The Big Board

The full data behind Fintech Friday. Every number we tracked this week, organized the same way as the blast: what capital costs, where it moved, what it is powering, what crypto did, and the hardware. Levels as of September 25, 2026, Friday morning. Closes will differ slightly.

One week after the first hike since 2023, the bond market decided one was not enough. Strong business data pushed yields to multi-year highs and put an October hike on the table. Here is the full picture.

Why money costs more when business is booming

On Wednesday a survey of US companies showed business growing at its fastest pace in five years, and bond yields jumped anyway.

That sounds backwards, but it isn't. When business is hot, companies hire, spend and raise prices, and what they pay for supplies is rising at the fastest pace since 2022. The Fed hears that as inflation, and the same day Fed Governor Michael Barr said more rate hikes are likely. On top of that, Washington has already spent $2 trillion more than it took in this fiscal year. That means more government bonds to sell, and buyers want a higher rate to take them.

Right now, good news for business is bad news for anyone borrowing.

🇺🇸 At home

🌍 Abroad

🎙️ Fed speak

Every non-crypto capital move we tracked this week, biggest first, geography by the acquirer. Deals that finance something announced earlier are labeled as financing. Every deal name links to its source.

🇺🇸 Domestic

🌍 International

👀 Talks, not signed

Brent up, WTI down, and the gap between them at about $12. The full price sheet, the shipping numbers, the week's grab for AI power, the diesel ban back and forth, and who controls the barrels.

Why the war is still setting your gas price

The Strait of Hormuz, the sea lane that used to carry about a fifth of the world's oil, has been closed for roughly 208 days because of the war with Iran.

Abroad: Gulf oil has to take the long way out. It goes through Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, which drone attacks shut for nine days this month, or onto ships swapping cargo off Oman. That squeeze pushed supertanker rates to a record $1.27 million a day and kept Brent, the global price, near $105.

At home: The US pumps its own oil, so WTI, the US price, slipped to about $93. Diesel still hit a record $6.50, because refiners can sell it overseas. The White House thinks those exports are the problem, which is why it floated a ban, and big business pushed back.

On Friday Iran offered to reopen the strait within seven days if the US lifts its blockade. Oil fell on the headline. Prices at the pump haven't followed yet.

🌐 Prices

🚢 Shipping

⚡ Power for AI

🛢️ Supply & policy

🌍 The East

The White House floated a 90-day ban on diesel exports, then an official called the report fake news. The Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable wrote to warn a ban would raise prices. The Xi and Trump summit extended the trade truce to January 10, and nothing else.

Prices, flows, prediction markets, fraud and the week's regulation, in one place. Prices from CoinGecko, Friday morning Sept 25, week change is CoinGecko 7-day. Flows from Farside.

Why crypto is ripping

On Monday bitcoin jumped above $87,000, its highest price since January, on the biggest day of ETF buying in 11 months.

Three things lined up. Traders who had bet on a drop were forced to buy back in, which pushed the price up faster. Oil and bond yields eased early in the week, so investors took more risk. And about $1 billion flowed into bitcoin funds in a single day, most of it through BlackRock. By Thursday the rally cooled as the odds of another Fed hike climbed, and bitcoin settled near $84,000. XRP and the meme coins still finished the week up double digits.

Behind the price, the rules keep getting friendlier. The CFTC now lets traders use bitcoin and stablecoins as collateral, and NYSE signed on to put its stocks on a blockchain.

The regulator just put limits on Kalshi's most viral bet

Once something gets big enough, Washington shows up. This week it was Kalshi's turn.

On Tuesday the CFTC warned that markets betting on what one person will say carry a "heightened risk of manipulation."

Kalshi lets people bet on things like whether the President will say a certain word in a speech. The problem is easy to see: whoever has the speech early can win. Forbes reported that Trump's teleprompter operator did exactly that and made $107,539 before regulators caught him. Kalshi traded $15.27 billion last week, sportsbook size, and the Supreme Court may soon decide whether states can treat it as gambling.

Same story as the banks, and now AI. The bigger it gets, the more Washington wants a say.

Also this week: hackers took $351.6 million from the exchange Bitget, which says its own insurance fund covers every dollar, and a man who posed as Coinbase support got up to 12 years for stealing about $16 million.

🪙 Majors

🐸 Memes

📊 Market

🎲 Kalshi & prediction markets

🚨 Fraud watch

⚖️ Regulation

Crypto raises and M&A run in the Wednesday edition.

Everything Meta showed at Connect on Sept 23, what it costs Meta to build, and the other devices that launched this week.

Enterprise: stop renting, start owning

Apple is pitching its new Mac mini and Mac Studio to businesses as machines that run AI in the office, with no cloud bill.

Meta says its own AI chips go into its data centers next year. Alibaba has a new chip coming in 2027. The companies that spend the most on AI are tired of paying someone else for it.

Renting AI got them started. Owning it is how they keep the savings.

Research: quantum got a little more real

On Tuesday IonQ showed it can fix a quantum computer's mistakes in real time using one ordinary chip.

Errors are the main thing holding quantum back, and fixing them has always needed custom hardware. If a regular processor can do it, useful quantum machines get cheaper and arrive sooner. It was a simulation, not a real machine, but Nvidia still picked IonQ the next day to sit beside its own chips in Boston. Infleqtion linked 30 protected qubits using just 80 atoms. And in the lab, researchers at Carnegie Mellon and MIT built transistors under 5 nanometers from a material one atom thick.

Quantum is still years away. Nvidia just made sure it has a seat when it gets here.

🕶️ Meta lineup

📈 Meta by the numbers

📱 Everyone else