On 19 August the US Treasury said it would at least double the size of its buyback operations on long-dated government debt, from a ceiling of $2 billion to at least $4 billion each, starting 9 September. A buyback is the government buying back its own older bonds.

Wednesday was the first day of the bigger program. The Wall Street Journal reported that the 10-year yield rose 0.03 percentage point to 4.836%, the highest in nearly three years.

That yield sets the cost of borrowing for almost everything else, including the money that funds risky assets. It went up on the day the government spent billions trying to push it down.

Oil went the same way. MarketWatch reported that prices advanced on Wednesday after the US said it destroyed five Iranian crude oil vessels. Brent settled at $101.21 and WTI at $96.05.

Expensive oil is the oldest route to worse inflation, and it arrived in the week two inflation reports land and the Fed decides.

There is one number going the other way. Glassnode puts US core inflation at 2.5%, a two-year low. Inflation expectations sit at 3.6%, a gap Glassnode calls the widest in three years.

Bitcoin is $78,311 this morning, down 0.4%. Glassnode places the ceiling above it at $83,000 to $86,000. Three separate measures meet there: what long-term holders paid, where the futures market would be forced to buy, and where US spot ETF buyers break even.

Bitcoin stalled about 1.5% under that. Holders are taking less money off the table than at any point this year, less than half the August rate. There are few sellers, and no buyers strong enough to push through $86,000.

When that is the state of things, the next move comes from outside. Two events arrive inside six days: the August inflation report at 8:30 on Friday morning, and the Fed on 16 September.

Consensys said on Wednesday it is splitting in two. The current legal entity rebrands as MetaMask and keeps the wallet and the consumer business. A new company takes the Consensys name and keeps the protocol and institutional work: Linea, Besu and Teku.

Joe Lubin, who founded Consensys, becomes chairman and chief executive of MetaMask and executive chairman of the new Consensys. Mike Kriak runs the new company as chief executive, with David Cunningham as president. The legal separation is expected to close by the end of 2026.

Nothing changes for users. MetaMask says holdings, logins and the app itself are unaffected and there is nothing to migrate.

The wallet most people use to reach Ethereum now answers to a company whose only business is that wallet. Its Money Account launch says where the wallet is going, which is a replacement for a bank account rather than somewhere to keep tokens.

Meta launched Muse on Tuesday, a personal AI agent that works inside your apps rather than answering questions about them. It books travel, fills in forms, negotiates bills and buys from Shopify and Ticketmaster merchants.

It reached the App Store top five in under a day, and Meta shares rose 6.6% on Wednesday. There are more than three billion monthly users to sell it to.

Payments run through Link by Stripe on single-use cards, and you approve each one as it happens. No wallet, no stablecoin, no chain.

Crypto has spent two years arguing that machines buying things would need on-chain rails, and a standard for it already exists. Solana has held first place for agent payments two weeks running. The largest consumer test of the idea so far runs on the card networks.