Institutional Adoption, MSTR, BTC Market Outlook | BMTV Sep. 18, 2026

Grace Remington (0:00)

Good morning and happy Friday. Well, the macro picture has been a little bit doom and gloom lately, but things are looking up for Bitcoin. We are two weeks away from October. Historically, a great month for everyone's favorite crypto. Welcome into BMTV. I'm Grace Remington with Sean Hagan.

Sean Hagan (0:15)

Absolutely, it's gonna be a good one. We're gonna look at October later, and this year might be a little bit different, so we'll get into that here in a bit.

Grace Remington (0:21)

Yeah, looking forward to that. Looking forward to another full house on today's show as well. We have Phong Le joining us in just a few minutes, CEO of Strategy. Tyler Evans, CIO of UTXO Management and Nakamoto. Faryar Shirzad, Head of Policy at Coinbase. Blue Macellari, Head of Digital Assets at T. Rowe Price. And Bill Miller, the fourth CIO of Miller Value Partners. But let's start with our headlines of the day. The Bank of Japan has raised its benchmark interest rate from 1% to 1.25%, the highest level in 31 years. The widely expected hike passed by a 7-2 vote and the Bank of Japan moves further away from decades of ultra-loose monetary policy and looks to prevent inflation from overshooting its 2% target.

Saudi Aramco has told at least two European refiners that they will receive no Saudi crude oil next month after an attack damaged the kingdom's key East-West pipeline to the Red Sea. The pipeline is a critical alternative route for Saudi oil exports that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, meaning the disruption could further tighten global crude supplies and put additional pressure on oil prices if the flows cannot be restored. JP Morgan analysts saying Bitcoin could receive more support than gold if investors begin reducing their hedges around Bitcoin ETFs. While both assets have seen recent ETF inflows, JP Morgan says gold has recovered all of its earlier 2026 outflows, while Bitcoin ETFs have recovered about half. The bank points to elevated short interest and put options around Black stocks iBit as evidence that investors remain more cautious on Bitcoin than gold. JP Morgan says if that hedging demand eases, it could provide additional support for Bitcoin relative to gold.

Venech head of digital assets research Matthew Siegel told CNBC that Bitcoin could hit $100,000 by next year, pointing to government debt and potential liquidity easing as key drivers. He also says institutional investors from financial advisors to sovereign wealth funds continue buying Bitcoin despite its volatility.

The SEC has issued a temporary innovation exemption allowing certain tokenized securities venues to facilitate on-chain trading of US stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. The agent says the move is designed to help bring US capital markets into the digital age while it considers longer term rules for tokenized securities. And the CFTC is providing new regulatory clarity for software developers building tools that connect users with registered futures firms and exchanges. Under the new no action position, qualifying passive software providers can offer and market these tools without needing to register as introducing brokers or associated persons subject to current conditions.

And we are about 10 minutes into your trading day, so let's take a look at the markets now. Bitcoin is up 3.8% this morning, sitting at $78,927 per coin and climbing gold down just one-tenth of a percentage point on the day, sitting at $4,354 per ounce. The SPY, let's take a look there. Not much movement this morning, sitting at $7,626. And of course, all the conversation is on oil. The WTI crude up 1.3% this morning, sitting at $103 per barrel. Anything standing out to you today, Sean?

Sean Hagan (3:50)

Yeah, absolutely. You know, from the headlines, I really like seeing the SEC and CFTC step in so quickly. You know, also, I think it's pretty funny how Coinbase initially or immediately launched high yield on their stable coin deposits as a response to Clarity not passing. On the market open, I think, you know, everything is pretty tame there. One thing of note is ASST, right? Up 5% on the open. They always have such explosive opens, right? They kind of just dominate the market open, especially on up days. And, you know, you see an asset that volatile and some people say, we want more volatility. I know yesterday they announced there's going to be an ETF.

An ETF provider is launching ASSX, which will be 2X volatility. So if you were trading that, you'd be up a nice little 10 to 12 on the morning.

Grace Remington (4:40)

All right. Yeah, not bad. Well, you know who else is making headlines? Michael Saylor. And not for the reasons you'd expect. Apparently, he goes to jury duty. Take a look. You probably saw this photo making the rounds on X this week. Michael Saylor and Jeff Bezos hanging out. Oh, that's not the chart. Well, hopefully we get the image in there. There he is.