NATO's readiness underscores the potential for prolonged geopolitical instability, impacting regional security dynamics and global diplomatic relations.

The post NATO prepared for Russian escalation amid eastern tensions appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Investors face increased risk as hidden AI commitments strain cash flow and leverage, potentially impacting financial stability and growth.

The post Big Tech keeps $3 trillion of AI exposure off balance sheets through accounting footnotes appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

China's unchanged rates amid US hikes may lead to capital outflows, yuan pressure, and limited monetary policy options, affecting growth strategies.

The post China keeps benchmark lending rates unchanged for 16th straight month as policy divergence with US widens appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The US's decision may weaken Palestinian leadership's global standing and complicate future peace negotiations, affecting regional stability.

The post US bars Mahmoud Abbas from UN visit, escalating diplomatic tensions appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The escalation in civilian-targeted strikes may bolster Ukrainian resistance, impacting Russia's territorial ambitions and market confidence.

The post Russian strikes kill mother, 2 children in Kyiv region amid escalating conflict appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

European Central Bank President Blocked Binance’s EU Entry: Report

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde stopped Binance from operating in the European Union, according to a Wall Street Journal report. 

The newspaper on Thursday reported that the top crypto exchange was on the cusp of operating in the trading bloc but then was told it couldn’t after the central bank chief waded in. 

EU law requires that local Crypto-Asset Service Providers (CASP) have a MiCA license. Binance does not. Binance in June withdrew its MiCA application in Greece. 

“Lagarde wanted to keep the controversial crypto exchange, which pleaded guilty to financial-crime violations in the U.S., out of the European Union,” the newspaper report said, citing interviews with officials. 

Lagarde has long been anti-Bitcoin and pro-central bank digital currencies. Back in 2021, Lagarde said that the leading cryptocurrency was “a highly speculative asset” used for money laundering. She also criticized cryptocurrencies as a whole and said central banks would never hold bitcoin. 

On CBDCs, though, Lagarde takes a different approach. A CBDC is a digital form of fiat money, like the US dollar or euro; nations around the world are in different stages of researching and releasing them. 

The EU under Lagarde is fast moving forward with a digital euro. Lagarde has described the digital euro as key to Europe’s financial autonomy while taking aim at privately issued stablecoins. 

CBDCs have been criticized by bitcoiners and others in the crypto industry who think they could be used to surveil citizens. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning CBDCs when he took office.

The WSJ report added, citing various interviews, that Lagarde was worried Binance would embed the dominance of dollar-based stablecoins in Europe, instead of encouraging euro counterparts.

Binance is the world’s biggest crypto exchange and billions of dollars in stablecoins are traded on its platform daily. 

A controversial company, Binance and its CEO, Chanpeng Zhao, in 2023 pleaded guilty to anti-money-laundering violations and paid a record $4.3 billion fine.

Binance in June said it was still working to pursue MiCA authorization in another EU Member State.

This post European Central Bank President Blocked Binance’s EU Entry: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

CFTC Sends Proposal To Regulate Crypto Transactions Following Clarity Act Fail

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday sent a proposal to the White House to regulate crypto transactions and markets. 

It isn’t clear what the regulations will look like from the post on the Office of Management and Budget’s website. The proposal is titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets.”

The CFTC’s move comes after lawmakers blocked the long-awaited crypto legislation Clarity Act on Tuesday. Despite the law not advancing, both the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission have said they would go ahead with crypto rulemaking anyway. 

CFTC Chair Mike Selig said on Wednesday that while the Clarity Act didn’t move forward, the watchdog would still help U.S. President Trump “get the job done” in regulating the crypto space. 

“The outcome of yesterday’s Senate vote was unfortunate,” Selig wrote on X, adding that the CFTC was “locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance.”

Before the procedural vote on the legislation this week, Selig had said would proceed with rulemaking whether or not the Clarity Act is enacted — with the aim of finalizing rules before the administration’s term is out.

Senators last year approved Selig as the regulator’s chair. Formerly chief counsel at the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, Selig was described by White House’s Crypto and AI Tsar, David Sacks, as “instrumental in driving forward the President’s crypto agenda” 

President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the crypto space after regulators under the previous administration hit digital asset businesses with lawsuits — mostly for allegedly selling unregistered securities. 

Since Trump became president, the SEC and CFTC have taken a much friendlier approach to watchdogging the space. 

The CFTC isn’t the only regulator going ahead with rulemaking: the SEC earlier this week approved tokenized stocks trading. In August, it also proposed its own framework for crypto asset offerings, pressing ahead while the landmark legislation stalled. 

President Trump last month urged lawmakers to pass the Clarity Act, calling the legislation “very powerful” — but Republicans said that Democrats were deliberately holding it back.  

Democrats mainly took issue with the ethics side of the bill. Trump received backing from major industry players while campaigning and since becoming president, his family has made money from digital asset ventures. 

Some lawmakers have alleged conflicts of interest. The White House has always denied any wrongdoing. 

A new draft of the bill started circulating in July tackling the issue of ethics and banning officials from making money from crypto. But some Democrats said it didn’t go far enough. 

The Clarity Act wants to formally divide oversight between regulators, distinguishing which digital assets are securities, commodities or stablecoins. 

This post CFTC Sends Proposal To Regulate Crypto Transactions Following Clarity Act Fail first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Surges Over $81,000 Despite Clarity Act Fail and Interest Rate Hike

Bitcoin’s price on Friday shot above $81,000 — despite a week of setbacks for the crypto industry. 

The biggest coin was recently trading for $80,982, after jumping as high as $81,055 at one point Friday morning in New York. Over the past 24 hours, it has risen by nearly 6%. 

Its surge comes after lawmakers on Tuesday blocked long-awaited crypto legislation, the Clarity Act, and the Federal Reserve on Wednesday hiked interest rates. 

Digital asset industry bigwigs had long called for clear rules to regulate the crypto space and the Clarity Act — which wants to divide oversight between regulators — aimed to do that. But lawmakers blocked the landmark digital asset market structure bill in a procedural vote. 

And the Federal Reserve increased borrowing costs for the first time due to skyrocketing inflation in the U.S. The central bank’s chair, Kevin Warsh, said that price stability in the U.S. was the Fed’s number one priority. 

“The plain fact is that inflation is too high, and has been for too long,” Warsh said. “This summer’s inflation readings do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”

Bitcoin has in the past done well in a low interest rate environment because it means there is more liquidity to trade the asset. 

While Bitcoin’s price dipped initially news of the Clarity Act blockage and Fed’s move, it shot up on Friday. 

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. have so far this week experienced net negative flows, with investors cashing out nearly $427 million from the vehicles, according to Farside Investors data. 

Flows on Thursday turned positive, with investors chucking nearly $160 million at the funds following two days of consecutive outflows. 

In a research note Thursday, asset manager Grayscale said that it didn’t expect bitcoin’s price to be hurt by the Fed’s decision because the move reflects a mid-cycle adjustment, not a cyclical change. 

And despite lawmakers blocking the Clarity Act, regulators like the SEC are already pushing ahead with pro-crypto regulation. 

This post Bitcoin Price Surges Over $81,000 Despite Clarity Act Fail and Interest Rate Hike first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Community Recognizes Quantum Computing Risk: VanEck

Quantum computing is a risk to Bitcoin but the community recognizes the issue, according to asset manager VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets Research. 

Speaking to CNBC on Friday, Matthew Sigel said that while progress on addressing the issue may be slow because of the crypto network’s decentralized nature, the community was working on it. 

The crypto community has sounded the alarm about hypothetical advancements in quantum computers that could in the future be able to break Bitcoin’s cryptography. 

Some in the space — including Bitcoin developers — have started preparing for a post-quantum future by testing quantum-resistant signatures on live sidechains. 

“It’s a risk,” he said. “But the community has recognized the scope of the issue. There’s a lot of talent that’s now come together with a framework of how to upgrade the system.”

He added: “The upgrades don’t happen as fast because there’s no CEO who can tell the devs, ‘hey, do it now.’ There’s a governance process — it takes more time, it’s a little bit messier, but there are technological paths for quantum resistance, and I think you’ll see more of that over the next couple of years.”

Quantum computers do exist but make mistakes and a machine that can break Bitcoin’s cryptography currently does not exist. Bitcoin currently is the biggest computer network in existence. 

Major companies in the space — including America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, and Bitcoin infrastructure firm, Blockstream — are already working on solutions. 

Back in July, Coinbase said it plans to deliver a post-quantum signing pipeline using secure enclaves and threshold cryptography. 

A Bitcoin Security Consortium — made up of BlackRock, Fidelity Digital Assets, Block, and others — formed in July and donates funds and dedicates engineers to open-source work supporting proposals like BIP-360, which aims to introduce a new transaction output type to reduce long-exposure quantum computing risks.

This post Bitcoin Community Recognizes Quantum Computing Risk: VanEck first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Next 3-5 Years of Bitcoin Lending

SALT Lending CRO Hunter Albright says a growing number of Bitcoin holders may eventually borrow against their bitcoin rather than sell it, creating a new relationship between bitcoin, credit and stablecoins.

Bitcoin-backed lending could become an increasingly important part of how holders access the value of their bitcoin without selling it, according to Hunter Albright, Chief Revenue Officer of SALT Lending.

Speaking on BMTV, Albright said he expects borrowing against bitcoin to become more common as the market matures and holders become more comfortable using bitcoin as collateral.

“I’d like to think we will see a growing percentage of the population of bitcoin holders borrow against it,” Albright said.

For Albright, that shift could also change how bitcoin and stablecoins function alongside one another.

“I do believe people borrowing against their bitcoin and leveraging stables is the difference between money in motion and money at rest,” he said. “The speed of conversion really creates a utility and advantage for people willing to operate in that ecosystem.”

In that framework, bitcoin increasingly becomes “money at rest” – an asset held for the long term – while stablecoins serve as “money in motion,” providing liquidity that can be transferred and used more easily without requiring holders to sell their bitcoin.

A Behavioral Shift for Bitcoin Holders

Getting there, however, will require more than simply building lending products.

Albright said greater education around both Bitcoin itself and the mechanics of borrowing against bitcoin will be necessary before the behavior becomes mainstream – something SALT Lending has made part of its own efforts in the market.

It also requires a change in how Bitcoin holders think about the value stored in their assets.

Instead of viewing bitcoin only as something to accumulate and eventually sell, holders can potentially use it as collateral to access liquidity while maintaining their bitcoin exposure.

That model is already common elsewhere in finance, where owners of real estate, equities and other assets regularly borrow against their holdings rather than liquidating them.

For Bitcoin holders, there can also be tax advantages. In the U.S., borrowing against an asset generally does not itself constitute a taxable sale, whereas selling appreciated bitcoin can trigger capital gains taxes. Individual tax consequences depend on the structure of the transaction and the borrower’s circumstances, readers should consult a tax advisor.

Albright sees that combination – long-term bitcoin holdings, growing stablecoin adoption and easier access to credit – as part of a broader shift in how Bitcoin holders may eventually use their wealth.

Rather than bitcoin needing to move every time its value is put to use, bitcoin can remain at rest while liquidity moves around it.

SALT Lending is the Official Liquidity Sponsor of BMTV. Learn more about borrowing against your bitcoin and explore SALT’s BMTV offer at https://saltlending.com/bmtv/?utm_source=bmtv&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=52783658-BMTV%20article&utm_term=BMTV

Disclaimer: SALT Lending is a paid sponsor of BMTV and serves as BMTV’s Official Liquidity Sponsor. This article is sponsored content and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Bitcoin Magazine. The information provided is for promotional purposes and should not be considered financial advice. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before making any investment decisions related to Bitcoin or other financial products mentioned herein.

This post The Next 3-5 Years of Bitcoin Lending first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Josh Plischke.

Crypto Twitter (now X) has always been a place where someone with an illustrated animal for a profile picture can explain why your financial future depends on a token you just learned about. Now X’s Cashtag links are shortening the route from that conversation to a crypto exchange.

Kraken joined X's US Cashtag partner program on Sept. 16, giving users another route from tickers such as $BTC to its exchange. Tapping a Cashtag can bring up posts and a price chart on X, while the trading link sends users to Kraken's app or website, where they sign in or register and complete the purchase.

Kraken's announcement describes this as a way to become easier to find inside applications people already use. That's the important part of the deal. X isn't becoming an exchange, and the trade itself still happens at Kraken. What changes is the distance between discovering an asset and reaching somewhere that sells it.

That distance has historically been surprisingly long for crypto. Someone might first hear about Bitcoin on X, read a thread explaining it, search for the price somewhere else, compare exchanges, open an account, fund it, and eventually return to the asset they were interested in several steps earlier. Cashtag links compress part of that process into the same environment where the interest started.

Exchanges want to own the next Cashtag click

Twitter experimented with the same idea before it became X. In 2023, eToro connected Twitter Cashtags to its platform, citing 420 million Cashtag searches during the first three months of that year. Those searches weren't 420 million investors, and they certainly weren't 420 million trades. But they showed why exchanges care about this part of the internet.

People searching $BTC or $ETH have already done something valuable from a financial company's perspective: they've identified the asset they're interested in.

Traditional advertising has to find people who might want to invest and then convince them to care about a particular product. Cashtag traffic starts much further down that road. Users are already looking at the asset, reading arguments about it, checking the price, or watching other people trade it.

That makes the next click valuable. Kraken doesn't need everyone who opens a Cashtag to buy anything. It needs to be one of the places users think of when reading about an asset turns into wanting exposure to it.

This changes exchange competition in a subtle way. Fees, liquidity, and execution still count once investors are comparing trading platforms, but distribution determines which platforms make it into that comparison in the first place.

Crypto companies have spent years fighting for the places where people trade. Increasingly, they're also fighting for the places where people decide they want to trade.

The X feed is becoming part of the financial interface

That's where the X integration becomes more interesting than another referral link.

Crypto's social life and its financial life have always been unusually close. Prices move around posts, memes become investment theses, founders announce products directly to holders, and traders narrate positions in public while other people decide whether to follow them.

The industry didn't need X to invent social investing because much of crypto already worked that way. What Cashtag integrations do is formalize the next step.

The same feed can now help create interest, reinforce it through repeated exposure, show the price, and direct users toward somewhere they can act on it. The exchange still handles the transaction, but the social platform becomes part of the route that produced it.

That could be important for adoption because people don't usually wake up wanting a new financial product in the abstract. They encounter it through friends, communities, creators, news, jokes, arguments, and whatever everyone else appears to be talking about.

X already concentrates much of that process for crypto. Its recommendation system uses signals such as likes, reposts, replies, and connections to decide what people may want to see, while the For You feed distributes posts beyond accounts users deliberately follow.

Those systems are built to surface attention, not decide whether an investment is sensible. But when trading access appears beside the conversation, attention becomes financially actionable much faster.

This doesn't automatically make the resulting decisions worse. Crypto users who already know what they want may prefer reaching a familiar exchange without leaving the flow of what they're reading, and fewer steps can make investing easier for newcomers who previously found crypto unnecessarily difficult to navigate.

The larger consequence is that adoption becomes less about persuading people to enter a separate crypto world. Instead, financial products come to the places people already spend their time.

That's a very different version of mainstreaming. People don't necessarily adopt crypto by becoming “crypto people” and reorganizing their online lives around exchanges, wallets, and specialist websites. They encounter an asset in an ordinary feed, tap the ticker, and move into a financial service from there.

The boundary between media and financial distribution gets thinner in the process. Less friction means the feed carries more weight. Reducing friction has obvious commercial value because every extra step gives someone another opportunity to abandon a purchase.

However, removing those steps also gives more influence to whatever created the impulse in the first place.

Research shows that financial interfaces can affect behavior. In a 2024 experiment involving more than 9,000 consumers, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority found that some app-design features increased trading and risk-taking. Push notifications increased trading by 11%, while points and prize draws increased it by 12%.

The experiment wasn't about X and doesn't tell us what Cashtag users will do. Its relevance is simpler: the way a financial decision is presented can change how people act. On X, that presentation starts before anyone reaches an exchange.

Investors may have already seen a bullish thread, watched a token trend, read dozens of replies, or seen the same ticker repeatedly before clicking toward a trade. By then, the exchange isn't creating the idea. It's receiving a user whose conviction was built somewhere else.

That makes social distribution extremely powerful for crypto because the feed doesn't have to sell the financial service directly. It only has to make the asset feel important enough to investigate. The trading provider handles the rest.

There are still ordinary financial questions at the end of that route. Kraken's fees vary by product and execution method, and users still have to consider the quoted price, spread, account eligibility, and whether they actually want the asset they're about to buy.

But those details are no longer the most interesting part of the integration: the bigger shift is where the investment decision begins.

Crypto exchanges used to be destinations people visited after deciding to buy. Social platforms increasingly have the chance to become the place where discovery, conviction, and the first step toward execution happen together.

For an industry that has always grown through online communities, that could be a much bigger adoption channel than another trading feature.

Crypto Twitter spent years telling people what to buy. Now it can also point them toward the checkout.

The post X brings crypto trading closer to your social feed appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s share of supply last moved at least one year ago reached 63.3% on Sept. 18, up 0.98 percentage points from 62.32% on Aug. 18, according to Maketo’s HODL-wave data.

HODL waves group Bitcoin’s unspent transaction outputs into age bands based on their last on-chain movement. The rising one-year share therefore shows that more supply now sits in older bands. Current-month buying and deliberate withdrawal from the market require separate evidence.

The underlying bands point to a specific mechanism. Coins that last moved roughly a year ago can enter the one-to-two-year bracket simply by remaining still long enough to cross the boundary.

What Bitcoin HODL waves measure

The one-to-two-year band increased to 14.57% of supply from 13.52% between Aug. 18 and Sept. 18, a gain of 1.05 percentage points. That was the largest positive change among the cohorts already older than one year.

Over the same period, the six-to-twelve-month band fell to 17.53% from 19.10%. Glassnode’s Sept. 18 snapshot showed the same latest values for both bands.

The paired moves are consistent with coins crossing the one-year boundary. Each band is a net share after coins age into it, age out of it or move on-chain and reset to the youngest cohort, leaving the identity and gross flow of the underlying units unresolved.

Recent movement also eased. Coins last moved within one month accounted for 7.03% of supply on Sept. 18, down 0.27 percentage points from 7.30% a month earlier.

Under Glassnode’s methodology, an unmoved output advances into older bands as it crosses each age threshold. Movement resets the clock.

Last-movement age leaves beneficial ownership and intent unresolved. A transfer between wallets controlled by the same person or custodian can make an output look young even when ownership has not changed. Lost coins can remain in the oldest bands without representing a deliberate decision to hold.

Coinbase provided a practical example in November 2025 when it warned that an internal wallet migration would create large on-chain volumes unrelated to market conditions. That episode illustrates attribution uncertainty and is not offered as the cause of the current shift.

The Sept. 18 readings support a limited conclusion: Bitcoin’s on-chain age distribution grew older while the share moved within a month declined. Available-for-sale supply and liquid-supply tightening remain unmeasured.

Identifying a fresh-accumulation thesis needs corroboration from entity-adjusted balance changes, exchange flows, and spending behavior. Until those measures align, the rising one-year wave is an aging signal rather than proof of new demand.

The post Why Bitcoin’s 63% HODL wave isn’t the mega bull signal everyone thinks it is appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Like fashion, investing eventually finds something embarrassing in the back of the wardrobe and puts it on again. Millennial-era crypto gave us yield-bearing dog coins and all kinds of food-themed financial contraptions. Now Gen Z has entered the market in JNCO jeans, carrying an ironic digicam and, in at least one corner of the market, displaying a positively parental interest in conventional investments.

The jeans are super low again, and apparently their tolerance for portfolio risk is, too.

Binance Research's Aug. 12 report looked at how different generations use the exchange's direct equities, tokenized bStocks, and TradFi perpetuals. The youngest users weren't the ones constantly reaching for leverage or flipping positions. Across all three products, Gen Z was the lowest-turnover working-age cohort. The findings cover Binance users over a short period; its direct-equity product only reached scale in June 2026.

The most traditional-est, conservativ-est, unimaginativest portfolios in crypto, believe it or not, may belong to zoomers.

A rebellion with an expense ratio

The easiest place to see the difference is in ETFs.

ETFs accounted for 25% of Gen Z's direct-equity trading volume in the first days of August, up from 14.6% in June. Millennials were at just 9.5% in early August, which means the younger group was directing more than twice as much of its equity trading toward funds.

The money moving into those funds looks even more interesting than the trading volume. Unleveraged ETFs accounted for 18.5% of Gen Z's net equity inflow in June and 21.9% in July, while the share going into individual stocks fell from 77% to 74.2%.

July was a weaker month for Gen Z equity deployment overall, with net investment falling 17.4%, but unleveraged ETF inflows barely moved, declining just 2%. Single-stock inflows fell 20.4%, while leveraged products dropped 28.5%.

Gen Z was also the only cohort in the Binance data whose ETF holder base actually grew during July, rising 2.9% while the number of millennial ETF holders fell 4.5% and Gen X fell 5.9%.

So this isn't simply a case of young traders occasionally buying SPY between more exciting trades. When Gen Z pulled back, ETFs were the part of the portfolio they kept funding.

The individual investments don't exactly resemble something assembled by a regional pension fund, but they're also far from the lottery-ticket stereotype.

Among Gen Z accounts that had only bought and never sold, the largest average direct-equity purchase was SCHD, Schwab's US Dividend Equity ETF, at $16,567 per trade. Broadcom followed at $12,370. The overall holdings had a noticeable semiconductor and AI tilt, but the smaller average purchases among the top names went to some of the companies most associated with retail speculation, including Tesla at $633 and Nvidia at $514 in bStocks.

In other words, Gen Z still likes technology and AI, but the bigger tickets aren't necessarily going into the names with the loudest cult following.

The holding behavior points in the same direction. Some 22% of Gen Z direct-equity accounts in the report had never placed a sell order, compared with 19% of Gen X and 9% of Baby Boomers. Millennials actually led that category at 30%, so they can claim at least one victory in the case against their alleged financial recklessness.

Once the definition is widened from “never sold” to simply buying more than selling, Gen Z moves to the front.

About 76% of Gen Z bStocks accounts were net accumulators, the highest share of any generation and nine percentage points above millennials. In direct equities, 77% were accumulating, compared with 74% of Gen X and 68% of Baby Boomers.

They're not just trading less. In the parts of Binance designed to resemble ownership rather than a short-term derivative trade, they're mostly adding.

Perps are for trading and ETFs are for keeping

That behavior becomes stranger when you look at perpetuals, because a generation that came of age alongside crypto should theoretically be perfectly comfortable with them. They're comfortable enough to use them, but they're not using them as aggressively as older users.

The average Gen Z account made 13 TradFi-perpetual trades per month, compared with 17 for millennials, 16.5 for Gen X, and 19 for Baby Boomers. Only 14% of Gen Z perpetual accounts qualified as high-frequency, below millennials and Gen X at 18% and even below boomers at 16%.

That gives us the slightly ridiculous situation in which the 22-year-old trading stocks through a crypto exchange is making fewer perpetual trades than someone's boomer dad.

We saw a similar pattern in leveraged and inverse ETF usage, too. Some 88.2% of Gen Z TradFi-perpetual accounts recorded no activity in leveraged or inverse ETFs, compared with 84.5% of millennials and 85.9% of Gen X. In bStocks, 98.9% of Gen Z accounts avoided those products, again more than either of the other working-age cohorts.

Boomers remain harder to beat. They had the highest share of accounts avoiding leveraged and inverse products overall, including 98.9% in direct equities versus 96.5% for Gen Z.

So zoomers haven't become boomers. However, among people who haven't reached retirement age, their behavior is surprisingly close.

The more interesting distinction is between what Gen Z trades and where it actually leaves money.

Leveraged and inverse ETFs represented 9.25% of Gen Z direct-equity turnover in July, but only 3.93% of net inflows. By the first days of August, their share of net inflows had fallen again to 2.65%.

That suggests leverage is being treated the way leverage is supposed to be treated: as a short-term position rather than somewhere to park capital.

TradFi perpetuals show something similar. About 60% of Gen Z accounts were net buyers, the highest proportion of any age group, but the actual net flow represented less than 1% of gross volume. Traders were opening and closing positions, leaving very little capital behind.

Equities look completely different. Gen Z's direct-equity net flow ratio was 26.5%, with average net inflows of $1,898 per account.

The distinction explains why simply asking whether young investors use perps misses what's happening. They do use them, but their persistent capital is going somewhere else.

Binance's earlier research on the next generation of investors gives a plausible reason for this. Gen Z already accounts for around 44% of Binance's direct-stock and bStocks users and 45% of TradFi-perp users, making it the largest cohort in direct stocks and bStocks and roughly level with millennials in TradFi perpetuals. More than 90% of TradFi users across generations were based in emerging markets, where getting access to US securities through a conventional domestic broker can be considerably harder.

For some of those users, the crypto exchange may effectively be the easiest brokerage they've ever had.

They already know the interface, the account is funded, fractional exposure is available, and the market can be accessed outside normal US trading hours. Binance reported that 13% of all Direct Stocks users were Gen Z customers in emerging markets with less than $2,000 in equity assets.

That makes the behavior easier to understand. The exchange doesn't have to turn every young customer into a perpetuals trader because it can also become the place where that customer buys ordinary investments.

We used to put the money in a pickle

The contrast is funny because some of the financial products that came out of crypto during earlier crypto cycles were completely insane by conventional standards.

Pickle Finance had Jars and Farms, including arrangements that compound returns from other protocols and reward users for depositing the resulting tokens. The concepts have financial explanations, although the vocabulary makes them sound like a pension designed during a prolonged supermarket incident.

ShibaSwap likewise uses “Bury” for staking tokens, with SHIB, LEASH, and BONE among the names in the interface. Crypto took activities already capable of confusing newcomers and gave them instructions suitable for a very ambitious dog.

A decade of that created a reasonable assumption that people who don't remember a world before Dogecoin would be even more comfortable with financial chaos.

Instead, the Binance data shows younger users putting a growing share of their equity money into unleveraged ETFs, trading less frequently than millennials and Gen X, and leaving leveraged exposure with a relatively small share of their net investment.

That doesn't mean they've abandoned crypto. A 2023 FINRA Foundation and CFA Institute survey found that 55% of US Gen Z investors owned cryptocurrency, while CryptoSlate has previously covered the broader appetite among young Americans investing in crypto.

The more interesting possibility is that using crypto and wanting maximum financial risk were never the same preference.

For someone who first encountered finance through an exchange app, Binance doesn't necessarily feel like the rebellious alternative to a brokerage account. It's simply the financial interface they already know, and once stocks and ETFs appear inside it, there's no reason their investment taste has to resemble the branding that surrounded crypto's earlier years.

That's where Gen Z looks different from both the millennials immediately above them and the boomers at the other end.

They're not building classic retirement portfolios. Semiconductor exposure, AI stocks, tokenized equities, and 24-hour markets are hardly an attempt to recreate 1990s wealth management. But they're using those products with a surprisingly old-fashioned instinct: buy something, keep more than you sell, and don't make every position dependent on leverage.

Crypto spent years making finance stranger so younger people would want to use it. The youngest customers may have taken the interface and left some of the weirdness behind.

Fashion can bring back the jeans while finance brings back the ordinary ambition to own something, leave it alone for a while, and hope it does reasonably well. The pockets are certainly big enough for both.

The post Gen Z are investing like Boomers – with some surprising portfolio decisions appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Washington came surprisingly close this week to writing a dollar amount into one of its thorniest crypto ethics rule debates.

Under the final Senate draft of the CLARITY Act, senior federal officials holding equity worth at least $15,000 in certain businesses that issue or sponsor digital assets would have had to sell that interest or place it into a qualified blind trust. Their spouses would have faced the same restriction, but their adult children wouldn't.

The bill failed to advance on Sept. 15, so none of this became law. But the language is revealing because CLARITY was primarily supposed to establish who regulates crypto markets and under what rules. By the end of the negotiations, Congress was also trying to decide where a government official's crypto fortune ends and the family's begins. Republicans said the final draft incorporated most of a bipartisan ethics proposal and dozens of changes requested by Democrats, while several Democrats still argued that the protections didn't go far enough.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick shows why those distinctions matter in real life.

Lutnick spent decades running Cantor Fitzgerald, one of Wall Street's major trading and investment firms, before joining President Donald Trump's Cabinet in February 2025. Cantor also became deeply embedded in crypto through its relationship with Tether, the company behind USDT, the world's largest stablecoin. The firm has held billions of dollars of Treasuries for Tether and remains involved in its US business, including as reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer for Tether's regulated US stablecoin.

When Lutnick entered government, he stepped down from Cantor and later transferred his ownership through trusts benefiting his adult children. His son Brandon now runs the company and controls the trusts holding the voting interests. SEC filings show that after the October 2025 transfer, Howard Lutnick no longer held beneficial ownership of the securities tied to that control structure.

Legally, that's an important separation. But economically, the family remains heavily exposed to the same business.

That gap between the official and the family is exactly where the proposed crypto rules become interesting.

The ethics rule wasn't really about owning Bitcoin

The ethics rule was narrower than a ban on politicians holding crypto.

Owning $20,000 of Bitcoin wouldn't automatically have triggered it. The draft targeted equity interests in businesses or subsidiaries whose largest revenue source in any of the preceding three calendar years was issuing or sponsoring digital assets, excluding tokenized traditional assets. It also restricted officials from issuing or sponsoring digital assets for compensation.

The people covered included the president, vice president, senior executive officials, members of Congress, and other federal officeholders already subject to public financial-disclosure rules. Spouses were included as well, but adult children weren't.

That last distinction became one of the reasons several Democrats withheld support.

The concern is easiest to understand through the Trump family itself. Trump's latest certified financial disclosure showed more than $1.4 billion in 2025 income from crypto ventures, according to Reuters, with most of it connected to World Liberty Financial and the Trump meme coin business. World Liberty was founded with members of his family, including his sons. The White House has said Trump's finances are managed by his children and that his private interests don't influence administration policy.

Under the Senate proposal, a qualifying interest still owned by Trump himself could have required divestment or a blind trust. The same rule would apply to his spouse. Ownership held independently by adult children would fall outside that particular requirement.

Lutnick creates an even neater example because he already did what federal ethics rules generally want a Cabinet official to do: he left the company and transferred control.

Cantor announced in May 2025 that his ownership would pass to trusts benefiting Brandon, Kyle, and his other adult children, with Brandon serving as controlling trustee. The transaction later closed, and public securities filings reflect the change in control.

So this isn't a case in which the Commerce secretary appears to be secretly running his old company from Washington. The more difficult issue is what an ethics rule should do when an official has genuinely separated himself from an asset, but the family's wealth is still tied to an industry affected by government policy.

Federal conflict law has traditionally drawn that line fairly close to the official. Financial interests belonging to a spouse or minor child can be attributed to an executive-branch employee. An independent adult child's interests generally aren't automatically treated as the parent's. That keeps the law from assuming that every financially independent son or daughter is simply an extension of a government official.

Crypto makes the consequences of that boundary much easier to see. A parent can leave office-facing control behind while the next generation continues running a business tied to stablecoins, token issuance, Bitcoin finance, or another sector whose economics are affected by federal policy.

The legal separation can be real even when the family connection remains obvious.

A blind trust means more than handing the company to your kids

The other source of confusion is the phrase “blind trust.”

In ordinary conversation, it can sound like any arrangement in which someone transfers assets to a trustee and promises not to interfere, but federal ethics rules mean something much stricter.

A qualified blind trust uses an independent trustee and limits the official's knowledge of, and control over, the investments. The point isn't simply to put another person's name on the paperwork; it's to prevent the officeholder from knowing enough about the portfolio to shape government decisions around particular holdings.

Even then, assets placed into the trust don't instantly become invisible for conflict purposes. Federal ethics guidance generally treats the original holdings as known until the trustee disposes of them or they fall below the relevant threshold. The official can't erase knowledge of owning a company simply by signing a trust agreement on Monday.

That's very different from transferring a family company to adult children. Lutnick's structure removed his control while deliberately keeping ownership within the next generation of the family. A qualified blind trust is designed to separate the official from the investment itself.

The CLARITY draft would have required the latter for certain covered holdings if the official didn't sell. Under this specific provision, the trustee's actions and those of businesses held by the trust would not be attributed to the official; existing conflict-of-interest laws would still apply.

That made the proposal stronger than simple disclosure. It also exposed the limit that ultimately drew much of the political argument: Congress was willing to reach the official and spouse, but not automatically the adult children.

Supporters of the final bill described the ethics language as a substantial concession made during bipartisan negotiations. Several Democrats said it still left too much room for presidents, Cabinet officials, and their families to remain financially connected to crypto businesses while the government writes the industry's rules.

Those are competing judgments about how broad an ethics law should be, rather than a disagreement over where the draft drew the line. The Senate never got far enough to test that line in practice.

But the problem isn't going away with this version of CLARITY.

Crypto has made the familiar Washington problem of family wealth harder to contain because government policy can change the value and viability of privately held token businesses very quickly. Stablecoin regulation can reshape an issuer's market, banking rules can affect which companies get access to dollars, and securities law can determine whether a token business can operate in the US at all.

That makes ownership and control important, but it also makes the family boundary harder to ignore.

Congress can require a president or Cabinet secretary to sell an asset. It can require a blind trust and prevent the official from controlling what replaces it. What it hasn't settled is how far those restrictions should follow the money once the business passes to the next generation.

The post Why Trump backed a crypto ethics rule that stopped at the family business appeared first on CryptoSlate.

U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds drew $433 million of net inflows on Friday, Sept. 18, according to Farside Investors. The session extended the market's rebound to a second day, but it did not fully repair the withdrawals recorded earlier in the week.

In the Farside data, Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund, or FBTC, supplied $310.7 million on Friday. That was nearly 2.9 times the $108.4 million added by BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust, known as IBIT. Bitwise's BITB, ARK 21Shares' ARKB and VanEck's HODL also posted smaller positive flows, giving the session more than one meaningful source of demand.

The issuer split marked a reversal from the earlier rebound. Monday's return to inflows was led by BlackRock, with Fidelity playing a secondary role. By Friday, Fidelity was the largest contributor while IBIT remained positive.

The broader two-day picture was less decisive. Thursday and Friday generated $592.5 million of combined inflows after investors withdrew $746.3 million on Tuesday and Wednesday. The rebound therefore left a $153.8 million gap against those two losing sessions.

Monday's $159.9 million inflow was enough to push the five-session total barely above zero. The week ended with $6.1 million of net inflows, underscoring how little separated the recovery from a negative weekly result.

Friday also did not overturn the weekly issuer ranking. IBIT accumulated $120.6 million across the five sessions, compared with $79.9 million for FBTC. Fidelity led the latest session, but BlackRock still attracted more capital over the full week.

That distinction matters for judging whether demand has genuinely broadened. Friday showed that the rebound was no longer dependent on IBIT alone, but a single session cannot establish a lasting change in how investors are allocating money across the funds. The weekly totals still point to BlackRock as the larger net beneficiary.

The withdrawals landed on Sept. 15 and Sept. 16, the day before and the day of the Federal Reserve's decision to raise its target range by 25 basis points to 3.75% to 4.00%. The timing provides context, but the available data does not show that the policy decision caused either the outflows or the subsequent rebound.

The next ETF sessions will show whether Fidelity and the smaller issuers continue to contribute alongside BlackRock. For now, the evidence supports a narrower conclusion: participation broadened on Friday, the rebound recovered most of the midweek damage, and the week itself remained close to flat.

The post Fidelity surge brings in $310M BTC saving Bitcoin ETFs from a disastrous week appeared first on CryptoSlate.

On October 18, 2026 the US administration has to set how high the new tariffs against Russia will be. The law permits up to 500 percent; it prescribes not a single figure. The act behind that deadline is H.R. 5334, and it bundles sanctions, tariffs and prohibitions against Russia into one package. For you as a crypto investor, October 18 is neither a buy nor a sell signal but a date in the calendar: that is the day it is decided whether a sanctions act turns into a macro event or stays a narrowly drawn measure. This article explains what the law actually says, by what route Russia sanctions reach Bitcoin at all, and what you can check until then without touching a single position.

What H.R. 5334 says and why October 18, 2026 counts

The White House reports the president's signature under H.R. 5334, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, for Friday, September 18, 2026. The official statement says the act authorizes sanctions, tariffs and prohibitions against Russia, expands them and at the same time extends existing sanctions against Iran.

What matters is the difference between two things that headlines tend to merge. A sanctions act is not itself a tariff: it creates the legal basis and instructs the administration to set concrete rates within a deadline. A tariff, in turn, is a duty on imported goods that the importer pays in the destination country and as a rule passes on in its prices.

The signature starts a 30-day clock. Trade outlet CryptoSlate extrapolates it to October 18, 2026 in its analysis of September 19, 2026: by that day the administration has to determine which rates actually apply. That is exactly why the date is of any interest to the crypto market. Before it there is an authorization with a very wide frame; after it there is a number you can work with.

Up to 500 percent on Russian goods: a ceiling, not a mandatory rate

According to CryptoSlate, the act obliges the president to raise duties on all Russian goods imported into the United States. Oil, natural gas and petroleum products are named explicitly. The rate may reach up to 500 percent.

That figure is a ceiling and not a prescribed rate. A ceiling means the administration may go that far but does not have to. The room between a symbolic surcharge and the full level is therefore wider than the distance between most realistic market scenarios. Anyone reading the 500 percent as a decided measure is reading the law wrong.

For the market it is therefore not the headline that decides but the implementation. Which level is chosen, which goods are covered and from when the rates apply: those three points are not fixed before October 18, and without them no transmission route can be quantified seriously.

The third-country clause: when other countries risk tariffs of up to 100 percent

The second provision weighs more heavily in economic terms than the first. This clause is aimed at third countries, meaning countries that are not sanctioned themselves but continue to trade with Russia. Anyone making new purchases of Russian crude oil or natural gas after the 30-day deadline expires, and ranking among the five largest buyers, can be hit with tariffs of up to 100 percent on all goods that country exports to the United States, according to CryptoSlate's analysis.

The same ceiling applies to the five countries that the US administration considers most helpful in circumventing the oil sanctions. Sanctions circumvention here means any route by which sanctioned goods or sanctioned money still reach their destination via an unsuspicious third party, for instance through intermediaries, reflagging or layered companies in a third country.

The decisive point: the act names none of these countries, and it prescribes no minimum rate. Who gets hit is therefore an administrative decision, not a consequence of the statutory text. That very uncertainty makes October 18 the test of whether the package becomes a broad trade shock or a narrowly framed sanctions measure.

Ten days' warning: the first solid signal comes from Congress

The act contains a reporting duty that is more practical for you than any forecast. Before the administration imposes or changes tariffs under the third-country clause, the president or the US trade representative has to submit a written justification to six congressional committees, at least ten days in advance. According to CryptoSlate, that justification must state both the tariff rate and the methodology by which the affected country was selected.

Something concrete follows from that: the first solid signal can become public well before October 18. Anyone with the date in the calendar should therefore also keep an eye on the congressional notices of the preceding days and not only on the deadline itself. That is where it first appears how close the rates come to the ceilings and which countries are in the crosshairs.

Exemptions and waivers: why the ceiling is rarely the outcome

The act contains two built-in valves. An exemption applies to certain natural gas purchases. And the president can suspend tariffs if he certifies to Congress that doing so serves the national interests of the United States.

Such a waiver is a formal decision not to apply a rule that otherwise holds. In sanctions practice it is the norm rather than the exception, because it allows the administration to build pressure without damaging its own supply or important trading partners. For your assessment that means the range of possible outcomes runs from a decision with almost no consequences to a tangible intervention in energy flows, and both ends are covered by the act.

What the Fed decided on September 16 and why it narrows the room

The date meets a monetary policy that has just turned the other way. On September 16, 2026 the US central bank raised the policy rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range of 3.75 to 4.00 percent and justified the increase with still elevated inflation. It was the first hike since July 2023; German business media report consistently on a unanimous decision and a further step signaled before year-end.

Why that counts here: a central bank already acting restrictively has little room to respond to an additional price push in energy with easing. An energy shock in a phase of falling rates works differently from the same shock in a phase of rising rates. The second case is the one we are in.

The transmission route to the crypto market: energy, inflation, rates, dollar

CryptoSlate describes the route from tariff to price in four links, and that description is the outlet's assessment, not this newsroom's expectation. Energy first: high tariffs on countries that keep buying Russian oil or gas can shift trade flows once further purchases become economically or politically expensive. Whether world market prices respond depends on which countries are hit, how high the rates turn out and whether Russian volumes are merely redirected rather than taken off the market.

The second link is inflation. According to CryptoSlate's account, Fed governor Christopher Waller pointed out this year that persistently higher energy costs feed through to the prices of other goods and services, because companies pass on their increased input costs. Repeated energy and tariff shocks could also raise inflation expectations.

The third link is rates and the dollar: rising inflation expectations push government bond yields up and support the dollar, which makes capital more expensive and reduces liquidity for risk assets. The fourth link is the crypto market itself. A study by the Bank for International Settlements, which CryptoSlate cites, links tighter US monetary policy to falling crypto prices and weaker demand for stablecoins.

This chain is a mechanism, not a timetable. Every link can hold or break, and nobody can say seriously where Bitcoin stands on October 19. How sensitively the market can react to tariff news was described by cryptoticker.io on February 23, 2026 in its analysis of volatility around earlier tariff plans; the route via the oil price was worked through by the newsroom on March 28, 2026 using the example of the Russian export ban.

The counter-argument: why the effect may fail to materialize

A date with an open outcome has two sides. Three things speak against a tangible market shock, all of them built into the act itself: a mild implementation with rates well below the ceilings, generous use of the waivers, and the possibility that Moscow simply redirects its volumes to other buyers rather than taking them off the market. If energy prices stay stable, nothing arrives at the end of the chain.

Three points speak for a tangible effect as well: aggressive rates against the largest buyers of Russian energy, sustained pressure on oil and gas prices, and a central bank that wants to tighten anyway because of elevated inflation. If all of that comes together, the sanctions package becomes one more brake on financing conditions. Which of the two descriptions applies cannot be settled before the rates are published, and anyone selling a direction today is selling a supposition.

Why the US act is something different from the EU crypto sanctions

A distinction is worth drawing here, because both topics end up under the same search term. Anyone searching for crypto sanctions almost always lands on the European measures and not on this American act. H.R. 5334 is a trade and sanctions law addressing flows of goods. On cryptocurrencies, crypto exchanges or crypto service providers it contains nothing, as far as the available sources report.

The European Union takes a different route and hits crypto infrastructure directly. On August 21, 2026 cryptoticker.io set out in detail which fourteen crypto platforms were blocked by the EU transaction ban from August 23 and what that means for incoming transfers. What stands there is a sanctions list, a ban on certain services for Russian actors, and a rule allowing the EU to cover entire third countries in future.

A rule of thumb for placing this: the American act affects the crypto market only indirectly, through macro channels. The European measures act directly on individual platforms, wallets and transactions. For your portfolio those are two entirely different risks, and only one of them has a date on October 18.

Why cryptocurrencies feature in sanctions debates at all

Since the war in Ukraine began, financial sanctions against banks and other financial institutions have been part of the West's standard toolkit. A financial sanction is the order to deny certain people, companies or states access to the financial system, and it works through the institutions that provide that access. That is exactly where cryptocurrencies come into view: payments can be settled without a bank, which is why many supervisors regard the crypto sector as a possible route around them.

The other side of that concern is rarely voiced. A public blockchain is a permanent cash book that anyone can inspect. Authorities and specialist analytics firms trace addresses back over years, assets on listed addresses can be frozen, and supervised crypto firms run anti-money-laundering and sanctions screening in the same working step. For the crypto sector as a whole that means regulated trading is transparent rather than anonymous, and that is the reason sanctions can be enforced there at all.

Sanctions risk in your portfolio: what happens if your exchange has a listed counterparty

The concrete, non-macroeconomic risk lies in your provider's sanctions screening. Crypto service providers in the EU have to check customers, wallet addresses and incoming transactions against sanctions lists. If that screening triggers, the amount is frozen and reported instead of processed, regardless of whether you knew anything about the origin of the funds.

If it happens to you, it runs in this order: the provider blocks the amount, informs the competent supervisor and often may not even tell you the reason. In Germany, BaFin is the authority where that route ends. Release follows only after an official review, and that takes time. Customers without complete evidence of the origin of their funds wait longest.

For you that means two things. First: a balance held with a provider without solid supervision is harder to reach in a sanctions case than a balance at a supervised exchange. Which obligations now apply to supervised providers is set out in the overview of MiCA licensing requirements for crypto firms. Second, it is worth looking at the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges before a date with an unclear outcome draws closer, not afterwards.

What you can check before October 18 without trading

The most useful preparation for a macro date consists of homework that makes sense regardless of the outcome. Buying and selling are not part of it.

1. Note the date and the lead time. October 18, 2026 is the deadline; the congressional notices under the ten-day rule are the earlier signal. Both belong in the same calendar entry.
2. Go through your counterparties. Where does which holding sit, which provider is under which supervisor, and how long does a payout take if it comes to that?
3. Recalculate leverage and liquidation levels. Anyone working with borrowed capital should know before a window of volatility at what price a position closes automatically. That number is best known while things are calm.
4. Check your access. Do two-factor methods, recovery codes and access to your own wallet work? A date with heightened attention is also a date with heightened fraud.

None of this is a bet on a direction, and all of it keeps its value if October 18 passes without consequence.

Tax: why a panic sale costs more than the price drop

A date with an unclear outcome tempts people into quick sales, and in Germany that is often the most expensive part. For private disposal transactions under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act the rule is: hold a cryptocurrency for more than a year and the gain is sold tax-free. Sell within the one-year period and the gain is taxed at your personal rate as soon as the exemption limit of 1,000 euros in the calendar year is exceeded; that limit has applied since the 2024 assessment period.

So if you sell holdings in October out of nervousness whose one-year period would have expired in December, the nervousness may cost you more than the feared price decline. On top of that comes the documentation duty: acquisition date, acquisition cost and the allocation method you chose have to be evidenced, and that is hard to do retroactively. How to keep that evidence cleanly is shown by the comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers. For assessing an individual case, tax advice remains the place to go; this section does not replace it.

What this act does not say

Honest treatment of an open situation includes the list of what stays open. The act names no affected countries. It prescribes no minimum rate. According to the available sources it contains no crypto-specific provision. And it says nothing about how quickly the rates once set are actually levied.

Nor can the statutory text tell you how large direct trade between the United States and Russia even is today. Anyone wanting to estimate the effect needs that order of magnitude, and it is one of the points to be re-examined once the rates are published. As long as those figures are missing, any concrete price expectation for this date is an assertion without a basis.

Russia sanctions and crypto: what to take away

1. Treat October 18, 2026 as a date, not as a signal. What will matter is the level of the rates and the list of affected countries, and a first signal can come from Congress ten days earlier. Anyone planning an entry in this phase anyway should settle the provider question first: the crypto exchange comparison takes it off the table before things get hectic.
2. Check your tax position before a possible swing, not after. Holding periods and evidence often decide the net return more clearly than the price itself; the tax tools in comparison keep the history while it is still complete.
3. Separate macro risk from provider risk. The US act works through energy, inflation and rates; the European sanctions hit individual platforms directly. Against the second risk, the choice of a supervised counterparty helps, as broken down in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Primary sources for this article: the White House statement on the signing of H.R. 5334 of September 18, 2026 and the assessment by CryptoSlate on the October 18 date of September 19, 2026.

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

Zcash traded above $1,500 for the first time since its launch in 2016 on September 19, 2026. If you hold ZEC, the most important question this weekend is neither the next price target nor whether the rally continues. It is this: when does your gain become tax-free in Germany, where will you still be allowed to trade the coin eighteen months from now, and is it sitting somewhere you can still move it from? This article works through those three points in turn and names the source and the measurement time behind every figure.

Zcash price today: $1,473.77 after an intraday high of $1,590.80

The reading everything else refers to: Zcash traded at $1,473.77 on September 20, 2026 at 00:49 UTC. That is 6.41 percent below the previous day. Within the preceding 24 hours the high was $1,590.80 and the low $1,466.66. The price therefore sits closer to the daily low than to the daily high.

Over longer periods the picture differs. Over seven days Zcash is up 31.38 percent, over 30 days 159.02 percent, over twelve months 2,913.12 percent. Market capitalization stands at $24.97 billion, which places Zcash ninth among all crypto assets. Trading volume over the past 24 hours was $1.15 billion. There are 16,940,252 ZEC in circulation out of a maximum of 21,000,000.

cryptoticker.io collected these values itself on September 20, 2026 at 00:49 UTC, through CoinGecko's public market data endpoint for the Zcash asset. A single asset was checked. What we could not check is how the quotes at individual venues differ from this aggregated average price; anyone trading on a particular exchange will see a slightly different number there.

Record or not? Why the figures for the Zcash all-time high diverge

A clarification is worth making here, because the reports over this weekend refer throughout to an all-time high. Industry outlet The Coin Republic reported a record of $1,535 on September 19 and said Zcash had risen above $1,500 for the first time ever.

CoinGecko's database, by contrast, lists an all-time high of $3,191.93, set on October 28, 2016. Both figures are correct within their own frame and cannot be merged into a single number. The October 2016 value comes from Zcash's first days of trading, when only a tiny number of coins had been issued and individual trades cleared at four-digit prices. Count that phase in, and what you see today is not an all-time high but the highest level in almost ten years. Exclude it as a distortion, and you get a record.

For your own decision the difference is less academic than it sounds. A price running into a known high meets sellers there who have been waiting years for that exit. A price in unknown territory does not face that resistance. Which of the two pictures applies depends entirely on how you rate the 2016 number.

Open interest and short liquidations: what pushed the ZEC price up

Open interest is the total of all outstanding derivatives contracts on an asset, meaning the money betting on rising or falling prices through leveraged products. For Zcash that total stood at $3.47 billion on September 19 according to The Coin Republic, higher than ever before for this coin.

A second mechanism comes on top. A liquidation is the forced closure of a leveraged position by the exchange as soon as the posted collateral no longer suffices. When a short position is force-closed, the exchange has to buy in the market, and that purchase pushes the price further up, which unwinds the next position. In the 24 hours before the report, short positions worth $26.5 million were closed this way; on the Wednesday of the same week it was $48.9 million. According to the report, a single trader lost a short position of $18.3 million after winning 26 trades in a row.

A sober reading follows from that: a substantial share of the past few days' move came from forced buying, not from fresh capital looking to position for the long term. Buying of that kind stops once the affected positions are cleared out. Seen in that light, the 6.41 percent pullback from the daily high is not a break in the move but what regularly happens once a liquidation chain ends. On its own it says nothing about the coming weeks.

The German one-year holding period under Section 23 EStG: when your Zcash gain stays tax-free

For investors with unlimited tax liability in Germany the current rule is this: crypto assets held as private assets fall under private disposal transactions in Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Sell within a year of buying and the gain is taxed at your personal income tax rate. If more than a year lies between acquisition and sale, the gain is tax-free, regardless of its size.

Within the one-year period there is an exemption limit of 1,000 euros for the sum of all private disposal transactions in a calendar year. The word limit is to be taken literally: stay below it with a gain of 999 euros and you pay nothing; land at 1,001 euros and you are taxed on the full amount, not just on the excess euro.

If your Zcash position has gained 159 percent over the past few weeks, the purchase date decides a considerable sum. On a position acquired more than a year ago, the entire gain is tax-free under the law as it stands. On a position you bought in August of this year, the exemption is zero and the full rate applies. So check first which tranche carries which acquisition date before you think about a partial sale. Where there are several purchases, the order you base your documentation on applies; the German finance ministry accepts per-wallet treatment for crypto assets.

The draft bill and December 31, 2026: what is meant to change for the holding period

That legal position is up for revision. A draft bill from the German finance ministry names December 31, 2026 as the cut-off: crypto assets acquired after that date would fall under the flat-rate withholding tax, which would remove the one-year holding period for them. We worked through the draft in a separate article on September 8, 2026.

Two things need to be kept apart. A draft bill is a working document from the ministry and not applicable law; nothing has been decided so far, and the draft can be amended or dropped as the process continues. At the same time, that cut-off date is why the acquisition date of your ZEC is gaining importance right now: holdings you still acquire this year would not be covered by the new rule as the draft text stands.

So keep a clean record of the acquisition dates of your tranches, whatever the outcome of the process. Documentation you have to reconstruct in January is the most expensive version.

The EU anti-money-laundering regulation from July 10, 2027: what is coming for privacy coins

The second date is further away and firm in return. Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, the European Union's anti-money-laundering regulation, applies from July 10, 2027 according to the official summary on the EU law portal. It bars credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers from keeping anonymous accounts, explicitly including anonymous crypto accounts.

The decisive point for Zcash is the provision on anonymity-enhancing crypto assets. The industry reading is predominantly that licensed providers in the EU will no longer be allowed to offer such assets from that date, which would amount to a delisting. Whether supervisors will treat Zcash as fully covered has not been settled, and that is exactly where the coin differs from other candidates. So do not rely on a figure or a date at second hand: the text of the regulation is publicly available on EUR-Lex, and we have covered the consequences for Zcash buyers in more detail in a separate article on the EU trading ban.

What follows in practice is manageable. The regulation addresses companies, not you as a private individual. It prohibits neither holding nor transferring ZEC from your own wallet. What it changes is where you trade: if European providers delist, trading moves to platforms outside the licensed framework, and with it your risk profile moves too.

MiCA-licensed exchanges: where you can still trade Zcash in Germany today

MiCA is the EU regulation on markets in crypto assets. It governs who may offer crypto services in the EU and requires authorization for that, granted and supervised in Germany by BaFin. Since the EU-wide transition period ended on July 1, 2026, supervisors have become noticeably stricter towards providers without a license. We have set out what obligations that brings for companies in our overview of MiCA licensing requirements.

Two checks follow from that for you as a holder. First: is your trading venue on the list of authorized providers? A regulated provider may delist Zcash sooner, but it gives you an enforceable legal framework and a payout that works. You will find the selection in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Second: do you know which address types your provider supports for withdrawals? Some platforms have listed Zcash but settle deposits and withdrawals exclusively over transparent addresses. That is irrelevant for the payout itself, but it becomes a problem the moment you want to withdraw a larger holding at short notice and the receiving end does not accept the format. Better to settle that question before the cut-off date than on the day a delisting is announced.

Shielded pool and viewing key: why Zcash sits differently from Monero in technical terms

Zcash knows two kinds of address. Transparent addresses work as they do on Bitcoin: sender, recipient and amount are openly visible on the blockchain. Shielded addresses, the so-called shielded pool in technical language, hide those details using a cryptographic method known as a zero-knowledge proof. A zero-knowledge proof is a mathematical demonstration that a statement is true without disclosing the underlying data.

The difference from a fully anonymous coin lies in the viewing key. A viewing key is a separate key that lets you grant a third party sight of your shielded transactions without handing them control of the coins. You can use it to disclose to your tax adviser or an authority, selectively, what has happened on your addresses.

That mechanism is precisely why the regulatory classification of Zcash is more open than for coins without such an option. A provider can argue that selective disclosure meets anti-money-laundering requirements and keep the coin listed, possibly restricted to transparent addresses. Whether European supervisors follow that reading has not been decided. For you that means: treat the question as open and make your custody decision so that neither outcome catches you off guard.

Self-custody for Zcash: what a wallet has to do for shielded addresses

If you take your ZEC off the exchange, the choice of wallet is narrower than for Bitcoin or Ethereum. Look for three properties. The wallet has to be able to generate shielded addresses and send from them, not merely receive on transparent ones. It has to support the current address standard, because Zcash has developed its shielded addresses across several generations and older pools are being retired step by step. And it has to give you a recovery phrase that you store separately from the device.

The second point is in practice the most common stumbling block. A balance still sitting in an older pool has to be moved actively, and that does not happen by itself. We have described how to check whether your holding is affected and how the migration works. The upcoming network upgrade is also worth keeping an eye on if you hold your coins yourself: the NU7 upgrade is due on November 5, 2026, and we have written up what holders should take care of beforehand.

Hardware devices support Zcash to differing extents depending on manufacturer and firmware. Some handle transparent addresses only, which is sufficient for long-term storage but takes shielded use away from you. Clarify that before the purchase, not after.

Grayscale ZCSH and the September 30 share split: why you cannot reach it from Germany

Grayscale's Zcash fund has traded on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH since August 25, 2026. The provider has announced a three-for-one share split for September 30, 2026, with the split shares tradable from that day. A split changes only the denomination and not the value of your holding; three shares at a third of the price are the same assets.

For investors resident in Germany the product remains uninteresting for a different reason. US funds built this way do not meet European requirements for distribution to retail investors, and in particular the mandatory key information document is missing. German brokers therefore regularly do not make such securities available to retail clients. We have written up the details in our article on the Zcash ETF.

The fund remains relevant nonetheless, because it shows institutional capital in the US gaining regulated access to Zcash while the European framework moves in the opposite direction. That divergence is one of the reasons the price has moved so markedly over the past 30 days.

Putting the Zcash pullback in context: what to take away

The price jump is the event, the deadlines are the work. Three steps that can be done today:

1. Gather the acquisition dates of your tranches. Note the date, quantity and price for each purchase and work out which part of your holding already meets the one-year period under Section 23 EStG. That is the basis for every further decision and at the same time the documentation you would need if the draft bill goes through. Tools that pull this automatically from your exchange data can be found in the comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
2. Check your custody for shielded addresses. Establish whether your wallet supports the current address standard and whether any balance sits in an older pool. If you have held exclusively on the exchange so far, decide deliberately whether that should stay the case until July 2027. Suitable applications are shown in the software wallet comparison.
3. Fix your exit route in advance. If you want to sell in full or in part before the cut-off date, check now which provider that should run through and whether euro payouts work reliably there. You will find an overview of the routes in our guide to selling crypto assets.

One thing does not follow from this weekend's numbers: any statement about where Zcash will stand in a month. Record open interest and a chain of forced purchases describe how the price got to where it is. About the direction of the next move they say nothing.

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

If you still hold Stargate tokens (STG), you now have an expiry date in the calendar: after December 15, 2026, STG can no longer be converted into ZRO. LayerZero announced this in its ecosystem update on September 15, 2026, and it is the first time an end date has been named for this swap at all. Until now it ran indefinitely.

For most holders, however, an earlier deadline bites first. On September 18, Binance announced that it will carry out the swap for its own customers — and will halt trading in STG on October 6, 2026 at 03:00 UTC for that purpose. Half an hour later, at 03:30 UTC, STG deposits and withdrawals will be suspended and, according to the announcement, no longer supported. If you still want to send your tokens to the exchange, the deposit has to be fully completed before then.

And then there is the figure that nobody has written about so far. The swap runs at a fixed ratio of 1 STG = 0.08634 ZRO. That ratio comes from the acquisition proposal of August 2025. Recalculate it with today's prices and you receive considerably less for your STG than the same tokens still cost on the open market. How much less is set out below, with the arithmetic.

Until when can you swap STG for ZRO? Two deadlines, not one

The two dates belong to different houses and apply to different people. It is worth keeping them apart, because whether you have to do anything at all hangs on the distinction.

October 6, 2026 applies to you if your STG sit at Binance. The exchange states verbatim in its announcement that it will handle all technical requirements for the users involved. So you do not have to click anything. But trading ends on that day, open orders are deleted, and the route for deposits and withdrawals closes half an hour later.

December 15, 2026 applies to you if your STG sit in your own wallet. LayerZero puts it this way: the swap will remain available until December 15, after which conversions will no longer be supported. Until then the project says it is working with exchanges, market makers, custodians and ecosystem partners to accompany the transition.

A token merge is simply the consolidation of two tokens into one: one is withdrawn, the other remains, and a rate fixed in advance governs how many new units you receive for your old ones. Here STG is withdrawn and ZRO remains.

The 1 STG = 0.08634 ZRO ratio is fixed, the value it delivers is not

The ratio has been settled for more than a year. The LayerZero Foundation's acquisition proposal of August 10, 2025 states verbatim that all STG in circulation — staked and vote-escrowed included — would be swapped at a ratio of 1 STG to 0.08634 ZRO, corresponding to a value of $1.94 per ZRO and $0.1675 per STG. The same proposal names, as comparison figures, backing of $0.14444 per circulating STG and a market price at the time of $0.1637.

This is exactly where the catch lies. The ratio is a fixed number, but it connects two prices that have both moved since. ZRO stood at $1.12 on September 19, 2026 at 18:34 UTC (CoinGecko), while the exchange OKX showed $1.127 at the same moment. Against the $1.94 used in the 2025 calculation, that is around 42 percent lower.

Worked example: what 1,000 STG yield on the swap and on a sale today

Run the arithmetic on a round number and the gap is immediately visible. All prices in this section were retrieved from CoinGecko on September 19, 2026 at around 18:34 UTC.

• Swap route: 1,000 STG give you 86.34 ZRO. At a ZRO price of $1.12 that comes to $96.70, or, converted at the euro rate of 0.979998 euros per ZRO, around 84.61 euros.
• Sale route: the same 1,000 STG cost $0.142838 each on the market, so $142.84 in total, or roughly 124.43 euros.
• Gap: on this day the swap yields around 32 percent less than a sale on the market. Calculated with the OKX price for ZRO it is 31.9 percent, with the CoinGecko price 32.3 percent.

The STG price is no outlier from a single thin exchange. Within a daily volume of around $22 million, Binance showed $0.1428, Coinbase $0.1431, Kraken $0.1428 and KuCoin $0.1429. The prices sit closely together.

What you make of that is your decision and hangs on things this text does not know: your entry price, your holding period, fees, and whether you want to hold ZRO at all. What matters is only that you do the arithmetic yourself before you click, rather than taking the fixed rate for a fair price. Both prices move daily, and the figures above are a snapshot of a single afternoon. If you do not yet have an exchange on which both tokens can even be viewed, our comparison of the best crypto exchanges lists the venues that are regularly accessible in the EU.

Why the fixed 2025 swap rate sits so far from today's market price

The gap does not arise from an arithmetic error. It arises from the passage of time. The rate was fixed on a day in August 2025 when ZRO was worth almost $1.94. ZRO has given ground since, while STG holds up at a good $0.14. An offer that meant a premium on the STG market price in 2025 is therefore a discount on it today.

Why this gap has not closed by itself cannot be answered cleanly from the outside, and this text therefore makes no such claim. Only the observation itself can be verified: the fixed rate and the market price lie far apart today, and whoever swaps realises that distance. We described how strongly individual dates in the LayerZero ecosystem act on the ZRO price back in August, looking at the monthly unlocking of new tokens — read it in our analysis of the ZRO unlock and its monthly dilution.

If your STG sit at Binance: what the exchange handles automatically

For customers of the largest exchange the process is convenient, and still not without consequences. Binance announces that it will carry out the swap technically itself and refers to the project team's announcement for further detail. In practice that means your STG are converted into ZRO at the ratio of 1 to 0.08634 without you having to sign a transaction.

Three things are still worth keeping in view. First, trading ends on October 6 at 03:00 UTC, after which you can neither buy nor sell STG there. Second, open orders are deleted automatically at that moment, including limit orders you set months ago and forgot. Third, the deposit window closes at 03:30 UTC, and Binance explicitly advises allowing enough time for a deposit to be fully processed beforehand.

The Binance timetable in detail: margin, futures and spot fall away in stages

The exchange withdraws STG from circulation over a good two weeks and across several products. All times come from the Binance announcement of September 18, 2026 and are given in UTC.

• September 19, 06:00 UTC: Binance Margin suspends borrowing on the affected pairs in cross and isolated margin.
• September 24, 08:30 UTC: no new positions may be opened on the STG futures.
• September 24, 09:00 UTC: Binance Futures closes all open positions and settles them automatically. A forced settlement is a closure of a position triggered by the exchange, without you selling it yourself.
• September 24, 10:00 UTC: STG disappears from cross and isolated margin.
• October 5, 03:00 UTC: Spot Copy Trading removes the STG pairs from portfolios.
• October 6, 03:00 UTC: spot trading for STG/USDT ends, and trading bot services for this pair fall away.
• October 6, 03:30 UTC: STG deposits and withdrawals are suspended.

Nothing changes for ZRO: Binance writes that trading on the existing ZRO pairs is unaffected. Anyone who was in STG with leverage or through automated strategies therefore already has the tighter dates behind them, while the plain spot holder still has until October.

If your STG sit in your own wallet: the redemption site and its terms

Here things get less clear, and this is precisely where most guides on the internet fall down. According to the ZRO Foundation's terms of use, the official swap page is the address stargate.finance/bridge. The terms refer to it verbatim as the “STG Redemption Site” and name the ZRO Association together with the Stargate Foundation as operators. Redemption here means cashing in: you hand over STG and receive ZRO for it.

What is missing on the Stargate home page itself is striking. The navigation leads to Bridge, Earn, Stake, Pool and Overview. The addresses stargate.finance/redeem, /convert and /merge answer with a 404 error, and neither layerzero.network nor layerzero.foundation hosts a swap page of its own. The pointer to how the swap actually runs sits in a post on X that the LayerZero update links to.

This article therefore deliberately gives no click-by-click instructions. What is established: the terms name stargate.finance/bridge as the official address, and they have been unchanged since August 23, 2025. Everything beyond that you should look at on the site itself before you connect a wallet.

Why the swap is irreversible: STG are burned on redemption

This point is stated explicitly in the terms of use and belongs to the few things that leave no room for interpretation. All redemptions of STG into ZRO through the website are, accordingly, final, non-refundable and irreversible. All submitted STG are permanently and irrevocably destroyed on receipt, automatically and immediately, as part of the process via a smart contract.

This destruction is called a burn: the tokens are sent to an address from which nobody can retrieve them, and they thereby vanish from circulation. There is no way back afterwards, no cancellation and no support case that undoes the process. The terms also record that the foundation assumes no fiduciary duties and that actions you approve through your wallet are final.

Stargate switches off the bus on October 1: what that costs for bridge transfers

The same update contains a second dated change that concerns an entirely different readership: everyone who uses Stargate as a bridge between blockchains. Stargate has so far delivered transactions in two ways. Taxi delivers the value on the destination chain immediately. Bus bundles several transactions into one trip and pushes down gas costs that way.

From October 1, 2026, according to LayerZero, all Stargate transactions will be delivered via Taxi. The cheaper pooled route falls away with it. Anyone regularly moving smaller amounts between chains should recheck the costs afterwards before letting their routine run on.

Dates in the LayerZero ecosystem creating concrete deadlines for action is nothing new. In August, balances on 15 shut-down chains expired — how that played out at the time and how short the window was is in our report on the shutdown of the 15 chains.

Is swapping STG for ZRO taxable in Germany?

This question cannot be answered conclusively here, and any site claiming otherwise is overstepping its competence. What can be said is the framework within which you ask it.

A swap of one token for another typically counts, for German tax purposes, as a process in which one asset is given up and another obtained. It is therefore more than a mere renaming. Whether that becomes a taxable private disposal transaction under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act depends, among other things, on the holding period and on whether a gain arises at all. Section 23 (3) sentence 5 of the Income Tax Act provides an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros per calendar year for the sum of all private disposal transactions.

It gets particularly tricky with the Binance variant, because you do not trigger the process yourself there. Whether an automatically executed swap is to be treated differently for tax purposes than a self-initiated one is not something an article can decide for your individual case. The swap site's terms of use make clear, for their part, that you alone are responsible for determining, calculating, reporting and paying all taxes due, and that the foundation provides no tax advice.

In practice that means two things. Secure your records while you can still get them: swap date, number of STG, ZRO received, prices at the time of the transaction. At Binance that means exporting the transaction history before October 6, because after the delisting it gets more laborious. And settle your individual case with a tax adviser familiar with crypto matters.

How to spot a fake swap site

Every migration with a deadline attracts imitations, and this case is particularly vulnerable because the route is unclear. When the official path is not on the home page, people search for it, and search ads pointing at fake addresses are cheap.

Three checks that cost little time. First: type the address yourself or follow it from a source you know, instead of from a search ad or a direct message. Second: a genuine swap site never asks for your seed phrase or your private key. Anyone who does is after your balance. Third: check in your wallet's approval dialogue which contract receives which permission, and distrust unlimited approvals for tokens you have no intention of swapping.

And the sentence that always applies: there is no urgency that justifies an unchecked click. Even the tighter of the two deadlines is still a good two weeks away.

What happens if you miss the December 15 deadline?

LayerZero writes only one sentence about it, and it is unambiguous: after this date, conversions would no longer be supported. What happens to unswapped STG after that is not in the announcement. Whether a route through exchanges, custodians or a later individual arrangement stays open is therefore open, and will not be painted in here.

Only the opposite can be planned for: assume that no regular swap is possible after December 15, 2026, and organise your actions accordingly. Anyone holding at Binance has the earlier marker on October 6 anyway and has to do nothing for it — except decide beforehand whether an automatic swap at a fixed rate is what they want.

Swapping STG for ZRO: your takeaways

1. Find out where your STG actually sit. At an exchange, that venue's own timetable applies, and at Binance that is October 6, 2026. In your own wallet, December 15, 2026 applies, and then you have to act yourself. Our comparison of the best crypto exchanges shows which venues are regularly accessible.
2. Weigh the fixed swap rate against the market price before you do anything. Multiply your quantity by 0.08634 and that figure by the current ZRO price. Compare the result with what your STG cost on the market. On September 19, 2026 the swap route came out around 32 percent below. If you trigger the process yourself from a wallet, look first at how you store your holdings securely — the options are in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Secure the records while you can get them. Export your transaction history before the delisting and record the date, the quantity and the prices. For sorting and evaluating it, the programmes in our comparison of crypto tax tools are suitable.

Sources and status of the figures

The deadlines and the wording on the swap come from the LayerZero ecosystem update of September 15, 2026. The terms on irreversibility, the official address of the swap site and the responsibility for taxes are in the terms of use of the STG redemption site. The staggered timetable and the swap ratio for exchange customers come from the Binance announcement “Binance Will Support the Stargate Finance (STG) Token Merge to LayerZero (ZRO)” of September 18, 2026. The ratio of 1 to 0.08634 and the valuation of $0.1675 per STG are in the LayerZero Foundation's acquisition proposal of August 10, 2025. All prices were retrieved from CoinGecko on September 19, 2026 at around 18:34 UTC and cross-checked against OKX and CoinGecko's exchange overview.

(As of September 19, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Two new decisions have been taken around World Liberty Financial, and both bear on how many tokens can reach the market in the coming months. The stake held by US President Donald Trump is contractually locked until May 2028. And from October 1, holders are to receive rewards if they lock their WLFI for 180 days and vote regularly. The price has barely reacted so far: according to CoinGecko data, WLFI stands at $0.0584 on Saturday evening, September 19, 2026, equivalent to around 0.051 euros, almost unchanged from the previous day.

What is documented in this article: the price data, the terms of the lock-up contract and the proposal for the rewards programme. Where the discussion turns to price movement, it is an assessment by the editorial team, and we mark it as such.

World Liberty Financial price: the numbers at a glance

Over one week WLFI is up 2.3 percent, over 30 days it is down 4 percent. The all-time low of $0.0483 dates only from September 11, 2026, and the current price sits around 21 percent above it. From the all-time high of $0.331 in September 2025, WLFI is a good 82 percent away. Market capitalisation stands at around $1.9 billion, placing the token in 54th place. In 24 hours, WLFI worth roughly $30 million changed hands.

Trump's WLFI stake: locked until May 2028

The project's founders were able to move their previously indefinitely locked tokens into a new plan: two years of full lock-up, followed by release in instalments over three years. Anyone taking part has to burn ten percent of their tokens, destroying them permanently. According to an analysis by CoinDesk, the largest wallet contributed 15.75 billion WLFI to the lock-up contract and kept 14.175 billion after the burn. That matches the stake Trump has disclosed, worth around $830 million at the current price. The first of these tokens become freely sellable in May 2028 at the earliest.

Lock-up contract: almost half of all WLFI is tied up

In total, according to CoinDesk, the lock-up contract holds 46.1 billion WLFI, almost half of the entire supply of 96.7 billion tokens. That makes the contract by far the largest single holder. The original cap stood at 100 billion tokens. For the price this means a large share of the possible selling pressure from the founder circle is contractually ruled out for the next eighteen months.

Rewards for voting: what is meant to apply from October 1

The second topic is a proposal the community is still voting on. According to The Crypto Times, the programme is set to launch on October 1, 2026 if it is adopted. Anyone wanting to take part locks freely available WLFI for at least 180 days in a protocol directly on the blockchain, without handing them to a custodian. On top of that, for every 90 days of the lock-up they have to vote on a proposal themselves at least once. A vote delegated to someone else does not count.

The rewards carry no fixed rate. They come from a pool that World Liberty Financial fills, among other sources, from fees of the World Liberty Markets trading platform and tops up every two weeks. How much an individual receives depends on the size of the pool, how many tokens are locked in total, and whether they met the voting requirement. No participant is meant to reach more than five percent of voting rights through the programme.

Locking World Liberty Financial: plan for the 180 days

For investors, the lock-up is the key point. Anyone taking part cannot touch their tokens for half a year, whatever the price does. Trading a reward whose size nobody knows in advance against six months without the option to sell pays off mainly for investors who intend to hold WLFI long term anyway. Participants should also keep an eye on the voting dates, because without casting their own vote every 90 days they risk their claim to the reward.

WLFI and taxes: what applies to rewards and sales

In Germany, rewards for locked tokens are generally treated like staking rewards, that is, as income from other services under Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act. They count at their market value on the day they arrive, and they remain tax-free up to an exemption threshold of 256 euros per year. Whether the programme falls into that category in an individual case is best settled with a tax adviser.

For a sale of the tokens themselves, the usual one-year holding period applies. Since the German Federal Ministry of Finance published its guidance on the taxation of crypto assets, it has been settled for staking that a lock-up does not extend the period to ten years. The same is likely to hold for a lock-up with a voting requirement. Each reward starts its own one-year clock on the day it arrives.

Is World Liberty Financial a good buy now?

What argues for an entry is that supply is getting tighter. The largest single holder cannot sell until May 2028, ten percent of the contributed founder tokens have been destroyed, and if the rewards programme is adopted, further tokens disappear from the market for half a year. What argues against it is that WLFI trades only a good fifth above its all-time low and the downtrend since launch remains unbroken.

On top of that comes a political risk that goes beyond the normal crypto market: the price also hangs on how Washington handles the crypto holdings of the presidential family. A revised version of the CLARITY Act provided that senior office holders must divest larger crypto holdings or place them in a blind trust. The bill failed in the Senate on September 15, as we described in our article on the failure of the CLARITY Act. The issue is likely to return, though.

Our assessment: the lock-up takes selling pressure out of the next eighteen months, but it changes nothing about the fact that the market has so far placed little trust in WLFI. The chart analysis with moving averages and trading volume is in our buy assessment of World Liberty Financial from September 16.

Buying World Liberty Financial: what to check before you enter

Three checks are worth doing before a purchase. One, the provider: platforms serving customers in the EU have needed authorisation as a crypto asset service provider under the MiCA regulation since the transition period ended in late 2025. Two, the order size: with a token turning over roughly $30 million a day, you are better off spreading your entry across several purchases. Three, custody: anyone wanting to join the rewards programme needs the tokens in a wallet they control themselves, because the lock-up runs directly on the blockchain.

Our overview of the best crypto exchanges shows which ones combine low fees with EU authorisation. Check whether WLFI is tradable there before you sign up.

World Liberty Financial and Trump: your takeaways

1. Expect less selling pressure until 2028, but no price target. The lock-up concerns the largest holder; it says nothing about demand. The buy assessment with chart analysis is in our WLFI check.
2. Lock only what you can do without for half a year. The rewards programme requires a 180-day lock-up and regular votes of your own, and the reward is not fixed in advance.
3. Document every reward. Each payment counts at its value on the day and starts its own holding period. A crypto tax tool records this automatically.

(As of September 19, 2026, 22:00. This article is not investment advice. Prices and programme terms change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Avalanche is leading the crypto market on Saturday evening. According to CoinGecko data, AVAX stands at $9.78 on September 19, 2026 at around 21:45, equivalent to 8.52 euros, and thus a good 18 percent above the previous day. No other coin among the 30 largest comes anywhere close to that gain. Bitcoin managed a plus of 0.1 percent over the same period, while Ethereum slipped by 0.2 percent.

What is documented in this article: the price data, the Paxos integration and the date of the next network upgrade. Where the discussion turns to further price movement, it is an assessment by the editorial team, and we mark it as such.

Avalanche price up 18 percent: the numbers at a glance

The daily range ran from $8.18 to $9.81. Over one week AVAX is up 32.5 percent, over 30 days the figure is 36.5 percent. Market capitalisation stands at around $4.3 billion, putting Avalanche in 29th place. In 24 hours, AVAX worth roughly $846 million changed hands. That comes to almost a fifth of the entire market value and shows how much movement there is. Measured against the all-time high of $144.96 from November 2021, AVAX remains around 93 percent below, rally notwithstanding.

Why is Avalanche rising so sharply?

Two pieces of news this week are giving the price a tailwind. The first concerns access for large investors: on September 17, the regulated financial services provider Paxos added AVAX and the Avalanche-issued version of the stablecoin USDC to its platform. According to Crypto Briefing, more than 650 institutions and payment providers work with Paxos, together reaching over 470 million end customers. They can now offer AVAX through infrastructure they already use.

The second item is a fixed date. On September 22 at 15:00 UTC, Avalanche activates the Helicon upgrade. After that, the minimum staking lock-up drops from two weeks to 48 hours. Anyone staking AVAX gets back to their coins considerably faster. That makes staking more attractive for investors who want to stay flexible.

How much of this is already priced in cannot be measured. What stands out, though, is that Avalanche is rising on its own: Bitcoin and Ethereum are treading water, and NEAR and Uniswap, both strong earlier in the week, are giving back three to five percent on Saturday. That suggests the move hangs on Avalanche itself rather than on a general market push.

Paxos and Avalanche: what the integration changes for institutions

Paxos is one of the best-known regulated providers for crypto asset custody and for stablecoins. Banks, brokers and payment services use the platform to offer their clients crypto assets without building custody themselves. With the integration, according to Crypto Briefing, these firms can build products on Avalanche and move funds directly across the network.

For the price, what the news does not say matters: it opens a route, and it carries no evidence that institutions have already bought AVAX. How much money actually flows will only become visible over weeks, for instance in holdings at custodians and in the volume of USDC on Avalanche.

Avalanche Helicon on September 22: what changes for stakers

With Helicon, the minimum staking lock-up falls from two weeks to 48 hours. At the same time, the required uptime for validators rises from 80 to 90 percent. If a validator falls below it, the investors who delegated their AVAX to that validator also risk their rewards. In our query of the P-Chain on September 17, 37 of the 593 active validators sat below the new threshold. The details are in our article on Avalanche Helicon and the shorter lock-up period.

Staking Avalanche in a rising market: plan for the lock-up

Until September 22 the old rule still applies. Anyone locking AVAX into staking now gets back to their coins after two weeks at the earliest, even if the price swings sharply in that time. After the upgrade it is 48 hours. If you stake through an exchange, check the terms for the deadlines the provider itself sets. Our comparison of staking platforms gives you an overview.

Avalanche staking and taxes: what applies to rewards and sales

In Germany, staking rewards count as income from other services under Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act. They are recognised at their market value at the moment they arrive, and they remain tax-free up to an exemption threshold of 256 euros per year. With a rising price, the taxable value of each new reward rises as well.

For a sale, the usual one-year holding period applies. Since the German Federal Ministry of Finance published its guidance on the taxation of crypto assets, it has been settled that staking does not extend that period to ten years. Each reward starts its own one-year clock on the day it arrives.

Buying Avalanche after the rally: what to check before you enter

An 18 percent gain in a single day invites a quick purchase. Three checks are worth doing first. One, the provider: platforms serving customers in the EU have needed authorisation as a crypto asset service provider under the MiCA regulation since the transition period ended in late 2025. Two, the order size: anyone buying into a rally is better off spreading entry across several purchases than putting everything in near the daily high. Three, custody: if you want to hold AVAX longer or stake it yourself, you need a wallet whose seed phrase you control.

Our overview of the best crypto exchanges shows which ones offer AVAX with low fees and EU authorisation.

Avalanche price: which levels matter now

On the upside, the round $10 mark is the next hurdle, with the daily high of $9.81 just below it. On the downside, the daily low of $8.18 serves as a first reference point. Should AVAX drop back below it, Saturday's jump would largely be surrendered. Our scenarios for the coming months are in the Avalanche price prediction.

Our assessment: with Paxos and Helicon, Avalanche has two tangible triggers, which sets it apart from the many altcoins that simply rise with the market. An 18 percent gain in a single day is often partly given back, though, especially when Bitcoin provides no direction. Anyone holding AVAX should therefore decide in advance at which price to secure gains or cap losses, instead of settling that under the impression of the day's move.

Avalanche price and staking: your takeaways

1. Check your validator before September 22. With Helicon, the required uptime rises to 90 percent. You can compare provider terms in the staking comparison.
2. Buy in tranches and only from authorised providers. Spread your entry across several purchases and use an exchange with MiCA authorisation from the exchange comparison.
3. Document every staking reward. Each reward counts at its value on the day and starts its own holding period. A crypto tax tool records this automatically.

(As of September 19, 2026, 21:45. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

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

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

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

The network's clock just sped up again, but the extra speed goes to freshness, not capacity.

The filing seeks CFTC approval for contracts giving US traders 24/5 leveraged exposure to individual stocks without ownership.

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood pushed back against Jason Calacanis after the venture capitalist dismissed Bitcoin’s latest rebound as a "dead cat bounce" and argued that the cryptocurrency has lost its technological edge.

Vitalik Buterin says he is "doubling down" on privacy as Ethereum developers work on private reads, private transactions, and stronger censorship resistance across the network.

A massive $2.2 billion whale buying spree drains XRP from exchanges, setting the stage for a breakout toward $2.

Shiba Inu builds a rare weekly 'Bull Combo' to delete a zero, but a major chart barrier stands in the way.

Bitcoin has surged back above $81,000 following a broader crypto market recovery, but its exchange reserve on Binance appears to be painting a different picture.

TLDR:

• FCA crypto authorisation applications open September 30, 2026, and firms seeking transitional arrangements must apply by February 28, 2027.
• The new UK regime covers stablecoin issuance, trading platforms, dealing, arranging, safeguarding, and cryptoasset staking activities.
• Existing registration under the Money Laundering Regulations does not provide automatic permission under the future FSMA framework.
• The FCA plans an October consultation on stablecoins, market-making, technology providers, decentralised protocols, safeguarding, and promotions.

FCA crypto authorisation applications officially open on September 30, 2026, for UK firms. UK firms can enter the approval process before new rules start. The Financial Conduct Authority published final perimeter guidance on September 16. The guidance identifies activities requiring permission under the Financial Services and Markets Act. 

The framework covers stablecoin issuance, trading platforms, transaction dealing, safeguarding, and staking arrangements. The FCA says the new rules take effect on October 25, 2027. Firms that want to use transitional arrangements must apply during the designated window. Existing registration under money-laundering rules does not automatically provide permission under the new framework.

FCA Crypto Authorisation Opens Before the UK Regime Begins

The FCA guidance defines activities that fall within the regulator’s perimeter. Firms may need authorisation for qualifying stablecoin issuance or cryptoasset trading platforms. They may also need permission for dealing, arranging transactions, safeguarding assets, or arranging staking services. The list gives companies a basis for mapping their business models against the new rules.

Parliament introduced the framework through the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2026. The regulations bring specified cryptoasset activities into the FCA’s remit from October 25, 2027. The perimeter policy statement helps firms determine whether they need direct permission, an additional permission, or an exemption.

FCA crypto authorisation applications will open on September 30 and close on February 28, 2027. The FCA says firms should use this period to rely on saving or transitional provisions. The authority will assess their submissions during the process. The regulator offers pre-application support meetings and webinars for applicants.

The gateway date creates a fixed preparation timetable. Businesses must review governance, senior management, customer treatment, market conduct, systems, and controls before submitting applications. The FCA expects firms to identify UK consumer services and assess whether overseas operations fall within its perimeter.

Applicants also need to identify senior managers, document risk controls, and explain customer protection measures. The FCA will assess each submission against its standards before granting permission. Gateway access does not equal approval. Firms cannot treat it as an authorisation decision under the new rules.

UK Crypto Regime Sets Separate Duties for Existing Companies

MLR registration does not equal FCA crypto authorisation. Firms that hold Money Laundering Regulations registration must seek authorisation for covered activities. The UK crypto regime sets this requirement. Existing FCA permissions also do not convert automatically, so firms may need a variation or separate approval.

That distinction affects exchanges, custodians, brokers, stablecoin issuers, and staking providers. Companies must review each service rather than rely on their current regulatory status. The FCA crypto authorisation guidance covers firms entering UK markets. It also covers traditional finance businesses exploring crypto services and overseas firms serving UK consumers.

The application window supports transitional arrangements, but eligibility depends on meeting the relevant conditions. Firms that miss the deadline may lose access to those provisions. The FCA directs firms to its guidance, webinars, and pre-application support service when they assess their obligations.

The regulator plans an October consultation on targeted changes. Topics include UK qualifying stablecoins, proprietary trading, market-making, and certain technology providers. The list also covers decentralised protocols, safeguarding involving central securities depositories, and financial promotions. The FCA plans to publish updated perimeter guidance in early 2027 after considering those changes.

FCA crypto authorisation will operate within wider cryptoasset regulation. That framework covers market conduct, disclosures, market abuse, prudential requirements, and the FCA Handbook. The regulator has already published final rules for several parts of that framework. The regime begins on October 25, 2027. Covered firms must hold required permission under cryptoasset regulation to conduct business in the UK.

The post FCA Crypto Authorisation Gateway Opens September 30 for UK Firms appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Strategy stock gained 47.7% over the past month, making it the Nasdaq-100 top performer and more than doubling Meta’s 21.9% advance.
• SpaceX’s projected Nasdaq-100 weighting will rise from 1.28% to 2.82%, potentially driving $15.5 billion to $22 billion in passive buying.
• Healthcare and technology gained during the week, while utilities, financials, value stocks and small caps recorded losses across the market.
• MSTR stock benefits from concentrated Bitcoin exposure, while higher Treasury yields and sector rotation shape the wider equity backdrop.

Strategy stock has become the Nasdaq-100’s strongest performer over the past month after gaining 47.7%. The move more than doubled Meta’s 21.9% advance. It placed MSTR stock at the center of a rotation toward Bitcoin-linked equities.

The gain came as investors sought companies with direct digital asset exposure. Strategy’s corporate model gives shareholders an equity route to Bitcoin performance, while technology and healthcare posted smaller gains.

The Nasdaq-100 also faces a September 21 rebalance. SpaceX’s projected weighting will rise from 1.28% to 2.82%, creating an estimated $15.5 billion to $22 billion in passive buying. The change may affect index members.

Strategy Stock Outperformance Reflects Bitcoin Exposure and Flows

Strategy stock’s 47.7% monthly gain separates it from most Nasdaq-100 constituents. Meta’s 21.9% advance provides a comparison in performance. The gap shows stronger demand for Bitcoin-linked equity exposure during the period.

MSTR stock became a liquidity magnet as investors rotated from traditional sectors. Strategy’s concentrated Bitcoin exposure offers a different risk profile from diversified technology companies. That concentration can amplify gains when Bitcoin-linked sentiment strengthens.

Bitcoin-linked equities can attract capital when investors seek listed exposure rather than direct token ownership. This channel also allows digital asset sentiment to appear inside traditional equity benchmarks. The result is a market where thematic demand can outrun broad sector performance.

Strategy stock’s ranking does not show that every Nasdaq-100 constituent weakened. Healthcare and technology both gained, but their advances were smaller. The difference instead highlights how concentrated narratives can dominate short-term index performance.

The Strategy stock move also stands apart from the wider index. The Nasdaq-100 rose 0.72% during the week, while the S&P 500 slipped 0.08%. Value stocks fell 1.28%, and small-cap stocks declined 1.38%.

Healthcare gained 1.56%, and technology advanced 1.03%. Utilities fell 2.95%, while financial services dropped 2.29%. The figures show selective growth demand rather than broad market participation.

The performance gap leaves Strategy stock tied closely to Bitcoin sentiment and liquidity conditions. It also makes the company sensitive to changes in digital asset prices and investor appetite for thematic equities.

Nasdaq-100 Rebalancing Meets Mixed Market Breadth and Yields

SpaceX shares rose 2.6% to $154.81 and gained more than 4% for the week. Its Nasdaq-100 weighting is projected to increase from 1.28% to 2.82% on September 21.

The change follows higher free float availability after lockup expirations. Assets tracking the index total $1.7 trillion. Passive funds may need to buy $15.5 billion to $22 billion during the closing auction.

Index changes can create forced demand without changing a company’s underlying operations. The buying reflects fund mandates, not necessarily a new view of future earnings. Prices can therefore react sharply near rebalancing dates as passive and active investors adjust together. Flows can distort short-term rankings.

That demand could influence other constituents as funds adjust positions. SpaceX fell nearly 6% during its July inclusion despite $4.3 billion in passive inflows. The reaction shows that index buying does not guarantee sustained price gains.

Market breadth also reflects higher borrowing costs. The 10-year Treasury yield increased to 5.01% from 4.96%. Higher yields can pressure companies that depend on distant future earnings.

Commodities weakened during the period. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.50% to $99.49, while Comex gold declined 1.22% to $4,325.30. These moves accompanied weaker performance across utilities, financials and smaller companies.

Growth stocks still attracted selective buying. Zscaler gained 19.76% for the week, while Tenable and Qualys also advanced. The gains show that investors continued to target technology names despite broader market pressure.

Strategy stock therefore sits within two overlapping flows. Bitcoin exposure supports its company-specific demand, while Nasdaq-100 positioning shapes the capital backdrop. MSTR stock’s next performance will depend on both forces as index allocations change and digital asset sentiment develops.

The post Strategy Stock Leads Nasdaq-100 as Bitcoin Exposure Drives Gains appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• ENA price prediction centers on Arthur Hayes’ $0.50 target after he bought 25.33 million ENA for $5.53 million at an average price of $0.09.
• Ethena approved a fee switch that directs 95% of protocol net revenue toward ENA buybacks and redistribution to token holders, linking revenue with token demand.
• ENA/USD faces resistance near $0.1976, while the MA-50 at $0.1826 and the MA-200 at $0.1038 provide separate technical reference levels.
• The latest trading session forecast places ENA/USD between $0.1766 and $0.2104, with a 62% upside probability and 38% downside risk.

The ENA price prediction has gained attention after Arthur Hayes called for ENA to reach $0.50. According to Lookonchain data, Hayes bought 25.33 million ENA for $5.53 million one month earlier. His average entry stood near $0.09, with an unrealized profit of $3.28 million, or 146%.

Ethena has approved a proposal directing 95% of protocol net revenue toward ENA buybacks and token-holder redistribution. Its total value locked reached $5.21 billion.

ENA Price Prediction Tracks the $0.50 Target and Buyback Demand

Hayes’ purchase gives the ENA price prediction a visible on-chain reference, but his target is a personal market view. The reported purchase occurred about one month before the post. Lookonchain identified the transaction size and average acquisition price in its update.

Lookonchain reported 25.33 million tokens, a $5.53 million position value and an average acquisition price near $0.09. The unrealized gain stood at $3.28 million. The 146% return reflects the performance figure cited in the update.

Hayes’ $0.50 call does not establish a formal Ethena forecast. It does, however, place a specific level beside the broader market discussion. Traders can compare that target with support, resistance and protocol developments.

Governance also adds a demand factor to the ENA price prediction. Ethena approved a fee switch that directs 95% of net revenue into ENA buybacks and redistribution. That structure ties protocol revenue to recurring token purchases.

Ethena’s TVL reached $5.21 billion. TVL measures assets users deposited in the protocol, but it does not guarantee token appreciation. The figure provides context for the scale of activity connected to the buyback policy.

Revenue-based purchases differ from discretionary market calls. The proposal creates a documented allocation rule, but it does not specify a fixed daily volume. ENA demand will therefore vary with protocol earnings and the execution schedule. Token redistribution also depends on governance implementation and the final mechanics that governance formally adopts.

Ethena’s $5.21 billion TVL figure covers assets users deposited in Ethena-related contracts. It does not show how much revenue the protocol generated during the period. A larger deposit base can provide scale, but it cannot establish the future value of ENA.

Traders still need to separate confirmed governance action from price speculation. These factors can change expected trading paths.

Any impact from buybacks depends on protocol revenue, implementation and market liquidity. The information does not state the size or timing of future purchases.

Ethena Buybacks Meet Mixed Momentum Near Key ENA Resistance

ENA/USD trades below MA20 at $0.2003, while MA50 at $0.1826 and MA200 at $0.1038 provide reference levels. Ichimoku Kijun resistance sits at $0.1976.

Momentum indicators do not point in one direction. MACD shows Strong Buy, while ADX indicates buying interest. RSI reads 52.848, a Buy signal, and Stoch RSI sits in oversold territory.

The recent trading session places ENA/USD between $0.1766 and $0.2104. It assigns a 62% probability to an upside move and 38% to downside risk. The base case calls for sideways consolidation inside the range.

A sustained move above $0.1976 would strengthen the upside case in the forecast. A break below $0.1766 would weaken it. The ENA price prediction therefore tracks both the $0.50 target and the immediate trading range.

Technical data do not currently confirm a move to $0.50. The data identify the levels traders monitor as ENA/USD responds to buybacks, market liquidity and broader crypto conditions. The ENA price prediction will change if the asset breaks the stated range.

The post Arthur Hayes Buys 25.33M ENA as Ethena Approves 95% Revenue Buybacks appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• XRP Ledger Batch V1.1 has support from 30 of 35 tracked validators, but activation depends on maintaining at least 80% support through September 29.
• The feature groups up to eight transactions, allowing asset transfers, payments and platform fees to settle together or fail as one operation.
• Ripple says asset managers and commercial projects are building around delivery-versus-payment, while partner details have not been disclosed.
• Developers withdrew Batch V1.0 after a signature flaw, then released V1.1 with redesigned authorization and reviews by Halborn and Common Prefix.

Ripple says asset managers are preparing for XRP Ledger Batch V1.1, a payments upgrade for linked transactions. It can group eight XRP Ledger transactions in one operation. The all-or-nothing setting completes every transaction or cancels the group.

The design supports delivery-versus-payment, linking asset transfers with payment. RippleX engineering head Ayo Akinyele said commercial projects already account for XRP Ledger Batch V1.1.

The XRPL Dashboard lists support from 30 of 35 tracked validators. The amendment needs 28 votes to start its countdown. That process began September 15 at 14:06:41 UTC. Activation could follow September 29 if support stays above 80% for fourteen days.

XRP Ledger Batch V1.1 Moves Toward Conditional Activation

The vote gives XRP Ledger Batch V1.1 a conditional path toward activation. Validators can change their positions during the countdown. If support falls below 80%, the clock stops. A new fourteen-day period must begin after the amendment regains the threshold.

XRP Ledger Batch V1.1 groups transactions under a parent operation. Users can submit as many as eight linked transactions, with each transaction retaining its details. The all-or-nothing setting prevents partial settlement when one transaction fails.

Unlike a multi-step workflow, the grouped operation gives counterparties a settlement condition. If one leg fails, the ledger does not complete the other leg. That design may simplify settlement for funds, trading venues and token issuers using the XRP Ledger. It also gives developers a way to combine transfers without relying on callbacks or manual reconciliation. The feature does not guarantee adoption, since projects still need testing, compliance and preparation.

That function matters for asset managers building digital markets. A fund can transfer a tokenized asset while receiving payment within the same ledger operation. The use case gives XRP Ledger Batch V1.1 a direct role in atomic settlement.

Akinyele identified delivery-versus-payment as a key use case. The method links asset delivery and payment, rather than asking one party to send first. This can reduce exposure to incomplete settlement during a trade.

Ripple also identified fees as another application. Exchanges, wallets and marketplaces can attach service charges to a customer transaction. The payment and fee can then process as one grouped operation.

RippleX has not named the commercial projects using the feature. Akinyele said more details will follow after partners formally finalize plans and launch timing. He added that activation would move development work closer to production.

Delivery Versus Payment Shapes the Upgrade Use Cases

The planned activation follows the withdrawal of Batch V1.0. Researchers found a critical signature-validation flaw in February. Under certain conditions, the code could stop checking signatures early. An attacker could then include transactions from another account without authorization.

Validators had not activated the original amendment when developers withdrew it. The vulnerable code therefore never controlled the live ledger. The flaw exposed no user funds directly.

RippleX used the incident to redesign parts of the signing and authorization model. The replacement shipped in xrpld version 3.3.0 on August 6. Ripple said the code now under consideration matches that release.

The review covered internal adversarial testing and AI-assisted analysis. It also included a Sherlock attack contest. Security firms Halborn and Common Prefix conducted assessments.

RippleX also used internal adversarial testing before seeking validator approval. The company said its wider review covered the work before V1.1 returned to the vote.

The expanded process supports the return of XRP Ledger Batch V1.1 to the validator process. Akinyele said the team raised the review standard, addressed the defect and submitted Batch V1.1 for another validator vote.

The amendment will continue through September 29 under the current schedule. Support must stay at or above 80% throughout the window. Any decline below that level would pause activation and require another countdown after support recovers.

The post XRP Ledger Batch V1.1 Nears Activation as Asset Managers Prepare appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Robinhood Chain fees reached about $4.5 million on September 3, while Ethereum received roughly $398 for data posting and proof costs.
• The reported figures compare gross Layer 2 transaction charges with Ethereum settlement payments, so they do not measure identical revenue streams.
• Robinhood Chain operates as an Ethereum Layer 2 built with Arbitrum technology, separating transaction execution from settlement and data posting.
• Subsidized activity, memecoin speculation, or concentrated venues can lift one day’s fees, leaving recurring demand and net earnings unmeasured.

Robinhood Chain fees reached about $4.5 million on September 3. Bitquery data cited by South Korean outlet Digital Asset showed the payment to Ethereum. Ethereum received roughly $398 for data posting and proof costs. The gap puts attention on how Ethereum earns from its Layer 2 network. Robinhood Chain ran as an Ethereum Layer 2 built with Arbitrum technology. 

Most fees stayed on the execution layer. Ethereum supplied settlement and data availability services for a smaller payment. That distinction matters when comparing fee collection with Ethereum’s settlement costs. 

Robinhood Chain Fees Stay High While Ethereum Captures Less

Bitquery measured approximately $4.5 million in transaction fees on Robinhood Chain on September 3. The figure represented charges paid by users and collected by the Layer 2 during that day. Ethereum received about $398 for the data posting and proof operations linked to that activity.

On those reported figures, Robinhood Chain’s daily fee total was roughly 11,000 times Ethereum’s payment. The ratio attracts attention, but it does not compare two identical measures. The first figure reflects gross user charges, while the second reflects a payment for settlement-related services.

That difference does not mean Ethereum received no economic value. Ethereum provided the settlement layer that records and secures Robinhood Chain’s state. It also supplied data availability, allowing other participants to verify the chain’s published information.

Robinhood Chain fees therefore reflect the business model used by many rollups. The Layer 2 sets user charges, pays its settlement costs, and keeps the difference after operating expenses. Users may see lower transaction costs, while the base layer receives payment for a narrower technical service.

Under this model, Ethereum revenue can vary with data demand and the cost of posting batches. Compression, blob pricing, and proof requirements can alter the amount paid to the mainnet. Higher user activity does not always produce a matching increase in the Layer 1 payment.

Why Layer 2 Fees do not Equal Ethereum Revenue Growth

Ethereum’s rollup strategy separates transaction execution from settlement. Robinhood Chain executes user activity away from the mainnet, then posts data and proof information to Ethereum. This design can raise capacity without sending every transaction directly through Ethereum’s execution layer.

The difference between Robinhood Chain fees and Ethereum revenue reflects that separation. The L2 can charge users for trading, transfers, or applications. Ethereum receives fees for data availability and settlement, while the rollup controls the remaining spread.

Robinhood Chain fees can also include charges that do not represent operating profit. Part of the daily total may cover sequencer operations, liquidity programs, user incentives, or other expenses. The Digital Asset analysis did not provide a full income statement, so the fee total alone cannot measure net earnings.

Activity may also reflect temporary conditions. Subsidized transactions, memecoin speculation, or concentrated trading on a small number of venues can lift a single day’s total. September 3 therefore provides a snapshot of fee distribution, not a complete measure of recurring demand.

The data also shows why Layer 2 growth does not automatically create proportional Ethereum revenue. More users can strengthen the network while directing a larger share of transaction charges to execution-layer operators. Ethereum’s model depends on settlement demand, data costs, and the value users place on its security.

For Ethereum, Robinhood Chain fees add to a broader debate about how rollups distribute economic value. The network can secure more activity without collecting the majority of each transaction charge. That arrangement supports cheaper execution, but it leaves Ethereum’s direct revenue tied to the services each Layer 2 purchases.

The post Robinhood Chain Growth Shows a Wider Ethereum Revenue Gap appeared first on Blockonomi.

Although the general expectations showed that the CLARITY Act didn’t have the best odds of passing the cloture vote on Tuesday, the actual confirmation was quite painful for most cryptocurrencies. However, XRP suffered a major blow, slumping by over 8% at one point and dipping below $1.30 to mark a monthly low.

Aside from the price dip, the correction resulted in cumulative volume delta plunging to negative 10.5 million, suggesting that the move was more than routine profit-taking.

With that regulatory shock now absorbed, we decided to ask ChatGPT about the asset’s future and the levels that can determine what happens next.

Regulation Delayed, Not Dead

The first major point the AI platform made is that the September 15 failure to advance in the US Senate doesn’t guarantee that the bill is scrapped. For now, it leaves more responsibility to the two largest watchdogs in the country, the SEC and the CFTC, which are already moving ahead with crypto rules under their existing authority.

Although agency rules can be changed more easily by a future administration, which makes CLARITY even more important, the situation for XRP is rather different. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stressed after the vote that the company’s business and momentum remain intact. Moreover, he reassured XRP investors that the asset’s existing US legal footing was not altered by the Senate setback.

After all, the token’s situation has improved significantly over the past several years, especially since the conclusion of the lawsuit between the SEC and the company behind it regarding its status. XRP also has institutional products already trading, with the ETFs attracting over $1.7 billion in less than a year.

Congress failing to agree on the key market structure therefore delays the next layer of certainty rather than removing the progress already made, said ChatGPT.

The Future Roadmap

The popular AI platform said it would expect the token to spend some time rebuilding confidence rather than immediately resuming the mid-August rally that drove it to $1.70. The most likely scenario, in its view, would be a period of consolidation around $1.25 and $1.50 while the market absorbs the vote and watches ETF flows.

A recovery above $1.50 would make a retest of the recent $1.70 high plausible, while renewed institutional demand and broader altcoin strength could eventually bring $2.00 back into play.

In contrast, the bearish scenario envisions XRP plunging to $1.20 if ETF flows deteriorate and the market loses further momentum.

The post Where Does XRP Go After the CLARITY Setback? ChatGPT Maps the Key Scenarios appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Despite the overall macro calamity experienced last week, bitcoin’s price surged from $75,000 to almost $82,000 within days, hitting its highest level since the start of the month.

However, the breakout attempt was halted at $82,000 due to more worrisome news from the Middle East. There’s also a technical aspect that helped prevent another leg up.

New Escalation

Numerous reports online suggested on Sunday that the United States had warned that hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Houthis have escalated, with some even suggesting that the latter’s capital was under drone and ballistic missile attacks. BBC added that even some energy sites on the country’s Red Sea coast were targeted.

Saudi authorities reported that they intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile fired at Riyadh on Saturday evening, claiming that there were no casualties and no new attacks.

“Iranian-supported Houthis have engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including civilian airports. This military conflict has the potential to escalate rapidly,” said the US State Department. The statement also warned Americans to “seriously reconsider travel to and through the region.”

Meanwhile, Daily Iran News, an X account with over 500,000 followers, claimed that Iran had issued “Code 100,” its highest alert level, for all armed forces earlier this morning. It covers the IRGC, the Army, and security forces.

Reacting to the news, Trump reportedly cut short his weekend at Camp David to return to the White House, citing the potential for significant escalation. Israel’s Netanyahu also reportedly headed back to his country after cutting the US trip short.

TD Sequential

We saw last week that the substantial blows from the CLARITY Act setback, the Fed rate hikes, and the subsequent hawkish outlook couldn’t keep BTC down for now. The asset dipped to $75,000 after the Senate vote, but went on an impressive run on Friday and Saturday, nearing $82,000 for the first time in two weeks.

This notable rally, though, changed some technical aspects. Ali Martinez reported that the TD Sequential, which flashed a buy signal when BTC slipped to $75,000, had flipped into a sell signal on Saturday evening, just as the cryptocurrency had tapped $81,500.

“That suggests short-term momentum may be getting stretched, and I’m watching closely for signs that it’s time to lock in some profits,” he added.

The post Why Was Bitcoin Rejected at $82K? 3 Reasons Behind the Sunday Pullback appeared first on CryptoPotato.

South Korean police have opened criminal cases against 26 users of the prediction market platform Polymarket and referred 18 of them to prosecutors over roughly 17.6 billion won, about $12.7 million, in bets tied to political, economic, and social outcomes.

The case, disclosed on September 17 through data from Democratic Party lawmaker Yoon Geon-young’s office, sets up a legal fight over whether trading on Polymarket counts as gambling under Korean law or something closer to a derivatives investment.

Blockchain Records and a Gambling Charge

According to a report from Asia Economy, the Gangwon Police Agency’s Cyber Investigation Unit had booked the 26 suspects as of September 15, and the largest single bet from one user reached about 5.7 billion won ($4.1 million).

Polymarket does not hold custody of user funds and settles wagers automatically in USDC or pUSD based on real-world outcomes, so it keeps no real-name list of who is trading. But law enforcement pulled public blockchain transaction records and used open-source techniques to trace the Korean users anyway.

Police argue the transactions amount to illegal gambling under Article 246 of the Criminal Code, pointing to a Supreme Court precedent holding that a bet counts as gambling once chance plays a role and money is staked on the result, even if skill also factors in.

Calling the trades an investment, in their reading, doesn’t change that a virtual asset is put at risk against an outcome nobody can know in advance.

The booked users argue Polymarket should be treated as a virtual asset derivatives market rather than gambling, and that is expected to become a central question once the cases reach court.

The setup could formally meet the legal definition of gambling according to attorney Kim Tae-rim of AXIS Law, since profits and losses turn on uncertain outcomes with virtual assets on the line.

South Korea Had Already Blocked Polymarket Access

The prosecutions have come after South Korea’s August 18 decision to block domestic access to Polymarket. As CryptoPotato reported then, authorities said the platform’s winner-takes-all structure, combined with betting on events outside users’ control, encouraged gambling behavior.

Polymarket had argued it fell outside Korean jurisdiction after dropping Korean language service and won-denominated payments, but the commission rejected that argument.

The prediction market has run into similar resistance well beyond Korea, with France, Australia and Germany restricting access, and Baltimore suing it and rival Kalshi last month over claims they operate as unlicensed sportsbooks.

The post Report: $12.7M in Polymarket Wagers Triggers Criminal Cases in South Korea appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The latest SEC filing from the XRP-focused treasury company reveals that the funds will come through convertible senior notes tied directly to the closing of the business combination with Armada Acquisition Corp. II.

It also reads that Evernorth has entered into a note purchase agreement on September 11 with NH Investment & Securities, acting as trustee for Kyobo AIM Corporate Finance General Private Investment Trust No. 3.

Deal Depends on the Nasdaq Move

The aforementioned structure is important as Evernorth agreed to sell $30 million in 4% Convertible senior PIK Notes due 2031 rather than issuing ordinary shares. Payment-In-Kind (PIK) notes typically allow interest obligations to be paid through additional securities rather than entirely in cash.

The financing is not complete yet, as the issuance of the notes is explicitly conditional on the closing of the company’s previously announced business combination involving Armada II, Pathfinder Digital assets, and Ripple Labs. The two transactions are expected to close concurrently.

Evernorth expects the merger to be completed in Q4, meaning the fresh $30 million remains tied to the success of the broader transaction. The firm has already cleared one of the major regulatory hurdles, but the deal itself is still unfinished.

The SEC said the company’s Form S-4 registration statement was effective on August 27, which allowed the proposed combination to move beyond the registration-review stage. Armada II shareholders are expected to vote on the transaction, and completion remains subject to shareholder approval and other customary conditions.

Evernorth’s XRP Strategy

The merger and the $30 million in funding are central to Evernorth’s strategy to become a publicly traded company focused on holding and actively managing Ripple’s XRP as a treasury asset. CryptoPotato reported before that the firm had raised more than $1 billion in gross proceeds from institutional strategic investors, including Ripple, SBI Holdings, Pantera Capital, Kraken, and Arrington Capital.

If the business combination is completed and the remaining conditions are satisfied, the resulting entity is expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker XRPN, subject to exchange approval.

The post XRP Treasury Giant Evernorth Raises $30 Million – But There’s a Catch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

S&P Global (SPGI) has agreed to acquire OpenZeppelin, the smart contract security firm whose open-source code library sits behind more than $37 trillion in transferred value, and will run the auditor as a standalone business unit under its own name.

Founded in 2015, OpenZeppelin pairs security assessments and secure development services for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and traditional financial institutions with OpenZeppelin Contracts, a free library of standard token and contract implementations that the vast majority of the largest stablecoins and tokenized funds are built on.

The $37 trillion counts cumulative value moved through contracts built with that library, according to the announcement. OpenZeppelin has run more than 900 security engagements, including a late-2021 review that flagged a bug putting $15 billion in Convex Finance deposits at risk before it was patched.

“Our digital assets strategy centers on bringing trusted data, benchmarks and transparent risk assessment to markets as they move onchain,” said Yann Le Pallec, President of S&P Global Ratings.

Le Pallec stated that OpenZeppelin will complement the company’s smart contract and onchain technology risk assessment capabilities, giving traditional institutions and DeFi-native firms “the confidence to build and transact in this new environment.”

OpenZeppelin Keeps Its Name and CEO

OpenZeppelin will continue operating as its own unit inside S&P Global, with CEO Demian Brener staying in charge and reporting to Le Pallec. Financial terms were not disclosed, and S&P Global said the purchase is not expected to have a material impact on its financial results.

“OpenZeppelin’s standards, technology, and expertise already power the infrastructure behind the world’s leading stablecoins, tokenized funds, DeFi protocols, and onchain markets,” said Demian Brener, CEO of OpenZeppelin. “With S&P Global, that foundation reaches a broader set of organizations entering this market, as well as the blockchain networks and DeFi protocols gaining institutional adoption.”

Jefferies is serving as financial advisor to S&P Global, with Clifford Chance as legal counsel. FT Partners advises OpenZeppelin on the financial and strategic side, and Cooley on legal.

Deal Lands Amid Tokenization Push

S&P Global’s index arm has published crypto benchmarks since 2021, when S&P Dow Jones Indices launched a broad market index tracking more than 240 coins alongside its dedicated Bitcoin and Ethereum gauges, with pricing data supplied by Lukka.

On the same day as the acquisition, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) opened the door to secondary trading of tokenized US stocks through a temporary innovation exemption that requires the smart contracts involved to be publicly auditable and to run on public, permissionless blockchains.

The post Massive Crypto Acquisition: Why S&P Global Is Buying Blockchain Security Giant OpenZeppelin appeared first on CryptoPotato.