The Daily: Bitcoin ETFs end 9-day, $3.1 billion inflow streak, and more

The following article is adapted from The Block's newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.

Happy Thursday! Bitcoin is up today, trading around $84,700, while U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs ended a nine-day, $3 billion inflow streak as $149 million exited the funds on Wednesday.

Also in today's newsletter, NEAR Intents suffered a $3.8 million exploit, Lloyds and Visa settled $750,000 using USDC in a live cross-border pilot, Hyperliquid Policy Center and Circle are pushing for changes to EU crypto rules, and more.

Meanwhile, Robinhood Wallet integrates Arcus' RFQ system for stock token swaps, and an Ethereum staking reward burn proposal is pulled from the Hegota upgrade.

P.S. Don't forget to check out The Latent, our sister website covering AI. Get The Latent Daily here and all other The Block newsletters here.

Bitcoin ETFs snap 9-day, $3.1 billion inflow streak

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $148.7 million in combined net outflows on Wednesday, ending a nine-day streak that brought in $3.1 billion.

• BlackRock's IBIT also ended its own nine-day inflow run, which had brought in $1.6 billion, with $9.5 million in net outflows on Wednesday.'Fidelity's FBTC led the day's outflows with $125.6 million, followed by Bitwise's BITB with $13.6 million. All remaining funds registered zero flows.
• The nine-day streak was one of the most positive runs for the bitcoin funds this year and brought cumulative flows back into positive territory for 2026.
• U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have generated more than $57 billion in cumulative net inflows since their January 2024 debut and $970 million year-to-date, with more than $100 billion in assets under management.
• U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs also recorded $59.6 million in net outflows Wednesday, extending their outflow streak to two days after a seven-day, $850 million inflow run.

NEAR Intents partially resumes services after $3.8 million exploit

• NEAR Intents and near .com are back online after a $3.8 million exploit temporarily halted services Thursday, though a few affected chains remain unavailable, according to NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin.
• Polosukhin said the attacker exploited a bug in the Omni deposit and withdrawal interaction with the NEAR Intents smart contract, isolated to USDT on BSC. The vulnerability was identified and fixed within an hour of detection.
• Polosukhin said all affected users will be fully compensated. He also said the core NEAR Protocol, NEAR token and other applications on NEAR were not affected.
• Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said the stolen funds were transferred to KuCoin and bridged to bitcoin. NEAR Intents said it is working with law enforcement and blockchain analytics platforms to trace the funds.

Lloyds, Visa settle $750,000 using USDC in live cross-border pilot

Lloyds and Visa completed a seven-day live pilot using USDC to settle $750,000 of payment obligations, which Lloyds described as the first stablecoin settlement trial between Visa and a major UK banking group.

• Lloyds purchased USDC through UK-regulated digital asset exchange Archax for the U.S. dollar settlements, with the volume booked through its Corporate Markets branch in Jersey and transferred to Visa in the U.S.
• The funds reached Visa in under an hour, including during the weekend. The pilot focused on settlement between the financial institutions rather than customer payments.
• Lloyds also ran its own node on the Canton Network during the trial, while Visa supported settlement on a separate, unnamed public blockchain.

Hyperliquid Policy Center, Circle press EU on perps and stablecoin reserves in MiCA review

Hyperliquid Policy Center and Circle are pushing for changes to EU crypto rules as part of the European Commission's review of MiCA.

• Hyperliquid Policy Center said crypto perpetual futures should be treated as derivatives under MiFID II rather than MiCA. It also said perps should not be grouped with CFDs.
• Circle wants MiCA's requirement for stablecoin issuers to keep at least 30% of reserves in bank deposits, or 60% for significant tokens, replaced with a less rigid liquidity requirement.
• Circle also wants to preserve multi-issuance, where an EU-authorized entity and a foreign-regulated affiliate issue the same global stablecoin. The consultation closed Sept. 30.

Clarity Act's failure gave crypto 'faster' regulatory wins, Bitwise CIO says

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says crypto lost the long-term certainty of the Clarity Act but avoided compromises in the bill. He says regulators have since moved faster with rules he views as more favorable.

• Hougan said the stalled bill left stablecoin rewards intact and avoided a national licensing path that could have made it easier for new exchanges to compete.
• Days after the Clarity vote, the SEC issued a five-year "innovation exemption" for limited trading of tokenized U.S. stocks onchain. Hougan warned that a future administration could change course without rules set in law.

In the next 24 hours

• The U.S. September employment report, unemployment rate and average hourly earnings data are due Friday, alongside August factory orders. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan is also scheduled to speak.
• Euro area September headline and core inflation flash estimates are due Friday. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone is also scheduled to speak.
• Ethena (ENA) and DoubleZero (2Z) are among the crypto projects set for token unlocks.

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