4K, the Nasdaq dropped 1.13%, and the bond market lost it. 10Y yields rose to 5.125%, its highest level since 2007 and the biggest one-day jump in 18 months. Source: U.S. 10Y and 30Y Bond Yields, TradingView Here’s why you should be paying attention to this: The 10Y yield is what the U.S. government pays to borrow money for a decade, and nearly every other loan in the economy prices off it. A widely watched daily gauge of 30-year mortgage rates just hit 7.26%, the highest since January 2025. Source: Hedgeye Oil explains part of the move: Expensive energy → stickier inflation → a Fed that keeps squeezing. Traders now put the odds of another hike by the Fed above 70%, six weeks after the Fed hiked for the first time since 2023. The economy isn't helping either. S&P Global's flash PMI (a monthly survey of purchasing managers, basically a temperature check on business) came in at 58.4, the strongest reading since July 2021, with input costs rising at the fastest pace since October 2022. Which is quite odd since high borrowing costs often lead to a cooler economy. All of this sounds like a very American story, until you look at the rest of the world. Germany's 10-year yield is at its highest since 2009, France's since 2008, and Japan's just hit a 30-year high above 3%. We also pointed out yesterday that the 30Y had barely moved since mid-August, because the long end didn’t believe you can hike your way out of an oil shock. It rose 11 bps yesterday. And before anyone reaches for the word "default," insuring U.S. debt against one costs about 0.33% a year (five-year credit default swaps), roughly half the ~0.69% it cost during the 2023 debt-ceiling standoff. Lenders fully expect America to pay them back, they just want more interest for waiting. Which leaves one question: who's going to keep buying all this debt at the old price? For decades America’s lenders were foreign governments and central banks, buying Treasuries by the truckload because they needed the dollar. That group has started to buy less and the folks stepping in are American pension funds, insurers and investment funds. Source: U.S. Treasury On Sep 15, the government auctioned ~$13B of 20Y bonds at 5.42%. Foreign buyers took 52.5%, the weakest on record. In their place, American institutions stepped in for a record 30.7%. So the buyers still exist, but they’re asking for a bigger premium. America’s federal interest payments on debt crossed ~$1T for the first time last month. And every dollar the government borrows from here costs more than the one it's replacing. Now back to the odd part, because the interest payments are the reason this economy won’t cool down… THE COMPANY BRINGING $400T OF TRADFI ONCHAIN $400 trillion in stocks, bonds, funds and private credit sits in traditional finance. Someone has to bring it onchain. Securitize is already doing it and in July 2026, they went public on the NYSE under ticker $SECZ. Few facts about Securitize : $4.6B+ in tokenized assets under management Works with BlackRock, Apollo, KKR, Hamilton Lane, BNY and VanEck Partnered with the NYSE to build tokenized securities markets Tokenized their own stock at IPO One of the largest tokenized money market products in the world (BlackRock's $BUIDL fund) runs on Securitize rails. Here's what you need to know about Securitize. WE GOT OUR ANSWER (P2) 😩 At 1:40pm ET today, the Treasury will buy back $6B of its own 20 to 30-year bonds, the exact stretch foreign buyers walked away from. Against $40T of debt, that's nothing. The real squeeze is slower. Lock in a 2.8% mortgage in 2020 and your payment doesn't budge when rates hit 7%. You feel it when you’re at the bank trying to refinance the loan. The U.S. government is in the same spot, the difference is they refinance constantly. For all debt issued by the U.S. across time horizons, it pays an average 3.45%, because so much was borrowed when money was free. New borrowing costs are north of 5%. Source: U.S. Treasury $1T in interest payments is just the start. Reprice the whole $40T at 5% and it's $2T a year, or more than a third of every tax dollar collected by the U.S. That $2T goes to bondholders, which gets cycled back into the economy, keeping it warm, which keeps the Fed hiking, which makes those interest payments bigger still. High rates are supposed to be the brake but today they’re more like a gas pedal. Zoom out and you’ll see this is exactly the world Satoshi built Bitcoin for. A government can’t tax its way out of a growing interest bill, when the interest itself is the stimulus. The story usually ends with the devaluation of the currency. But the real catch here is timing. The same rising yields building the case for the ‘debasement trade’ are acting against it which caused BTC to fall ~2.1% yesterday. So here's the new fork: Watch if Bitcoin holds above its May high of ~$82.8K on the weekly close which is a strong sig

Plus: Who's coming to dinner | Thursday, September 24, 2026 Axios Closer By Nathan Bomey · Sep 24, 2026 Thursday ✅. Today's newsletter is 788 words, a 3-minute read. 🔔 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed essentially flat. Oil prices rose, with Brent crude up 4% to $107 a barrel. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.2%, while the 30-year hit its highest level since 2004. 🥶 Today's stock spotlight: MGM Resorts (-11%) slid after Barry Diller said he was withdrawing his bid for the company after months of talks. 1 big thing: Risk gets real Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios Oracle is recognizing the growing risks of data center development as it takes steps to protect itself from steep costs on a massive project in New Mexico that will provide computing power to OpenAI. Why it matters: The move appeared to unnerve investors who are questioning the foundations of the AI economy . Driving the news: Oracle , the main tenant of the coming Project Jupiter data center campus, delivered a force majeure notice to the developer, Blue Owl unit Stack Infrastructure, amid growing concerns about a possible delay in completion. A force majeure clause is meant to relieve a party from contractual obligations when events beyond its control keep it from fulfilling its commitment. 📝 The big picture: It's historically been used to cancel or revise deals based on a major, unexpected occurrence — such as a weather catastrophe or geopolitical disruption — but this raises the possibility that it could be used to address delays stemming from public or regulatory opposition. "In AI data center projects, force majeure is no longer a back-end boilerplate provision," Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan attorneys wrote in a recent client alert . "It is a core litigation and risk-allocation tool that can determine whether a delay remains isolated—or cascades through the project's construction, customer, power, insurance, and financing documents." Between the lines: Oracle is positioning itself to defer payments on capacity it can't energize should Jupiter fail to come online in 2028 as planned, William Blair analyst Sebastien Naji said today in a research note. 🗣️ What they're saying: "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule. We are committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward," Oracle VP Michael Egbert said in a statement. A Blue Owl spokesperson said in a statement that the firm remains "fully aligned" with Oracle on the data center development. "This notice does not change the financial commitments to this multiyear project." 📉 The impact: Oracle shares closed down 3.5% after paring steeper losses in the morning. Blue Owl finished down 3.6%. Go deeper 2. Guess who's coming to dinner Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump today at the White House. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images Some of the most powerful people in corporate America will be in the room with Chinese President Xi Jinping at tonight's state dinner — including executives at the center of U.S.-China tensions over AI, chips, export controls and trade, Axios' Courtenay Brown writes . Xi is in Washington for his first state visit since 2015. 🙋 Zoom in: NYSE chief Lynn Martin is expected to attend, Axios has learned. She's expected to join other Wall Street executives including Citi CEO Jane Fraser and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach is slated to be there, as is GM CEO Mary Barra. They're expected to join a parade of tech leaders, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple executive chairman Tim Cook. Many of the executives joining tonight traveled with Trump to China in May as part of a U.S. business delegation. 🍽️ Dig in: The White House-released menu features sesame-crusted sea bass and, for dessert, vanilla crémeux with White House honey ice cream. Guests will also toast with the same American sparkling wine served during President Nixon's historic 1972 trip to China. 3. Other happenings Photo: Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images ☕️ Starbucks plans to close around 250 underperforming locations across North America this week, the second round of closures under CEO Brian Niccol. ( CNBC ) 🏠 Average 30-year mortgage rates hit 7.03% this week, the first time they broke 7% since the beginning of last year, per Freddie Mac. ( WSJ ) 🤑 Cathie Wood is taking steps to allow investors to trade tokenized assets tied to the ARK Venture Fund, which has investments in Anthropic, Kalshi and SpaceX. ( Bloomberg ) A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Everything you need to simplify "Simplify," a new book by the co-founders of Axios, is a step-by-step playbook for spending your time on what makes you perform and feel your best. The takeaway: Learn the Confront, Delete, Amplify framework used by the world's most effective leaders to cut complexity and reclaim focus. Grab a copy today. 4. Quoted: Chapek's unhappy place 😡 "I didn't get a chance to finish what I started. In truth, it pisses me off." — Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek in his new memoir, "Behind the Castle Walls: My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth," where he blasts predecessor and successor Bob Iger as manipulative and egotistic, according to a copy acquired by NYT . A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Ready to simplify? "Simplify: Do 50% more with 50% less" is a toolkit for work in the AI era, from the authors of "Smart Brevity." It's built on a three-step framework: Confront the complexity. Delete what's draining energy. Amplify what works best. Order your copy. Why stop here? Let's go Pro. Axios Pro Deals helps you get smarter and faster on the deals, opportunities, and investments that matter most. Get started today . Follow Axios across:

Onchain yields vs. T-bills Luke Leasure Higher for longer The 10-year Treasury yield broke out to 5.12% on Wednesday, a level not seen since 2007. This was the largest single-day increase in yields in over a year and the second biggest single-day increase this year in the MOVE index, the measure of bond market volatility. With the Fed having hiked rates last week, and now the whole yield curve shifting up, the bond market reflects expectations and concerns of some combination of inflation, growth, and a growing inability for the Treasury to manage the deficit. Bond markets are pricing yields higher for longer, a notable shift from a year ago, when rate cuts were priced as the base case. How does this move in offchain yields relate to onchain yields, and can the market take it? Looking at the spread between onchain stablecoin supply rates and T-bill yields, 2026 is on track to be the most consistently negative year on record. 96.9% of days are negative, with T-bills paying more than onchain lending, exceeding 2023's 89.0%. Stablecoin lending has underpaid bills every day since late April, putting the current period of a discount at the third-longest stretch in history, and the current gap of negative 115 basis points is now in the bottom quintile of its entire history. When this spread sat in the bottom quintile as it does now, the average 90-day forward change was a +0.85 bps increase. The modal outcome from this current rate context is a nearly 100 bps increase over the coming 90 days. The recent rate hike and shift up in the yield curve have only grown this spread. Second, we can look at a recent snapshot of the funding rate term structure on Pendle’s Boros, revealing the market’s implied path of funding rates on BTC and ETH perpetual futures through year-end. Just like the Treasury yield curve, the market prices shorter-term rates at a discount to the long end, showing rates rising out in time. Pulling from prior research on term structures , a curve of this shape has consistently preceded increases in yields and rising spot prices over the coming 90-120 days. A look back on the path of the front-month implied rate shows this story well, where implied rates troughed at the end of April and have trended higher since. The uptrend in the front-month implied rate preceded the corresponding uptrend in BTC spot prices. In crypto, rising rates are bullish. The move may not be done. Relative to the historical distribution, onchain rates across stablecoin lending and perps remain historically subdued. A rising yield curve in Treasurys will likely drag the onchain curves higher as well. Finally, zooming out, reading the tea leaves of BTC’s cycle theory suggests elevated and favorable returns over the next one to three years. Favorable returns can pull the cost of carry on leveraged inventory even higher. Should the onchain market continue to move fast and higher as it has over the past month, the need to lock in and monitor the situation will become even more pressing. Today, Blockworks launched its Unified API , combining the powerhouse databases of both Blockworks and Messari into a single API. The Unified API gives you market data across 40,000+ assets and 300+ centralized and decentralized exchanges, standardized financials and fundamentals across 400+ DeFi protocols, and comprehensive research, news, funding data, token unlocks, social sentiment, disclosures, and more. As coins and rates move higher, the Unified API gives enterprises and investors access to every data point worth monitoring, including the term structure above. Enjoy :) — Luke DAS Asia is coming up this Oct. 7 in Singapore. Hear from the biggest names in onchain finance. Ticket prices increase this Friday, so grab yours now! Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 Blockworks 133 W 19TH ST New York, New York 10011, United States