Bitcoin Magazine

Move Over Housing – Bitcoin is Gen Z’s New Wealth Building Asset

Gen Z now makes up less than 5% of the new home market and Hunter Albright of SALT Lending thinks that changes what assets an entire generation chooses to build wealth with. In this conversation he connects housing affordability, Bitcoin as collateral, and the rise of borrowing against Bitcoin for down payments without locking your coins up for 30 years. Albright also covers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recognizing Bitcoin, SALT’s five-year loan terms, and what a Bitcoin-powered life actually looks like in practice.

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

This post Move Over Housing – Bitcoin is Gen Z’s New Wealth Building Asset first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

T. Rowe Price’s Blue Macellari: Bitcoin is Now Core to the Debasement Conversation

Blue Macellari spent 20 years investing in emerging market sovereign and distressed debt before building T. Rowe Price’s digital assets business — which makes her read on the Treasury market unusually worth hearing. She discusses the return of the bond vigilantes, the shift from foreign to domestic financing of US debt, and why the Japan and Italy comparisons don’t map cleanly onto America’s buyer base. She also assesses whether GENIUS Act stablecoin demand for T-bills is a material change or wishful thinking.

Chapters:
0:00 — How the Digital Asset Conversation Changed Inside T. Rowe Price
1:15 — Why T. Rowe Price Built an Actively Managed Multi-Token ETF
2:43 — Tokenization at Scale and the Automation of Asset Management
4:22 — Bifurcated Liquidity and the Risks of 24/7 Trading
6:11 — The Brazil Mortgage Story That Became a Bitcoin Origin Story
7:04 — Global Liquidity, Fiscal Concerns and the Bond Vigilantes Return
8:26 — Foreign vs Domestic Treasury Buyers and the Japan Comparison
10:15 — Can GENIUS Act Stablecoins Create Real Demand for T-Bills?
11:16 — Why the Debasement Trade Actually Drives Institutional Allocations
13:02 — Volatility as a Portfolio Tool and the Generational Allocation Split

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

This post T. Rowe Price’s Blue Macellari: Bitcoin is Now Core to the Debasement Conversation first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Coinbase Policy Chief: Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill Outlook

The Clarity Act’s cloture vote failed this week, and Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad has the clearest post-mortem yet on why. He points to an electoral calendar that caught the bill late in the cycle and a roughly $200 million campaign by big banks that created serious drag on the process. Shirzad explains why he believes Congress has had its shot and why the real action now moves to the SEC, CFTC and bank regulators under Paul Atkins. He also lays out the three-track policy strategy — legislation, regulation and international — that he says still has strong momentum.

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

This post Coinbase Policy Chief: Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Bill Outlook first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy CEO Phong Le: We Want to Be the JPMorgan of Bitcoin

Strategy’s aspiration isn’t to be a Bitcoin holding company — it’s to be the JPMorgan of Bitcoin. CEO Phong Le explains what that means in practice: creating products, making markets and providing liquidity for a digital asset economy he believes can eventually reach 8 billion people. He walks through Strategy’s digital credit ecosystem, now roughly $15 billion, and why DeFi protocols building yield and tokenized products on top of STRC matter more than anything Strategy ships itself. Le also addresses the MSCI index question and why the company is fighting exclusion on principle.

0:00 — Global Banks Move Deeper Into Bitcoin as Deutsche Bank Enters
1:29 — Regulatory Clarity and the New Rules From the SEC, CFTC and Treasury
2:06 — Why Strategy Chose Buybacks Over Raising the STRC Dividend
2:52 — What a Period of Stress Taught Strategy About Digital Credit
3:38 — The Two-Way Bitcoin Strategy: Long-Term Accumulation With Flexibility
5:17 — Bitcoin as a Cash-Adjacent Line Item on the Balance Sheet
7:18 — Becoming the JPMorgan of Bitcoin for 8 Billion People
9:16 — Digital Credit Becomes a Platform for DeFi Builders to Build On
12:06 — Stablecoins, Bank Yield Products and STRC’s Path to $300 Billion
14:59 — How AI Tools Are Embedded Across Strategy’s Software and Bitcoin Business

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

This post Strategy CEO Phong Le: We Want to Be the JPMorgan of Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Why Legendary Investor Bill Miller IV has “Never Been More Bullish on Bitcoin”

Bitcoin’s market cap sits roughly where it did at the last cycle’s peak, but according to Miller Value Partners chairman and CEO Bill Miller IV, the global fiscal situation has gotten much, much worse, which means the gap between price and fair value is wider than ever. Miller explains his capital governance thesis, why he views Bitcoin as a denominator for capital rather than an asset to be valued, and how he frames fair value against a US deficit roughly the size of Bitcoin’s entire market cap. He also addresses gold’s outperformance, the AI trade rotation and global liquidity flows out of Japan and US treasuries.

0:00 — Bill Miller IV on Why He’s Never Been More Bullish on Bitcoin
0:57 — Flat Market Cap, Worse Fundamentals: The Widening Fair Value Gap
2:07 — AI Trade Rotation, Japan Liquidity and the Global Liquidity Question
2:55 — The Deficit Framework: Bitcoin’s Market Cap vs One Year of US Borrowing
3:59 — Why Gold Outperformed Bitcoin and Why Miller Calls It Narrative Lag
5:56 — The Fed’s 25 Basis Point Hike, Energy Prices and Inflation
6:29 — Immigration, Rule of Law and Stability of Process for Capital
8:50 — Capital Governance Explained: What Happens When the Units Change
10:06 — Can US Companies Outrun the Debt, and Why Funds Still Can’t Hold Bitcoin
12:06 — A Denominator for Capital That Isn’t Backed by Force

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

This post Why Legendary Investor Bill Miller IV has “Never Been More Bullish on Bitcoin” first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Almost 4,000 Bitcoin left Liquid's reserve on Sept. 6 through a withdrawal the network approved, even though the private keys used to authorize it hadn't been stolen. Software had accepted a withdrawal that should never have qualified.

Liquid lets people move a Bitcoin-backed token on a separate blockchain designed for faster, more private transactions. Bitcoin goes into a shared reserve, and users receive tokens called L-BTC, each intended to represent one BTC. When users redeem those tokens, the corresponding coins come out of the reserve.

According to TRM Labs' reconstruction of the attack, attackers exploited a software flaw to create L-BTC without putting in the Bitcoin to back it, and then exchanged those tokens for real coins. The operators responsible for approving withdrawals essentially trusted information that was wrong.

If you've spent years hearing that protecting your keys means protecting your crypto, this takes a moment to absorb. Private keys are the secrets that authorize transactions, and keeping them away from thieves is essential. But software can still use those keys to approve the wrong payment. Think of several people signing off on a withdrawal while all consulting the same incorrect account balance.

Once that happens, you stop looking for the technical explanation and start asking the billion-dollar question: who pays to put the money back?

Crypto insurance can help, but just having a policy might not be the fast and easy solution. The company may be insured for certain losses, or for claims brought against it, without promising every customer full repayment. Even when an insurer pays, the amount might fall short of what it takes to replace the missing coins.

To understand that, we need to look at what happens between the company's insurance claim and the customer's account. It's where the promise of ‘financial protection' can turn out to mean a completely different thing than people expect.

The company is insured, but what about you?

People entrust assets to financial services because they want someone else to handle work they can't do themselves. That includes protecting the money, and it can also include taking responsibility when those protections fail. Insurance can support that responsibility, although the terms determine how much support it actually provides.

Coinbase offers a pretty good example in its public explanation of its insurance. The company says its crime insurance protects a “portion” of the digital assets held across its storage systems against theft, including cybersecurity breaches. It also warns that total losses could exceed insurance recoveries, leaving customers with losses even when the incident is covered.

The policy excludes losses from unauthorized access to an individual account caused by compromised or lost login credentials. So the same outcome for two customers, money missing from their accounts, could involve different coverage depending on how it happened.

Coinbase's disclosure explains more than the word “insured” ever could. It tells customers that protection has limits, and that the cause and size of a loss affect what the insurance can provide. Someone reading only that the business has coverage would miss both qualifications.

There's a familiar comparison that can make this harder to understand. In the US, the FDIC protects eligible deposits when an insured bank fails. But it doesn't insure digital assets, even when they're bought through an insured bank. Cash and crypto can appear next to each other in an app and come with very different protections.

With private insurance, the first thing to establish is whose loss the policy covers. If the insured party is the company holding your Bitcoin, the insurer's agreement is with that company. Whether you can claim directly, and how any payout reaches you, depends on the applicable arrangements and law. And you can't see that from your account balance.

The company's obligations to you are also separate from its insurance. If it owes customers more than its insurer will pay, it needs another source of money to meet the difference. Conversely, knowing the size of an insurance policy doesn't establish what the company owes any particular customer.

This is why two services can both advertise insurance and offer different levels of financial protection. One might promise to replace specified losses and have enough money to cover an insurance shortfall, while another might make a more limited commitment. Customers need to know what they're being promised and whether the business can afford to honor it.

Software fails, and the bill needs an owner

Software-driven theft can be insurable even when private keys stay secure. Relm, a specialist insurer serving crypto businesses, describes digital asset crime coverage that can respond to infrastructure exploits and theft involving smart contracts, the programs that carry out transactions automatically.

The same insurer offers technology errors and omissions coverage, which addresses claims arising from problems with a company's products or services. Depending on the policy, it can pay for defending a claim and for a covered settlement or judgment. But that serves a different purpose from directly reimbursing the business for assets it lost.

Imagine a company that stores Bitcoin for customers and relies on another company's software to process withdrawals. If a software mistake lets money leave, the storage provider might seek payment under its own coverage. It might also pursue a claim against the software firm, whose liability policy could help pay what that firm owes.

The customers, meanwhile, want access to their balances. Their need is immediate, even while the businesses establish responsibility and insurers assess claims. Whether the storage provider pays customers during that process depends on its obligations and its ability to fund repayment.

Liquid shows why recovering assets and assigning responsibility are two different tasks. According to Bitquery's investigation, the attackers returned 3,400 BTC on Sept. 7. On Sept. 12, CryptoSlate reported that Blockstream had rejected a demand for a bounty.

Every coin returned reduces the amount needed to restore the reserve. But repayment from an attacker doesn't determine who must contribute any shortfall. That depends on obligations which the transaction record, however detailed, cannot establish on its own.

Getting your dollars back isn't always getting your Bitcoin back

Even an agreed payout needs a definition of what's being replaced. People who held Bitcoin may expect the same number of coins, but their compensation agreement might instead specify a dollar amount.

Consider a hypothetical loss of one Bitcoin worth $80,000. Suppose compensation is fixed at that value, but Bitcoin costs $100,000 when the payment is made. The recipient gets the promised $80,000, which now buys only 0.8 BTC. The dollar amount has been repaid in full, while a fifth of the original Bitcoin holding is still missing.

If the price falls during the wait, the same dollars can buy more Bitcoin. The point is that the agreement determines who bears the risk of those price movements. This example describes no particular policy; contracts can use different valuation dates or provide for replacement in coins.

Recoveries need rules too. If an insurer pays and some of the missing Bitcoin is subsequently returned, the agreement must account for who receives them. Getting coins back into a wallet is just one step in resolving a loss: allocating them among the people entitled to repayment is a whole other issue.

Then there's the cost of being unable to use the money. Someone who eventually gets every coin back may have spent weeks unable to meet a payment or move their savings. Replacing the asset doesn't automatically compensate for those consequences, which would need their own basis for repayment.

These complications expose a limit to the instruction that customers should do their own research. Few people can inspect the software approving their Bitcoin withdrawals. Fewer still can compare its possible failures with an insurance policy they may never see, negotiated between their provider and another business.

Choosing a financial service shouldn't require that level of expertise. Providers should explain reimbursement as plainly as they explain fees, stating which losses they undertake to repay and whether repayment means coins or dollars. They should also explain how they would fund a gap between what they owe customers and what their insurer pays.

That information would let people judge the price of accepting more risk themselves. Some will choose a cheaper service with limited protection, while others will pay more for a business to take on obligations backed by enough money to meet them.

Liquid's missing Bitcoin started with software accepting something it should have rejected. The biggest lesson here reaches anyone relying on a company to protect their assets: security reduces the chance of a loss, while financial protection determines how that loss is shared. Customers deserve to know their share before they're asked to bear it.

The post Why keeping your private keys safe won’t always stop crypto theft appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Solana validator coordination now operates on a 250-millisecond target slot time. A slot is the network's target interval for a validator to produce a block, so the change gives users more frequent opportunities for transactions to land while giving validators less time to pass production from one leader to the next.

The change became effective at epoch 1037 on Sept. 18, according to the Solana engineering changelog and a Solana Compass report that placed the transition at about 05:06 UTC. One early Sept. 20 sample covering 60 one-minute windows observed about 266ms per produced slot. Epoch 1037 skipped about 0.05% of its scheduled slots.

The narrow observation window supports an encouraging first reading, not a long-term performance trend. The more important test is whether leader handoffs, transaction forwarding, repair and multiple validator clients remain reliable as Solana considers a conditional move to 200ms.

Solana validator coordination faces a tighter budget

The draft SIMD-0525 design cuts per-slot work limits as slot duration falls. The block budget is 62.5 million compute units at 250ms and would be 50 million at 200ms. Both settings leave the nominal protocol ceiling near 250 million compute units per second.

Shorter slots therefore change cadence and latency more directly than capacity. Blocks arrive more often, but each carries less permitted work. Demand, scheduling and how effectively leaders fill blockspace still determine realized transaction throughput.

Shorter leader windows tighten handoffs

The same design keeps a leader's turn fixed at four slots. That gives each leader a nominal one-second window at 250ms and an 800ms window at 200ms. Users get more frequent chances for inclusion, while validators get less time to receive traffic and begin producing after a handoff.

Geography already consumes part of that margin. A Solana Foundation engineering analysis measured a median first-slot duration penalty of about 28ms when consecutive leaders were less than 500 kilometers apart and 122ms when they were more than 8,000 kilometers apart. The larger figure equals 61% of a 200ms target slot.

The metric compares a leader's first slot with its later slots and captures more than network latency alone. It nevertheless shows the trade-off: geographic distribution can reduce common-location risk while long-distance handoffs use more of a shrinking production window.

Solana's Sept. 18 changelog identifies two ways engineers are trying to protect that window. Agave developers are working on pessimistic forwarding to the next leader when a transaction may miss its intended destination. Client teams are also testing block and transaction execution against conformance binaries across implementations and versions.

Recovery has a similar constraint. The draft proposal retains a 250ms repair-defer threshold at its 200ms stage, making that delay longer than one target slot. These are prospective engineering margins rather than evidence of a current failure, but they define the conditions under which lower latency can coexist with reliable execution.

One routing failure exposed three layers of concentration

The Aug. 12 routing failure at TeraSwitch happened before the 250ms setting and was not caused by it. It still shows how a shared infrastructure dependency can affect many apparently independent validators at once.

TeraSwitch's incident report says 12 sites lost reachability and a Miami site was removed for containment. Solana Compass measured 28.83% of network stake as delinquent for about 33 minutes. The Solana Foundation's account said blocks continued and transactions kept landing.

The network absorbed the failure without a halt, but the event also showed why validator count tells only part of the decentralization story. Independent data dated Sept. 7 put Solana's stake-based Nakamoto coefficient at 18 and its largest validator near 4% of active stake. At the hosting layer, the same date's provider report put TeraSwitch at 22.1% of active stake.

The Foundation has separately said TeraSwitch hosted 38% of stake “last year” before its share was reduced below 30%. Those figures lack a common date and method, so the Sept. 7 reading is the cleaner current snapshot rather than one point in a continuous series.

Software creates a third failure domain. A Sept. 20 stake-weighted query grouped roughly 87.4% of stake on 4.x client versions, 7.3% on 0.x and 5.3% on 26.x. Major-version numbers serve only as rough markers for Agave-family, Frankendancer and Firedancer software because they cannot separate every scheduler variant or downstream build.

The three measurements answer different questions. Validator stake shows how many leaders would need to fail or coordinate. Client lineage shows exposure to common implementation faults. Hosting share shows how much stake can disappear behind one provider or routing domain. Faster slots do not create those concentrations, but smaller handoff and repair margins can make correlated disruptions more consequential.

The evidence threshold for 200ms

The 200ms feature remained pending for mainnet on Sept. 20, with no firm activation date in Anza's feature-gate schedule. Solana's reduced-slot-time page says further reductions depend on acceptable network performance, including skip rates.

One completed epoch with a roughly 0.05% skip rate is a useful baseline. A stronger decision would rely on sustained slot duration, skip, transaction-landing and leader-handoff measurements, broken down where possible by client family and infrastructure provider. That would reveal whether a clean network-wide average hides a weaker cohort or a longer tail.

Alpenglow belongs on a separate timeline. It is a consensus upgrade targeting roughly 150ms finality, whereas slot time governs the cadence of block-production opportunities. Solana's official pages give different planning windows, from a Q3 target to an October Agave 4.3 window, and neither supplies an exact activation day.

Solana's first 250ms readings show no immediate skip-rate shock. Reaching 200ms will require the same result across a longer window and under less favorable conditions. The binding test is whether transaction forwarding, leader transitions, repair and different client implementations can keep pace when geographic and provider concentration removes part of the network's timing margin.

The post Why Solana’s new 250ms speed boost could actually trigger network instability appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A strange thing has happened to Bitcoin's derivatives market over the past five years. The market is larger, institutions play a much bigger role, exchanges offer more sophisticated products, and traders have become far better at moving risk around. At the same time, one of the products that helped build that market has almost disappeared from the crypto-native venues where Bitcoin derivatives first took off.

Dated futures volume across the offshore venues tracked by Glassnode is now about 97% below its 2021 level. Options, meanwhile, have expanded from roughly one-quarter of crypto-native Bitcoin derivatives open interest to nearly half, gaining share during four of the five market regimes Glassnode studied since 2019.

It would be easy to describe that as options replacing futures, but that's not really what happened. Bitcoin derivatives have split the old futures market between two products that are better suited to different kinds of risk, with perpetuals becoming the easiest way to make a leveraged directional bet without worrying about expiry, while options take more of the work around hedging, volatility, downside protection, and trades built around a particular price or date.

That division has squeezed dated futures between them.

CryptoSlate has been watching the process for years. A 2024 market report on how Bitcoin options affect the crypto market looked at how large expiries were already rearranging open interest and influencing short-term trading. By March 2025, Bitcoin's options-to-futures open interest ratio had climbed from 57.8% to 69.6% in less than a week, while Ether's stayed much lower, according to CryptoSlate's options-to-futures analysis.

The ratio finally flipped in January 2026, when Bitcoin options open interest reached about $74.1 billion against roughly $65.22 billion in futures, the first time CryptoSlate recorded options carrying the larger position inventory. CryptoSlate's January derivatives report captured the shift as it happened.

The new Glassnode data adds something those snapshots couldn't because it shows the reordering across several market cycles and, more importantly, makes it easier to see where the old futures activity went.

The futures market split in two

Conventional futures have a date attached to them. Buy a December Bitcoin future and the contract eventually expires, which means the trader has to settle it, close it, or roll the position into another maturity.

That structure still works extremely well in traditional markets built around standardized monthly and quarterly contracts. Crypto, however, trades every hour of every day and eventually created a product that fit that environment better.

The perpetual future removed the expiry date, allowing a trader to keep the position open for as long as there's enough margin, while recurring funding payments between longs and shorts help keep the contract near the underlying spot price.

That's hard to beat for someone who simply wants leveraged Bitcoin exposure, because there's no contract roll to manage and no decision over which maturity has the deepest liquidity. The largest perpetual can simply become the obvious place to trade.

A Sept. 18 snapshot of Binance's market shows how far that preference can go. At around 03:25 ET, the exchange's BTCUSDT perpetual carried about 108,289 BTC of open interest, while the BTCUSDC perpetual carried another 19,465 BTC. At their respective mark prices, those two contracts represented roughly $9.93 billion of outstanding positions.

Binance's two USD-margined dated Bitcoin contracts, expiring Sept. 25 and Dec. 25, carried only about $77 million combined, putting open interest in those two major stablecoin-margined perpetuals at roughly 129 times the amount in the corresponding quarterly contracts.

It's only one exchange and one snapshot, so it shouldn't be treated as a market-wide ratio. But it does show why the collapse in dated futures activity on crypto-native venues isn't especially mysterious, because traders who want linear leverage already have another instrument with deeper liquidity and less maintenance.

Glassnode's broader derivatives data points in the same direction. Dated futures activity fell sharply from its 2021 levels, while perpetuals absorbed much of the leverage that once lived there. Options expanded alongside them, but they aren't competing for exactly the same trade.

That's an important distinction because open interest can otherwise make very different products look interchangeable. A dollar of perpetual open interest and a dollar of options open interest don't represent the same risk, because a perpetual is mostly linear while an option's payoff depends on strike, expiry, volatility, and where Bitcoin trades in relation to all of them.

That lets a holder protect a large Bitcoin position without selling it or cap downside while keeping some upside, while a trader who expects a large move without knowing the direction can isolate volatility itself rather than make a simple call on direction. Once the market became deep enough to support those trades, there was less reason for dated futures to do everything at once.

Why options became much more valuable

The simplest explanation for the growth of options is that Bitcoin ownership itself changed.

Earlier crypto cycles were dominated by participants making relatively direct bets. They bought because they thought Bitcoin would rise, shorted because they thought it would fall, or added leverage to either side, and futures were excellent for that.

A market with large pools of Bitcoin that owners don't intend to sell creates a different problem. US spot ETFs hold Bitcoin for investors who may keep that exposure for years, corporate treasuries hold it on their balance sheets, and funds run mandates around it while market makers and structured-product desks carry inventory because they're providing liquidity or packaging returns for someone else.

Those holders don't always want more or less Bitcoin because sometimes they simply want to alter the risk around what they already own, which is where options become much more attractive.

Funds worried about a drawdown can buy puts instead of selling their Bitcoin, while holders who are willing to give up some upside can sell calls against the position. Desks that expect a large move without knowing the direction can trade volatility instead of choosing long or short, giving the market a way to separate the risk of owning Bitcoin from the decision to own it.

Options also become part of the way the rest of the market moves because dealers have to hedge them. A market maker that sells options can end up buying or selling Bitcoin or futures as the option's delta changes, which means the options book starts feeding directly into spot and perpetual liquidity.

That makes options more important even when the person buying them isn't making a directional bet at all.

Glassnode's data makes this look less like something that only happens during bull markets because options gained share in four of the five regimes it studied since 2019, and some of the fastest expansion took place during the long bear-market period.

That fits a product that doesn't need prices to rise to become valuable because it becomes more important when investors care about the shape of their risk.

The collateral underneath the market changed too, because early crypto derivatives were often margined in Bitcoin itself, which created a nasty feedback loop during selloffs because a trader's position could lose money at the same time as the collateral backing it. A leveraged trade became more fragile precisely when volatility was accelerating.

Stablecoin and cash-like margin separate those two risks. Glassnode describes the derivatives market as moving away from coin-backed leverage toward stable-value collateral, which makes it easier for professional desks to manage positions across products without having the margin itself fall alongside Bitcoin.

The options venues have also become much deeper than they were a few years ago. Glassnode's four-venue comparison found Bybit's share of tracked Bitcoin options volume reaching 28%, up from below 10%, while its options book expanded from $529 million in its first month to $2.33 billion. Ethereum accounted for roughly one-third of Bybit's options turnover over the previous 90 days.

Those exchange-specific figures come from research produced with Bybit and should be read with that relationship in mind. The broader point, though, is harder to dismiss: liquidity is no longer concentrated in a single options venue to the degree it once was.

As spreads tighten and professional market makers operate across more exchanges, the product stops feeling exotic and starts functioning as ordinary market infrastructure.

Dated futures still have a place

There's one important boundary around the Glassnode data because its options comparison covers crypto-native venues, while the futures study looks at offshore exchanges and explicitly excludes CME.

So the claim that dated futures are disappearing shouldn't be stretched across the entire Bitcoin market.

CME futures serve a different customer and often a different purpose. A regulated asset manager, hedge fund, bank, or basis trader may prefer a standardized CME contract because it already fits into established collateral, clearing, compliance, and risk systems.

Spot ETFs made that institutional futures market more relevant in another way. Funds can hold spot exposure and short futures against it, while basis traders can buy Bitcoin or an ETF and sell a future when the spread is wide enough to cover financing and execution. Market makers can also use CME positions against exposure held elsewhere.

That can create enormous short positions without telling us much about whether those traders are bearish on Bitcoin, which is why CFTC leveraged-fund shorts need to be read alongside basis conditions and the rest of the trade.

Dated futures therefore aren't disappearing everywhere, but their role is becoming more specialized. Offshore crypto-native exchanges built a better instrument for continuous directional leverage and called it the perpetual; regulated institutions still have reasons to use standardized futures through CME, and options expanded into the large space between those two markets where investors need to manage volatility, downside, expiry-specific risk, and portfolios they don't actually want to sell.

The result looks very different from Bitcoin's derivatives market five years ago. Perpetuals carry much of the raw leverage, options increasingly carry the more complicated risk around that leverage, and CME futures preserve a regulated route for institutions that need standardized contracts and established clearing.

Dated futures didn't lose all of their business to one replacement because their old role was broken apart, and that says more about how Bitcoin trading has matured than the size of any single derivatives market. A market dominated by one leveraged contract is mostly built around making a bet, while a market with deep spot ownership, perpetual liquidity, regulated futures, and a large options surface is built around holding Bitcoin for longer while continuously deciding which parts of the risk are worth keeping.

The post Offshore Bitcoin futures crash 97% as traders abandon traditional risk appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Some of the most consequential financial rules begin with surprisingly little text.

For example, on page 36 of the European Commission's current MiCA review, item 66 asks whether Europe's treatment of staking is adequate and, if it isn't, what requirements should apply to companies providing staking services.

The question is brief, but the consequences wouldn't be.

There isn't a proposed staking license, a new capital requirement, or an agreed position in Brussels that any of those things should exist. The European Commission's MiCA review consultation remains open until Sept. 30 at 23:59 CEST and could eventually feed into legislation that amends MiCA, but the Commission says explicitly that the document isn't a final policy position.

Even so, the question tells us a lot about where European crypto regulation is heading. MiCA already governs much of what a centralized staking provider does when it takes custody of customer assets, and Brussels is now asking whether staking has become large and complicated enough to be treated as a regulated service in its own right.

For users, that could eventually mean more specific rules around slashing, withdrawal delays, fees, and who carries the loss when something goes wrong. For companies, it could mean another authorization layer and a more expensive compliance burden on top of MiCA, while protocols face a harder problem because staking is both a financial service and one of the basic mechanisms through which proof-of-stake blockchains operate.

That dual identity is where the regulatory argument gets difficult.

Staking started as network infrastructure, with participants locking assets, running validator software, following the protocol rules, and receiving rewards for helping the network reach consensus. Once exchanges, custodians, banks, and staking platforms placed themselves between the holder and the validator, the same activity started to look much more familiar to financial regulators.

At that point, some form of regulation was always going to follow.

Europe already regulates custodial staking

It's common to hear that staking falls outside MiCA, but that's only partly right.

MiCA doesn't contain a standalone regulated service called staking. Someone who stakes their own assets directly with a blockchain doesn't need a MiCA authorization just because they're participating in proof-of-stake consensus.

The European Commission has already drawn a distinction between that kind of proprietary staking and staking-as-a-service. If a company takes a customer's crypto, or controls the keys needed to access it, and stakes those assets for the customer, the service falls under MiCA's rules for custody and administration, according to ESMA's guidance on staking-as-a-service.

That sounds pretty straightforward until you look at how many different businesses now sit under the word “staking.”

Someone running an Ethereum validator with their own 32 ETH and keeping control of the keys is staking directly, while a specialist validator can run the technical infrastructure for a customer who keeps the withdrawal key, which can make the relationship noncustodial. An exchange can hold the customer's ETH, decide how it will be staked, collect the rewards, take a fee, and credit the remainder back to the customer's account, while liquid staking adds another layer because the user gives up the underlying asset and receives a token representing the staked position that can then be traded or posted as collateral elsewhere.

An EBA and ESMA joint crypto-asset report estimated the value of liquid staking at $44 billion in October 2024, with almost 80% of that activity on Ethereum. At the time, Lido alone represented roughly $25 billion.

These models aren't equivalent because control isn't distributed in the same way. The provider that holds the asset or controls the key can decide where it gets delegated and how rewards are handled, while it may also determine how quickly the customer gets the asset back and what happens when a validator is penalized.

That's why MiCA already imposes detailed obligations once custody enters the picture. A licensed custodian needs a written agreement explaining the service and the fees, while also maintaining records of client positions and procedures designed to protect those assets. Customer crypto has to be separated from the firm's own holdings, and there must be a process for returning it under MiCA Article 75.

MiCA also requires firms holding client crypto to protect customer ownership rights, including in insolvency, and prevents them from treating those assets as their own property under Article 70's client-asset safeguards.

ESMA has gone further on staking itself. A CASP can't take customer crypto and stake it for its own benefit, even if the customer agrees. The provider and customer can enter a staking arrangement where rewards are divided, but the assets don't become the firm's proprietary staking inventory, according to ESMA's guidance on the use of client assets for staking.

Europe therefore isn't starting from a regulatory vacuum, because the existing framework effectively says that staking is a protocol activity until an intermediary takes custody and turns it into a service. The Commission is now asking whether that distinction still works.

A separate staking regime would regulate the layer around the validator

The consultation doesn't tell us what a dedicated staking regime would contain, so it's too early to say Europe is about to impose a particular capital rule or require insurance for every validator service. However, the areas regulators are looking at aren't difficult to infer because EBA and ESMA have already spent considerable time cataloguing the risks.

Assets can become unavailable during protocol withdrawal periods, validators can be penalized or slashed, and customers may not understand how rewards are calculated or how much the provider deducts. Liquid-staking tokens can also trade away from the value of the underlying position, while using those tokens as collateral elsewhere can add another layer of leverage, according to the EBA and ESMA staking risk assessment.

A standalone framework could make providers spell out who bears those risks. If a validator is slashed, for example, the customer could be told in advance whether the loss sits with them or the provider, while a company could be required to explain how it chooses validator operators and what happens if one of them fails operationally.

Withdrawal terms could become more formal too because a user pressing “unstake” may assume the asset will be available immediately, even though the protocol itself can impose an exit period and the intermediary may add more processing time on top.

Reward advertising is another obvious area because a percentage shown next to a staking button can make a complicated combination of protocol issuance, validator performance, fees, and temporary incentives look like an ordinary savings yield, so regulators may want providers to separate those pieces more explicitly.

That could make the service easier to understand, but it would also make it more expensive to offer.

For a large exchange or bank that already has a MiCA authorization, another regulatory layer could mostly mean adding staking-specific policies to an existing compliance operation. Smaller validator businesses face a very different problem because their advantage may come from running reliable infrastructure rather than operating anything that resembles a financial institution.

If serving European customers directly begins to require more regulatory reporting, legal work, insurance, and customer-service infrastructure, the provider has to decide whether the market is still worth serving. Some will pay the cost, some will leave, and others will stop dealing with users directly and work behind a large licensed custodian instead.

That last outcome could reshape staking more than any disclosure rule because a bank or major exchange could become the regulated front door through which customers reach a large number of independent validator operators. The customer gets one regulated counterparty rather than having to assess each validator, but the regulated firm gains more influence over where customer stake is delegated.

For a proof-of-stake network, that isn't just a business question because validator distribution is part of network security. A framework designed to protect customers could therefore make access safer while concentrating more decision-making inside the firms that can afford the regulatory perimeter.

Users get more protection and less freedom

Users would feel that trade most directly because a dedicated staking framework could force providers to explain, before the customer deposits anything, what can delay a withdrawal and how much of the protocol reward the company keeps. It could also make them spell out whether an outside validator is involved and what happens to the customer's assets if that operator makes a costly mistake.

For a retail user who doesn't want to understand the validator architecture underneath the product, that's probably an improvement.

Institutional investors may benefit even more because large funds and banks don't usually avoid staking because the mechanics of proof of stake are too complicated to understand. They hesitate when legal title, liability, custody, exit rights, and counterparty obligations can't be fitted comfortably into their existing risk frameworks.

A more formal European regime could make those issues easier to resolve internally, but the cost would show up somewhere else. If compliance becomes more expensive, providers will either absorb it or charge customers more, which can lower net staking rewards, while smaller proof-of-stake networks may simply disappear from the product menu if they aren't worth the compliance work.

Validator due diligence could also favor large operators that already know how to pass institutional onboarding. A smaller operator may be technically excellent but still lose business because it can't produce the documentation a regulated custodian wants.

There's also the problem of writing one financial rule around blockchains that don't all work the same way. Ethereum's slashing and validator mechanics aren't Solana's, and neither looks exactly like the delegation models used elsewhere, so a rule written with the largest network in mind can become awkward when applied to systems with different technical assumptions.

Users who don't like the regulated version would still have another route because they can move assets into self-custody and interact directly with validators or decentralized protocols.

MiCA itself recognizes that services provided in a fully decentralized way without an intermediary can fall outside its scope. The current MiCA review document separately examines where that boundary should sit, including cases where admin keys, governance concentration, or identifiable operators make a protocol less decentralized than its branding implies.

That could leave Europe with two very different staking markets. One would run through exchanges, banks, custodians, and approved validator networks, with identity checks and regulator-supervised processes around the customer relationship, while the other would continue directly onchain for users willing to keep custody and accept the technical responsibility themselves.

The uncomfortable part is what happens in between because protocols with foundations, front ends, governance groups, or upgrade keys may discover that being decentralized in software doesn't automatically mean regulators treat the service as fully decentralized.

That problem extends well beyond staking, but staking may be one of the first places where Europe has to draw the line in a way that affects everyday users.

Finance has gone through this before

Crypto often frames regulation as a fight between a new technology and an old state, while financial history tends to be less dramatic and much more repetitive.

New products start with very little specialized regulation because lawmakers haven't decided how to classify them. The market expands, large institutions get involved, and eventually enough money is exposed that regulators stop treating it as an experiment, after which the rules begin accumulating, and the economics of providing the product start changing with them.

The product usually doesn't disappear, but the businesses that can absorb the new regulatory cost gain ground, while smaller providers consolidate, specialize, or leave.

OTC derivatives went through something similar after the 2008 financial crisis. Before the crisis, enormous volumes of swaps were traded bilaterally between counterparties, and when major institutions began failing, regulators discovered how difficult it was to see the network of exposures and how much depended on a relatively small group of firms.

The reforms that followed pushed standardized derivatives toward central clearing and reporting, while uncleared trades faced heavier margin and capital requirements. By 2017, the central clearing rate for interest-rate derivatives had climbed from around 20% in 2010 to at least 60%, according to a BIS analysis of post-crisis derivatives clearing.

The market survived, but providing the infrastructure became more concentrated around large clearing houses and banks.

Money-market funds offer an even closer example of how regulation can alter the version of a product investors choose. The SEC tightened the rules several times after 2008, and its 2014 reforms forced institutional prime funds away from the stable $1 net asset value while also changing liquidity requirements.

By the 2016 implementation deadline, roughly $1 trillion had left prime money-market funds, with most of the money moving into government funds instead, according to the Federal Reserve's account of the migration.

Investors didn't stop using money-market funds; they moved toward the form of the product that worked better under the new rules, and staking could follow a similar path.

If Europe makes custodial staking more expensive and more prescriptive, users don't necessarily stop staking. Some may migrate toward the large providers that can absorb the cost, while others may decide self-custody makes more sense, and providers will redesign the product around whichever regulatory boundary Brussels eventually draws.

That's where the debate becomes more difficult than simply deciding whether regulation is good or bad.

Custodial staking does create relationships that need rules somewhere. If an exchange takes a customer's ETH, decides where to stake it, loses some through an operational error, and then delays the withdrawal, saying that staking is merely blockchain consensus isn't much of an answer to the customer.

At the same time, staking isn't just a yield product invented by an intermediary because it's how many blockchains decide who gets to produce blocks and verify transactions. Treat it too much like a conventional investment service, and regulators risk turning part of network security into another branch of regulated asset management.

That was always going to become harder to avoid as the market got larger. When staking was something technically sophisticated users did from their own machines, there wasn't much political urgency around creating a dedicated rulebook. Once major exchanges began offering one-click staking to millions of customers and institutional custodians began packaging validator rewards as a financial service, the regulatory vacuum became much harder to maintain.

Europe hasn't decided what comes next, and for now item 66 just asks whether staking should have its own rules.

If Brussels eventually decides that it should, the deeper meaning will be hard to miss because staking will have completed the same journey many financial products made before it, from an unfamiliar technical mechanism to a commercial product and then into an industry where regulators decide who can provide it and under what conditions.

That may make staking safer for the customer who never wanted to understand validators in the first place, but it could also make it more expensive, more concentrated, and much further from the permissionless system it came from.

The post EU staking review threatens crypto yields and network security could pay the price appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Bank of Russia has proposed a 1% crypto capital cap, limiting covered crypto and foreign-digital-instrument risk to a bank’s own funds while leaving some client custody positions outside the new calculation.

The Sept. 18 proposal would create N31 for individual credit institutions and N32 for banking groups on a consolidated basis. Each ratio compares covered exposure with the relevant institution’s capital, not its total assets. The rules remain in draft form.

The two-level structure subjects both a bank and its wider group to the same proposed percentage ceiling. N31 uses the individual institution’s own funds, while N32 uses consolidated group capital, keeping the measurement tied to the entity that carries the covered risk.

What the 1% crypto capital cap captures

The draft regulation reaches beyond coins held outright. Its numerator includes direct and indirect investments, derivatives tied to crypto prices, and instruments such as loans, bonds, guarantees, repos and credit lines when their settlement or value depends on crypto or foreign digital instruments.

Banks would receive limited recognition for hedges. Long and short positions may be netted only within the draft’s qualifying lower-risk category, which imposes conditions tied to the asset, settlement and maturity as well as freezing and liquidity risk. Direct holdings and other higher-risk exposures are measured more conservatively and cannot be fully neutralized by an offsetting position.

The treatment of customer assets turns on who bears the loss if assets are seized or transactions are restricted. A custody position enters N31 or N32 when the bank, or a digital depository in its group, is liable for that loss. If the bank does not bear that responsibility, the client position is excluded from the two 1% ratios.

That exclusion does not remove the position from prudential treatment. For covered bank and group capital-adequacy calculations, the draft assigns non-liable client custody positions a 50% risk weight. Own-account exposure and client positions for which the bank is liable receive a 1,250% risk weight.

The distinction permits custody without automatically treating every customer asset as the bank’s own exposure, provided the institution does not bear the specified seizure or restriction liability. It simultaneously places a tight capital-based constraint on direct holdings and other crypto-linked risk carried by the bank.

The ratios are part of Russia’s broader crypto-market rulemaking, a framework CryptoSlate has previously described as still being completed. The central bank plans official publication in the fourth quarter of 2026, with the requirements taking effect 10 days later. Banks are expected to begin reporting instrument turnover and N31/N32 values in January 2027, although detailed forms are still being developed.

The post Why Russia’s harsh 1% crypto cap actually protects bank customer assets appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Buying through Kraken's standard interface costs a 1 percent trading fee plus a spread that is baked into the price you see. The same purchase on the Kraken Pro trading interface costs 0.40 percent as a maker and 0.80 percent as a taker at the entry tier. Depositing euros by SEPA transfer is free; withdrawing costs 1 euro. Those are the numbers that matter in any Kraken review that talks about fees, and they are what the exchange's official fee schedule shows on September 20, 2026.

This article works the cost through a concrete example, places the MiCA licence Kraken has held from Ireland since June 2025 in context, and follows the money all the way: deposit, purchase, withdrawal, tax records. No price target, no recommendation. Anyone buying cryptocurrencies can lose the full amount they put in, and the choice of platform does not change that.

What does it cost to buy Bitcoin on Kraken? A worked example

Take 500 euros and a Bitcoin purchase. Through the simple buy form Kraken calls "Instant Buy", the fee is 1 percent, or 5 euros. On top comes the spread, which the exchange builds into the displayed price and does not show as a separate line. Place that same Bitcoin purchase on Kraken Pro as a limit order that rests in the order book and you pay 0.40 percent at the entry tier, or 2 euros. Take the market price there straight away and it is 0.80 percent, so 4 euros.

The gap between 2 and 5 euros sounds small. On a monthly purchase over a year it comes to 36 euros, and the spread is not yet part of that calculation. To know what a purchase really costs, you have to keep two things apart: the trading fee that is stated, and the portion that disappears into the price.

Trading fee is the percentage the exchange charges on the volume of an order and shows separately. Spread is the gap between the market price and the price at which you actually complete the trade. Both are trading costs; one appears on the statement and the other does not.

Instant Buy or Kraken Pro: why the same exchange has two prices

Kraken runs two doors into the same market. The buy form in the app and on the website is aimed at investors who want to enter an amount and be done. Kraken Pro is the trading interface with an order book, charts and order types. Both draw on the same liquidity, yet the fee model differs sharply.

The official fee schedule lists this for the simple route: 1 percent on instant and recurring purchases, 1.5 percent on so-called custom orders. For very small residual balances below the minimum order size, the "Convert Small Balances" function carries a flat rate of 3 percent. Anyone entering by card payment also pays the payment charge covered further down.

This split is not a Kraken peculiarity; it is the standard at almost every large crypto exchange. How wide the gap between the convenient route and the cheap one runs at other providers is set out in our crypto exchange comparison, which puts the fee models side by side.

Maker and taker: how the Kraken fee tiers work in spot trading

Maker describes an order that places liquidity into the order book, meaning a limit order that is not filled immediately. Taker describes an order that removes existing liquidity, typically a market order. Kraken grades both across twelve tiers plus five professional tiers, and the distance between them is considerable.

At tier 1, meaning from a trading volume of zero, maker fees stand at 0.40 percent and taker fees at 0.80 percent. From $2,500 of volume in 30 days they fall to 0.30 and 0.60 percent, and from $10,000 to 0.22 and 0.38 percent. Only from $10 million does the maker fee drop to zero.

For the average retail investor that means one thing: advertising that promises "fees from 0 percent" describes a tier they will never reach. The first three tiers are the realistic ones. For comparison, we described the same pattern at Coinbase on September 20, 2026, a convenient interface carrying a high markup alongside a pro interface with graduated rates.

Assets on Platform: when your balance lowers the trading fee

One change has barely been described in German-language coverage so far: Kraken has moved its fee tiers onto a system the exchange calls "Cross-platform Fee Tiers". Your tier used to depend on trading volume within each individual product. Now the better of two figures counts, either your spot trading volume over the past 30 days or the balance you hold on the platform, listed in the fee schedule as "Assets on Platform" and abbreviated AoP.

In concrete terms: from $20,000 of balance in the account you reach tier 3 with 0.22 percent maker and 0.38 percent taker, even if you have not made a single trade in thirty days. From $100,000 of balance, tier 5 applies at 0.15 and 0.30 percent.

That lowers trading costs for investors who leave larger holdings on the exchange anyway. It also creates an incentive to do exactly that, which runs against the rule of thumb of moving holdings to your own wallet. Taking the discount means paying for it in custody risk. That is a trade-off, not an arithmetic problem.

The spread is the part of the cost that never appears on a statement

Kraken describes the spread openly in its own fee schedule as the difference between the market price and the price you receive, and states that the exchange may retain any surplus from that gap. Its size varies with market conditions, asset class, order size, order type and account activity. The exchange names no fixed figure, which is why none appears here either.

This is the real reason fee comparisons between trading platforms are so hard to run. Two providers can both state 1 percent and still differ several times over in actual cost. There is only one way to check: read the market price in a second window, put the offered price beside it and work out the difference before you confirm the purchase.

On Kraken Pro this item largely falls away, because you trade directly in the order book and set the price yourself. That is the second, less visible reason the Pro interface works out cheaper for regular purchases than the buy form.

Does Kraken have a MiCA licence? What the Irish authorisation means

Yes. Kraken received authorisation under the European Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation from the Central Bank of Ireland in June 2025. The exchange itself describes the step in its announcement as enabling it to "offer regulated services and serve customers directly across all 30 EEA member states". The licence is held by the group's European entity; the US parent company is based in San Francisco.

For you as a European customer this has three tangible consequences. First, Kraken falls under the supervision of an EU authority rather than national transitional registers alone. Second, the information, complaint and custody obligations of the MiCA Regulation apply. Third, the exchange may offer its services across the bloc under the EU passport without needing a separate national permission in each country.

A MiCA licence is therefore a solid point of difference against platforms without authorisation. It does not work as an absolute, and the next section explains why.

What the MiCA licence does not cover: deposit protection and self-custody

The statutory deposit protection of 100,000 euros you know from your current account applies to bank deposits. Crypto-assets in an exchange account do not fall under it, and the euro balance parked there is treated differently in law from a balance at your own bank. The regulation requires client assets to be segregated from the firm's own and sets custody requirements. That makes a platform failure less likely, but it neither rules one out nor makes good the loss.

Kraken says it keeps the bulk of customer holdings in cold storage, meaning on systems without a network connection, and relies for security on two-factor authentication, a configurable global account lock and address approvals for withdrawals. Those security standards only take effect once you switch them on. The most important lever in practice sits with you: an active second factor that does not run over SMS protects against the most common line of attack on exchange accounts.

Anyone holding larger amounts for the long term usually moves them to their own hardware wallet and leaves on the exchange only what they intend to trade. If authorisation matters to you as a selection criterion, the overview of regulated crypto exchanges helps with the comparison.

Depositing euros: SEPA free, card payment at 3.75 percent

The cost gap shows up most clearly on deposits. Via SEPA transfer or SEPA Instant, Kraken charges no fee on a minimum amount of 1 euro; depending on the payment service provider it takes anywhere between a few seconds and three banking days. A card payment within the euro area, by contrast, costs 0.25 euros plus 3.75 percent on a minimum of 10 euros. A SWIFT deposit comes in at 3 euros, and with PayPal the payment service's own charges apply.

Weigh that up: on 500 euros the card costs 19 euros and the SEPA transfer nothing. The trading fee for the actual purchase then comes on top. That makes card payment by far the most expensive way to get money into a Kraken account, and it is also the one the interface puts closest to hand.

A practical note on deposits: for some payment routes Kraken requires the transfer to carry your account identifier as the reference. Without it the credit can get stuck. Deposits through certain routes also trigger a temporary withdrawal hold, typically 72 hours for card purchases.

Withdrawing euros: what a SEPA transfer from Kraken costs

Withdrawal is where user accounts of the experience diverge, because the price depends on the payment service provider your account runs through. According to the exchange's "Cash withdrawal options" help page, as of September 20, 2026, the euro position is this: a standard SEPA withdrawal costs 1 euro on a minimum of 2 euros and takes up to five banking days. An instant SEPA withdrawal through one of the providers costs 0.90 euros on a minimum of 3 euros and usually arrives within minutes. A SWIFT withdrawal costs 5 euros and requires at least 100 euros.

Two pitfalls sit in the small print. First, a transfer can be processed as SWIFT if your IBAN is not reachable over SEPA, and the higher rates then apply. Second, the charges depend on the country your account is registered in. Check the display in the withdrawal dialogue before you confirm; the amount actually deducted is shown there.

Moving crypto to your own wallet: network fee instead of trading fee

Withdraw coins rather than euros and a different price tag applies. The exchange charges a fixed rate per cryptocurrency that covers the cost of the transfer on the respective network, and sets a minimum withdrawal amount. Both change as network fees fluctuate; the binding figure is the one in the confirmation dialogue.

What drives the amount is the network, not the sum being moved. A transfer over an expensive base layer costs the same fixed rate whether you move 50 or 5,000 euros. On small amounts that eats several percent in short order. How exchange fee and network fee combine on a withdrawal, and where the adjustment points sit, is taken apart in our piece on withdrawal fees and network fees.

The practical consequence for regular savers: let holdings accumulate on the exchange until the amount puts the withdrawal fee into a sensible proportion, instead of moving each monthly purchase off on its own. Turn that around and you pay twelve withdrawals in place of one.

Crypto savings plan and Kraken+: when the subscription pays off

A crypto savings plan runs through recurring purchases at Kraken, and the same rate of 1 percent applies as for an instant buy. Alongside it the exchange offers a paid subscription called Kraken+, which waives the trading fee on a monthly trading volume of up to $10,000 or the equivalent in euros. The waiver expressly covers only purchases, sales and conversions through the simple interface, not spot trading on Kraken Pro, not futures trading and not business done through the programming interface.

One point here is easily skimmed over: the spread remains in place under the subscription, and so do card charges. The discount touches only the portion of the cost that is disclosed. Whether it pays off therefore hangs on how large the spread is on your purchases, and that is precisely the figure you do not know in advance.

On a savings plan of 100 euros a month, the trading fee saved amounts to 1 euro. A subscription costing more than that does not carry itself by this route alone. Do the sum with your actual volume, not the one you intend to reach next year.

Staking on Kraken: 20 percent commission on the rewards

Staking means committing coins from a proof-of-stake network to help secure it and receiving a yield in return. Kraken charges no transaction fee of its own for this, but takes a commission from the yield earned. For flexible staking on assets with an unbonding period on the network, and for the assets in the rewards programme, the fee schedule names 20 percent. For bonded staking and for assets without an unbonding period on the network, the commission depends on the amount staked per asset.

For tax purposes, staking is a chapter of its own in Germany: the running yield is regularly treated as other income and must be recorded in the year it accrues, irrespective of the holding period of the underlying coins. Anyone using staking should document the yield continuously, because it is hard to reconstruct after the fact.

Whether staking is offered on your account at all depends on your country of residence and on the individual cryptocurrency. The offering in the EU has narrowed over the past years of regulatory steps, more than the marketing copy on some comparison sites suggests.

Margin, futures and perps: the offering beyond spot trading

Alongside spot trading, Kraken runs margin trading, futures trading and perpetual contracts, known in the market as perps. For these contracts the fee schedule shows 0.25 percent on the notional value when opening a position and another 0.25 percent when closing it. Margin trading adds an opening fee and ongoing financing costs.

These products are designed for experienced traders and are not accessible to everyone; availability depends on country of residence and account level. The decisive point lies elsewhere: in leveraged trading the loss can exceed the stake, and a liquidation runs without asking. That is a different risk class from a purchase on the spot market, even though both live in the same interface.

Tax: holding period, exemption limit and what to export from your account

In Germany, gains from selling cryptocurrencies fall under private disposal transactions pursuant to section 23 of the Income Tax Act. If the period between acquisition and disposal is no more than one year, the gain is taxable and is charged at your personal income tax rate. After a year has passed, the sale is tax-free. An exemption limit applies on top: gains stay tax-free if the total gain from all private disposal transactions in the calendar year comes to less than 1,000 euros. An exemption limit is not a tax-free allowance. Reach 1,000 euros and the entire amount is taxable, not merely the part above the line.

For your tax return you need the complete transaction history from the account, with timestamp, quantity, value and fee for each event. Kraken provides export files for this in the account area. Pull them regularly, ideally at the turn of the year: after an account closure or a delisting, older data may no longer be within reach, and the tax office asks for records rather than screenshots.

The fees themselves are more than an annoyance here. Incidental acquisition costs increase the acquisition cost and thereby reduce the taxable gain. Failing to export your fee lines gives money away at exactly this point.

From 2026 the exchange reports itself: Germany's crypto tax transparency act

Since January 1, 2026, new reporting and due diligence obligations have applied to providers of crypto-asset services in Germany. The basis is the Crypto-Asset Tax Transparency Act, KStTG for short, through which Germany implemented the European administrative cooperation directive DAC8. Under section 9 KStTG, providers must report the required information to the Federal Central Tax Office annually by July 31 at the latest for the preceding reporting period; section 10 sets the calendar year as the reporting period.

In practice that means the first full year reported on is 2026, with the report due by the end of July 2027. The notion that crypto gains stay undetected as long as they are not declared is finished for regulated platforms. Kraken falls under these obligations as an authorised provider.

Anyone who failed to declare gains in past years should clear that up with tax advice before the first data matching. This article is no substitute for such advice, and judging an individual case belongs in the hands of a tax adviser.

What are the drawbacks of Kraken? Three points that hit German users

First, the entry price. Anyone using the app without switching to Kraken Pro pays considerably more than necessary at 1 percent plus spread. The cheap side of the exchange sits behind a change of interface that many users never make.

Second, the product situation. The crypto offering is broad but not stable: Kraken halted trading for 21 tokens in September 2026, and steps like that hit investors holding smaller coins there. Anyone invested in niche assets should follow the exchange's announcements, because only a limited withdrawal window remains after a trading halt.

Third, ease of use for beginners. The standard interface is lean, the Pro interface demands some study, and customer service runs largely in writing. Anyone moving through the crypto market for the first time needs to allow time for that.

Is Kraken safe? What the licence proves and what scammers do with the name

The question comes up regularly in search results, so here is the sober answer: Kraken has been in the market since 2011, holds a MiCA authorisation from Ireland and is therefore a supervised provider. There is no indication of fraud in its business model, and anyone claiming otherwise should be able to prove it.

At the same time, the names of well-known crypto exchanges get used by third parties for fraud attempts. Forged emails in an exchange's name, cloned login pages and supposed support staff asking for the second factor hit the customers of large platforms first. Kraken asks for neither your password, nor your second factor, nor a recovery phrase, by email or by telephone. Any message that does is an attack, however genuine the sender may look.

The second group of complaints concerns frozen accounts. Freezes after irregularities are a prescribed procedure at regulated providers rather than arbitrary acts, but they hit users who have no idea they are coming, and resolving them takes time. To avoid that, keep your details current and steer clear of unusual deposit and withdrawal patterns through third parties.

Kraken compared: who the exchange suits and who it does not

For regular mid-sized purchases through the Pro interface, Kraken is competitive on price, particularly if you work with limit orders and use the maker fees. For investors who buy a small amount once a month and do not want to switch interfaces, the route through the buy form is expensive in relation to the result. For pure card purchases, the exchange is the wrong address.

For a short rule of thumb: the effort of learning the Pro interface once pays for itself at a purchase volume of a few hundred euros a year. Below that, the deciding factor is not the fee table but whether you are comfortable operating the platform.

Kraken review: what to take away

1. Check which interface you are buying through before you transfer the next amount. The difference between 1 percent and 0.40 percent is the biggest lever in this whole calculation, and it costs you nothing beyond learning the interface once. How other providers fare is set out in the crypto exchange comparison.
2. Decide deliberately what stays on the exchange. The fee discount tied to your balance on the platform is a genuine advantage and at the same time an incentive to take on custody risk. For long-term holdings the route to self-custody runs through the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Pull your transaction data now, not next spring. From the 2026 reporting period the tax authorities match provider data, and your own record of acquisition costs and fees determines the size of the taxable gain. Tools for that are listed under crypto tax software.

The fee figures in this article come from Kraken's official fee schedule and the help pages on deposits and withdrawals, retrieved on September 20, 2026. The authorisation is documented in the exchange's announcement of the MiCA licence from the Central Bank of Ireland.

(As of September 20, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Anyone wanting to move a balance from one blockchain to another has until now mostly used a bridge, and has had to answer two questions themselves: which route the money takes, and who owns it along the way. NEAR takes a different path with its swap layer, NEAR Intents. You describe only the result you want to hold at the end, and several service providers bid against each other for the execution. Between $167.6 million and $169.1 million currently sits in that layer, and the NEAR price has risen by almost 18 percent within 24 hours. This piece separates the documented figures from the expectations and shows what to check before your first swap through this layer.

NEAR price on September 20, 2026: these figures are documented

Retrieved from CoinGecko on September 20, 2026 at 16:52 UTC: NEAR trades at $4.23. That is 17.76 percent more than the previous day, 67.5 percent more than the previous week and 103.5 percent more than 30 days ago. Market capitalization stands at $5.53 billion, and trading volume over the past 24 hours at $1.70 billion. That places NEAR 21st in the ranking by market capitalization.

An important point for context: this is an ongoing move and not a finished one. The price has roughly doubled within a month, and a considerable part of that rise falls in the past seven days. Anyone buying in at levels like these is not buying into a quiet market. Experience says the counter-move after a doubling turns out just as forceful, and nobody can tell you when it begins.

On September 18 we already assessed the preceding jump, triggered back then by the launch of confidential perpetuals and an incentive programme with a price condition. If that part of the story interests you, it is in our analysis of the NEAR price jump and the NEAR@3.33 incentive programme. This piece is about something else, namely the swap layer itself and the questions it raises for you as a user.

What an intent is: ordering the result instead of programming the route

An intent is a bindingly stated intention: you set out which result you want to achieve and leave it to others to find the way there. The project's documentation puts it in one sentence: an intent expresses what you want to achieve, and not how you get there.

An example makes the difference tangible. Classically you swap one ether on Ethereum for USDC on Arbitrum in several steps. You look for a trading venue, you pick a bridge, you wait for confirmations, you pay fees at every station and you carry a separate risk at every station. Phrased as an intent, the same process shrinks into a single order: one ether on Ethereum in, USDC on Arbitrum out. Which liquidity is used for it, and which stations it passes through, is no longer your job.

Why this is more than a convenience

The shift changes who carries the execution risk. In the classic version you carry it yourself, because every step you pick is your decision. With an intent the service provider commits to a result and has to work out for themselves how to reach it. For you that means you no longer have to assess the route; instead you have to assess whom you leave the route to, and what happens if they fail.

NEAR Intents in numbers: $169 million across 26 chains

The current figures come from two analyses that differ slightly. DefiLlama reports a locked value of $167.55 million for the swap layer, while an analysis via Dune Analytics arrived at $169.05 million on September 16. The reliable statement is therefore a range of roughly $167.6 million to $169.1 million rather than a single round number. DefiLlama puts growth at 77.2 percent over 30 days.

This capital is spread across 26 chains, though by no means evenly. The NEAR chain itself accounts for around 52 percent, some $87.23 million. Ethereum follows with about $45.89 million. The remainder is spread across networks such as Tron, Bitcoin and BSC. Two chains therefore carry roughly four fifths of the total value, while the other 24 share the small remainder.

Figures are also available on the revenue side. Over the past 30 days, around $5.87 million in fees accrued according to the same analysis, of which $1.29 million remained as protocol revenue. Crypto Briefing published these values on September 19, 2026, citing DefiLlama and Dune.

What these numbers do not say

Locked capital is a stock measure and says nothing about how well any single swap works out for you. A high value means liquidity is there, and liquidity is the precondition for a tight price. It is no guarantee of a good price in an individual case. What counts for you in the end is the difference between the quote you are offered and the reference price on a liquid market.

Solvers, quotes and verifier: who actually executes your swap

A solver is a market participant who provides liquidity and commits to filling your order at the quoted price. In the documentation they are called market makers. As soon as you submit an order, several of them bid on it and, according to the project, compete on price, speed and execution quality.

That competition is the core of the model. On a classic decentralized exchange you trade against a liquidity pool at whatever price that pool's formula currently yields. Here you collect several quotes and take the best one. The mechanism resembles a tender more than a vending machine.

Settlement is handled by a contract the project calls the verifier contract. It checks whether all conditions are met and executes the result atomically. Atomic means the swap either goes through in full or not at all. The documentation phrases it as your swap either completing in full or you automatically receiving a refund. A state in which your money hangs half-swapped somewhere is, by construction, not meant to exist.

Technically the layer runs under the name Defuse, and the connection for applications goes through an interface the project calls the 1-Click API. You will come across these names when reading the documentation; for actually using the service they are irrelevant.

Intent or bridge: why the difference matters after this year's exploits

A classic bridge locks your balance on the origin chain and hands you a stand-in on the destination chain, which is supposed to be backed by the locked balance. That backing is the weak point. If the contract holding the original is drained, an unbacked stand-in is left on the destination chain, economically worthless even though your wallet still displays it.

This is not grey theory but the experience of this year. In the bridge exploit at The Sandbox, SAND holdings on Base and BSC were left unbacked for exactly that reason. Comparable cases occurred around the shutdown of the TON bridge and in the exploit of Maya Protocol.

An intent swap avoids that state, because no stand-in is created at the end. On the destination chain you receive the genuine asset the solver already holds there, and in return they receive your asset on the origin chain. No backing relationship arises that could later fall apart. That removes an entire class of failure.

What is not removed is every risk. It moves. In place of the backing risk comes the risk that the settlement contract itself contains a flaw. September showed exactly how expensive a flaw in verification logic can be: in the break-in at Liquid Network, the damage arose not from stolen keys but from an error in checking proofs. An atomic contract is therefore precisely as reliable as its code and the review of it.

Custody during the swap: when you hand over control

The documentation describes the model as non-custodial and states that you keep control of your balances throughout the process and do not hand them to a third party. That is the decisive difference from an exchange, where you deposit first, then trade, then withdraw.

In practice that means two things for you. First, the key remains the actual security anchor, which keeps the question of where that key sits an important one. If you are moving larger amounts, it belongs on a device that is not connected to the internet. Second, the checking moves forward in time: you sign an intention, and what you sign is what applies.

The three details you read before signing

Before you confirm, you read the confirmation screen for three details. Which asset goes out on which chain. Which asset comes in on which chain, and what minimum amount is guaranteed with it. How long the quote is valid. The third detail is often overlooked and is the most important one in moving markets, because a quote several minutes old reflects a market that no longer exists.

Confidential Intents: what confidential execution achieves against MEV

Part of the attention of recent days goes to an extension the project calls Confidential Intents. It routes orders through a shielded sub-chain, so that the size, timing and direction of a trade are not publicly visible until settlement.

MEV describes the profit third parties extract from being able to influence the order of transactions. Anyone who sees your order in the public waiting area before it is executed can place themselves in front of it and leave you with a worse price. If the order stays hidden until settlement, that opportunity disappears.

On September 17, confidentially locked capital passed $70 million according to the project, triggering the first distribution of the NEAR@3.33 incentive programme, in which 333,333 tokens go to users with more than $100 in confidential holdings and an active swap history. Different figures circulate on its reach: the analysis of locked capital names 26 chains, while the project speaks of more than 30 connected blockchains for confidential execution. The two numbers do not measure the same thing, and we have no clean delineation available.

One point for context, because it often gets lost in the debate: confidentiality towards other market participants is a different thing from anonymity towards the authorities. Your tax obligations do not change because of it, and an incentive token that reaches you is income like any other.

MiCA and the interface: what to look up in the ESMA register

Since 2024, the European regulation on markets in crypto-assets has governed which providers may offer crypto-asset services in the EU and which duties come with that. For you in Germany the practical question is not how a protocol should be classified, but who stands opposite you when something goes wrong.

As a rule that question is decided at the interface through which you trigger the swap, meaning the website or the app. If it is operated by a company based in the EU and authorized as a crypto-asset service provider, duties on information, complaints and organization apply. If no authorized provider is involved, those routes are not open to you, and an unwinding through a supervisory authority is out of the question.

You can look this up yourself. ESMA maintains a public register of authorized providers, and BaFin maintains a database of companies supervised in Germany. Which duties attach to such an authorization is something we have written up in our overview of the MiCA licensing duties for crypto companies. If going through a supervised provider matters more to you than the last bit of price advantage, you will find the trading venues authorized in the EU in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

Tax on a cross-chain swap: why the holding period starts again

Here lies the point at which the convenience of the procedure most easily turns into an expensive misunderstanding. A swap feels like moving house from one chain to another. For tax purposes it is not.

Under German law, crypto assets count as other economic goods, and gains from their disposal fall under private disposal transactions according to Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. A swap is a disposal of the asset given up and at the same time an acquisition of the one received. If less than a year lies between acquisition and disposal, the gain is taxable; beyond that it is not. On top of that comes an exemption threshold for the sum of all private disposal transactions in a year, which once exceeded makes the entire gain taxable and not merely the portion above it.

Three things follow from that for an intent swap. The transaction is a sale that counts for tax purposes, even though economically only the chain has changed. For the asset you receive on the destination chain, the one-year period starts again that day. And the fees embedded in the quoted price belong in your calculation, because they reduce the disposal gain.

The practical problem of matching them up

Because the route stays hidden with an intent, what you end up seeing in your wallet is an outgoing transaction on one chain and an incoming one on another, with no visible connection between them. For your records that means you note the transaction at the moment of the swap, with the date, both amounts and the identifiers of both transactions. Reconstructing that connection afterwards from chain data is barely possible. Tools that bring such transactions together and supply a holding-period calculation along with them are set side by side in our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

A note on the state of play: in September the German Federal Ministry of Finance presented a draft bill that would reorganize the taxation of crypto gains in future. None of it has been enacted. For the current year the legal position applies as described above.

Levels above and below: what to pin the next NEAR step to

With an asset that has roughly doubled in 30 days, round levels are above all reference points for your nerves and no forecast. It is still worth writing down beforehand what you will pin your own decision to, because in the moment of the move people otherwise construct the reasoning after the fact.

On the upside, the $4.23 level is the starting point of this assessment, the current level from September 20. On the downside lies the area around $3.68, where the price stood on September 18 when we assessed the preceding jump. A fall back into that region would take back the gain of the past two days without touching the move of the previous week.

More robust for an assessment than the price is the question of whether usage is growing with it. The locked capital of the swap layer and the fees accruing within it are the more honest indicators, because they do not move on expectation alone. You can follow both continuously at DefiLlama. If the price rises and the fees stagnate, the move is carried by expectation and not by usage.

If you want to trade the move with leverage, the usual warning applies in sharpened form: with an asset of this volatility, an ordinary counter-move is enough to close a leveraged position. How close your liquidation price actually sits is something you calculate before you open the position, not afterwards.

Checking NEAR Intents: what to take away

1. Check the interface before you trigger the first swap. Look up in the ESMA register and the BaFin database whether an authorized provider stands behind the app or the website, and decide on that basis how much money you route through it. Anyone preferring the supervised route will find the trading venues authorized in the EU in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Record every swap immediately. Date, both amounts, both transaction identifiers. Because the route stays hidden, the connection between the outgoing and the incoming transaction can barely be reconstructed later, and that connection is exactly what you need for the holding period. Tools that bring this together automatically are in our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
3. Separate storage from execution. The procedure is non-custodial, so your key remains the security anchor. Move only the amount you are currently swapping through a hot wallet, and keep your holdings on a device with no network connection; an overview of the devices is in our hardware wallet comparison.

The bottom line: the swap layer solves a genuine problem, because it does away with the backing relationship on which several bridges failed this year. In its place comes trust that a settlement contract verifies correctly. The figures show growth so far, and the price has run ahead of them. How much of that is usage and how much is expectation will be decided by the fees of the coming weeks.

(As of September 20, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Sources: the NEAR Intents documentation and the analysis of locked capital at DefiLlama.

Anyone buying Bitcoin on Coinbase for the first time sees one number before confirming: the Coinbase fee. What few people know is that a second item sits alongside it, easy to miss because it never appears as a fee at all but is built into the price itself. We looked up the terms in Coinbase's official fee overview on September 20, 2026, and sorted out where the exchange actually earns its money.

The most important point first: Coinbase quotes no fixed percentage for a simple purchase. The fee depends on the payment method, the order size, the market and the country. That is exactly why it pays to check the preview before every single order, and exactly why the question "what does this cost" cannot be answered with a single number.

The four places where Coinbase earns

First, the Coinbase fee on buying, selling and converting. It is charged on the order and shown in the preview. Second, the spread, which is contained in the displayed price on simple buy and sell orders and sits inside the conversion rate when you convert. Third, a separate execution fee of one percent on limit orders. And fourth, the commission on staking, which by default amounts to 35 percent of the rewards.

Free of charge, by contrast, are holding a balance, transfers between two Coinbase accounts, and staking itself, which carries no fee but a commission on the yield. Anyone sending crypto to their own wallet outside Coinbase pays the network fee.

The spread: the item that is not called a fee

A spread is the gap between the price at which you buy and the price at which you could sell in the same moment. At Coinbase it is baked into the displayed price, so you pay it without it appearing as a separate line on the bill. Coinbase justifies this by noting that the price is briefly locked in while the order is processed, and states explicitly that excess spread may be retained.

It is visible all the same: in the order preview you tap the note next to the unit price on buy and sell orders, and the one next to the conversion rate on convert orders. That single step before confirming is the only way to see the full price.

Limit orders: the one percent many people overlook

A limit order is an instruction to buy only at a set price. It generally counts as the more prudent route, because you fix the price instead of accepting it. At Coinbase it costs extra: every purchase or sale by simple limit order carries a separate execution fee of one percent of the amount traded. On top of that can come the usual Coinbase fee, which runs to as much as 1.875 percent depending on the payment method.

Both items appear in the order preview, in the transaction history and on the receipt. Anyone working regularly with limit orders should build that surcharge into their calculation, because it applies to every single transaction rather than once.

Does Coinbase One really make trading free? No

Coinbase One is the subscription advertised with fee-free trading, and it does keep that promise, though only for part of the costs. Coinbase itself names three limitations, and all three are why the bill ends up looking different from what people expect.

First, a spread may still be built into the displayed price on certain trades. Second, the fee exemption explicitly does not cover the one percent execution fee on limit orders. Third, trading through the DEX function carries a separate service fee that the subscription does not cover either. What we wrote about the subscription itself is in our piece What is Coinbase One?.

Staking: 35 percent of the reward, not of the stake

For staking itself Coinbase charges no fee, but it does take a commission on the rewards paid out by the respective protocol. The standard rate is 35 percent and applies to ADA, ATOM, AVAX, DOT, ETH, MATIC, SOL and XTZ, among others. Coinbase One subscribers pay 31.75, 28.5 or 25.25 percent depending on their tier, though not across all of those currencies.

What matters for your own calculation: the commission applies to the yield, not to the amount staked, and the rewards shown in the account are already the figure after deduction. Anyone exiting staking early also pays a fee for the immediate unstake; anyone who waits out the regular period pays nothing for it.

What you can do to buy more cheaply

The biggest lever is the place of execution rather than the subscription. On a simple purchase through the app you pay the fee and the spread. On Coinbase Advanced you trade directly in the order book, and there, according to Coinbase, no spread is included. Anyone moving larger amounts regularly should take a look at that interface, even if it seems less tidy at first glance.

Three habits help alongside it. First: open the preview before every purchase and reveal the spread, because Coinbase itself points out that terms can differ across similar transactions and are tested from time to time. Second: check the payment method, since it feeds directly into the fee. Third: make a few larger purchases instead of many small ones, because every transaction carries its own costs.

Whether a switch is worth it depends on how often and how much you trade. Our overview of the best crypto exchanges sets fee models and EU authorization side by side. Check the terms with the provider before you sign up all the same, because they change.

Fees and taxes: how they connect

Crypto assets held as private wealth fall under the one-year holding period set out in Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. Anyone who holds for longer and then sells pays no tax on the gain. Anyone who sells earlier is taxed at their personal rate, as soon as all private disposals in the year together reach the exemption threshold of 1,000 euros.

The link to the fees is a practical one: incidental acquisition costs reduce the taxable gain, and the costs of the purchase count among them. Anyone who fails to document them gives them away. The spread shows up in no fee line at all, yet it is in the price actually paid, and that price is the acquisition basis.

Coinbase fees: what to remember

1. There is no single percentage. The Coinbase fee depends on payment method, order size, market and country. Only the preview shown before the order in question is reliable.
2. The spread is the invisible part. It sits in the displayed price rather than in the fee line. On Coinbase Advanced it falls away, because trading there happens directly in the order book.
3. Coinbase One does not cover everything. Neither the one percent on limit orders nor the service fee on DEX trades, and a spread can still be included.
4. Document costs and swaps. Incidental purchase costs reduce the taxable gain, and every swap restarts the holding period. A crypto tax tool records both automatically.

(As of September 20, 2026, 9:00 p.m. All figures are taken from Coinbase's official fee overview, retrieved that day. Coinbase itself points out that fees and spreads can change. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

It is the hope that has carried every Shiba Inu discussion for years: burn enough tokens and whatever is left becomes more valuable. The logic sounds compelling, and the community has been burning tirelessly since 2021. Yet on Sunday, September 20, 2026, SHIB stands at $0.00000549 according to CoinGecko data. That is 93.6 percent below its October 2021 peak and 57.7 percent lower than a year ago.

So we looked at what has actually been burned over the past 30 days and set it against the circulating supply. The figure explains more about the price than any forecast does.

Shiba Inu price: the weekend numbers

On the day, SHIB is down 1.6 percent, with a range from $0.00000532 to $0.00000563. Over seven days it is up 5.2 percent, over 30 days 2.0 percent. Market capitalization stands at $3.24 billion, which puts SHIB in 35th place. Some $97 million worth of SHIB changed hands in 24 hours. There are 589.24 trillion tokens in circulation.

What was really burned in 30 days

The reports on this read dramatically: one day the burn rate drops 93 percent, the next it climbs 31,000 percent, and on one day in September it was zero. Those percentages are even accurate, they simply always refer to the previous day. What matters is the absolute amount.

Over the past seven days, around 111.41 million SHIB were taken out of circulation, and over 30 days around 476.96 million. At the current price that comes to tokens worth roughly $2,619. Not millions, not thousands of millions: a good two and a half thousand dollars in a month, spread across thousands of small transactions.

The calculation nobody makes

476.96 million sounds like a big number, and taken on its own it is. Facing it, though, is a circulating supply of 589.24 trillion tokens. A whole month of burning therefore amounts to 0.00008 percent of the supply. Extrapolated over a year that is around 5.8 billion tokens, or 0.001 percent.

From this follows a figure worth committing to memory: at an unchanged pace, a single percent of the supply would be gone after 1,015 years. Ten percent would take a good 10,000 years, halving the supply around 50,000. This is no polemic against burning, it is simply the division. Anyone counting on scarcity as a price driver is counting on a process that never becomes measurable within a human lifetime.

Why the percentage reports are accurate anyway

A burn rate that climbs 31,000 percent is a real number. It merely describes the change against a very small previous-day figure. If $100 is burned one day and $31,000 the next, the percentage increase is enormous and the effect on 589 trillion tokens is still not measurable. With headlines like these it is always worth looking at the absolute amount and its share of the supply. Both are public in every burn tracker.

What would have to move the price instead

For a token of this size, price moves come almost entirely from demand rather than from a tighter supply. That would require either usage, meaning applications on Shibarium that people genuinely use, or fresh money across the whole meme sector. The second case is the more realistic one and at the same time the one SHIB holders have no say over: when the broader market runs, meme coins usually run harder; when it falls, they fall further. Where sentiment stands right now can be seen live in our chart of the fear and greed index.

Meme coins and taxes: what applies in Germany

Crypto assets held as private wealth fall under the one-year holding period set out in Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. Anyone who holds for longer and then sells pays no tax on the gain. Anyone who sells earlier is taxed at their personal rate, as soon as all private disposals in the year together reach the exemption threshold of 1,000 euros.

With SHIB there is a catch many people miss: using tokens inside the ecosystem, for instance by locking up a balance, can trigger a taxable event depending on how it is structured. And every swap into another coin is a sale, after which the clock starts again. It is also an exemption threshold, not an allowance: at 1,000 euros of gains everything stays tax-free, at 1,001 euros the full amount becomes taxable.

Buying SHIB: what to check before you start

Three checks are worth making before you act on a report about the burn rate. First, the provider: platforms serving customers in Germany have needed authorization as a crypto-asset service provider under the EU's MiCA regulation since the transition period ended in late 2025. Second, position size: with a token that has lost 58 percent in a year, that is what decides whether you sleep at night, and no forecast will. Third, custody: anyone planning to hold for a while needs a wallet whose seed phrase they control themselves.

Which exchanges combine low fees with EU authorization is set out in our overview of the best crypto exchanges. Whether SHIB is tradable there is worth checking before you sign up.

Shiba Inu price: which levels matter now

On the downside, the daily low at $0.00000532 serves as a first marker. On the upside, the daily high of $0.00000563 is the next hurdle. The all-time high of $0.00008616 from October 2021 sits so far away that it no longer works as a level at all: reaching it again would take more than a fifteenfold rise. Current market data is in our chart section.

Our assessment: SHIB remains a bet on attention, and even the most diligent community changes nothing about that. The burning is a ritual with real solidarity behind it, yet it does not drive the price. Anyone buying in should do so out of the conviction that the meme sector as a whole will attract money again, and should settle in advance at which price they take profits or cap losses.

Shiba Inu: what to remember from this calculation

1. The amount decides, not the percentage. 476.96 million SHIB burned in 30 days is 0.00008 percent of the circulating supply, worth around $2,619.
2. Scarcity is no lever for SHIB. At today's pace, one percent of the supply would be gone after 1,015 years. What moves the price is demand.
3. Document every swap. A swap into another coin is a sale too, and it restarts the holding period. A crypto tax tool records it automatically.

(As of September 20, 2026, 8:15 p.m. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Binance Coin has fought its way back. On Sunday, September 20, 2026, BNB trades at $761.74 according to CoinGecko data. Market capitalization stands at $101.4 billion, which makes BNB the fourth-largest asset in the market. In early September the $100 billion mark was back on the board for the first time in months, and it has held since.

Anyone looking for the reason quickly arrives at a single figure: $3.6 billion. That is how much the value of real-world assets on BNB Chain has grown this year, more than on any other blockchain. The number is correct, and it is impressive. It simply measures something other than what most headlines make of it.

BNB price: the weekend numbers

On the day, BNB is down 0.4 percent, with a range from $746.64 to $764.34. Over seven days it is up 5.7 percent, over 30 days 12.1 percent. Some $915 million worth of BNB changed hands in 24 hours; measured against market capitalization, that is a quiet turnover of just under one percent. The price sits 44 percent below the all-time high of $1,369.99 from October 2025. Last week's peak came on September 6 at $779.70.

Why everyone is pointing at BNB Chain right now

RWA stands for real-world assets that are mapped onto a blockchain as tokens: short-dated government bonds, money market funds, in some cases shares in property or commodity stores. The market as a whole stood at around $31 billion in July 2026 according to figures from rwa.xyz, an increase of more than 400 percent since the start of 2025. Ethereum still holds the largest share, at roughly two thirds.

On growth this year, though, BNB Chain leads: around $3.6 billion in additional value, ahead of Solana at about $2.6 billion. That fits with Binance launching tokenized stock trading in June, which we covered in our piece on bStocks and US stock trading. The chain laid the technical groundwork for it in August with the Pasteur hard fork, for which we wrote a checklist for holders.

What the $3.6 billion does not say

The figure measures what the instruments on the chain are worth. It does not measure how often anyone buys or sells them. If a fund provider puts more than a billion dollars of bonds onto BNB Chain as tokens, the value rises by a billion even when not a single token changes hands afterwards. A parking garage full of expensive cars is not a busy marketplace, and that difference is what gets lost in the headlines.

On activity alone, the ranking therefore looks different. There Solana leads on trading volume and user numbers, while BNB Chain draws its advantage above all from large holdings that sit quietly. Both count as a success, but they are two different ones.

How to spot genuine usage

Three measures help, and all three are publicly visible. First, the trading volume of the tokens relative to the amount outstanding: if it runs at a few percent, they are being held rather than traded. Second, the number of addresses holding such a token, because a holding in few hands is a product for institutions and no market at all. Third, the fees that accrue on the chain. They only arise when something moves.

What BNB gains from this, and what it does not

BNB is the fuel of the chain: anyone who moves something on BNB Chain pays the fee in BNB, and part of that is permanently removed from circulation. For the price, movement is what counts; a large holding on its own does nothing. A tokenized bond fund left untouched for a year burns not a single BNB.

The right question is therefore less about how much value sits on the chain and more about whether it turns into trading. If June's tokenized stocks gain traction, fees and burns rise with them. If the holdings stay quiet, the effect on the BNB price remains modest. How sentiment across the wider market is developing right now can be followed live in our chart of the fear and greed index.

BNB and taxes: what applies in Germany

Crypto assets held as private wealth fall under the one-year holding period set out in Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. Anyone who holds for longer and then sells pays no tax on the gain. Anyone who sells earlier is taxed at their personal rate, as soon as all private disposals in the year together reach the exemption threshold of 1,000 euros.

With BNB there is an added wrinkle: anyone using the token for discounted trading fees or in the Launchpool quickly accumulates a lot of small transactions. Every swap into another coin counts as a sale, and the clock starts again afterwards. And it is an exemption threshold, not an allowance: at 1,000 euros of gains everything stays tax-free, at 1,001 euros the full amount becomes taxable.

Buying BNB: what to check before you start

Three checks are worth making before you follow a weekly move. First, the provider: platforms serving customers in Germany have needed authorization as a crypto-asset service provider under the EU's MiCA regulation since the transition period ended in late 2025. Second, position size: at a good $100 billion BNB is a heavyweight, yet it hangs on the business of a single company far more than Bitcoin does. Third, custody: anyone planning to hold for a while needs a wallet whose seed phrase they control themselves.

Which exchanges combine low fees with EU authorization is set out in our overview of the best crypto exchanges. Whether BNB is tradable there is worth checking before you sign up.

BNB price: which levels matter now

On the downside, the daily low at $746.64 serves as a first marker. On the upside, the next hurdle is the daily high of $764.34, followed by the weekly high of $779.70 from September 6 and the round $800 level. Current market data is in our chart section, and our detailed assessment is in the analysis Is BNB a good buy at current prices?.

Our assessment: the lead in real-world assets is genuine progress for the chain, but it is not revenue yet. What decides the price over the coming months is whether those holdings turn into trading. Anyone buying in should settle in advance at which price they take profits or cap losses, instead of deciding that under the impression of a headline.

BNB: what to remember from this weekend

1. The $100 billion mark is back. At $761.74 and a market capitalization of $101.4 billion, BNB is the fourth-largest asset, 44 percent below its October 2025 peak.
2. The RWA lead measures holdings, not movement. Growth of $3.6 billion is the highest figure of any chain. Fees and burns arise only once someone trades with it.
3. Document every swap. With BNB in particular, fee discounts and the Launchpool add up to a lot of small transactions. A crypto tax tool records them automatically.

(As of September 20, 2026, 7:45 p.m. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

After banks lost their push for tighter stablecoin rules in the failed Clarity Act, JP Morgan scored a narrower win as Visa moves to stop meme coin purchases from being coded as ordinary "digital media" and earning card rewards.

A Glassnode and Bybit report frames the divergence as the defining feature of this cycle, with froth pooling in the market's riskiest corners even as Bitcoin does the heavy lifting.

The Clarity Act failed to advance in the Senate, shifting the industry’s focus to a new wave of action from the SEC and CFTC.

A Glassnode and Bybit report found Bitcoin climbed 24.6% in five August days even as active leverage fell, with short positions supplying 89% of every liquidated dollar.

The Zcash ETF is splitting its shares three ways after pulling in more than $233 million in under a month, as Wall Street piles into crypto's hottest privacy trade.

A French family was tied up and held captive in their home after masked attackers allegedly targeted the father over his cryptocurrency involvement, forcing him to transfer roughly €40,000 in crypto.

Key amendment required for several high-value XRP Ledger use cases set to activate in next nine days.

This puts Bitcoin firmly among the world's most valuable financial assets and companies, above both Tesla and Samsung.

Prediction-market giant Polymarket was reportedly hit by a sprawling fraud scheme that saw criminals attempt to funnel at least $10 million through its U.S. platform.

Shiba Inu just saw one of its largest daily burn rate increases in weeks, as millions of SHIB get torched.

TLDR:

• Fetch.ai says its contracts remain unaffected while the exploit targets SingularityNET bridge infrastructure.
• An unauthorized party withdrew about $1.56 million in FET from the converter, according to the alliance.
• AGIX-to-FET conversions remain paused while teams review the bridge and related migration contracts.
• FET trades near $0.1773, while chart support sits at $0.1697 and major resistance stands near $0.1905.

Artificial Superintelligence Alliance token FET traded at $0.1773 after falling 1.53% over the previous 24 hours. The decline followed reports of a bridge exploit linked to the FET migration system. However, Fetch.ai said its own contracts were not affected by the incident and continued to operate normally across its network.

The reported attack targeted SingularityNET contracts, mainly the bridge connecting Ethereum and Cardano. Fetch.ai said unauthorized minting occurred through that route during the incident. After the announcement, the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance reported an unauthorized withdrawal worth about $1.56 million in FET, saying the funds came from the converter connected to the migration system.

The alliance said treasury and exchange wallets were not affected by the breach and noted FET held in private wallets or exchanges remained unaffected. Holders were told that no action was required at the time, with the FET price not reacting so much to the exploit.

Fetch.ai Halts AGIX-to-FET Conversions Following Bridge Exploit

Fetch.ai paused AGIX to FET conversions while investigators reviewed the affected bridge infrastructure. The company also paused its Ethereum-side bridge contract as a precaution. It said there was no indication that this contract contained the exploited weakness. Both services are expected to return after further security checks. Bridge services play a separate role from normal token transfers on the Fetch.ai network.

Their temporary suspension limits conversion activity while teams review the affected contracts and transaction history. Normal FET trading remains available. The company said the exploit had been contained, while the investigation remained active. Fetch.ai is working with the SingularityNET team and external security partners.

The teams have not yet published a full technical report on the breach. Further verified updates are expected after investigators complete their review. The event centers on migration infrastructure used by members of the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance. Earlier migration plans combined AGIX and OCEAN into FET under the alliance structure.

That system allowed users to convert supported tokens as the projects moved toward a shared token framework. The latest pause affects AGIX-to-FET conversions rather than normal FET network operations. Fetch.ai said no Fetch.ai contract was under threat when it published its update. The distinction matters because the reported breach involved connected bridge infrastructure, not the core Fetch.ai contracts.

FET Price Defends Key Fibonacci Support After Bridge Exploit

FET remained under selling pressure after the security news entered the market. According to a crypto analyst, the chart showed FET holding near the 50% Fibonacci retracement at $0.1697. That level remains an important short-term support area for the token. Immediate resistance sits near $0.1741, followed by the $0.1795 Fibonacci level. FET would need stronger buying pressure to hold above those levels.

Source: X

The chart also showed recent higher lows and higher highs from the August bottom near $0.12. This structure remains intact while FET stays above its recent higher-low region. The next major resistance sits near $0.1883 and $0.1905. A daily close above $0.1905 would confirm a stronger breakout from the current range.

According to the analyst, the downside support sits near $0.1653 and $0.1604 if selling pressure increases. The more important structural support remains around $0.1512 on the chart. A move below that area would break the recent higher-low pattern.

The post FET Price Tanks After SingularityNET Bridge Exploit Triggers Conversion Pause appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Four suspects reportedly held a crypto worker’s family at home overnight in Vendin-le-Vieil, France. 
• The criminals threatened the father to force a 40,000-euro crypto transfer, the Béthune prosecutor said. 
• The father and his 12-year-old daughter suffered minor assaults, including a blow with car keys. 
• France has recorded 135 crypto-related kidnappings since 2023, nearly 80 percent of Europe’s total.

Crypto kidnapping struck a family in Vendin-le-Vieil, in the Pas-de-Calais, overnight on September 19-20, 2026. Four suspects reportedly entered the home and held and restrained a couple and their two children, aged 8 and 12.

The father of the family works in the cryptocurrency sector. According to BFMTV, the prosecutor of Béthune said the criminals threatened him to force a 40,000-euro crypto transfer. The four suspects fled the scene afterward and remain at large.

Details of the Overnight Attack

BFMTV learned of the case on Sunday from a police source. According to that source, the family was sequestered inside the residence overnight. Reports also indicate the relatives were tied up until the suspects left.

The two children, aged 8 and 12, were inside the home throughout the incident. Reports place the crypto kidnapping between Saturday night and Sunday morning. The father contacted emergency services at around 8:00 a.m. on Sunday.

The father was assaulted during the incident. His 12-year-old daughter was also attacked. According to a source close to the investigation, she was hit in the face with car keys. Reports describe both assaults as minor. No other family member is reported as assaulted.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor of Béthune said the criminals searched the home before making their demand. Another account says the suspects isolated the father to obtain his wallet codes.

That account states they fled after a 40,000-euro transfer. The reports differ on whether the transfer was completed. However, the amount of any loss remains unknown at this stage.

Firefighters took charge of the family after the four criminals left. The relatives were in a state of shock at the time.

Separately, investigators are considering whether the incident was linked to an attempt to obtain cryptocurrency. That line of inquiry remains under review.

Investigation and Crypto Kidnapping Trend in France

The investigation was opened for kidnapping and extortion in an organized gang. This classification reflects both the confinement of the family and the demand for a cryptocurrency transfer. As a result, the file covers two alleged offenses committed by a group.

Several services are handling the case. The interdepartmental judicial police services of Pas-de-Calais and Nord received the file.

In addition, the case was entrusted to the French anti-cybercrime office, known as OFAC. These services are now working on the investigation.

Meanwhile, police are hunting the four suspects, who fled before firefighters reached the family. Investigators are also probing organized networks in connection with the crypto kidnapping. The reports do not name any suspect. Authorities have not reported any arrests so far.

The crypto kidnapping in Vendin-le-Vieil fits a broader pattern in France. Since 2023, the country has recorded 135 crypto-related kidnappings.

That figure represents nearly 80 percent of Europe’s total. The figure places France well ahead of other European countries.

The post Crypto Kidnapping in France: Family Tied Up at Home, Four Suspects Flee appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• At least seven U.S. aerial refueling tankers were tracked over the Persian Gulf on September 20, data showed.
• A U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton, capable of 24+ hour missions, conducted regional reconnaissance hours earlier.
• Iran warned renewed U.S. attacks could trigger sustained retaliation against American bases and interests.
• Trump said he was in “deciding mode” as Washington raised readiness, though no new strike was confirmed.

U.S. military aviation activity intensified over the Persian Gulf on Sunday as Iran warned that Washington could be preparing renewed attacks. The movements raised alert levels during a conflict nearing seven months, although visible flights did not confirm that another strike had been ordered.

The Hormuz Report said at least seven U.S. aerial refueling tankers were operating over the Gulf on September 20. Its Flightradar24 image showed aircraft activity around Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and waters near southern Iran.

Hours earlier, the monitoring account reported a U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton reconnaissance mission over the region. The aircraft is built for maritime surveillance, can remain airborne beyond 24 hours and has a range of 7,400 nautical miles.

U.S. Tankers and Recon Flights Intensify Over the Persian Gulf

Aerial refueling tankers allow combat aircraft to stay airborne longer and operate farther from their home bases. That capability can support missions, readiness patrols, surveillance flights and other operations across the Gulf.

The Triton serves a different role by collecting maritime intelligence across large areas for extended periods. Its endurance allows crews to monitor shipping lanes, aircraft movements and other activity across the maritime theater.

However, neither tanker concentrations nor reconnaissance flights establish that Washington has approved new attacks. The visible activity shows increased operational capacity and surveillance, while the purpose of individual missions remains unconfirmed.

Iran’s military central command said it had received information indicating Washington was preparing renewed military action with support from several regional countries. Tehran, however, did not disclose evidence supporting that assessment.

Iran Warns New U.S. Strikes Could Trigger Regional Retaliation

The command warned that another U.S. attack would trigger sustained retaliation against American bases and interests across the region. It also said countries assisting Washington could be treated as parties to the conflict.

The Hormuz Report separately cited Iranian media claims of unidentified fighter aircraft near Bandar Abbas, a strategic port near the Strait of Hormuz. That report had not been independently verified at publication.

The military activity unfolded as Trump said he was in “deciding mode” over Iran, according to Fox News. Trump also said “very big things” could happen soon while leaving open a possible meeting with President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Reuters reported fresh threats between Washington and Tehran after Iran-backed Houthis launched missile and drone attacks toward Saudi Arabia. The State Department warned Americans that security conditions could deteriorate unexpectedly, including through flight cancellations and airspace closures.

Together, the tanker presence, Triton mission, Iranian warning and Trump’s comments point to heightened readiness and sharper rhetoric. They do not confirm that the U.S. has decided to launch another large-scale attack.

The post U.S. Tankers, Recon Aircraft Surge Over Gulf as Iran Warns of New Strikes appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Protocol 28 “Adapter” went live on the Stellar mainnet after a validator vote held in September.
• CAP-85 enables atomic upgrades for contract groups, while CAP-86 adds sparse functions for migrations.
• Stellar sustained over 211 TPS across 100 consecutive ledgers, a record not tied to Protocol 28 alone.
• Tokenized assets on Stellar have reached about $3.3 billion, with stablecoin supply near $884 million. 

Stellar Protocol 28, known as “Adapter,” is now live on the Stellar mainnet following a validator vote in September.

The upgrade introduces several changes to Soroban smart contract management, data migrations, and the network’s consensus process.

The activation arrives as the network records growth in tokenized real-world assets and stablecoins. Tokenized assets on Stellar have now reached about $3.3 billion. Stablecoin supply is approaching $884 million, according to recently published data.

Stellar Protocol 28 Adds Smart Contract Upgrade Tools

Stellar Protocol 28 focuses mainly on developers and infrastructure operators rather than raw performance. One key change is CAP-85, which allows groups of smart contracts to be upgraded atomically. Contracts that share the same logic can be linked to an external code reference.

When an upgrade is required, the linked contracts move to the new version in a coordinated manner. As a result, financial applications that manage many contracts may find maintenance and security updates simpler.

Additionally, CAP-86 introduces new “sparse” functions for data migrations. These functions let contracts handle missing or additional fields when a data structure changes. The goal is to make migrations more gradual and reduce the risk of interruptions or incompatibilities.

CAP-83 Consensus Changes and the 211 TPS Record

The upgrade also includes CAP-83, which modifies parts of Stellar’s consensus process. Validators can move through certain consensus stages without waiting for all transaction data.

Late or invalid transaction sets can also be handled more efficiently. The aim is to keep the network resilient when transaction loads rise or data transmission is delayed.

Meanwhile, the network posted a new throughput record. In a post on X, Stellar XLM Holder cited Chainspect data on the milestone. The data shows sustained throughput above 211 transactions per second across 100 consecutive ledgers.

However, the post notes that Stellar Protocol 28 alone does not account for the 211 TPS figure. Stellar is also rolling out parallel transaction-set downloading, which adds to processing capacity.

Therefore, the record reflects a broader infrastructure effort. Protocol 28 mainly targets smart contract infrastructure, developer tools, data management, and network resilience.

Tokenized Assets, Stablecoins, and XLM Price Action

Stellar Protocol 28 arrives as real-world assets grow on the network. The network now hosts roughly $3.3 billion in tokenized assets. The Stellar Development Foundation reported that RWAs passed $3 billion during the second quarter of 2026.

The ecosystem covers tokenized bonds, U.S. Treasuries, money market funds, private credit, and tokenized gold. Stellar has historically centered on payments, cross-border transfers, and financial applications. With tokenization, the network is increasingly used to represent and transfer financial assets on-chain.

Stablecoins are also growing on the network. Supply has reached about $884 million following the activation. Stablecoins support cross-border payments, international transfers, settlement, and liquidity. The Foundation also reported record stablecoin transfer volume of $11.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026.

XLM also traded higher around the upgrade, moving near $0.19 and reaching a local high near $0.203. However, the post cautions against linking the move directly to Protocol 28. Bitcoin’s price action, capital flows, regulation, liquidity, and RWA narratives also influence the market.

Developers still need to integrate the new capabilities, and several infrastructure improvements are rolling out progressively.

The post adds that the real test is real-world usage by financial institutions, developers, stablecoin issuers, and RWA platforms. Going forward, observers are watching RWA growth, stablecoin supply, Soroban adoption, network throughput, and institutional activity.

The post Stellar Protocol 28 Goes Live on Mainnet as Network Records 211 TPS appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• POSCO International and LG CNS selected Injective for the first onchain trade finance pilot.
• AI agents reviewed Letters of Credit and trade documents before receivables were issued onchain.
• Injective is now an SEC-registered transfer agent, the first layer 1 to pair RWAs with recordkeeping.
• Injective has brought over $1 billion in real estate mortgages onchain, with more RWAs coming soon.

Onchain trade finance now has its first pilot on Injective. South Korea’s largest trading company, POSCO International, and LG CNS selected the blockchain for the project.

The pilot successfully completed a transaction using trade receivables generated through real commercial activity. AI agents reviewed Letters of Credit and supporting trade documents during the process.

The receivables were then issued as programmable, permissioned onchain assets with compliance controls embedded directly into the infrastructure.

Injective Onchain Trade Finance Capabilities

Injective shared the details in a post on X. The network said it is breaking new ground in tokenization. According to the post, its approach combines purpose-built RWA infrastructure, AI-powered finance, and regulatory rails on one unified network. The pilot forms part of that effort.

Injective said the pilot demonstrated what its infrastructure can power. These include programmable tokenized receivables, compliance controls, and regulated issuance rails.

The list also covers AI-assisted trade document review and institutional-grade onchain financial infrastructure. Together, these features supported the receivables issued during the pilot.

Trade finance supports more than $5 trillion in annual financing globally, according to the post. Injective said bringing these workflows onchain opens the door to modernizing one of the world’s largest financial markets.

The network listed faster settlement, greater programmability, and entirely new forms of RWA issuance as benefits.

Injective also said that trade finance is only one part of the story. The post then turned to other RWA developments alongside the onchain trade finance pilot. Those developments include a regulatory registration and a growing range of tokenized assets.

SEC Registration and Expanding RWA Footprint

Injective is now an SEC-registered transfer agent. The network said this makes it the first layer 1 blockchain to combine native RWA infrastructure with regulated recordkeeping.

The recordkeeping capabilities are required by U.S. capital markets. The announcement appeared alongside the onchain trade finance update in the same post.

Beyond the registration, this infrastructure has helped bring over $1 billion in real estate mortgages to Injective. The network said the figure further expands its footprint across real-world assets. The mortgages are one of several asset types now available on the network.

To date, Injective has brought a growing range of assets onchain. These include institutional funds, public equities, trade receivables, and real estate mortgages.

Trade receivables entered that list through the recent onchain trade finance pilot with POSCO International and LG CNS. The network also listed pre-IPO exposure to companies such as SpaceX and OpenAI.

Injective said its goal extends beyond tokenizing individual assets. The network is building a full stack for compliant internet capital markets.

That stack covers issuance, trading, settlement, compliance, recordkeeping, and AI-powered onchain financial workflows.

It runs on one purpose-built network designed for the world’s largest financial institutions and everyday users. Injective added that new RWAs and deployments are coming soon.

The post Injective Powers First Onchain Trade Finance Pilot for POSCO International and LG CNS appeared first on Blockonomi.

The US Treasury Department has sanctioned cryptocurrency exchange BitBank as part of a wider crackdown on Iran’s financial networks.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said BitBank is controlled by Iranian financier Babak Zanjani, who is already under US sanctions. The agency accused the exchange of helping move funds linked to Iran.

BitBank Targeted

According to OFAC, BitBank was used to transfer payments received by the Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, an entity already designated by the US. The agency said the transfers began in June. Treasury officials also alleged that BitBank was involved in moving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, between June and July.

The action also targets BitBank’s developer, Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, along with three executives linked to Zanjani: Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein, Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein, and Seyed Adel Heidari. OFAC described the group as part of Zanjani’s digital asset network.

The sanctions were imposed under Executive Order 13902, which gives the US government powers to target parts of Iran’s economy, including its digital asset sector. Treasury plans to use those powers to pursue crypto platforms and other businesses that help the West Asian country evade US restrictions.

BitBank has been operating as an Iranian digital asset exchange since at least 2024. According to OFAC, Zanjani promoted the exchange through his social media accounts. BitBank was also listed as a partner by other companies connected to his business network, the agency claimed.

Zanjani has faced legal action in Iran in the past. He was sentenced to death in 2016 over the embezzlement of millions of dollars from the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company. His sentence was later commuted in 2024. US officials now assert that he has rebuilt a network of businesses that includes digital asset companies.

The latest measures come under the Operation Economic Outcast. The Treasury launched the campaign in August 2026 as part of efforts to restrict Iran’s access to international financial channels.

Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent stated,

“If you support the Iranian regime, the Department of the Treasury will sanction you.”

Iranian Crypto Sector Faces Pressure

Back in June, the US sanctioned Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, and Ramzinex. Nobitex drew particular attention. Treasury said it handled more than half of Iran’s crypto inflows in 2025. Officials also alleged that the exchange helped move stablecoins and supported access to overseas crypto platforms.

Nobitex co-founder and former CEO Amir Hossein Rad was also targeted.

The post Iranian Crypto Exchange BitBank Lands on US Treasury’s Sanctions List appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said this week that Bitcoin ETFs could eventually reach three times the assets of gold ETFs, pointing to younger investors, falling volatility and stronger sales activity around BTC funds.

His view rests on a long-term shift in who owns Bitcoin and how institutions use it, rather than a claim that the cryptocurrency has already displaced gold as a store of value.

Balchunas Sees Bitcoin Closing the Gap With Gold

In a recent interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Balchunas said younger investors are more likely to grow up treating Bitcoin as a store of value, giving Bitcoin ETFs a potential advantage as those investors accumulate more capital.

“I do believe that Bitcoin ETFs will triple gold in assets,” he said.

Right now, gold is less volatile than BTC, and according to the analyst, volatility is the main concern investors report when considering the flagship cryptocurrency.

But if its volatility and correlation with other assets continue moving closer to gold, he expects larger institutions to become more comfortable using it as a store of value, a safe haven asset or an alternative holding.

Bitcoin is still viewed differently from gold, however, with Balchunas saying it has traded more like the Nasdaq 100 for years, giving it a reputation as a high-beta asset that is closely tied to stocks. He further described it as “gold as a teenager,” contrasting its roughly 17-year history with gold’s much longer record.

His argument also centered on distribution. In a follow-up post, Balchunas pointed out that Bitcoin has “way more enthusiasm and sales firepower.”

He also noted that wholesalers who are familiar with both crypto and the habits of older investors are actively educating clients about BTC ETFs, adding that there is little comparable sales activity around gold ETFs.

The analyst later stressed that his view does not mean gold disappears.

“Gold isn’t going anywhere,” he wrote. “I just think it will be lapped by Bitcoin ETFs as a category long term.”

ETF Flows Show the Picture Is Still Mixed

The latest fund data provides a less straightforward picture. SoSoValue recorded $159.45 million in net inflows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs on September 17, following two difficult sessions in which funds lost $295.98 million on September 16 and $450.33 million on September 15.

For the week through September 17, the ETFs had a combined $426.81 million in net outflows. Meanwhile, cumulative inflows stood at $54.73 billion, while total net assets were $96.25 billion, equal to 6.26% of Bitcoin’s market cap.

As CryptoPotato reported, the products recorded $462.73 million in net outflows across the four trading sessions through September 11. That followed a much stronger period in August, when they attracted more than $1.9 billion in one week.

The post Younger Investors Could Help Bitcoin ETFs Overtake Gold: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, September 20th, 2026]

Monochrome Exchange, a multi-asset trading platform, has announced the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) of its native utility token, MCR. The platform aims to consolidate crypto, equities, bonds, and real-world assets into a single venue where trades settle on-chain. The exchange is currently live, featuring over 260 active markets.

MCR Initial Exchange Offering Details

• Date: September 21, 13:00 UTC+8 to September 28, 13:00 UTC+8
• Location: Monochrome Launchpad (monochrome.exchange/launchpad)
• Token Price: $0.88 per MCR
• Public Sale Supply: 10,500,000 MCR (5% of total supply)
• Vesting Schedule: 1-month cliff from Token Generation Event (TGE), followed by 3-month linear vesting
• Commitment Asset: USDT
• Subscription Limits: No minimum; maximum of $100,000 per account

The MCR offering will take place directly on the Monochrome Exchange platform. Users can participate by depositing USDT and committing funds on the offering page during the designated seven-day window. Following the one-month cliff after the TGE, MCR tokens will vest linearly and be credited directly to user accounts.

Live Platform Offerings

Monochrome Exchange currently supports trading across four asset classes from a single account balance:

• Crypto: Spot and perpetual markets.
• Equities: Nearly 150 markets, including tokenized exposure to US and Hong Kong equities (e.g., AAPL, NVDA, TSLA, BYD).
• ETFs and Indices: Over 30 options including SPY, QQQ, and XLE.
• Commodities: Gold, silver, platinum, crude oil, Brent, natural gas, and copper.
• Pre-IPO Markets: Tokenized exposure to private companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic.

Leadership and Backing

Monochrome Exchange was founded by Jeff Yew, former Chief Executive Officer of Binance Australia, where he led local operations for the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. He subsequently founded Monochrome Asset Management, the investment manager behind the first direct-holdings spot Bitcoin ETF of its kind admitted to trading on Cboe under an ASIC-issued Australian Financial Services Licence.

Yew has over a decade of experience across exchange operations, digital asset licensing and the design of regulated investment products. “Tokenisation has produced a large number of assets that barely trade,” said Jeff Yew. “The harder problem has always been the market underneath them: liquidity, settlement, and compliance that holds up. We listed the markets first and are offering the token second.”

Monochrome Exchange operates as a separate entity from Monochrome Asset Management. Jeff Yew’s professional history does not extend any licence, authorisation or regulatory status of any Monochrome affiliate to Monochrome Exchange or to the MCR token.

How It Works

The offering is conducted entirely within the Monochrome Exchange platform. Participation follows four steps:

1. Account. Participants open a Monochrome Exchange account and enable two-factor authentication.
2. Deposit. USDT is deposited to the exchange account. Deposits are credited once confirmed on-chain.
3. Commitment. Funds are committed on the offering page during the seven-day window, which opens on 21 September at 13:00 UTC+8 and closes on 28 September at 13:00 UTC+8, or earlier if the allocation is filled. There is no minimum subscription and a maximum of $100,000 per account.
4. Distribution. MCR is held against the participant’s account from the Token Generation Event. No tokens unlock during the first month. Following the cliff, the allocation vests linearly over three months and is credited automatically as it unlocks.

No external wallet, bridge or on-chain transaction is required at any stage, and no claim transaction is necessary.

MCR Tokenomics and Deflationary Mechanism

The maximum supply of MCR is capped at 210,000,000 tokens. Tokens allocated to the team and advisors are locked for 12 months, followed by a 36-month linear vesting schedule.

$MCR Tokenomics

Vesting Schedule

The token incorporates a buy-back and burn mechanism driven by platform activity:

• 20% of net platform profit will be used to buy back MCR from the open market quarterly.
• 25% of all Launchpad and Digital IPO fee revenue will be added to the buy-back allocation.
• Purchased tokens will be sent to a verifiable burn address to reduce the circulating supply.

Token Utility

MCR serves multiple functions within the Monochrome ecosystem:

• Fee Discounts: Holders receive trading fee discounts ranging from 10% to 50%, tiered by holdings.
• Exclusive Access: MCR acts as the access token for Launchpad offerings and upcoming Digital IPOs, with allocations weighted by user balances.
• Staking: Users can stake MCR to earn rewards, increase allocation weight, and qualify for the node program.
• Governance: Holders can participate in voting on platform listings, Launchpad parameters, and treasury deployment.

Digital IPOs and Leadership

Monochrome Exchange is developing a Digital IPO framework designed to streamline the public listing process by moving issuance, subscription, allocation, and settlement on-chain. MCR will be required to participate in these offerings. The platform schedules its first Digital IPO for Q1 2027.

The exchange was founded by Jeff Yew, former CEO of Binance Australia and founder of Monochrome Asset Management. Yew brings a decade of experience in exchange operations and digital asset licensing. Monochrome Exchange operates as a separate entity from Monochrome Asset Management. Jeff Yew’s professional history does not extend any license, authorization, or regulatory status of Monochrome affiliates to Monochrome Exchange or the MCR token.

About Monochrome

Monochrome Exchange is a multi-asset trading venue where crypto, equities, ETFs, commodities and pre-IPO markets trade from a single account and settle on-chain. The platform currently lists more than 260 markets, including tokenised exposure to US and Hong Kong equities, index and sector ETFs, precious metals and energy, and private companies including OpenAI and Anthropic.

Monochrome Exchange was founded by Jeff Yew, former Chief Executive Officer of Binance Australia and founder of Monochrome Asset Management, the investment manager behind the first direct-holdings spot Bitcoin ETF of its kind admitted to trading on Cboe. MCR is the native utility token of the exchange, used for trading fee discounts, allocation in Launchpad offerings and Digital IPOs, staking and governance.

Monochrome Exchange is a separate entity from Monochrome Asset Management and operates independently of it.

Socials

Website: monochrome.exchange

Twitter: x.com/Monochrome_EN

Disclaimer

MCR is a utility token and does not confer ownership, dividends, profit-sharing, or redemption rights. Digital assets carry significant risks, including total loss. Users are advised to review the full documentation, risk factors, tokenomics, and vesting schedules at docs.monochrome.exchange prior to participation.

The post Multi-Asset Trading Venue Monochrome Exchange Announces IEO of Its Native Token, $MCR appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Crypto derivatives markets are moving toward two main products, perpetual futures and options. Perpetuals provide continuous leverage, while options are becoming more important for pricing and managing risk.

That shift is also visible in how traders are allocating capital across derivatives. A Glassnode study produced with Bybit found that options increased their share of Bitcoin notional open interest from about 25% to nearly 50%. Meanwhile, dated futures have lost ground in the crypto market.

Options Are Becoming More Important

Dated futures volume is now roughly 97% below its 2021 level, according to the study. Perpetual futures have taken a larger role in leverage, while options have gained ground in volatility trading and hedging.

The growth in options has not been limited to bullish market conditions. Glassnode found that options gained market share in four of the five market regimes it examined since 2019. The largest increase came during a prolonged bear market, when demand for hedging can become more important. This suggests that traders use options not only for directional bets but also to manage risk.

Recent venue data shows that the shift is also changing where Bitcoin options trading takes place. Data through the settled close of August 23, 2026, showed Bybit’s share of options volume across four crypto-native venues rising from below 10% to 28%.

Bybit Expands Its Options Market

Ether has also become an important part of Bybit’s options activity, accounting for 32% of its options volume over the previous 90 days. That was the highest share among the four venues, ahead of OKX at 26%, Binance at 24% and Deribit at 12%.

Bybit also recorded the highest Ether options volume among the four venues for 143 consecutive days. Glassnode measured the lead using both coin and dollar volumes to reduce the effect of changing prices.

The concentration extends beyond crypto assets. Bybit’s tokenized gold perpetual market was the largest among tracked crypto venues for 476 consecutive days, while the platform held 97.1% of gold options open interest.

Bybit’s broader options market has also grown significantly, with its options book rising from $529 million in its first month to $2.33 billion. Growth was uneven, however, as options initially lost share while perpetual activity expanded before recovering.

The post Options Nearly Double Their Share as Crypto Derivatives Market Shifts: Report appeared first on CryptoPotato.

After a couple of consecutive weeks in which the spot XRP ETFs attracted nearly $19 million, the actual inflows were slashed in half during the previous, highly eventful five-day trading period.

Nevertheless, they have extended their green streak, which can also be said of the spot SOL ETFs. In fact, the Solana funds have been in the green for nearly three months now.

XRP ETFs Hit New ATH

On the day ahead of the crucial Senate vote for the CLARITY Act, the spot Ripple ETFs attracted $11.26 million, which helped them start the week with a bang. Interestingly, the failure of the bill vote on Tuesday didn’t result in any direct net outflows, with SoSoValue showing $0.00 in reportable data on that day, even though the underlying asset slumped by more than 8% in hours.

In fact, investors continued to pour funds into the financial vehicle on the next day, with $3.50 million entering the ETFs despite the Fed’s rate hike on Wednesday. That’s where the tide turned, and the net inflows stopped. SoSoValue shows $5.15 million in net withdrawals completed on Thursday, and a very modest $43,700 taken out on Friday.

As such, the cumulative total net inflows reached a new all-time high on Wednesday at $1.720 billion but dropped toward $1.710 billion a day later. Nevertheless, the week was still a success, with $9.56 million in net inflows. The last time the spot XRP ETFs were in the red was during the first full week of July.

SOL ETFs Are Doing Even Better

Similar to the XRP ETFs, the SOL counterparts began the week on a high note, attracting just over $11 million. They didn’t budge on Tuesday either, gaining another $1.35 million. The net inflows slowed down to under $840,000 on Wednesday and went to $0.00 on Thursday. As of press time, there’s no data on SoSoValue about what happened on Friday, so we will assume it was another non-action day of $0.00.

Given the currently available information, the week ended with $13.19 million in net inflows. Unless investors pulled out over that amount on Friday alone, which is highly unlikely since the last time this happened was on July 28, then the green streak of consecutive weeks with more net inflows grew to 12. In other words, the last time the SOL ETFs were in the red weekly was in late June.

Meanwhile, the underlying asset rocketed to a multi-month peak of around $115 during the Friday/Saturday rally, before it was rejected to below $110 as of Sunday afternoon.

The post Ripple (XRP) ETFs Hit 10-Week Green Streak, but Solana (SOL) Funds Go Even Further appeared first on CryptoPotato.