The potential failure of Republican redistricting to secure expected gains could weaken their influence and alter the balance of power in Congress.

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Warsh's stance on AI suggests a potential shift in monetary policy focus, prioritizing long-term productivity over immediate inflation concerns.

The post Fed Chair Kevin Warsh does not see AI growth as necessarily inflationary, says Tom Lee appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The bug highlights the critical need for timely updates in software security, as outdated nodes risk operational disruptions and network reliability.

The post Bitcoin Core bug lets malicious peers crash Windows and Mac nodes appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The potential Bitcoin purchases by Strategy could significantly impact market dynamics and investor confidence, influencing broader financial strategies.

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The expanded partnership may intensify competition in AI infrastructure, prompting increased investments from other tech firms and cloud providers.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Trades Above $81,500 as Fed Keeps Rates Steady in Split Vote

The Federal Reserve left its benchmark rate unchanged Wednesday, holding the federal funds target range at 3.75% to 4%. The bitcoin price showed some volatility around $81,000.

The decision passed 10-2, and the dissents carry as much weight as the outcome. Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack wanted a quarter-point increase. It is the first time since 1992 that a Fed governor and a regional bank president have dissented together on the same side.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh faced reporters after the vote and said politics played no role in the decision, days before the midterm elections. Warsh has said he does not favor forward guidance absent a crisis, which leaves investors to read the data themselves. 

The committee’s statement dropped its earlier language about when a hike might support a return to 2% inflation. In its place is a line saying more information will guide the policy stance. The Fed also described growth as strong, up from solid.

The signal points toward tightening. Fed funds futures and the Fed’s own dot plot lean toward a rate increase by December, and some pricing puts the odds near three in four. Inflation has been running hot, and the two dissenters are the officials who want to act on it.

Bitcoin price reaction

Bitcoin price’s reaction was restrained. The bitcoin price spiked to about $81,700 in the minutes after the announcement, fell below $80,500, and then recovered toward $81,000. Most traders expected a hold, so the muted move surprises nobody.

Bitcoin’s first response to Fed news tends to be modest, and that the real direction often emerges over the following day. Spot Bitcoin ETFs drew $110 million in net inflows on October 26 and $176 million on October 27, a sign that some institutional money is buying the dip. Other observers have flagged large holders selling into strength.

That tension defines crypto’s position right now. Bitcoin sits about a third below its October 2025 record near $126,000. A rate-hike path works against an asset that has thrived on cheap money, and the market has spent months adjusting to the possibility that the easy-money era is over. 

Some traders read the hold as evidence the Fed will move slowly. Others see December as the real test. For now, the level to watch is a bitcoin price of $80,000. It has held as support in recent sessions, and a clean break below it would expose the next floor. 

Warsh and his colleagues have said they will wait for incoming data before acting. Bitcoin will have to wait along with everyone else.

Midterms up next

Bitcoin’s next big political test arrives on November 3, when voters across the country head to the polls. Crypto has not really dominated the campaign trail. 

The crypto industry spent about $176 million on more than 100 midterm races to build a bipartisan bloc in Congress that could protect its interests after President Donald Trump left office. Fairshake, the industry’s largest super PAC, led the effort and directed strategy as it had in the 2024 cycle.

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is $81,478.

This post Bitcoin Price Trades Above $81,500 as Fed Keeps Rates Steady in Split Vote first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Centralized Exchange and DeFi Losses Dominate 2026 Crypto Hacks Despite Hardware Wallet Failures

Crypto hacks have produced roughly $2.35 billion in net losses so far in 2026 after freezes and returns, according to a report by Lightning.news shared with Bitcoin Magazine. A security researcher by the name of Stacy Muur posted on X compiled “a list of protocols that were hacked for more than $50,000 in 2026.” 230 protocols year-to-date. “Crypto security is absolutely cooked.” September alone accounted for about $768 million in Muur’s tally, driven mainly by centralized exchanges and DeFi rather than pure Bitcoin self-custody hardware wallets, which got significant news coverage at the time.

The largest single loss was Bitget’s September 24 drain of roughly $387.5 million from hot and warm wallets. The exchange and firms including Chainalysis, Elliptic, and TRM Labs have linked the incident to North Korea, citing IP patterns consistent with prior DPRK-linked VPN use, on-chain overlaps with wallets tied to earlier Lazarus Group and TraderTraitor activity, including the 2025 Bybit theft. Attackers used third-party security products to inject fraudulent withdrawal commands without taking private keys.

Liquid Network, Blockstream’s Bitcoin sidechain, took the next-largest hit when attackers exploited an Elements software bug in early September to mint about 4,000 unbacked L-BTC and peg them out for roughly 4,000 real bitcoins, valued near $320 million at the time. The self-described white-hat actors returned 3,400 BTC after negotiations conducted on-chain via OP_RETURN messages and kept about 600 BTC. No federation keys were compromised. The loss came from a type of inflation bug on the Liquid network protocol. 

Samson Mow later called the episode part of an “avalanche of AI-assisted attacks” that had already reached other Bitcoin-adjacent software before hitting Liquid. The network is back and running now, having covered the losses, presumably from investors. 

DeFi platforms showed the same pattern of concentrated, high-value losses. Drift Protocol lost approximately $285–296 million in an April governance and multisig compromise that involved months of social engineering. An investigation commissioned by the project attributed the operation to North Korean actors. 

KelpDAO’s LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge was drained of roughly $292 million in unbacked tokens after a single-verifier design was subverted. LayerZero stated that preliminary indicators pointed to DPRK’s Lazarus Group, specifically TraderTraitor. 

Tectonic on Cronos saw about $120.4 million borrowed against manipulated collateral in late August. Validators later rewound the chain and recovered the majority, though several million dollars that had already been bridged off-network were not restored.

Incidents involving Bitcoin hardware wallets were smaller in aggregate despite the wide news coverage. Galaxy Research placed the Coinkite RNG hack values in the range of roughly 1,596–1,789 BTC, on the order of $100–130 million, with higher upper-bound estimates near 2,055 BTC. 

Ledger losses of roughly $86–102 million traced to devices sold through the authorized Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBilis, where an unauthorized hardware implant captured recovery phrases during setup, a supply chain attack. The company stated that confirmed cases were limited to that reseller’s supply chain and that its own systems and direct sales were unaffected, though there are unconfirmed reports of such bugged devices making it to German markets. Combined, however, these hardware-adjacent events remain well below the single largest CEX and DeFi incidents. 

The year has also coincided with the practical deployment of AI coding agents capable of scanning codebases for vulnerabilities and automating exploit development. Muur has stated that “AI is definitely making it much easier to find and exploit bugs. I think we’re entering a pretty serious cybersecurity arms race.” 

Reports note that code-flaw exploits accelerated after the February release of models such as GPT-5.3-Codex and Claude Opus 4.6, which showed high success rates on smart-contract bug benchmarks at low cost. 

OpenAI has disclosed internal testing cases in which agents accessed unauthorized test-network funds or bypassed controls to complete tasks. Most of the year’s largest heists still relied on traditional vectors such as key compromise, social engineering, and infrastructure flaws, but the lowered barrier for discovering and weaponizing bugs adds a new layer of risk, particularly for complex smart-contract systems and sidechains.

Bitcoin’s base layer itself has not been the source of these losses. The bulk of the 2026 damage has concentrated in CEX hot-wallet infrastructure, DeFi governance, oracle designs, and Bitcoin sidechain code, while pure self-custody hardware wallets, even when imperfect, have accounted for a distinctly smaller share. Nevertheless, calls for an update to self custody recommendations have emerged from industry leaders, pushing forward multivendor multisig wallets as the future of niche industry.

This post Centralized Exchange and DeFi Losses Dominate 2026 Crypto Hacks Despite Hardware Wallet Failures first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Google Debuting a Bank-Grade Crypto Custody Tool Built on Split Keys: Report

Google is reportedly unveiling Google Multi-Party Compute, a crypto custody system that splits signing keys across separate systems, at its first digital assets symposium in New York today. The product is in private preview with several financial institutions. Alphabet has started using it to secure its own assets, according to CoinDesk reporting.

Google plans commercial availability in early 2027 and has not disclosed pricing.

The system applies multi-party computation to a signing key. The key is divided into fragments held by separate parties or machines, and a transaction requires a set number of fragments to sign. 

The full key is never assembled in one place. A bank could hold one share on its own hardware, another in Google Cloud, and a third with a rival cloud provider. Institutions can set thresholds such as two-of-three or five-of-seven. Before any signature, a policy engine running inside Google’s Confidential Space checks the transfer against limits, destination restrictions, and approval rules. 

Google says it has no access to key shares in unencrypted form, per CoinDesk.

Crypto’s security issues

The pitch rests on a persistent problem. Chainalysis attributed 43.8% of cryptocurrency stolen in 2024 to compromised private keys. DeFiLlama data shows roughly 40% of the $16.69 billion lost to hacks through June came from key compromises. In June, an attacker took seven keys from one developer’s computer during the Humanity Protocol breach and drained wallets across two networks. 

Such incidents show how concentrated signing authority creates a single point of failure. The industry has responded by recommending multi-vendor multisignature setups that spread control across hardware and software providers.

Google also frames the product against AI-enabled fraud. Chainalysis found that scams linked to AI tool vendors averaged $3.2 million per operation in 2025, compared with $719,000 for other scams. The report links the two figures but does not prove that AI caused the difference. 

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has warned that AI could eventually find mathematical shortcuts that weaken wallet signatures. No AI system has shown that capability. Google’s MPC design targets stolen credentials and unauthorized transfers, not a break in the underlying cryptography.

Quantum computing presents a separate, longer-term risk. Google researchers estimated that a sufficiently powerful future machine could derive a bitcoin private key from an exposed public key in about nine minutes. Roughly 6.9 million bitcoin have exposed public keys. Google says its architecture can adopt post-quantum signatures later without forcing institutions to rebuild their systems, but it has set no timetable. Background on how quantum machines threaten bitcoin explains which addresses are most exposed.

Google enters a market led by Fireblocks, Fordefi, and BitGo. Google argued to CoinDesk that its banking relationships and security expertise give it an advantage. It also positions itself as a neutral supplier for banks that do not want to rely on competitors. 

Banks already use specialized platforms, such as BNP Paribas’s custody work with Metaco, and multi-institution vaults built with BitGo.

This post Google Debuting a Bank-Grade Crypto Custody Tool Built on Split Keys: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy (MSTR) Shareholders Approve Daily Dividends on Four Preferred Stocks

Strategy shareholders have approved the Daily Dividends amendment, the company announced Wednesday. Preliminary results show 99.3% of votes cast were in favor, according to Executive Chairman Michael Saylor.

The amendment allows STRF, STRC, STRK and STRD to accrue dividends every calendar day, including weekends and holidays.

The proposal surfaced on September 25, when the company asked holders to attend a special meeting on October 28. Strategy said the change “would reduce reinvestment lag, enhance liquidity and market efficiency, and increase price stability.”

At the time Strategy said that they “believe these enhancements can also benefit our common stockholders by increasing the attractiveness and utility of our Digital Credit instruments, supporting our ability to access preferred equity capital efficiently and expanding the capital markets toolkit we use to execute our Bitcoin Treasury strategy.

Under the approved structure, dividends accrue every day but are paid on the next business day. Strategy has said scheduled dividend rates and total dividend obligations remain unchanged. The company has argued the change could benefit common stockholders by making its Digital Credit instruments easier to use and easier to fund.

The timing depends on board action. If the board approves the change and required filings are completed, the first STRC record and payment dates would fall on November 1 and 2, 2026. For STRF, STRK and STRD, the first record and payment dates would be January 1 and 4, 2027. Those dates also depend on operational readiness.

STRC pays a variable rate that the company can change at its discretion. Its rate for the month ended June 30, 2026 was 11.50%, according to Strategy’s quarterly report. Shareholders approved moving STRC to semi-monthly payments in June, and the new amendment builds on that precedent.

In short, STRC is designed to help Strategy raise money from investors through a preferred stock offering targeting a stable $100 price and a variable dividend yield, then use that capital to continuously buy Bitcoin regardless of its short-term price movements. This creates a potential global dollar-cost-averaging machine for Bitcoin.

Final vote certification will come in a company filing. Board action remains the final step before any new payment schedule begins.

Strategy’s bitcoin moves this year 

The vote comes after bitcoin fell into somewhat of a bear market. Strategy slowed its bitcoin purchases this year and sold some holdings to fund preferred dividends, interest payments and repurchases. 

The company’s common stock, MSTR, is down near 50% over the past year, though it has risen by a figure approaching 1,000% since Strategy began buying bitcoin in 2020.

Earlier this week, Strategy said they paused Bitcoin purchases for the prior week and maintained its holdings at 848,517 BTC, acquired for $64.02 billion at an average price of $75,446 per Bitcoin. 

The company spent $204.9 million repurchasing STRC preferred stock while retaining a $4.83 billion cash reserve. 

Fellow bitcoin-treasury company Strive pays cash dividends on its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock (SATA) every business day. This started on June 16, after moving from monthly payments. 

This post Strategy (MSTR) Shareholders Approve Daily Dividends on Four Preferred Stocks first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitwise Raises Bitcoin Target to $1.6 Million as Institutions Keep Buying

Bitwise Asset Management this week released its 2027 Bitcoin Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions, raising its 2036 base-case price target for bitcoin to $1,599,766 from $1.3 million a year earlier. 

The forecast implies a 34.3% compound annual growth rate from the roughly $83,557 price the firm used as of September 30, 2026. Bitwise’s bear case is $130,686 and its bull case is $3.67 million.

The base case rests on three arguments. Institutional investors will keep adding bitcoin to portfolios. New supply stays fixed on a predictable schedule. Rising government debt will push investors toward assets that cannot be printed. 

Institutional investors love bitcoin

Bitwise estimates that institutions controlling about $147 trillion could allocate 1% to 5% of their portfolios to bitcoin, which the firm says would mean $1.5 trillion to $7.4 trillion of purchases. The network issues about $14 billion in new coins per year, and Bitwise argues that gap will push prices higher.

Institutional plumbing is already expanding. U.S. spot bitcoin ETPs hold about $108 billion, according to the report. Banks and brokerages are building custody and trading services, and a recent report describes sovereign wealth funds and family offices buying during the 2026 decline. 

Regulators are also moving. A Federal Reserve capital proposal aimed at easing bank custody rules could widen access for large institutions, if adopted.

The past year tested that thesis. Bitcoin fell 53.4% from its October 2025 peak of $126,080 to a June 30, 2026 low of $58,717. Bitwise calls that drawdown the shallowest in the asset’s history. Prior cycle declines were 77%, 84% and 86%. 

Whether the shallow decline signals a new pattern or a pause is less settled. Bitwise expects the four-year cycle to weaken as the investor base broadens. Others see the cycle still at work. 

VanEck argues the current slump follows the historical halving pattern, and Fidelity has pointed to a possible floor around November 2026 if past timing holds. NYDIG has said a repeat of earlier bear markets could push the cycle low near $38,000 to $39,000. Cathie Wood has argued the market is nearly through the downturn. Each view carries a different price floor and timeline.

Bitcoin’s volatility 

Volatility is the other pillar of the forecast. Bitwise models a 27.8% average volatility over the decade, the midpoint between today’s level and its 2036 expectation. Grayscale’s research head recently put one-year volatility at 43%, against a 10-year average of 64%, and lower than the volatility of 19% of S&P 500 companies. Charles Schwab’s research found the asset remains prone to sharp drawdowns despite the lower readings. A Deutsche Bank analyst has described the trend as a sign of a maturing market.

Bitwise also reports that bitcoin’s correlation with gold reached a record 0.58 in September 2026. The firm expects that relationship to deepen, which positions bitcoin as a store-of-value asset. That link cuts both ways. If gold weakens, bitcoin may lose the support it gained from the same investor demand. Gemini has predicted that at least one country will shift part of its gold reserves into bitcoin in 2026, a forecast that has yet to materialize.

The report is candid about what could go wrong. Bitcoin’s track record is short. Its software was developed in 2008 and 2009, trading began on public exchanges in 2010, the first institutional product with bitcoin exposure launched in 2014, and spot ETPs arrived in 2024. 

Bitwise writes that forecasts built heavily on history carry uncertainty because future returns may differ from the past. Regulation is a second concern. The Clarity Act’s failure in Congress, which the report traces to Democratic concerns about ethics provisions, shows that progress can stall, even as the firm argues recent advances are unlikely to be rolled back. 

Technology is a third. Quantum computing, and mathematical advances accelerated by AI, could threaten the cryptography that secures bitcoin wallets. Bitwise says the network will need a major upgrade at some point, and holders who fail to move funds to new addresses could be exposed. The developers have made progress over the past year, the report says, but major issues remain unresolved.

Bitcoin’s price is near $80,500.

This post Bitwise Raises Bitcoin Target to $1.6 Million as Institutions Keep Buying first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Prediction markets generated $173 million against crypto's $120 million in Q3, raising the stakes of a continuing state-federal regulatory fight.

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Coinbase says funds were unaffected by the Amplitude incident, while disclosures in South Korea reveal different data exposures and unresolved customer risks.

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The 30-day face-value tally compares with $3.4 billion paid for contracts, while Reuters reports renewed offshore-access scrutiny and separate US customer-protection checks.

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The first full Helios lease quarter left Data Centers with a $435,000 loss, while Treasury & Corporate drove Galaxy’s recovery.

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The ECB still calls the deterioration moderate, while any Bitcoin impact depends on financing costs and investor risk budgets.

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The documented part: the US Federal Reserve left its target range for the policy rate unchanged at 3.75 to 4.00 percent on Wednesday evening at 7 pm German time, by ten votes to two, and the average staking yield on Ether stood at 2.63 percent in the third quarter. Our assessment follows further down: the gap between those two numbers explains the outflows from the American Ether funds better than any chart level, and it works out differently for investors in the euro area than for investors in dollars.

Ether was trading at around $2,357 on Wednesday evening, up 0.5 percent over 24 hours (as of October 28, data from CoinGecko). Over seven days it is down 6.6 percent, over 30 days down 12.8 percent. Where the price can point over a horizon of months is set out in our Ethereum price prediction. For the coming days, though, the more important quantity is not a level on the chart but an interest rate.

The Fed holds at 3.75 to 4.00 percent, two members wanted a hike

The Open Market Committee decided to leave the target range for the federal funds rate at 3-3/4 to 4 percent. That is set out in the Federal Reserve statement of October 28, 2026. The vote ended ten to two. What stands out is the direction of the two dissents: Lisa D. Cook and Beth M. Hammack argued for raising the target range by a quarter point. Neither member wanted a cut.

On the economy, the statement says activity is expanding at a strong pace and that inflation remains elevated. In September the Fed raised the rate by a quarter point. Anyone who had bet on easing soon received the opposite of a signal that evening.

For the crypto market the decisive point is not the decision itself but its reasoning. A target range of 3.75 to 4.00 percent means short-dated dollar deposits continue to earn in that region. That rate is the yardstick against which institutional investors measure every return they could earn elsewhere.

What the rate decision changes for Ether but not for Bitcoin

Bitcoin pays no running yield. If the dollar rate rises, that raises the cost of holding, but there is no direct comparison figure. With Ether it is different, and in that lies the distinction most market reports pass over.

Ether can be staked. If you post your coins as stake and thereby help confirm blocks, you receive a running distribution for it. Staking describes exactly that process: Ether is locked up to secure the blockchain and earns a yield for doing so. That places Ether alongside interest-bearing assets, and that is precisely where it gets valued.

That produces a simple calculation any investor can work through, and at present it does not come out in Ether's favour.

Staking yield of 2.63 percent: the sum against the dollar and the euro

According to an analysis by the asset manager Bitwise, reported by The Block, the average annualised staking yield on Ether stood at 2.63 percent in the third quarter of 2026. In the previous quarter it was 2.81 percent. The yield has therefore fallen by 0.18 points while the dollar rate rose in September.

Setting the two numbers side by side produces the following picture, calculated on the rates in force today:

• Against the lower bound of the Fed's target range of 3.75 percent, the staking yield trails by 1.12 percentage points.
• Against the midpoint of the range at 3.875 percent, it is 1.25 percentage points short.
• Against the European Central Bank's deposit rate of 2.50 percent, it is 0.13 percentage points ahead.

The ECB's deposit rate has stood at 2.50 percent since September 16, 2026, as set out in the European Central Bank's overview of key rates. That yields a finding most reports lose sight of: an American institutional investor calculating in dollars gives up a good percentage point of interest by staking. An investor in the euro area gives up nothing and is in fact narrowly ahead.

That difference is not an arithmetic game, because it explains why American fund investors are pulling money out while the staked amount keeps growing. Which providers leave which yield standing after fees is shown by our overview of the best staking platforms; the providers' deductions decide whether anything of those 2.63 percent still amounts to a lead over the euro deposit rate.

One date is coming on top of that: the ECB Governing Council meets on October 28 and 29, with the announcement scheduled for Thursday at 2.15 pm. If the deposit rate stays at 2.50 percent, staking's narrow lead in the euro area stays in place as well.

43.8 million Ether staked, and the amount keeps growing

At the end of the third quarter, according to the same Bitwise analysis, 43.8 million Ether were staked, just under 36 percent of total supply. In the first nine months of 2026, 7.96 million Ether were added.

That is the real contradiction of this October. The yield is falling, the dollar rate is rising, and yet ever more Ether moves into stake. Read staking purely as a bet on interest rates and that cannot be explained.

The explanation lies in the role the stake plays. Staked Ether is not available for trading. Every million that moves into stake tightens the freely tradable supply. For holders with a long horizon the distribution is therefore only one half of the sum; the other is the scarcity that results from it. A rate decision in Washington changes nothing about that in the short run.

ETF outflows of $148.8 million across two trading days

On the other side stand the American spot funds, and there the direction is unambiguous. According to data from SoSoValue, reported by several industry outlets, the US spot ETFs on Ether recorded a net outflow of $60.2 million on October 27. On October 26, $88.6 million had already flowed out. Together that makes $148.8 million across two consecutive trading days.

Within that sum the movement ran unevenly. BlackRock's fund lost around $93.3 million on October 27, while the Fidelity fund gathered $28.6 million. For comparison, a look at the previous week: on October 22, $110.6 million flowed out, and on October 23, $4.4 million came in.

Total assets in the Ether spot funds most recently stood at $14.18 billion, corresponding to around 4.95 percent of Ether's market capitalisation. Data providers put cumulative net inflows since launch at different levels, with SoSoValue citing $12.57 billion and Farside around $12.66 billion. We give the range rather than presenting either value as settled.

The contrast with Bitcoin is marked: on that same October 27, the American Bitcoin funds gathered $176 million. The money is therefore not leaving the crypto market, it is re-sorting itself within the market.

How a fund outflow works through to the price

That an outflow depresses the price is often asserted and rarely explained. The mechanism is manageable. When an investor hands back fund units, the fund has to raise liquidity. To do so an authorised participant returns units to the fund and receives Ether or the dollar equivalent in exchange. The Ether freed up in the process lands on the market.

What matters is the ratio to trading volume. Measured against daily Ether turnover, $60 million is a small amount that on its own barely forces a price move. The effect arises through duration: several outflow days in a row take away the buy side that reliably stepped in during the preceding months. That is precisely the pattern in place at the moment.

The price at $2,357 and the session high at $2,380

Over the past 24 hours Ether moved between $2,324 and $2,380 (as of October 28, data from CoinGecko). That makes a daily range of around 2.4 percent, a quiet day for Ether.

On the upside the session high of $2,380 is the first hurdle that is grounded in the trading itself rather than in a drawn line. On the downside sits the session low at $2,324. Both values come from live trading and are therefore verifiable, unlike price targets circulating without an author.

The comparison with Bitcoin places the situation: over 30 days Ether has lost 12.8 percent, Bitcoin 3.4 percent. The difference of 9.4 percentage points is the real story of this month, and it fits the fund movement above.

The comparison with where things stood on October 27

On Tuesday we reported in this spot on the outflow of $2.9 billion from stablecoins. Since then the picture has shifted on two points.

First the price: on October 27 Ether stood at $2,320.67 at the start of the day, and by now it is around $2,357. That is a gain of 1.6 percent, and the price has not fallen below the previous week's low since. Second the reason: the peg back then was liquidity in the stablecoin market, today it is the interest rate. Both pull in the same direction, namely tighter funds for risk assets, but by different routes. If you read Tuesday's article, you know the supply side; the rate decision adds the demand side to it.

Staking income and the tax office: receipt, exemption limit, holding period

Anyone working the sum above through for themselves should not leave tax out of it, because it shifts the result noticeably. The following points reflect the position as tax guides and the German Federal Ministry of Finance describe it; they are no substitute for advice in an individual case.

In Germany, staking income counts as other income under section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act. It is taxed at the personal rate, not at the 25 percent withholding rate. What governs is the market value at the time of receipt, and under the Ministry of Finance letter of March 6, 2025, receipt is the moment at which the income is claimed.

For small amounts an exemption limit of 256 euros per calendar year applies. The word limit is to be taken literally: once it is reached, the entire amount is taxable and not merely the portion above it. The limit also applies to all income from services taken together, not per exchange or per token.

On a later sale of the Ether received, the one-year holding period applies. Staking does not extend it to ten years; that older reading is obsolete. We keep the current state of the political debate on this on our page on the crypto holding period.

In concrete terms that means this for the sum above: at a personal tax rate of 42 percent, around 1.53 percent remains after tax out of a gross yield of 2.63 percent, before the provider's fee is deducted. With that, the lead over the euro deposit rate disappears. If you want to keep the evidence straight, you need an unbroken record of every receipt.

Our assessment of the rate gap

From the editorial point of view, the gap of 1.12 percentage points between the staking yield and the dollar rate is the most solid reason for Ether's weakness against Bitcoin this month. Three pieces of evidence support that: the fund outflows of $148.8 million across two days alongside simultaneous inflows of $176 million into Bitcoin funds, the decline in the staking yield from 2.81 to 2.63 percent, and the Fed's September rate increase, which frames both movements in time.

Against it stands the staked amount, which has grown by 7.96 million Ether in 2026 even though the yield fell. Anyone holding Ether for the long term is evidently not guided by the dollar money market. As long as that holds, the rate gap mainly hits short-horizon fund money, not the existing holdings.

What follows from this: whether the rate rises or falls, the sum shifts in the same direction. The two dissents on the Open Market Committee, which wanted a hike, are the opposite of an early signal for that. This is explicitly not a recommendation to buy or sell; crypto assets can lose their entire value.

Staking and rates: enough against the euro, not against the dollar

1. Work out your own staking yield after fees. If your provider takes a share of the income, your net figure sits below the 2.63 percent from the Bitwise analysis. The deductions of individual providers are set out in our comparison of the best staking platforms.
2. Record the receipt of every payout with date and price while the year is still running. The exemption limit of 256 euros applies to all income from services together, and the evidence is harder to assemble in January than it is today. Suitable tools are set out in our comparison of crypto tax software.
3. Mark Thursday, 2.15 pm, as your date. If the ECB cuts the deposit rate below 2.50 percent, staking's lead in the euro area grows; if it raises the rate, that lead disappears. Where you trade Ether and at what cost is set out in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

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

Context: Shiba Inu is trading at $0.00000492 on Wednesday afternoon, 1.16 percent above where it stood 24 hours ago. The documented part: that puts the coin ahead of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Cardano, all of which gave ground over the same period. Our own assessment follows further down, and it is more sober than the daily tally.

The session high was exactly $0.0000050 according to CoinGecko data, the session low $0.00000485. So the round level was touched and not held: the price turned lower there and slipped back. If you hold Shiba Inu, you face a day on which the direction is set not by your own coin but by the Federal Reserve's rate decision at 7 pm German time.

Shiba Inu price on Wednesday: $0.00000492, with the round level just above

The market value of all SHIB tokens stands at $2.899 billion, trading volume over the past 24 hours at $61.46 million. Both figures as of October 28, 5:42 pm German time. The all-time high of $0.00008616 from October 2021 is 94.3 percent away, and nothing about that changed on Wednesday either.

More interesting than the distance to the record is the distance to the coin's own previous week. The average price over the past seven days is $0.00000491. Shiba Inu is therefore sitting practically on its weekly average, 0.2 percent above it. Measured over 30 days the average is $0.00000530, putting the current price 7.2 percent below it. The week is moving sideways, the month downwards.

What has changed since Monday evening's September low

On Monday evening this page reported that Shiba Inu, at $0.00000488, was trading lower than on any day in September. Since then 0.8 percent has been added. That sounds like very little, yet for the level picture it is the decisive difference: the 30-day low sits at $0.00000485 and was reached on October 26. Today's price is 1.5 percent above it, and today's session low tested it exactly.

Two days running, then, the price has accepted this zone and closed above it both times. That is not a trend reversal but a confirmation of the downside. The same applies to the upside in reverse: the price reached $0.0000050 once today and fell back again.

Meme coins up, large caps down: the day's comparison in numbers

The daily comparison across nine large coins, all values from CoinGecko, as of 5:42 pm German time, change over 24 hours:

• Dogecoin up 1.25 percent
• Shiba Inu up 1.16 percent
• Chainlink up 0.43 percent
• Polkadot up 0.39 percent
• Solana up 0.04 percent
• Bitcoin down 0.14 percent
• Ethereum down 0.72 percent
• XRP down 0.93 percent
• Cardano down 1.88 percent

The two dog-themed coins sit at the top, the four largest names at the bottom. On the day before a rate decision that is not a given, because the usual order runs the other way: the smaller and more speculative a coin, the harder any nervousness in the broader market hits its price.

Why a rate decision hits Shiba Inu differently from Bitcoin

The mechanism behind it is no secret, but it is rarely spelled out. Since the US spot funds were approved, Bitcoin and Ethereum have been tied to capital that calculates against interest rates: fund managers and treasury desks shift money between government bonds, tech stocks and crypto, and they do so before a rate decision, not after. For Shiba Inu that capital does not exist. There is no spot fund on SHIB, no quarterly filing from a bank, no mandate that has to hold SHIB.

That produces a peculiarity which shows up on days like today: when institutional money flows out of Bitcoin, it does not flow into Shiba Inu but into dollars. Shiba Inu is then simply left where it is, because the buyers and sellers there are different people. A gain of 1.16 percent on a day when Bitcoin slips slightly is therefore less a strength of the coin than an absence of the selling pressure that moves the large caps.

The fear and greed index stands at 51 and says exactly that

The fear and greed index for the crypto market stands at 51 points on October 28, placing it in neutral territory. The previous day it was 48 points, also neutral. The market is therefore neither fearful nor greedy, and that fits the picture precisely: without a direction in the broader market, Shiba Inu is decided by its own order book, and that book is thin.

The futures market is not betting on the breakout: funding and the perpetual gap

With Shiba Inu the spot market is only half the story. The other half sits in futures, and it is almost never read alongside articles on the SHIB price. A perpetual, or perp, is a futures contract with no expiry date: it runs on until somebody closes it. To keep its price from drifting away from spot, holders of the stronger side pay holders of the weaker side every eight hours. That balancing payment is called the funding rate.

At OKX the SHIB-USDT-SWAP contract traded at $0.000004911 on Wednesday at 4:49 pm UTC, while the same exchange's spot price was $0.000004913. The futures price was therefore 0.04 percent below spot. The funding rate stood at 0.01 percent per eight-hour period, with the next settlement on October 29 at midnight UTC. Open interest, meaning the sum of all open contracts on that exchange, came to $6.73 million.

Those three numbers together make a clear statement. 0.01 percent is the standard rate an exchange applies when neither side dominates. A futures price slightly below spot means leveraged buyers are not pressing. And $6.73 million of open interest is a small number against $61.46 million of daily spot turnover. Anyone buying SHIB today is buying against a futures market that has not positioned itself.

In practice that means two things. The built-up leveraged position that would turn a break above $0.0000050 into a fast run, because shorts have to be closed, is missing. But so is the opposite side that would turn a slide below $0.00000485 into a wave of liquidations. If you work with leverage, the cost side of such contracts is set out in our comparison of perp exchanges.

The levels carrying the price: 30-day low, weekly average and the round number

Four values make up the picture, and every one of them can be recalculated:

• $0.00000485 is the 30-day low from October 26 and was today's session low. The price sits 1.5 percent above it.
• $0.00000491 is the average of the past seven days. The price is standing practically on it.
• $0.0000050 is the round level and was today's session high. That is where the price turned lower.
• $0.00000530 is the average of the past 30 days, 7.2 percent above today's reading.

The span between the first and the third figure is 3.1 percent. Shiba Inu has been moving within that span since Sunday, and for a coin of this market value it is unusually narrow. Anyone wanting to place an order therefore has two reasoned prices instead of a gut feeling.

Trading volume against market value: Shiba Inu turns over more often than Bitcoin

One metric explains the difference between the coins better than any percentage change: turnover, meaning daily volume divided by market value. For Shiba Inu that is $61.46 million against $2.899 billion, or 2.12 percent. For Bitcoin it is $22.66 billion against $1,616 billion, or 1.40 percent. For Dogecoin it is $508.2 million against $12.38 billion, and therefore 4.11 percent.

Shiba Inu is thus traded proportionally more often than Bitcoin and only half as often as Dogecoin. The higher turnover against Bitcoin does not mean more liquidity in absolute terms but shorter holding periods: the same money changes hands faster. For buyers, that means the price reacts more strongly to individual larger orders, upwards as well as downwards.

Holding period and loss offsetting: the December 31 cut-off

For investors in Germany, a price 94 percent below its high raises one concrete question, and it has nothing to do with the forecast. Under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, the sale of crypto assets is tax free after a holding period of one year. Anyone who bought SHIB before October 28, 2025 therefore sells tax free today, even if a gain has arisen.

The reverse also holds: anyone sitting on a loss within the one-year window can realise it through a sale and offset it against gains from other private disposals in the same calendar year. That includes gains from other coins, but not price gains on equities, which fall under a pot of their own. The offset refers to the calendar year, so the cut-off is December 31, 2026. Anyone who does nothing by then can only carry the loss forward.

One note on the legal position itself: the one-year rule is politically contested. We keep the current state of play on our page on the crypto holding period and its reform. If you do not have the holding periods of your purchases in your head, the right tools are set out in our comparison of tax software and portfolio trackers. For the offset you need the purchase date, purchase price and quantity for each position, not just the portfolio value.

Spread and order type: what buying SHIB actually costs

With a price carrying five zeros after the decimal point, the entry price is decided not by the order fee but by the spread, meaning the gap between the best bid and the best ask. For Shiba Inu the smallest price increment sits around the eighth decimal place, and a spread of one such increment already amounts to 0.2 percent at $0.00000492. Two increments are 0.4 percent, and that is more than the order fee at most licensed venues.

Two points follow from this in practice. First: a limit order at a price you set yourself protects you from that span, while a market order accepts it. Second: euro trading in SHIB is thinner than dollar trading, so the spread in euros tends to be wider. Which venues licensed in Germany list SHIB, and at what fees, is set out in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

The editorial view: a quiet day is not yet a turn

Our assessment of today's tally is reserved, and the evidence for it is above. In its favour is that the price has closed above $0.00000485 two days running and that the futures market has built no one-sided position. Against it stands the clearer number: the 30-day average is 7.2 percent above today's price, the 30-day high 16.8 percent above it. A gain of 1.16 percent on a day when the large caps give ground changes nothing about that direction.

What decides matters is the rate decision in the evening, not the morning. If the broader market falls afterwards, Shiba Inu is likely to surrender its thin lead quickly, because it lacks the layer of buyers that supports Bitcoin. If the market rises, SHIB conversely lacks the leveraged position that would accelerate a breakout. This is an assessment of the situation and not a recommendation to buy or sell: with crypto assets, a total loss is possible.

Shiba Inu and the $0.0000050 level: what November hangs on

Three moves make sense today, and none of them presupposes a view on the price:

1. Look up your holding periods. Check for each position whether the purchase fell before October 28, 2025. That determines whether a sale is tax free or whether a loss remains offsettable until December 31. The tools for it are set out in our comparison of tax software.
2. Fix two prices instead of an opinion. $0.00000485 below and $0.0000050 above are this week's levels. Anyone looking to buy or sell places a limit order at one of those prices instead of reaching for the market. Which venue lists SHIB in euros and at what fees is shown by our exchange comparison.
3. With leverage, count the funding cost against it. 0.01 percent per eight hours is around 1.1 percent a month, regardless of where the price goes. The rates at individual venues are set out in our comparison of perp exchanges.

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

Here is what is documented: Dogecoin trades at $0.0792 at midday on Wednesday, 16.1 percent below where it stood on October 1. Our assessment follows further down: the numbers are enough to describe October's weakness, but not enough to turn it into a seasonal rule.

October has a reputation in crypto circles as a reliably strong month. That does not hold for Dogecoin this year, and it did not hold last year either. Three trading days still separate the price from the monthly close that enters every annual statistic. Anyone who bought in October is sitting on a paper loss today. Anyone running a savings plan is buying at cheaper rates. The two situations call for different responses, and both rest on numbers you can check yourself.

Where Dogecoin stands at midday on Wednesday

The price is $0.079167, measured on October 28 at 12:51 UTC at CoinGecko. That is a gain of 1.7 percent over 24 hours, a loss of 2.2 percent over the week and a loss of 14.0 percent over 30 days. The daily range ran from $0.0787 to $0.0805. Trading volume over the past 24 hours came to $531 million, and market capitalisation stands at $12.39 billion. That puts Dogecoin twelfth among cryptocurrencies by market value.

Market capitalisation here means circulating supply multiplied by the current price. In Dogecoin's case the circulating supply grows by roughly 5.2 billion coins every year, because the protocol has no cap. A flat price therefore means a rising market value, and a flat market value means a falling price. That feature separates Dogecoin from Bitcoin, whose supply ends at 21 million.

The October record: 26 of 28 days below the month's opening level

Dogecoin closed at $0.094495 on October 1. Since then, 26 of the 28 October closes have come in below that level. The monthly high fell on October 2 at $0.097914, the monthly low on October 24 at $0.074714. The gap between the two is 23.7 percent.

A positive month would require the price to climb 19.2 percent in the three trading days that remain. Dogecoin has not managed a move of that size over any three-day window this year. The calculation sets a boundary rather than sketching a scenario: October 2026 will in all likelihood enter the record books as a losing month for Dogecoin.

For context in both directions: the yearly high dates from January 6 at $0.15645, the yearly low from August 1 at $0.067582. The current price is therefore 49.4 percent below the yearly high and 17.2 percent above the yearly low. Exactly one year ago, on October 28, 2025, Dogecoin stood at $0.19376.

Three Octobers compared: plus 40, minus 20, minus 16

The talk of a strong October can be tested against exactly three fully available years for Dogecoin. The basis is the daily closing prices for the DOGE against US dollar pair at the exchange Bitstamp, measured from the first to the last day of October in each case.

In October 2024 Dogecoin rose from $0.11502 to $0.16137, a gain of 40.3 percent. In October 2025 the price fell from $0.23298 to $0.18639, a loss of 20.0 percent. The current October stands at a loss of 16.1 percent through the 28th. Three years therefore produce one winning month and two losing months, an average gain of 1.4 percent. That average says nothing about next October, and that is the real finding.

Why the October rule does not hold for Dogecoin

Seasonality describes the assumption that one month performs systematically better than others over many years. Two things are needed before such a claim carries weight: a sufficient number of years, and an explanation of why the calendar should act on the price at all.

Both are missing here. Three data points do not make a distribution you can draw anything from, and a range from plus 40 to minus 20 percent shows the spread more clearly than any average. There is also this: Dogecoin trades mostly against the dollar stablecoin Tether and follows the direction of the broader market in day-to-day business. A calendar month is no driver of that mechanism.

What does act on the price can be named: inflows into the American Dogecoin funds, the cost of leveraged positions, news from around the project, and the direction of Bitcoin. Those four factors explain the moves of recent weeks better than a glance at the calendar. A fifth point joins them today: the US central bank decides on its key rate this evening, and dates of that kind move the whole crypto market more than any seasonal rule.

What weighed on October: a trademark dispute, flat fund flows, expensive leverage

Three developments can be backed with numbers. The trademark agreement between the Dogecoin Foundation and the company House of Doge ended on October 25; licence payments of $400,000 were outstanding, as we reported the same day in our article on the terminated trademark agreement. For the price, the amount matters less than the question of who may run commercial projects under the name from here on.

Second, the funds. As of October 21, the American Dogecoin funds had taken in $16.43 million since launch, while their assets had shrunk to $13.38 million. The gap of roughly three million stems from the price decline of the coins held, not from outflows. The figures come from our analysis of fund assets on October 21.

Third, the futures market. Leveraged long positions cost a funding rate of 7.4 percent a year on October 27, as our analysis of leverage costs on October 27 showed. The funding rate is the fee that holders of a leveraged long position pay to the other side as long as the futures price sits above the spot price. The longer a month moves sideways, the more that fee eats into the position.

What has changed since yesterday

Yesterday's closing price was $0.079007; today at midday it is $0.0792. The move amounts to less than a quarter of a percent. The gap to the 200-day line, which we measured at 13.9 percent yesterday, has narrowed to 8.5 percent; the line itself sinks with every weak day that drops out of the calculation. Nothing decisive has shifted as a result: the price remains below that line, and the gap is closing from underneath, because the line is falling rather than the price rising.

The levels that count before the monthly close

On the upside, the first level is the daily high at $0.0805. Above it, the next level with a basis is the month's opening at $0.0945; only there would October be back to even. There has been no closing price between those two values since October 20, so the space is thinly traded.

On the downside stands the monthly low of October 24 at $0.0747. It has held four times since, most recently on October 26. If the price falls through it, the yearly low of August 1 at $0.0676 is the next level from the current year. The two sit 9.5 percent apart.

A level is not a promise. It is the name for a price area where enough buy or sell orders sat in the past to slow a move. Whether orders still sit there today only the next test will show.

A Dogecoin savings plan: minimum instalment, fee and execution date

A falling month acts differently on a savings plan than on a one-off purchase. Investing a fixed amount each month buys more coins for the same money at lower prices and lowers your average entry price. That effect follows from the arithmetic alone and protects against no loss; it works only as long as the instalments actually keep running.

Three points decide what such a plan costs. First the minimum instalment, which runs between 10 and 25 euros depending on the provider; below that the plan cannot be set up. Second the order fee: on an instalment of 25 euros, a difference of one percentage point comes to three euros a year, measured against 300 euros invested. Third the execution date: many plans run at the start of the month, and some can be spread across several dates. Being able to choose the day spreads the risk of a single price across several points in time. Which providers carry Dogecoin in a savings plan at all, and at what rates, is set out in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

A note on licensing: under the European regulation on markets in crypto-assets, only providers holding the corresponding licence may offer crypto-assets to retail clients in the EU. Check whether your provider holds that licence before setting up a plan; it appears in the register of the national supervisory authority and in the provider's legal notice.

Tax: why a paper loss in October is not yet a loss

In Germany, crypto-assets count as other economic assets. Gains on a sale are tax-free after a holding period of one year, and taxable within the year as a private disposal once the sum of all such gains in a year reaches 1,000 euros. That exemption threshold has applied since 2024 and replaced the earlier limit of 600 euros.

A sober point follows for the current October: a price decline in your portfolio is not a tax loss. The tax office takes into account only what was actually sold, and sold within the same calendar year. Offsetting a loss from 2026 against gains from 2026 requires the sale to be executed by December 31. After the turn of the year that offset is no longer possible, because losses from private disposals can be set only against gains of the same kind in the same year, or carried forward against future years.

In practice, that means gathering your acquisition data before you calculate. Each position needs its purchase date, purchase price, quantity and fee. Buying across several exchanges makes those details easy to lose track of; the common portfolio programmes read trading data in automatically and produce the annual statement. Which programmes cover the German rules is set out in the tax tool comparison further down. For the filing itself, tax advice remains the competent authority; this section does not replace it.

Our assessment: what the numbers support

In the editorial view, Dogecoin's October weakness carries no statement about November. The evidence points that way: three available October records with a range from plus 40.3 to minus 20.0 percent, a price that has moved in a four percent range since October 22, and trading volume of $531 million that shows nothing unusual against the summer months. What can be documented is a downward move over 30 days and a quiet market for the past week.

Against that, nothing can be waved away: the trademark dispute over House of Doge is unresolved, fund inflows have brought no fresh momentum for months, and the rate decision this evening can turn the direction of the whole market. Building a forecast on that leaves the ground of what is documented. Checking whether your position matches your own holding period, and whether your acquisition data is complete, works with what is known today.

Dogecoin's October: three trading days decide the monthly record

Three trading days remain until the monthly close on October 31. What can usefully be done in that time comes in three steps:

1. Gather your acquisition data. Purchase date, price, quantity and fee for every position, across all the exchanges you use. The programmes for the job are listed in the comparison of crypto tax software.
2. Review your savings plan terms. Check the minimum instalment, order fee and execution date with your own provider, along with the licence under the European regulation. The overview comes from the comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
3. Note the levels. $0.0805 on the upside, $0.0747 on the downside, $0.0945 as the month's break-even. Anyone working with leverage should also project the funding rate across the intended holding period; the crypto broker comparison names the respective rates.

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

Traders on the Hyperliquid blockchain are no longer limited to cryptocurrencies. Through the HIP-3 extension, outside operators run their own futures venues there, and what they list ranges from the S&P 500 through gold and crude oil to single stocks and government bonds. A count of all these marketplaces on the morning of October 28, 2026 comes to 315 markets with $4.08 billion in open interest between them.

For an investor in Germany, though, the decisive number is not the total but the leverage tiers. The S&P 500 market of the largest operator allows leverage of up to 50x. At a provider under German supervision, 20:1 would be the ceiling on the same index. That difference is not a footnote in a fee schedule: it moves the point at which a position is force-closed by a factor of two and a half.

HIP-3 lets outside operators run their own perpetual exchanges on the Hyperliquid blockchain

A perpetual, or perp, is a futures contract with no expiry date: it tracks the price of an underlying asset and is held near the spot price through regular settlement payments between buyers and sellers, the funding rate. What HIP-3 changes is who creates the contract. Until then the exchange itself decided which markets existed. Since HIP-3 any third party that meets the conditions can take that over.

Anyone who wants to open such an exchange posts 500,000 HYPE as stake, according to Hyperliquid's specification. The amount is meant to fall over time, but stays locked for at least 183 days after launch. An operator may list its first three markets without further conditions; every one after that goes through a Dutch auction shared by all HIP-3 operators. On top of that it receives a reserve of listings it can redeem at the current auction price with no waiting time.

HYPE traded at $81.62 on October 28, 2026 at 8:54 am, 5.38 percent above the previous day, according to market data from Coinpaprika. How the token has moved before that is covered in our Hyperliquid price prediction. For the operators this price is more than a quote: it determines how much capital those 500,000 HYPE tie up.

315 markets and $4.08 billion in open interest: the count from October 28

The figures that follow are based on Hyperliquid's public market data, collected on October 28, 2026 shortly after 9 am. All ten reported HIP-3 exchanges were examined, with 315 markets between them. cryptoticker.io collected this data itself on October 28, 2026.

Open interest is the value of all positions open at a given moment. Across all ten exchanges it adds up to $4.08 billion. For comparison: Hyperliquid's own crypto marketplace, which still carries the core business, stands at $11.58 billion. The offshoots thus reach a good third of the main business, and they are only a few months old.

A single operator carries 97 percent of the open interest

The distribution is extremely lopsided. Of the $4.08 billion, $3.97 billion sits with a single operator running 139 markets. That is 97 percent. Behind it comes a second provider with $87.5 million across 16 markets, then one with $17.3 million across 39 markets and one with $8.2 million across 24. Six of the ten exchanges report zero open interest across every one of their markets. Listed and tradable they are, but so far nobody holds a position there.

For an investor that leads to a very practical point: two markets on the same underlying can look technically identical and be entirely different in liquidity. Four operators each run a Tesla market, with leverage tiers of 10, 12 and 20. In none of those four markets was there an open position on the morning of October 28. Place a sizeable order there and you are the market.

S&P 500 at 50x leverage, gold at 25x, crude oil at 20x

The largest markets by open interest are not niche names. At the top stands the S&P 500 with $417.1 million and permitted leverage of 50. Then come gold with $323.1 million at 25x, a US technology index with $289.0 million at 30x, WTI crude with $218.1 million and Brent with $211.1 million, both at 20x, plus silver with $168.1 million at 25x.

Across all 315 markets the most common tier is 10x leverage, allowed by 171 markets. 67 markets permit 20x, 22 markets 25x, three markets each 30x and 40x, and seven markets the maximum of 50. The high tiers are therefore the exception. They sit, however, precisely where most of the money is.

BaFin caps the same index at 5 percent margin for German providers

The yardstick comes from BaFin's general administrative act of July 23, 2019. The act carries the temporary interventions of the European securities regulator permanently into German law, based on Article 42 of the MiFIR regulation, and for each asset class it names a minimum margin below which a contract for difference may not be marketed to retail clients.

For main equity indices the act demands 5 percent of notional value and names the S&P 500 explicitly as an example, alongside the DAX, the EURO STOXX 50 and the Nikkei 225. Five percent margin corresponds to leverage of 20:1. For non-main indices it is 10 percent, so 10:1. Gold is treated like a main index and sits at 5 percent, other commodities at 10 percent. Single stocks require 20 percent, which is 5:1. For cryptocurrencies the act sets 50 percent, so 2:1.

These rates apply to retail clients. Anyone who has themselves classified as a professional client falls outside that protection. How perpetuals are to be classified in law, and where the line to a contract for difference runs, we covered at greater length in our classification of perpetual futures and CFD rules.

Single stocks like Tesla: 20 percent margin at a CFD provider, 5 percent on a HIP-3 market

Lay the two sets of figures side by side and the gap is widest on single stocks. BaFin demands 20 percent margin there. The Tesla market with the highest permitted tier among the HIP-3 exchanges allows 20x leverage, which means 5 percent margin. The same picture at Nvidia, Microsoft and Meta, which one operator runs at 20x leverage throughout.

On the main index the gap is smaller, but points the same way: 20:1 under the act against 50:1 in the largest market. On crude oil it is 10:1 against 20:1. In concrete terms, for the liquidation threshold: at 50x leverage a 2 percent move against the position eats up the margin, at 20x it takes 5 percent. An index that loses 2 percent in a trading day is nothing out of the ordinary.

On the bitcoin perpetual the ratio is reversed

It is worth noting that the gap is widest on cryptocurrencies, even though no HIP-3 market is needed there at all. On Hyperliquid's own crypto marketplace the ceiling for bitcoin is 40x leverage, for ether 25x. BaFin's act sets 50 percent margin for cryptocurrencies, so 2:1. Of all asset classes that is the strictest rate in the act, and at the same time the widest gap to practice on the blockchain.

Anyone even considering such markets should therefore start by telling them apart. Which venues exist, how their fees and funding models differ and which leverage tiers they run is set out in our comparison of perp DEXs.

Pre-IPO markets on SpaceX and OpenAI have no exchange price as reference

Some of the markets track companies that are not listed at all. One operator runs markets on SpaceX and OpenAI, both at 3x leverage. Another lists a market on OpenAI at 6x and one on Anthropic at 15x leverage, the latter with $56.7 million in open interest and thus the largest market outside the dominant operator.

With a listed asset there is an exchange price against which the price of a contract can be checked. With a company that has no listing, that reference is missing. The fact that operators pick the lowest tiers of their range here, 3x and 6x, suggests they are aware of the problem.

The market's own operator sets the oracle price

The point that differs most clearly from a supervised venue is in the specification itself: the operator defines the oracle and the contract terms, and the operator sets the oracle prices. It is against that price that it is measured whether a position is in profit and when it gets liquidated.

For cross-margin positions there is one control on this: validators review every move in the external price of more than 50 percent against the start of the day. Assets where such daily jumps are to be expected more than once a month may not run in cross-margin mode. The threshold therefore sits very high. What it catches is the extreme case, not the everyday deviation of a few percent.

haltTrading cancels all orders and settles positions at the mark price

An operator can shut down one of its markets. The function is called haltTrading, and the specification describes its effect briefly: the call cancels all orders and settles the positions at the current mark price. The same function can resume trading later.

That is something other than a trading halt at a futures exchange, after which the position still stands. Here it ends at whatever price applies in that moment. Anyone intending to hold a leveraged position for weeks should know this mechanism before opening it.

500,000 HYPE stake, 183 days locked, slashing of up to 100 percent

What stands against misconduct by the operator is its stake. The size of a cut is determined by a stake-weighted median of the validator votes. As reference points the specification names up to 100 percent for invalid state transitions or a long outage, up to 50 percent for a short outage and up to 20 percent for performance problems. The stake remains exposed even during the seven-day queue for withdrawal.

One limitation is stated explicitly in the specification and is the most important sentence of the whole section for investors: stake that is cut is burned and not distributed to users. Slashing therefore punishes the operator; it does not make good a loss. There is no deposit guarantee here and no claim to compensation of the kind a supervised investment firm in Germany brings with it.

On top of that comes the cost side, which an operator sets itself: it can add a fee share of 0 to 300 percent, or 0 to 100 percent in what is called growth mode. If the share goes above 100 percent, the protocol fee follows up to the level of the operator fee. Two markets on the same underlying can therefore sit far apart in liquidity and in cost.

Stock perpetuals: 2 percent against you is enough at 50x leverage

The count shows a market that has grown to $4.08 billion in a few months and opens up underlying assets not available in this form from any German provider. At the same time it shows that the leverage tiers there run furthest above the German limits in exactly those classes where the regulator drew them tightest in 2019. Three steps make sense before money moves:

1. Measure the leverage tier against your own loss limit. At 50x leverage liquidation sits 2 percent away, at 20x it is 5 percent. If you want to hold the same position with supervision and deposit protection, the supervised routes are in our comparison of crypto brokers.
2. Check the venue before the underlying. Six of the ten HIP-3 exchanges had zero open interest on October 28. If you would rather stay on a venue with EU authorisation, the licensed providers are listed in our overview of MiCA-regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Settle the tax treatment early. In Germany futures contracts follow different rules than buying a coin, and keeping the two cleanly apart is a question of record-keeping. Which tools manage that is set out in our comparison of crypto tax tools.

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

The US central bank announces its rate decision this evening at 7 pm Central European Time. The key rate stands at 3.75 to 4 percent, and it did not arrive there in September through a cut but through a hike. Anyone holding Bitcoin therefore has a different question to answer today than in the months before. It is how much further tightening their own portfolio can take.

Bitcoin is trading at $81,352 this morning, up 1.7 percent within 24 hours (CoinGecko). That leaves a loss of around 2.7 percent for October. The decision itself takes a second, the reasoning half an hour longer. Both land in a market that works with leverage.

Fed rate decision at 7 pm: the key rate stands at 3.75 to 4 percent

The Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, is the body of the US central bank that decides the key rate. According to the Federal Reserve's meeting calendar it meets on October 27 and 28, 2026, so the decision comes on the second day, today.

The key rate, called the federal funds rate in the United States, is the rate at which banks lend each other money overnight; it indirectly determines what credit costs everywhere else. The central bank sets a target range for it, currently 3.75 to 4 percent.

The decision is published at 2 pm local time in Washington. Because the United States is still on summer time and Germany has not been since October 25, that is 7 pm in Central Europe. The chair's press conference begins half an hour later. Kevin Warsh chairs the Board of Governors.

The September hike: 3.75 to 4 percent against high inflation

On September 16 the committee raised the target range by a quarter point, unanimously at twelve votes to zero. The Federal Reserve's decision gives as its reasoning that inflation remains elevated; the measure is meant to support a more timely return to the two percent goal.

That is the situation today's decision lands in. A central bank that has just raised and still describes inflation as elevated has two routes: another step up, or a pause that holds the range. Which of them appears in the text decides the price of the coming days more than any analyst estimate.

In the same decision the committee calls economic output solid, productivity strong and investment robust, with an unemployment rate that has barely moved. A central bank describing its economy that way has little reason to loosen quickly.

No new projections: the October meeting brings a statement and a press conference

Four times a year the central bank publishes a Summary of Economic Projections alongside the meeting, a collection of every participant's expectations for growth, unemployment, inflation and the rate path. The meeting calendar marks those dates with an asterisk. The October meeting has none.

That has a practical consequence. There is no new dot plot today from which the expected rate path can be read. Everything the market gets in the way of direction sits in the wording of the decision and in the answers at the press conference. Anyone waiting for a number describing the path for 2027 waits in vain today; the next round of projections comes with the meeting on December 8 and 9.

For the price reaction that means it arises from language, not from tables. That is exactly why the first move after a rate decision often runs one way and the second the other, once the reasoning has been read.

Bitcoin at $81,352: October stands at minus 2.7 percent

On October 1 Bitcoin stood at $83,576; it is now at $81,352 (CoinGecko, read on October 28). That gives a loss of around 2.7 percent for the month. October counts as a strong month in the industry; this year it is not playing that role.

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on October 28, 2026, on the basis of CoinGecko's daily data for October 1 and the same provider's current price.

A monthly loss of 2.7 percent is not a crisis. It does shift the calculation for anyone working with borrowed money. There, what counts is the distance between entry price and liquidation threshold, and that shrinks with every percent to the downside.

The distance to liquidation: what a rate step does to leveraged positions

A leveraged position borrows capital to move a larger sum than sits in the account. The liquidation price is the level at which the exchange force-closes the position because the posted collateral is used up. It appears in every trading screen, and it is the only number that really counts on an evening like this.

Liquidation price and funding rate, two different things

The funding rate is the balancing payment that flows regularly between the buy and sell sides on perpetual futures so that the contract price sticks to the spot price. It costs money for as long as a position is open, and it says nothing about when that position is closed. The two numbers are confused all the same.

Before a rate decision, price ranges sometimes narrow for minutes because order books thin out. A position whose liquidation threshold sits only a few percent away can break in that phase, even though half an hour later the price is back where it was. The loss stays all the same.

Anyone trading such contracts should lay the terms of the brokers and trading venues side by side before the evening starts; the differences in collateral requirements and fees are considerable.

Holding period and the tax office: one year separates tax-free from taxable

In Germany, crypto assets count as other economic goods. The gain from a sale is free of income tax after a holding period of more than one year; anyone selling earlier pays tax on the gain at their personal rate, provided the total of private disposal gains in the year exceeds the allowance.

That turns a market question into a calendar question. A position turning one year old in November has a different value from the same position at eleven months, and a hurried sale on the evening of a rate decision can cost that difference. If you do not have your entry dates in your head, they are in the exchange's transaction history or in a portfolio tracker with a tax function that carries the deadlines per purchase.

With several purchases of the same coin, each tranche counts separately. Which of them counts as sold depends on the method applied to the calculation; the order of purchase is the usual one.

Spot ETF, ETN or direct purchase: where the rate risk lands in the portfolio

A spot ETF is a fund that holds the cryptocurrency itself and trades on an exchange. In the EU the comparable products are mostly ETNs, exchange-traded debt securities of an issuer, where that issuer's solvency is also at risk. The difference sounds legal and becomes practical on a day with a rate decision.

An exchange-traded product follows the trading hours of its exchange. If the decision falls at 7 pm and the crypto market reacts at once, the price runs on while trading in the wrapper is closed. Anyone investing through a securities account therefore gets the move into their portfolio with a delay. Which routes exist in Germany also differs from one custodian bank to the next.

Buying directly on an exchange removes that lag, but then custody is your own responsibility. Both routes have different weak points on the same evening.

MiCA and the purchase route: which exchanges trade with a licence in Germany

MiCA is the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets. It requires trading venues and custodians to hold an authorisation, granted in one member state and then valid across Europe. Behind it sits the question of which supervisory regime your balance falls under if a provider runs into trouble.

A rate decision changes nothing about that. It does regularly lead to volume spikes, and volume spikes are the moments when withdrawals take longer and order books jump. Anyone wanting to switch provider on such an evening switches at the worst possible time.

The authorisation is publicly verifiable, and it differs from advertising claims such as regulated or safe, which are not defined legal terms.

Ethereum and the second tier: what a rate step means for altcoins

Ethereum is trading at $2,363, up 1.9 percent in 24 hours (CoinGecko). The move sits close to Bitcoin's, and that is typical for rate dates: correlation between the large crypto assets rises when a shared macro trigger is in the calendar.

Smaller assets usually move more in both directions in these phases, because their order books are thinner. That says nothing about their quality, but it does say something about the swings to expect. Holding a position whose daily turnover is small against your own position size can mean getting a price on sale well below the one on the screen.

Analysts will name price targets after the decision; that much is certain. Which of them hold depends on the wording of the decision, not on the number in the headline of a forecast.

Fed rate decision: before 7 pm only the distance to liquidation counts

The decision has been in the calendar for months. Three things can still be sorted out calmly beforehand:

1. Read off leverage and liquidation threshold. Note the liquidation price for every open position and the distance to the current price in percent. If it is in single digits, position size is the decision, not price direction. Which venues demand which collateral is shown in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Check the holding period per purchase. Sort your tranches by purchase date and mark the ones turning one year old in the coming weeks. A sale shortly before costs tax that falls away four weeks later. A tax tool with a deadline overview carries those dates.
3. Settle custody before things get hectic. Decide in advance which part of your holdings stays on the exchange and which moves into your own custody. The differences between the devices are in the hardware wallet comparison.

After 7 pm, none of these three can be settled calmly any more.

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

SK Hynix's quarterly revenue topped 100 trillion won for the first time, and the chipmaker says memory demand will outrun supply through 2030, with DRAM and HBM sold out through 2029.

The cloud and AI security firm Upwind says revenue quadrupled in 2026 as it targets risks from autonomous AI agents.

A survey conducted by Ipsos for the DeFi Education Fund found that 22% of Americans have ever owned or used crypto, up from 18%, while past-year use held flat at 13%.

OpenAI, one of Nvidia's biggest customers, reportedly plans to buy Google's TPU chips. Neither company has confirmed the report, and the price and size of the order were not disclosed.

The Federal Reserve left rates unchanged Wednesday in a 10-2 vote, with Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack favoring a hike.

The XRP Ledger Foundation has officially added Flare Networks to its recommended validator list, marking a significant milestone for the project and strengthening its involvement in XRPL governance.

Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper has predicted a seismic shift toward Bitcoin adoption, warning that the eventual abandonment of fiat currencies could trigger widespread bank runs.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse defends XRP utility at Swell 2026 amid a record-breaking $900 million product revenue run rate.

BlackRock spends over $151 million on new Bitcoin purchase as its Bitcoin ETF records a fresh influx of new capital amid growing demand.

Wintermute explains why spiking crude oil price markets, not AI, now control Bitcoin’s price path and defines the ultimate levels to watch.

TLDR

• Alphabet stock drops 8.90% after hours as Q3 earnings miss Wall Street estimates.
• Alphabet revenue jumps 25% to $127.6 billion, but investment losses hit earnings.
• Google Cloud revenue surges 103% to $30.7 billion on strong enterprise demand.
• Alphabet EPS falls to $2.12 as an $8.7 billion investment loss weighs on profits.
• Google Search revenue grows 12% as Alphabet shares plunge after quarterly results.

Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) shares faced sharp after-hours selling despite strong revenue growth and record Google Cloud performance in the third quarter of 2026. The company reported $127.6 billion in revenue, up 25% year over year, while an $8.7 billion investment loss weighed on earnings. Consequently, diluted earnings per share fell to $2.12, missing analysts’ expectations and pressuring Alphabet’s stock after the market closed.

Alphabet Stock Falls as Investment Losses Hit Earnings

Alphabet shares gained 1.60% to $321.89 at the regular market close before falling 8.90% to $293.25 in after-hours trading. The decline followed quarterly results that showed strong business growth but weaker reported profitability. Meanwhile, the company’s market capitalization stood at approximately $3.9 trillion.

Alphabet Inc., GOOG

Alphabet generated $127.577 billion in revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, compared with $102.346 billion a year earlier. However, diluted earnings per share dropped to $2.12 from $2.87 during the same period. The company attributed much of the earnings pressure to unfavorable changes in investment-related income.

Alphabet recorded an $8.7 billion loss on equity securities, compared with a $10.7 billion gain in the third quarter of 2025. This reversal affected the company’s reported earnings despite stronger operating performance across its core businesses. Nevertheless, operating income increased to $40.576 billion from $31.228 billion, while operating margin improved to approximately 31.8%.

Google Cloud Revenue Doubles as Enterprise Demand Expands

Google Cloud delivered Alphabet’s strongest segment growth, with quarterly revenue climbing 103% to $30.709 billion. The segment benefited from rising demand for computing infrastructure, enterprise services, and systems supporting advanced AI workloads. As a result, Google Cloud contributed significantly to Alphabet’s overall revenue expansion.

Cloud operating income also increased substantially, reaching $11.121 billion compared with $3.594 billion a year earlier. This improvement reflected stronger revenue alongside greater profitability within the business. Google Cloud’s results highlighted its growing contribution to Alphabet’s earnings and its expanding role in enterprise technology spending.

Alphabet’s broader Google Services division generated $96.302 billion in revenue, representing an 11% annual increase. Google Search and other revenue rose to $63.350 billion from $56.567 billion, while YouTube advertising revenue reached $11.207 billion. Together, these results demonstrated continued demand across Alphabet’s established advertising businesses and newer cloud offerings.

Search Growth and Advertising Support Alphabet’s Revenue Expansion

Google advertising revenue increased to $82.012 billion from $74.182 billion in the prior-year quarter. Search remained the largest contributor, supported by stronger query activity and continued demand from advertisers. Meanwhile, YouTube advertising revenue advanced from $10.261 billion to $11.207 billion.

Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices generated $14.290 billion, up from $12.870 billion a year earlier. Consequently, total Google Services revenue reached $96.302 billion, reinforcing the division’s importance to Alphabet’s financial performance. However, Google Network revenue increased only slightly, rising to $7.455 billion from $7.354 billion.

Alphabet also reported $26.170 billion in net income available to common stockholders, compared with $34.979 billion in the previous year’s quarter. The company’s operating income growth contrasted with this decline in net income because investment-related losses affected the bottom line. Overall, Alphabet delivered strong revenue and cloud growth, but weaker reported earnings triggered a sharp after-hours stock decline.

The post Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) Stock: AI and Cloud Growth Surge as $8.7 Billion Investment Loss Hits Earnings appeared first on Blockonomi.

Can Chainlink hold its ground after a rough month? So far it can, as LINK trades near $11.70 after shedding about 16% over the past 30 days.

The stakes are rising for any Chainlink price prediction. The coin sits just above a key floor, and buyers need to step in before sellers test it again. Price action stays weak, even though the slide has paused for now.

Traders who watch that floor also keep an eye on early-stage projects. One of them is MEMASA ($MEMASA), an upcoming AI trading app that lets users research and trade crypto through a simple chat.

Chainlink Price Prediction Turns Cautious as LINK Bleeds Through the Month

LINK has spent most of this month drifting lower, with sellers capping nearly every bounce.

No single headline explains the drop, and the move looks more like steady selling than a sudden shock. That matters because LINK now trades much closer to its yearly low than to its yearly high.

The past week added to the pressure, with the token down about 5% before a modest rebound.

For holders, the real question is whether this pause marks a base or just a breather before another leg down.

$11.40 Support Stands Between LINK and a Deeper Drop

LINK trades near $11.70, slightly higher on the day after a week of steady losses.

The nearest strong support sits at $11.40, only a short step below the current price. Resistance waits much higher at $16.55, so any recovery has a long road ahead.

For any near-term Chainlink price prediction, losing $11.40 could open a path toward $8.43, and technical indicators lean bearish.

Plain-Language Questions Replace Chart Overload in MEMASA’s App

MEMASA is an upcoming AI-powered crypto trading app built so people can research, buy, and sell cryptocurrencies by chatting with an AI assistant. It swaps dense dashboards for a simple conversation.

Users won’t need to study complex charts, track hundreds of tokens, or jump between trading platforms. They can type their questions in everyday language instead.

Ask “Can LINK hold $11.40 after its monthly slide?” and MEMASA will review market indicators, trading activity, and sentiment to explain what the available data suggests.

The app takes aim at familiar on-chain pain points: too many charts, too much noise, scam tokens, and endless app switching. It combines market analysis, risk checks, and trading in one AI-powered chat.

That setup gives MEMASA a real chance at attracting a wide audience, from crypto newcomers to seasoned traders. As launch approaches, anyone interested can join a waitlist for early access to the app.

Reserve Your Spot on the MEMASA Waitlist

Chainlink Price Prediction vs. $MEMASA’s Utility-Driven Setup

LINK’s price now depends on whether buyers defend a fragile support zone. $MEMASA is a utility token powering the MEMASA trading ecosystem, so its role ties directly to how people use the app.

• Premium AI intelligence: Access to advanced market analysis and trading insights.
• Trading fee discounts: Lower fees on eligible platform activity.
• Analyst and agent staking: Analysts and AI agents stake $MEMASA to list their strategies and signals.
• Marketplace payments: Transactions for intelligence services and trading strategies.
• Curation and contributor rewards: Incentives for participants who share useful signals and help curate the ecosystem.

A Capped Supply and a Stage-Based Early Sale

$MEMASA comes with a fixed token supply. Its structure also includes long-term team vesting and transparent unlock schedules.

MEMASA runs an on-chain early sale that opens access to $MEMASA before broader market availability. The present stage sets the price at $0.0155 per token, below the anticipated market price. Earlier stages carry lower token prices, while later stages offer faster unlocks.

Claim $MEMASA in an Early Sale Stage

The Takeaway

LINK’s next move hinges on the $11.40 floor. A break could pull the token toward $8.43, while a real recovery would need a push back toward $16.55.

MEMASA faces a different kind of test, as it must turn an AI trading concept into an app people open every day. If it does, demand for its utility token could grow with the ecosystem.

Future returns depend on app development, user adoption, and demand for $MEMASA.

Outcomes for both LINK and MEMASA remain uncertain, and higher potential comes with higher risk.

The post LINK Holds $11.70 After a 16% Monthly Slide: Is $8.43 Next, or Can Bulls Reclaim $16.55? appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• SK Hynix Stock Jumps 12.35% as Operating Profit Soars 632% Year Over Year
• SK Hynix Revenue Tops 100 Trillion Won for the First Time on AI Memory Demand
• SK Hynix Posts Record Earnings as AI Memory Shortages Support Market Growth
• SK Hynix Plans 100 Trillion Won in Shareholder Returns After Record Results
• SK Hynix Targets HBM4 Growth as Memory Supply Shortages Extend Toward 2030

SK Hynix (SKHY) shares jumped 12.35% to $163.31, adding $17.95 as strong buying pushed the stock higher. The rally followed record third-quarter revenue and operating profit, supported by rising demand for artificial intelligence memory. The South Korean chipmaker also announced substantial shareholder returns and plans to expand production capacity.

SK hynix Inc., SKHY

SK Hynix Reports Record Revenue and Operating Profit

SK Hynix recorded 104.62 trillion won in third-quarter revenue, marking its first quarterly result above 100 trillion won. Revenue increased 32% from the previous quarter and surged 328% compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile, operating profit reached 83.33 trillion won, climbing 38% quarter over quarter and 632% year over year.

The company achieved an operating margin of 80%, compared with 76% in the second quarter and 47% a year earlier. However, net income fell 58% quarter over quarter to 39.78 trillion won, although it increased 216% annually. The results reflect strong demand for advanced memory products used in AI servers and data centers.

SK Hynix attributed its performance to higher prices for key products and growing sales of high-value memory. Server DDR5 shipments supported DRAM revenue, while HBM4 shipments began expanding during the quarter. Additionally, demand for 321-layer triple-level cell enterprise solid-state drives supported NAND sales.

AI Memory Shortages Support Production Expansion Plans

SK Hynix expects memory demand to outpace supply through 2030 as AI infrastructure investment expands. The company identified enterprise AI, personal AI, autonomous driving, and robotics as important sources of future memory demand. However, advanced manufacturing requirements and lengthy factory construction timelines could limit the industry’s ability to increase supply quickly.

To address rising demand, SK Hynix plans to increase production using its sixth-generation 10-nanometer-class process technology. The company also intends to expand DDR5 and LPDDR5 SOCAMM sales for AI servers. Furthermore, it plans to bring its M15X facility to maximum capacity by year-end to increase HBM4 production.

SK Hynix expects HBM4 to exceed HBM3E in both shipment volume and revenue during the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, the company plans to raise the share of 321-layer NAND to more than half of domestic production capacity. These measures aim to strengthen its position in high-performance memory and enterprise storage markets.

Long-Term Contracts and Shareholder Returns Shape Growth Strategy

SK Hynix has signed long-term agreements with 14 major customers, including leading global cloud service providers. These contracts cover more than 50% of its total production capacity for 2027 and 2028. The agreements improve demand visibility and allow the company to plan production around customer requirements.

The company also expects to increase investment significantly next year as the first phase of its Yongin facility advances. However, management plans to adjust investment levels according to demand, profitability, product competitiveness, and capital efficiency. This approach supports capacity expansion while linking spending decisions to market conditions.

SK Hynix announced approximately 100 trillion won in total shareholder returns for fiscal 2026. The plan includes at least 30 trillion won in cash dividends and at least 60 trillion won in share repurchases and cancellations. The board also approved a third-quarter dividend of 20,000 won per share, including a special dividend reflecting gains from its Kioxia investment.

The company completed a previously announced 40 trillion won share repurchase and plans to cancel those shares shortly. It also approved another 20 trillion won share repurchase, with 10 trillion won allocated for cancellation and the remainder for employee compensation. Together, record earnings, expanding AI memory demand, and substantial shareholder returns form the central drivers behind SK Hynix’s latest stock rally.

The post SK Hynix (SKHY) Stock: Jumps 12% as Operating Profit Skyrockets 632% Year Over Year appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Stellantis Stock Soars 15.58% as Q3 Revenue Climbs to €37.6 Billion in 2026
• Stellantis Cuts Quarterly Net Loss by 90% as Adjusted Operating Income Surges
• Stellantis Shares Jump 15.58% Despite €4 Billion in Negative Industrial Cash Flow
• Stellantis Reaffirms 2026 Guidance and Targets Positive Industrial Cash Flow in 2027
• Stellantis Reports Mixed Regional Results as Revenue Rises and Losses Narrow in Q3

Stellantis N.V. (STLA) shares jumped 15.58% to $4.7850 after the automaker reported improved third-quarter financial results. The company recorded €37.6 billion in revenue, representing a 1% increase from the same period in 2025. Meanwhile, a sharp reduction in net losses and stronger operating income highlighted progress under its recovery strategy.

Stellantis N.V., STLA

Stellantis Reports Higher Revenue and Lower Net Losses

Stellantis generated €37.611 billion in third-quarter revenue, compared with €37.206 billion a year earlier. However, regional performance varied, as Europe and South America each recorded revenue growth of 3%. North America declined 3%, Middle East and Africa fell 19%, and Asia Pacific dropped 7%.

The automaker reported a net loss of €453 million, improving 90% from €4.532 billion in Q3 2025. Additionally, adjusted operating income climbed to €256 million from €90 million, marking a 184% annual increase. The adjusted operating margin improved to 0.7%, gaining 50 basis points year-over-year.

Despite these improvements, Stellantis continued to report negative industrial free cash flow of €4.009 billion. The figure improved by €295 million compared with the previous year’s third quarter. Furthermore, industrial available liquidity reached €42.7 billion, equivalent to 26% of trailing twelve-month revenue.

Regional Performance Shows Uneven Recovery

North America delivered stronger operating profitability, although revenue declined amid lower volumes and planned production downtime. The region’s adjusted operating margin improved by 340 basis points compared with the previous year. Meanwhile, Ram sales increased 30%, supporting market share gains across the region.

In Enlarged Europe, revenue increased 3%, supported by higher volumes and growing demand for battery-electric vehicles. Passenger-car battery-electric vehicle sales across the EU30 increased 65% year-over-year. However, the region’s adjusted operating margin fell 340 basis points, while Stellantis retained leadership in light commercial vehicles.

South America maintained its regional leadership despite lower sales and a market share decline. The region recorded an 18.6% market share, while Fiat Strada sales rose 13% and Toro sales increased 26%. Meanwhile, Middle East and Africa faced weaker demand, and Asia Pacific experienced lower sales alongside continuing operational restructuring.

Stellantis Reaffirms 2026 Guidance and Recovery Targets

Stellantis maintained its 2026 financial guidance, including a mid-single-digit revenue increase and a low-single-digit adjusted operating margin. The company also expects industrial free cash flow to improve year-over-year. Furthermore, management expects positive industrial free cash flow in 2027.

The automaker plans to increase consolidated shipments in the fourth quarter compared with Q3 2026. Additionally, it expects broadly stable pricing and a positive working capital contribution from normal seasonal trends. However, higher memory chip and recall costs could create additional pressure during the quarter.

Stellantis also expects its Value Creation Program to deliver several hundred million euros in fourth-quarter savings. The company targets at least 40% of its €6 billion annualized efficiency savings by the end of 2026. Meanwhile, full-year capital expenditure and research and development spending should reach 6.5% of revenue, supporting its FaSTLAne 2030 strategy.

The post Stellantis N.V. (STLA) Stock: Jumps 15.58% as Revenue Rises to €37.6 Billion in Q3 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Vertiv (VRT) stock jumps 14.49% as Q3 revenue climbs 61% and diluted EPS rises 91%.
• Vertiv raises 2026 guidance after quarterly sales hit $4.313 billion, up 61% year over year.
• Vertiv earnings surge as adjusted EPS reaches $2.21 and operating margin expands to 25.2%.
• Vertiv stock rallies as strong data center demand drives record sales growth and higher forecasts.
• Vertiv lifts its 2026 revenue outlook by $650 million as organic orders growth exceeds 100%.

Vertiv Holdings Co (VRT) shares climbed 14.49% to $238.77, adding $30.21 during morning trading on October 28, 2026. The rally followed strong third-quarter results, with revenue increasing 61% and diluted earnings per share rising 91% year over year. Additionally, the company raised its full-year 2026 guidance, supported by expanding demand for critical digital infrastructure and strong order growth.

Vertiv Holdings Co, VRT

Vertiv Holdings Reports Strong Third-Quarter Revenue and Earnings Growth

Vertiv reported third-quarter net sales of $4.313 billion, up $1.637 billion from the same period in 2025. Organic sales growth contributed 55%, while acquisitions accounted for approximately six percentage points of the increase. Moreover, the company recorded higher sales across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The Americas delivered 75% revenue growth, including 66% organic growth, making it the strongest regional contributor. Meanwhile, Asia-Pacific revenue increased 50%, with organic sales rising 48% during the quarter. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa recorded 23% revenue growth, including 19% organic growth.

Vertiv also strengthened profitability as operating profit increased 90% to $984 million during the third quarter. Adjusted operating profit climbed 83% to $1.087 billion, while adjusted operating margin reached 25.2%. This margin represented a 290-basis-point improvement, driven by higher sales, manufacturing productivity, and operational leverage.

Vertiv Earnings Per Share and Cash Flow Strengthen

Vertiv’s diluted earnings per share reached $1.95, representing a 91% increase compared with the third quarter of 2025. Adjusted diluted earnings per share rose 78% to $2.21, reflecting stronger operating performance during the reporting period. These results showed that earnings growth outpaced revenue expansion as the company improved its operating efficiency.

Furthermore, operating cash flow increased 64% year over year to $794 million in the third quarter. Adjusted free cash flow rose 50% to $652 million, supported by higher adjusted operating profit. However, increased working capital requirements and capital expenditures partially offset the improvement in cash generation.

Vertiv’s liquidity position also expanded to $6.2 billion, while the company maintained a net cash position. This financial position provides additional flexibility for capacity expansion, operational improvements, and investments supporting customer demand. The company expects full-year capital expenditures to remain near 4% of revenue as infrastructure requirements continue to grow.

Vertiv Raises Full-Year 2026 Guidance on Strong Demand

Vertiv raised its full-year 2026 net sales guidance by $650 million, reflecting stronger demand and improved business visibility. The company now expects full-year revenue of $14.65 billion at the midpoint, representing 38% growth compared with 2025. It also anticipates full-year diluted earnings per share of $6.29 and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $7.15.

These earnings forecasts represent year-over-year increases of 84% and 70%, respectively, at the midpoint of guidance. For the fourth quarter, Vertiv expects net sales of $4.413 billion, alongside organic sales growth of approximately 50%. The company also projects fourth-quarter diluted earnings per share of $2.08 and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.25.

The fourth-quarter earnings forecasts represent respective increases of 82% and 65% compared with the same period in 2025. Vertiv’s results reflect rising demand for infrastructure supporting data centers and other critical digital operations. Its expanding order pipeline, production investments, and higher guidance establish the central business factors behind Wednesday’s share price surge.

The post Vertiv Holdings Co (VRT) Stock: Surges 14% as Q3 Revenue Jumps 61% and EPS Soars 91% appeared first on Blockonomi.

At the start of the business week, the second-largest cryptocurrency briefly fell below $2,300, but buyers stepped in over the past 24 hours, and the asset is now trading around $2,350.

While many analysts remain bullish on ETH’s prospects, persistent selling from wallets linked to the Ethereum Foundation could hinder the asset’s progress and weigh on investor sentiment.

The Upside Targets

X user Ella noted that the cryptocurrency finally moved out of the $2,300-$2,320 range and claimed the four-hour chart has started printing higher lows, calling it “a good first step.” The analyst said the key level now is $2,400, and reclaiming it could lead to a pump toward $2,440.

For his part, Michael van de Poppe argued that the rebound from around $2,300 is “a strong move,” but a bullish breakout is not yet confirmed.

“Much rather than thinking that we’re going to see another drop, the markets are at the most optimal sweet spot to hold and turn back upwards,” he added.

Ted and MikybullCrypto also weighed in. The former said ETH is currently at a crucial resistance level, and reclaiming $2,400 would be the first major sign of strength. The latter was much more bullish, telling their over 92,000 followers on X:

“See you at $3,600 in the short term.”

The Selling Goes on

A major obstacle to Ethereum’s decisive recovery is ongoing selling pressure from investors offloading coins. As CryptoPotato recently reported, a wallet linked to the Ethereum Foundation (a non-profit organization that supports the development and growth of the Ethereum ecosystem) parted with 2,785 units for around $6.42 million.

Another investor mimicked the move shortly after, dumping 1,500 ETH (worth roughly $3.5 million) after nine years of inactivity. The market participant initially purchased 100,000 coins for only $31,000 through the 2015 ICO and still holds 48,500 ETH (about $112 million).

Just a few hours ago, Lookonchain disclosed that an additional investor linked to the Ethereum Foundation sold 7,594 ETH (around $17.8 million) after a year of inactivity.

“This OG bought 200K ETH (cost $61K) during the ICO at $0.31 and also received 42,654 ETH from the Ethereum Foundation when ETH was trading at $13.82,” the analytics platform revealed.

BitMEX’s co-founder Arthur Hayes added to the selling pressure. Earlier this month, he dumped about $22.28 million worth of altcoins, including 6,400 ETH (roughly $15.2 million).

The post Ethereum (ETH) Attempts a Recovery, but Heavy Selling Persists: Details appeared first on CryptoPotato.

In what was the most expected turn of events, the US Federal Reserve kept the interest rates unchanged after the first hike in over three years in September.

However, the decision was not unanimous: two of the 12 policymakers voted to raise the benchmark to 4%-4.25%.

Fed Holds Rates Steady

Following last month’s hike, which was the first since mid-2023, all eyes turned to the inflation data for September, and both major indices, the CPI and the PPI, showed that inflation has remained a major concern. However, expectations for a new rate hike dropped, and experts were adamant that if there’s a raise, it would be in December.

After keeping rates unchanged today, the Federal Reserve justified its decision by highlighting stronger-than-expected economic activity, and added:

“Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.”

In the subsequent highly anticipated press conference, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh cautioned that the financial uncertainty and elevated inflation remain due to “geopolitical developments.” He doubled down on the fact that the US economy is “resilient,” and added that the committee will “deliver price stability.”

“Americans, of course, are still dealing [with] inflation that has been running above the committee’s objective for close to six years,” Warsh said. “It’s our responsibility to get inflation down.”

On the question of why the Fed didn’t raise rates today if it will hike them in December, Warsh answered that quashing inflation is not about a specific date or data point but about the broader objectives and a monetary policy strategy. He also refused to respond to Trump comments that rates should be lowered, but reassured the public that “politics played no role” in today’s decision to halt the rate hikes.

BTC Stays Stable

Although there were several on-chain signals suggesting that BTC’s price could tumble after the Fed’s decision, that hasn’t been the case so far. The cryptocurrency had a rather volatile day, jumping from $79,500 to $81,700 ahead of the meeting before dipping to $80,500 just hours prior to its conclusion.

However, it has rebounded swiftly above $81,000 once again after Chairman Warsh finished his press conference. Nevertheless, other major macro developments through the end of the week could drive further price fluctuations.

The post Bitcoin Price Rebounds as Fed Chair Warsh Explains Rate-Hike Pause appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The number-one cryptocurrency by market capitalization rebounded 2% over the past 24 hours and briefly reclaimed $81,000.

Some analysts think it may post a much more impressive short-term price increase, and a certain whale’s actions support the bullish thesis.

Sign of Strength and More

Several hours ago, X user Sweep noted that BTC had reclaimed its 50-day exponential moving average (EMA), backed by strong spot demand. This development suggests buyers are regaining control, with the analyst calling it “the first major sign of strength.”

Another bullish signal Sweep highlighted is the large amount of BTC leaving exchanges. The analyst said more than $1 billion of the cryptocurrency was withdrawn to self-custody over the past 24 hours, arguing that a “supply shock is coming.”

The big event today (October 28) likely to trigger volatility and hint at Bitcoin’s next move is the FOMC meeting. Experts project that America’s central bank will keep interest rates unchanged, while a surprise move could cause major turbulence.

As such, it is important to see how whales are preparing for the event. Max Crypto disclosed that one mysterious investor opened a $72.1 million long position on BTC with 30x leverage.

This has sparked speculation that the market participant may have insider information. After all, whales are often seen as sophisticated investors with more resources than the average retail trader. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee the cryptocurrency’s price will jump after the event.

Pullback Instead?

On the other hand, some analysts warn that the FOMC meeting could be followed by a BTC price correction. One example is Ali Martinez, who recently noted that Bitcoin’s initial reaction to previous Fed interest rate gatherings was often insignificant, with a clearer trend typically emerging over the following 24 hours and frequently persisting for at least a week.

He pointed to several factors that should make people cautious for the upcoming meeting. First, he said Bitcoin whales have recently realized around $156 million in profits, adding to potential selling pressure. Second, Martinez revealed these investors’ total holdings have fallen by 8,162 units in the last 24 hours, suggesting they are reducing exposure ahead of the event. Finally, the analyst said the Coinbase Premium index has plunged to around -0.17, one of its lowest readings since September.

“A negative premium means Bitcoin is trading cheaper on Coinbase than on Binance, suggesting weaker relative demand from US investors,” he stated.

In conclusion, Martinez said key support is near $81,000, where almost one million BTC previously changed hands, and warned that if it breaks, it could crash to as low as $67,000.

“To turn bullish, Bitcoin needs to clear $84,500, where roughly 620,000 BTC traded. Above that, the next levels I’m watching are $92,000 and $104,000,” he added.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Shows a ‘Major Sign of Strength:’ Price Rally Incoming? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum has rebounded toward $2.37K after finding demand near $2.3K, but the recovery remains below its broken ascending channel. Buyers are showing an initial response, while the broader sequence of lower highs keeps the outlook cautious.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, Ethereum’s correction extended into the highlighted $2.22K–$2.31K demand zone before producing consecutive recovery candles. The rebound suggests that buyers are defending the upper portion of this region, although it has yet to reverse the bearish structure established after September’s peak.

ETH remains beneath the ascending channel’s former lower boundary, which now represents potential resistance. The marked $2.47K–$2.52K supply zone overlaps with this broken structure, creating an important obstacle to a sustained recovery.

Holding above $2.31K could support a further rebound toward $2.4K–$2.44K and subsequently the supply zone. However, until Ethereum reclaims $2.47K–$2.52K and the channel boundary, the advance appears corrective. Renewed weakness beneath the recent low around $2.28K would expose deeper support within the demand zone toward $2.22K.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart shows Ethereum recovering within a descending channel after consolidating around $2.3K. Recent candles have formed a short sequence of higher lows, carrying the price toward $2.37K, but the broader downtrend remains intact.

The immediate resistance area sits around $2.39K–$2.42K, where previous consolidation could attract renewed selling. Clearing this region would bring the descending channel’s upper boundary around $2.46K–$2.48K into focus. Its overlap with the $2.47K–$2.52K supply zone makes this a particularly significant test for buyers.

Conversely, a rejection followed by a loss of the recent $2.33K–$2.35K recovery base would increase the risk of another visit to the highlighted $2.27K–$2.31K support zone. A sustained breakdown beneath $2.27K would favor continuation toward the lower portion of daily demand near $2.22K.

Sentiment Analysis

The two-week Binance ETH/USDT liquidation heatmap highlights nearby estimated liquidation concentrations above the recovering price. Bands around $2.39K–$2.4K and $2.43K–$2.44K could become relevant if the rebound continues, while a broader concentration remains around $2.52K–$2.55K.

The $2.43K–$2.44K cluster sits below the main technical supply zone. A move through it could trigger short liquidations and accelerate the rebound toward descending resistance. However, such an acceleration would not independently confirm a broader bullish reversal.

Below price, a prominent liquidation band remains around $2.27K–$2.29K, with additional concentrations extending toward $2.22K–$2.25K. Losing the recent recovery structure could bring these pools back into focus, potentially amplifying a decline through long liquidations. For now, the heatmap supports the possibility of a short-term liquidity-driven rebound, while the technical trend remains bearish beneath overhead supply.

The post Ethereum Price Analysis: Can ETH Finally Break the $2,400 Resistance? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The frog-themed meme coin has posted a substantial price increase over the past 24 hours, jumping to around $0.000005, while its market capitalization has exceeded the $2 billion psychological level.

Multiple analysts see room for further near-term upside, with some signals pointing to TRON’s Justin Sun as a potential catalyst for the recent rally.

What Happened and What’s Next?

PEPE has outperformed many of the leading cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, and XRP, today (October 28), and the main reason appears to be Sun’s increased exposure to the token.

The X account BSCN cited data from Arkham Intelligence that the Chinese businessman now owns 11.85 trillion coins (worth over $51.2 million), or about 2.82% of the circulating supply.

“Most of that came in over the past ten days, when two large withdrawals from Poloniex occurred on October 17 and October 26. His previous PEPE holdings were valued at around $267,000 until mid-October,” the announcement reads.

In fact, Sun is among the biggest PEPE holders, with only Binance, Robinhood, and Coinbase controlling more tokens than he does. BSCN made an important disclaimer that the crypto exchange Poloniex is connected to Sun’s wallet, so these transactions may have been internal rather than new market acquisitions.

Some analysts have shifted their attention to PEPE after the latest price resurgence, including Altcoin Sherpa and Sweep. The former said the meme coin has shown “a ton of strength” in the last two days but isn’t sure the uptrend will continue.

They believe that if PEPE breaks above its current level and BTC remains stable, the price could jump to $0.00007 next. For his part, Sweep thinks “the pump isn’t over yet.”

Crypto With Gopal also touched on the matter. The analyst spotted an inverted head-and-shoulders pattern forming, with buyers currently defending the right shoulder as momentum builds toward neckline resistance at $0.0000051.

“A confirmed breakout could open the door toward $0.0000085-$0.0000090. Failure to break resistance could keep PEPE range-bound. Bulls are waking up – neckline breakout is the key trigger,” he predicted.

The Unlucky Whale

TMA | The Money Ape revealed an interesting story concerning a large PEPE investor. According to the popular X account, the mysterious person or entity purchased 2.5 trillion coins for just $27 in April 2023, but developers blacklisted their wallet eight minutes later.

As of press time, those tokens are up a staggering 44,900,000% from the initial investment. However, the whale can’t cash out, and as TMA | The Money Ape said, they are “a millionaire on screen, not in real life.”

The post PEPE Soars 17% Daily: Did Justin Sun Fuel the Pump? appeared first on CryptoPotato.