A Google-Constellation nuclear deal could accelerate Big Tech's shift to reliable, carbon-free energy, impacting energy markets and policies.

The post Google and Constellation reportedly near billion-dollar nuclear power deal appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The surge in AI-related lending heightens financial concentration risks, potentially destabilizing economies reliant on tech investments.

The post Asian banks pour record debt into AI chip and data center boom appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The Bitcoin rally's optimism at TOKEN2049 Singapore could signal renewed investor confidence, potentially revitalizing the crypto market.

The post Bitcoin rally sets the mood as TOKEN2049 Singapore draws crypto’s biggest names appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Broadcom's multifaceted involvement with Anthropic highlights potential conflicts of interest, posing risks to both companies' financial stability.

The post Broadcom faces scrutiny over $42 billion Anthropic loan in IPO filing appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Broadcom's dual role may lead to regulatory scrutiny and investor caution, impacting Anthropic's IPO valuation and market dynamics.

The post Broadcom faces scrutiny over $42B financing deal with Anthropic ahead of IPO appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Coinbase’s Ryan VanGrack: CFTC Approval “Opens Many Doors” for Bitcoin

The SEC’s proposed custody rules could make it easier for investment advisors to help clients own Bitcoin directly. Coinbase’s Ryan VanGrack explains why institutional capital tends to flow where there are clearer rules, and why he sees direct ownership and ETFs as “both and, not either or.” He also shares why traditional finance is accelerating its push into Bitcoin and digital assets.

Chapters:
00:00 Coinbase Wins CFTC Approval for Its Own Clearinghouse
01:29 Can SEC Guidance Last Without the Clarity Act?
02:40 SEC Custody Proposal: Helping Advisors Hold Bitcoin Directly
04:14 Tokenization: The Biggest Upgrade Since Electronic Trading
05:41 How Tokenization Cuts Out Wall Street’s Middlemen
07:34 What Washington Still Needs to Fix for Bitcoin Holders
08:56 Institutional Adoption Accelerates After the Clarity Act Vote
11:07 How Coinbase Is Bringing Digital Asset Infrastructure to Community Banks
12:01 Sponsor: Square
12:34 Is Crypto Really a Tool for Illicit Finance?

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’s Ryan VanGrack: CFTC Approval “Opens Many Doors” for Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Coinbase Business Chief: Big Banks Increasing BTC Exposure | Shan Aggarwal

New SEC rules could open the door for financial advisors to hold Bitcoin for their clients, and Coinbase is already at the center of that custody story. Shan Aggarwal, Coinbase’s first-ever Chief Business Officer, explains how Coinbase custodies most of the Bitcoin ETFs and supports the advisor community. He sees the advisor rule as expanding the pie for Bitcoin access, with Coinbase providing the infrastructure behind it.

Chapters:
00:00 How the SEC’s New Advisor Rules Could Bring Bitcoin to Wealth Managers
01:13 What BlackRock and JPMorgan Want From Bitcoin Infrastructure
02:16 What Will Drive the Next Wave of Bitcoin Adoption
03:28 Can the Coinbase One Card Turn Spenders Into Bitcoin Owners?
04:22 Coinbase’s Trillion-Dollar Stablecoin Opportunity
05:14 Coinbase and Citi Bring Stablecoin Payments to Merchants
05:56 Sponsor: SALT Lending
06:26 How Coinbase Customers Are Using Bitcoin Lightning
07:37 Will AI Agents Pay in Bitcoin or Stablecoins?
08:30 Coinbase Expands Into Collectibles and Everyday Bitcoin Rewards

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 Business Chief: Big Banks Increasing BTC Exposure | Shan Aggarwal first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

TD Cowen’s Lance Vitanza: BTC to $132k in 2027 & MSTR Price Outlook

Institutions are no longer debating whether to own Bitcoin. Now the question is how. TD Cowen Managing Director Lance Vitanza explains why Bitcoin is evolving from a standalone asset into a capital markets ecosystem of common stock, preferreds, bonds and income products. He shares what he heard at the Bitcoin Treasuries conference in New York and why institutional investors increasingly evaluate Bitcoin within a portfolio.

Chapters:
00:00 Bitcoin Is Evolving From an Asset Into a Capital Markets Ecosystem
01:36 Bitcoin Preferreds, Bonds and Dividend-Paying Instruments
03:25 How Analysts Are Evaluating Digital Credit
05:23 Which Bitcoin Treasury Companies Survive a Downturn
07:28 Strive, Metaplanet and Nakamoto: Why Operating Businesses Matter
10:24 Could MSCI Index Removal Hurt Bitcoin Treasury Companies?
12:27 Blockchain Surveillance, Front-Running and Trust in Bitcoin Prices
14:20 Sponsor: Cash App
15:01 TD Cowen’s Bitcoin Price Target for 2027
16:38 Why Well-Run Bitcoin Treasury Companies Could Outperform Bitcoin

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 TD Cowen’s Lance Vitanza: BTC to $132k in 2027 & MSTR Price Outlook first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Lyn Alden: Nothing Stops This Train – BTC, AI Equities, Bond Market Analysis

Silicon Valley promises an AI-driven age of abundance, but does that mean an end to inflation? Lyn Alden separates AI price deflation from monetary inflation. AI can make white-collar services radically cheaper without slowing money printing or lowering the price of truly scarce assets like Bitcoin. She also explains how a peak in AI stocks could rotate capital back into Bitcoin.

Chapters:
00:00 Nothing Stops This Train: Why US Fiscal Deficits Can’t Be Stopped
01:30 Fiscal Dominance and Why the Fed Can’t Control Inflation
03:18 AI Age of Abundance vs. Monetary Inflation
07:00 What Would Force the Fed to Support the Treasury Market
09:10 Lyn Alden’s Gold Outlook After the Pullback From Record Highs
10:38 Why Bitcoin and Gold Trade Differently
13:17 Could a Peak in AI Stocks Rotate Money Into Bitcoin?
14:40 Lessons From Egypt’s 15% Inflation and Broken Money
16:03 Do Stablecoins Actually Strengthen the US Dollar?
17:49 Japanese Yen Intervention and Scott Bessent’s Edge

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 Lyn Alden: Nothing Stops This Train – BTC, AI Equities, Bond Market Analysis first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Caitlin Long: Fiscal Dominance, Stablecoins & the Macro Case for Bitcoin

Will tokenized bank deposits crowd out stablecoins? Caitlin Long, founder and CEO of Custodia Bank, says stablecoins are about $300 billion against roughly $5.7 trillion in traditional demand deposits, and that bringing tokenization into the banking system could be the bigger story. She also explains why the Treasury wants tokenized dollars and what the Fed is doing about it.

Chapters:
0:00 Fiscal Dominance and “Nothing Stops This Train”: Intro to Caitlin Long
1:53 Why Washington Is Pushing Tokenized Dollars and Where the Fed Stands
3:28 Tether, New Treasury Demand, and the GENIUS Act Rules
7:14 Community Banks vs. Megabanks: The Deposit Flight Debate
13:03 SVB, AI Agents, and a Banking Model Under Pressure
16:26 The Eurodollar Parallel and the Fed’s Reluctance
19:29 Tokenized Deposits vs. Stablecoins, and Tokenized Equities
26:50 Treasury Market Stress, Fed Hikes, and the AI Debt Question
30:24 Bitcoin as Digital Gold: Retail Ownership and Holding Long Term
35:25 Treasury Buybacks, Lessons From Volcker, and Life After the Clarity Act

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 Caitlin Long: Fiscal Dominance, Stablecoins & the Macro Case for Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Kraken's parent company, Payward, has connected to Singapore Gulf Bank's SGB Net clearing network, opening round-the-clock US-dollar funding for selected institutional clients in Asia and the Gulf.

The companies say participating clients in eligible jurisdictions can deposit cash with Payward and use it immediately.

In their release dated Oct. 5, the companies describe an initial dollar settlement offering. SGB also plans to use Payward markets to price digital asset trades for its own customers over the coming months, giving the partnership a live funding service and a separate planned trading component.

Through SGB Net, participating SGB clients can fund Payward accounts at any hour, the companies say. The dollar connection is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Its immediate practical benefit is greater flexibility over when those institutions move cash for digital-asset activity.

The releases do not name participating clients or list eligible countries, so they do not provide an institution outside that group with a country-by-country guide to availability. The reference to Asia and the Gulf describes the regional focus, while the jurisdiction restrictions limit where the service can be used.

The companies intend to add more clients and currencies over time, but give no exact expansion date.

Although the connection is operating for some institutions, the rollout announced so far is confined to the initial clients and dollars. The expansion plans concern both who can use the connection and which money it can move.

Adding clients would extend participation, while adding currencies would expand the service beyond its initial US-dollar scope.

Singapore Gulf Bank announced the network's launch on May 1, 2025, and Payward is now connecting to that existing system, adding a funding route for the institutions included in the initial offering.

SGB expands partnership with Kraken

SGB is also partnering with Payward's Kraken Prime for digital asset liquidity. The bank plans to draw on Payward markets to price its customers' trades over the coming months. The announcement supplies that broad horizon but no specific date for starting the customer-pricing service.

The live connection lets participating institutions move their dollars into Payward and deploy them immediately. The planned pricing use concerns SGB sourcing liquidity for digital asset trades offered to its own customers.

The next developments to watch are the start of SGB's customer-pricing use and the addition of settlement clients and currencies. Pricing has a stated horizon of the coming months, while the wider funding rollout remains undated.

The post Kraken parent joins Singapore Gulf Bank, opening 24/7 institutional dollar rails appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is offering US crypto exchanges a federal route to retail leverage as Congress remains stalled on market-structure legislation.

On Oct. 5, the financial regulatory agency opened rulemaking for Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions (CTX) and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets (CAM), which would create a national framework for platforms offering retail customers margined, leveraged, or financed crypto trading.

Participation would remain optional for ordinary spot exchanges because the agency acknowledges it cannot compel the broader crypto market onto CFTC-regulated venues without congressional action. The incentive is access to leveraged products that state money-transmitter licensing alone does not provide.

The initiative gives the CFTC a way to use authority it says already exists under the Commodity Exchange Act while Congress has yet to enact comprehensive legislation governing crypto spot markets.

CFTC turns leverage into its regulatory carrot

The framework would effectively create three regulatory paths depending on what an exchange wants to offer US customers.

Ordinary spot exchanges could remain primarily under state licensing regimes, supplemented by the CFTC’s existing anti-fraud and anti-manipulation authority.

Platforms offering leveraged or financed retail crypto transactions could seek federal registration under the new framework, while venues offering futures, perpetuals and other derivatives would remain under the agency’s existing designated contract market regime.

CAM would sit in that middle category.

The structure would allow existing designated contract markets to offer CTXs under tailored rules while giving crypto platforms another route into federal supervision without requiring them to operate as conventional derivatives exchanges.

The CFTC is relying on Section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act, which covers certain leveraged retail commodity transactions.

Hyperliquid Policy Center said the resulting structure could give market participants a clearer regulatory ladder, with state licensing covering ordinary spot activity, federal CFTC oversight applying where leverage is introduced, and the existing derivatives framework covering futures and perpetual contracts.

The proposal could also narrow one of the biggest product gaps between US exchanges and offshore rivals.

Leveraged trading and perpetual contracts have helped offshore venues attract active traders and generate substantial volumes. US platforms have generally operated with a narrower product menu because of regulatory constraints.

That creates the central commercial bargain.

Federal registration could give exchanges access to products that have historically strengthened the economics of offshore competitors, but accepting CFTC oversight could also force changes to the vertically integrated model through which many crypto venues combine exchange, brokerage and custody functions.

Larry Florio, deputy general counsel at synthetic-dollar developer Ethena Labs, described retail leverage as the proposal’s central attraction, arguing that it could be enough to draw exchanges voluntarily into a single federal framework.

Whether leverage generates enough additional volume and revenue to justify those constraints may determine how many major platforms enter the regime.

FTX shapes the cost of opting in

The regulatory bargain would extend well beyond permission to offer leverage.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig framed the initiative around lessons from FTX's bankruptcy, arguing that regulators should establish preventive safeguards rather than rely primarily on enforcement after customers have suffered losses.

Selig said on Oct. 5 that “the lesson from FTX’s failure should have been obvious,” arguing that protecting customers from fraud should coexist with responsible crypto innovation.

CAM operators would face core requirements already associated with designated contract markets, including rules governing financial integrity, surveillance, conflicts of interest and operational safeguards.

The agency is also considering crypto-specific requirements.

Exchanges could have to assess token concentration, distribution methods, vesting schedules, lockups, programmatic issuance and buybacks when determining whether an asset can be traded without being readily susceptible to manipulation.

Platforms holding customer property in omnibus accounts could also face proof-of-reserves requirements, a safeguard Selig directly linked to risks exposed by FTX.

Customer CTX trades would meanwhile be intermediated through registered futures commission merchants, bringing customer accounts and property under requirements covering capital, disclosures and segregation.

FCM involvement would also bring customer-facing activity within applicable Bank Secrecy Act obligations, including anti-money laundering controls, customer identification and suspicious-activity reporting.

Those provisions raise the cost of opting into the federal framework beyond registration fees or compliance staffing. Exchanges could gain access to leverage while surrendering some of the structural flexibility that has allowed crypto platforms to keep trading, brokerage and custody under one roof.

That trade-off will be central to whether the framework attracts the large US exchanges whose participation would give it meaningful scale.

CFTC draws a boundary around onchain markets

The commission is also beginning to define where decentralized markets and software developers fit within federal commodities law, although that effort sits partly outside the CTX and CAM initiative.

The CTX proposal would clarify the Commodity Exchange Act’s “actual delivery” exception by treating transfers to a customer’s external non-custodial wallet within 28 days as generally satisfying the exemption from exchange-trading requirements for certain leveraged retail commodity transactions.

Separately, Selig said the agency is considering how to treat developers who publish software without taking customer orders, controlling execution or holding customer assets.

He said:

“A person should not have to register as an introducing broker simply because that person shipped code.”

The CFTC is consulting developers about where control resides in onchain venues and when software activity begins to resemble regulated financial intermediation.

However, the more immediate question is economic for centralized exchanges.

The Oct. 5 action is an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, and the agency is seeking public input before drafting detailed rules covering leverage, asset eligibility, custody, reserves and intermediary requirements.

That leaves major elements of the framework unresolved, including leverage limits, capital standards and the extent to which FCM intermediation could reshape existing exchange business models.

Agency rules also remain less durable than legislation, and a future commission could revise them.

The CFTC is testing a relatively simple proposition: whether access to federally regulated retail leverage is valuable enough to persuade crypto exchanges to accept substantially deeper oversight.

If major platforms decide that it is, the agency could begin pulling trading activity now concentrated on offshore venues into regulated US markets without waiting for Congress to settle the broader fight over crypto spot-market jurisdiction.

The post CFTC makes its biggest move yet to bring offshore crypto trading back to the US appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said he infiltrated a Chinese laundering syndicate by posing as a cryptocurrency client and funding repeated stablecoin trades.

In an Oct. 5 disclosure, he alleges the network laundered more than $1 billion across exploits for Lazarus Group.

He said he fronted 349,700 USDC to build a relationship with a contact using the alias Jimmy Green. According to his account, the repeated exchanges led to private conversations about moving funds stolen from Bybit in 2025.

He reported tracing a cluster involving more than $12 million in Bybit funds and a later 442,000 USDT freeze by Tether.

Becoming a client

ZachXBT said the investigation began after the February 2025 Bybit exploit, when he noticed at least 15 accounts asking for help with orders he linked to stolen funds in public Telegram and Discord groups.

He contacted several of those accounts. One was Jimmy Green, the Telegram alias of the person with whom he subsequently exchanged funds.

On March 6, 2025, ZachXBT said he funded a new Ethereum address with 349,700 USDC in preparation for transactions with the contact. The arrangement involved sending his USDC on Ethereum in exchange for the contact's USDT on Tron. He then completed additional transactions to build trust.

As he built trust through repeat exchanges, ZachXBT said the contact began discussing movements of Bybit funds for North Korea before they occurred. The conversations also included details about operations in Hong Kong and mainland China.

In one example, he said the contact told him funds would move to Solana, and the movement happened the following day.

On March 12, 2025, ZachXBT said the contact sent a screenshot of a cross-blockchain transfer. He matched its amounts and timing to an order on the THORChain transaction explorer created within minutes of the message.

According to ZachXBT, the contact also supplied three Solana addresses. He said these exposed a cluster involving more than $12 million in Bybit exploit funds moving through Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Tron.

He separately reported that Tether later froze 442,000 USDT linked to the cluster. That is the specific freeze amount described in this part of his investigation; the larger cluster figure represents funds he said he traced.

The account also reaches beyond Bybit. ZachXBT said the contact mentioned a team whose funds had been frozen in 2024. He said that matched an on-chain freeze of 332,000 USDC tied to the Poloniex exploit.

The Bybit backdrop and the cost of access

In a Feb. 26, 2025 alert, the FBI said North Korea stole approximately $1.5 billion in virtual assets from Bybit on or about Feb. 21. It called the specific malicious activity TraderTraitor.

At the time, the FBI said some stolen assets had been converted into Bitcoin and other virtual assets dispersed across thousands of addresses on multiple blockchains. It urged private-sector services to block transactions connected to the laundering addresses.

The syndicate's total and the links to Jimmy Green remain ZachXBT's findings, separate from the FBI's attribution of the theft.

Allegations involving a Chinese over-the-counter trader surfaced in October 2024. The latest account describes how ZachXBT obtained information by becoming a trading counterparty himself.

ZachXBT said he fronted 349,700 USDC for the case and lost 5% on each order. The amount advanced is distinct from his net loss, which he did not quantify in the disclosed figures.

He appealed for continued foundation grants and individual donations to support higher-risk investigations. He said intelligence from these trades helped freeze funds tied to the Bybit exploit.

The post ZachXBT infiltrates $1B crypto syndicate to expose Lazarus Group appeared first on CryptoSlate.

US corporate credit spreads widened beyond the weakest borrowers from September 25 to October 1, creating a broader test of whether tighter financing and reduced institutional risk-taking could pressure Bitcoin. The largest increase remained concentrated in CCC-and-lower debt, while investment-grade bonds showed a much smaller rise.

These option-adjusted spreads measure the premium over a Treasury curve. Their widening shows investors demanding more compensation to hold corporate debt. A borrower's total interest cost also depends on the Treasury component.

The ICE BofA CCC credit spread climbed from 11.28% to 12.15%, an increase of 87 basis points. Over the same dates, the broad high-yield spread rose from 2.93% to 3.24%, or 31 basis points. The investment-grade corporate spread increased from 0.81% to 0.86%, or 5 basis points.

All three comparisons use daily closing observations for September 25 and October 1, 2026. FRED's October 5 updates added October 2 readings of 12.02% for CCC-and-lower debt, 3.10% for broad high yield and 0.85% for investment-grade debt. All three eased from October 1 while remaining above their September 25 levels.

The investment-grade move is the clearest evidence that repricing extended beyond the lowest-rated debt. CCC-and-lower bonds are already included in the broader high-yield index, so those two increases are overlapping evidence. The picture is broader but unequal pressure.

How credit spreads could reach Bitcoin

For Bitcoin, transmission would depend on how credit repricing changes capital costs and risk-taking. If financing becomes more expensive, leveraged investors may need to shrink positions. Institutions could reduce crypto exposure as they reassess how much risk they are willing to carry across their portfolios.

The authors of the 2023 IMF working paper The Crypto Cycle and US Monetary Policy describe a related mechanism. Their historical analysis finds that monetary tightening can raise capital costs, encourage crypto investors to reduce leverage and lower aggregate crypto prices, with institutional participation reinforcing transmission.

The paper examines historical monetary-policy shocks; the current figures measure corporate credit premiums. Applying its mechanism to this episode remains conditional. The spread observations establish credit repricing, while current Bitcoin selling and its cause remain unestablished.

The Chicago Fed National Financial Conditions Index provides a broader check. Its latest reading was -0.548 for the week ending September 25, released September 30. That negative value indicates looser-than-average financial conditions. The observation predates the newest spread readings.

The next test is whether widening persists beyond the weakest borrowers and coincides with worsening broad financial conditions and weaker Bitcoin demand. That combination would strengthen the case for wider pressure on institutional risk-taking. Narrowing spreads and resilient Bitcoin demand would weaken it.

The post US credit spreads eased on October 2 after widening beyond the weakest borrowers appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Aave’s Ethereum Core market lists a 4.5% borrowing rate for GHO, aligning the stablecoin’s borrowing cost with the savings rate TokenLogic reported on Oct. 2.

The next test is whether the change brings USDC or USDT into the reserves available to savers who choose to convert withdrawn GHO into USDC or USDT.

Aave describes its savings token (sGHO) as redeemable instantly into GHO, so a holder who wants USDC needs a separate conversion. A higher borrowing rate can change the incentive to repay, but the route used to acquire that repayment GHO determines whether stablecoins enter the reserves.

The DAO service provider reported a depleted USDC GHO Stability Module (GSM) on Oct. 2, and said the rate increase should help replenish reserves if borrowers obtain repayment GHO through the modules.

The effect on reserves depends on borrowers bringing stablecoins into those modules, and the new rate alone does not demonstrate improved USDC conversion liquidity.

Aavescan’s Core GHO data dated Oct. 5 displays a 4.5% borrow APR. Its daily snapshots show 4.25% at midnight UTC on Oct. 3 and 4.5% at midnight on Oct. 4 and Oct. 5, locating the change between daily readings.

TokenLogic’s Oct. 2 notice proposed moving Core from 4.25% to 4.5%. It said borrowers could previously pay 4.25% to acquire GHO on Core and earn 4.5% in sGHO, leaving the DAO to fund the 25-basis-point difference. At an unchanged savings rate, the new Core rate eliminates that stated gap.

That alignment is specific to Core and the 4.5% savings rate reported on Oct. 2.

TokenLogic proposed a 3% base rate, up from 2.75%, and a 4.25% APR at optimal utilization, up from 4%. Aavescan’s Prime page displayed 4.17% on Oct. 5 at 86.35% utilization, versus 4.22% in its midnight snapshot.

Repayment replenishes reserves only through the right route

TokenLogic describes two ways a borrower needing GHO can acquire it: buy on the secondary market, or exchange USDC or USDT through a GSM.

Buying GHO can support its market price, while bringing stablecoins into a GSM adds the inventory that another GHO holder can later redeem against.

That makes a fall in outstanding debt an incomplete measure of conversion liquidity, since repayment can occur without USDC reaching a module. Improved conversion liquidity requires stablecoins entering the reserve, beyond any change in GHO debt.

Core’s midnight snapshots recorded 116 million GHO borrowed on Oct. 2 and 115.8 million on Oct. 5.

Aave’s native sGHO documentation says users deposit GHO, receive vault shares, and redeem those shares for GHO without a cooldown. It also says deposited funds are not rehypothecated.

Aave also documents a pause state and user-specific withdrawal limits. Those conditions affect live vault availability, separately from the inventory and liquidity needed to exchange the resulting GHO.

The RemoteGSM architecture, described by TokenLogic in March, makes the inventory distinction explicit. Governance-approved facilitators supply preminted GHO to a GhoReserve, and GSMs draw and restore it under assigned limits.

Room to distribute GHO is separate from the stablecoin inventory available for redemption. A higher limit can permit incoming swaps, but users still have to deliver the USDC or USDT.

Aave Labs’ institutional proposal reported 19.2 million USDT on Ethereum and 40.7 million on Plasma as of Sept. 24, totaling 59.9 million USDT. It excluded USDC instances because their redeemable balances were negligible.

TokenLogic’s Oct. 2 update reported approximately 22.5 million USDT in a USDT GSM without labeling the network scope. Comparing that figure with the earlier Ethereum-plus-Plasma total would not establish an aggregate decline. Neither statement supplies matched Oct. 5 balances.

Plasma provides a potential route to USDT inventory beyond Ethereum through Chainlink CCIP. Its usefulness depends on the time needed to bridge GHO and turn the module’s assets into usable stablecoins.

Kairos Research’s September analysis, using Sept. 8 readings, reported 40.6 million in nominal Plasma GSM redemption inventory against 38.6 million in underlying lending-pool cash.

Kairos also estimated at least 9.7 hours of rate-limit time to move 40 million GHO to Plasma under the bridge settings it measured. That assumed a full initial bucket and no competing traffic, and excluded message delivery and subsequent conversion steps.

Fees require the same care. TokenLogic’s September parameter notice proposed 15-basis-point USDC redemption fees on Ethereum, Monad and Arbitrum, a 10-basis-point Ethereum USDT fee and zero mint fees.

Its implementation language does not establish current executed fees. A usable exit depends on the current quote, inventory, and underlying liquidity together.

Institutional funding adds a duration test

Aave Labs seeks a 25-million-GHO facilitator and a separate route borrowing up to $25 million of USDC or USDT against DAO balance sheet assets. The planned initial balance-sheet route would use no GSM conversion inventory, and Aave Labs said on Oct. 1 that the proposal had advanced to Snapshot.

For the GHO route, the proposal prioritizes matched sGHO inflows, then secondary-market liquidity, then GSM reserves. TokenLogic’s Sept. 30 response adds a condition: matched inflows must last at least as long as the borrower’s draw.

That condition connects the rate story to the exit story. A matched inflow can provide lending currency while preserving GSM inventory at conversion, but TokenLogic argues that the funding must persist for the loan’s duration to resolve the liquidity pressure.

The duration condition applies to the proposed funding arrangement, while Aave describes deposited GHO in the native savings vault as held without rehypothecation.

Evidence of success would be stablecoin inventory arriving and remaining available for conversion, with executable routes that account for fees, pool cash, and cross-chain access.

Larger reserves or durable matched inflows could make exits easier. The higher Core APR establishes a change in borrowing cost, while its liquidity benefit depends on where the repayments and new deposits send the money.

The post Aave hikes GHO borrow rates to rescue depleted stablecoin pools appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Virtune completed the monthly rebalancing of the Virtune Crypto Altcoin Index ETP on October 5, 2026. One line in it matters most for you: Gram (GRAM) has left the index and Litecoin (LTC) is newly in. All ten positions then stand at exactly 10.00 percent again.

This is not a product that concerns Scandinavian accounts alone. It trades on Deutsche Börse Xetra under ISIN SE0023260716 and German securities number A4AKW6, ticker VRTA, in euros. Anyone holding it has had a different mix in their account since the reporting date than in September. The reasons for that lie not in a market view but in the rules of the index itself.

What Virtune changed in the altcoin index on October 5, 2026

Virtune is a Swedish issuer of crypto ETPs based in Stockholm. The company publishes the composition of its altcoin index monthly, each time after the reporting date. This time two snapshots are available: the weighting as at September 29, 2026, before the rebalancing, and the one as at September 30, after it.

Before the rebalancing the basket looked like this: Bitcoin Cash 11.11 percent, Chainlink 11.08 percent, Solana 10.86 percent, Cardano 10.07 percent, Stellar 9.91 percent, XRP 9.79 percent, Canton 9.78 percent, Hyperliquid 9.47 percent, BNB 9.26 percent and Gram 8.68 percent.

After the rebalancing there are ten names with an identical share: Canton, Cardano, Bitcoin Cash, BNB, Solana, Stellar, XRP, Hyperliquid, Chainlink and Litecoin, each at 10.00 percent. Nine of the ten names were already there before. Exactly one position was swapped.

Important for placing the timing: the announcement is dated October 5, while the composition itself applies as at September 30. Several days therefore lie between the change taking effect in the index and its publication. Anyone reconciling the monthly figures of their account against the index should use the reporting date, not the date of the announcement.

Gram out, Litecoin in: the only change of position in the index

Before the rebalancing Gram sat in last place in the basket with 8.68 percent. That is no accident but a consequence of equal weighting: start the previous month at 10.00 percent, then run weaker than the other nine, and you slide down by the next reporting date. Gram, incidentally, is the name of the token that ran as Toncoin until it was renamed; cryptoticker.io described the change at the end of September 2026.

Litecoin takes that place. The coin belongs to the oldest networks in the market and stood at around $70 on October 5, 2026, down 0.9 percent within a day and up 0.8 percent over the week. That is a quiet picture, and it shows something important: inclusion in the index does not coincide with a jump in the price.

Why an index inclusion is not a recommendation

An index provider makes no investment decision in the individual case. It applies a rule. According to the issuer, the Virtune Crypto Altcoin Index takes in up to ten leading alternative crypto assets, expressly without Bitcoin and without Ethereum, and weights each of them equally. Whoever belongs to the leading ten by the index's measure in a given month is in; whoever drops out is out. No statement about the further course of the price lies in that.

Equal weighting at 10.00 percent: how the Virtune Crypto Altcoin Index calculates

Equal weighting means every position in the basket gets the same share, regardless of the size of the coin. A network with a market value of several hundred billion dollars therefore carries just as much weight as one worth a few billion. In Virtune's index, with ten positions, that is 10.00 percent each.

That equality does not hold by itself. As soon as trading resumes, the ten prices pull apart and the shares shift. This is why there is a monthly reset. The mechanism has a consequence many buyers underestimate: on the reset, the month's winners are systematically trimmed and the losers built up. In September that visibly affected Bitcoin Cash and Chainlink, which stood on top at over 11 percent and were brought back to 10.00 percent.

This is neither good nor bad, but it is a deliberate decision by the index provider. Anyone who believes an altcoin basket automatically bets on the strongest trends has it wrong: equal weighting works in the opposite direction to momentum.

ETN rather than fund: what sits in your account when you buy the Virtune ETP

A closer look pays off here, because the terms get muddled in everyday use. The trading venue data of Börse Frankfurt list the security as type: ETN. An ETN, an exchange traded note, is in law a debt security of the issuer and not a fund. No segregated fund assets arise, of the kind you know from a UCITS fund.

In practice that means for you: alongside the price risk of the ten altcoins you also carry a risk attached to the issuer. How that is secured in the individual case is not stated in a press release but in the base prospectus and the provider's product documents. Reading those documents before money moves is no formality with a debt instrument.

How exchange-traded crypto securities are classified in Germany in general, which structures exist and how they differ, we have put together in our overview of crypto ETFs and ETPs for investors in Germany. It also sets out why the term "crypto ETF" in German usage mostly means something other than a genuine fund.

Trading hours of 9:00 to 17:30: the weekend hole between Xetra and the crypto market

One point that rarely appears in product descriptions and gets expensive when it matters: the trading hours do not match. Regular Xetra trading runs from 9:00 to 17:30 according to Börse Frankfurt, with early and late trading from 8:00 to 22:00. The crypto market itself knows no break.

So if a piece of news moves one of the ten coins by 15 percent on a Saturday afternoon, you cannot sell the ETP. You see the move, but you cannot reach it. Only on Monday morning does the first price reflect the interval, and it does so all at once. Anyone sitting on a direct purchase through an exchange could have traded on the Saturday.

That gap is the strongest argument for getting clear about your route of access before buying. Which broker offers which trading hours, spreads and order fees for exchange-traded crypto securities differs considerably; our comparison of crypto brokers gives an overview.

What the spread has to do with trading hours

The thinner the trading in a security, the wider the bid and ask prices sit apart. In early and late trading the volume is as a rule lower than in the core session. Anyone placing a larger order in those fringe hours pays that difference. A limit instead of a market order is not a nicety for the advanced here but the obvious protection.

Litecoin in the index: the new entry is not a price signal

After every index inclusion, readings appear that put more into it than is there. Litecoin is by market value one of the smaller networks in the leading ranks and quoted at about $70 on October 5, 2026. The inclusion says the coin met the index criteria on the reporting date. It says nothing about October.

The same holds in reverse for Gram. Leaving the index is no verdict on the project but the result of a ranking on a given date. A token can drop out one month and slip back in the next without anything having changed in the network.

Tax and holding period: a security in your account or a coin in your own wallet

This difference is probably the most consequential for investors in Germany, and it is readily overlooked at the point of purchase. On the private sale of cryptocurrencies you hold yourself, the system of private disposals under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act applies, with its familiar one-year period. For a securitised instrument in a securities account, taxation follows a different logic.

How an individual crypto ETN is treated in concrete terms depends on its legal structure and cannot be answered across the board for every security. That is precisely why the question belongs before the purchase and not in the following year's tax return. Settle it with your tax adviser, and have the issuer's documents to hand for it.

What you can do in any case: document cleanly. Purchase date, quantity, price, trading venue and fees belong on the record, and with coins the wallet addresses as well. Tools that take this on spare you the reconstruction at the end of the year.

Canton, Hyperliquid, Gram: what ten equally weighted altcoins say about spread

The index deliberately leaves out Bitcoin and Ethereum. That is the core of the product, and it changes its risk profile markedly. The two largest networks carry the bulk of the market value and a large part of the liquidity. A basket without them is not a picture of the crypto market but a targeted bet on everything except the two heavyweights.

On top of that, the ten names are built very differently. Among them stand established payment networks such as Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, large platform chains such as Solana and Cardano, the exchange token BNB, the oracle network Chainlink, and younger names such as Hyperliquid and Canton. Ten identical percentages conceal that the projects earn from quite different things and are tradable to quite different depths.

For spread that means: ten positions are more than one, but equal weighting alone creates no diversification across different kinds of risk. If the altcoins fall together in a weak market, an equal distribution helps little.

Plus 15.39 percent in September: what the monthly figure says and what it does not

Virtune reports a result for the ETP of 15.39 percent for September. That is a monthly figure for a single calendar month, and it describes a phase in which altcoins did well overall. Deriving an expectation for October from it would be exactly the error that monthly returns provoke so reliably.

The figure is useful all the same, as a gauge of the swing. A basket that can add a good 15 percent in one month can lose correspondingly in another. Anyone who cannot bear that range in their account solves the problem not through the choice of product but through the size of the position.

How to spot the next rebalancing

The rebalancing is monthly. You do not have to wait for it, but you should know that the composition of your security changes as a matter of course without your doing anything. If you want to know the basket you are holding right now, the issuer's current announcement is the only reliable source. A composition from the previous month is simply out of date.

Virtune altcoin ETP: your next three steps

1. Reconcile your account and your watchlist. Check whether you hold the security under ISIN SE0023260716 or German securities number A4AKW6. If so, it now contains Litecoin instead of Gram. If you would rather hold the coins directly, the route runs through a regulated trading platform; the differences in fees and custody are in our comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Read the issuer's papers before you buy. Because this is an ETN, the legal structure counts. Take the base prospectus and the product documents in hand, and settle the tax treatment for your case. For documenting your purchases, a portfolio tracker with a tax function helps.
3. Match your route of access to the trading hours. If you want to be able to react at the weekend, a security with Xetra trading hours is the wrong tool for it. Then the coins belong in your own custody, and the question of keys arises at once; which devices come into consideration is shown by our hardware wallet comparison.

You will find the announcement on the rebalancing at Virtune in the original, and the trading venue data including ISIN, German securities number, instrument type and trading hours at Börse Frankfurt.

(As of October 5, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The US spot ETF on Zcash has lost money for the first time. In the week to October 5, 2026 investors pulled a net $94 million or so out of the Zcash products; at the level of the fund itself the figure is $93.56 million. It is the first weekly outflow since trading began on August 25, 2026. Nothing changes legally for you as a holder, but the demand side looks different from how it looked in September.

Zcash trades at $1,340.09 or €1,194.29 (October 6, 2026, CoinGecko). In dollar terms that is 0.98 percent below the previous day and 7.36 percent below a week ago. Over a month there is still a gain of 33.89 percent. The two figures belong together, and anyone who reads only one of them comes away with the wrong picture.

The first weekly outflow since the Zcash ETF launched on August 25, 2026

The fund is called the Grayscale Zcash ETF and trades under the ticker ZCSH on NYSE Arca. It is a spot product, so it holds real ZEC and does not track the price through futures contracts. Since the launch on August 25, 2026 the direction was unambiguous: money flowed in, week after week. That run has now broken.

A weekly outflow at a spot fund means more shares were redeemed than newly issued. To meet that, the issuer releases ZEC from the fund's assets and passes the proceeds on to the redeeming holders. This is part of the normal mechanism of an exchange-traded fund and is not a fault. It is simply working in the opposite direction from the six weeks before.

The figure sits in the context of a week in which the large crypto funds pulled apart. On the flow data of the provider SoSoValue, the Bitcoin products took in $241.1 million, their third consecutive week of inflows. The Ethereum funds gave up $138 million. Solana saw $2.4 million of inflows and XRP $4.7 million. That made Zcash the second largest outflow of the week after Ethereum, even though its fund is the youngest of the group.

$93.56 million in a week: how the individual trading days ran

The outflow did not arrive on one day and not as a single large sale. On the fund data, redemptions at the end of September and the start of October ran between $26 million and $30 million on several trading days. A pattern like that argues against the story of a single large investor heading for the exit and in favour of a broader reallocation over several days.

September 30 as the heaviest single day

The heaviest single day was September 30, 2026, with $30.25 million of outflows. The date is no accident: it is the last trading day of the quarter. Fund managers and asset managers square their books on that reporting date, and positions that have run hard during the quarter are frequently trimmed in the process. With a gain of more than 30 percent over the month, Zcash was exactly such a position.

$751 million in fund assets against $212.56 million of net inflows

Here lies the most interesting figure in the whole episode. Fund assets stand at around $751 million at the start of October. But the sum of all net inflows since launch comes to only $212.56 million. The difference of a good $538 million is not fresh money; it is the price gain on the ZEC already held.

Put another way: less than a third of the fund's assets is paid-in capital. The rest is valuation. A fund with this structure reacts sensitively to falling prices, because the assets shrink twice over when the price gives way and shares are redeemed at the same time.

Set the outflow against the inflows: before the outflow week, around $306 million net stood on the books. The $93.56 million amount to a good 30 percent of that. In a single week, then, close to a third of all the net capital ever gathered has gone back out. The peak in fund assets came in September, between $915 million and $979 million depending on the reporting date and the price level.

Zcash loses 7.4 percent in seven days while Bitcoin gains 2.9 percent

This weakness is not the weakness of the wider market. Bitcoin stands at $85,912 or €76,565 and has gained 2.92 percent in seven days. Ethereum is at $2,715.22 or €2,419.81, up 1.34 percent over the same week. Zcash lost 7.36 percent in that period. The gap to the market is therefore around ten percentage points.

Within the last 24 hours ZEC moved between $1,281.40 and $1,361.16. Trading turnover came to $820.67 million. That keeps Zcash in tenth place by market capitalisation. The price is 58.02 percent below the all-time high of $3,191.93 set in October 2016.

The monthly balance of 33.9 percent remains despite the weak week

Anyone who has only been watching for a week sees a falling price and a fund losing money. Anyone looking back a month sees a gain of 33.89 percent. Bitcoin managed 7.79 percent in the same month, Ethereum 9.71 percent. Over thirty days Zcash was therefore markedly stronger than the two large names and only fell back in the final week.

That spread is the honest description of the position. A rally that lifts an asset by a third in four weeks creates gains that get realised at some point. That this happens at quarter end is unsurprising. What the figures do not say is whether the outflows continue. Flow data describe the past; they say nothing about the week ahead.

One point often lost in the coverage: an outflow from a fund is not a sale on the crypto market in the usual sense. The issuer gives up ZEC, but the shareholder who redeems can just as easily put the money into another crypto product. Flow data show reallocation and demand, not automatically flight from the asset class.

ZCSH, ZCASH and ZEC: three names for three different things

The similarity of the names causes expensive mix-ups, so here is the difference in brief. ZEC is the coin itself, which you buy on a crypto exchange and transfer into your own wallet. ZCSH is Grayscale's US spot ETF, whose outflow this article is about. ZCASH is the ticker of a European security that tracks the same price.

ZCSH stays closed to German retail investors

The fund that saw the outflow is not available to you as a retail investor in Germany. US funds of this kind have no key information document under the European PRIIP regulation, and without that document a broker may not offer the security to retail clients in the EU. cryptoticker.io described this route to purchase in detail on August 29, 2026. In practice that means the outflow figure is information about demand for you, not a call to act on your own account.

The reverse conclusion holds too. That US investors are redeeming shares says nothing about how European investors are behaving. The European products are younger, smaller and listed on different exchanges.

21Shares and Valour: the European securities on Zcash

Since September 22, 2026 there has been an exchange-traded security on Zcash in Europe. The Swiss issuer 21Shares runs the 21Shares Zcash ETP under the ticker ZCASH, ISIN CH1608218801, German securities identification number A4AXHY. The annual fee is 2.50 percent. The paper is listed on Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Paris, and at launch not on a German exchange.

Alongside it, Valour, a subsidiary of DeFi Technologies, launched a Zcash ETP at the end of September on Sweden's Spotlight Stock Market, settled in Swedish kronor, with an annual fee of 1.9 percent.

Two issuers, two fee models

The difference of 0.6 percentage points in the annual fee sounds small, and over a short holding period it is. Over five years, on an investment of €10,000, it comes to around €300 before any price gain has arisen at all. Whether your broker connects to the Euronext venues or to Spotlight decides which of the two papers is reachable for you. A query to the broker settles that before you place an order. Which routes exist for exchange-traded crypto products in Germany is set out in our overview of crypto ETFs and ETPs for German investors. cryptoticker.io examined broker access, fees and the holding period for the Zcash ETP in detail on September 22, 2026.

Holding period and capital gains tax: the consequences for your tax return

This is the point at which coin and security part company most clearly, and the decision falls before the purchase, not after it.

If you hold ZEC directly in your own wallet, section 23 of the German Income Tax Act applies. Sell within a year of buying and the gain is taxable as a private disposal, at your personal rate. Once a year has passed the gain is tax free. That holding period is the reason many investors in Germany prefer the coin to the security.

What runs differently with a security than with the coin

An ETP in a securities account is treated for tax purposes like a security. Gains are subject to the flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, regardless of how long you have held. Your bank normally remits the tax directly. For physically backed crypto-asset ETPs with a delivery claim, the classification is contested in tax practice; do not rely on a blanket statement here and have the individual case examined. A tax tool or portfolio tracker documents purchase dates and holding periods in a way that lets you prove them if it comes to that.

July 1, 2027 and the EU ban on anonymity-enhancing crypto assets

There is one date that weighs more heavily for Zcash in Europe than any weekly flow figure. Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 on the prevention of money laundering prohibits credit and financial institutions as well as crypto service providers, in article 79, from maintaining accounts holding anonymity-enhancing crypto assets. The provision applies from July 1, 2027.

Zcash falls under that definition because the network permits shielded transactions. For licensed providers in the EU this means no listing, no custody, no brokerage for such assets. Monero, Dash and comparable projects are affected in exactly the same way.

Two things the regulation expressly does not prohibit. You may continue to hold ZEC in your own wallet, and transfers between self-custodied wallets are out of scope. The ban is addressed to supervised businesses, not to private individuals. In practice it still means that the convenient route through a regulated exchange in the EU falls away by mid-2027. Anyone intending to hold ZEC for the long run is therefore better off settling custody sooner rather than later.

How this deadline affects buying, selling and custody was written up by cryptoticker.io in detail on August 23, 2026.

NU7 on November 5: what to watch on old ZEC balances

The next network date comes before the regulatory one. On cryptoticker.io's reporting of September 18, 2026, the Zcash upgrade NU7 is scheduled for November 5, 2026; the consequences for old balances in the Sprout pool were described on September 23, 2026.

This is relevant for you if you have held ZEC for a very long time and never moved it. Balances in older shielded pools may under some circumstances have to be transferred into a current pool before the upgrade. Anyone holding their coins on an exchange or in an ETP is unaffected, because there the provider takes care of the technical side. Anyone self-custodying should check the pool type of their address in good time, not on the eve of the date.

Zcash ETF outflow: the key points for your decision

The record outflow is a demand figure, not a verdict on the network. It shows that US investors took profits after a strong September, and it coincides with the quarterly reporting date. Three steps that make sense independently of it:

1. Settle your route of access before you trade. ZCSH is not available to you, the European ETPs depend on your broker's exchange connections, and the coin itself runs through a crypto exchange. Which regulated crypto exchanges are authorised in Germany under MiCA decides where you can get ZEC at all.
2. Decide coin or security on the tax, not on the headline. One year's holding period on the directly held coin against flat-rate withholding tax on the ETP: that is a bigger lever on your return than 0.6 percentage points of fee difference. A tax tool records the deadlines in provable form.
3. Set your custody up for July 2027. If licensed EU providers may no longer hold Zcash in custody from July 1, 2027, you will need your own arrangement for long-held ZEC. A hardware wallet is the route this deadline does not touch.

(As of October 6, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Fifty euros a month is the figure most people start with when they first consider a Bitcoin savings plan. The short answer to whether it pays off: anyone who began in January 2017 and has bought 50 euros every month since has paid in €5,900 and holds 0.7137 Bitcoin for it. At the price on October 5, 2026 that is around €54,500, a good nine times the money paid in. Anyone who only started in January 2024 is up just 14.5 percent on the same instalments.

Both figures come out of the same calculation, and that is precisely the point: what a savings plan ends up delivering is decided above all by the entry date and the time in the market. This article works through five periods, sets each instalment plan against a lump sum of the same amount, and shows where fees and German tax law cut in. Bitcoin traded between €76,300 and €76,400 on Monday; every closing value below is calculated at that level.

What 118 instalments of 50 euros in Bitcoin since January 2017 produced

A savings plan buys a fixed amount on fixed dates, whatever the price. When Bitcoin is high, your 50 euros buy little; when it is low, they buy a lot. Across 118 monthly instalments since January 1, 2017 that works out at an average entry price of €8,267 per Bitcoin. Today a Bitcoin costs around €76,400, so 50 euros still buy 0.000655 BTC.

The table shows five entry dates. Each line assumes an instalment of 50 euros on the first of the month, and the value refers to October 5, 2026.

The middle row stands out. Anyone who started in January 2022, shortly after the high of the time had broken, is almost exactly as well off today as someone who got in a year earlier. The reason is the average price: both sit at around €39,000, because the instalments paid during 2022 were executed at very low prices and dragged the average down.

Cost averaging: why the Bitcoin savings plan lands at an average price of €8,267

Cost averaging describes a plain mechanism: because the amount is fixed and the price moves, you automatically buy more units when prices are low than when they are high. Your average price therefore always sits below the arithmetic mean of every price in the period.

Across the 118 instalments since 2017 that difference is enormous. The average price of €8,267 did not exist on any single day. It comes about because the instalments paid between 2017 and 2019 bought at a few hundred to a few thousand euros per Bitcoin and still account for the bulk of the units held. The instalments from 2024 on cost ten times as much per unit and contribute correspondingly little to the quantity. We worked this effect through in detail on September 19, 2026, using an example with a 100 euro monthly instalment over twelve payments.

The effect has a flip side that rarely appears in marketing copy: it only lowers your entry price if the market actually falls along the way. In a market that rises from start to finish, the savings plan is the more expensive route, because every later instalment costs more than the first.

Bitcoin savings plan vs lump sum: when the monthly instalment is the worse route

The honest counter-test is the lump sum, where the same total is invested on the first day of the period instead of spread across months.

In three of the five periods the lump sum would have done better, in the longest one by a wide multiple. That is neither an accident nor an argument against savings plans. It follows from the fact that Bitcoin has risen steeply over ten years: invest everything early and you are invested for longer.

The catch in this comparison is that nobody in January 2017 knew it would turn out that way, and that hardly anyone puts €5,900 at once into an asset that had fallen by more than 80 percent twice in the years before. A savings plan does not buy you a higher return. It buys you the chance to start at all. We looked at the two routes side by side against the current market on October 3, 2026.

Since October 2025 the picture flips: plus 14.2 percent against minus 24.5 percent

The bottom row of the table is the most interesting case. On October 1, 2025 a Bitcoin cost around €101,100; today it is around €76,400. Anyone who had invested €650 in one go back then would be sitting on €491, a loss of 24.5 percent. Anyone who instead transferred 50 euros thirteen times holds €742 today and is up 14.2 percent.

The gap of almost 39 percentage points arises purely because the later instalments were executed at markedly lower prices. This is exactly the situation a savings plan is built for: a falling or sideways market. The reverse also holds. The lead melts away as soon as the price climbs back above the entry point.

What a 1.5 percent spread costs a savings plan over 118 instalments

Crypto savings plans often advertise free execution. You still pay, only through the spread. The spread is the difference between the price at which a provider buys and the price at which it sells; it sits inside the quote and never appears as a separate line on a statement. We pulled together the terms nine providers disclose on this from their own fee pages on August 14, 2026.

How hard that bites can be shown on the 118 instalments above. The higher the mark-up per execution, the less Bitcoin lands in the account, and that shortfall in quantity grows along with the price.

€88 in fees turns into €818 less in final value over nine years. The reason is that every fraction of a Bitcoin not bought takes no part in the whole subsequent rise. On an instalment of 50 euros this is the single most important cost lever, more important than account charges or withdrawal fees.

The claim that execution is free, and what it leaves out

"Free execution" only means that no order fee is charged. What matters is whether the provider names a reference price its own quote can be measured against. Without that figure you cannot establish the actual mark-up. A high-street bank or a broker may also offer a certificate or a debt security instead of coins, which is a different thing in law. Comdirect, for instance, lists 29 certificates with no order charge in its savings plan but not a single genuine coin, as we read out of its price list on October 4, 2026.

Minimum instalment, interval and execution day: the levers on a crypto savings plan

Three settings determine how a savings plan runs, and all three have a measurable effect.

The minimum instalment sits between one and 25 euros at most providers. At 50 euros a month you clear that bar everywhere. The more relevant question is whether the provider trades fractions: without fractions, a 50 euro instalment simply could not be executed at a price of €76,400.

The interval can be weekly, fortnightly or monthly. More frequent instalments smooth the entry price somewhat more, but they raise the number of executions and with it the sum of the spreads. For a fixed annual amount the difference in return over long periods is small; the fee side argues for less often, the smoothing for more often.

The execution day is often overstated. The calculations above use the first of the month. There is no systematically better day for Bitcoin, because the market runs seven days a week and has no settlement dates around which patterns could form.

Which providers in Germany run a genuine coin savings plan, and what the terms are, is in our comparison of Bitcoin savings plans. Check as well whether the provider holds a MiCA authorisation in the EU, because since 2025 crypto service providers may only operate here with that permission.

Holding period under section 23 EStG: every instalment has its own purchase date

Here lies the difference between a savings plan and a lump sum that shows up in no return table. Under current law Bitcoin counts as one of the other assets, and for those section 23 paragraph 1 number 2 of the German Income Tax Act sets a period of one year: disposals are only taxable if no more than one year lies between acquisition and sale. Once that year has passed the gain is tax free, however large it is.

A savings plan creates a separate acquisition with its own date for every instalment. Of the 118 instalments since 2017, 106 are now more than a year old. Those instalments account for 0.70448 Bitcoin and therefore for around €53,800 of the total value. The twelve younger instalments are worth about €704 between them and would fall into the tax net on a sale today.

The €1,000 threshold and the order of sale

A threshold applies to taxable gains: under section 23 paragraph 3 sentence 5 EStG gains stay tax free if the total gain from private disposals in the calendar year comes to less than €1,000. That is a threshold, not an allowance. Reach €1,000 or more and the entire gain is taxable, not merely the excess.

Which instalments count as sold in a partial disposal is determined in practice by the order of acquisition: the units bought first count as sold first. For a savings plan running over years that means the oldest and therefore tax-free instalments go first. Documenting that allocation cleanly is barely possible by hand across 118 separate purchases; that is what tax tools and portfolio trackers are for, reading the purchase dates straight out of the exchanges. We set out in more detail on August 11, 2026 how the holding period and a savings plan interact.

The December 31, 2026 cut-off splits your Bitcoin savings plan in two

On September 30, 2026 the German Federal Ministry of Finance sent its draft bill on reforming the taxation of certain crypto assets held privately into interdepartmental consultation. The draft reassigns income from crypto assets to investment income, on which a tax deduction of 25 percent of the investment income is levied. Under article 2 of the draft the law is to take effect on January 1, 2027.

For a savings plan already running, the application provision is the decisive part. The explanatory note on item 7 reads: "The substantive changes in law are to be applied from January 1, 2027 and cover exchange crypto assets acquired or received after December 31, 2026." And further: "For legacy holdings, sections 22 and 23 EStG otherwise continue to apply unchanged."

Applied to an instalment of 50 euros on the first of the month, that means the instalments of October 1, November 1 and December 1, 2026 would be legacy holdings under the draft and would keep the one-year holding period. Every instalment from January 2027 would fall under the new rule. A savings plan that runs past the turn of the year would therefore consist of two tax-wise different parts inside the same holding, and that split would remain permanently.

The qualification matters: a departmental draft is not yet a law. The text passes through cabinet, Bundestag and Bundesrat and may change in its deadlines, cut-off dates and rates along the way. Basing a purchase decision on this cut-off alone would be a bet on a process whose outcome is open. We assessed on October 3, 2026 what the draft means for the choice between instalment, lump sum and certificate.

Custody: when 50 euros a month justify a move to your own wallet

A savings plan sits with the provider to begin with. As long as only a few hundred euros are held there, a withdrawal to your own wallet is often uneconomic, because the network fee for a Bitcoin transaction is charged regardless of the amount and weighs heavily in percentage terms on small sums.

A workable rule is not to withdraw every instalment separately but to bundle them at intervals. At 50 euros a month, transferring once a year moves €600 in one transaction instead of twelve. The holding at which a dedicated device pays for itself depends on what you are willing to spend on security; that class of device starts in the low double digits. Only one thing matters here: a transfer to your own address is not a sale and triggers no tax, as long as you remain the owner. The holding period of each individual instalment keeps running.

What argues against a 50 euro savings plan

Three objections deserve to be taken seriously. First, a standing order ties up money that is better kept as an emergency fund; anyone forced to sell in a bad market phase loses precisely the advantage the long run is meant to deliver. Second, the automation invites you never to review the position, even though providers, fees and the legal position all change. Third, Bitcoin remains an asset that has lost more than 70 percent several times in the past. The 14.5 percent gain on the 2024 instalments in the table above is a thin result after not quite three years, and it could just as easily have been a loss.

Bitcoin savings plan: the key points for your decision

Whether 50 euros a month pay off hangs on the time in the market, on the fees and on your own staying power. These three steps will take you further:

1. Work out the mark-up before you set up the standing order. Compare a provider's execution price with a reference price and check whether it holds a MiCA authorisation. Our exchange comparison gives an overview of the authorised venues.
2. Document every instalment with its date and price from the start. Across 118 separate purchases that is barely possible to reconstruct after the fact, and without those records the holding period cannot be proven. There are tax tools and portfolio trackers for it.
3. Decide at what holding you will transfer out. Bundle the withdrawals instead of moving each instalment on its own, and settle beforehand where they go. The classes of device and how they differ are in our hardware wallet comparison.

(As of October 5, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

A single Shiba Inu token costs $0.00000587 on Monday evening. That is 0.9 percent more than the day before and 2.8 percent more than a week ago, on CoinGecko figures as of October 5. Market value stands at $3.46 billion and daily turnover at $103.2 million. The price sits 93.2 percent below its record of $0.00008616.

The question behind almost every Shiba Inu price prediction runs like this: will the steady burning of tokens eventually tighten supply enough to show in the price? The honest answer sits in two figures that are both circulating right now and that differ by a factor of 52. This piece sets them against each other, places the new trading route on Solana in context and names the levels that will decide the coming weeks.

Shiba Inu burn rate: 384 million SHIB in 30 days

The counter at shibburn.com is the most easily verifiable source for burned tokens. It reads the official burn addresses on Ethereum and shows the following picture as of October 5. Over the past 24 hours, 3,630,330 SHIB were destroyed, worth roughly $22. Over seven days the figure was 96,849,960 SHIB, or about $562. Over 30 days the amount adds up to 384,044,752 SHIB, or around $2,104.

On that count, 410,844,466,658,035 SHIB have been taken out of circulation in total. It sounds enormous, yet it equals 41.08 percent of the one quadrillion tokens once issued. The lion's share comes not from ongoing burns but from a single transaction in May 2021, when Vitalik Buterin destroyed the holding that had been sent to him. What has been added month by month since then moves in an entirely different order of magnitude.

Not every burn address counts the same way

Technically a burn is nothing more than a transfer to an address for which nobody holds the private key. Which of those addresses a counter includes decides which figure comes out at the end. That is precisely where the problem begins.

Two counting methods, two results: 20 billion against 3.6 million SHIB

Several industry outlets reported a jump in the burn rate of more than 17,000 percent for October 3, and around 20 billion SHIB burned within 24 hours. The verified monthly balance at shibburn.com shows only 384 million SHIB for the same period. The October 3 report therefore claims, in a single day, 52 times what the Ethereum counter records for the whole month.

Both figures can be correct if they measure different things, and there is a fair case that they do. Part of the burning runs through Shibarium and the automatic ShibTorch sluice, part through burn addresses on Ethereum, and on top of that come moves by individual projects destroying their own holdings. A counter that adds several of these pots together is bound to arrive higher than one that reads only the classic Ethereum addresses. No authority reconciles the two methods in a binding way.

For you as an investor one simple consequence follows: a percentage figure for the burn rate without a stated baseline is worthless. A gain of 17,134 percent against an extremely quiet previous day often means very little in absolute volume. Stick to the absolute number and set it against the circulating supply, rather than following the rate of change.

The scarcity calculation: 585 trillion SHIB in circulation

Set the monthly balance against the circulating supply and the order of magnitude becomes visible. In circulation are 585,475,632,329,593 SHIB, and total supply stands at 589,155,533,341,966 tokens. The 384,044,752 SHIB of the past 30 days equal 0.0000656 percent of the circulating supply.

Extrapolated over twelve months, that is 0.0008 percent a year. At this pace the network would need some 1,250 years to cut the circulating supply by a single percent. Even the disputed 20 billion of a peak day equal 0.0034 percent of the float.

That settles an expectation that runs through many forecasts: the ongoing burns are no driver of the price. As a signal about network activity they remain interesting, but as a lever on the price they do not work. Anyone expecting a squeeze that carries the price is calculating past reality. What has moved the price in recent months has been market conditions, inflows and news, not the supply side.

ShibTorch and Shibarium: the burn hangs on network load

ShibTorch is the automatic sluice of Shibarium, the project's own layer-2 network. The sluice collects the base fees of transactions there, which accrue in BONE, swaps them into SHIB and sends those tokens to a burn address. Because the amount hangs directly on fees, a rise in the burn rate is first a statement about utilisation and only then one about supply.

Utilisation is the sore point. Shibarium's block explorer shows 612,814,563 transactions in total. On a recent day some 1,005 of them came together, which is 0.00016 percent of all transactions ever processed. Capital locked in applications on Shibarium stood at $56,677 in early October. For comparison, daily turnover in the token itself runs above $100 million.

This mismatch is the real finding. A network that locks less than $60,000 in capital generates no fees from which a meaningful squeeze could arise. As long as nothing changes in usage, the burn mechanism remains a footnote.

SHIB on Solana since October 4: $514,000 in opening liquidity

The bigger change of recent days lies elsewhere. On Sunday, October 4, SHIB went officially live on Solana. The gateway is called Sunrise and works with Wormhole's Native Token Transfers standard. The contract address on Solana had already been created on October 3, with the release following on the afternoon of October 4. Sunrise announced the step with the line: “$SHIB is now listed on @Solana via Sunrise.” The official Shiba Inu account confirmed five minutes later with the words: “$SHIB has landed on Solana. Make yourselves at home SHIB Army.”

The start ran up quickly. Within 20 minutes roughly $514,000 of liquidity sat in the pools. In a five-minute window shortly afterwards, observers counted 3,005 trades worth about $300,000 across 1,401 wallets, with around 1,500 addresses holding the token at that moment. It was tradable within minutes on nine venues, among them Jupiter, Raydium, Phantom, Kamino Swap and Mayan. The details are documented in a log of the launch at Solana Compass.

What a canonical token is

Canonical means, in this context, that there is exactly one officially recognised representation of the token on the new network, not several competing replicas. The Native Token Transfers standard locks or burns the token on the origin chain and mints it anew on the destination chain, so that total supply stays constant across both chains.

One point matters for context: SHIB is not leaving Ethereum. The Solana version sits alongside it and replaces nothing. For the price it counts as an additional trading venue and as access to a user base that has barely come into contact with the token so far. That is a real, if small, lever on demand, and it weighs considerably more than the burn figures from the sections above.

Two contract addresses, one token: how to proceed when you switch chains

From now on SHIB exists in two places, and that is the practical question of this article. On Ethereum the contract address reads 0x95aD61b0a150d79219dCF64E1E6Cc01f0B64C4cE. On Solana the canonical address reads shib5gSoVKPjwkXrxRk7SbQFzb2R9rQB3TgQWYX4RwW. Three points decide whether the switch costs you money.

First, the address itself. Check it against an official source before every purchase and every transfer, for instance the project's own channels or an established data service. New trading venues regularly attract replicas with similar names. A token that shows up on a decentralised venue is not genuine by virtue of carrying the right name.

Second, the chain. An Ethereum wallet and a Solana wallet are different systems with different address formats. If you send SHIB from an exchange to an address on the wrong chain, the tokens are as a rule lost, and no party can reverse that. In the withdrawal dialogue, always check the network first and the address second. If you hold your own coins, it is worth looking at which chains your device supports at all, because not every model carries Ethereum and Solana side by side.

Third, the route. You do not have to switch in order to benefit from Solana's liquidity. Anyone buying through a centralised exchange and holding there has nothing to do with either contract address. Changing chains only pays off if you actually want to use the applications on Solana.

Holding period and the exemption limit: the tax catch on the bridge

Here lies the point most international analyses leave out, and it can be the most important part of the whole affair for investors in Germany. Gains from the sale of crypto assets fall under private disposal transactions in the sense of section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If you hold a token for longer than one year, the gain is tax-free. Below that, an exemption limit of 1,000 euros has applied since the 2024 assessment period, covering all private disposal transactions in a year taken together. Once it is exceeded, the entire amount is taxable, not only the part above the limit.

The open question is this: what does a bridging transaction do to that clock? With a procedure that destroys the token on one chain and mints it anew on the other, there are good grounds for arguing that a swap, and therefore a disposal, has taken place. The one-year clock would then start again on the new chain, and any gain accrued up to that point would fall into the year of the switch. A binding position from the tax authorities specifically for native token transfers has not been published so far.

In practice that means: document every change of chain with date, amount and value in euros before you carry it out. A tax tool with a portfolio tracker takes that record-keeping off your hands and tracks holding periods per position. And if your holding is large enough that the deadline decides a noticeable sum, settle the case with a tax adviser before the switch rather than after it.

Levels to the upside: $0.0000060, then $0.0000067 and $0.0000072

The next hurdle is the round level at $0.0000060, currently 2.2 percent above the price. Analysts point to weekly resistance at $0.00000596 as the first stop. The area between $0.0000060 and $0.0000061 has been approached several times over the past two weeks without becoming a load-bearing support.

If a breakout succeeds on volume, the same analyses name $0.0000067 as the next target, then $0.0000072. That would be 14.1 and 22.7 percent above today's level respectively. For a sense of scale: at $0.0000072 the market value would stand at around $4.2 billion. The record high would require roughly $50 billion.

These price targets come from external analysts and are not a statement by this newsroom. Treat them as what they are: reference points from chart analysis that describe a market move without explaining it.

Levels to the downside: $0.0000055 as a cushion

On the downside, the area between $0.0000055 and $0.0000056 counts as a cushion, around 6.3 percent below the current price. If the token falls durably through it, analysts name the zone between $0.0000051 and $0.0000052 as the next catch line, a good 13 percent lower.

For a position that means one thing above all: the distance to the next target above and the distance to the next catch line below are roughly equal. Anyone working with leverage should calculate their own liquidation threshold before entering, because with a token of this volatility 13 percent falls inside a handful of trading days.

Buying route and custody under MiCA: two networks, two wallet types

Since the European markets in crypto-assets regulation MiCA took full effect, providers targeting customers in Germany need authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. For you that is the first check before every purchase: does the provider work with an authorisation in the EU, and is it listed in the register of the competent supervisor? Authorisation says nothing about fees, so the second look belongs to the price list.

On custody, the Solana route shifts the picture slightly. Until now a wallet that manages ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum was enough for SHIB. Anyone who wants to move on both chains in future needs either a wallet that handles both networks or two separate access points. For larger amounts, custody on your own hardware remains the safest route, because the private key never leaves the device.

What argues against a position

For completeness the other side belongs here too. The network locks less than $60,000 in capital, the burn mechanism moves nothing in arithmetic terms, and the token trades 93.2 percent below its high. The Solana connection is progress on reach, but it creates no new utility. Anyone investing here is betting on attention and market sentiment, not on cash flows. That is a legitimate decision as long as it is taken consciously and the position size fits it.

Shiba Inu price prediction: what to take away

1. Measure burn reports against the circulating supply, not against the previous day. 384 million SHIB in 30 days are 0.0000656 percent of the float. Check the absolute amount on a counter of your choice before you take a percentage headline seriously, and hold your own positions against it in a portfolio tracker.
2. Match network and contract address before every transfer. Since October 4 SHIB exists on two chains. A transfer to the wrong chain is final. Which devices carry both networks is shown by the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document the holding period before you change chains. Record the date, the amount and the euro value, track the one-year clock per position, and clarify larger sums with a tax adviser in advance. The buying route itself you choose through an authorised provider from the crypto exchange comparison.

(As of October 5, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Quant is a British technology company that connects banks and public authorities to blockchains without obliging them to commit to a single chain. The product behind it is called Overledger, supplemented since June 2026 by the Fusion Rollup, which according to the company brings 74 networks together in a shared execution environment. The associated token carries the ticker QNT.

The name became widely known most recently through a mandate from a US clearing house. This article takes a step back and explains what the technology actually delivers, where its limits lie and what role the token plays in it. For the current price there is a separate Quant price prediction; here the subject is the substance behind it.

What Quant is and what banks use the network for

Quant does not build a blockchain of its own. That is the most important sentence about this project, and it is often skimmed over. The company sells an intermediate layer that connects existing networks to one another.

The need for it arises from a practical problem. A bank working with digital assets today deals with several networks at once: public ones such as Ethereum or Bitcoin, permissioned ones such as Hyperledger Fabric or R3 Corda, plus internal systems. Each of these networks speaks a protocol of its own. Building an application for every single one and maintaining it permanently is expensive and ties up staff.

This is exactly where Quant comes in. The bank's application now talks to one interface only, and that interface translates into the respective networks. Technically, such a thing is called an abstraction layer: an intermediate level that conceals differences and presents a uniform picture to the outside.

Overledger: the layer applications dock onto only once

Overledger is the product with which this translation happens. An application connects once, reaches several ledgers through it and does not have to know the quirks of the individual chains. A ledger here is nothing other than a distributed bookkeeping system, that is the database behind a blockchain.

From the perspective of an IT department, the appeal of this design is easy to name. If a new network joins, ideally nothing changes for your own application, because the connection happens one level down. If a network falls away, the same applies. The dependency does shift, though: away from many individual chains and towards the provider of the intermediate layer.

That shift is no footnote but the central objection to the model. Anyone using Overledger trades technical diversity for dependence on a single company. For a bank that is a classic trade-off between effort and supplier lock-in, and it does not fall automatically in favour of the intermediate layer.

Why banks do not simply take a bridge

For moving between blockchains, bridges have existed for years. Such constructions lock a value on one chain and issue an image of it on the other. In private use that works; in banking it runs into three limits.

The first is security. Bridges have for years been among the most frequently attacked components in the industry, because they concentrate large holdings in a single place. The second is legal in nature: an image of a value is not necessarily the same value in law, and for the deposits of a regulated institution that is a problem. The third is settlement. A bank needs certainty that delivery and payment either succeed together or fail together; specialists call this delivery versus payment.

Quant promises to solve these points differently, namely through a shared execution level instead of pairwise bridges. Whether that holds up in practice can only be judged credibly once real payment volumes run across it. So far they do not.

The Fusion Rollup since June 2, 2026: 74 networks in one environment

On June 2, 2026, Quant switched the Fusion Rollup live on the main network. A rollup is a level above a blockchain that bundles many operations and writes only the result back to the main chain. That lowers costs and raises throughput.

According to the company, Fusion is connected to 74 networks at launch. On the public side these include Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, the XRP Ledger, Stellar and XDC. On the permissioned side stand enterprise chains such as Hyperledger Fabric and R3 Corda. Further networks are to be added on request.

Layer 2.5 and the classic rollup: what sets them apart

An ordinary rollup hangs off exactly one parent chain and writes its results back there. According to the company, Fusion is anchored simultaneously to several connected networks and writes its state roots to several destinations. Quant therefore describes the design as Layer 2.5 rather than Layer 2.

The practical difference shows up in an outage. A classic rollup stands still when its parent chain stands still. A level that hangs off several chains is meant to survive that. The price for it is complexity: several anchorings mean more parts that have to work at the same time, and more assumptions about which state applies in a dispute.

Technically, Fusion is EVM-compatible. EVM stands for the Ethereum Virtual Machine, Ethereum's execution environment; compatibility means that existing contracts and tools largely run without rebuilding. For developers that lowers the barrier to entry considerably.

A further promise concerns assets that today lie scattered across the chains in dozens of variants. Fusion is meant to merge them into one uniform form each. Whether that merging holds up everywhere in legal and accounting terms is an open question and not a technical one.

The US clearing house mandate and the timetable to 2027

On September 24, 2026, The Clearing House, the settlement body of the large US banks, selected Quant as technology partner for a network for tokenised deposits. According to those involved, the initiative is backed by 25 large US institutions. For participating houses the network is due to open in the first half of 2027.

Tokenised deposits are not a stablecoin. They are a bank's book money represented on a blockchain; the claim continues to run against the institution and remains subject to its supervision. That is the reason banks prefer this route to the detour via private payment tokens. What exactly was commissioned and what is still open we set out in the report on the clearing house mandate.

Quant takes a second route into the banks via software. Since March 2026 the company has been working with the provider Murex, whose MX.3 platform runs in trading, risk management and post-trade at many institutions. At the industry gathering Sibos, held from September 28 to October 1, 2026 in Miami, both houses jointly demonstrated the settlement of tokenised assets. The thinking behind it is obvious: whoever lands in systems that are running anyway does not have to talk any bank into changing systems.

What role the QNT token really plays in this

Here the technology parts company with the investment, and at this point precision pays. Using Overledger incurs an annual licence fee that is settled in QNT. The tokens used for it are locked for the term of the licence and are not available on the market during that time. When this model was introduced in December 2021, the company named an amount of 100 pounds a year per licence.

According to reports, a customer can also pay in another currency; Quant then locks a corresponding quantity of its own tokens. For demand for QNT on the open market that makes a considerable difference, and it is exactly at this point that the chain of evidence ends.

What remains open is the question that matters most to investors: whether and to what extent the future revenue of the US clearing house runs through the token is not publicly documented. Neither the timetable nor the statements of those involved give figures on it. Anyone claiming that every settled deposit generates demand for QNT goes beyond what is documented.

Does the banks' revenue really flow through QNT?

Two readings stand opposed on this question, and both deserve a fair presentation.

The one: the licence model couples usage to token demand. The more institutions deploy Overledger, the more QNT sit locked, and the smaller the freely tradable quantity. With a maximum supply of fewer than 15 million tokens, every permanently locked quantity carries weight.

The other: a licence fee is a fixed annual sum and does not grow with the volume settled. Ten banks moving billions pay no more under this model than ten banks moving little. The connection between the success of the technology and demand for the token is therefore weaker than it looks at first glance.

Documented is the model itself and nothing more. Everything beyond that hangs on contracts that are not public. Anyone investing in QNT is therefore investing not only in a technology but also in an assumption about how it is billed.

QNT for investors in Germany: venues, licensing and the holding period

QNT is one of the larger crypto-assets and ranks between 33rd and 42nd by market capitalisation, depending on the data service. On October 5, 2026 the price stood at around $263 or about 235 euros, with market capitalisation between $3.2 billion and $3.8 billion. The range arises because the services assume different circulating supplies.

The same applies to supply. As a maximum quantity, figures between 14.61 and 14.88 million QNT can be found, and as a circulating quantity statements between a good 12 and 14.5 million. Anyone calculating with such numbers should write the source alongside, otherwise the result cannot be retraced later.

One point of context, because it shapes every discussion these days: QNT has risen very sharply within a month, in the order of around 300 percent, and is thereby approaching its peak of $427 from September 2021 again. A move like that raises the risk of a setback, but on its own it proves nothing whatsoever about the technology. An assessment of the valuation can be found in our analysis of the current price.

Where QNT can be traded

QNT is listed on numerous venues, including some with a direct euro pair. For investors in Germany what counts above all is whether the provider is authorised as a crypto-asset service provider under the European MiCA regulation. That can be looked up in the public register of the European securities regulator ESMA; decisive is the company with which you conclude the contract. We keep an overview in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

What the tax office sees

Gains from the sale of QNT held as private assets count as private disposal transactions pursuant to Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. After a holding period of more than twelve months the gain remains tax-free; before that it is charged at the personal income tax rate. Below 1,000 euros of total gain in the calendar year an exemption threshold applies; if it is exceeded, the full amount is taxable. Exchanging QNT for another cryptocurrency also counts as a disposal.

How progress can be read over the coming months

For a project whose promise reaches far into the future, verifiable intermediate steps are needed. Three of them are scheduled or at least observable.

The first is the launch of the deposit network in the first half of 2027. By then it will become apparent whether the selection of a technology partner turns into live operation or into a postponed date. The second is the number of networks connected to Fusion: if it stays at 74, the launch was a one-off event; if it grows, the model is taking hold. The third is the licences themselves. Every new Overledger licence locks tokens, and that lock is in principle traceable on the chain.

What is not a signal of progress, by contrast: an announcement without a contract, an appearance at an industry trade fair or a price move. The gap between a declaration of intent and a productive system is often a span of years with infrastructure projects.

Quant and Overledger: how to proceed now

1. Separate the technology from the token question. Overledger and Fusion solve a real problem for banks; whether the success of that technology arrives at the token depends on the licence model and is not publicly quantified. Anyone deriving an investment decision from it should know which of the two questions they are answering. Where QNT can be traded at all and what the purchase costs is shown by the comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Settle custody before the amount grows. QNT is a token on Ethereum and can accordingly be held in any wallet that supports the standard. With larger holdings the key belongs out of the exchange; the devices for that are listed in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document the purchase date and purchase price from the outset. The one-year period governs the tax exemption, and later it can only be demonstrated with records. Anyone buying across several accounts keeps the record best with a tax tool.

(As of October 5, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The Nasdaq-listed bitcoin treasury company, co-founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, paid roughly $169 million for 2,000 coins last week and now holds 29,462 BTC.

Nasdaq-listed DeFi Development Corp's latest SEC filing shows its Solana stash grew 1%, to about 2.56 million SOL and SOL equivalents—roughly half the prior week's gain and well below mid-September's pace.

Investigators say a Bonita Springs woman's Claude "diary" tripped Anthropic's safety filters. A human review team sent it to police, and Anthropic's own terms allow exactly that.

An anonymous 4chan user called Bitcoin's October 2025 peak to the day way back in 2023. Could they be right again?

FinCEN withdrew a 2020 proposal to track transactions with self-custodial crypto wallets and a 2023 plan to designate crypto mixing as a primary money laundering concern.

Ripple effect from growth on larger cryptocurrencies have reached smaller networks.

The XRP Ledger has moved a step closer to launching Smart Escrow after developers rolled out the ninth Devnet release.

The CFTC is moving to build a new federal rulebook for crypto markets, proposing purpose-built regulations that could bring leveraged retail crypto trading.

ADA outpaces the market in its deepest rally since May while Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson teases a major scalability upgrade.

Barry Silbert flags his 2011 market prophecy as RWA tokenization and 24/7 trading transforming Wall Street.

TLDR:

• Zeta Global signed an agreement to acquire Y Combinator-backed AI engineering firm Senso on Oct. 5. 
• Senso’s technology already powers Zeta’s Generative Engine Optimization offering for AI answers. 
• Zeta aims to improve brand visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. 
• Senso co-founder and CEO Saroop Bharwani and the Senso team will join Zeta after the acquisition closes. 

Zeta Global acquires Senso to boost AI marketing tools, according to an announcement made on Oct. 5, 2026. The New York-based company, listed as NYSE: ZETA, signed an agreement to buy the Y Combinator-backed AI engineering firm.

Senso’s technology already powers Zeta’s Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) offering. The deal brings that technology in-house.

It also adds engineering talent and stronger links to frontier models. Senso’s team will join Zeta once the acquisition closes.

GEO Offering Gains Frontier Model Connections

Zeta shared the news on an official announcement. The post stated that Senso will strengthen Zeta’s connections to leading frontier models.

It added that Senso’s technology already helps power the GEO offering. Zeta described the deal as an addition of technology, talent, and model connectivity.

GEO helps brands understand how they appear in AI-generated answers. In addition, it shows who those answers reach. Zeta said Senso will help improve how brands appear across leading AI platforms.

The release names ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews among those platforms. Combined with the Zeta Data Cloud, Senso will speed up tools that help enterprises optimize and remediate brand reach.

CEO Outlines the Infrastructure Strategy

Under the agreement, Zeta plans to connect AI insights to customer intelligence and marketing activation. The stated aim is measurable business outcomes.

Zeta defines intelligent AI infrastructure as a layer that connects what an enterprise knows to AI. Senso will extend that connection to AI platforms where customers discover brands.

David A. Steinberg, Zeta’s co-founder, chairman, and CEO, commented on the deal. “Models are increasingly ubiquitous,” he said. He added that infrastructure creates the advantage by connecting “an enterprise’s data and context to those models.”

Steinberg also described what Senso brings. “Senso will bring AI engineering talent and deeper connectivity to the frontier models and personal agents,” he said. Furthermore, he noted the deal stands apart from announcements planned for Zeta Live 2026.

Senso Leadership Explains Its Approach

Saroop Bharwani, Senso’s co-founder and CEO, will join Zeta with the rest of the team. He has more than 20 years of experience working with regulated enterprises. Bharwani founded Senso as an AI research lab during the early wave of enterprise deep learning.

Bharwani described the company’s founding principle. “Senso was founded on the simple principle of making AI more useful in the real world, not more conversational,” he said.

Senso combines applied research and engineering to help businesses turn trusted information into better AI interactions.

He also addressed AI discovery. “AI discovery is becoming an increasingly important part of the customer journey, but visibility alone is not enough,” he said.

Zeta will work closely with the Senso team to provide continuity for customers. LUMA Partners advised Senso on the transaction. However, the release does not state a closing date or a purchase price.

The post Zeta Global Signs Deal for Senso to Strengthen AI Discovery Offerings appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• AbbVie Phase 3 lymphoma trial cuts progression or death risk by 51% in DLBCL
• Epcoritamab plus R-CHOP delivers a major Phase 3 win in frontline lymphoma care
• AbbVie gains fresh lymphoma data as EPCORE DLBCL-2 meets its primary endpoint
• Phase 3 results strengthen AbbVie’s bispecific strategy in frontline DLBCL care
• AbbVie and Genmab plan regulatory talks after positive lymphoma trial results

AbbVie reported positive Phase 3 lymphoma trial results after its shares closed 1.12% higher at $265.76. The EPCORE DLBCL-2 study showed a 51% reduction in disease progression or death risk. The findings could strengthen AbbVie’s position in frontline treatment for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

AbbVie Inc., ABBV

AbbVie Phase 3 Trial Meets Key Lymphoma Goal

AbbVie and Genmab tested epcoritamab with standard R-CHOP therapy in newly diagnosed DLBCL patients. The trial enrolled patients with International Prognostic Index scores ranging from two to five. Researchers compared the combination directly with R-CHOP treatment alone.

The study met its progression-free survival goal with statistically significant and clinically meaningful results. Epcoritamab plus R-CHOP reduced progression or death risk by 51% compared with standard therapy. The trial reported a hazard ratio of 0.49 and a p-value below 0.0001.

The companies also reported a generally manageable safety profile for the combination treatment. Researchers found the safety findings consistent with earlier results from epcoritamab and R-CHOP separately. AbbVie therefore gained stronger Phase 3 evidence supporting epcoritamab in earlier lymphoma treatment.

Epcoritamab Could Expand AbbVie’s Frontline Lymphoma Strategy

DLBCL represents an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and often requires immediate treatment. R-CHOP has remained a core frontline therapy for many patients for more than two decades. However, some patients still experience disease progression or relapse after initial treatment.

Epcoritamab uses a bispecific antibody approach that engages T cells against cancer cells. AbbVie and Genmab designed the treatment to target CD3 on T cells and CD20 on B cells. The approach aims to increase immune activity against malignant B cells.

The latest results could expand epcoritamab beyond later treatment settings if regulators approve the combination. AbbVie already sees bispecific antibodies as an important part of its hematology development strategy. The Phase 3 outcome gives the company additional clinical data supporting that strategy.

AbbVie and Genmab Prepare Regulatory Discussions

AbbVie and Genmab plan to present detailed EPCORE DLBCL-2 results at a future medical meeting. The companies will also discuss the findings with regulatory authorities across major global markets. Those talks will help determine the next development and filing steps.

The combination remains investigational and currently lacks regulatory approval for newly diagnosed DLBCL patients. Regulators will assess the complete efficacy and safety data before making any authorization decision. AbbVie must therefore complete further regulatory work before commercial use in this setting.

Epcoritamab forms part of a broader AbbVie and Genmab collaboration in blood cancer treatment. Both companies have continued studying the medicine across several lymphoma settings and treatment stages. The latest Phase 3 result adds frontline DLBCL to that growing clinical development program.

The post AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) Stock: Phase 3 Lymphoma Trial Cuts Progression Risk 51% appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• AST SpaceMobile and TELUS complete their first satellite network integration test.
• TELUS plans direct-to-smartphone satellite services for customers within a year.
• Satellite coverage will target remote areas beyond traditional Canadian cell towers.
• AST SpaceMobile technology supports calls, texts and broadband on standard phones.
• TELUS satellite integration could improve emergency access and network resilience.

AST SpaceMobile stock closed at $58.44, down 0.02%, before rising 0.27% to $58.60 after hours. The move followed a successful network integration test with Canadian telecom operator TELUS. The test advanced plans to extend direct satellite connectivity across areas beyond traditional cellular coverage.

AST SpaceMobile, Inc., ASTS

AST SpaceMobile Stock Gains Support From TELUS Test

TELUS and AST SpaceMobile completed their first integration test between terrestrial wireless and space-based cellular networks. The companies tested technology designed to connect standard smartphones directly with satellites. Therefore, the milestone moves their Canadian satellite broadband partnership closer to commercial deployment.

The system supports broadband data, voice calls, and text messaging without requiring specialized satellite phones. AST SpaceMobile operates low Earth orbit satellites equipped with large communication arrays. Meanwhile, TELUS provides the terrestrial network infrastructure required to connect satellite services with existing cellular systems.

The integration creates another coverage layer for locations where conventional towers cannot provide reliable service. This approach could extend connectivity across highways, wilderness areas, parks, and remote communities. It could also strengthen network resilience when terrestrial infrastructure faces coverage limitations or service disruptions.

TELUS Plans Satellite Smartphone Service Within Next Year

TELUS expects to introduce the satellite service to eligible customers within the next year. Customers will use compatible smartphones already designed for conventional cellular connections. Consequently, users will not need separate satellite equipment when accessing supported space-based services.

The planned service aims to improve connectivity for travelers and people living outside major urban areas. It will also support workers across energy, forestry, construction, and natural resources operations. These sectors often operate across remote locations where traditional mobile infrastructure remains limited.

Emergency communications represent another major use case for the partnership. TELUS plans to use satellite connectivity to extend access to emergency services across uncovered locations. As a result, users could gain another communication option when conventional cellular coverage becomes unavailable.

AST SpaceMobile Expands Direct-to-Device Network Strategy

AST SpaceMobile develops a satellite network designed to connect directly with ordinary mobile phones. Its business model works with established wireless carriers instead of requiring customers to adopt separate devices. The TELUS integration therefore supports its broader strategy of extending existing mobile networks through space.

The Canadian partnership also adds to TELUS’ continuing investment in nationwide wireless infrastructure. TELUS has expanded 5G+, LTE coverage, network speeds, and signal availability across several Canadian communities. Satellite coverage will complement those terrestrial investments rather than replace existing cellular infrastructure.

Canada presents a significant use case because large areas remain difficult to cover with traditional cell towers. Satellite-to-smartphone technology could reduce those gaps while using infrastructure already operated by wireless carriers. Therefore, the successful integration gives AST SpaceMobile another commercial milestone as it expands its direct-to-device network.

The post AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) Stock: Rebounds as TELUS Satellite Test Expands Canada Coverage  appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Binance AI is free for all users and adapts its “For You” tab to each user’s knowledge level.
• Binance AI Pro turns plain-language ideas into strategies, with a Premium plan at 19.99 USDC monthly.
• Each live strategy runs in a dedicated sub-account that users fund manually, so agents cannot move funds.
• Binance Agent OS launched in August 2026 and has now passed 280,000 daily calls from developers.

Binance Intelligence is a new AI product stack unveiled by the exchange on October 5, 2026. Co-CEO Richard Teng and VP of Product Jeff Li presented it during a livestreamed event in Abu Dhabi.

The suite includes Binance AI, Binance AI Pro, and Binance Agent OS. Binance says the stack aims to narrow the knowledge gap between everyday users and market professionals. Each product serves a different audience, from beginners to developers.

Binance AI Adapts Market Information to Each User

Within Binance Intelligence, Binance AI is a free feature set that personalizes market information. It uses generative UI to adjust layouts to a user’s knowledge level, interests, and products. These views appear in a new “For You” tab.

Teng described the broader goal during the event. “Blockchain is giving everyone access to markets; AI gives everyone the knowledge to navigate them,” he said. The tab also offers a Market Brief covering crypto, stocks, and macro topics.

The brief refreshes every four hours and reflects the user’s holdings. Users can read it as text or listen to it as audio.

Other tools include Smart Tool Tips, tailored widgets, and Master Trade profiles. Binance AI rolls out progressively to all users from October 5.

Binance AI Pro Converts Ideas Into Strategies

Binance AI Pro is a finance-focused agent that turns plain-language ideas into executable strategies. Users describe a goal, such as monitoring a portfolio. The agent then produces an initial strategy with a visual flowchart. Live strategies run 24/7 within Binance.

On desktop, the screen splits between the conversation and the workflow. Users can click modules to adjust, add, or remove components.

Li said the product is built around user input. “Users bring their ideas in plain language; everything a strategy needs is already built in,” he said.

Each live strategy runs in a dedicated sub-account that the user funds manually. The agent cannot move funds on its own, and users approve any workflow before execution.

Rollout begins in the second half of October on a freemium model. The Premium plan costs 19.99 USDC per month and adds live deployment and paper trading.

Binance Agent OS Targets Developers

Binance Agent OS connects AI applications to Binance trading, market data, wallet, payment, and on-chain capabilities.

The platform launched in August 2026 and has passed 280,000 daily calls. Developers and quantitative trading teams are building AI-driven strategies on it.

It combines Binance APIs, BinanceWallet Agentic Hub, Binance x402, and Binance Skill Hub. In addition, it supports the Model Context Protocol.

Users can authorize agents through ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. Agents can access market data, view account information, and place supported trades.

Each agent can use a dedicated subaccount, and access can be revoked at any time. Teng said Binance Intelligence places an intelligent partner inside the app users already use.

The post Binance Intelligence Launches AI Suite for Users, Traders, and Developers appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Rezolve AI stock rallies after Mastercard signs a worldwide reseller agreement.
• Mastercard can now market and sell Rezolve AI software across global markets.
• The deal expands Rezolve AI’s reach to merchants, banks, and enterprise clients.
• Rezolve AI will support joint sales, demonstrations, and customer evaluations.
• The agreement strengthens Rezolve AI’s push into agent-driven global commerce.

Rezolve AI stock jumped after the company secured a worldwide reseller agreement with Mastercard. RZLV gained 8.25% to $2.23 at Monday’s close. The stock then added 0.45% to $2.24 during after-hours trading.

Rezolve AI PLC, RZLV

Mastercard Deal Expands Rezolve AI’s Global Sales Reach

The agreement allows Mastercard to market and sell subscriptions to Rezolve AI software worldwide. Mastercard will lead customer coordination and contract directly with resale customers. The arrangement operates on a non-exclusive basis across international markets.

Rezolve AI will provide its commerce technology through this new distribution channel. Its services cover conversational commerce, product discovery, intelligent search, and catalogue enrichment. The platform also supports personalization, recommendations, and checkout orchestration.

Mastercard can introduce these services through its existing customer relationships. Rezolve AI will provide technical support during presentations and product evaluations. Both companies can also coordinate proposals and demonstrations for prospective customers.

RZLV Stock Gains on Expanded Commercial Opportunity

The agreement strengthens Rezolve AI’s ability to reach businesses across international markets. Mastercard already maintains broad relationships with merchants, banks, and other commercial customers. Therefore, the arrangement gives Rezolve AI another route for securing enterprise subscriptions.

Mastercard will manage key parts of the sales process under the agreement. Rezolve AI will support customer evaluations with technical expertise and product demonstrations. This structure could help move prospective customers from initial discussions toward commercial deployments.

However, individual deployments will require separate statements of work between the relevant parties. Those agreements will determine geography, selected products, and specific commercial conditions. Rezolve AI will generate revenue as successful customer engagements develop into subscription contracts.

Rezolve AI Targets Growing Agentic Commerce Market

Rezolve AI develops technology designed for digital shopping and automated commerce interactions. Its platform connects customer requests with product information and personalized recommendations. The technology also supports shopping journeys from product discovery through checkout.

Businesses increasingly use automated systems to improve product search and customer engagement. Rezolve AI provides tools that organize product data and improve recommendation accuracy. Its platform also includes governance, policy controls, and analytics for business deployments.

The company serves retailers, brands, financial institutions, and commerce platforms through its technology. Rezolve AI also operates Reward, its financial engagement platform. Together, these operations support its broader push into personalized and agent-driven commerce.

The Mastercard agreement adds a major distribution route without restricting Rezolve AI to one reseller. It also provides a formal framework for Mastercard to sell Rezolve AI subscriptions internationally. That structure supports Rezolve AI’s strategy of expanding its commercial footprint through large global partners.

Rezolve AI now has another pathway to reach enterprise customers through Mastercard-led sales activity. Mastercard brings established commercial relationships, while Rezolve AI supplies the underlying commerce technology. The partnership strengthens the company’s position as businesses adopt more automated shopping tools.

The post Rezolve AI (RZLV) Stock: Surge as Mastercard Deal Opens Worldwide Sales Channel appeared first on Blockonomi.

Strive CEO Matt Cole is pitching his company as the likeliest “fastest horse” among Bitcoin treasury firms in the next bull market, and he backed it with seven principles on competition posted on X.

His broader argument, however, is that Strive and Strategy need each other to expand the market for Bitcoin-backed digital credit rather than simply fight for the same investors.

Strive Claims Twice Strategy’s Amplification

“I think Strive has emerged as the leading contender to be the fastest horse in the next bull market,” Cole told Podcaster Robin Seyr. “What will drive the highest total returns will be one, having a high amplification ratio; two, being able to maintain a high amplification ratio; and three, not giving up Bitcoin upside for that amplification ratio.”

Amplification compares a company’s preferred stock and debt with the value of its Bitcoin. Strive’s own tracker puts its ratio at 51.4%, all of it from SATA preferred shares, with no debt, while Strategy’s is roughly 25%, putting Cole’s firm at about twice the amplification of Michael Saylor’s.

According to him, the next bull run could see Bitcoin go anywhere from $400,000 to $500,000 by late 2029, tied to a US debt crisis that pushes long-term yields down and weakens the dollar, and he described that as conservative.

The Strive chief was equally keen to play down any feud with Saylor’s company, pointing to a long article in which Strategy’s co-founder pictured the two firms working together.

SATA trades at between 25% and 50% of STRC’s daily volume, he noted, which some Strategy investors read as lost market share, but he called that “a really bad argument,” considering that had Strategy captured all of SATA’s roughly $1 billion, STRC would be only about 10% bigger. According to Cole, what matters more is whether the pool of digital credit can grow exponentially over the next three and a half years.

Institutions face issuer limits, he added, so large buyers need several issuers. He also claimed each firm has copied the other, citing Strategy’s move to daily dividends and its cash reserve.

“I’m glad that they innovate based on what we do and we innovate based on what they do,” he told Seyr.

On X, Cole wrote that every management team owes its first duty to its own shareholders and that “competing and collaborating are not mutually exclusive.”

Strive Holds 29,462 BTC to Strategy’s 848,000

As CryptoPotato reported earlier, Strive bought 2,000 BTC for $169 million on October 5, the same day Strategy announced 334 BTC for $28.7 million. That leaves Strive with 29,462 BTC and Strategy with 848,000.

ASST was trading near $30 at the time of writing, up about 137% in three months and down about 42% over a year. Meanwhile, SATA is paying a 13% dividend daily, against 12% on Strategy’s STRC.

The post Strive CEO Says ASST Can Outrun Strategy in the Next Bitcoin Bull Market appeared first on CryptoPotato.

OKXICE LLC, a venture formed by cryptocurrency exchange OKX and NYSE parent company ICE, made a filing on October 4 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a tokenized stock trading exchange.

The filing makes OKX one of the first crypto exchanges attempting to offer tokenized US stocks through a regulated exchange under the temporary SEC regulations.

OKXICE Seeks Approval for 63 NYSE Stocks

According to a report by Bloomberg, OKX plans to seek approval to offer tokenized shares of an initial 63 NYSE-listed companies. Under the SEC framework, those companies have 30 days to opt out before trading can begin, meaning the launch still depends on that notice period and other requirements.

OKX’s blockchain infrastructure would be paired with ICE’s market technology. ICE acquired a stake in OKX in March at a $25 billion valuation, and the companies have agreed to work together on US-regulated crypto futures.

The SEC introduced its temporary Innovation Exemption in September, allowing certain tokenized securities venues to facilitate secondary trading of tokenized US stocks through permissioned automated makers and liquidity pools.

Tokenized shares must carry the same shareholder rights as the underlying securities, including dividends and voting rights. Smart contracts must also be auditable and run on public, permissionless blockchains, while trading must stop if the underlying stock is suspended on its primary exchange.

OKX Joins a Growing Tokenized-Stock Race

As CryptoPotato reported, Coinbase announced in June that it planned to offer tokenized stocks to customers outside the US, with shares backed 1:1 by the underlying assets and carrying shareholder rights.

That move came before the SEC’s September exemption and showed how crypto exchanges were already pursuing ways to connect stock trading with blockchain infrastructure.

The SEC’s exemption followed stalled legislative progress around the CLARITY Act. The regulator had reportedly been working on the exemption for more than a year and had planned to release it in May before delaying it during negotiations over the bill.

For OKX, the filing gives a use to the relationship with ICE beyond its March investment. The two companies are now seeking to combine exchange infrastructure and blockchain-based trading under a framework that could let US-listed stocks trade around the clock, subject to the SEC’s conditions.

The post OKX and ICE File to Trade 63 Tokenized NYSE Stocks appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Binance has told users in Brazil that from November 1, they must state the purpose of every crypto transfer to or from outside the country and identify who is on the other end. The exchange will report these operations to Brazil’s Central Bank every month.

The change brings international crypto transfers into Brazil’s foreign exchange rules, and nothing goes through without the answers.

Binance Sets New Requirements for International Transfers

Binance outlined the changes in an FAQ, explaining that users sending crypto abroad or receiving it from overseas will need to state the purpose of the transfer and identify the counterparty. Corporate accounts will also have to disclose whether the counterparty belongs to the same economic group.

The exchange stressed that this is not the Travel Rule. That requirement will apply separately to domestic and international transactions in 2027 and 2028, respectively.

For the new Brazilian foreign-exchange process, a transfer is considered international when the other party is outside Brazil or when users move their own assets between Brazil and an overseas account. Transfers between Brazilian residents, including transfers to a Brazilian exchange, are not affected.

Users will choose a purpose from a Central Bank classification system. Transfers of up to $50,000 have a simplified list of 10 purposes, while transactions above that amount require a complete list containing 96 options. Binance says there is no generic “others” option for transfers above $50,000.

A separate limit also applies. International transfers involving counterparties that are not institutions authorized to operate in Brazil’s foreign-exchange market are capped at $100,000 per transaction under the current rules, although Binance says that limit may later become $500,000.

What Users Need to Know Before November

The practical effect will be most noticeable when users move assets between Binance and foreign accounts. Withdrawals cannot be submitted until the questionnaire is completed, while deposits from abroad can remain pending and may sometimes be returned to the sender if the required information is not provided.

Self-hosted wallets are treated differently. Users do not have to provide a transfer purpose when sending crypto to or receiving it from their own wallet, but they must confirm ownership. Those transactions will still be reported to the Central Bank in a separate category.

Binance also says the information must reflect the actual reason for each transfer. Users can contact customer support if they make a mistake, while only foreign exchanges assessed under the Central Bank requirements will appear in the available exchange list.

The changes come as the exchange faces regulatory adjustments in some markets, including dealing with questions from European regulators over its continued operations after failing to secure a MiCA license. In September, the exchange separately announced the closure of UAH deposits and withdrawals and the removal of the USDT/UAH trading pair for Ukrainian users.

For Brazilian customers, however, the immediate issue is narrower: every international deposit and withdrawal will require the new information once the rules take effect.

The post Important Binance Announcement Concerning Brazilian Users appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Peter Schiff has warned that Bitcoin’s recent resilience could make a later reversal more painful for Strategy, arguing that the company has lost the ability to use STRC to raise fresh money for Bitcoin purchases.

His broader view is that markets have absorbed worsening economic signals without fully pricing the risks he sees.

Schiff Sees Strategy’s Financing Problem

In the latest Peter Schiff Show, the economist noted that Bitcoin had gained almost 1% on the week and was trading around $84,500 at the time of recording. He also pointed to Strategy’s STRC price, which had recovered to about $99.40 after falling to $75 during the summer.

He attributed that recovery to Strategy repurchasing STRC and Bitcoin’s move back above $80,000, which may have improved confidence and prompted short covering. But he argued that the rebound does not solve the financing problem.

“There’s no way that he’s going to be able to start selling more STRC. And that means he’s not going to be able to raise money to really start buying more Bitcoin,” Schiff stated, referring to Strategy’s Michael Saylor.

Strategy’s latest figures show 848,000 BTC, equal to just over 4% of total supply, alongside $4.8 billion in USD reserves and $833 million in cash. Its STRC position has an $8.93 billion notional value, with a 12% variable dividend and 12.07% effective yield.

Bitcoin has since moved higher, with CoinGecko data at the time of writing putting it around $86,000, up more than 4% in seven days and over 8% across 30 days, while remaining down 30% from where it was one year ago.

But despite what Schiff says, Strategy has continued buying the asset. As CryptoPotato reported earlier today, the company acquired 334 BTC for about $28.7 million. It also repurchased another $176 million of STRC. This latest buy is quite smaller than the 1,665 units bought for about $142.8 million in late September, which came together with $152 million of STRC.

Schiff Links Bitcoin Risk to a Wider Market Break

Schiff’s argument extends beyond Strategy’s capital structure. He believes Bitcoin is benefiting from a stock market that has so far absorbed weak economic and bond-market signals without a larger correction.

He referred to softer PCE inflation numbers, poorer-than-expected employment figures, and lower expectations of an interest rate hike in October, but maintained that bond prices were falling. The oil price stood at about $91 a barrel following a promise by the G7 to release 100 million barrels from their strategic reserves.

Schiff’s worry is that the markets are taking resiliency as an indicator that the bad news no longer matters, but he thinks things are only going to keep getting worse.

“At some point, Bitcoin is going to roll over, especially if we get a pullback in the tech market, which we haven’t had yet,” he warned.

The post Peter Schiff Predicts Bitcoin Will Drop If Tech Stocks Pull Back appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin is approaching a key resistance area again after recovering from its late-September pullback. The price structure remains constructive, but nearby technical resistance and holder cost bases suggest that buyers still face a meaningful barrier to further gains.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, BTC is trading around $85.2K, near the lower boundary of the $86K–$90K resistance zone. Following the initial rejection around $87K, buyers defended the $83K–$84K area and pushed the price back toward the recent highs. This relatively shallow correction suggests that demand remains resilient, although a sustained breakout has yet to materialize.

Meanwhile, the two displayed moving averages are converging around $71.5K, with the rising yellow average approaching the orange average from below. The highlighted potential bullish crossover would reinforce the broader recovery backdrop, but confirmation is still needed, and the asset remains well above both averages.

A sustained move above the recent $87K–$87.5K highs could allow Bitcoin to advance further into the $88K–$90K resistance area. Clearing that broader zone would open the way toward the next major supply region at $94K–$98K. Conversely, another rejection followed by a loss of the $83K support area would increase the risk of a deeper correction, with the $75K–$78K demand zone serving as the main highlighted support below.

BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart shows an ascending triangle developing within the broader rising channel. Repeated highs around $87K–$87.3K form a relatively flat resistance boundary, while the ascending white trendline supports progressively higher lows. Bitcoin is currently trading near the upper portion of this formation after another test of overhead resistance.

This compression suggests that buyers continue to challenge supply, but the pattern requires a confirmed breakout. A decisive 4-hour close above $87.3K, followed by sustained acceptance above that level, could support a move toward $89K–$90K, where the broader supply zone and upper channel boundary would become relevant.

On the downside, the ascending triangle support currently sits around $84.5K–$85K. Losing this trendline would weaken the continuation setup and expose the recent lows around $82.5K–$83K. Further selling could then bring the broader channel midpoint near $81K into focus, followed by the $75K–$78K demand zone.

Sentiment Analysis

The Realized Price UTXO Age Bands chart tracks the average on-chain cost basis of coins grouped by age, providing context for the profitability of different holder cohorts.

With Bitcoin around $85K, the price remains above the realized prices of the 1-to-3-month and 3-to-6-month cohorts, positioned near $69K and $71K, respectively. These cohorts are therefore in aggregate unrealized profit. However, Bitcoin is still below the closely aligned realized prices of the 18-month-to-2-year and 6-to-12-month cohorts, both near $88K–$89K.

This cost-basis cluster overlaps with the daily resistance zone, adding significance to the $88K–$90K area. As price approaches these levels, some holders may use a return toward breakeven to reduce exposure, potentially increasing selling pressure. The metric alone does not confirm that such selling will occur, but it identifies a region where supply could emerge.

A sustained move above $89K–$90K would place Bitcoin above both cohort cost bases and strengthen the bullish continuation scenario. Until then, the convergence of technical resistance and realized prices remains an important hurdle for the recovery.

The post Bitcoin Price Analysis: Is BTC Running Out of Steam After Another Rejection at $87K? appeared first on CryptoPotato.