Ecosystem Update September 2025

We are pleased to share the September 2025 Ecosystem Update, covering developments across the macro environment, market performance, and the broader industry landscape.

Macro Overview

September 2025 was a dynamic month that set the stage for a potentially bullish October, as Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $125,000 for the first time ever. The asset gained 5.3% over the month, rising from $108,000 to above $114,000. A strong early rally pushed prices to $118,000 by mid-month before a sharp correction erased much of the advance. However, a late rebound restored momentum, keeping the broader uptrend intact. The $107,400 low from September 1 held as firm support, while the new pivot at $109,000 (September 25 low) now anchors the short-term structure. As long as this level holds, the setup remains constructive—reinforced by the month-end recovery above $111,000.

Against traditional assets, Bitcoin’s ~10% gain in September lagged gold’s 12.4% surge but outperformed the S&P 500 (+4.8%).

Overall the market cap peaked towards August’s all-time high of $4.25 trillion, reflecting the continued and increased positive sentiment in the market.

Q3 2025 marked a key milestone as the market cap broke above the $4 trillion threshold and has remained above this level through October so far. This ongoing strength highlights rising adoption, deepening institutional participation, and broader investor interest across the digital-asset landscape.

Digital Asset Treasuries Expansion

Digital asset treasuries continued to expand, led by public companies such as MicroStrategy and Bitmine, which together drove total corporate Bitcoin holdings to around $135 billion, according to VanEck. This trend underscores a growing movement among listed firms and institutional treasuries to treat Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset, reinforcing the emerging “corporate gold” thesis.

VanEck’s report also highlighted the rise of new entrants to this segment, with mid-cap tech and energy firms beginning to allocate to BTC through convertible debt issuances and balance-sheet integrations. The increasing institutionalization of Bitcoin treasuries underscores how corporate adoption continues to deepen even amid macro uncertainty.

Increased Institutional Participation

Beyond corporate treasuries, Morgan Stanley — one of the world’s leading investment institutions — updated its Global Investment Committee (GIC) guidelines to include crypto allocations of up to 4% for high-risk (“Opportunistic Growth”) portfolios and 2% for balanced strategies, while maintaining 0% for conservative mandates. The bank acknowledged crypto’s strong long-term performance but cautioned that volatility may rise under macro stress. Industry Analysts see this as another milestone in the mainstream institutional adoption of digital assets.

Furthermore, Swift - the backbone of global interbank communication and settlement infrastructure - made notable progress in blockchain adoption through its partnership with Chainlink, and announced plans for a new blockchain-based ledger. The collaboration enables financial institutions in the Swift network to interact with public and private blockchains using existing ISO 20022 messaging standards. Early use cases include tokenized fund transactions with UBS, and on-chain corporate actions processing with partners such as DTCC and Euroclear. The initiative marks a major step toward connecting traditional finance infrastructure with blockchain ecosystems, easing institutional adoption of tokenized assets.

On product level, the DeFi derivatives also saw notable shifts in September. Perpetual futures DEXs such as Aster and Hyperliquid have rapidly gained traction, capturing roughly one-third of total crypto fee revenues. As shown in recent market data, Hyperliquid’s share surged steadily through Q3, while Aster emerged as a strong new entrant toward month-end. This trend underscores the growing competitiveness of decentralized derivatives platforms, which are beginning to rival centralized exchanges in both liquidity depth and user adoption.

Macro Economical Impact to the Crypto Industry

From a macroeconomic standpoint, The U.S. economy has entered an early stage of stagflation. For the first time in more than three decades, the Federal Reserve has begun cutting policy rates while inflation remains well above its 2% target. On September 17, the Fed reduced rates by 25 basis points, signaling the start of an easing cycle that could extend through year-end.

This policy shift was not a choice but a necessity, triggered by a sharp deterioration in the labor market. Data from August show that the U.S. economy has lost more than 1.7 million jobs since 2024, and new hiring is no longer sufficient to stabilize unemployment, now back at its highest level since 2021. Employment — long the foundation of U.S. economic resilience — is showing clear signs of strain.

The Fed’s challenge is compounded by persistently high inflation. The PCE index came in at 2.7% in August, while core inflation (excluding food and energy) held near 3%. Recent tariff hikes continue to feed through to import prices, adding further inflationary pressure.

At the same time, fiscal imbalances are widening. The interest burden on federal debt now exceeds 13% of annual tax revenues — a global record — while the money supply continues to expand at a pace unseen since the pandemic. The U.S. dollar has weakened sharply, posting its worst half-year performance since 1973, underscoring growing pressure on both monetary and fiscal credibility.

Outlook

Historically, October has been one of Bitcoin’s strongest months — often referred to as “Uptober.” Over the past decade, BTC delivered positive returns in 8 out of 10 Octobers, with an average monthly gain of +20.6% and a median of +14.7%. Even after challenging summer or September periods, October has frequently marked the start of renewed upward momentum - as seen in 2021 (+39.9%), 2020 (+27.7%), and 2017 (+47.8%).

Macro and regulatory factors will play a crucial role in shaping October’s market tone. Key themes to monitor include:

• Monetary policy developments - Markets will closely watch the Federal Reserve’s follow-up statements after September’s rate cut, as well as inflation and employment data, for signals on how aggressive the easing cycle may become.
• Earnings season and institutional flows - Results from large financial and tech firms, along with fund inflow data for spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, will provide insight into how mainstream capital is positioning into Q4.
• U.S. dollar and bond market moves - A continued weakening of the dollar or decline in real yields could reinforce capital rotation toward risk assets, benefiting Bitcoin and broader crypto markets.
• Fiscal dynamics - Rising U.S. deficits and record-high interest costs remain a medium-term tail risk that could support the “hard asset” narrative for Bitcoin.
• Regulatory landscape - Market participants will track potential updates from the SEC and CFTC on ETF approvals, stablecoin frameworks, or custody rules, all of which could influence institutional engagement and market confidence.

Overall, while historical patterns favor a positive October, macro crosswinds and regulatory signals will determine whether this “Uptober” continues as a sustained Q4 rally or remains a short-lived technical bounce.

Group Update

After a long period spent addressing historical issues related to the group’s subsidiaries - primarily Incredulous Labs - our team was fully focused during September on developing and crystallizing the final key components of its revamped strategic vision for the mid to long term. This aims to establish a more sustainable and scalable foundation for future growth and to strategically position the company for its next phase of development.

The comprehensive strategic vision report will cover key topics - from the company’s historical reflection on key events (i.e., milestones achieved and lessons learned) and subsequent structural refinements to the introduction of new strategic business pillars, financial and capital-allocation frameworks, and the mid- to long-term execution roadmap - and shall be published in the first half of the week commencing the 13th of October, 2025.

In line with our different strides to establish recurring revenue paths for the group, we have officially launched our first peaq validator - along with other validator operators such as Deutsche Telekom, Lufthansa, among others - enabling the network’s token holders to participate in securing the network via staking while simultaneously earning more rewards in addition to our regular staking activities that the group have been doing since the end of 2024. 

The validator seat is accessible via the following link https://app.peaq.xyz/stake and is displayed below: 

The setup of the peaq validator marks an initial step towards launching further validator nodes across different ecosystems in the future, provided that a reasonable level of profitability and low maintenance efforts can be achieved.

Year to date, the group has generated 1,651,152 PEAQ tokens through its staking activities, which have been monetized regularly on a dollar-cost averaging (DCA) basis. 

Beyond our continuous support for peaq and its ecosystem, our team attended an exclusive event organized by the Silencio team in Munich on the 11th of September where Silencio team presented its new vision involving the integration of voice AI and decentralized audio intelligence. 

Furthermore, as part of its regulatory obligations towards the respective stock exchanges. Advanced Blockchain has published its unaudited half-year results. Contrary to 2024, when the first half-year was positively impacted by the successful sale of the company’s tracebloc stake and no other operational revenues, revenue for the first half of 2025 benefited from operational services between group companies and, for the first time, from interest income arising from intercompany financings. However, the result is affected by ongoing legal and consulting costs, which we, however, aim and work on decreasing over time.

Lastly, the AGM is coming closer and closer. We are in the final stages of preparing for this important corporate event, which will take place in a physical format at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management on 20th October. This event will provide a good opportunity for investors to address their feedback, support and concerns towards Advanced Blockchain AG. The company is also requesting shareholder support for the renewal of its capital allowances. The management has put strong focus on minimizing shareholder impact, while compromising on financial flexibility for the company. This financial flexibility sets the basis for future profitable strategic growth.

Portfolio Update

peaq: September witnessed a strong growth of peaqosystem in a while. Three projects chose to build on peaq in September. Newcoin, featuring 100,000+ agents, 45,000+ experts, and 30,000,000+ iterations of human feedback, builds its intelligence layer on peaq. DualMint, tokenizing boring everyday businesses serving local communities such as laundromats, ATM networks & A/C Units, is onboarding more human-centric machineries to peaq. While Robo Rumble is the world’s first prediction market for robot fights. peaqosystem is diversifying.

peaq’s Get Real campaign welcomed its Season 2 in September, following its previous success in Season 1. The Get Real campaign Season 2 continues to incentivize use of peaq apps with a 210 million $PEAQ reward pool. This campaign also boosted peaq’s transactions growth by 500% in Q3.

Polymer: Polymer is integrated into Plasma chain, a L1 blockchain for instant settlement of stablecoin payments. Polymer now enables Plasma to transact with other blockchains with its efficient sub-second crosschain interoperability. 

Panoptic: Panoptic discovered a serious security flaw in their V1 of the protocol. A researcher reported a shortcut that could be tricked. If exploited, an attacker could have borrowed money, opened huge leveraged positions, and withdrawn profits without depositing any real collateral, potentially draining the protocol’s funds. Luckily, the flaw was found by a security researcher before anyone malicious used it. Panoptic quickly warned users, who withdrew most funds, and the team safely rescued the rest in a coordinated “whitehat” operation. In the end, no user lost money, and the researcher received a $250,000 bounty. This paved the way for its continued development of its V2. 

XMAQUINA: XMAQUINA closed its investment into Figure AI, a humanoid robot manufacturer backed by OpenAI, Jeff Bezos, Microsoft and Nvidia. By making Figure AI part of XMAQUINA’s portfolio, it solidifies its idea of decentralized investment decision making via its $DEUS token in the robotics industry. 

XMAQUINA also had its third round of $DEUS auction closed in 20 minutes, successfully raising $3 million.

Silencio: Silencio’s data collection business model extended to Voice data, with data buyers specifically asking for certain speech data such as French and Australian English. This extends Silencio’s vision beyond collecting noise data, to a more generic mobile data collection protocol with limitless possibilities.

zCloak Network: zCloak Network successfully launched their new product - zCloak Money. It is the first enterprise grade passkey wallet, unifying governance, compliance, risk control, and privacy into one unhackable, fully on-chain architecture—transforming multisig from cost center into value driver.

Arweave & AO: Arweave, together with AO, hosted Arweave Day Asia 2025 in September. Arweave Day Asia 2025 is a multi-day meetup focused on fostering collaboration, evangelism, technical innovation, and community engagement around the Arweave protocol in Asia, with a mix of talks, workshops, hackathon showcases, networking, and interactive experiences.

—------------------------

September 2025 combined strong momentum across the digital asset market with continued progress at Advanced Blockchain AG. Amid a record-setting Bitcoin environment and rising institutional participation, the group focused on finalizing its long-term strategic vision, strengthening operational efficiency, and activating new recurring-revenue initiatives such as the launch of its first peaq validator. Portfolio projects continued to advance, with Silencio unveiling its expanded Voice AI vision, peaq driving further ecosystem growth, and multiple ventures reaching critical milestones. As we approach the AGM and release of our Strategic Vision Report, Advanced Blockchain remains committed to transparency, disciplined execution, and value creation for its shareholders.

We thank our shareholders and partners for their continued support and look forward to sharing further progress in the coming months.

Best regards,
Your Advanced Blockchain Team