AI startup Instinct closed a $1B Series C at a $10B valuation, quadrupling its worth in one month with backing from Sequoia, Benchmark, and

The post Instinct raises $1B in funding, quadruples valuation to $10B appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Unchecked self-improving AI could outpace human control, necessitating global regulatory frameworks to ensure safety and alignment with human values.

The post Top AI executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft urge policymakers to regulate self-improving AI appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Spectra's Stellar launch could accelerate tokenized asset adoption, bridging traditional finance with blockchain, enhancing market liquidity.

The post Spectra Finance launches fixed-term markets for deJTRSY on Stellar appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Ondo Perps' integration of spot trading and perpetual futures on one platform enhances trading efficiency but raises regulatory and risk concerns.

The post Ondo Perps adds spot trading for 12 tokenized stocks and ETFs appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The partnership could revolutionize cross-border payments, reducing costs and enhancing financial inclusion in emerging markets through regulated stablecoins.

The post HashKey MENA unveils stablecoin payments pilot with Aptos and Daya appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy and Strive Scoop Up More Than 2,700 Bitcoin in a Week

Bitcoin treasuries are loading up again. 

Strategy, the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, announced Monday that it had bought 1,665 coins last week for $142.7 million — its second buy in a row after a brief hiatus. 

The Nasdaq-listed company added that it had also bought back $152 million in its preferred stock, STRC. Strategy now holds 847,666 bitcoins worth $70.5 billion, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Elsewhere, the fifth biggest bitcoin treasury, Strive, said it had last week snapped up 1,107 BTC for a total cost of  $94.5 million — bringing its holdings to 27,462 coins. 

The two companies have continued to stack coins despite the bitcoin treasury model taking a hit. Major treasuries like Strategy, Satsuma, Smarter Web Company, Sequans, Nakamoto, and Empery Digital have all sold bitcoin this year to repay debt, fund operations or finance buybacks, while others have folded or pivoted to AI infrastructure as their share prices collapsed. 

Strategy stock (MSTR) has lost over 50% of its value over the past year. Strive (ASST) is down by more than 30% over the same period. 

Still, both Strategy and Strive have reassured investors that it’s just business as usual and bitcoin will bounce back. 

Strive CEO Matt Cole has repeatedly said that the company is debt-free, with zero margin requirements, and zero encumbered bitcoin, calling it a balance sheet built to thrive through volatility. 

Strategy has defended having to sell bitcoin this year, with CEO Phong Le boasting that the company now has a “bullet-proof balance sheet” because of the sales, and that it was the “right trade at the time” to sell when it did.  

The software company last week announced it plans to pay investors daily dividends on four of its preferred stocks — STRF, STRC, STRK, and STRD.

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at close to $83,409, down 3% over the past week. 

This post Strategy and Strive Scoop Up More Than 2,700 Bitcoin in a Week first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Dollars In, Bitcoin Out: Breez SDK Debuts New Stablecoin Feature

Despite being so-called digital dollars, stablecoins aren’t always simple to use. They run on various crypto networks that need different digital wallets — the type of thing that can put crypto newbies and seasoned bitcoiners alike off. 

But Bitcoin software provider Breez has come up with a solution: Apps built on its Breez SDK can now let users with a bitcoin balance accept stablecoin payments from over 30 networks. 

Breez’s SDK is a developer toolkit that lets apps add bitcoin payments without building the payment infrastructure themselves. It handles wallet creation, sending and receiving and Lightning Network payments. Developers can offer bitcoin features with a few lines of code instead of running nodes or managing liquidity.

Breez said Monday that with the new feature, the receiver picks the sender’s network and an amount. The SDK generates a deposit address and shows what will arrive, and the sender pays from their usual wallet as normal. 

Flashnet converts the payment in the background, and the funds land in the receiver’s non-custodial wallet as bitcoin, or as dollars if they use the stable balance feature. 

Breez released its send USDT/USDC feature in June, allowing a single Breez-powered balance to now move stablecoins in both directions across nearly any network. 

It’s the latest in a series of usability upgrades, after Passkey Login, instant Cash App onboarding, and Stable Balance.

Breez has been layering on features to make bitcoin apps feel more like regular fintech apps: passkey login instead of seed phrases, instant onboarding, dollar-denominated balances, and now cross-chain stablecoin payments. Breez’s Glow, which debuted in August, is its reference app for showing what the SDK can do.

Breez in July announced it was working with Turnkey in a deal letting developers add non-custodial Bitcoin to apps running wallets from their own servers — solving a custody problem that has kept many of the largest consumer platforms from integrating Bitcoin at all.

This post Dollars In, Bitcoin Out: Breez SDK Debuts New Stablecoin Feature first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Trezor Safe 7 Review: The FOSS Self Custody Hardware Wallet

Some hardware wallets aim to create air-gapped devices that can be assembled by hand by end users, or tailored to industry professionals in a free and open-source ethos. Others close the source and aspire to become the Apple or Macintosh of hardware wallets, leading through their design of user guardrails. Trezor seems to have found a middle ground with the Safe 7.

The device feels like what you might expect from a modern iPhone, metal exterior, a wide screen that reaches the border of the device, and tactile feedback clearly designed to deliver satisfaction to the user. The Safe 7 manages to give you the impression, the experience, that Bitcoin is a real thing, a physical thing, in a way most other wallets do not. 

Trezor also navigates the divide between Bitcoin and crypto users quite well. It pulls it off by delivering two different firmware stacks and designs; the standard multi-coin version, which comes in black and green, and the Bitcoin-only orange. Users can switch back and forth at will, regardless of which one they order, but Bitcoiners who already know what they want can get the orange version and won’t have to do any off-path firmware upgrades. Both types of users can switch to the other firmware type if they are so inclined, regardless of device color.

The choice does, however, have some consequences; many updates to firmware revolve around coins other than Bitcoin. As a result, Bitcoin-only firmware is leaner; Trezor’s support articles put it plainly: “Added advantages of running Bitcoin-only firmware include fewer regular updates (compared to the Universal firmware) and reduced risk of bugs or security issues.” 

The Magic Words 

The first thing you’ll notice if you have some experience with Bitcoin but have never used Trezor is the size of their word list. The Safe 7 offers 20 words for the wallet’s backup, rather than 12 or 24 as most others. This is a security design choice that Trezor has been building on for many years.

The 20-word standard called SLIP-39 was first introduced by Trezor in 2019 with their announcement of the Shamir backup feature. Shamir lets users split up the wallet’s backup seed words into shards, a threshold of which can be used to recreate the Bitcoin wallet, but any one of which alone is insufficient.

Take, for example, a two-of-three Shamir setup; users write down three lists of 20 words, and store them in separate physical locations: the bank, the home, the office. Any one of those found by a thief or destroyed by a fire or flood is not a catastrophic loss. The single shard can not give anyone access to the wallet, and the other two shards let the owner regain control and move the coins to a new wallet setup. This quality is often called ‘redundancy’, and it is also achieved by multi-signature wallets, though with different trade-offs, such as onchain transaction costs. Shamir backups come from an old, well-known cryptographic scheme called Shamir Secret Sharing, which Trezor built its own implementation of. 

The extra words, compared to the more popular 12-word standard, do not give users more entropy; Trezor is clear that users can expect the same 128 bits of entropy as with 12-word seeds. However, the word list used in SLIP-39 is, according to Trezor, carefully curated to avoid confusing or similar words. 

SLIP-39 also unlocks something that BIP-39 does not; extendability into Shamir. Users who initially create a single seed 20-word backup with a Trezor device can later on create a redundant set of Shamir shares, like a three-of-five. These shares recreate the same wallet, which means users do not need to do onchain transactions to transfer funds. They should, however, consider destroying their original 20-word single seed, since it alone will also be able to restore the wallets involved. 

There is a full FAQ from Trezor that interested users can read up on. SLIP-39 is supported by other wallets like Sparrow and Electrum, though it has far less adoption than its predecessor. 

Top of the Line User Experience

The Safe 7 demonstrates a deep investment in design and user experience with a series of subtle but memorable features. The most iconic of all, in my experience testing the device, was how it responds to an important approval decision, such as signing a transaction or changing the security PIN code. The user is asked to press and hold a digital button at the bottom of the screen. The device starts to slowly vibrate with an internal gyro, as two green lights start to flow from the button around the edges of the screen. As the lights reach the top of the screen to meet, the gyro accelerates, producing an escalating mechanical sound and sensation in your hand. The experience culminates in the full illumination of the screen frame, with a small green LED lighting up at the top, confirming the completion of the action. The whole sequence happens in a second or two, but it makes this otherwise rather digital and abstract experience of moving bitcoin feel quite real. 

Compared to other Trezors I have tested, like the Model T and the classic Trezor One, the thought gone into making it comfortable to use cryptographic money is evident. The buttons on the screen, for example, are much bigger than the Model T, resolving common mistyping occurrences that can potentially have significant consequences, such as when inputting the security PIN. If a user inputs such a PIN incorrectly in most hardware wallets, it can escalate negative consequences up to wiping the device memory. The bigger finger-sized digital buttons relieve that unnecessary stress. The metal casing without a doubt gives the Safe 7 a sense of maturity, leaving behind the plastic shell of older models. 

One curious feature within the interface is that of a “Wipe PIN”, a special PIN code that, when entered on device login, deletes the user data. This feature is not well explained in Trezor’s public documentation; its function is written about, but not its purpose: What risk or threat is it trying to address? What use case? The more paranoid bitcoiners have asked for features of this sort as a solution to low-likelihood but high-impact scenarios like the infamous “wrench attack”, where a thief forces the user to open their wallet to steal the funds. 

The problem with Trezor’s Wipe PIN is that it makes it quite obvious that you just deleted the wallet’s contents, something a wrench attacker is not likely to be happy about in that scenario. At least one other hardware wallet has implemented a more sophisticated version of this feature, which would delete the main user’s wallet, but open up a second ‘decoy’ wallet, and not give up the trick via the UI. For those of us paranoid enough to think about this, a more advanced wipe PIN would be welcome. 

The Safe 7 also has Bluetooth connectivity as well as an internal battery that can be charged via Qi2 wireless chargers. The device can be used via USB-C connection with Bluetooth disabled via settings. This alternative operation mode frees the user from cables, another subtle but powerful design choice that relieves added stress during the signing of a transaction. Bitcoin’s immutable, irreversible spending nature makes every signing decision high stakes enough as it is. For more paranoid users, a hardware off switch for the Bluetooth antenna would be nice. 

The Airgap Principle

No Trezor model before the Safe 7 came with an internal battery or Bluetooth. Adding such technology to the device is a big decision with significant gains in what a broader consumer base might expect from modern hardware, but also introduces some potential risks. 

Internal batteries have been known to fail over time in many such devices, from hardware wallets to mobile phones, swelling and breaking out of their case. This can be a hazard and can destroy device memory or accessibility. Trezor addresses this concern, explaining that they chose the LiFePO₄ battery type, whose “chemistry is more stable and safer than common lithium-ion batteries.” In their documentation, they claim that “swelling is extremely unlikely.”

Meanwhile, integrating Bluetooth means adding a broadly closed-source software and hardware stack that unlocks interaction at range with the device, undermining the air-gapped principles of bitcoin cold storage. To solve this issue, hardware manufacturers like Trezor try to isolate the Bluetooth antenna and use it only to send messages that are encrypted end to end. To achieve this, Trezor built the Trezor Host Protocol, a technology that encrypts data in transit to the user’s computer, and which is also used via the USB-C cable connection. Trezor does not trust the USB cables nor the Bluetooth stack with unencrypted data. 

Nevertheless, this wireless connection arguably moves the Safe 7 out of the air-gapped or cold storage category of Bitcoin wallets, closer to a high-security warm wallet, where a hot wallet would be a general computer or server connected to the internet, holding private key material. 

Hardware Overview and Entropy

If the Coldcard hack taught us anything, however, it is that cold storage is meaningless without good entropy. Entropy is supposed to be the random and unpredictable input that is used to create a secret in cryptography, such as rolling dice 100 times and writing down the results. The dice outputs are the entropy that’s run through cryptographic algorithms to generate private and public key pairs, aka the seed words. 

Trezor has a full and in-depth article about how they generate and use entropy to create wallet key pairs. With the Safe 7, they use four sources of entropy: 

• The host computer or phone entropy. 
• A hardware TRNG in the STM32 microcontroller – one of Trezor’s computer chips.
• The Optiga secure element, the second computer chip in the Trezor hardware.
• The TROPIC01, their latest “independently auditable” secure element chip. 

The four independent sources are supposed to combine when generating your wallet. The firmware that handles this logic is GPL 3 open source.

Trezor does not currently enable user-generated entropy input into the creation of a wallet. There are no dice rolls, though the user can add a ‘passphrase’ or ‘25th word’ to accounts to keypairs already created, which serves a similar function. 

Trezor CTO Tomas Susanka explained in a conversation with Efrat Fenigson that user-generated entropy only matters if the code actually uses it. He pointed out that the Coldcard bug was not a failure of hardware-generated entropy, but rather that the firmware failed to use that high-quality entropy in its software implementation, due to the bug. 

Danny Sanders, CCO of Trezor, echoed this sentiment, though he told Bitcoin Magazine that the topic of user-added entropy had been “discussed a lot,” adding that “it’s not a hard no.” Rather, the broader user base of Trezor, which, according to Sanders, is “multiples” that of Coldcard, “cannot be asked to throw dice.” He added that “they already have a mental overload with just writing down words” refering to the 20-word seed backup. While the security benefits of user-added entropy are marginal, when other sources of machine entropy are actually used properly. 

Shipping, Phishing and Wipe Codes

In terms of getting a Trezor hardware wallet, or any hardware wallet for that matter, buying it online and shipping it home is increasingly unpalatable. Trezor recently joined Ledger among large crypto hardware providers whose user databases have been hacked, specifically their shipping partner ShipMonk. 67,000 U.S. customer records were compromised from ShipMonk databases earlier this month; most of these records were supposed to have been deleted by the shipping company, according to Trezor. The result is an increased risk of targeted harassment of those users, who in countries like France are already high on the list for organized crime. 

From an operational security perspective, it is now basically a requirement to have a P.O. Box for crypto-related purchases. No large corporation or government can be trusted to keep user personal data secure; the history of the internet demonstrates that conclusively. Users can also attend large conferences and buy their hardware wallet of choice with cash or bitcoin and avoid the shipping risk altogether.

However, on the topic, Trezor teased out an “Anonymous delivery” service they are building out in response to this breach. Sanders told Bitcoin Magazine the service will be available in the E.U. in a matter of weeks and will expand to the U.S. soon after. The company currently still uses ShipMonk according to public data. 

Concluding Thoughts

Having used Trezor for many years, albeit older models like the Model T and the Trezor One, the Safe 7 strikes me as a serious evolution of the product and a strong addition to a self-custody setup. In particular, as part of a multi-vendor multisig, or as a daily-use warm wallet. Its Shamir backup feature also deserves a place among more advanced self-custody solutions. 

This post Trezor Safe 7 Review: The FOSS Self Custody Hardware Wallet first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Samourai Letter #7: Notes From The Inside

Dear Reader,

It has been many months since I last wrote you. Part of the reason for that is because I spent most of June and part of July in transit from FPC Morgantown to FCI McKean – a four hour drive away. For most of that time I had no access to pen, paper, stamps, or the rudimentary email system that I use to send these letters out. 

The other part of the reason why I haven’t written in so long is that once I did finally arrive I was so shell shocked from the entire ordeal that I needed time to decompress and process that month long trauma that is BOP transit. 

Six days after arriving at FCI McKean I finally put pen to paper to document the journey but the result was less of a letter and more of a trauma dump to help me process the absolute worst 30 days of my life. I decided to take a step back and give it some time before I sent out this letter. I have been slowly adapting to life here at McKean, and in good time I will tell you all about this place, but for this letter I want to go back to early June. 

I want to tackle the entire transit process and explain how what should have been a quick four hour drive turned into 30 days, two trans-continental flights, three multi-hour bus rides, a cell mate doing time for murder, and a cell mate who couldn’t stop shitting (I preferred the murderer). This letter will likely be published in two parts due to the length. Thank you for your continued reading and support. 

“I finally put pen to paper to document […] the absolute worst 30 days of my life.”

On June 5th I was told I would be transferred from FPC Morgantown for a drug and alcohol treatment program. Successfully completing the program (which takes about 9-10 months) rewards you with a year off your sentence, so it is seemingly well worth the hassle of moving to take it. 

For security reasons they do not tell you when you will be leaving or where you will be going. While being transferred in BOP custody you almost always are put on an airplane being piloted and operated by the US Marshalls to be taken to BOP transit hub in Oklahoma City. After a few days in Oklahoma you are put back on a plane and taken to your destination. From speaking with others I was told to expect 1-2 weeks of transit. 

I also heard that it costs around $10,000 per prisoner to be transited through Oklahoma. I figured that since I am classified as minimum security, spent close to two years on pre-trial release, self surrendered, and had no incident reports since being incarcerated I would be a good candidate for what is called a transfer furlough – where I would be responsible for transporting myself to my new institution at my own expense. 

I put in my official request for a transfer furlough on June 5th. On June 8th my request was denied without explanation, I would be going through transit, no way around it. 

On June 10th I was called to Receiving and Discharge (R&D) at 6:00 AM. Though I did not know it at the time I was about to embark on a month long fever dream through two different holding facilities, share cells with murderers, be locked down behind iron barred cells for 23 hours a day, and much more. 

Leaving through R&D is much the same as when I arrived. I was stripped, searched, issued a pair for ill fitting clothes (khaki elastic band trousers, a brown cotton shirt, threadbare boxers, socks that didn’t match, and a pair of slip on blue canvas shoes). 

I was put into a holding cell while the other inmates being transferred went through the same process. There were six of us transiting from Morgantown on that day. We were each lined up and called forward so that the officer could fasten shackles to our ankles and cuffs to our wrists. 

Once cuffed and shackled the officer wrapped a chain around our waist and attacked the handcuffs to them. The end result being that you could not lift your arms or hands much higher than your waist, and you could walk only in painful short shuffling steps. We were handed a brown paper bag with ‘breakfast’ in it (bread, peanut butter, bologna) and escorted to the waiting bus. 

“We were each lined up and called forward so that the officer could fasten shackles to our ankles and cuffs to our wrists.”

The bus was a cross between yellow school bus and a coach (think Greyhound or National Express) and already filled with inmates from other prisons in the area. There were guys from all security levels on the bus. Some guys serving 20 years coming from the “pen” (The US Penitentiary), some guys like me serving short sentences and going to a camp. 

The atmosphere was generally friendly on the bus, most of the USP guys were interested in what the camp was like and how much contraband like vapes and phones cost. At the front of the bus behind a metal grate were the driver and three heavily armed officers. They all wore stab vests and carried handguns and long guns. 

As we departed Morgantown I was excited to watch the scenery go by. This was the first taste of the outside world I had in 6 months. I took in all the sights. The trailer park, the run down gas station, the XXX store, it all was captivating. After about an hour of driving the bus suddenly exited the highway and stopped on the side of a small road. After 20 minutes idling I noticed one of the officers walking back to the bus with a bag of biscuits from Tudor’s Biscuit World – a West Virginia institution. 

We remained on the side of the road as each officer one by one went and bought breakfast, an endeavor that took over an hour. I decided Breakfast sounded good but my bread fell out of bag onto the floor. Breakfast would have to wait. As quickly as we got back on the road we suddenly pulled off again. This time each officer went one by one into a gas station to buy cigarettes and energy drinks. 

The metal of the shackles were starting to dig into my ankles, my wrists were cramping, my eardrums were shot beyond comprehension. Many others have said it before, but the one thing you really remember about the prison bus is how unbelievably loud it is. Every bump in the road is followed by a symphony of crashing metal. Inmates at the front of the bus maintain full conversations at full volume with their friends all the way in the back. The volume is at maximum for the entire journey. 

After about 5 hours we arrived at the Greenbriar Valley Regional Airport. There were several other prison busses parked off to the side of the runway. For the next hour or so a parade of officers from other busses would climb up and yell out a series of names. We were playing a grand game of musical chairs and for a brief moment I prayed that I would be called to another bus and spirited off to my camp bypassing the free plane ride to Oklahoma. 

Eventually musical chairs was over and we were instructed to get off the bus and directed to line of waiting US Marshalls standing in front of a plain white airplane adorned only with a small American flag on the tail fin. 

The Marshall patted me down, checked my mouth and feet and directed me to line up and wait by the front of the plane under the cockpit. They packed us in tight on the runway 10 rows of inmates at least 10 men deep. We watched inmates disembark the plane and enter the busses we just left. 

The whole thing must be a logistical nightmare for the folks at BOP and I was surprised how smoothly it all was moving. It was by no means quick, but it could have been far worse. Finally I was ordered to wobble up the stairs to board the plane. I felt like Joe Biden before falling up the stairs. 

How embarrassing it would be to eat it in front of all the convicts. I made it up without embarrassing myself. On board Air Operations Marshalls replaced flight attendants, though one really couldn’t tell any difference in demeanor between a Delta air steward herding a bunch of fat slobs in sweat suits and a US Marshall herding a bunch of prisoners. We filled each row from back to front at the direction of the Marshalls. 

I was sat in the window seat. The guy next to me sported a nifty full face tattoo and informed me he had been down 15 years and was kicked out of the USP for fighting. I informed him I was on my way to a camp and had been down for 6 months. He had nothing else to say to me after that. 

“This was the first taste of the outside world I had in 6 months.“

The plane itself had certainly seen better days, it looked to have been dated from The Cold War. The stickers commonly found plastered across the surfaces of airplanes telling you not to smoke or where to find the life vest in case of emergency – how exactly to apply said life vest while shackled and bound was not explained – were all in German and Russian. Where the hell did they get this thing from. 

The plane was filled 2/3 of the way with inmates. The final third at the front of the plane were all US Marshalls, at least 30 of them. With that, the plane took off and we were on our way to Oklahoma City. After about an hour an Air Marshall doing their best surly Delta stewardess impression threw a bag of lunch at us. It was the second – but not last – sack lunch containing 4 slices of bread, a pouch of peanut butter, two slices of turkey, and a small pack of cookies (“Cream 4 Fun” a BOP staple that even in my dire circumstances solicited a juvenile chuckle out of me). 

Sick to death at this point of the oily BOP peanut butter I happily pawned it off on the face tattoo next to me. I got started trying to fix myself a turkey sandwich – a task made difficult due to the cuffs and limited mobility. The bread was ice cold and the turkey was frozen solid. After brushing off the top layer of ice from the sliced meat and placing it between the now soggy and still freezing bread I took a bite and decided I wasn’t a great fan of turkey popsicle sandwich. The Cream 4 Fun would have to suffice for lunch. 

I was thankful for the small bottle of water that was handed out, but was not thrilled when I spilled most of it down my front contorting myself to try and twist the cap off. Shortly after lunch the Marshall went row by row to ask if we needed to use the toilet. Most people did, so the rest of the flight consisted of much jostling and shuffling to the bathroom and back. I refused, preferring to hold it, but the gentleman across the aisle let the entire plane know that he needed to take a shit, a declaration that caused much consternation and debate. 

As we approached Oklahoma City the pilot got on the intercom to let us all know it was a beautiful sunny day in Oklahoma City, a balmy 88 degrees. He failed to mention that none of us would see that sun for our entire stay in FTC Oklahoma City. 

We landed at OKC airport, went past the main terminal building towards a squat brown concrete building about 6 stories high. After what felt like an eternity we were disembarked row by row through the jet bridge directly into the airport prison. 

We shuffled single file through an assembly line of Marshalls who thankfully removed the cuffs and shackles, searched our mouths and feet again, and directed us into a dark concrete holding cell where we were packed in tight like a tin of sardines. In the corner of the room was a single stainless steel combination toilet, sink, water fountain. 

Almost immediately several inmates somehow fashioned a lighter and proceeded to get extremely high on K2 – known also as Deuce. In prisons Deuce is commonly just roach spray or rat poison drenched on a small piece of paper. 

When you light the paper and inhale the fumes you often freeze where you are standing lean over and are lost to the world around you for several minutes. I was most curious as to where the hell they were hiding these things to make it past no fewer than 3 probing searches. 

All I could think of was getting out of this claustrophobic concrete box into a housing unit with other minimum security “campers”. Everyone had warned me that security classifications would be mixed until you were assigned a housing unit. I just had to tough out the intake process. 

“You quietly wonder if Dante got it all wrong and all the circles of hell happen to be within the BOP’s Oklahoma City airport transfer facility.“

For being the official transit hub of the BOP, handling thousands of inmates every week, the staff at FTC Oklahoma City were breathtaking in their incompetence. Every last officer was less than useless, all of them wearing an expression of bewilderment as to how they happened to stumble into this predicament of dealing with a plane load of convicts, as if normally they were payroll accountants or copy clerks. 

It was as if it was everyone’s first day on the job. After jam packing us ass to elbow in the small concrete room for 4 hours – presumably they were having some sort of crisis meeting trying to determine what exactly they were supposed to do with us – a morbidly overweight officer whose stab-vest appeared to be groaning in protest at the enormity of the task of protecting such an enormous man unlocked the door and shouted that he needed five of us at a time. 

Instantly well over 100 men all desperate to be out of this hellish room push and shove their way towards the door. The only ones in no hurry are the deuce heads who have no idea where they are – and if they are indeed aware their limbs are in no mood to take any direction regarding movement – and myself who has no interest in playing grab ass with murderers and rapists. 

I wait patiently towards the back of the room and entertain myself by taking covert glances at the inmates around me to try and guess which ones are the ‘chomos’ (child molesters). You may at this point wish to chide me and extoll the virtues of not judging a book by its cover, but these books had covers that all but said “Hey Look! I’m a chomo!”. They have a look about them. 

After 45 minutes of 5 men trickling out at a time the room emptied and the deuce heads stumbled back into reality – what a horrible reality to return to from what must be a thrilling escape – and we shuffle out into the convict assembly line. 

We are commanded to undress, lift, squeeze, cough under the careful supervision of an officer no doubt cursing the recruiter at the Buttplug County job fair who never said anything about staring at genitals all day. 

Once the second strip search of the day concludes you are thrown a bundle of damp clothing with odd stains on them and hurry you further along the conveyor belt towards a long queue to go through a body scanner machine, the kind of thing you would find at an airport designed to find bombs and weapons. 

The officer manning the machine sits behind a lead curtain to shield themselves from radiation that leaks out of this whirring machine. The warning sticker helpfully informs you to keep back behind the blue line for your safety, but it turns out this warning is not for you, you are instructed to jam yourself as close as possible to the machine so they make sure to dose you with the radiation of the 6 guys ahead of you. 

Once you have been sufficiently irradiated you get pushed along where the medical officer menacingly asks if you have anything medically wrong with you, almost daring you to say anything but “no”. 

There is a whirlwind of papers being stamped, collated, duplicated, and filed and before you know it the assembly line ends. You breath a sigh of relief, surely some friendly officer is going to check your papers and notice you are a minimum security ‘camper’ and whisk you away. Instead yet another morbidly obese officer points at a room and makes some sort of grunting noise. You do not speak primate but gather he wants you to wait in the room. 

You quickly realize this room is a carbon copy of the first holding room and you quietly wonder if Dante got it all wrong and all the circles of hell happen to be within the BOP’s Oklahoma City airport transfer facility. 

“All I could think of was getting out of this claustrophobic concrete box.”

Another couple of hours pass – or years, who can tell at this point – in the second holding room and the Deuce heads are the only ones having a great time. The Deuce dealers have defeated yet another strip search and now a body scanner. Eventually an officer of indeterminate gender unlocks the door and yells out 5 to 10 names and you are escorted to your “range” (prison speak for the floor you live on). 

The officer leads us towards the elevator, 10 of us cram in and I get a good look at the men with me. Seven of them have full face tattoos that extend across their shaved heads. Rams horns, Celtic knots, Thor’s hammer, that sort of thing. 

At this point I am fully aware that a “camper” only range is a fantasy. I am going into the general population with murderers, rapists, kidnappers, gang members, and career criminals – many of whom have spent more time behind bars than they have in society. I take a deep breath, this is no time to be anxious or afraid. If the sharks smell fear they will strike. 

The guard walks us to the heavy metal door that seperates our range from the hallway. He turns the key but the door won’t open. He tries another key with the same result. One of the face tattoos mocks him “what is it your first day or something?” he heckles. The officer now very aware that this is taking way too long fumbles the keys and drops them on the floor. The scene is objectively funny and now several more of the inmates are heckling the clumsy officer. 

Finally the door opens from the inside. The range officer must have taken pity and opened it for him. The guys watching on the security cameras must have been pissing themselves. He will probably never hear the end of it in the breakroom. 

I am on Range 4D. The room is vaguely triangular in shape as if the architect started drawing a triangle but gave up halfway through. The room is large and painted in a palette of institutional grey and the same sort of pink they paint high schools. 

Cells with big metal doors line three of the walls. Two large staircases flank both sides of the room and take you up to an internal balcony where cells line the walls as well. If I remember correctly there are 30 two-man cells on each floor, so each range holds a total of 120 men. As soon as you cross the threshold between hallway and range you are immediately struck by the sheer number of strung out junkies hunched over seemingly frozen in place. 

Before you even have a chance to breathe several face tattoos are in your face asking if you want to buy drugs from them. These enterprising fellows apparently are running a fully stocked pharmacy. They offer me deuce, ice, meth, snizzlefizz, and junglerush. 

Okay, I made the last two up, but they offered me stuff I have never heard of before. I decline the offer and they move on quickly to a more lucrative mark. The range officer leaves his office and steps over a frozen drug addict and informs us that he is new here and to just give him a minute to get us situated. 

I politely wait while the officer – looking more and more flustered by the minute – assigns the guys ahead of me their cells, hands them a roll of toilet paper, and a thin mattress before sending them on their way into the jungle. When it is my turn the officer lets me know that he has run out of toilet paper and but if I give him a minute he will find me some. He gives me my cell number and scurries away back into his office. I follow him and remind him I need a mattress to which he explains he has run out of those as well, but if I just give him a minute he will try and locate one. 

From that point forward he was “Officer Just-A-Minute”. I climb over three junkies strung out on the staircase and make my way to the cell I have been assigned. 

“This isn’t fucking Guantanamo!” 

The cell is small, only a bunk bed, a toilet, a sink, a desk, and a fluorescent light. Inside is a large American Indian. If you asked someone to draw the most racist caricature of an American Indian he would have drawn this guy. 

He looks at me and says in a deep voice with a flat affect “I am Shadow”. The strange face tattoos gave him the air of some sort of tribal witch doctor. I said “You sure are” and quickly introduced myself lest he take offense to my glib remark and place a hex on me. 

I liked Shadow immediately. I learned that he was on his way to a USP doing 20 years for murder. Before I had a chance to explain that I was on my way to a camp for the fake crime of not having a license I didn’t even need in the first place Officer Just-A-Minute was in the doorway of the cell holding half of a foam mattress. 

Decidedly at the end of my tether I looked to him, to the mattress in his hands, back to him and asked incredulously “what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”. “It is all we have” he responded slightly annoyed. “It is half gone. How the hell am I supposed to sleep on that? My ass and legs will be on bare metal!” I protested. “Welcome to prison” he responded curtly. 

I was seriously fed up at this point, plus I had Shadow the murdering witchdoctor to back me up so I pressed further “I understand this is prison. I am well aware of that fact! You still have an obligation to provide us basic amenities like bedding. This isn’t fucking Guantanamo!” 

I pushed. He simply shrugged and dropped the mat onto the floor and walked off. “Fuck that guy” said Shadow. I agreed. 

A few minutes later Officer Just-A-Minute walked by and locked the cell door. We were locked in for the night. It would be the first time I had been truly locked in a cell. I was mildly surprised there wasn’t some sort of central locking mechanism. The officer needed to walk by 60 cells and manually lock them all. A while after locking us in another officer showed up to perform the 10:00 PM count. 

Count concluded I climbed onto my half mattress and waited for the bright fluorescent light to be turned off. By 11:00 PM I asked Shadow what time they usually turned the lights off. “They don’t” he responded. 

I sighed and covered my head with the sheet they gave me – it smelled vaguely like motor oil and sawdust – and silently sobbed. Everyone told me that transit was bad, that Oklahoma was terrible. They were not overstating it. 

I laid there, ass on bare metal, harsh light shining through the threadbare sheet and asked myself if all this was worth the year off. I regretted ever leaving Morgantown, and I desperately wanted to call my wife Lauren.

The transit story will continue in Part 2. Thank you for reading.

This is a guest post by Keonne Rodriguez. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

This post Samourai Letter #7: Notes From The Inside first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Keonne Rodriguez.

Bitcoin Magazine

An Austrian Economist Explains Why AI Will Make Everyone an Entrepreneur w/ Per Bylund

AI is changing how we work, but can it replace the human entrepreneur? Austrian economist Per Bylund, Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, joins Spencer Nichols to explain why AI is a statistical engine that improves efficiency but can’t imagine the future. He argues we’re moving from an employment economy to an entrepreneurship economy, and explains what that means for jobs, innovation, and value creation.

Chapters:
00:00 Austrian Economics on AI, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
02:34 Can AI Replace the Entrepreneur?
05:48 Invention vs Innovation: What Bitcoin Teaches About AI
06:29 From an Employment Economy to an Entrepreneurship Economy
09:52 Can Regulators Keep Up With the Speed of AI?
13:06 Remote Work, Capital Controls, and the Future of Money
18:23 Why Every Voluntary Trade Has Two Winners
26:28 The Individual vs the State in US-China Competition
31:17 Steel Stockpiles, Sugar Subsidies, and the Lobbying Behind Protectionism
33:36 OpenAI, Anthropic, and Regulatory Capture in AI

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.

This post An Austrian Economist Explains Why AI Will Make Everyone an Entrepreneur w/ Per Bylund first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Crypto exchange operators and digital depositories in Russia will be able to apply for entry into official registers from October 5, when new Bank of Russia admission rules take effect. The move gives firms a route into the regulated crypto market envisioned by a law that took effect in September. Each applicant still needs a separate regulator decision.

In a September 24 notice, the Bank of Russia said the rules also cover operators of information systems used to issue digital financial rights. Its Russian regulation sets qualifications for managers and certain officers, lists documents applicants must submit and governs decisions on register entries. A firm seeking admission must document that it meets those requirements before the bank considers its entry. The published rule tells applicants what to provide and how the bank will make its decision. It does not grant a particular applicant the status it is seeking.

How firms enter the market

The bank's exchange-operator guidance says its electronic application form becomes available on October 5. Under the ordinary route, the regulator has 30 working days to decide after receiving the last required document. For a digital depository, that decision window is 60 working days. These are periods for a decision, not promised approvals or dates for customer trading. The clocks begin with a complete set of required documents, rather than with the October 5 effective date itself. Exchange operators and depositories also face different ordinary review windows, so the single start date for the rules cannot be read as a common timetable for admitting firms.

Some existing banks, brokers and participants in an experimental regime can use a faster notification route, with eligibility depending on the role sought. The regulator says qualifying firms must submit documents before September 1, 2027. That route also requires a decision on a register entry.

Russia's crypto law took effect on September 1 and envisages buying and selling through regulated intermediaries. It requires testing for both qualified and non-qualified investors and sets a 300,000-ruble annual purchase limit per intermediary for the latter group. Those terms describe the intended market; the October rules address how firms can enter it.

The assets that non-qualified investors may buy are being handled separately. In August, the central bank named Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether's USDT for public exchange trading in a draft directive open for comment. The October admission procedure does not finalize that proposed list.

For investors, the next markers are the Bank of Russia's decisions on individual firms and the status of the separate asset rules. An effective admission procedure alone does not establish that regulated retail trading is available.

The post Russia lets crypto exchanges apply October 5 – but even Bitcoin lacks final retail clearance appeared first on CryptoSlate.

OKX US plans to cancel open orders and trading bots left on affected dollar trading pairs when it retires those order books on Sept. 30. Positions in Grid and Smart Portfolio bots on the affected pairs will also be sold, the exchange says, making inaction potentially costly for traders using those strategies.

According to the US customer notice, the corresponding USDC pairs have been available alongside the affected USD pairs since Sept. 23. Traders have until the migration to cancel open USD-pair orders, stop those bots and recreate them on the USDC pairs. Orders and bots created on the replacement pairs during the parallel window will keep running afterward.

What the deadline changes

OKX US says the old books will be retired between 3 and 4 a.m. Eastern time on Sept. 30, equivalent to 7 to 8 a.m. UTC. All remaining orders and bots or automated trades on affected USD pairs will be canceled. OKX's migration schedule says bots using those pairs may close gradually over that hour and the relevant USD pairs will be delisted at 8 a.m. UTC.

The cancellation has different consequences for the positions behind different bots. OKX says it will sell positions in Grid and Smart Portfolio bots. Positions managed by DCA, Recurring Buy and TWAP/Iceberg bots will be held after migration, although those bots will still close. An automatic sale may incur trading fees or slippage and produce a realized gain or loss; the outcome depends on a user's holdings and execution.

The migration concerns selected USD trading pairs, not every dollar market on the exchange. USDT-USD is exempt. OKX US says account balances, deposits and withdrawals are unaffected. The announced sales concern the specified bot positions rather than a broad sale of customers' funds.

The change also does not eliminate dollar funding for the consolidated book. OKX US says users will still be able to place orders with USD, which will automatically convert to USDC to access the new liquidity. That distinction matters for traders who assume a dollar balance itself must be exchanged in advance: the action required under the notice is to move affected open orders and bots to the corresponding USDC pairs.

For an affected trader, waiting until after the window means losing the existing USD-pair order or bot rather than having it transferred automatically. Moving it during the parallel period preserves control over when it stops and how any Grid or Smart Portfolio position is handled before OKX's scheduled closure.

The post OKX US to sell USD trading bot positions if users miss Sept 30 deadline appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitget detected unauthorized wallet transfers about 30 minutes before attackers began draining hundreds of millions of dollars from the crypto exchange, raising questions about why its security response failed to contain the breach.

The exchange said its systems flagged unauthorized transfers at 18:31 UTC on Sept. 24 and that its security team immediately activated emergency protocols.

However, blockchain security firm Hypernative's reconstruction of the attack shows that most losses came later: $87.6 million left hot wallets at 19:01, and another $202.8 million left warm wallets at 19:16.

Those two bursts, completed in a combined 24 seconds, accounted for about three-quarters of the $387.5 million Bitget ultimately said was moved to attacker-controlled addresses.

The sequence suggests Bitget had roughly half an hour after its initial alert to prevent the first major wave and about 45 minutes before the largest transfer burst. It also shifts scrutiny from how the attacker first gained access to how the exchange responded once its own systems indicated something was wrong.

Hypernative said the attacker initially tested the compromised route at 18:31 with transfers of 0.84 ETH and 93 TRX to new addresses. After waiting about 28 minutes, the attacker moved $34.75 million of USDT at 18:58 before accelerating the drain across multiple blockchains.

Bitget's containment controls failed to stop the signing?

Bitget said its investigation found that the attacker compromised a backend system in its wallet infrastructure, spoofed withdrawal data, and tricked the exchange's authorization process into approving the transfers. The company said private keys were not compromised.

That attack path makes the response window especially significant. Hypernative said the transactions were signed by Bitget's own wallets and resembled ordinary customer withdrawals closely enough to pass through its infrastructure.

The security firm identified several controls that could have interrupted the attack after the initial alert.

One would have required every signed transfer to correspond with an independently stored customer withdrawal or approved treasury transaction. Such a check could have prevented a compromised backend service from creating its own authorization.

Hypernative also found unusual transaction parameters in the attacker's requests, including gas limits that differed from Bitget's normal withdrawal pipeline. Comparing proposed transactions against parameters normally generated by the exchange could have flagged the 18:31 test transaction before the larger withdrawals began.

Velocity limits provided another potential barrier. Hypernative said warm wallets moved $202.8 million across five networks within nine seconds at 19:16. Caps on how much individual wallet tiers could transfer within short periods, coupled with secondary approval requirements, could have delayed or blocked much of that wave.

Most critically, Hypernative said anomalous-transfer alerts could trigger an automatic suspension of the affected signer rather than relying on manual intervention. Instead, attacker-linked transfers continued until 21:23 UTC, almost three hours after Bitget's stated detection time.

Bitget has since said it remediated the vulnerability and that no further unauthorized transfers occurred after containment. Mandiant and SlowMist remain involved in the forensic investigation.

The unresolved issue is now what Bitget's security systems did with the 18:31 alert and why the compromised signing route remained operational long enough for roughly $290 million to leave in the two major waves that followed.

The post Bitget had 30 minutes to contain its hack before $290 million started moving appeared first on CryptoSlate.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2409 on Sept. 27, setting two restrictions on political meme coins. Covered California public officers and certain government employees will be barred from issuing them. Digital asset service providers face a separate limit on listing new official-linked coins for California residents.

The enrolled bill makes an official's role central to both provisions. Its listing clause covers a coin offered by or in partnership with a federal public official or a state or local public officer, provided the coin was issued on or after Jan. 1, 2027. The January 1 date is a threshold for which newly issued coins fall under the provider listing rule.

For the direct issuance ban, a California public officer includes elected and appointed state or local officers, legislators and members of government boards or commissions. Membership on a body with only advisory powers still falls within the definition. The employee category reaches state and local government workers with decisionmaking authority over procurement offers and contracts for their employer. An advisory-board appointee can fall within the officer category; an employee's coverage depends on the contracting authority attached to the job.

The bill defines “issue” as making a meme coin available for public purchase, donation or exchange of any value, whether it is promoted or not. It defines a meme coin as a digital asset tied mainly to themes such as internet memes, public figures, fictional characters, current events or social trends, with value derived primarily from public interest, speculation or community engagement.

Federal officials are included in the provider listing clause, which defines them to include elected and appointed officers and members of federal government bodies, including advisory ones. The direct issuance provision addresses California state and local officers and the defined employee group. These are distinct sets of people under the signed text.

The provider rule prohibits listing for sale on behalf of, or for purchase by, a California resident a qualifying meme coin issued on or after Jan. 1, 2027. The coin must also be offered by or in partnership with one of the public officials named in that clause. The statute therefore makes the coin's issuance date, the resident-facing listing and the official's participation separate parts of the test.

Coins issued before that threshold fall outside this particular listing condition. The provision also focuses on an official's offer or partnership. The governor's announcement summarized it as a restriction on coins using an official's likeness or image. The enrolled text uses the offer-or-partnership test. A platform assessing a new coin for California residents would need to establish the connection described in the statute.

The governor's release cites Trump's meme coin, which he launched in 2025. That existing coin falls outside the listing rule's condition for coins issued from Jan. 1, 2027. The reference explains the political contrast in Newsom's announcement, while the statutory threshold governs the new listing restriction.

AB 2409 provides for civil enforcement. The California Attorney General may seek an injunction against a violation of either rule and may also seek disgorgement. A district attorney, city attorney or county counsel may seek the same remedies for the direct issuance ban. The statute gives the Attorney General the enforcement role for the separate provider listing clause.

The bill's findings identify conflicts of interest, public trust and opportunities for pay-to-play arrangements as concerns when officials issue or promote financial instruments. Newsom framed the signing as a contrast with President Donald Trump's meme coin. His office announced AB 2409 alongside other consumer and fraud measures. Separate bills in the package address fraud restitution and crypto seizures. AB 2409 sets the meme-coin issuance and listing restrictions and their civil remedies.

The post California signs into law restrictions banning public officers from issuing crypto meme coins appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin slipped below $83,000 during Monday's Asia session, moving beneath the lower edge of the $83,000 to $85,000 range reported late last week. BTC price sits around $82,953 at press time, down 1.79% over the preceding 24 hours. The intraday breach adds a fresh lower price to last week's retreat from the $87,000 level.

CryptoSlate's Friday market analysis discussed Bitcoin's battle between roughly $83,000 and $85,000 after pulling back from near $87,000. A price around $83,400 would still have sat inside Friday's reported band. Early Monday trading took Bitcoin below its lower edge.

Oil and yields rise alongside Bitcoin's slide

The wider market began Monday under pressure from oil and bonds. In early Asia trading, Reuters reported Brent crude futures rising 1.6% to $106 a barrel and the yield on 30-year U.S. Treasuries edging up to about 5.51%. Asian shares made a cautious start. Reuters linked the oil rise to doubts over a U.S.-Iran truce, a development that renewed inflation concerns. Higher yields raise the return available on government debt, adding to the pressure that risk-sensitive markets were navigating. Those shifts coincided with Bitcoin's decline.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF flows give a narrower view of demand. Farside Investors' live table showed $134.5 million in net inflows for Friday, Sept. 25, compared with $190.7 million on Thursday when checked Monday. Both readings were positive, even as the daily amount declined. Friday's fund data describe the final U.S. trading session before the weekend; the sub-83,000 USDT Binance quote came during a later Asian session. The figures show that ETF demand had not turned into a net outflow on Friday, while leaving Monday's order flow open.

A recovery into Friday's reported range would make Monday's breach a short-lived dip. More trading below its lower edge would make the new price territory harder to dismiss.

The post Bitcoin dips below $83,000 to start the week as Asia markets sell, extending last week’s retreat appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Shiba Inu stands at $0.0000056 on Monday, September 28, 2026, equivalent to €0.00000493. That is 5.31 percent below the level of 24 hours earlier, 0.23 percent below seven days ago and 11.81 percent above 30 days ago. All values come from CoinGecko, retrieved on September 28, 2026 at 14:47 UTC, which is 16:47 German time. The short answer to the question in the headline is this: the price currently hangs less on the meme and more on an infrastructure that is not running properly again. Anyone drawing up a Shiba Inu price prediction without looking at activity on Shibarium is working with half a data set.

Shiba Inu Today: Where SHIB Actually Stands on September 28, 2026

Market capitalisation is $3.295 billion, ranking 37th in the overall market. 589.24 trillion SHIB are in circulation. The high of October 27, 2021 was $0.00008616. The price today is 93.5 percent away from that level, and that is the figure against which every expectation for the coming months has to be measured.

More important than the distance to the record is the range of recent weeks. SHIB climbed briefly above $0.000006 after the news of the Shibarium fix and reached a multi-week high of $0.000006254. The coin has not held that level. It currently trades around ten percent below it again.

A word on notation, because with SHIB it is the most common source of error. Many exchanges and apps show the price to eight decimal places, others in units of one million tokens. Confuse 0.0000056 with 0.000056 and you are out by a factor of ten. When comparing two providers it is therefore worth checking which unit each interface is working in.

Shibarium After the Reorg Fix: 1,680 Transactions a Day Against 4.69 Million in August 2025

Shibarium is the project's own layer-2 chain, a side chain that settles transactions more cheaply and then anchors the result on Ethereum. The chain launched in 2023 and was long the strongest argument that there is more behind SHIB than a dog logo.

That very argument is under pressure. According to an analysis by The Crypto Basic of September 22, 2026, Shibarium most recently processed around 1,680 transactions a day. On August 21, 2025 the figure was 4.69 million. That amounts to a fall of 99.96 percent. The developers have fixed the underlying reorganisation problem of the chain, but the switch to the new RPC service is, according to the same report, not yet complete.

For a price forecast that is the central open question. A chain that is barely used generates barely any fees, and without fees the burn mechanism has no fuel. The causal chain is therefore not speculative but arithmetically traceable.

The Explorer Shows Only 53 Percent: Why the Shibarium Figures Are Currently Too Low

There is an objection to the figures above, and it is a fair one. The block explorer Shibariumscan rebuilt its data set after the fix and was about 53 percent through on September 20, 2026. An explorer is a blockchain's search engine: it reads out the blocks and makes them searchable. While that rebuild runs, it shows less than actually took place.

The order of magnitude can be quantified. The explorer most recently listed 611.96 million transactions, while the chain has processed more than 1.56 billion over its entire life. The stock on display therefore stands at just under 40 percent of the real one.

From that follows a rule of caution for every figure quoted from Shibarium statistics in the coming weeks, including those in this text: each of them is an interim reading. Full reindexing is announced for the fourth quarter of 2026. Only afterwards will it be possible to say whether 1,680 transactions a day reflect reality or merely the section the explorer has sorted so far.

Burn Rate and Circulating Supply: What 589 Trillion SHIB Mean for Every Price Forecast

The burn is the most quoted argument in SHIB forecasts. It means the permanent destruction of tokens by sending them to an address from which nobody can retrieve them. At the end of September, destructions ran at around 476.96 million SHIB within 24 hours. That sounds like a lot.

Set against the circulating supply it looks different. 476.96 million out of 589.24 trillion tokens is 0.000081 percent. Extrapolated to a full year at an unchanged pace, that would be around 0.03 percent of the circulating supply. For the stock to halve by this route, more than two thousand years would pass. The calculation is deliberately rough, because the daily burn rate swings sharply, but the order of magnitude does not change with it.

Anyone who has worked that figure out once reads price targets differently. A SHIB price of one cent would, at today's circulating supply, require a market capitalisation of around $5.89 trillion. That is roughly three and a half times what Bitcoin weighed in at on the same day. Such targets circulate all the same, and they are the reason a look at the supply should come before a look at the forecast.

Levels for SHIB: $0.0000052 Below, $0.0000063 Above

Two traceable reference points emerge from the recent trading range. On the downside the next watched zone is at $0.0000052. That support comes from the area in which the price turned several times before the Shibarium news. If SHIB falls below it, that support is gone and the next reference would be the September low.

On the upside the level is the multi-week high at $0.000006254. It is relevant because it is the point at which willingness to buy ran out after the good news. A close above it would be the first sign that the market does after all reward the infrastructure work.

Both levels are observation points, not predictions. Neither replaces the question of whether use of the chain comes back. If it does not, the range simply shifts downwards over time, no matter how often it has held before.

Liquidity in SHIB: $97 Million in Daily Turnover on a $3.3 Billion Market Cap

This measure is rarely named and yet decides the price at which an order actually gets filled. In the 24 hours to the retrieval, SHIB worth $97.3 million changed hands. Measured against the market capitalisation of $3.295 billion, that is 2.95 percent.

For comparison, the obvious neighbour: Dogecoin came to $1.038 billion in turnover on the same day at a market capitalisation of $14.36 billion, or 7.23 percent. The meme coin with the bigger name is currently traded more than twice as intensively as SHIB. If you are weighing the two against each other, the assessment is in our Dogecoin price prediction.

In practice a thinner order book means a larger market order moves the price against whoever placed it. With a price carrying seven decimal places that is barely noticeable, because the difference looks minuscule. Calculated in percent, it is not. A limit order that fixes the maximum price costs nothing in this market situation but patience.

Buying Under MiCA: Which Providers May Trade SHIB in Germany Since CASP Authorisation

Since the European Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation applies in full, every trading venue addressing customers in Germany needs an authorisation as a provider of crypto-asset services. The abbreviation for that is CASP, for crypto-asset service provider. The authorisation is granted by the national supervisor and then applies across the single market.

For everyday use that means one concrete check: BaFin runs a company database in which a provider's status can be looked up by name. Anyone using a trading venue for the first time can find out there within a minute whether it is supervised. Which houses carry SHIB and how their fees differ is set out in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

On costs there is a peculiarity that applies specifically to tokens with very small unit prices. Some providers round the quantity to whole tokens, others to eight decimal places. On a purchase of €200 the difference is not material; with automated savings plans executed weekly, the rounding adds up measurably over a year.

SHIB as an ERC-20 Token: Custody Between Exchange Account, Software Wallet and the Shibarium Bridge

SHIB is an ERC-20 token, so it normally lives on Ethereum. ERC-20 is the technical standard by which tokens behave on that chain, and it is the reason practically every Ethereum wallet can display SHIB without being adapted for it.

Anyone moving tokens to Shibarium uses a bridge for it. A bridge locks the balance on the source chain and issues an equivalent on the destination chain. This construction is the point at which the largest sums in the crypto market have been lost in recent years, and during the chain's ongoing rebuild it carries additional uncertainty. If you use no application on Shibarium, you have no reason to leave a balance there.

For holdings kept longer, storing the keys separately remains the most effective protection against account takeovers and exchange failures. The devices differ above all in which chains they support and how recovery is organised; those differences matter more before a purchase than the price does.

Holding Period and Exemption Limit: How the Tax Office Treats SHIB Gains in 2026

Gains on the sale of crypto assets fall in Germany under private disposal transactions per Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. If more than twelve months lie between purchase and sale, the gain stays tax-free. Below that, an exemption limit of €1,000 per calendar year applies, and the word limit is to be taken literally: exceed it and the entire gain is taxable, not merely the part above it.

With SHIB that has a consequence which arises less often with more expensive coins. Because the quantities are large and the unit prices tiny, many part-purchases quickly build up, for instance through savings plans. For calculating the period, every additional purchase counts on its own, usually under the method in which the tokens bought first count as sold first. A sale in December can therefore be partly tax-free and partly taxable.

Anyone using several trading venues will barely get that allocation right by hand. Tools that merge purchase and sale data and track the periods for each tranche take exactly this work off you, and the box below in this text leads to the common providers. The text of the law itself can be read at the Federal Ministry of Justice: Section 23 of the Income Tax Act.

Bull Case and Bear Case for SHIB: What Forecasting Models Assume for 2026

The published models lie far apart, and that spread is part of the information. One model assumes a median of €0.00000238 for the end of 2026, which against today's level would be a fall of around 46 percent. Another arrives at an average of €0.00000657 for the same period, a gain of about 75 percent. Further models name corridors that go considerably beyond that.

These values come from automated forecasting sites and are not analyst estimates in the sense of a named person with a rationale. The models extrapolate past price paths and know nothing about the state of Shibarium. Anyone quoting them should label them as what they are: extrapolations, not assessments.

More reliable than any of these figures is observing chain usage itself. If daily transactions climb back into the six- or seven-figure range once reindexing is complete, the bull case has a basis. If they stay in four figures, the bear case carries, regardless of which model outputs which median.

Shiba Inu Price Prediction: How to Proceed Now

1. Look up chain usage yourself before you believe a figure. Call up the daily statistics at Shibariumscan and note the previous day's transactions. Remember today's value, and in four weeks you will have your own reference point instead of a quoted number. If you would rather not write the figure down by hand, tools with a history function are in the overview of the best analytics platforms.
2. Work through buying routes and rounding. Compare the same amount at two providers, once as a market order and once as a limit order, and look at the quantity actually credited. Given SHIB's low liquidity that is the cheapest test you can run. If you buy in fixed instalments instead, hold the execution intervals and minimum amounts against each other; the differences are in the savings plan comparison.
3. Put periods and custody in order while the year is still running. Enter the purchase date for every tranche and see which of them reach the twelve-month mark before December 31. Holdings you want to keep longer belong off the exchange and in your own custody; which device fits your chains is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

Back to the opening question: nothing dramatic is going on with SHIB right now, and that is precisely the finding. The price moves in a narrow range while the chain meant to carry it is being rebuilt. The next solid piece of news is therefore not a price figure but the completion of reindexing in the fourth quarter.

The figures on chain usage come from the analysis by The Crypto Basic of September 22, 2026, the price and market data from CoinGecko, retrieved on September 28, 2026 at 14:47 UTC.

(As of September 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The Robinhood Chain is the broker's own layer-2 network, running on the Arbitrum Orbit toolkit, storing its data on Ethereum and settling gas in ETH. Since launching on July 1, 2026 it has become the costliest surprise of the year: $1.02 billion sits in its contracts, more than on Polygon, and $93.5 billion in volume has passed through its venues since the start. What has carried that so far is something few would have expected on a stock chain: meme tokens from a mass-market launchpad. On September 29 the start-up funding that paid for this growth falls away.

This overview takes the chain apart piece by piece, with figures collected against the DefiLlama interface on September 28, 2026, and with the wording Robinhood itself uses in its documents for the European market. It tells you what actually runs on the network, how you get there in practice, what the tokenised stocks are in legal terms and which points you should settle as an investor in Germany beforehand.

Robinhood Chain at a Glance: A Layer-2 Rollup on Arbitrum Orbit with Chain ID 4663

A rollup is a network that executes transactions itself but stores their data in bundles on a larger blockchain and draws its security from there. The Robinhood Chain is one such rollup: it uses the Arbitrum Nitro software on the Orbit framework, is EVM-equivalent, writes its data as blobs under the Ethereum standard EIP-4844 to Ethereum, and carries chain ID 4663. Without that identifier you cannot add the network in any wallet, which is why it comes first here.

The technical parameters are set out in the official developer documentation at docs.robinhood.com/chain and in the public network list chainlist.org/chain/4663. Gas is paid in ETH; there is no separate gas token. Data availability, meaning where the raw transaction data can be read permanently, is solved via blobs on layer 1. Because the chain is EVM-equivalent, the same smart contracts run as on Ethereum, and tokens follow the ERC-20 standard. Developers also have a testnet. That matters more for classification than it sounds: every movement on this chain consumes ether, and in Germany ether is an economic asset with its own tax consequences.

The purpose of the network is so-called stock tokens, that is, replications of share prices tradable on the blockchain, together with real world assets in the wider sense, meaning values from traditional finance represented on chain. What has become of that in practice is set out below.

Who Uses the Chain: $1.02 Billion in TVL, More Than Polygon

The usual yardstick for the use of a network is total value locked, or TVL: the sum of all value sitting in the network's contracts. On September 28, 2026 the DefiLlama interface reported $1,020,163,244 for the Robinhood Chain. For comparison, measured in the same call: Polygon $765 million, Arbitrum $1.43 billion, Base $6.19 billion. A network not yet a quarter of a year old is thereby ahead of a chain that has been running since 2020.

On trading volume the gap is wider still. $55.28 billion passed through the chain's decentralised exchanges over the past 30 days, $9.65 billion over the past seven days and $947 million over the past 24 hours. Since launch that adds up to $93.50 billion. The fees all protocols on the chain take together stand at $373.11 million over 30 days and $694.40 million since launch. 207 protocols contribute to that.

These figures are impressive and at the same time misleading if read without the next section. They describe the past, and the trend inside them points down.

One question upfront, because it is asked often: the Robinhood Chain has no token of its own. There is therefore no market capitalisation, no all-time high and no price for the chain. Anyone who nonetheless finds a price page under this name should look closely: the name also appears on price pages as the label of a token issued on an entirely different network, which has nothing to do with the network described here. Payment on the chain is in ETH, and the prices of the represented securities are supplied by a price feed, a service that feeds market prices into the contracts.

The Gas Subsidy Ends on September 29, and Fees Are Already Falling

At launch on July 1, 2026 Robinhood covered transaction fees for 90 days, provided the transaction came from the Robinhood Wallet. That period expires on September 29, 2026. After it, every movement pays its own gas in ETH. A free transaction is the most effective tool for pulling users onto a new network, above all for small speculative amounts where a fee of a few cents makes trading unattractive. That tool is now going. Our report on the switch is in Robinhood Chain: The Free Gas Ends in Late September.

What the measurement on September 28 shows, a day before the deadline, is interesting. Fees across all protocols on the chain came to $373.11 million over the past 30 days, or $12.44 million a day. Over the past seven days they were $41.49 million, or $5.93 million a day. The weekly average is therefore less than half the monthly average. On trading volume the decline is milder: $1.84 billion a day on the monthly average against $1.38 billion on the weekly average.

The cooling has thus begun before the subsidy ends. That is a finding about the state of the chain, not a forecast of its price: anyone seeing a decline after September 29 cannot simply attribute it to the fee switch, because the move set in beforehand. How the values look after the deadline cannot, in the nature of things, be measured on September 28. Daily values from individual calls also fluctuate sharply, because a day in progress can be incomplete at DefiLlama; the weekly and monthly windows are the reliable ones.

Is Robinhood Permitted in Germany?

Yes, through a European entity. On its EU site Robinhood names as the responsible entity Robinhood Europe, UAB, company identifier 306377915, based in Vilnius. The wording there is: "RHEU is authorized and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania as a financial brokerage firm and a crypto-asset service provider." The competent supervisor is therefore the Lithuanian central bank, not BaFin. An authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider in one EU state takes effect across the single market under the European crypto regulation MiCA, so German customers are served through this entity and not through a German branch.

In practice that means two things. First, complaints and questions of deposit protection run under Lithuanian law and that country's supervisor, not the German financial regulator. Second, the offering for the EU market is not the same as in the United States. German users have access to cryptocurrencies and to the stock tokens described below; no German securities account holding real shares arises in the process. If you would rather stay with a provider whose authorisation you can look up yourself, our comparison of crypto exchanges helps you line up the licences and the fees.

Stock Tokens and Real World Assets: Derivative Contracts, Not Shares

This is the point at which most accounts turn too vague. Robinhood describes its tokenised stocks on its own EU site in these words: "Classic Stock Tokens are derivative contracts between you and Robinhood. They are priced at the prices of the underlying securities without granting rights to them."

A derivative is a contract whose value is derived from another value. Everything else follows from that definition. You do not become a co-owner of the company. You have no vote at the annual general meeting. You have no direct claim to a dividend, at best a contractual replication of one. And on top of the price risk you carry the risk of your counterparty: if the provider fails, the claim fails with it, because the claim is against the provider and not against the exchange on which the share is listed.

In tax terms this is a category of its own. German income tax law treats cryptocurrencies as other economic assets, with the one-year holding period of Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Derivative contracts instead fall under the rules for investment income, and there is no holding period there after which a gain becomes tax-free. How an individual contract is to be classified depends on how it is constructed; that is for a tax adviser to settle, not a line in an article. Anyone holding both in the same account should separate the entries early, or the tax return gets expensive. A tool that keeps the two types of entry apart saves you this work in the spring.

Pons: 646,000 Tokens Since July, and a Mountain of Fees That Is Melting

The chain's actual main application so far is a launchpad called Pons. A launchpad is a service that lets a new token be created in a few steps and made tradable immediately. At Pons that costs around one dollar in launch fees according to CoinDesk: enter a name, choose a ticker, done, and a market for it opens on the Robinhood Chain.

The success was extraordinary. CoinDesk reported on September 3, 2026 that Pons took around $5.95 million in fees in 24 hours, putting it fourth among all services tracked by DefiLlama, ahead of the chain it runs on. On September 2 just under 25,000 new tokens were created there in a single day, on $544 million of daily volume. Since July there have been around 646,000 tokens from more than 167,000 different creator addresses.

Our own measurement of September 28 shows how quickly that has cooled. Pons in its current version took $1.24 million in fees over 24 hours. Over seven days the launchpad comes to $14.83 million, or $2.12 million a day; over 30 days to $146.35 million, or $4.88 million a day. The peak day in early September was therefore not a level but a spike, and the weekly average is less than half the monthly average. Since launch Pons has taken $179.85 million in fees.

For placing meme tokens, what we describe in our overview of the meme coin section still applies: a token created for a dollar has no issuer liable for anything, no audit and as a rule no market once attention moves on. Of 646,000 tokens created, only a very small share is traded at all. Total loss is the normal case in this asset class, not the exception.

Where Swapping Happens on the Chain: Uniswap v3 and v4 Carry the Volume

The venues on the chain are decentralised exchanges, or DEXs: programmes that settle swaps directly between wallets without a company holding the balances. Measured by volume over the past 30 days, Uniswap version 3 leads with $24.02 billion and version 4 follows with $19.39 billion. Together that is around 78 percent of the chain's entire trading volume. Behind them, at a clear distance, come GMGN with $4.30 billion, Pons itself with $2.45 billion, Ramses with $1.90 billion, Fables with $1.68 billion and Uniswap version 2 with $1.26 billion.

What barely features on this chain so far are lending markets, meaning protocols for collateralised credit, and other quiet applications. By way of comparison, on Base, Coinbase's chain, usage spreads far more widely across lending and yield protocols. On these figures the Robinhood Chain is a trading venue and not yet financial infrastructure.

The second group stands out: trading apps. GMGN took $30.70 million in fees over 30 days, the wallet app fomo $17.64 million and Axiom $7.23 million. These applications are front ends for fast meme token trading and do not belong to Robinhood, even though they run on its chain. Anyone using such an app generally grants it far-reaching permissions over their balance. More on that in the section on risks below.

Adding the Network, the Bridge, the Explorer: The Practical Route onto the Chain

Anyone wanting to use the chain without the Robinhood app needs three things: the network entry in their own wallet, ETH for gas, and an explorer for looking things up.

The network entry consists of chain ID 4663 and the public access point rpc.mainnet.chain.robinhood.com. An RPC endpoint is the address through which your wallet talks to the network. Many wallets now add well-known networks themselves; if you cannot find the chain in yours, you can add it through the network list chainlist.org/chain/4663. Never enter an access point that somebody sent you in a message.

The gas comes across a bridge. A bridge locks an amount on the source network and credits it on the destination network. The official route runs through the Arbitrum portal at portal.arbitrum.io; a deposit of ether onto the chain takes about ten minutes there. The return journey takes considerably longer with rollups of this design, because a challenge period runs before the withdrawal is released. Anyone wanting out faster has to use a third-party provider and pay for it. Plan that time in before you move larger amounts across.

You can look everything up in the block explorer robinhoodchain.blockscout.com. An explorer is the network's public ledger search: every transaction, every address and every contract can be inspected there. Beware of imitators: after the launch several community-built sites appeared under names such as "RobinScan". None of them is the official explorer, and a site asking you to enter a recovery phrase is always an attack.

NFTs and Collectibles on the Chain: Marketplace Present, Liquidity Thin

An ecosystem only counts as complete once it also has trading in non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. On the Robinhood Chain that part exists, but it is narrow. The large marketplace OpenSea supports the chain, and collections have appeared that pick up the network's equity character. Volume and price formation remain far behind swap trading in tokens.

For valuation that is a sober finding: a collectible needs buyers, and where few trade, the last price paid is not a sound valuation of your own holding. If you want to look at the wider field, the established venues are in our comparison of NFT marketplaces.

Arbitrum: 10 Percent of Net Revenue Flows to the DAO

The chain has no token of its own. Anyone wanting to bet on its success therefore ends up at the token of the toolkit it runs on: Arbitrum, ticker ARB. The reason is a levy: the Robinhood Chain passes 10 percent of its net revenue to the Arbitrum ecosystem, of which, on the reporting, 8 percentage points go to the DAO's treasury and 2 percentage points into a developer fund. A DAO is an organisation whose use of funds is decided by votes of token holders.

Important for placing this: the money goes to the common treasury and not to holders. An ARB token conveys no claim to a distribution. The Arbitrum Foundation has reported that fees from the expansion programme accounted for 35 percent of DAO income in July. Our own measurement also shows how small the share is that reaches the chain's own sequencer: $39.31 million over 30 days, against $373.11 million across all protocols on the chain together. Most of the fees arise at applications, not at the network operator.

Analyst views on this differ widely and are to be read as views. According to a CoinDesk report of September 15, 2026, Standard Chartered named a price target of $10 for ARB and expressly pointed to revenue from the Robinhood Chain. On the other side stands an unlock date: in mid-October, on the reporting, around 92.6 to 92.7 million additional ARB become available, which increases supply. Our assessment of the coupling between chain and token is in Arbitrum up 150 percent in a month. A price target is not a promise, and we issue none.

Risks: One Sequencer, Old Approvals and Tokens Without a Market

Four points belong on the list before money goes onto this network.

Centralisation. Rollups of this design are run by a single sequencer, an instance that determines the order of transactions. If it fails or holds transactions back, the network stalls. The L2BEAT project collects assessments of such dependencies publicly; anyone entrusting larger amounts to a new chain should look there first.

Old approvals. Anyone working with trading apps and launchpads continually grants contracts permission to access balances. Such approvals persist until you revoke them, and a contract compromised later can use them. Go through the approvals you have granted regularly and remove what you no longer need.

Custody. Self custody means you hold your own keys and nobody else can dispose of your balance. It is the most effective protection against the failure of a provider and at the same time full responsibility for safekeeping. For longer-term holdings a device with separate key storage is the obvious choice, because the key never leaves the device.

Market risk of the tokens themselves. A launchpad with a one-dollar launch fee does not produce an audited investment product. For the great majority of these tokens there is no buyer left after a short time, and a price without buyers is not a value.

Tax in Germany: Every Swap on the Chain Is a Disposal

Here lies the part investors in Germany regularly underestimate. Under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act, swapping one cryptocurrency for another is a private disposal transaction. On a chain whose main application is a launchpad, exactly that happens continually: ETH for a new token, that token back for ETH, and again on the next attempt. Each of these steps is a separate transaction with its own acquisition date, its own price and its own holding period.

Three things follow. The one-year holding period starts afresh with every swap, which is why active trading practically never reaches it. Gains from such transactions stay tax-free only within the exemption limit of €1,000 per calendar year, and once it is exceeded the entire gain is taxable. The gas itself is also a transaction: paying with ETH means giving ETH away. While the subsidy ran, that question did not arise for transactions from the Robinhood Wallet; from September 29 it arises on every movement.

In practice that means: download your transaction history regularly while you have access, and store it outside the app. The chain is new, and so are the reporting channels between providers and the tax authorities. Missing records are for the investor to produce in the end, not the exchange.

Robinhood Chain: What to Take Away

In barely three months the Robinhood Chain has become one of the largest layer-2 networks by value deposited, carried above all by a meme token launchpad. The fee figures show that this wave had already flattened noticeably before the start-up funding ended on September 29. The tokenised stocks that were meant to be the point are, on Robinhood's own description, derivative contracts against the company and not shares.

1. Settle the provider and the supervisor first. Who your counterparty is and which authority supervises it decides whom you turn to in a dispute. Set that beside the terms of the established venues in the exchange comparison.
2. Separate play money from holdings. What goes onto a launchpad can be lost in full. What you want to keep belongs in custody you control yourself; the selection is in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Keep the tax file from the first transaction. Every swap is a separate transaction, and it can barely be reconstructed after the fact. A tool from the tax tool comparison takes the work off you.

(As of September 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Hedera's HBAR token stood at $0.1217 on September 28, 2026 at 12:48 UTC, 27.3 percent higher than 24 hours earlier (source: CoinGecko). The wider market moved the other way over the same window: Bitcoin gave up 1.8 percent, Ether 1.2 percent. The documented trigger is not a price fantasy but a corporate announcement dated September 23: Switzerland's Hashgraph Group said that IDTrust, its identity platform built on Hedera, had been validated by IBM and added to the IBM Cloud Catalog.

For you as an investor in Germany that splits into two questions, which this article answers separately. First: what exactly happened, and does it carry the price move? Second: if you want to buy, hold or sell HBAR, where does that run, what does it cost you in tax terms and where are the pitfalls in custody?

HBAR Price: 27 Percent in 24 Hours, 63 Percent in a Month

The figures come from a call to the CoinGecko interface on September 28, 2026 at 12:48 UTC. HBAR trades at $0.1217, equivalent to €0.1070. The intraday low of the past 24 hours was $0.0931. Roughly 31 percent lie between that low and the current level, so the move arose within a single day rather than growing over weeks.

Over longer windows the picture looks like this: plus 35.3 percent over seven days, plus 58.7 percent over 14 days, plus 62.9 percent over 30 days. Over twelve months, by contrast, there is a loss of 41.6 percent. Anyone who bought HBAR a year ago remains well behind despite this rally.

Market capitalisation is $5.33 billion, equivalent to €4.69 billion. That puts Hedera 25th among the largest crypto assets by market capitalisation. Trading volume over the past 24 hours was around $800 million, roughly 15 percent of market capitalisation. Volume on that scale means the move is carried by real trading and not by a handful of orders in a thin book.

43.83 billion HBAR are in circulation. The maximum supply is 50 billion and is fixed in the protocol. Around 88 percent of the total supply has therefore already been issued. In a separate piece on September 21 we described how Hedera's trading volume was then rising faster than its price. That gap has now closed in the other direction.

IDTrust in the IBM Cloud Catalog: What the Hashgraph Group Announced on September 23

The Hashgraph Group, or THG, is a Swiss technology company based in Schwyz that builds enterprise applications on Hedera technology. On September 23, 2026 it published an announcement with three concrete points, all of which can be checked.

First, IDTrust was validated by IBM and officially listed in the IBM Cloud Catalog. On THG's account it is thereby the first commercial Hedera-based enterprise application that can be bought directly as a software subscription through a major cloud marketplace. Second, THG reached IBM Silver Partner status, which is tied to technical certification requirements. Third, a global Embedded Solution Agreement with IBM was signed. That is a licence contract allowing a partner to build IBM technology into its own product and sell it as a single solution under its own name.

Stefan Deiss, co-founder and chief executive of THG, is quoted in the announcement saying that companies are deploying AI agents at scale that can negotiate contracts, process sensitive data and execute financial transactions on their own. The question exercising everyone, he says, is: how do I know this agent is authorised to act on my behalf? Naemi Benz, responsible at IBM for the partner ecosystem in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, is quoted as saying that IBM has recognised the commercial potential of Web3 solutions and that THG's work on agent-capable identity infrastructure on Hedera fits that.

Know Your Agent: Verifiable Identity for AI Agents as an Enterprise Topic

Behind the abbreviation KYA sits an extension of a term you know from finance. Know Your Customer (KYC) describes a provider's duty to establish the identity of its customers. Know Your Agent (KYA) carries that idea over to software: when an AI agent places an order or grants an approval in a company's name, the counterparty has to be able to check whether that agent is entitled to do so and who stands behind it.

For the urgency of this, THG's announcement cites a forecast from the research firm Gartner, according to which around 40 percent of enterprise applications should contain task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, against less than 5 percent in 2025. As further evidence it notes that Akamai launched its own agent verification procedure in June together with Visa and Experian. These figures and references come from the company's own announcement; they are a vendor's arguments for its own market and not an independent measurement of it.

Why this can matter for the price is easy to state soberly: Hedera has positioned itself for years as a network for companies rather than for speculation. An entry in the purchasing catalogue of a group such as IBM is a sales channel, not an advertising banner. Whether revenue follows, and whether that revenue ever reaches the HBAR price, is a separate matter and not settled by this.

DIDs, Verifiable Credentials and eIDAS 2.0: The Technology in the IDTrust Stack

By the provider's account, IDTrust is a platform for self-sovereign identity (SSI). The term describes a model in which a credential sits with its holder and does not have to be queried from the database of a central issuer.

Two building blocks carry this. A decentralised identifier (DID) is an identifier that can be created and checked without a central registration body. A verifiable credential (VC) is a digitally signed statement about the holder of that identifier, for instance that a particular agent is cleared for a particular task. Both formats are described at the W3C standards body, so neither is an in-house invention.

THG states that the platform is being aligned with the European eIDAS 2.0 framework, which governs the legal requirements for electronic identification in the EU. On the technical side the announcement also mentions MCP servers through which AI agents in IBM's watsonx Orchestrate environment can obtain their own identity credentials. Every credential issued is anchored on the Hedera ledger, which produces a record of permissions that cannot be altered afterwards without it showing.

According to the company, the application is already in use at a European telecommunications provider for checking caller identities. Alongside that, the announcement names partnerships from the past twelve months with the Merck group on EU digital product passports, with PwC on infrastructure for emission certificates, and with the logistics provider Teleport on customs documents in South-East Asia.

The Hedera Network: What HBAR Is Needed For in Proof-of-Stake Consensus

Hedera works with a proof-of-stake procedure in which a node's influence on consensus depends on how many HBAR are assigned to it. Under the official documentation, a transaction counts as confirmed only once nodes holding together more than two thirds of all staked HBAR have processed it.

Something practical follows from that: in this network HBAR serves both as the means of payment for fees and as the material the security of the system is made of. Every credential anchored on the ledger via IDTrust generates transactions, and transactions cost fees in HBAR. That is the path by which business use theoretically feeds through to demand for the token. How much that path carries in practice depends on volumes that Hedera does not disclose for individual applications.

On staking itself, the Hedera documentation names two points that are often misremembered in Europe. There is no lock-up period: staked balances remain available at all times and can be traded without waiting. The size of the reward is moreover set by the Hedera Council and updated on the mainnet; the market does not form it. Rewards do not expire, but they can only be collected for the most recent 365 days if no payout was triggered in between.

Distance to the 2021 All-Time High: 79 Percent, Rally Notwithstanding

A daily gain of 27 percent reads differently when you set it against the longer record. HBAR's all-time high is $0.5692 and dates from September 15, 2021. From the current level, 78.6 percent are missing to get there, so the price would have to more than quadruple.

Two levels are verifiable for the coming days and therefore more useful than any price target. On the downside, the low of the past 24 hours sits at $0.0931; if the price falls back there, the whole day's gain would be handed back. On the upside, the next objective reference is the level of twelve months ago, because only above that would buyers from the autumn of 2025 be in profit again, and at minus 41.6 percent that is around $0.208.

Everything circulating beyond that in the way of price targets comes from individual research houses and is their opinion. Anyone reading such figures should check whether a name and a date are attached. We deliberately name none here, because we could not verify a sound derivation for any of them.

Buying HBAR in Germany: MiCA Authorisation and the Route via an Exchange

Since the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA, has applied in full, trading platforms may only offer their services in Germany with an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. For you that is the first test. A provider without that authorisation may not serve you here, and in a dispute you stand outside the European supervisory framework.

HBAR is listed on the large European venues, so buying it is not a niche exercise. What counts are the costs: the spread between bid and offer, the trading fee and, if you later move the token to your own wallet, the withdrawal fee. Those three items differ between providers far more sharply than the prices do. Which platforms are authorised in Germany and what they charge is set out in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

One note on sequence that is easily lost on rally days: buying on the day of a 27 percent jump means you pay for the jump. That is meant as a statement about your entry price, not as a warning. Anyone entering through a savings plan spreads precisely this risk over time.

Holding Period, Exemption Limit and Staking Income: The Tax Rules for HBAR

For private individuals in Germany, a gain on the sale of crypto assets falls under private disposal transactions per Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Two figures decide your tax burden.

The first is the holding period. Sell a coin more than a year after buying it and the gain is tax-free. Sell within the year and it is taxable at your personal income tax rate. The second is the exemption limit: if the total gain from all private disposal transactions in a calendar year stays below €1,000, no tax arises. Exceed the limit and the full amount is taxable, not merely the part above it. That is the difference between an exemption limit and an allowance, and in close cases it costs money.

Income from staking is treated separately by the tax authorities as other income. These inflows have to be recognised at the market value on the day they arrive, and a separate, markedly lower exemption limit applies to them. Because Hedera has no lock-up period and rewards arrive irregularly, active staking quickly produces a large number of small inflows, each with its own date and its own price. Without clean record-keeping that is barely reconstructible later.

This account does not replace tax advice. Where larger amounts, staking income or sales within the one-year period come together in your case, the case belongs with a tax adviser.

The Canary HBAR ETF on Nasdaq: No Route in for German Retail Investors

In the United States an exchange-traded product on HBAR has existed since the autumn of 2025. The quarterly report of the Canary HBAR ETF to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the period to June 30, 2026 shows that the shares trade under the ticker HBR on Nasdaq and that the trust is managed by Canary Capital Group.

Two figures from that report are instructive. As at December 31, 2025 the trust held 473,456,805 HBAR with a fair value of $50.6 million. As at June 30, 2026 it held 663,209,584 HBAR, valued at $46.2 million. The number of tokens held therefore rose by roughly 40 percent while the dollar value of the holding fell. The product saw inflows in that half-year, and the price decline more than offset them.

For you as a retail investor in Germany the product is nonetheless not tradable as a rule. US funds do not produce a key information document under the European PRIIPs Regulation, and without that document brokers in the EU may not offer retail clients the purchase. Which exchange-traded routes exist instead with European authorisation, and how they differ from buying directly, is set out in our overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.

Storing HBAR: Account ID, Auto-Renew and the Most Common Traps

Hedera handles custody differently from the networks you know from Ethereum or Bitcoin, and that is exactly where withdrawals fail.

An address on Hedera is an account ID in the form 0.0.x. That account has to be created on the network before you can send anything to it. A freshly generated wallet with a key pair is not enough on its own. Anyone sending HBAR from an exchange to an account ID that has not yet been created risks the withdrawal failing or the funds being untraceable.

The second point concerns running costs. Accounts and entries on Hedera carry a renewal logic that incurs fees in HBAR. An account holding no HBAR for those fees is not an account you should leave unattended for years. So check three things before a withdrawal: that the destination account exists and that the wallet itself shows you the account ID, that you send a small test transfer ahead, and that the wallet supports the token at all.

If you hold larger amounts, the key does not belong on a device that hangs on the internet every day. That applies to any crypto asset capable of a triple-digit percentage move in either direction, and is no peculiarity of Hedera.

Hedera Rally: What to Take Away

The move has a documented trigger, and that trigger is a distribution agreement, not a revenue report. It is a distinction the price does not reflect on a day like this. Three steps that make sense regardless:

1. Document your holding periods. Note the purchase date, quantity and price for every HBAR holding before you think about selling. The one-year period decides the tax rate, and it cannot be created after the fact. Tools for it are in our comparison of crypto tax tools.
2. Recalculate the staking terms. Because Hedera has no lock-up period, the return is decided by the size of the reward and how it is recorded for tax; availability is a given anyway. How other platforms handle it is shown in our overview of staking providers.
3. Settle custody before you move anything. Create the Hedera account ID and test the withdrawal with a small amount. Which devices are suitable is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

The sources for this article are the Hashgraph Group's announcement of September 23, 2026 and the official Hedera documentation on staking. Both can be read directly here: the Hashgraph Group announcement on the IBM partnership and the Hedera documentation on staking.

(As of September 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The price of Ethereum stood at $2,675.39 on Monday, September 28, 2026, at 14:42 German time, equivalent to €2,359.14. That is 1.44 percent below the level of 24 hours earlier. What matters over the next few days is not that single figure but the distance above it: the supply zone sits between $2,750 and $2,800, and ETH has bounced off it several times since mid-September. Break that zone, and on the reading of several chart analysts the path towards $3,000 is clear. Fail to break it, and the price returns to support between $2,530 and $2,570.

There is also a date falling due within the next eight days that many investors overlook, because it happens on a test network. On October 6, 2026, Sepolia forks to Glamsterdam. It is the first public rehearsal for Ethereum's next major upgrade, for which the Ethereum Foundation still gives no more than the fourth quarter of 2026 as a mainnet target. This article puts the two side by side: the levels in the price and the deadlines in the protocol. And it tells you which of them actually matters for your German tax return.

Ethereum Price on September 28: $2,675 and the Distance to the Supply Zone

The figures in this section come from CoinGecko, retrieved on September 28, 2026 at 12:42 UTC, the euro rate at 12:49 UTC. ETH traded at $2,675.39 with a market capitalisation of roughly $326.8 billion. That leaves the all-time high of $4,946.05 almost 46 percent away.

On the day, Ethereum is holding up better than the rest of the market. Bitcoin lost 2.01 percent over the same period and stood at $83,272; Solana gave up 3.75 percent and traded at $119.46. A decline of 1.44 percent counts as the quiet move this week. That is no argument for buying, but it explains why the supply zone at $2,750 is getting so much attention in commentary right now: the distance to it is only around 2.8 percent.

What a Supply Zone Is

A supply zone is a price range in which an unusually high number of sell orders were filled in the past. It is not a fixed line: think of it as a band, because sellers do not place their orders to the cent. When a price approaches such a zone from below several times and falls back each time, the zone counts as confirmed. It counts as broken only once the price closes above it and holds there for some time, not on the first brief excursion.

The Supply Zone Between $2,750 and $2,800: Where the Resistance Sits

The $2,750 to $2,820 range has appeared in the analysis of several market observers since mid-September. On September 27, 2026 ETH traded at $2,714.60, directly below the lower edge. Since then the price has moved roughly $40 away from it again. The view that a sustained advance above this zone would point to $3,000 comes from technical analysts and is explicitly their expectation, not ours.

For you the practical value of this zone is one thing above all: it gives you a point at which to test your own assumption without relying on instinct. If ETH closes several daily candles above $2,800, the sideways phase so far was accumulation. If the price is rejected again, it was distribution. Either way this is an observation, not a forecast, and either way it costs you nothing but attention.

Anyone looking to build an ETH position in the first place should check where the fees sit on the way in. The gap between an exchange charging 0.1 percent in trading fees and a provider with a wide spread eats more on small amounts than most price moves in a month deliver. You will find an overview of the terms in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

Support at $2,530 to $2,570: The Area That Catches a Break

On the downside the same analyses name the $2,530 to $2,570 range as the next line of support. From the September 28 level that is roughly 4 to 5.4 percent away. That number matters more than it looks, because it governs your position size: anyone working with leverage measures the distance to liquidation not in dollars but in percent.

A worked example, and not a recommendation: at five times leverage a long position is liquidated on paper after a move of about 20 percent against it, at ten times leverage after roughly 10 percent, in each case before fees and funding costs. The distance to support is well below that. Which means an entirely ordinary pullback to $2,540 does not automatically take out a leveraged position, while a second pullback in the same week very much does, once funding costs have been running in between.

Funding Rate in One Sentence

The funding rate is the payment that holders of perpetual contracts make to one another at fixed intervals so that the contract price tracks the spot price. Settlement is usually every eight hours, and when the rate is positive the long positions pay the short positions. Anyone holding a leveraged position for weeks pays it without noticing.

Sepolia Fork on October 6: What Glamsterdam Has to Prove on the Test Network

Glamsterdam is the name of Ethereum's next major upgrade. The roadmap on ethereum.org names the fourth quarter of 2026 as the mainnet target without confirming a date. The first verifiable deadline is therefore October 6, 2026: on that day the Sepolia test network forks to the new rule set.

A testnet fork is a dress rehearsal, not a delivery. That is precisely what makes it useful for the price question. If Sepolia runs through cleanly, the remaining test networks and with them a mainnet date come into view, and the odds improve that the upgrade really does land in the fourth quarter. If there are problems, the whole schedule slips, and typically not by days but by weeks. Toni Wahrstätter, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said recently that Glamsterdam was on the home straight with EIP-7928 and that things looked good. That is the assessment of a participant, not a commitment to a date.

EIP-7732 and EIP-7928: The Two Proposals Carrying Glamsterdam

An EIP is an Ethereum Improvement Proposal, a formalised change to the protocol that receives its own number and goes through a public discussion process. Glamsterdam rests on two of them.

EIP-7732 writes the separation of block proposal and block building into the protocol itself. Until now that separation has run through software outside consensus. Build it in, and a central part of block production no longer depends on individual providers. For holders that is not a price event; for the censorship resistance of the network it is.

EIP-7928 introduces block-level access lists. That establishes before execution which parts of the state a block will touch, and clients can process transactions in parallel rather than strictly one after another. Added to that are a simplified synchronisation procedure and measures against uncontrolled growth of the state database.

The common denominator of the three goals is this: process faster, synchronise faster, stay operable in the long run. None of them lowers gas fees noticeably on the day of the upgrade. Anyone buying in the expectation of cheaper transfers on October 6 or on the day of the mainnet fork is buying the wrong story.

ETF Inflows of $746.5 Million: Where the Institutional Demand Comes From

The second force behind the price sits not in the protocol but in exchange-traded funds. US spot Ethereum ETFs took in roughly $746.5 million in total across five consecutive trading days at the end of September. On September 18 a single day brought net inflows of $143.8 million. Across September as a whole, net inflows added up to around $445 million, which means Ethereum ETFs gathered more that month than Bitcoin ETFs did. Cumulatively over their entire life, all ETH ETFs together stand at roughly $13.85 billion in net inflows.

The most common explanation for this is the staking yield. Since January 5, 2026, Grayscale's ETHE has been the first US crypto exchange-traded product to distribute staking income to shareholders. That turns a pure price product into a product with running income, and that property is exactly what Bitcoin ETFs structurally lack. Whether it becomes a lasting advantage is open; one month of inflow figures is a snapshot, not a series.

Staking Yield and ETF Distribution: The Difference for Your Tax Return

Here two paths separate that look identical on the chart and are treated entirely differently by the tax office.

If you hold ETH yourself and stake it through a provider or your own validator, the rewards allocated to you are, in the view of the German tax authorities, income from other services under Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act. They are taxed at your personal income tax rate, and an exemption limit of €256 a year applies. Exemption limit means this: at €255 you are below it and pay nothing. At €257 you are above it, and the entire amount is taxable, not merely the part above the line. That is the difference from an allowance, and the two are regularly confused.

If instead you hold units in a fund that stakes internally and distributes, you are dealing with a security and with investment income. There, withholding tax, the saver's lump-sum allowance and, as a rule, the automatic deduction by the custodian apply. The one-year holding period from private assets does not exist there. Anyone mixing the two paths is in effect running two separate sets of books. Anyone starting out should compare provider terms first; the yield figures and minimum lock-ups are in our comparison of staking platforms.

DAC8 from 2026: The Reporting Duty of the Exchanges Changes Your Starting Position

Under the EU's DAC8 directive, regulated crypto service providers in the EU report transaction data to the tax authorities automatically from 2026. In practice that means the assumption that the tax office learns of a sale only if you declare it no longer holds. For complete returns nothing changes apart from the order of events. For incomplete ones, the probability of being found out changes.

What matters in practice is that the reporting rests on providers with an EU connection. Holdings on your own hardware wallet are not reported, because no service provider sits in between. They are taxable all the same as soon as you sell or swap within the deadline. Anyone pulling holdings off an exchange therefore shifts the burden of proof onto themselves and should document acquisition data cleanly, meaning date, quantity and value for each inflow.

Holding Period, Exemption Limit and Staking Income: What You Can Do Now

The legal position for private holders in Germany is currently more stable than the debate suggests. Under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act, the gain on a sale of crypto assets is tax-free if more than a year lies between acquisition and sale. The Finance Ministry letter of March 6, 2025 on individual questions of the income tax treatment of certain crypto assets revised the May 2022 version, and in doing so confirmed that the holding period stays at one year even when the coins were lent out or used for staking in the meantime. The extension to ten years once feared does not apply in these cases.

Within the one-year period, an exemption limit of €1,000 per calendar year applies to gains from private disposals. That too is an exemption limit and not an allowance: a gain of €1,001 is taxable in full.

From that follow four points you can settle this weekend in half an hour, whichever way the price runs:

• Dig out the acquisition data for each tranche. What counts is not when you first bought ETH but when the tranche in question was bought. Without those dates the one-year period cannot be evidenced.
• Add up the staking income for the year. If the total sits just below €256, one further payout in December costs you the entire tax exemption for this category of income.
• Set the realised gains of the year against its losses. Losses from private disposals can only be offset against gains of the same kind, not against salary and not against investment income.
• Pull the export files from your exchanges while you still have access. Close an account, or have your exchange leave the market, and you lose access to the history, while the duty to produce records stays with you.

Bull Case $3,000 and Bear Case $2,400: Two Scenarios to the Quarter End

The quarter ends on September 30, the day after tomorrow. Two days is little for a price move and enough for a position decision.

In the friendly case ETF demand holds, ETH closes above $2,800, and the Sepolia fork on October 6 runs without incident. Then the $3,000 level named by analysts is the next visible target, roughly 12 percent above today's reading. That expectation comes from third-party technical analysis and is reported here, not shared.

In the unfriendly case the inflows run into nothing, the broader market keeps giving way, and ETH falls through the zone at $2,530. The next relevant area then lies around $2,400, roughly 10 percent lower. A postponed testnet fork would be read as confirmation in that situation, even though a delay says nothing technically about the value of the network.

Both scenarios share the same blind spot, namely the assumption that the price reacts to these dates at all. In the past, Ethereum upgrades have rarely moved the price on the day of the event, because the expectation was already priced in. The Sepolia fork is moreover a testnet event that almost nobody outside the developer community follows.

Ethereum Price Prediction: What to Take Away

1. Fix the two levels, not the price. $2,800 on the upside and $2,530 on the downside are the points at which the picture changes. If you were going to add anyway, compare trading fees first in our exchange comparison, because on small amounts they matter more than the difference between $2,675 and $2,700.
2. Separate staking income and price gain in your books. A €256 exemption limit for the income, a €1,000 exemption limit for the gain within the one-year period, two different sections of the law. A portfolio tracker makes that separation automatically; the providers are in our comparison of crypto tax tools.
3. Treat October 6 as an information date, not a buy signal. If Sepolia runs cleanly, the remaining test networks follow. If you keep your ETH yourself, check by then that your recovery phrase is still complete and legible; suitable devices are in our hardware wallet comparison.

(As of September 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The Shiba Inu price stands at $0.0000056 on September 28, 2026 at 09:40 UTC, the equivalent of 0.00000492 euros. That is a good 6 percent less than 24 hours earlier. Over the same period in which the price gave way, roughly 476.96 million SHIB were permanently removed from circulation according to evaluations by several burn trackers. Both at once looks contradictory, but it is not: the amount burned corresponds to 0.000081 percent of the supply. Anyone who sets the figure against the total supply sees immediately that it has no measurable influence on the price.

This piece places the day's price figures in context, sets the burn against the circulating supply, describes the state of the Shibarium infrastructure after the reorg of September 19 and names the tax deadlines running for holders in Germany before December 31. Burn here means: tokens are sent to an address for which nobody holds a private key, which puts them irretrievably out of circulation.

Shiba Inu Price on September 28, 2026: $0.0000056 After a 6 Percent Loss

The reading comes from CoinGecko, retrieved on September 28, 2026 at 09:40 UTC. Over the preceding 24 hours SHIB moved between $0.0000060 and $0.0000056, so the price sits at the lower edge of the daily range. Market capitalisation stands at $3.30 billion, which corresponds to rank 35 among all crypto assets. Trading volume over the past 24 hours comes to $92.24 million.

Over seven days there is a gain of 1.26 percent, over 30 days a gain of 10.37 percent. The daily loss therefore fits into a broad pullback: Bitcoin gave up 2.53 percent the same day, Ethereum 2.70 percent, Solana 5.18 percent and Dogecoin 5.49 percent. SHIB falls harder than the large assets and about as hard as the second large meme coin. That is the usual pattern: assets with smaller capitalisation and a thinner order book amplify the movement of the overall market in both directions.

To gauge the distance to the upside: the all-time high of October 27, 2021 stood at $0.00008616. From today's price, 93.5 percent are missing to get there. An investor who had bought at that peak would need a fifteenfold rise to be back at break-even.

Burn Balance: 476.96 Million SHIB in 30 Days Are 0.000081 Percent of Supply

The circulating supply comes to 589,238,950,149,691 SHIB according to CoinGecko, so around 589.24 trillion tokens. Measured against that figure, 476.96 million tokens burned in 30 days amount to a share of 0.000081 percent. At a price of $0.0000056, the amount destroyed in a month had a value of roughly $2,671.

The extrapolation makes the scale tangible. At the pace of the past 30 days, just under 15.9 million SHIB per day, it takes around 370,600 days until one percent of the circulating supply has disappeared. That is a good 1,015 years. A scarcity that takes effect over such a period is not a scarcity that moves a price.

On top of that, the burn rate fluctuates enormously and is therefore of little use as a signal. Within a few days in September, trackers once reported a rise of several hundred percent to 15.16 million tokens on a single day, while on other days the figure stood at zero. Such swings arise when a single market participant sends a larger position to a burn address. Percentage figures on the burn rate refer to the previous day, not to the circulating supply, and taken on their own therefore say nothing about scarcity.

How to Spot a Meaningful Burn Figure

A burn report is informative only when three details stand together: the absolute number of tokens, the reference period and the share of the circulating supply. Without the third value, every figure sounds large. In absolute terms 15.16 million SHIB is a lot; measured against 589.24 trillion it is 0.0000026 percent. Anyone reading a report that gives only the percentage change in the burn rate has received no information about supply.

Shibarium After the Reorg: Explorer Only 53 Percent Reindexed

Shibarium is the project's own layer 2 blockchain, on which transactions are settled more cheaply than directly on Ethereum. Part of the burns comes from the fees on this chain. On September 19, 2026 the team reported that a previously announced reorganisation of the chain had been resolved. A reorg means that already confirmed blocks were subsequently replaced, which makes transaction histories temporarily ambiguous.

The state of the clean-up matters more to holders than the report itself. The network explorer Shibariumscan showed a reindexing level of 53 percent on September 20. As long as the explorer has not run through completely, individual transactions may be missing there or displayed incompletely. Anyone documenting their Shibarium transactions for a tax return is working in this phase with a source that is itself not yet complete. The percentage explicitly describes the explorer alone and is not a measure of the state of the network as a whole.

Two further points belong here. On September 15 the node operators received entirely new peer lists for the Bor and Heimdall processes, so this was a complete replacement and not an extension. And validator staking has, according to the ecosystem's status page, been under maintenance since an infrastructure migration begun on April 17, 2026, without any completion date being named. Anyone who had budgeted for a yield from staking on this chain has therefore been counting for months on an offering that is currently unavailable.

What the Burn Means for Your Coins

For valuing a position, the result of the calculation is plain: the burn is not a price driver and should not appear as one in any purchase consideration. What actually moves the SHIB price is liquidity in the overall market and demand from meme coin traders. Both can be observed, but not read off a burn statistic.

In practice one check follows from this that costs a few minutes. Anyone holding a position compares their own entry price with the current level and notes whether the position is in profit or at a loss. That distinction decides everything that follows in the next section on tax, because gains and losses are treated differently in Germany. An overview of tools that pull the entry price automatically from exchange data is available in the comparison of crypto tax tools.

Holding Period Under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act: One Year, Then Tax Free

In Germany, crypto assets held privately count as other economic goods under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. From that follows the rule that applies to SHIB exactly as it does to Bitcoin: if more than twelve months lie between acquisition and sale, the gain is tax free. Within the one-year period it is taxed at your personal income tax rate.

With a token carrying six decimal places, this rule has a practical catch. Anyone who has topped up in small amounts over months owns not one position but many tranches, each with its own acquisition date. Allocation follows the FIFO consumption sequence, so first acquired, first disposed of, and separately for each wallet or exchange account. FIFO stands for first in, first out. Anyone selling in October disposes, for tax purposes, of the oldest units, not the most recently bought ones.

From this follows a date that every holder can work out for themselves. Anyone who bought in December 2025 passes the one-year mark in December 2026. A sale a few days before costs income tax, a sale a few days after does not. For a position that is in profit, this date is the most important number in the calendar.

The 1,000 Euro Exemption Threshold and the December 31 Deadline

For gains within the one-year period there is an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros per calendar year, raised from 600 euros previously. An exemption threshold is not an allowance: anyone whose private disposal transactions for a year together come to a gain of 999 euros pays nothing. Anyone who lands at 1,001 euros pays tax on the full amount and not merely on the euro above it. Depending on the tax rate, the difference between the two cases can run to several hundred euros.

The second date concerns positions at a loss. Losses from private disposal transactions can be offset only against gains of the same kind, not against employment income and not against investment income from shares or interest. They can, however, be carried forward into other years. Anyone who has already realised taxable crypto gains in 2026 and additionally holds a SHIB position at a paper loss can offset that loss in the same year only if they actually sell by December 31, 2026. A paper loss in the portfolio does not count for tax purposes.

Both rules stand in Section 23 of the Income Tax Act; the administrative view on crypto assets was most recently summarised by the Federal Ministry of Finance in its circular of March 6, 2025. That document also describes the cooperation and record-keeping duties a holder with many small tranches has to meet.

Spread and Minimum Order Size: The Route In Costs More With Sub-Cent Coins

At a price of $0.0000056, a cost structure arises that goes unnoticed with more expensive coins. The smallest price step the market can represent is very high relative to the price, and the gap between bid and ask is correspondingly wide. A spread of one price step here corresponds to a multiple of what the same distance would mean for a coin in the double-digit dollar range.

Three blocks of cost therefore belong on the list before every order: the stated trading fee, the gap between bid and ask at the time of the order, and the withdrawal fee in SHIB should the tokens go to your own wallet. The third item is often overlooked because it is stated in tokens rather than in euros. Which platforms are licensed in Germany under the European regulation on markets in crypto assets, and what their fee models look like, is set out in the comparison of crypto exchanges. The MiCA regulation has applied in full since December 30, 2024, and providers need a corresponding licence for retail business in the EU.

SHIB Against Dogecoin: $3.3 Billion Versus $14.4 Billion

The direct competitor in the meme segment is Dogecoin. On September 28, 2026 DOGE reached a market capitalisation of $14.42 billion at a price of $0.092375, SHIB $3.30 billion. Over 30 days DOGE is up 10.15 percent and SHIB up 10.37 percent, so the two assets run largely in parallel.

The difference lies not in direction but in market depth. The ratio of daily volume to market capitalisation stands at around 2.8 percent for SHIB. Anyone wanting to unwind a larger position moves the price against themselves faster with the smaller of the two. For holders with amounts in the hundreds of euros this plays no role; from the five-figure range upwards it does.

Custody as an ERC-20 Token: Gas Costs and the Bridge to Shibarium

SHIB is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. Every movement on the main chain costs gas, and those costs fall in ETH, not in SHIB. With a position in the low hundreds of euros, a single transfer can swallow a noticeable share of the position's value, because the fee depends on network load and not on the value transferred. Before every transfer it is therefore worth looking at the current gas fee.

The route via Shibarium lowers the running costs but adds a risk of its own. Tokens brought to another chain over a bridge exist there in a derived form, and the way back hangs on the bridge remaining functional. Given the ongoing reindexing status, that is a point to consider before a transfer rather than after it. For long-term custody of larger holdings on the main chain, a hardware wallet remains the standard route, because the private key does not leave the device there.

Will the $0.0000056 Level Hold?

The daily range over the past 24 hours ran from $0.0000060 to $0.0000056, so the price sits exactly at the lower edge. To the downside the next round marker is $0.0000050, which would be a further 10.7 percent from today's level. To the upside the seven-day range reaches just over $0.0000060, which corresponds to around 7 percent.

Both marks are orientation points from the price range, not a forecast. What decides matters in the coming days are, in the assessment of several market observers, three factors that have nothing to do with the burn: liquidity in the overall market, actual usage of Shibarium once reindexing is complete, and demand from the meme coin segment. Anyone reading price targets should attribute them to the analyst naming them rather than read them as fact; the range of published expectations for SHIB is wide and runs from a continuation of the sideways move to a test of the $0.0000062 mark.

Shiba Inu Price: Your Next Three Steps

1. Establish entry price and holding period for each tranche. Pull the purchase data from your exchange or wallet and note the acquisition date for every tranche. From that it follows which units have already passed the twelve-month mark and which have not. Anyone who does not want to do this by hand will find suitable tools in the comparison of crypto tax tools.
2. Hold the December 31 deadline against your own situation. If the position is at a loss and you have realised other taxable crypto gains in 2026, a sale by the year end decides whether the loss can be offset in this year. If the position is in profit and the one-year period expires soon, waiting is the more favourable option for tax; for the holdings that stay put, the devices for self-custody are listed in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Work out the total cost of the route before you trade. Trading fee, the gap between bid and ask, and the withdrawal fee in tokens together make up the real cost of an order. The terms offered by providers licensed in Germany are set out in the comparison of crypto exchanges.

Sources for further reading: the statutory text on the holding period and the exemption threshold is in Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. The state of the Shibarium infrastructure after the reorg of September 19, 2026 is documented by the report from crypto.news. The price and supply data come from CoinGecko, retrieved on September 28, 2026 at 09:40 UTC.

(As of September 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Hegota will be Ethereum's last 'normal' fork, he argues, with everything after built on recursive STARKs and formal verification.

Bitcoin extends last week's pullback as Trump rejects Iran's ceasefire plan, sending oil above $100 and yields higher ahead of Wednesday's PCE report.

Bitmine has staked 84% of its tokens, a position it projects will generate some $358 million a year in staking rewards.

Michael Saylor's Bitcoin treasury firm bought 1,665 BTC last week, taking its holdings above its previous record to 847,666 BTC.

The Gary Gensler era is long gone and now the SEC is providing clarity on what crypto protocols can and can’t do with their tokens.

Tom Lee's BitMine now holds over 6 million Ethereum as it continues to purchase the asset regardless of the crypto market conditions.

In exactly 11 days, XRP activates crucial smart-execution features designed to capture trillions in institutional asset volume.

Cardano (ADA)'s 68% price drop on a one-year basis has bulls watching October closely.

Stellar (XLM) breaks its historic speed record, hitting 217.4 TPS as institutional real-world asset funds flood the network.

Citigroup is expanding its crypto push through a deeper partnership with Coinbase, tapping the exchange’s infrastructure to help corporate clients accept stablecoin payments as the Wall Street giant builds out payments, custody and tokenization services.

TLDR

• Information Services Group stock rises 0.48% to $5.29 after early losses.
• ISG names SoundHound AI its Overall Software Innovation Award winner.
• Celonis wins the Artificial Intelligence Award for enterprise technology.
• Veeam secures the Information Technology Award at the 2026 ISG event.
• ISG updates Paragon Awards to reflect wider enterprise provider roles.

Information Services Group stock gained 0.48% to $5.29 after recovering from an earlier intraday decline. Shares fell below $5.15 before rebounding and stabilizing near midday trading. The move followed ISG’s announcement of its 2026 North America technology award winners.

Information Services Group, Inc., III

Information Services Group Stock Recovers After Early Drop

Information Services Group shares showed renewed strength after reversing losses recorded earlier during the session. The stock recovered from below $5.15 and moved back above the $5.25 level. Consequently, III traded at $5.29 as the market absorbed the company’s latest announcement.

The company announced winners of its 2026 Software Innovation Awards and Paragon Awards for North America. ISG presented the awards during its annual Sourcing Industry Awards event in Dallas. The September 24 ceremony recognized technology providers and partnerships across several business categories.

ISG operates as an AI-centered technology research and advisory company serving businesses worldwide. Its research covers technology markets, enterprise software, sourcing services, and digital transformation programs. Therefore, the awards form part of ISG’s broader research and industry recognition activities.

ISG Names Major Software Innovation Award Winners

SoundHound AI received the Overall Software Innovation award for technology supporting business and IT transformation. Meanwhile, Celonis secured the Artificial Intelligence Award for innovation across data, analytics, automation, and AI technologies. Legion Technologies won the Business and Technologies Award for its enterprise-focused software capabilities.

Minitab received the Industries Award for technology supporting specialized markets and business sectors. In addition, Veeam secured the Information Technology Award for innovation across enterprise technology infrastructure. The category covers areas including cloud services, cybersecurity, automation, networks, observability, and IT operations.

ISG Software Research analysts selected the award recipients based on the company’s technology research methodology. The awards recognize providers introducing software designed to improve enterprise processes and technology operations. Furthermore, ISG evaluates how software supports organizations across workforce, finance, revenue, infrastructure, and industry functions.

Paragon Awards Highlight Changing Enterprise Partnerships

ISG also introduced a revised methodology for its 2026 Paragon Awards in North America. The structure now recognizes five winner subcategories within each main award category. Each category receives equal standing under the updated awards framework.

The changes reflect expanding expectations for technology providers working with large enterprise clients. Companies increasingly expect providers to support innovation, governance, productivity, and measurable business results. As a result, providers now play broader roles beyond traditional technology delivery and outsourcing arrangements.

The Dallas event also recognized winners across other ISG industry award programs. These included the Provider Lens Awards and the Star of Excellence awards. Together, the programs highlighted technology providers, enterprise partnerships, and service performance across the North American market.

The post Information Services Group (III) Stock: Surge as Company Unveils North America Award Winners  appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Costco stock rises 0.22% to $924.83 as digital sales exceed $33 billion
• Digitally enabled sales grew more than 20% during Costco’s latest fiscal year
• Costco closed Costco Next and will shift popular products to core platforms
• Uber Eats and DoorDash expansions strengthen Costco’s U.S. delivery reach
• Costco site and app traffic rose 30% as personalization gained momentum

Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) stock rose 0.22% to $924.83 as the retailer expanded its digital operations. Digitally enabled sales exceeded $33 billion and grew more than 20% during the latest fiscal year. Costco closed its Next marketplace and shifted focus toward its main website and mobile application.

Costco Wholesale Corporation, COST

Costco Digital Sales Gain From Delivery Expansion

Costco has increased online investment while keeping its warehouse membership model at the center of operations. The company now uses outside delivery partners to widen access without building every service internally. That approach has supported stronger digital sales and broader member engagement.

Costco expanded its Uber Eats partnership from 17 states across the entire United States. It also widened its DoorDash relationship, while Instacart continues serving members in the United States and Canada. These partnerships give members more delivery options and extend Costco’s reach beyond warehouse visits.

Digital activity also increased across Costco’s website and mobile application during the fourth quarter. Site and app traffic rose 30% as the company improved personalized product placements and email communications. Personalized initiatives generated triple-digit sales growth during the quarter.

Costco Next Closure Changes Online Product Strategy

Costco closed Costco Next in September after operating the marketplace since 2017. The service gave members access to selected products that Costco did not regularly stock in warehouses. Vendors shipped those purchases directly and handled returns for their products.

The marketplace offered discounts reaching 40% across categories including electronics, luggage, and home goods. Costco kept the platform curated instead of operating a large open marketplace like Amazon. Management later changed direction as Costco’s main digital channels became more capable.

Costco now plans to integrate popular Costco Next products directly into Costco.com and its application. The company expects that move to simplify shopping and support sales through established online channels. Management also said the marketplace closure would not materially affect Costco’s financial results.

Personalization and AI Search Support Online Growth

Costco continues to improve digital merchandising as more members use its online services. About 10% of Costco.com orders now include at least one personalized product. This approach helps the company connect members with relevant merchandise through its existing digital platforms.

Traffic from AI search tools also increased at a triple-digit rate for a second consecutive quarter. Costco said those visits produced the highest conversion rate among all website traffic sources. AI search still represents a smaller traffic source than Costco’s established digital channels.

The company continues combining delivery, personalization, and digital product discovery with its warehouse model. Closing Costco Next concentrates more activity inside Costco’s primary website and mobile application. As digital sales expand, Costco is simplifying online access while preserving its membership-focused retail structure.

The post Costco Wholesale Corporation (COST) Stock: Digital Growth Accelerates After Marketplace Exit appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Sidus Space targets April 2027 for LizzieSat-4 and LizzieSat-5 launches.
• SIDU stock slipped 2.59% to $2.0650 after retreating from a $2.15 high.
• LizzieSat-5 moved from Transporter-18 to SpaceX Bandwagon-6 for testing.
• Sidus will expand Fortis VPX-Maxima testing before both satellites launch.
• Both LizzieSat spacecraft will carry imaging, AIS, and hosted payload systems.

Sidus Space (SIDU)  shares plans to launch LizzieSat-4 and LizzieSat-5 aboard SpaceX’s Bandwagon-6 rideshare mission in April 2027. The company will complete additional qualification testing before final spacecraft integration and launch readiness. SIDU stock traded at $2.0650, down 2.59%, after retreating from an intraday high near $2.15.

Sidus Space, Inc., SIDU

Sidus Space Moves LizzieSat-5 to Bandwagon-6

Sidus Space previously planned to launch LizzieSat-5 on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 mission in October 2026. However, the company shifted the satellite to Bandwagon-6 to expand testing of its Fortis VPX-Maxima platform. The additional work will test the system against broader requirements expected across future missions.

The company plans to assess Fortis across different environments, spacecraft designs, and mission interfaces before launch. This approach allows Sidus to complete wider qualification work within one testing period. It also reduces the need to repeat similar testing for individual spacecraft programs.

Both satellites will launch from Florida’s Space Coast, near Sidus Space’s Cape Canaveral production facility. The vehicles will move from manufacturing and testing operations directly to the launch site. Bandwagon-6 will place both spacecraft into a mid-inclination orbit after launch.

LizzieSat Spacecraft Carry Multiple Hosted Payloads

Sidus Space continues production of LizzieSat-4 before environmental testing and final mission preparation. The spacecraft will carry hosted payloads from Solar MEMS, Lonestar, and Maris-Tech. It will also carry imaging and maritime tracking equipment within Sidus Space’s own payload suite.

LizzieSat-5 has already completed environmental testing, including vibration testing at an Orlando defense testing facility. The spacecraft now awaits final integration before its planned 2027 launch. It will carry a hosted payload supplied by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research.

Both satellites will also carry Simera Sense HyperScape-100 imaging systems and Satlabs Polaris AIS receivers. These systems support Earth observation and vessel identification functions during orbital operations. The mission will also provide more frequent coverage across mid-latitude regions than the earlier planned orbit.

Fortis Platform Supports Sidus Defense Pipeline

Sidus Space continues positioning Fortis for commercial and defense missions requiring stronger onboard computing capabilities. In July 2026, the company signed a teaming agreement with a commercial space contractor. The agreement includes Fortis as a proposed mission processor for an advanced orbital project.

That opportunity focuses on resilient, high-performance capabilities supporting national security mission requirements. Such programs require testing across processing, power, thermal, spacecraft, and data-handling specifications. Sidus therefore continues evaluating Fortis against wider system-level requirements before deploying the platform.

Sidus Space operates as an integrated space and defense technology company with manufacturing capabilities in Cape Canaveral. Its LizzieSat platform supports hosted payloads, imaging equipment, data processing, and other space-based applications. The planned Bandwagon-6 mission will extend that strategy through two additional spacecraft in 2027.

The post Sidus Space (SIDU) Stock: Drops as LizzieSat 4 and 5 Set for SpaceX Launch  appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• AMC Entertainment announced a $3.97 billion debt restructuring, featuring $2 billion in first-lien notes maturing in 2031 and an $850 million term loan facility.
• The restructuring extends critical debt obligations from 2029 to 2031, providing the cinema operator with additional financial flexibility.
• Shares of AMC surged more than 6% following the refinancing announcement and encouraging box office performance data.
• Summer box office revenues increased by over 42% compared to the previous year, signaling renewed consumer interest in theatrical experiences.
• Company shareholders voted in favor of a new performance-based equity compensation structure during the 2026 annual shareholder meeting.

Shares of AMC Entertainment (AMC) rose more than 6% following the theater operator’s announcement of a comprehensive $4 billion debt restructuring initiative. The strategic financial maneuver extends critical repayment deadlines to 2031, providing relief from immediate liquidity concerns.

AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc., AMC

The restructuring framework consists of a $2 billion first-lien note issuance with a 2031 maturity date. Additionally, AMC initiated an $850 million first-lien term loan syndication process on September 21.

The financing package also features a contingent $1.12 billion second-lien term loan commitment. This component’s activation hinges on the successful completion of the first-lien financing arrangements.

Proceeds from the restructuring will retire current debt instruments and cover associated transaction expenses. The company plans to utilize existing cash reserves to address any funding shortfalls.

Strategic Importance of Extended Maturities

Extending debt obligations from 2029 to 2031 provides AMC with crucial additional runway to strengthen its balance sheet. This extension proves particularly valuable as the cinema industry continues navigating post-pandemic consumer behavior shifts.

Cash flow from operations demonstrated meaningful improvement. During the first six months of 2026, AMC produced $106.9 million in operating cash flow. This represents a significant turnaround from the $231.6 million cash consumption during the comparable 2025 period.

Company executives attributed the improvement to increased theater attendance and elevated per-patron spending. Enhanced advertising revenues and favorable working capital dynamics also contributed to the positive results.

Theatrical box office performance supported this narrative. Early summer box office receipts surged more than 42% on a year-over-year basis.

The True Cost of Restructuring

Debt refinancing arrangements carry inherent costs beyond headline numbers. Transaction fees, early redemption penalties, and discounted note pricing can diminish the net benefit without addressing fundamental operational challenges.

The company’s September 21 announcement omitted specific details regarding new interest rates. This information gap leaves uncertainty about the actual economic savings from the transaction.

AMC’s tender offer documentation reveals some cost structure. The company proposed $1,009.70 per $1,000 of face value for its 7.5% secured notes maturing in 2029, in addition to accumulated interest payments.

Investment in theater infrastructure reduced net cash generation. Capital expenditures totaling $91.5 million during the first half absorbed the majority of the $106.9 million in operational cash flow.

Certain working capital improvements stemmed from timing factors rather than sustainable operational enhancements. AMC collects ticket revenue immediately but pays film distributors on a delayed schedule, creating temporary cash flow fluctuations.

The restructured debt framework establishes creditor priority hierarchies through secured collateral arrangements. First-lien creditors maintain superior claims compared to second-lien holders in potential financial distress scenarios.

Institutional investor interest in AMC accelerated prior to the refinancing disclosure. According to Insider Monkey’s tracking data, 33 hedge funds maintained positions in AMC at the conclusion of Q2 2026, representing growth from 20 funds in the previous quarter.

At the company’s 2026 annual shareholder meeting, investors authorized a revised equity incentive framework. The updated compensation structure aims to strengthen alignment between executive rewards and company performance metrics.

Certain market participants maintain reservations regarding potential share dilution and the ongoing interest burden associated with the new debt architecture. AMC’s stock has appreciated 88.46% year-to-date, with daily trading volume averaging approximately 34.4 million shares and a market capitalization reaching $2.62 billion.

The post AMC Entertainment (AMC) Stock Jumps 6% Following $4B Debt Restructuring Deal appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• U.S. online holiday sales are projected to reach an unprecedented $275.1 billion, marking a 7% year-over-year increase according to Adobe Analytics.
• Cyber Week spending is anticipated to reach $47.5 billion, representing 17% of the entire holiday shopping period.
• Black Friday is forecasted to generate $12.9 billion in sales, reflecting a 9% annual growth.
• Amazon’s October Prime Day event is expected to contribute $10 billion to the month’s total online sales.
• Wall Street analysts maintain a Strong Buy consensus on AMZN, with price targets suggesting 33% potential upside.

Trading around $252, Amazon (AMZN) stock is garnering attention as fresh projections indicate an exceptional holiday shopping period on the horizon. Adobe Analytics predicts digital commerce will surge 7% compared to 2025, pushing total spending to $275.1 billion.

Amazon.com, Inc., AMZN

This optimistic outlook comes even as consumers navigate persistent inflationary pressures and elevated borrowing costs. Merchants are responding proactively, with Adobe noting that retailers have already launched enhanced discount campaigns and expanded access to deferred payment solutions such as Buy Now, Pay Later services.

The Cyber Week period is positioned to dominate the seasonal calendar. Adobe’s analysis suggests this concentrated timeframe will capture $47.5 billion in transactions, accounting for 17% of all holiday-related purchases. Cyber Monday is anticipated to surpass $15 billion in sales independently.

Prime Day and Black Friday Drive Early Momentum

Black Friday maintains its position as a cornerstone shopping event. Adobe’s model predicts $12.9 billion in revenue for that single day, representing a 9% increase from the previous year, with electronics, fashion, and home appliances leading the charge.

However, the seasonal timeline is shifting earlier than ever. Amazon’s Prime Day promotion is scheduled for October 6-7, significantly preceding traditional holiday shopping patterns.

Adobe forecasts October will see $95.8 billion in total digital transactions, an 8% year-over-year climb. Amazon’s Prime Day is projected to capture $10 billion of that volume independently.

According to Adobe, this early-season event has fundamentally altered retail strategy. Merchants must now balance stock levels and promotional timing around an October surge, rather than concentrating solely on the November-December window.

Non-traditional gift categories are showing dramatic growth patterns as well. Adobe anticipates personal care products will spike 150% versus September baselines. Essential apparel items could jump 210%, while baby-related merchandise is forecast to increase 113%.

Pet supplies are expected to rise 93%, and household cleaning products should see gains of 49%.

Top Products Driving Holiday Demand

Consumer electronics continue to dominate gift-buying behavior. Gaming systems, televisions, and computing devices are projected to perform strongly, with the Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5/Pro, and Xbox Series X anticipated as the bestselling consoles.

In gaming software, titles including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, EA Sports FC 27, and Grand Theft Auto VI are expected to lead sales charts.

The toy category is experiencing significant momentum. Products like Beyblade X, Jellycat stuffed animals, KPop Demon Hunters collectibles, and LEGO Pokémon collections are projected to sell rapidly.

Additional high-demand items include AirPods Pro 4, the Dyson Airwrap styling tool, Google’s Pixel 11 smartphone, and Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro and Duo models. Meta’s AI-enabled eyewear, the Oura Ring 5, and Samsung’s Galaxy S26 and Z Fold 8 devices also appear on Adobe’s anticipated bestseller forecast.

While Amazon stands to capture substantial market share, competitors including Walmart and Target are positioned to benefit from elevated consumer spending. Financial services providers like American Express may experience increased transaction volumes, alongside hardware manufacturers such as Apple and Meta Platforms.

Analyst sentiment toward Amazon remains overwhelmingly positive entering this critical retail period. The stock carries a consensus Strong Buy rating from 40 Wall Street analysts, comprising 39 Buy recommendations and a single Hold rating issued within the last three months.

The consensus price target stands at $334.70, indicating potential upside of 33% from present trading levels. This target reflects widespread confidence that Amazon is strategically positioned to capture a disproportionate share of the record-setting holiday spending Adobe has projected for this year’s shopping season.

The post Amazon (AMZN) Stock Poised for Record $275B Holiday Season Surge appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin struggled around $83,000 on Monday after falling 2.2% over the past 24 hours. The decline came as fresh uncertainty around Middle East diplomacy weighed on market sentiment.

Weakening momentum and bearish divergences point toward a possible short-term correction before recovery.

The Road Ahead

In the latest report, Doctor Profit said that his earlier $88,000 target has effectively been reached after Bitcoin climbed from around $60,000 to $87,300.

He has now predicted that the crypto asset could pull back toward $79,000, around the 50-week moving average, before continuing higher. Doctor Profit flagged bearish divergences in RSI, MACD/PPO and MFI, along with weaker trend strength in ADX, as signs of a near-term correction. However, he maintained,

“I consider Bitcoin to be in a BULL MARKET, but I expect a correction WITHIN that bull market.. At $79K, I want to see whether the MA50 Weekly holds as support.”

Meanwhile, Ali Martinez said that Bitcoin is retesting the $82,000 level after breaking out of a double-bottom pattern, a level that could now act as support. If the crypto asset manages to hold above it, the retest could set the stage for another rally. Martinez expects it to rally toward $100,000 if the setup plays out.

Bitcoin whales have also been quietly accumulating. Wallets holding 100 to 1,000 BTC have scooped up nearly 114,000 coins since July 15.

Big Money Stays In

Things are looking pretty solid on the institutional side, as US-based Bitcoin ETFs continued to see strong demand last week. The biggest move came on Monday, when investors poured almost $1 billion into the funds in a single day. Inflows cooled off after that, but stayed positive throughout the week. By Friday, spot Bitcoin ETFs had pulled in a total of $2.39 billion for the week, which ultimately pushed their cumulative total net inflows to $57.55 billion.

The steady demand also fits with what Bitwise found in its survey of institutional investors. The firm surveyed 15 institutions and found that none reduced their crypto allocation during the sharp market turmoil between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026. Most hold between 1% and 2% of their investable assets in crypto.

Strategy is also back to buying Bitcoin in a big way. The company added another 1,665 BTC last week at an average price of $85,681. That takes its total holdings to 847,666 BTC, which is worth more than $70 billion at current prices.

The post Bitcoin’s (BTC) Still in a Bull Market, But a Correction Could Be Coming First appeared first on CryptoPotato.

One of the co-founders of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has outlined how Ethereum could change after the Hegota fork, arguing that the network is moving toward a “cryptographic world computer” rather than remaining a conventional blockchain.

His roadmap would change how Ethereum verifies transactions, handles computation, and uses its decentralized network, with zero-knowledge proofs taking a much larger role by 2030.

What Changes After Hegotá

Buterin started by comparing Ethereum’s future with the way early blockchains worked. In Bitcoin’s original model, every participant downloaded a block, checked it, and re-executed its transactions, and Ethereum still works broadly along those lines, but the developer sees that changing as the network adopts more advanced cryptography.

By 2030, he expects verification to move toward PeerDAS, where participants can check samples of the data, combined with SNARKs, which let the network verify that a large amount of computation was done correctly without repeating all of it.

The same shift is already visible in consensus, which has moved from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake and is now heading toward a more efficient version of PoS. Block production could also involve several participants instead of one party building the entire block.

He pointed to upgrades like FOCIL, EIP-8288, Lean consensus, formal verification, and changes to Ethereum’s mempool as part of a system designed to rely more heavily on proofs and distributed processing. Another major piece is state management, because Ethereum will need to handle access to a much larger amount of information without making every participant do all the same work.

The changes could also affect how developers build applications, with the 32-year-old arguing that Ethereum will increasingly favor computation that can be broken into smaller pieces and handled separately, rather than putting everything into one large transaction. As such, developers could keep the information the network needs to record directly on-chain while doing other work before it reaches the final block.

That would give decentralization a different role. Instead of being mainly a cost accepted for security, a distributed network could sometimes help Ethereum process more data and computation at the same time. Buterin wrote that the network could “decentralize not just for robustness but also to increase scale,” something those building it had hoped to achieve as early as the mid-2010s.

He expects Hegotá, planned for next year, to be Ethereum’s last “normal” fork, after which recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, more efficient consensus and quantum-safe technology would become part of the longer-term roadmap.

Meanwhile, in the Market

ETH reclaimed its 200-day moving average and was rejected near $2,800 last week, a level analyst Daan Crypto Trades called a major obstacle.

The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap was trading near $2,700 at the time of writing, down nearly 2.5% in 24 hours and about 2% in one week. Still, it had gone up almost 5% over 14 days and 8% in the previous 30 days, while staying about 34% lower than a year ago and roughly 47% below its all-time high near $4,950.

The post Ethereum Post-Hegotá: Vitalik Buterin Lays Out 2030 Roadmap appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The broader cryptocurrency market took a step back today (September 28), but its overall condition seems much better than it was for most of the summer. As a result, many analysts believe that the bears might soon wave the white flag, with bulls retaking full control.

In such an environment, many cryptocurrencies are expected to rally hard, but it remains unclear which will be the biggest potential winners. We asked three of the most widely used AI-powered chatbots which altcoin has the best chance of posting a 10x gain during the next bull cycle, and here are their answers.

TAO?

ChatGPT said its pick (if it had to choose) would be Bittensor (TAO). OpenAI’s platform noted that the cryptocurrency is closely connected to the Artificial Intelligence niche, predicting that the technology will be among the strongest narratives in the next bull market.

The chatbot also considered other fundamentals of the cryptocurrency, including its halving mechanism. Like BTC, TAO is programmed to have a maximum supply of 21 million units, and the issuance of new coins is cut in half about every four years. Many experts and investors see the halving as positive because it makes the asset increasingly scarce, which could fuel price appreciation during periods of strong demand.

At the same time, ChatGPT warned that a surge of that magnitude is far from certain. “I would assign it roughly 20% probability during the next complete bull cycle – high for crypto standards, but nowhere near guaranteed,” it explained.

Interestingly, Google’s Gemini also picked Bittensor’s native token. It claimed AI will become the dominant technology and megatrend of the decade, and TAO is well positioned to benefit. Similar to ChatGPT, it paid attention to the halving, saying:

“TAO mirrors Bitcoin’s token structure – capped strictly at 21 million coins, with periodic halving events and a fair launch. There are no large venture-capital unlocks scheduled to flood the market and crash the price, which is rare for modern altcoins.”

SOL’s Chances

Perplexity said that no altcoin can be reliably predicted to 10x, but if forced to name the most-probable high-liquidity candidate, it is Solana’s SOL.

The chatbot maintained that the asset has the strongest balance of liquidity, developer activity, and real app usage, saying that market observers have repeatedly identified it as a top contender to outperform during a renewed crypto expansion.

Nonetheless, Perplexity cautioned that such a massive price rally would require a combination of bullish factors, including a broad altseason and sustained capital inflow.

The post Which Altcoin Is Most Likely to 10x in the Next Bull Cycle? (3 AIs Speculate) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – George Town, British Virgin Islands, September 28th, 2026]

Aster, the privacy-first onchain trading platform backed by YZi Labs, today announced the launch of its Liquidity Pool Mining campaign, a four-week incentive campaign featuring a total reward pool of up to 140,000 $ASTER and running from September 28 to October 25, 2026 (UTC). To celebrate the launch of Perpetual Grid 2.0, the program is open to all Aster users running Perpetual Grid strategies on eligible trading pairs.

Rewards will be distributed hourly based on each eligible Grid’s share of trading volume. The base reward pool is set at 10,000 $ASTER per epoch, with additional rewards available based on market conditions and trading activity on the platform. Participation is automatic, with no registration required.

“As Aster continues to bring more emerging assets and opportunities onchain, we’re also focused on building the tools traders need to navigate increasingly dynamic markets. Perpetual Grid offers a flexible way to capture opportunities amid market volatility, and Grid 2.0 takes this experience further with greater flexibility and independence. This upgrade is another step toward our broader vision of building the frontier of onchain trading,” said Leonard, CEO at Aster.

Incentivizing Automated Perpetual Trading

The campaign builds on Aster’s expanded Perpetual Grid infrastructure, giving users a new way to participate in automated trading while earning additional $ASTER rewards from eligible Grid activity. Both Maker and Taker volume count toward the campaign, while manual trading and activity outside the Grid strategy are excluded.

An Estimated Bonus APY is also displayed to provide an indication of potential annualized $ASTER rewards based on recent campaign activity. The estimate can change as trading volume, participating Grids and other campaign conditions change, and does not guarantee future rewards or returns.

Grid 2.0 Separates Automated and Manual Strategies

Alongside the campaign, the newly upgraded Perpetual Grid 2.0 enables Grid strategies to operate independently from users’ regular Perpetual trading. Each Grid runs through a dedicated Grid Bot subaccount, keeping its positions and margin separate from the main Perpetual account.

With support for both Cross and Isolated Margin, users can run automated Grid strategies while continuing to trade Perpetuals manually, including on the same trading pair. Isolated Margin supports up to 50 independent Grid strategies per account, with no per-pair limit.

Discover Strategies Through Grid Marketplace

Aster’s Grid Marketplace further simplifies strategy discovery by allowing users to browse active Grid strategies and review metrics such as PnL, ROI, runtime, price range, leverage and trading activity.

Users can use an existing strategy as a starting point through Copy, or switch its direction through Reverse, turning a Long strategy into Short or vice versa. Copied or reversed strategies remain independent from their source and do not automatically synchronize with the original Grid.

The Liquidity Pool Mining campaign is available on designated eligible trading pairs, with the Week 1 eligible pairs including OURA/USD1, POLYMARKET/USD1, and META/USD1. The reward pool is shared across participating pairs. Individual rewards are determined by each Grid’s eligible trading volume relative to the total eligible volume generated during the relevant hourly period.

More eligible trading pairs may be added in subsequent weeks to reflect the latest market trends. For more information about the campaign, eligible trading pairs and current campaign parameters, please visit the official campaign page.

About Aster

Aster is a privacy-first onchain trading platform backed by YZi Labs, with unique features like Hidden Orders to protect user trading activity. It pioneers the frontier of on-chain trading through perpetual futures, spots, and earn products for top-trending assets, including RWAs, memes, and core crypto markets. It is powered by Aster Chain, a Layer 1 blockchain built to power the future of decentralized finance.

Users can learn more about Aster on the official website or follow Aster on X.

The post Aster Launches Perpetual Grid Trading 2.0 with Up to 140,000 $ASTER Liquidity Mining Campaign appeared first on CryptoPotato.

BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) said on Monday that it holds more than 6 million Ethereum (ETH) after buying 17,362 tokens in the week ending September 27.

The latest buy was smaller than the 27,562 ETH the company added a week earlier. It took the treasury to 6,001,302 ETH. That is 4.9% of the 122.1 million ETH in supply, against BitMine’s goal of owning 5%.

Staked Ether Holds at 5.07 Million

BitMine marked its ETH at $2,698 per token, using Coinbase prices. At that price, its crypto, cash, securities, and equity stakes add up to $17.2 billion. The release ranks BitMine second among crypto treasuries worldwide, behind Strategy (MSTR).

BitMine Chairman Tom Lee said the company built the position in under 15 months. He added that BitMine has bought ETH every week since its treasury strategy began on June 30, 2025. The treasury crossed 5 million ETH in late April.

BitMine reported 5,067,309 ETH staked, worth $13.7 billion at its mark. The company has reported that same count in every weekly update since August 9, according to its SEC filings. Over that stretch, the treasury kept growing, and the staked share has slipped to 84%.

The company stakes through MAVAN, the Made in America Validator Network it launched in March, and through outside staking partners. Lee projected annualized staking revenue of $358 million, based on a 2.62% seven-day yield from BitMine’s own operations. He said that projection rises to $424 million once all of the company’s ETH is staked.

Lee Expects Institutions to Add Crypto

“In our view, institutions are still underweight crypto and we expect them to be adding to their exposure in the final months of 2026,” Lee said. He added that ETH is beating the S&P 500 by 6,728 basis points in the quarter to date. He is due to give the keynote at Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul on September 30.

Cash and marketable securities fell to $672 million from $714 million a week earlier. BitMine gave no reason for the cash decline. Besides ETH and cash, BitMine held 213 Bitcoin (BTC), a $180 million stake in Beast Industries and a $115 million position in Eightco Holdings (ORBS). BitMine describes Eightco as one of the few listed stocks that give investors indirect exposure to OpenAI.

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