Bitcoin finance, weekly · 10 to 16 October · Published by Hemi Labs Stablecoins go to work at Visa. Bitcoin yield takes shape. The week in five lines Visa moved USDC funding into production for cross-border payouts on 15 October. US spot ETFs lost $146M in four trading days, after losing $679M the week before. More BTC went to loans. cbBTC posted on Morpho rose 600 to 49,550, while Spark lost 1,191 BTC. MSCI finalized rules that could drop Strategy and Metaplanet from its indexes on 30 November. Hemi's Oxygen heads to audit, and ZK proving stays on track for Q4. By the numbers Week to 16 October; ETF flows through 15 October
Visa Takes Stablecoin Payments Out of the Lab Visa Direct now lets businesses fund cross-border payouts with USDC, around the clock, with Inyo Global first to go live. Thirteen months after the first pilot, it is in commercial production.
Sources: Visa, 15 Oct · The Block OUR READ Stablecoins are becoming the funding leg of mainstream payments. The open question for Bitcoin finance is whether BTC becomes the collateral those dollars are borrowed against.
ETF Selling Slows. Bitcoin Loans Keep Growing. Spot ETFs lost $146 million in four trading days as BTC held near $81,000. Inside Bitcoin DeFi, coins left Spark and moved into Morpho collateral. US spot BTC ETF net flows by week
Weeks run Saturday to Friday. *Through 15 Oct. Source: Farside IBIT and FBTC led the outflows at −$93.6M and −$49.6M. Bitcoin DeFi's share of all DeFi rose to 4.88% from 4.79%. Bitcoin left Spark again BTC posted with lenders, net of borrowing
Spark's −1,191 BTC: cbBTC −1,147, LBTC −216, WBTC +173. DefiLlama, Morpho API. Institutions MSCI moves to drop bitcoin treasury companies. Firms failing four of five ratios become ineligible from 30 Nov; Strategy and Metaplanet are named. Decrypt Metaplanet moves to cut its bitcoin loan. Borrowing hit 17.7% of its BTC's value; a ¥52B convertible partly repays it. TDnet Strategy buys back more than it buys bitcoin: $192.4M of STRC against $21.5M of BTC. 8-K A Korean bank lends against bitcoin. Jeonbuk Bank's first won loan secured by custodied BTC. SINGLE SOURCE CoinDesk
Bitcoin Yield Gets Real BTC-paid products now offer up to a 3% target with no token incentives, lending against BTC keeps climbing, and treasury preferreds at 12 to 15% show what investors will pay for bitcoin income. What Bitcoin earns, costs to borrow, and what treasuries pay
Orange: paid in BTC. Grey: borrowing cost. Black: treasury preferreds, paid in cash. Binance, Lombard, Stacks, Morpho, Strive and BitcoinTreasuries. Lending demand is climbing. 52% of all cbBTC is now loan collateral on Morpho, up from about 7% in February 2025. Treasuries are managing capital. Strategy's buybacks ran nine times its BTC buying in the week to 11 October. Exchange wrappers won the year. cbBTC, kBTC and UBTC added about 37,800 BTC over 12 months.
Regulators Race to Define Who Holds the Coins Congress is stalled, so agencies are filling the gap. The question in each proposal: who holds the coins once they enter a smart contract. Status board As of 16 October
What the incidents cost: $92M to $108M
Interop: LayerZero support on GOAT winds down 23 to 30 Oct; LayerZero WBTC on BOB stops moving after 31 Oct. GOAT
Hemi's Proving Stack Heads to Audit From Tuesday's Midweek with Max: the hardest piece of Hemi's ZK work goes to auditors, and the Q4 roadmap holds. Oxygen goes to audit. Hemi's Bitcoin daemon stores data in a Merkle structure built for hVM queries, with full ZK provability. ZK miner private beta nears. Rewards come from a separate HEMI pool for successful runs, proof volume and bug reports. veHEMI auto-relock heads to auditors, with a one-time retroactive incentive; PoP points conversion follows in the next couple of weeks. ZK proving on track for Q4. hBitVM is targeted for Q4 but could slip to early Q1. Full recap COMMUNITY · HAIR GAMES SEASON X Candy Cascade Lands in the Arcade 500 levels of match-3 with progress saved onchain. Beat your best for Hair Points; 30,000 HEMI across the top 15, and first place wins 6,000. Earn on Hemi: BrownFi pools Merkl incentive APR as of 16 October
Jurisdictional restrictions may apply. Rates may fluctuate based on market conditions.
Ahead: Money20/20, a Fed Call and an Index Cut
Figures as of 16 October 2026, 19:45 UTC, from DefiLlama, CoinGecko, Morpho, Farside, Merkl and onchain reads. SINGLE SOURCE marks items confirmed in only one place. Hemi Pulse is published by Hemi Labs for information only. It is not investment, legal or tax advice. Digital assets involve risk. |
Hemi Pulse - October 16, 2026
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