While most market participants were resting, the crypto sphere experienced a series of landmark events. The main news came from the prediction platform Polymarket, which announced the launch of perpetual futures trading with leverage of up to 20x. The service, named Polymarket Perps, will be available to users outside the United States — in jurisdictions where this does not contradict local legislation. Trading will be possible not only in cryptocurrencies, but also in stocks, commodities, and other assets. This is a bold step that could radically change the derivatives landscape, attracting a new wave of speculative capital to the platform.
Bitcoin and the market: figures and trends
On the morning of September 4, the leading cryptocurrency was trading near the $80,895 mark, showing a 4.13% increase over the day. During the upward movement, the price traveled from $77,200 to $81,800, indicating confident buyer momentum. Ether (ETH) also showed positive dynamics, gaining 4.33% and settling around $2,506 after rising from $2,380.
Among the top 25 coins by market capitalization, a synchronized upward trend was observed. The growth leaders were Zcash (ZEC) with a gain of 15.62%, Uniswap (UNI) — 9.99%, and Cardano (ADA) — 6.79%. XRP strengthened by 5.72%. The only laggard among large assets was Monero (XMR), which lost 2.09%. In the top 100, Pons (PONS) stood out, rising by 32.16%, while Filecoin (FIL) became the main laggard, plunging by 5.74%.
The inflow of funds into spot crypto ETFs was impressive: bitcoin funds attracted $730.87 million, Ethereum products — $141.39 million, Solana — $6.40 million, and XRP and Dogecoin — $6.14 million and $419,410, respectively. The fear and greed index jumped to 74 points, remaining in the "greed" zone, which sharply contrasts with the reading of 27 points a month earlier. Over the day, positions worth $537.28 million were liquidated, with the main burden falling on shorts ($456.46 million), confirming the strength of bullish pressure.
Institutional view and regulatory signals
Fidelity warns: the August rally is not a guarantee that the bear cycle has ended. Company analysts point to factors that could reverse the market, including exiting the low-volatility period, regulatory changes (in particular, the CLARITY bill and the SEC's Regulation Crypto Assets rules), monetary policy, and institutional inflows.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) confirmed that El Salvador has not spent government funds on purchasing bitcoin since June 2025, and all coin accumulations came exclusively from private donations. Further BTC accumulation beyond the documented amounts is not expected. If approved by the IMF board of directors, the country could gain access to additional financing of approximately $140 million.
Curve DAO: change in risk management
The Curve DAO community approved funding for the yRisk team, which will take over risk management for the crvUSD stablecoin and the Llamalend protocol. This decision followed the early termination of cooperation with LlamaRisk. Notably, both members of yRisk are lead developers of the Resupply protocol, which lost about $9.6 million in June 2025 as a result of a hack. The vote was almost unanimous: 536.9 million veCRV "for" and not a single vote "against."
My analysis: The launch of Polymarket perps is an attempt to create a "killer" of traditional derivatives by combining prediction markets and speculative trading. However, given recent security incidents in DeFi, the yRisk team will have to prove that they have learned lessons from past mistakes. The market, meanwhile, is clearly in a phase of euphoria, and investors should remain cautious.