Potential new mobilization could escalate the Ukraine conflict, impacting market perceptions and international diplomatic responses.

The post Russians fear new mobilization in Ukraine war after elections appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The shift to PFAS for AI cooling raises environmental concerns, potentially leading to stricter regulations and a push for alternative solutions.

The post Data centers turn to ‘forever chemicals’ instead of water for AI cooling appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Iran's use of bitcoin for tolls in the Strait of Hormuz may intensify economic tensions, challenging traditional sanctions and financial systems.

The post Iran uses bitcoin exchange for Strait of Hormuz tolls, US claims appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The attack heightens geopolitical tensions, increasing the risk of NATO-Russia conflict and impacting global diplomatic and security dynamics.

The post Russian strike sets Zaporizhzhia shopping center ablaze amid ongoing conflict appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Liverpool's record-breaking transfer of Isak highlights the escalating financial stakes in football, raising questions about sustainability and pressure.

The post Liverpool signs Alexander Isak for British record £125M transfer appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Dan Hillery: Digital Credit Could Rival BTC’s $1.5 Trillion Market Cap

Two years ago, Bitcoin-backed digital credit barely existed. Today it’s a roughly $16 billion market and Dan Hillery of UXTO thinks the financialization layer on top of Bitcoin could one day rival the network itself. In the debut episode of The Allocators Edge, Hillery breaks down how variable-rate preferred securities like STRC and SATA are priced, why buybacks keep them anchored near $100 par, and what separates digital credit risk from digital equity risk. He also walks through the structured credit fund he’s building, including its senior and junior tranches.

0:00 — Digital Credit Is the Fastest-Growing Part of Bitcoin’s Capital Structure
1:18 — Why STRC’s Variable Rate Design Has No Precedent in Market History
2:59 — What Flat or Falling Bitcoin Prices Mean for Strategy and Strive
4:17 — Short-Duration Bitcoin-Backed Notes and the Next Five Years of Products
5:45 — The Biggest Misconceptions Investors Have About Preferred Securities
6:58 — How Buybacks and Capital Markets Activity Anchor STRC Near $100 Par
8:09 — Why Major Fund Classes Still Can’t Touch Digital Credit Today
9:10 — Inside the UXTO Credit Fund: Senior and Junior Tranche Structure
10:35 — Where the Leverage Comes From and How Volatility Risk Gets Transferred
11:50 — Liquidity, Redemptions, and Digital Credit in a 60/40 Portfolio

This video is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investments in digital assets involve significant risk and may result in loss of capital. Both UTXO Management and BTC Inc., producer of BMTV, are owned by Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA)

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

This post Dan Hillery: Digital Credit Could Rival BTC’s $1.5 Trillion Market Cap first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Treasury Sanctions Iranian Crypto Exchange BitBank Over Bitcoin Transfers to IRGC

The U.S. is continuing to target Iran’s use of bitcoin. 

In a Thursday statement, the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated BitBank, an Iranian crypto exchange, as part of Operation Economic Outcast — the Trump Administration’s whole-of-government economic campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers. 

The U.S. has sanctioned Iran for decades. This year, the Middle Eastern country has stepped up its use of cryptocurrencies — including bitcoin — in order to skirt around economic penalties. 

“Today’s designations of Iranian digital asset infrastructure make perfectly clear that efforts to finance the Iranian regime using cryptocurrencies are not beyond OFAC’s reach,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in a statement. 

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

The sanctions target designated Iranian financier Babak Zanjani, along with its software developer, Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, and three of Zanjani’s associates: Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein, Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein, and Seyed Adel Heidari.

Since June, the Iranian Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority has used BitBank to move bitcoin to the Iranian regime, according to the Treasury. 

Thursday’s sanctions aim to hit the “architecture Zanjani built to launder funds,” it added. 

“The Department of the Treasury will continue to not only target the Iranian digital asset ecosystem, but also international entities and actors which help facilitate it,” the statement continued. 

Iran started a bitcoin-backed insurance service for its counties shipping companies earlier this year.

The U.S. in July said that it had frozen crypto linked to the Iranian regime, mostly in the form of Tether’s stablecoin. 

Stablecoins like Tether’s USDT can be frozen by the company that issues the asset. But bitcoin, being decentralized and having no single issuer, cannot. 

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in July said Iran had been dodging sanctions by accepting pay in bitcoin from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. 

OFAC said at the time that Hormuz Safe, developed by Iran’s Ministry of Economy, “accepts payment in Bitcoin and other digital assets” so it can bypass sanctions. 

This post Treasury Sanctions Iranian Crypto Exchange BitBank Over Bitcoin Transfers to IRGC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Unlikely To Be Bothered by Interest Rate Hike: Grayscale

The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates for the first time since 2023 on Wednesday and it sent the bitcoin price — briefly — all over the place. 

But then it settled and currently sits a modest 1% higher over a 24-hour period. 

And according to asset manager Grayscale’s crypto research team, bitcoin is unlikely to be bothered by the Fed’s decision. 

“We believe yesterday’s move was a mid-cycle adjustment, not a cyclical change,” wrote the firm’s head of research, Zach Pandl, in a Thursday note. 

“And we doubt the one or two rate hikes expected for 2026 will lead to much change in capital allocation.”

Bitcoin has — in the past but not always — done well in a low interest rate environment. And when the Federal Reserve has in the past increased borrowing costs, the price of the leading digital asset has slid. 

That’s because low interest rates means more liquidity for investors to take risks and buy assets like bitcoin. 

Pandl added that when the Fed in 2022 started ramping up interest rates to contain inflation, it “probably weighed on the price of bitcoin” because it “meaningfully affected the opportunity cost of holding non-interest-bearing assets.” 

But this time feels more like 1997, argued Pandl, when the Federal Reserve did a one off hike and the Nasdaq kept moving higher.

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at close to $76,581, up 18% over the past 30 days. The coin  in August benefited from news that the U.S. Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations.

The U.S. is currently in the grips of an affordability crisis and inflation is hurting households as oil prices surge. 

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said the central bank was focused on bringing down inflation. 

“The plain fact is that inflation is too high, and has been for too long,” he said on Wednesday. 

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he wants interest rates to be lower. Writing on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, he said: “Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR.”

This post Bitcoin Price Unlikely To Be Bothered by Interest Rate Hike: Grayscale first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin ETFs Could Triple Gold Counterparts as Asset Matures: Expert

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds could be three times bigger than their gold counterparts as younger investors grow up, an ETF expert has said. 

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine TV on Thursday, Bloomberg senior ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, said that while bitcoin’s price is currently volatile, things would change in the future. 

Bitcoin ETFs debuted in 2024 after a decade of denials from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The ETFs had the most successful launch in the history of the products and currently manage nearly $100 billion in assets, according to Coinglass data. 

“I do believe the Bitcoin ETFs will triple gold in assets,” said Balchunas. 

“I always say Bitcoin is like gold as a teenager — you know, gold is 5,000 years old, it was mentioned 450 times in the Bible. I mean that’s old, and Bitcoin is 17 years old.” 

Balchunas went on to say that younger generations could end up being drawn to Bitcoin as the government continues to spend wildly and things become to expensive. 

He said that right now, Generation Z is rebelling against government deficits and inflation by voting for socialist politicians, but Bitcoin might be a better bet — because the government can’t confiscate it. 

One of Bitcoin’s selling points is its censorship resistance but investors appear to be more focused on buying the asset as a way of hedging against currency debasement. 

The so-called debasement trade was hot last year and is becoming popular again in 2026 as investors buy non-yielding assets like gold and bitcoin while the dollar becomes weaker. 

Balchunas added that as bitcoin’s price becomes less volatile, big institutions will be more interested in buying the asset as a store of value. 

Bitcoin in 2025 has its least volatile year in its short history. 

“As that volatility and correlation get closer to gold — look out,” he said. 

“I think that’s when you have the inflection moment where even the big institutions are like, okay, it’s finally ready for me to use as a sort of reliable store of value, possibly even a safe haven and an alternative.”

This post Bitcoin ETFs Could Triple Gold Counterparts as Asset Matures: Expert first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

SEC Green Lights Tokenized Stock Trading Despite Clarity Act Fail

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved tokenized stocks trading in a move indicating that the regulator will push ahead with rulemaking despite the Clarity Act not moving forward. 

Wall Street’s top regulator said Thursday that it was offering a five-year exemption to platforms that facilitate trading of tokenized stocks. Major crypto companies have long wanted to get such assets on the blockchain. 

Lawmakers blocked the Clarity Act in a procedural vote on Tuesday. Regulators had said before the vote that regardless of whether the landmark legislation passed, they’d still start regulating the crypto industry. 

“Congress was unsuccessful in advancing the Clarity Act despite the tireless efforts of many,” SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said in a statement. 

“So today, the Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a significant step forward, within its statutory authority, to bring America’s capital markets into the digital age by facilitating onchain trading of certain tokenized stocks.”

Jamie Selway, Director of the SEC Division of Trading and Markets, added: “Today’s approval of exemptive relief for on-chain secondary trading on a TSV–known as the ‘Innovation Exemption’–marks an important milestone for the Commission’s work to open our capital markets for tokenized securities.”

The SEC’s move is the latest by regulators pushing ahead despite major crypto legislation stalling. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Mike Selig on Wednesday said that the top regulator would use its powers to advance crypto legislation despite the Clarity Act being blocked. 

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

President Donald Trump last month urged lawmakers to pass it but senators mostly voted against advancing the legislation — 49 for and 50 against — that the digital asset industry has long called for.  

Republicans for months have accused Democrats of deliberately holding back the bill. Some lawmakers had issues with Trump’s family making money from crypto ventures. Trump and the White House have always denied any conflicts of interest. 

This post SEC Green Lights Tokenized Stock Trading Despite Clarity Act Fail first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

S&P Global has agreed to acquire smart contract security company OpenZeppelin in a transaction that would put the crypto company inside the group that includes S&P Global Ratings.

The transaction remains subject to closing conditions, S&P Global's announcement said. Financial terms were not disclosed, and S&P said it does not expect the deal to materially affect its financial results.

Future Contracts versions will also stay open source, and OpenZeppelin extended that commitment to its other open-source applications and tools.

OpenZeppelin says more than $37 trillion in value has been transferred through its Contracts software since 2015.

The current OpenZeppelin Contracts repository uses the MIT License, which grants broad rights to use, copy, modify, and distribute the software. Separately, OpenZeppelin said released versions will remain open source permanently and cannot be withdrawn.

S&P says OpenZeppelin would keep its name and operate as its own business unit after closing. Demian Brener would continue leading the company and report to Yann Le Pallec, president of S&P Global Ratings.

OpenZeppelin also said its security audits, engineering work and ecosystem programs will continue with the same team. The announced change is access to S&P's research capacity, market data, institutional reach and additional resources.

That would add smart contract security expertise to S&P's institutional risk and data operations without changing the public availability of OpenZeppelin's code.

OpenZeppelin's current terms of service permit certain changes to paid or hosted plans, including pricing, features, quotas and usage limits, with protections and notice depending on the type of change.

For customers, the announcement makes specific continuity promises about audits, engineering work, ecosystem programs and open-source code. It does not make the same promise about every price, product feature or usage limit.

Until closing, OpenZeppelin remains the subject of a pending acquisition agreement, not an S&P business unit. If the deal closes as announced, the main change for users would be corporate ownership and access to S&P's data, research, and institutional distribution, while OpenZeppelin says its public code and core client work will continue.

The post Wall Street gains direct oversight of Web3 security as S&P Global buys OpenZeppelin appeared first on CryptoSlate.

HP Wolf Security, the company's threat-research team, said a fake AI crypto-trading assistant distributed malware that could replace browser crypto wallet extensions on an infected Windows computer and turn the familiar wallet interface into a credential trap.

The campaign appeared in HP's September threat report, published Sept. 17 and based on threats observed from April through June 2026. HP described a compromise that began on a user's endpoint after a counterfeit trading tool was downloaded and run, not a breach of Coinbase, MetaMask, or their official extensions.

Malwarebytes had documented the TradingClaw campaign in April and found that Needle Stealer also circulated through other malware loaders. The fake AI assistant was one route into a broader malware operation.

Attackers promoted tradingclaw[.]pro as an AI assistant that could follow a personalized strategy and trade around the clock, according to the full HP report. Search-engine poisoning and paid advertisements directed prospective victims to a ZIP file presented as the software's installer.

The archive contained an executable named Trading Agent.exe and a DLL named iviewers.dll. HP identified the executable as OLEView, Microsoft's legitimate, digitally signed OLE/COM Object Viewer. HP said the signed program helped bypass Microsoft's SmartScreen reputation check, while the malicious payload remained in the accompanying DLL.

Running the trusted-looking program caused it to load that DLL. The code then decrypted Needle Stealer and used process hollowing, a technique that runs malicious code inside a newly launched legitimate process.

How the crypto wallet swap worked

Needle Stealer enumerated Chromium browser extensions and checked their 32-character IDs against a hardcoded list covering Phantom, Trust Wallet, Atomic Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, OKX Wallet, MetaMask, and Tonkeeper.

When it found a target, the malware shut down the browser and extracted a corresponding malicious extension into the existing extension folder.

On its first launch, the replacement connected to a command-and-control server used by the attacker and loaded backup domains. HP said the attackers had built realistic login screens, and a crypto wallet ID and password entered into a counterfeit interface could be sent to the operator.

MetaMask's guidance says that, for crypto wallets created with a Secret Recovery Phrase, the password unlocks MetaMask locally and cannot restore the wallet elsewhere. Even so, the substituted extension was operating on an already compromised device, leaving locally accessible funds at risk.

Neither HP's report nor its newsroom summary disclosed a campaign-wide victim count or aggregate crypto-loss figure, leaving the operation's scale unknown.

The post Fake AI crypto software is secretly replacing browser wallet extensions appeared first on CryptoSlate.

XRP Ledger's (XRPL) newest server release defines a future lending market in which depositors could commit assets to a vault for a fixed term and wait until a set redemption date to withdraw. For XRP holders, the design introduces a possible liquidity lock that can last from minutes to years.

The XRP Ledger Foundation released xrpld 3.4.0 on Sept. 16 with LendingProtocolV1_1 code for closed-ended vaults and cash-basis accounting.

The first feature fixes the period during which deposited capital can fund loans, and the second recognizes interest when a borrower pays it.

Availability still depends on the amendment process and the rest of XRPL's lending stack. A live dashboard snapshot fetched Sept. 17 did not surface LendingProtocolV1_1 in the responding node's feature feed or show a V1.1 activation countdown.

The same snapshot placed the base LendingProtocol amendment at 13 of 35 trusted-validator votes and SingleAssetVault at 16 of 35, below the displayed threshold of 28.

Single-asset vaults can use XRP, an issued trust-line token, or a Multi-Purpose Token. Any claim that the system will create lasting XRP demand therefore depends on later choices by applications, borrowers and depositors.

A fixed calendar determines when depositors can leave

A closed-ended vault moves through subscription, investment, and redemption. Its SubscriptionDate and RedemptionDate are set when the vault is created and stay fixed, according to the closed-ended-vault implementation.

During subscription, depositors can add assets and redeem their shares. The investment phase starts at the subscription boundary, blocks new deposits and withdrawals, and allows the vault's capital to fund loans.

Redemption begins at the second boundary, when depositors can again withdraw their share of the proceeds.

The schedule creates a visible commitment before money enters the loan pool. A depositor can inspect the dates and decide whether the term fits their liquidity needs. Once investment begins, the protocol enforces the advertised lock even if the depositor wants the assets back early.

The implementation permits an investment period of at least 60 seconds and strictly less than 30 years, which is the encoded ceiling.

LendingProtocolV1_1 would also limit newly created loan brokers to closed-ended vaults after activation. Open-ended lending objects created under the earlier rules remain manageable, preserving their original behavior instead of forcing a retroactive conversion.

For an XRP-denominated vault, the investment phase can make the deposited XRP unavailable to that depositor until redemption. XRP held elsewhere in the same user's wallet, or by holders who never enter the vault, remains outside this lifecycle. The mechanism is a voluntary term commitment tied to a specific pool.

That boundary is central to the demand question. Moving already-owned XRP into a vault can produce a visible locked balance without requiring a market purchase. Applications could also build lending pools around issued assets, leaving XRP outside the principal flow.

Cash basis makes paid interest visible

The accounting change addresses when a vault reports income from the loans it funds. Under the earlier whole-life model, scheduled interest could enter the vault's accounting when a loan was originated, before the borrower delivered the cash.

A missed payment could then force the system to unwind income that had already appeared in the vault's value.

The cash-basis implementation stamps new post-activation vaults with the new accounting version. Those vaults recognize interest as borrowers pay it, and vaults created under the earlier model permanently retain legacy whole-life accounting.

For depositors, the practical change is a cleaner separation between expected and realized returns. A scheduled payment remains a claim on a borrower, and paid interest becomes vault income. That makes the reported asset value less dependent on money that has not yet arrived.

Cash-basis accounting leaves the underlying credit risks in place. XRPL's native lending design relies on off-chain underwriting, while the ledger handles origination, payments, and defaults. Borrowers can miss payments, brokers can underwrite poorly, recoveries can fall short, and first-loss capital may be insufficient to absorb every loss.

The accounting can also change how much debt a broker appears to have against a limit because future interest no longer enters the total at origination. That may create room for additional loans under the protocol's measurements. Utilization still depends on real borrowers and funding, while realized yield depends on successful repayment.

For XRP holders, this distinction prevents scheduled interest from being presented as already earned. The economic outcome emerges from loan performance over the term and the amount recovered after defaults.

The combination of locked withdrawals and cash-basis reporting makes the trade-off more legible: depositors supply liquidity for a known period, then evaluate payments.

That structure can support an XRP use case only where applications select XRP as the asset and borrowers create recurring demand for XRP-denominated credit.

Activation is only the first demand test

The next measurable event is network governance. The relevant amendments must become visible to the live network, attract sufficient validator support, and complete the activation process. Applications would then need to create closed-ended vaults, recruit depositors, and originate loans.

Adoption can be tested with on-chain and product-level evidence. The first indicators are the number of XRP-denominated vaults and the amount of XRP deposited. Loan counts and principal originated would show whether borrowers use that capital. Repayments, defaults, and realized interest would reveal the quality of the resulting credit activity.

Redemption data matters as much as deposits. Withdrawals after the fixed redemption dates would demonstrate that the liquidity schedule works through a full cycle. Renewed deposits and repeat borrowing would provide stronger evidence of a durable market.

Those measures separate three effects that can otherwise be conflated. A vault balance shows that tokens entered a pool, loan originations show that capital was put to work, and repeated repayments and renewed funding show continuing economic demand.

Only the last two begin to support a case that lending has created more than a temporary XRP sink.

For now, the strongest holder takeaway is contractual. A future XRP vault could exchange immediate liquidity for exposure to loan repayments over a fixed term, with income recorded only after payment.

Evidence of lasting XRP demand would come later in XRP-denominated deposits, borrowing, repayments, and repeat participation.

The post XRPL’s new lending tool could lock up your XRP from minutes to decades appeared first on CryptoSlate.

S&P Global agreed to acquire smart contract security firm OpenZeppelin, expanding its digital asset business into the technology underpinning tokenized finance.

On Sept. 17, the financial data and ratings company said that OpenZeppelin will continue operating under its own name as a separate business unit. Chief Executive Demian Brener will remain in charge and report to S&P Global Ratings President Yann Le Pallec.

Financial terms were not disclosed, and the transaction remains subject to closing conditions.

The deal gives S&P direct exposure to the security layer behind stablecoins, tokenized funds, and decentralized-finance applications. OpenZeppelin’s open-source contracts have supported more than $37 trillion in transferred value, while the company has completed more than 900 security engagements and identified over 10,000 vulnerabilities before production.

The acquisition follows a broader push by S&P into digital assets as round-the-clock markets create demand for the data, benchmarks and risk infrastructure needed to support institutional capital on blockchain networks.

S&P adds smart-contract risk to its institutional toolkit

As more financial products move onto blockchains, institutions face an additional layer of risk around the software that issues, transfers and manages those assets.

S&P said OpenZeppelin will expand its capabilities in what it described as the “on-chain technology-risk layer,” including security assessments and benchmarks for digital assets.

That adds another dimension to S&P’s existing financial-risk business. Tokenized funds and stablecoins remain exposed to risks around issuers, collateral and liquidity, while their operation can also depend on smart contracts, permissions and blockchain infrastructure that introduce technical vulnerabilities.

Le Pallec said:

“Our digital assets strategy centers on bringing trusted data, benchmarks and transparent risk assessment to markets as they move onchain.”

OpenZeppelin has built its business around that technical layer. Its Contracts library is widely used across blockchain applications, while its security teams review smart contracts and other systems before deployment.

The company said its libraries will remain free, open source, and publicly maintained after the acquisition, including future versions. Its audit, engineering and security work will also continue under the existing team.

That preserves the developer model behind OpenZeppelin’s adoption while giving the company access to S&P’s institutional relationships, research resources and distribution.

Brener said the combination could help OpenZeppelin reach more financial institutions as banks, asset managers and issuers increase their use of blockchain infrastructure.

S&P said the acquisition is not expected to materially affect its financial results, emphasizing near-term expansion of capabilities rather than adding a large new revenue stream.

S&P builds infrastructure for markets that never close

The OpenZeppelin deal follows a series of investments and product launches aimed at markets that increasingly operate around the clock.

Three days earlier, S&P Global led a strategic investment in crypto-data provider Kaiko, extending the company’s Series B funding to $110 million. DRW, Susquehanna, Royal Bank of Canada, Nasdaq, BNP Paribas and other financial firms also participated as 24/7 blockchain markets increase demand for continuous pricing, valuation and risk data.

Kaiko already provides market data and infrastructure to more than 250 financial firms, institutions and regulators. Its systems connect to more than 150 exchanges and support trading, valuation and risk management across markets that do not close at the end of the traditional business day.

S&P and Kaiko have also been extending traditional financial benchmarks onto those rails.

In March, the companies brought the iBoxx US Treasuries Index on-chain, embedding index data, licensing and permissioning into blockchain infrastructure. Earlier this month, they combined their digital-asset benchmark businesses into the S&P Kaiko Digital Asset Indices, a suite designed specifically for 24/7 markets.

The expansion began before the Kaiko investment.

S&P Dow Jones Indices helped develop the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index, which combines 35 US-listed companies tied to the crypto ecosystem with 15 cryptocurrencies. Dinari subsequently worked with Chainlink to make a tokenized version of the benchmark verifiable on-chain, with Chainlink supplying real-time pricing and performance data.

That effort put S&P’s benchmark business directly into an emerging market structure where indices, assets and the data used to value them can all operate on blockchain rails.

S&P has also developed stablecoin stability assessments, issued a credit rating for DeFi protocol Sky, and licensed the S&P 500 for tokenized products, extending its traditional businesses into digital markets.

The OpenZeppelin acquisition adds another piece to that buildout.

Kaiko supplies crypto-native pricing and market data, S&P provides benchmarks and financial-risk analysis, and OpenZeppelin brings smart-contract expertise for moving assets between investors and financial applications.

The combination could become more commercially significant as trading expands outside traditional exchange hours. Always-on markets require prices, collateral valuations, benchmarks, and risk controls to keep operating overnight and through weekends, while tokenized assets add software and smart contract risks alongside conventional financial ones.

For S&P, that creates an opportunity to extend services it already sells to banks and asset managers into a market where the infrastructure itself is becoming part of the risk assessment.

If more securities and funds migrate onto blockchains, institutions may increasingly need the same provider to understand both the asset they hold and the technology that determines how it moves.

The post From Kaiko to OpenZeppelin, S&P Global is quietly preparing for markets that never close appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Aave V4 went live on the Arc Layer-1 network on Sept. 16 and attracted USDC almost immediately. By Sept. 17, point-in-time Aavescan data showed roughly $76 million supplied, less than $100,000 borrowed, and utilization near 0.1%.

Suppliers quickly filled the market’s initial capacity, but borrowers had put almost none of that liquidity to work.

LlamaRisk responded to the deposit rush by proposing an increase in the Arc Main Spoke’s USDC add cap from 56 million to 150 million tokens. The balance later moved above the former ceiling, showing that 56 million was no longer binding.

However, the governance post and live market page did not identify the exact replacement setting as executed.

What Arc’s full cap actually measured

Aave V4 organizes liquidity through hubs and spokes. A hub holds liquidity, while spokes define how users interact with it. An add cap limits how much of an asset a spoke can supply into its hub.

Aave’s technical analysis describes them as the V4 equivalents of supply and borrow caps.

Arc’s Main Spoke launched with a 56 million USDC add cap and a 51 million USDC draw cap. LlamaRisk reported that the add cap reached 100% within hours, with 56 million USDC valued at about $55.99 million in its Sept. 16 snapshot.

The launch figures separate supply-side capacity from credit use:

This also explains why Aave’s broader V4 deposit figures cannot be treated as Arc growth alone. LlamaRisk said deposits increased from $577.1 million to $708.6 million between its Round 16 and Sept. 16 snapshots, but that total covered six hubs.

Arc Core accounted for about $57.56 million at that point, and the later Aavescan reading was both newer and specific to Arc’s USDC balance.

Aave’s interest-rate framework prices hub liquidity according to utilization. When little capital is borrowed, liquidity remains abundant, and base rates stay low. The Arc snapshot fit that pattern: Aavescan displayed 0.00% supply and borrow APRs during Sept. 17 checks.

Those displayed rates describe the protocol view at that moment, while public launch data did not disclose whether separate rewards existed or whether a few addresses supplied most of the USDC.

Borrowing is now the adoption test

More add-cap capacity gives deposits room to grow, but the proposed move to 150 million USDC would nearly triple the original supply-side ceiling while leaving the 51 million USDC draw cap unchanged.

It would expand the amount of USDC that could enter through the Main Spoke without increasing the maximum that could be borrowed through it.

The next evidence of adoption will come from the demand side: a sustained rise in borrowed USDC, utilization, and rates.

If those measures increase as capacity expands, Arc will be developing into an active credit market. If they stay near launch levels, the market will remain a large pool of mostly idle liquidity.

More room for deposits can improve the market’s ability to serve future borrowers, but only actual draws can show whether users value that capacity as credit rather than as a place to park USDC.

For now, Arc has not yet proved that borrowers will follow the USDC liquidity it attracted.

The post Aave V4’s Arc market is swimming in $76 million of USDC nobody is borrowing appeared first on CryptoSlate.

On September 29, 2026 at 14:06:41 UTC, a protocol upgrade on the XRP Ledger arms itself: the batch amendment carrying the internal name BatchV1_1. If you hold XRP on an exchange or in a custodial wallet, there is nothing for you to do. If you run a node of your own, or run a service against a node of your own, this date is a hard deadline, after which your server drops out of the network.

This article explains what the amendment changes, where the date comes from, how to check the status yourself and which caveats are attached to the date. Every figure in this article comes from the validated ledger and from the protocol documentation, not from announcements.

What an amendment on the XRP Ledger is and why it needs no shutdown date

An amendment is a change to the rules of the XRP Ledger protocol that the network's trusted validators vote on, rather than a company scheduling it. That is what separates the process from a classic hard fork with an announced block height: there is no calendar entry that somebody sets, only a condition that the network either meets or does not.

The rule behind it is written into the protocol documentation and it is short. An amendment needs the approval of more than 80 percent of the trusted validators, and it has to hold that approval continuously for two weeks. Only then is it activated. Should approval slip below the threshold at any point during those two weeks, even briefly, the count starts again from the beginning.

For you as a reader that means two things. First, a date of this kind can be verified, because it sits in the ledger and not in a press release. Second, it is not immovable while the two weeks are still running. Both points are the heart of the matter for the date at issue here.

What the BatchV1_1 batch amendment changes technically

Batch is a new transaction type that bundles several individual transactions into one package processed together. According to the protocol reference, a package holds at least two and at most eight inner transactions, which may also come from different accounts. Until now the XRP Ledger required you to submit every step on its own and to hope, with each one, that it went through.

The practical gain lies in the certainty. Anyone submitting two steps one after the other today, say an approval and then a swap, carries the risk that the first step succeeds and the second fails. A package closes that gap, because the network knows the processing rule and enforces it.

Do I have to do anything if my XRP sits on an exchange?

No. That is the most common situation, and the least dramatic one. If your XRP sits with a trading platform or in a custodial wallet, the provider runs the infrastructure and the duty to upgrade is theirs. You do not have to move holdings, sell, or change an address. Shuffling balances in a hurry because of a protocol date mainly produces fees and, in case of doubt, a taxable event that was never needed.

The occasion is still worth a calm inventory that has nothing to do with the date. Do you know which provider holds which part of your balance, how high the withdrawal fee is there, and whether the provider is supervised in the EU? Regardless of the protocol date, those are the more important questions.

What to check if you hold your XRP in self-custody

Even in self-custody the case is usually a simple one. A hardware wallet stores your private key and signs transactions with it; as a rule it reaches the network through the servers of the wallet provider. The keys themselves are never affected by an amendment, because an amendment changes the rules of the chain, not your address and not your access.

What you can do is keep the software you use to reach the wallet up to date, and check once before the date that your recovery words are where you believe them to be. That is basic hygiene and it is right independently of September 29. If you are still undecided about which device to pick, our hardware wallet comparison helps.

Amendment-blocked: what happens to an outdated xrpld node on September 29

Amendment-blocked is the state a server falls into when it does not know an activated protocol rule. The protocol documentation describes the consequences unambiguously: a blocked server can no longer validate ledgers, can no longer submit or process transactions, can no longer take part in consensus and can no longer vote on future amendments.

The decisive sentence stands right beside it: a server's voting configuration has no bearing on this. Anyone who has set their xrpld to vote against the amendment is just as blocked after activation as someone who voted in favour. What gets a server blocked is the missing code that understands the new rule. There is no carrying on against an activated majority decision.

The server does not crash while this happens, and it throws no conspicuous error message on the wall. It keeps answering, only no longer with valid data from the running chain. That is exactly what makes the state dangerous for services that query a node of their own in the background: the application looks healthy and serves a data state that has stopped moving.

Where the September 29, 2026 date comes from and how it is arrived at

The date is calculated, neither derived nor estimated. The validated ledger holds an object that tracks the state of every amendment. It contains a field called Majorities, and for every amendment that has reached the threshold, that field records the point in time from which the two-week period runs.

This editorial team queried the object on September 18, 2026 at around 00:35 UTC through a public XRP Ledger node (ledger index 107058182, response HTTP 200). The Majorities field held exactly one entry: the amendment with the identifier 9F287AED3CDB50A7BD1ACEC24296A30C9B5230CCD136219317AC790E3B884377 and the CloseTime value 842796401.

The XRP Ledger counts time from January 1, 2000. Converting that value gives September 15, 2026, 14:06:41 UTC as the start of the period. Two weeks later falls September 29, 2026, 14:06:41 UTC. The cross-check through the feature query on the same node returned the name BatchV1_1 for the same identifier, along with the values enabled: false and supported: true. The amendment is therefore known to the network and supported, but not yet active.

How to check the status of the amendment yourself

You do not need a node of your own for this. A public XRP Ledger endpoint answers the question with a single request. Anyone comfortable with the command line sends a feature request carrying the identifier above to a public node and reads three fields out of the answer:

• enabled: if this reads false, the amendment is not yet active. Once the value flips to true, activation has taken place.
• supported: if this reads true, the software of the node you asked already knows the rule. If it reads false, that very node will be blocked at activation.
• majority: the timestamp from which the two-week period runs. Should this field disappear again, the majority has slipped and the countdown has been reset.

That third point is precisely why you should look at the status once more shortly before the date, instead of writing the date down and ticking it off. The same route applies to a node of your own, with one important difference: send the feature query to your server, not to somebody else's. Only the answer of your own node tells you anything about your own node.

Which software version brings the new rule with it

The server software of the XRP Ledger is called xrpld and is published as open software. The current release is 3.4.0, published on September 17, 2026; before that came 3.3.0 of August 6, 2026 (both dates taken from the release dates of the official source code archive, retrieved on September 18, 2026).

Copying a version number out of an article is still the weaker route. The reliable answer comes from your own server through the supported field: it answers the question of whether the running software actually knows the rule. Which version you believe you are running plays no part in it. If false stands there, only an update helps, and it has to happen before September 29.

Why the date carries a caveat

The two-week period runs for as long as approval stays above 80 percent. Should it fall below, the counter is reset and September 29 lapses. That clause is no theoretical footnote; it is the safety mechanism built into the procedure. It leaves the validators the option, right up to the last moment, of stopping a change if a problem surfaces in the meantime.

For your planning, one simple stance follows from this. Treat September 29 as the deadline you prepare for, and treat its arrival as unsettled. Anyone who updates a node loses nothing if the countdown is reset. Anyone who postpones the update because the date might still fall through ends up, in the opposite case, with a system cut off from the chain.

The four modes of a batch package and what they mean in daily use

A package is given a mode when it is submitted, and that mode determines how the network deals with failures. The protocol reference names four:

• AllOrNothing: every single transaction in the package has to succeed. If one fails, the whole package fails. This is the mode for sequences that only make sense in full.
• OnlyOne: as soon as the first transaction has succeeded, the remaining ones are skipped. It allows alternatives to be submitted of which exactly one should take effect.
• UntilFailure: the transactions run in order until one fails; everything after that is dropped. This suits sequences that build on one another.
• Independent: all transactions are processed independently of one another, regardless of whether individual ones fail. This is pure bundling without chaining.

As a holder you will rarely set these modes yourself. The difference becomes visible where applications make use of it: in wallet interfaces that gather several steps into one confirmation, and in trading applications, where a half-executed sequence has so far been the most awkward case of all.

What services, wallet providers and payment processors should clarify now

Anyone who reaches the XRP Ledger through infrastructure of their own rather than through an outside provider is affected. That includes payment services, trading applications, accounting tools with their own data feed and every wallet whose provider runs a node. For this group, three questions need answering before the date.

1. Does the feed run against a node of your own or against an outside endpoint? With an outside endpoint the duty lies with its operator, and you should ask there instead of acting yourself.
2. Does your own node report the value supported: true for BatchV1_1? If not, an update is due, with the usual lead time for testing and a maintenance window.
3. Would a data state that has stopped moving show up in your monitoring at all? A blocked node keeps answering. Monitoring that only checks reachability notices nothing of it. Whoever monitors the gap between the last validated ledger and the current time notices it immediately.

Experience says the third question is the one on which everything hangs. An outage that disguises itself as normal operation is discovered late, and in the meantime bookings and displays carry on working with old data.

How this date fits into the run of amendments so far

The procedure is routine on the XRP Ledger and runs several times a year. Most recently, on September 9, 2026, we described the activation of the previous amendment; anyone who wants to read the sequence through from the start again will find it in our article on which points to check on wallet, node and position. The mechanics are the same, only this time a concrete date and an open condition hang on it.

For placing the network as a whole, a look at what is being built on it remains more telling than any single protocol step. One example from February 2026 is the euro stablecoin of Société Générale, which is issued on the XRP Ledger. Applications of that kind are the reason binding transaction packages are in demand at all: anyone automating payment sequences wants no half-executed chains.

XRP Ledger batch amendment: what you take away from it

1. If your XRP sits with a provider, you do nothing. Use the date at most for a calm check on whether the provider still suits you: the overview of the best crypto exchanges puts fees and withdrawal routes side by side.
2. If you hold your own coins, check access and recovery, not the protocol. Your keys are not affected by an amendment. Which device is up to the job is shown by the hardware wallet comparison.
3. If you run a node of your own, send the feature query before September 29. If supported: false stands there, update the software. Anyone who also needs an overview of their holdings and how they are recorded for tax will find the tools for it under crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

The primary sources for this article: the description of the amendment procedure and the protocol reference for the batch transaction, both in the official documentation of the XRP Ledger.

(As of September 18, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Anyone who sells a bitcoin position at a loss in order to use that loss for tax purposes, and buys the same quantity back shortly afterwards, triggers two things at once in Germany. The loss is realized and remains deductible. At the same time, the one-year holding period starts again from scratch for the quantity bought back. That is the price of the decision, and it hangs on a single date: the acquisition date of the new units.

The occasion is this week's slide. On September 17, 2026, Bitcoin stood at $76,555, or €66,712, and Ethereum at $2,453 and €2,138. Cryptoticker.io retrieved these figures on the same day through CoinGecko's public price interface. Many positions opened over the past year are therefore under water, and the question of whether to take the loss and get straight back in is coming up in a great many German portfolios at the same time.

Selling at a loss and buying back: what really happens for tax

In Germany, crypto assets count as other economic assets. Selling them therefore falls under private disposal transactions in section 23 of the Income Tax Act, not under the flat withholding tax. That sounds like a technicality, but it determines everything that follows.

A private disposal transaction is a sale within one year of acquisition. The gain from it is taxed at your personal income tax rate, and in return the loss from it can be offset. Anyone who sells after the year has elapsed stays tax-free, and that cuts both ways: the gain goes untaxed, but the loss is equally without effect.

That second half is routinely overlooked. A position bought eighteen months ago and sitting 30 percent under water today no longer carries any usable tax loss. That position is outside the period. Selling it brings nothing except liquidity.

The three figures you need for every lot

For each individual lot in your holdings, three pieces of information count: the acquisition date, the acquisition cost and the quantity. The acquisition date tells you whether the one-year period is still running. The acquisition cost tells you whether there is a loss at all. The quantity tells you how much of it you can move without touching other lots. Crypto tax software with portfolio tracking shows you these three values separately for each purchase, and without them the decision about a loss sale cannot be taken cleanly.

The one-year period in section 23: why a buyback starts a new clock

The holding period is the time between the acquisition and the disposal of a particular unit. That period attaches to the unit, not to the coin and not to the account. Every purchase starts its own clock.

From this follows the central point of this article. If you sell 0.3 bitcoin today that you bought in January 2026, and buy 0.3 bitcoin again ten minutes later, you have not restored the same position. You have a new position with a new acquisition date. The old eight months of holding time are not transferable; they were used up by the sale. The new unit does not become tax-free until September 2027.

On a position that is only a few weeks old anyway, this costs almost nothing. On a position that would have reached the one-year mark in three months, it costs those three months plus another twelve. That is the real calculation, and it comes out differently for every lot.

Is there a wash sale rule in Germany as there is in the US?

No. Under US tax law, a wash sale is a loss-making sale in which the same or a substantially identical security is bought back within thirty days before or after the sale. Section 1091 of the Internal Revenue Code denies the deduction of the loss in that case; it is added to the cost basis of the new position instead.

German income tax law has no equivalent for private disposal transactions. Section 23 contains no blocking period for re-entry, and there is no provision that shifts the loss into the new acquisition cost. The loss stays where it arose, in the year of the sale.

Anyone reading American guides or using an international tax tool should know this difference before deriving rules for the German tax office from them. The thirty-day window that regularly appears in such texts has no bearing on a German tax return.

Section 42 of the Fiscal Code and the same-day buyback: what the Federal Fiscal Court decided

That leaves the objection tax offices occasionally raise in such cases: abuse of legal structuring. Under section 42 of the German Fiscal Code, this exists where a legal arrangement essentially serves to obtain a tax advantage not provided for by law.

There is a decision directly on point, and it concerns precisely the provision discussed here. In a judgment of August 25, 2009, case reference IX R 60/07, the Federal Fiscal Court held that there is no abuse of structuring where a taxpayer sells securities at a loss within the one-year period and buys back securities of the same type and number at a different price on the same day. Sale and buyback, the court held, are to be assessed as separate transactions. The matter in dispute was a private disposal transaction under section 23, that is, the same provision crypto assets fall under today.

The judgment was handed down on shares and not on crypto assets, and it is not a blank cheque. It is, however, the closest thing to a supreme court statement on this constellation, and it supports the view that re-entry as such does not endanger the loss. Anyone wanting full certainty should have the case reviewed by a tax adviser before filing; a binding ruling from the tax office is the only route to genuine legal certainty in an individual case.

FIFO: why the bitcoin you buy back joins the back of the queue

FIFO stands for first in, first out and means that the unit acquired first counts as the one disposed of first. For crypto assets, the German Federal Ministry of Finance set out this consumption order in more detail in its circular of March 6, 2025, together with the record-keeping and cooperation duties attached to it. The circular carries the file number IV C 1 - S 2256/00042/064/043 and replaces the version from May 2022. It is publicly available from the Federal Ministry of Finance.

In practice that means your purchases stand in a line, ordered by date. When you sell, the line is cleared from the front. The buyback joins the end of that line.

This creates a trap that springs particularly often in a drawdown. The units at the front of the line are the oldest, and therefore often the ones with the longest holding time and the best tax position. Anyone triggering a partial sale in order to realize a loss reaches, under FIFO, for exactly those old units first, and those may well not be under water at all. A loss sale that hits the wrong lot produces a taxable gain instead of a usable loss.

How to keep them apart in practice

The wording of the law can be read in the full text of section 23 of the Income Tax Act. The consumption order can only be controlled cleanly if holdings are kept separately per wallet and per exchange account, because under the ministry circular the assessment is made in principle per individual wallet or per individual account. Anyone holding the same coin on three platforms has three separate lines and not one shared one. Which exchange gives you which export formats differs considerably; a look at our crypto exchange comparison is worth the time before you plan a loss sale spanning several accounts.

The price of the buyback: when you trade an almost tax-free lot for a loss

The decision can be boiled down to one question: which is worth more, the loss today or the remaining holding time?

On a lot that is only two months old, the answer is usually clear. Ten months of remaining period is a manageable stake, and the loss takes effect immediately. On a lot that is eleven months old, the picture flips. One month separates it from tax exemption; a buyback resets it to twelve months and extends the window in which a later gain would be taxable by eleven months.

On top of that comes a point easily lost in the arithmetic: a loss is only worth something if a gain from a private disposal transaction stands against it in the same year or in a later one. Losses under section 23 land in their own offsetting pot. They cannot be set against employment income, rental income or investment income from shares. Anyone not expecting corresponding gains realizes a loss that sits unused for years. We set out the mechanics of this offsetting and the deadlines in detail in our article on crypto losses before the one-year period expires of September 9, 2026.

The 1,000 euro exemption threshold: when a loss sale is worth it at all

An exemption threshold is a limit at which the entire amount becomes taxable once it is exceeded, not just the excess. For private disposal transactions it stands at €1,000 of total gains in a calendar year.

For the buyback decision this means two things. If your annual gain from private disposal transactions stays below the threshold anyway, an additionally realized loss is worthless for tax, because there is nothing to reduce. And conversely: if you are just above the threshold, a targeted loss sale can push the total gain below €1,000 and thereby make the entire amount tax-free. That is the only case in which a loss sale pays off in a jump rather than proportionally.

Grandfathering at December 31, 2026: what a buyback next year could change

A draft bill on the future taxation of crypto assets is on the table, providing for a switch to the flat withholding tax from 2027 and for grandfathering of holdings acquired before then. It is a draft and not applicable law; none of it has been adopted, and the cut-off date may move or disappear entirely.

But if it does come to pass, the acquisition date takes on a second meaning beyond the one-year period. Units you buy back today would have been acquired before the cut-off date. Units you only buy back in January would not. Anyone already weighing a loss sale with a subsequent buyback therefore has an argument for not pushing it into next year. We gathered the state of the draft and the open questions in our piece on the holding period and grandfathering of September 8, 2026.

What matters is the order of certainty: the one-year period applies today and is law. Grandfathering is an expectation. A decision resting on the expectation alone stands on one leg.

What proof the tax office wants for the loss and the buyback

The ministry circular of March 6, 2025 framed the record-keeping and cooperation duties considerably more sharply than its predecessor. For a loss sale with a buyback this means, concretely: both transactions must be individually documented, with time, quantity, price and platform.

In practice you need the exchange's transaction export for the sale and for the buyback, each with a timestamp. If the position came from your own wallet, proof of origin is required on top. A statement showing the holding only as a total is not enough, because the one-year period attaches to the individual lot.

The mistake that is hardest to correct

Export the data promptly. Anyone who discovers after a delisting, an account closure or a change of provider that the history is no longer retrievable has lost the proof and with it the loss. That is not a theoretical risk: in the past few weeks alone, several trading venues have set deadlines for withdrawing balances, after which the account interface was no longer reachable.

Three cases from the current drawdown worked through

The amounts below are freely chosen worked examples and not a price forecast. The cases only show how the variables interact.

Case one, a young lot at a loss. Bought in July 2026 for €8,000, current value €6,400. Loss €1,600, remaining period around ten months. A sale with an immediate buyback realizes the loss and resets the clock to twelve months. Anyone with gains from other crypto sales in the same year comes out clearly ahead here.

Case two, an old lot just short of the finish line. Bought in October 2025 for €10,000, current value €8,500. The loss of €1,500 is real, but the period runs out in a few weeks. A buyback trades an almost achieved tax exemption for a loss that is only worth something if there are enough offsettable gains. In most portfolios, waiting is the calmer option here.

Case three, a lot outside the period. Bought in February 2025, current value well below. Nothing happens for tax on a sale, neither a gain nor a usable loss. A sale here is a pure investment decision with no tax effect. We worked through a similar constellation on the gains side for Ethereum profits and the holding period on September 14, 2026.

Bitcoin losses and buybacks: what to take away

1. Sort by acquisition date first, not by price. Check for each lot whether the one-year period is still running. Only within the period is a loss worth anything at all, and only there does a buyback cost you holding time. Tax software with portfolio tracking compiles this list automatically for each purchase.
2. Weigh the loss against the remaining period. Young lots at a loss are the obvious candidates, lots just short of the anniversary the most expensive. And check beforehand whether you have any gains from private disposal transactions in the same year for the loss to be offset against.
3. Secure the records the same day. Export the sale and the buyback with timestamps, separated by wallet and account. Which exports your exchange offers is shown in our crypto exchange comparison; if the proof is missing later, the loss goes with it.

(As of September 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The short answer first: whether your stock token carries voting rights and a dividend does not depend on the company name shown in the trading interface, but on how the token is built in legal terms. Since September 17, 2026 there is an official yardstick for this for the first time. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has granted a time-limited exemption allowing trading venues to handle tokenized US stocks, and it has tied that permission to one condition: the token must embody the same rights as the real share. The condition binds venues under US supervision. It does not automatically cover the token you buy in Germany through a provider based outside the United States. That gap is exactly where you have to look for yourself.

A stock token is a tradable entry on a public blockchain intended to mirror the economic value of a real share. Tokens like these are not on the shelf at your high-street bank. You find them at crypto exchanges and crypto brokers, you usually pay for them with a stablecoin, and you keep them in the same wallet as the rest of your crypto holdings. That makes this your business as a crypto investor: custody, fees, your tax return and, in the worst case, insolvency protection all run through the crypto side of your portfolio, not the securities side.

What the SEC decided on September 17, 2026

The SEC has granted what it calls an innovation exemption, a time-limited and conditional exemption from the definition of an "exchange" under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The beneficiaries are trading venues the regulator refers to as tokenized securities venues, or TSVs. A TSV brings together buyers and sellers of tokenized US stocks without having to be registered as an exchange, and it may use approved liquidity pools and automated market makers to do so. An automated market maker is a trading mechanism in which a liquidity pool sets prices according to a fixed formula, rather than matching buy and sell orders against each other in an order book.

The exemption runs for five years, and the SEC has explicitly invited comment on possible changes. The details are set out in the SEC announcement of September 17, 2026; a reading of the conditions, including a quote from an SEC spokesperson, is available at Unchained.

One point matters for understanding the whole construction: an exemption from the definition of an exchange is not a licence to operate as one. The venue is permitted to work without an exchange licence for as long as it meets the conditions. If a condition falls away, the permission falls away with it. That is what separates this exemption from a permanent market authorization, and it is why the conditions matter more to you as an investor than the permission itself.

Equal rights as a condition: why the token must carry the same shareholder rights

The condition that matters most to investors is equality of rights. A token may only trade on such a venue if it embodies the same rights as the underlying share. That includes the dividend, the voting right and access to proxy voting. The trade publication Ledger Insights points out that the exemption even permits an unrelated third party to tokenize a company's shares, but only with the full set of rights attached.

This is notable, because until now the rights question around tokenized stocks has usually been answered with a no. In many of the structures available on the market you hold a claim against an issuer who in turn keeps the share in custody somewhere. What you actually own in that case is something we took apart in our analysis of tokenized stocks and issuer risk.

What "the same rights" covers in detail

• Dividend: the payout reaches you as the holder of the token, not just the custodian in between.
• Voting right: you can vote at the annual general meeting, either in person or through a representative.
• Proxy access: access to proxy voting, meaning the route by which a shareholder casts a vote without attending in person.
• Corporate actions: subscription rights, stock splits and reverse splits feed through to your token.
• Information rights: you receive the documents a shareholder receives, such as meeting invitations and reports.

Does the condition apply to the stock token you buy in Germany?

This is the point the German-language coverage of the decision has so far left out. The exemption covers NMS stocks on venues under US supervision. NMS stocks are those regularly listed on US exchanges and covered by the National Market System. The equal-rights condition therefore binds the US venue. A provider based outside the United States is not caught by it, and that is precisely where many German investors buy their stock tokens today.

In practice that means nothing follows for your own portfolio from the headline that the regulator now demands full shareholder rights. It may well be that your token still carries no voting rights and that this is entirely compliant, because your provider never fell under the exemption in the first place. What does emerge is a new benchmark against which you can measure your provider's terms. How to recognize a provider and the structure behind it is something we set out step by step in our guide to identifying stock token issuers.

Synthetic stock tokens stay outside the rules

With the same decision, the SEC drew a dividing line. Synthetic stock tokens do not fall under the exemption. A synthetic stock token is not backed by real shares; it replicates the price through a derivative or through an agreement with the provider. According to Unchained, an SEC spokesperson said such products could stay "out in the wilds". That statement describes the regulator's view of the scope of the rules, not an assessment of the products themselves.

For you this is the most useful dividing line in the entire decision, because you can trace it at your own provider. If a real, custodied share sits behind the token, there is a custodian, a backing ratio and, as a rule, evidence of it. If a derivative sits behind it, the terms will name a counterparty whose solvency you are buying along with the product. If you want to work through the difference between a replicated price and a backed holding in practice, our crypto broker comparison sets the models side by side, including the question of who becomes your counterparty.

The issuer's right to object: 30 days, and silence counts as consent

The third condition is the one that settles the longest-running dispute. If a venue wants to tokenize the shares of a company it does not control, it must notify that company in writing beforehand and wait 30 days. If the company objects within that window, the token may not be traded on that venue. If it stays silent, that counts as consent.

Whether companies should be given such a right of objection was an open question before the decision, and the industry answered it in opposite ways. Trading venues argued that a share is freely tradable once bought and that the issuer does not get to dictate where it trades. Companies and registrars countered that a token carrying a promise of voting rights reaches into their shareholder structure. The regulator came down in favour of a right to object with a deadline.

For you this has an awkward side effect worth planning for: a stock token can disappear from a venue because the company objected, not because anything is wrong with the token. What happens to an open position in that case is not covered by the SEC decision. It is covered by your provider's terms. Check there whether a redemption at net asset value is provided for, or a forced liquidation at whatever the market price happens to be.

How to check your stock token's rights yourself

The sequence below works regardless of where your provider is based. You do not need legal advice for it, only patience with the documents.

The terms first, the marketing page second

Search the issuance terms or the key information document for the words voting right, dividend and general meeting. If you cannot find them, that is already your answer. The product page showing the share price is the wrong place to look, because it describes the price history and not the legal position.

Then the custody chain

Establish who holds the real share and in what ratio it stands to the token. What matters is whether there is a named custodian, whether one-to-one backing is promised and whether evidence of it is published.

Finally, the cross-check against a corporate action

The hardest test is the past. If the company paid a dividend or carried out a split in the past year, look through your transaction history to see whether and how it reached you. A token that has never passed on a dividend carries no dividend right, whatever the description says.

1. Search the terms and the key information document for voting right, dividend and general meeting.
2. Identify the custodian, the backing ratio and the proof of backing.
3. Name the counterparty: whose solvency carries the token if things go wrong?
4. Cross-check a past dividend or corporate action against your own transaction history.
5. Read the venue's rulebook on suspension and on the unwinding of a position.
6. Write the result down with the date, because terms can change without notice.

Why the rights question also concerns your tax office

This is where the exercise becomes practical, because in Germany this precise question determines your tax bill. The classification turns on the legal structure of the token. If it certifies a claim to repayment in cash against an issuer, the gain counts as investment income under section 20 of the German Income Tax Act. The flat withholding tax of 25 percent then applies, plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, and it applies regardless of how long you have held. If there is no such claim, classification as another economic asset comes into play, and with it the one-year holding period for private disposals under section 23 of the Income Tax Act.

The difference is substantial. In the first case you pay on every gain, even after five years. In the second, a gain is tax-free after a holding period of one year, while a shorter holding period is taxed at your personal rate. Which of the two applies to your token is not something you can read off the price display, but you can read it off the issuance terms. Classification in an individual case is a job for a tax adviser; the groundwork you can do yourself.

What the five-year limit means for your holding period

The exemption expires after five years. Until the order is printed in the Federal Register, the official gazette, the end date is not fixed to a particular day, because the deadline runs from that publication. What counts for you is the order of magnitude: the framework such a venue operates under is set for a limited time and will be revised within it, since the regulator is collecting comments.

Anyone who wants to treat tokenized stocks as a long-term building block in their portfolio should factor that in. A ten-year holding period meets a legal framework whose current version ends after five. That is not a reason to stay away, but it is a reason to know the exit route in advance and to read the terms repeatedly rather than only once at the point of purchase.

A security under MiFID II: how BaFin classifies a stock token

The SEC has no authority over the German legal framework, but the question of which rights are embodied arises here just the same, only against a different yardstick. Germany's financial regulator BaFin classifies tokenized investments as securities where they are tradable in a way that resembles an exchange in practice. The concept of a security comes from Directive 2014/65/EU, known as MiFID II, and it requires three features at once: transferability, tradability on financial markets, and the embodiment of securities-like rights in the token.

That last feature is the rights question again. A token embodying shareholder rights therefore moves into the territory of securities law, and with it into the remit of the securities regulator, bringing prospectus and authorization duties for the provider. The European crypto regulation MiCA expressly does not apply here, because it carves out financial instruments; those are governed by MiFID II. With the Future Financing Act, Germany has additionally created the option of issuing shares electronically as central register shares and as crypto shares. How such a register works, and why the registrar is the decisive point, is settled at the level of register administration and the transfer agent, meaning the body that maintains the shareholder register.

Both legal orders produce the same test pattern for you. The more genuine shareholder rights a token carries, the more it is treated like a security, with the duties and the level of protection that come with that. The fewer it carries, the more it remains a crypto product with a counterparty in the background.

The case for and against tokenized stocks in a portfolio

Supporters of these products argue that they open up trading beyond exchange hours, that fractions of expensive shares become accessible and that settlement runs faster than through the classic securities chain. The US regulator itself gives as the purpose of its exemption the wish to enable innovation while gathering experience.

Against a large portfolio allocation stand the points this article works through: issuer and custody risk, the open rights position outside US venues, the unclear tax classification in individual cases and the time limit on the framework. This weighing up is no substitute for advice and is deliberately not a recommendation for any single provider. The list shows which questions you want answered before money goes into a product of this kind.

Checking a stock token: what to take away

1. Check your own token, not the headline. The SEC's equal-rights condition binds US trading venues. Search your issuance terms for voting rights and dividends, and record the result with the date. Which venues operate under supervision at all is set out in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Settle the tax question before you sell, not after. Whether section 20 with its flat withholding tax or section 23 with its one-year holding period applies depends on how your token is structured. Collect the records as you go; the tools in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers will help.
3. Separate the access route from the investment decision. If all you want is exposure to the price, you do not need a token with an unclear rights position to get it. Check instead which venues offer the stock directly, and compare the total cost using our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

(As of September 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

When you gift your child Bitcoin, you transfer two things at once: today's value and the tax history. The value decides whether any gift tax arises at all. For your own children, 400,000 euros per parent stay free of tax within a ten-year period, and very few transfers ever come close. The history decides what happens when your child sells the coins later: the acquisition date and the acquisition cost travel with them. Your child therefore takes over your holding period and your entry price.

That is the short answer, and it sounds more relaxed than practice is. Between the allowance and the sale sit a three-month reporting deadline, the question of who may hold the keys, and a less noticed side effect: a gain in the child's hands can touch free family health insurance. This article works through the points in order, each of them under German law.

Gifting Bitcoin to children: what actually transfers for tax purposes

For tax purposes, crypto assets are economic assets. They count as neither currency nor securities. An economic asset is any advantage with a monetary value that can be valued on its own. The German Federal Ministry of Finance confirmed this classification in its circular of 6 March 2025 and cited the Federal Fiscal Court, which had established it for Bitcoin and comparable coins in its judgment of 14 February 2023 (IX R 3/22).

Everything else follows from that classification. Because Bitcoin is an economic asset, a transfer without consideration falls under the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act. And because it is an other economic asset within the meaning of income tax law, the one-year rule for private sale transactions applies to any later sale. The two statutes run alongside each other and do not exclude one another. A gift can be free of gift tax and still trigger an income tax liability for the child years afterwards.

If you want to read up on the general rules for transfers without consideration, our overview of crypto gifts and inheritance covers them. Here the focus is the special case left out there: the minor recipient.

Gift tax: the 400,000 euro allowance applies per parent

The personal allowance is the amount up to which an acquisition stays free of tax. It depends on the family relationship between donor and recipient, not on wealth. For children the statute names 400,000 euros, for grandchildren 200,000 euros and for spouses 500,000 euros.

Two details matter more in practice than the figure itself. First, the allowance applies per donating person. Father and mother can therefore transfer 800,000 euros in total to the same child without gift tax arising, provided each parent gives out of their own assets. Second, the allowance replenishes over ten years. All acquisitions by the same person from the same person within ten years are added together; once the period has elapsed, the full amount is available again.

For Bitcoin, the sober conclusion is that gift tax is a non-issue at ordinary amounts. Anyone transferring coins worth a few thousand euros to their child stays far below every threshold. The allowance only becomes relevant when crypto forms part of a larger transfer of wealth alongside real estate or company shares, and at that point the whole arrangement belongs in expert hands.

How the tax office determines the value of gifted Bitcoin

What counts is the common value on the day the gift is executed. The common value is the price that could be achieved in ordinary business dealings. For Bitcoin that is the market price at the time of transfer. Your entry price is irrelevant here, as is an average across the year.

The gift is executed once your child has obtained the power of disposal. With an on-chain transfer, that is the moment the transaction was confirmed in a block and the coins sit at an address your child can dispose of. This is exactly where a threshold lies that many parents underestimate: as long as you alone keep control of the keys, it is questionable under civil law whether anything was transferred at all.

What you should document

Record which quantity of coins went to which address and when, which price applied on that day, and which source that price is based on. A short written gift agreement costs nothing and spares you the later discussion about whether it was a gift, a loan or mere custody. Without evidence, the person relying on the version that favours them bears the consequences in case of doubt.

Step into the shoes: why your child inherits your holding period

The step-into-the-shoes principle describes the rule that someone who acquires an asset without consideration steps into the tax position of their predecessor. Section 23 paragraph 1 sentence 3 of the Income Tax Act puts it this way: in the case of acquisition without consideration, the acquisition by the legal predecessor is attributed to the singular successor. The Federal Ministry of Finance applies this sentence expressly to crypto assets in margin number 73 of its circular.

The practical effect is considerable, and it usually works in the family's favour. If you have already held your Bitcoin for more than a year, the holding period is met at your child's level immediately. Should they sell the coins the day after the gift, the gain stays free of income tax, because more than a year lies between your acquisition and the disposal. A gift is not itself a disposal, so it does not reset the clock.

The reverse applies just as much. If you bought only three months ago, your child starts with three months of the period already run and has to wait another nine months to sell tax free. For calculating the period, the Federal Ministry of Finance relies on the times recorded at centralised trading venues, and on the times from the wallet in the case of direct transfers. So pass on the purchase records along with the coins.

A third figure travels along as well: the acquisition cost. Your child later calculates against your original purchase price rather than the price on the day of the gift. Anyone who bought cheaply in 2019 shifts hidden reserves along with the coins, which helps with the holding period question while making the starting point for the size of the gain within the period less favourable.

Reporting duty under section 30 ErbStG: three months, and for both sides

Section 30 of the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act requires every taxable acquisition to be reported in writing to the competent tax office within three months of becoming aware of it. With a gift between living persons, the person from whose assets the acquisition originates is obliged to report it as well. So it catches both sides: the child receiving the gift, represented by the parents, and the donating parent.

A widespread misunderstanding holds that nothing needs to be reported below the allowance. The reporting duty attaches to the acquisition, not to the amount of tax. It only falls away in the cases named in the statute, for example where the gift was notarised and the court or the notary takes over the report. With an on-chain transfer between parent and child, that is regularly not the case.

The report itself is informal. A letter with names, addresses, the family relationship, the date of execution, the quantity of coins transferred and the value applied is enough. The report is not a tax assessment, and it is no admission of debt. It is the basis on which the tax office decides whether to request a return. Anyone who omits it risks the accusation of a tax irregularity at larger amounts, and that accusation is considerably more unpleasant than the report itself.

Who gets to decide about the child's Bitcoin

A gift to a minor child is uncomplicated under civil law, as long as it brings the child nothing but a legal advantage. Under section 107 of the German Civil Code, a minor needs the consent of their legal representative only for declarations through which they obtain something more than a purely legal advantage. Simply receiving Bitcoin without conditions does not fall under that.

Joint representation under section 1629 BGB

From the moment the coins belong to the child, the parents may no longer dispose of them freely. Parental responsibility does include representing the child, and under section 1629 paragraph 1 BGB the parents represent the child jointly. What that means, though, is acting together, in the child's interest, with someone else's assets. A parent who sells the child's coins alone in order to pay a bill of their own is not acting within the scope of that representation.

Prudent asset management under section 1642 BGB

Rarely cited, but relevant here: section 1642 BGB obliges parents to invest the child's money under their management according to the principles of prudent asset management. The catalogue of transactions that additionally require approval from the family court is set out in section 1643 BGB in conjunction with sections 1850 ff. BGB and names land, registered ships, inheritance matters and commercial businesses. Crypto assets do not appear there.

An approval requirement for selling a child's Bitcoin therefore cannot be derived from the wording. The standard of section 1642 BGB nevertheless remains in place, and with a volatile asset it is anything but a formality. Anyone managing a larger sum for a child should do so with legal advice and be able to justify their decisions.

Account, custody account and wallet for minors: what works in practice

Legally, a child can own Bitcoin. In practice it usually fails at access to the trading venue. Crypto exchanges regularly admit only customers of full age in their terms of use, and the identity check under anti-money-laundering law is tailored to people with an ID document and full legal capacity. Check the provider's terms before you set out to open an account in your child's name; only what is written there in black and white is reliable.

That leaves two routes in practice. The first is a transfer to a wallet whose keys are held for the child, without any account at a provider being necessary. The second is to keep the coins in a clearly separated position until the child comes of age and to execute the gift only then; in that case, however, only this later point in time counts for the allowance and for the common value, and the ten-year period begins correspondingly later. If you are buying regularly anyway, a Bitcoin savings plan is the simpler foundation, because it documents every purchase with a date and a price and lets you hand the records on cleanly later.

Custody: whoever holds the key must be able to justify the attribution

For tax purposes, an economic asset is attributed to whoever exercises actual control over it. With Bitcoin that is whoever has the private key. For a gift to a child this creates a tension that cannot be defined away: an eight-year-old cannot secure a seed phrase, but if the parents keep the key and dispose of it freely, the transfer looks from the outside like an internal rebooking within their own holdings.

Separation and documentation resolve this. Use a dedicated wallet for the child's coins that has nothing to do with your other holdings, and never mix your own coins in. That also makes sense for a technical reason: the Federal Ministry of Finance prescribes a wallet-based view for the order of use. Anyone mixing holdings makes the later allocation of acquisition dates harder for everyone involved. Also record in writing that you hold the keys in trust for your child and from when they are to dispose of them themselves.

When your child sells: exemption limit, basic allowance and their own tax return

If your child sells the gifted Bitcoin at a gain within the one-year period they took over, a private sale transaction arises. The gain is the difference between the sale proceeds and the acquisition cost taken over. The child is liable for the tax, not you, because income is attributed to whoever earns it.

Two amounts provide relief here. The exemption limit in section 23 paragraph 3 sentence 5 of the Income Tax Act makes gains tax free if the total gain from all private sale transactions in the calendar year comes to less than 1,000 euros. An exemption limit is not an allowance: once it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable, not merely the excess part. Above that sits the basic allowance, which stands at 12,348 euros in 2026 and applies to the younger generation just as it does to everyone else. A child without other income therefore pays no income tax in the end even on a gain of several thousand euros, but still has to declare the transaction.

Anyone wanting to keep periods and cost bases clean over the years will hardly get by without software once more than a handful of transactions accumulate. When choosing, check whether the program can depict acquisition data taken over from a gift at all; many interfaces only know your own purchase. Also note the warning from the Finance Ministry circular: the tax reports offered by private providers resemble a bank's tax certificate from the outside, yet they are nothing of the kind. Responsibility for the declared figures stays with the taxpayer.

Family insurance, maintenance and student aid: where crypto gains show up

The point that surprises people most often in advisory conversations has nothing to do with tax. Children are covered by free family insurance in the statutory health insurance system as long as their regular total income does not exceed a limit. For 2026, the association of substitute health insurance funds names 565 euros a month, or 603 euros in the case of marginal employment.

Whether and how a one-off disposal gain enters this total income depends on how the health insurance funds interpret it and on whether the income counts as regular. There is no blanket answer here, and anyone who reads one should become sceptical. If a noteworthy gain is coming up for your child, ask the health insurance fund in writing beforehand how they will treat the transaction. The same caution applies to student aid applications, where the trainee's assets are counted separately, and to maintenance questions, where the child's own assets can play a role.

With child benefit the situation is more relaxed: there has been no income limit for children of full age in training since the 2012 reform. A crypto gain therefore does not endanger the entitlement.

The pocket money rule: what teenagers may do with their own money

Many parents stumble over the reverse question: the child bought on their own, out of their own pocket money. Section 110 BGB, known as the pocket money rule, provides that a contract concluded by a minor without consent is effective from the outset if they effect performance with means placed at their disposal for that purpose or for free use.

On the wording, the provision can be applied to a Bitcoin purchase out of pocket money, provided the money really was at free disposal and the purchase is paid in full. That does nothing to change the fact that the provider can terminate the contract on grounds of minority under its own terms and close the account. And for tax the rule holds without qualification: if your child makes a gain on these coins within a year, they are themselves obliged to declare it, pocket money or not.

Common mistakes when gifting Bitcoin to children

• The report is forgotten because the value lies far below the allowance. The three-month period runs anyway, and it hangs on the acquisition, not on the tax burden.
• The purchase records stay with the parents. Without them, the child can prove neither the holding period taken over nor the acquisition cost years later, and both are needed at exactly the moment they want to sell tax free.
• The child's coins and your own coins sit in the same wallet. That makes the wallet-based allocation vulnerable to challenge and lets the gift look like an internal rebooking.
• The gift is taken back because the price has risen or money is needed. Transferred assets belong to the child; a later grab is no correction, it is a separate transaction with consequences of its own.
• Conditions are agreed verbally. A gift subject to conditions is no longer purely legally advantageous and can affect validity under civil law.

Gifting Bitcoin to children: what to take away

1. Document before the transfer, not afterwards. Record the quantity of coins, the target address, the date, the price on the day and your original purchase records in one file, and give a copy to the child's custody. Which software carries acquisition data taken over cleanly forward is shown by the comparison of crypto tax tools.
2. Set up separate custody for the child. A separate wallet, never mixed with your own holdings, and a written note that you hold the keys in trust. Which devices are suitable for long-term separated custody is covered in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Report the gift within three months and plan the sale only afterwards. An informal letter to the tax office, and before any sale, check the one-year period taken over against the purchase date. Where your child will be able to sell the coins at all once they come of age is shown by the overview of the best crypto exchanges.

You can look up the two legal bases that matter yourself: the allowance in section 16 ErbStG and the treatment of crypto assets in the Finance Ministry circular of 6 March 2025, there especially margin numbers 53 ff. and 73.

This text does not replace tax advice in an individual case. As soon as larger amounts, several children or a planned succession of wealth are involved, the matter belongs in the hands of a tax adviser or a specialist lawyer before any transfer.

(As of September 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

2026 has been brutal for altcoins. $Bitcoin has clawed its way back from a 21 month low near $58,000 in late June to roughly $80,000, but most of the market never got the memo. Bitcoin dominance is sitting around 60%, and CoinMarketCap's Altcoin Season Index closed at 34 points in early September, well below the 75 that would confirm a real altcoin season.

That gap is the whole opportunity. When capital finally rotates down the risk curve, the assets that move first and hardest are usually the ones that got destroyed on the way down. Below are five low cap altcoins that are deep in the red for 2026, trade on market caps small enough that a modest inflow moves the price, and have something specific going on beyond a sad looking chart.

Why do low cap altcoins reverse fastest in a crypto reversal?

Market cap is leverage in both directions. A token with a $250 million market cap needs a fraction of the fresh demand that a $10 billion token needs to double. That is why small caps fall 70% to 90% in a drawdown while Bitcoin falls 30%, and it is also why they print the violent recovery candles once the flow turns.

The catch is that thin order books cut the same way. Low volume means slippage on the way in and, more painfully, on the way out. Every name below should be treated as a high beta trade on the market, not as a long term hold thesis.

There is also a structural point worth making. Four of the five names here are Ethereum aligned infrastructure. That is not an accident, because that entire sector spent 2026 being repriced. It does mean these coins are highly correlated with each other, so this is not a diversified basket. It is one bet expressed five ways.

Which low cap altcoins are down the most in 2026?

Figures are approximate and taken at the time of writing. Low cap prices move fast, so check live data before acting on anything here.

Can Celestia (TIA) reverse from a $320 million market cap?

The Celestia price sits near $0.35 with a market cap around $323 million and a fully diluted valuation near $411 million. That is a remarkably small number for a project that was one of the most hyped infrastructure launches of the last cycle, and the gap between circulating cap and FDV is unusually tight for a 2023 vintage token, which means unlock pressure is less of an overhang here than it is elsewhere.

Technically, TIA broke out of a multi week descending triangle in late August. The level that matters is a daily close above roughly $0.42. Clear that and the structure opens toward $0.52. Lose the breakout and support sits back near $0.30.

The narrative hook is Celestia's Vision 2.0 and the Fibre upgrade, which targets far higher blockspace throughput. Modular data availability is exactly the kind of story that gets ignored in a risk off tape and re-rated aggressively when traders go looking for beta.

Risk: Celestia's revenue is minimal, and the modular thesis has been out of favour for two straight cycles of narrative rotation.

Is the Sei (SEI) price oversold after a 96% drawdown?

Sei trades near $0.047 with a market cap in the $330 million range and roughly 7 billion of its 10 billion maximum supply already circulating. The SEI price is down about 96% from its all time high, and its one year return sits near minus 86%.

The bull case is mechanical rather than romantic. Sei is a trading focused Layer 1 with parallel execution and an order matching engine built into the chain. Chains that are optimised for trading tend to be the first to see activity return when volumes recover, because speculative flow is their core use case. If volumes come back across the market, Sei's on chain metrics improve before most of its peers.

Risk: roughly 3 billion SEI remain to be released, and the chain has struggled to convert technical throughput into sticky users.

Why is the Starknet (STRK) price one of the cheapest Layer 2 bets?

Starknet is the deepest value name on this list and the most speculative. STRK trades near $0.025 with a market cap somewhere between $160 million and $225 million depending on the data source, against 6.8 billion circulating tokens out of a 10 billion total supply.

This is a genuinely serious piece of zero knowledge infrastructure trading at a market cap smaller than plenty of meme coins. The token has been punished for two reasons that are worth separating: a heavy emissions schedule, and the broader collapse in Layer 2 valuations as fee revenue evaporated after blob fees made rollup costs negligible. The first is a real structural problem. The second is a sector wide repricing that reverses if activity returns.

Staking has given STRK a utility sink it did not have at launch, which at least gives holders a reason to lock supply rather than sell it.

Risk: this is the thinnest book of the five. Daily volume can drop to single digit millions, which means slippage is a real cost, not a theoretical one.

Can Optimism (OP) rebound from near all time lows?

The OP price is around $0.13 with a market cap near $287 million and roughly 2.15 billion of a 4.29 billion total supply in circulation. That puts Optimism about 96% below its all time high and within touching distance of its all time low.

The interesting thing about Optimism is that the token has decoupled almost completely from the technology's adoption. The OP Stack underpins a long list of production chains including Base, and the Superchain framework keeps expanding, yet none of that value historically accrued to the token. Any governance change that routes Superchain revenue back to OP holders would be a genuine repricing catalyst rather than a sentiment bounce.

Risk: the value accrual problem is not solved. Buying OP is a bet that it gets solved, and that bet has been wrong for three years.

Is Arbitrum (ARB) the most liquid reversal play?

Arbitrum is the largest of the five with a market cap in the $800 million to $900 million range and a price around $0.13. It printed a fresh all time low near $0.07 in late June before staging a sharp rally, and it already jumped 26% in a single session in early September while Bitcoin and Ethereum both slipped. That tells you the trading interest is there.

The catalyst is concrete. Robinhood launched the public mainnet of Robinhood Chain, an Arbitrum Orbit Layer 2 built for tokenised real world assets and 24/7 trading. A retail broker with tens of millions of accounts settling on your stack is the kind of distribution that eventually shows up in fee data.

Arbitrum also has the deepest liquidity here, which matters more than people admit. It is the one name on this list you can size properly and exit without wrecking the price.

Risk: roughly 92.65 million ARB unlock mid September as part of a recurring monthly cadence, split between team, advisors and investors. Two Arbitrum based DeFi apps were also exploited in July, with AFX Trade losing around $24 million and Ostium around $18 million. Both hit application contracts rather than the core network, but they still weigh on sentiment.

What would confirm the altcoin reversal next week?

Do not buy the story, buy the confirmation. Four signals to watch:

• Bitcoin dominance below 59%. Dominance closed recently above 60% after clearing a descending trendline. A rejection here is the single cleanest rotation signal.
• ETH/BTC above 0.03426 on a weekly close. The ratio has been hovering near 0.0313. A drop below 0.031 would invalidate the rotation thesis entirely.
• Altcoin Season Index above 50. It sat at 34 in early September. Anything above 50 means breadth is genuinely improving rather than a handful of names bouncing.
• A Bitcoin weekly close above $85,000. That would be the first real evidence that this is more than a bear market rally.

If those line up, low cap altcoins are where the outsized moves happen. If Bitcoin loses $75,000 to $77,000, none of this matters and every name above goes lower than you think possible.

What are the real risks with low cap altcoins?

Three things kill this trade. Token unlocks that dump supply into any strength. Liquidity so thin that a $1 million sell order moves the price 5% to 10%. And correlation, because all five of these names fall together on any Bitcoin flush, so there is no diversification benefit inside this basket.

Cheap is not the same as undervalued. A token that fell 96% can still fall another 50%, and several tokens that looked exactly like these in 2022 never recovered at all. Position size accordingly.

OpenAI's new transparency framework reveals AI models that invented fake "breach alerts," coached themselves to hide mistakes, and smuggled a file onto the public internet to talk to each other.

Brookings researchers in the US and China are urging Washington and Beijing to agree to keep humans in control of nuclear weapons.

SpaceX's AI division has held internal talks about buying customer records from dead startups—cheap fuel for Grok, no questions asked, because there's nobody left to ask them.

Chipotle is piloting a Palantir-built food safety dashboard after a summer of outbreaks, putting employee data in the hands of a company seeded by the CIA's venture arm.

In a no-action letter, the CFTC said certain software providers can connect users to regulated derivatives markets without registering as brokers.

Cardano users are being warned of an active scam after Input Output Group’s YouTube channel was apparently compromised.

The release is largely about strengthening the machinery underneath the network.

The market is at the pivotal stage where we are witnessing somewhat of a recovery at local levels.

JPMorgan says Bitcoin could gain more support relative to gold if investors unwind elevated hedges around crypto ETFs, with positioning in BlackRock’s IBIT still far more defensive than in major gold funds.

Ripple's David Schwartz has spotted a mysterious improvement in his XRP Ledger hub.

Key Highlights

• LINK increased 3.5% during Thursday’s session, reaching $11.78 from an opening price of approximately $11.38
• Critical support between $10.85 and $10.90 continues to hold after repeated testing
• SEC granted a conditional five-year exemption enabling blockchain-based trading platforms for tokenized American equities
• Bottomline rolled out Global Pay Connect, linking over 600 financial institutions through Chainlink’s CCIP infrastructure
• The Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act failed to secure sufficient Senate support for advancement

The LINK token from Chainlink posted gains exceeding 3.5% during Thursday’s trading, advancing from approximately $11.38 to reach $11.78. This upward movement coincided with significant institutional developments and regulatory progress concerning tokenized securities within the United States.

The token rebounded from its established support zone spanning $10.85 to $10.90, an area that has successfully withstood numerous challenges. This region previously functioned as resistance before the August breakout occurred, and it has maintained its integrity without experiencing a definitive breach since that time.

Technical indicators show the daily relative strength index climbing to approximately 55.6, marking a recovery from levels in the mid-40s observed earlier during the week. This positioning places LINK within neutral-to-bullish territory while remaining clear of overbought readings.

SEC Grants Pathway for Tokenized Securities Trading

This week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a conditional exemption spanning five years. The framework permits approved platforms to enable blockchain-based trading of tokenized American equities, with the requirement that these tokens preserve identical shareholder rights as conventional shares.

This development holds particular significance for Chainlink’s ecosystem. The protocol has constructed its framework around tokenized real-world assets, delivering price oracle services, proof-of-reserve verification, and cross-chain compatibility for traditional financial institutions.

Payment solutions provider Bottomline introduced Global Pay Connect recently, a system that links more than 600 banking institutions to blockchain payment infrastructure utilizing Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). This platform creates bridges between established networks such as Swift and SEPA with distributed ledger technology.

Additionally, BitGo designated Chainlink as the sole cross-chain provider for its multibillion-dollar Wrapped Bitcoin infrastructure, contributing to an expanding roster of CCIP integration announcements.

CLARITY Act Encounters Senate Roadblock

The Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act encountered a setback in the U.S. Senate this week. The proposed legislation, intended to establish a comprehensive federal framework for cryptocurrency market structure, could not secure the 60 votes required for procedural advancement.

This legislative failure created headwinds for Bitcoin and alternative digital assets during the week’s earlier sessions. The SEC’s tokenization exemption now represents a more limited yet tangible regulatory advancement as comprehensive legislation remains gridlocked in Congress.

Federal Reserve Rate Increase Introduces Macro Headwinds

The Federal Reserve implemented a 25 basis point increase to its benchmark rate this week, bringing it to 3.75%–4.00%, marking the first upward adjustment in three years. Central bank officials indicated additional tightening could materialize before the year concludes.

Elevated interest rates generally create challenges for cryptocurrency markets by enhancing the appeal of traditional lower-risk investments. LINK’s Thursday recovery occurred against this challenging macroeconomic environment.

Chart analysis identifies $10.87 as the crucial support threshold. Should LINK maintain levels above $11.50, the subsequent resistance targets include $12.00, followed by September’s peak range near $13.00–$13.50. A decisive move beneath $10.87 would redirect attention toward trend-line support positioned around $10.00.

LINK continues to preserve its August breakout structure, with the token last trading at $11.78 during the current session.

The post Chainlink (LINK) Surges on SEC Tokenization Approval and Banking Integration appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, directly intervened to prevent Greece from granting Binance an EU-wide crypto license
• The crypto exchange had prepared a “Major Milestone” announcement and arranged a planned photo opportunity with Greek Prime Minister before negotiations collapsed
• On June 24, Binance pulled its Greek MiCA license request ahead of an anticipated official denial
• Lagarde’s objections centered on Binance’s 2023 US criminal conviction and concerns about US dollar-backed stablecoins gaining market share in Europe
• Missing the July 1, 2026 MiCA compliance deadline cost Binance its ability to serve EU customers, though it now pursues licensing through alternative member nations

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange appeared poised to obtain comprehensive European Union market access via Greece in early 2025. That prospect ended when European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde made a decisive move.

A Wall Street Journal investigation released September 17 revealed that Lagarde directly reached out to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, urging him to reject Binance’s licensing request under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory structure.

Binance had filed its paperwork with Greece’s Hellenic Capital Market Commission in late 2025. Greek financial authorities informed the exchange that its submission met all requirements. The company drafted celebratory communications. CEO Richard Teng scheduled travel to Athens to appear alongside the prime minister for an announcement ceremony.

Shortly after Greek representatives informed the European Securities and Markets Authority’s digital finance panel of their intent to grant approval, an HCMC deputy chairperson notified Binance that Lagarde had made contact. The regulatory body indicated it couldn’t proceed without backing from Mitsotakis himself.

Lagarde’s Rationale for Blocking Approval

According to reports, two primary factors motivated Lagarde’s involvement.

Binance’s criminal record represented the first major issue. The exchange admitted guilt in 2023 to Bank Secrecy Act violations, operating without proper money transmission registration, and breaking sanctions regulations. Financial penalties exceeded $4.3 billion. Company founder Changpeng Zhao completed a four-month incarceration before President Trump granted him a pardon in October 2025.

Following that conviction, the US Justice Department launched an investigation this year into allegations that Iranian entities exploited Binance for sanctions evasion. Federal prosecutors claimed an Iranian operation utilized the platform to process oil sale proceeds from Chinese purchasers. Binance maintains the civil litigation doesn’t accuse the company of misconduct.

Stablecoin proliferation formed the second concern. Lagarde allegedly feared that authorizing Binance—where dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies dominate trading activity—would accelerate adoption of US dollar stablecoins throughout European markets. The ECB has invested heavily in creating a digital euro, an initiative Lagarde considers central to her institutional legacy.

Aftermath and Current Status

Approximately one week following the ESMA committee session, HCMC representatives informed Binance the licensing process would terminate, referencing insufficient “convergence” among stakeholders. Binance formally withdrew its filing on June 24, preempting an official board rejection.

The withdrawal triggered immediate ramifications. MiCA’s transitional grace period concluded on July 1, 2026. Lacking proper authorization, Binance lost the ability to market its platform to the EU’s 450 million-person market.

Following this setback, Binance has maintained limited European customer relationships through an Abu Dhabi-registered entity, relying on a regulatory exception permitting unlicensed operators to service clients they haven’t actively recruited. ESMA has requested documentation regarding whether Binance is appropriately terminating unauthorized EU operations.

The exchange states it intends to submit a MiCA license application via a different EU jurisdiction. No new filing has received public verification.

Simultaneously, the European Commission continues evaluating MiCA regulations, with stakeholder feedback accepted until September 30. A proposed reform transferring licensing jurisdiction for major cryptocurrency platforms from individual country regulators to ESMA remains under discussion.

The ECB holds no official authority over crypto licensing decisions under MiCA provisions. The intervention attributed to Lagarde in the WSJ reporting occurred through unofficial channels. Neither the ECB nor Greek government officials have publicly acknowledged the communication.

The post ECB Chief Christine Lagarde Torpedoed Binance’s EU Licensing Attempt in Greece appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Solana reduced its target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds, making block production about 17% faster.
• The network now targets four slots per second, giving wallets and trading apps fresher transaction updates.
• Faster slots do not increase Solana’s overall processing capacity because each slot carries proportionally less work.
• Validators now control transaction ordering for about one second instead of 1.2 seconds before leadership changes.
• Solana epochs will shorten from about 36 hours to roughly 30 hours, while a future 200-millisecond target remains under review.

Solana cut its target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds on Friday. The change makes the network clock run about 17% faster. Each Solana transaction can now receive updated network information sooner as validators produce blocks more often.

At the new setting, Solana targets four slots every second instead of about 3.3. Validators still lead for four straight slots. Their control window therefore falls from 1.2 seconds to one second before another validator takes over.

The change focuses on timing rather than throughput. Solana keeps its wall-clock work limit near the same level, so faster slots do not mean more total transactions each second. The update therefore changes coordination speed, not raw scale.

Faster Updates for Trading Applications

The shorter slot time can help wallets, exchanges, oracles, and trading platforms receive fresher network data. Automated market makers may also see less delay between a submitted Solana transaction and its arrival on the network.

A smaller delay can reduce the time available for market prices to move before a swap reaches validators. Users may receive transaction updates sooner, although execution still depends on network conditions, routing, and the transaction itself.

The change does not raise Solana’s raw processing ceiling by 17%. Under SIMD-0525, the network lowers the permitted computation and data in each slot by the same proportion as the shorter slot duration.

More blocks now arrive each second, but every block can carry less work. Infrastructure providers must still ingest and store more individual blocks. Applications using a fixed slot-duration estimate will also need to adjust their timing assumptions.

Shorter Epochs Change Network Timing

Blockhashes now expire sooner in real time, leaving less time for offline signing and delayed approvals. The Solana transaction timing change also shortens an epoch of 432,000 slots from about 36 hours to roughly 30 hours.

The move follows earlier reductions from 400 milliseconds to 350 and then 300 milliseconds. It also arrives days after the Solana Transaction V1 upgrade increased the maximum serialized transaction size from 1,232 bytes to 4,096 bytes. A future 200-millisecond slot target could cut epochs to about 24 hours, but developers have not set a mainnet date and plan to watch block-skip rates first.

The post Solana Transaction Speed Rises Without More Capacity appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• SOL price fluctuated between $101 and $105, registering approximately 4-5% gains over 24 hours
• Crypto analyst Ali Charts pinpointed $105 as the critical resistance threshold
• Breakthrough above $105 with sustained closing could trigger movement toward $130
• Net inflows into Solana ETFs totaled $836,930 on September 16
• Technical indicators on the weekly timeframe suggest a potential SMA crossover that could signal major price action

Solana maintained its position above the psychologically significant $100 threshold on Wednesday following a roughly 5% increase over the preceding 24-hour period. During this analysis, SOL was exchanging hands near $101.32, demonstrating stronger performance compared to the wider cryptocurrency marketplace.

The aggregate cryptocurrency market capitalization experienced a 2.13% uptick, reaching $2.63 trillion. Bitcoin hovered around the $76,000 mark while Ethereum traded near $2,450 during this timeframe.

Technical analyst Ali Charts identified a bull flag formation emerging on Solana’s four-hour timeframe. This chart pattern materialized following an earlier upward price movement, subsequently entering a consolidation phase near the $101 region.

According to Ali Charts, $105 represents the pivotal resistance threshold requiring monitoring. In a social media update on X, the analyst stated: “A sustained close above it could confirm the bullish breakout and open the door to a rally toward $130.” The analyst cautioned that any upward movement past $105 lacking a decisive close might constitute a false breakout scenario.

Technical momentum indicators showed SOL’s MACD line positioned at -0.10, trading above the signal line at -0.55, with the histogram displaying a positive 0.44 value indicating strengthening momentum. The Relative Strength Index advanced to 59.42, demonstrating increasing buying pressure while remaining below overbought conditions.

Exchange-Traded Fund Activity and Market Metrics

Investment flows into Solana-focused ETFs totaled $836,930 in net inflows on September 16, based on data from SoSoValue. Bitwise’s BSOL product captured the largest share with $2.69 million in incoming capital, while Grayscale’s GSOL experienced $1.85 million in capital withdrawals.

Combined net assets held across the seven Solana ETF offerings climbed to $1.38 billion, representing 2.38% of SOL’s overall market capitalization. Trading volume for these products reached $51.57 million daily, with BSOL commanding the largest position at $945.76 million in assets under management.

In a separate analysis, Ali Charts presented an extended timeframe perspective on Solana’s blockchain data, observing that over 40 million SOL tokens have changed hands near the $100 price point, establishing what the analyst characterized as a substantial support foundation. According to Ali Charts, the weekly chart displays a cup-and-handle formation with a neckline positioned around $360.

Moving Average Convergence and Tokenized Asset Developments

Examining the weekly chart structure, analyst Trader Tardigrade drew attention to an impending convergence between Solana’s 100-period and 150-period simple moving averages. The analyst referenced historical occurrences where comparable crossovers preceded significant price appreciation. Tardigrade established an ambitious technical price objective of $1,000 per SOL, though this figure represents an individual trader’s forecast rather than widespread market consensus.

Developments in tokenization also accelerated on the Solana network. Solflare expanded its xStocks platform by incorporating more than 750 tokenized equity instruments, featuring shares from prominent companies including Nike, Disney, and Airbnb.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on September 17 a conditional five-year exemption designed to facilitate blockchain-based trading of tokenized stocks and securities, reducing certain conventional exchange and broker-dealer compliance requirements.

At the time of the subsequent market update, SOL was changing hands near $100.14 with 24-hour trading volume reaching $6.27 billion and a market capitalization of roughly $59 billion.

The post Solana (SOL) Eyes $130 Breakout as Critical Resistance Level Approaches appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• On September 16, Coinbase revealed a strategic alliance with Stablecore designed to integrate cryptocurrency trading, custody services, staking capabilities, and stablecoin payment options directly into American banking infrastructure.
• Stablecore’s technology platform currently interfaces with systems serving over 3,000 financial institutions across the United States, including banks and credit unions, though universal adoption agreements remain unconfirmed.
• Texas-based Amarillo National Bank represents one of the initial financial institutions participating in this collaborative initiative.
• A separate agreement between Stablecore and Nasdaq Verafin, revealed September 15, focuses on cryptocurrency financial crime detection and is currently undergoing beta testing.
• Coinbase has established two community banking partnerships within a single week, with the Stablecore arrangement following closely after a Moov collaboration involving 1,000+ institutions.

On September 16, Coinbase revealed a strategic collaboration with fintech firm Stablecore aimed at embedding cryptocurrency capabilities directly into established U.S. banking platforms. The partnership encompasses digital asset trading, secure custody solutions, staking services, and stablecoin-based payment systems.

According to Stablecore, its existing technological infrastructure interfaces with platforms serving more than 3,000 American banks and credit unions. This number represents Stablecore’s current market penetration rather than confirmed partnership agreements with Coinbase across all these institutions.

Within this collaborative framework, Coinbase supplies the underlying custody infrastructure and exchange technology. Stablecore functions as the integration layer, linking Coinbase’s capabilities to each financial institution’s core banking platforms, digital banking interfaces, and regulatory compliance systems.

The partnership operates through a white-label architecture. Financial institutions maintain their proprietary branding and user experience while leveraging Coinbase’s digital asset infrastructure behind the scenes.

Amarillo National Bank, located in Texas, has been identified as an initial implementation partner. The institution was already collaborating with Stablecore via Q2 Innovation Studio, a specialized banking technology ecosystem, which successfully transitioned Stablecore’s integration from development phase to production environment in fewer than six months, completing by September 9.

There has been no official confirmation that Amarillo National Bank customers can presently purchase, sell, stake, or transfer stablecoins through their banking accounts. Representatives from both organizations characterize the initiative as ongoing, with customer-facing functionality dependent on each participating institution’s individual implementation timeline.

Financial Crime Prevention Infrastructure Developed in Parallel

On September 15, Stablecore unveiled an additional partnership with Nasdaq Verafin. This collaboration merges digital asset transaction information with conventional banking customer data to enhance financial crime detection capabilities.

Within this framework, Stablecore manages digital asset transaction records while deliberately excluding personally identifiable customer information. Each participating bank retains its own customer identity data, with both datasets feeding into Verafin’s platform for comprehensive risk analysis.

Amarillo National Bank currently serves as the beta testing partner for this compliance system. Stablecore projects the Verafin integration will become available to shared customers during the fourth quarter of 2026 and first quarter of 2027. Real-time sanctions screening functionality is scheduled for implementation following the initial deployment phase.

According to William Ware, president of Amarillo National Bank, customers are increasingly seeking access to innovative payment technologies while the institution requires comprehensive oversight spanning both conventional and digital financial activities.

Regulatory Framework Already Established

American financial regulators have previously established guidelines permitting banks to collaborate with external cryptocurrency service providers. In May 2025, the OCC clarified that national banks possess authority to offer cryptocurrency custody services and facilitate customer-directed digital asset transactions. Financial institutions may delegate these functions to specialized vendors provided they implement appropriate oversight protocols.

The Federal Reserve eliminated its advance notification mandate for state member banks in April 2025. Cryptocurrency-related activities now operate within the agency’s conventional supervisory framework.

The Stablecore collaboration represents Coinbase’s second community banking partnership announced within a single week. Just six days prior, Coinbase disclosed an arrangement with Moov affecting more than 1,000 community financial institutions, emphasizing stablecoin payment processing and merchant settlement services.

These two partnerships address distinct banking operational areas. The Moov agreement concentrates on payment acceptance and transaction funding, whereas the Stablecore partnership encompasses trading platforms, custody solutions, staking opportunities, and compliance system integration.

Coinbase has not made public specific fee structures, staking reward details, or a comprehensive rollout schedule for the Stablecore partnership. Neither organization has released transaction volume metrics from initial deployment sites.

The post Coinbase (COIN) Teams Up With Stablecore to Deliver Crypto Banking to Over 3,000 Financial Institutions appeared first on Blockonomi.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said early Friday that someone has hijacked the official Input Output Global (IOG) YouTube channel.

He warned the community not to click on any links on the platform or trust any videos that someone might post there.

Team Working With YouTube

Hoskinson posted the warning on X, saying:

“The IOG YouTube apparently has been compromised. Do not trust any videos or click on any links on it.”

He also said the team was working with YouTube to take the channel down and reset credentials.

At the time of writing, IOG’s own X account had not mentioned the alleged compromise, although several Cardano-focused accounts had echoed Hoskinson’s warning.

Bitcoin investor Lark Davis also shared the news with his 1.5 million X followers, urging them to always do their own research and triple-check everything.

The channel itself does not show obvious signs of a scam broadcast yet, with its newest uploads still the same ones IOG posted a couple of weeks ago, including a Musashi Dojo update, a Leios explainer, and a Lace wallet interview with Nate Strang.

A Familiar Playbook For Crypto Users

Compromised social media accounts belonging to established crypto brands and leading personalities have become one of the more reliable scam formats around, mostly because an account with years of posting, uploading videos, and interacting with a huge follower or subscriber base often reads as trustworthy to anyone scrolling past it.

The bigger the following, the more convincing a fake post or livestream giveaway would become to someone who hasn’t clocked that the channel has changed hands, making it easier for them to be hit with phishing links that could drain funds from their wallets.

The alleged IOG incident has also come right when crypto is facing a major account and data security issue. As CryptoPotato reported recently, an attacker using a real government agency’s email domain convinced Revolut to hand over customer information, including passports, verification selfies, and complete Bitcoin transaction histories.

Later, a group calling itself Revolut Smilik started publishing the information while demanding 10,000 BTC to stop.

While the two incidents are not exactly the same, both show how much damage a convincing impersonation can do before anyone gets the chance to double-check.

The post Cardano Founder Warns IOG YouTube Channel Has Been Compromised appeared first on CryptoPotato.

JPMorgan analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in a note this week that Bitcoin (BTC) could draw more price support than gold if hedging demand in the ETF market eases, with short interest in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) sitting near its highest level of the year.

IBIT’s put-to-call open interest ratio runs above that of the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD), which the analysts read as heavier hedging around Bitcoin, while short interest in GLD sits below its historical average.

Bitcoin Vs. Gold

Bitcoin still faces a more skeptical positioning backdrop than gold despite recent inflows and a build-up of futures positioning, the note said. Moreover, figures reported by FINRA and compiled by MarketBeat put IBIT’s short base at 45.9 million shares as of the August 31 settlement date, the highest reading of 2026 and up 23.8% from 37.1 million two weeks earlier.

The position equals 3.53% of the float and would take 0.6 days of the fund’s average trading volume, about 53 million shares, to cover. At the end of March, the short base stood near 13 million shares, the year’s low.

Bitcoin and gold funds both drew inflows after the Federal Reserve’s late-July meeting, when the debasement trade returned, according to the note. That’s part of the reason behind the rally that carried Bitcoin toward $80,000 and gold near $4,600 an ounce as investors rotated into scarce assets on US fiscal concerns.

However, momentum faded over the past week as inflation-adjusted bond yields rose and the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act in a procedural vote that fell short of the 60 votes needed, the analysts wrote. Gold ETFs have recovered all of their outflows from earlier this year, the note said, while Bitcoin funds have recaptured about half.

Panigirtzoglou’s team has run the Bitcoin-gold comparison before. In February, with crypto assets under pressure, the analysts put a volatility-adjusted comparison to gold at $266,000 per Bitcoin, in their words, “an unrealistic target for this year” but one that “shows the upside potential over the long term once negative sentiment is reversed.”

Bitcoin traded near $76,500 on Thursday, little changed over the past 24 hours, per CoinGecko data.

ETF Flows Swinging Hard

Moreover, US spot Bitcoin ETFs have swung hard this month, posting $236 million in outflows on September 1 before taking in $731 million on September 3, their strongest day since January, with IBIT alone accounting for roughly $454 million.

Net assets across the funds stood at $103.3 billion in early September, about 6% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization, per SoSoValue data.

The post Bitcoin Could Get More Support Than Gold as ETF Hedging Eases: JPMorgan appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ripple’s cross-border token was at the forefront of gains toward the end of August when its price reached $1.70. Since then, though, bears have regained control, and it has experienced a substantial pullback.

The CLARITY Act’s failure only worsened XRP’s position, driving it down to roughly $1.26. It has regained some ground and now trades around $1.30, but it is still down about 6% on a weekly basis. One popular analyst remains unfazed by the recent weakness, suggesting it may present an attractive buying opportunity. Here’s why.

First Time in History

X user Cryptollica disclosed that XRP’s two-week RSI ratio has dropped to around 33.5, the lowest point in its history and lower than in 2018, during the 2020 COVID pandemic, and in the 2022 bear market.

“That is the part the market is misreading. Sentiment has been destroyed, momentum has been washed out to a historical extreme, and the asset is being treated as if the story is already over. But this is exactly where asymmetry becomes interesting. Market has already delivered the pain while the long term structire is still active,” the analyst said.

Cryptollica maintained that everyone wants certainty after the move becomes obvious; investors find XRP attractive after the breakout, and almost nobody is interested when the chart “looks broken.”

Dropping to this level is indeed interpreted as a bullish sign. It indicates that Ripple’s native token has entered oversold territory like never before, which could precede a strong recovery.

The institutional appetite is another positive signal. Last week, spot XRP ETFs smashed another all-time high after cumulative total net inflows surpassed $1.7 billion. Despite the choppy price performance, these investment vehicles continue to attract capital, and September 2 was the only red day in the past month and a half.

Additional Forecasts

XRP started the current business week on the right foot, rising above $1.40. Ali Martinez noted the resurgence, forecasting that a sustained close above $1.38 could confirm the bullish move and open the door to a rally toward $1.60. In fact, the price continued pumping to nearly $1.50 but then headed south and could not reach the analyst’s target.

STEPH IS CRYPTO and Crypto Bitlord also made interesting predictions. The former spotted a “cup and handle” pattern on XRP’s price chart and projected a potential jump to $2.50, while the latter said they are 99% sure a push toward $2 is coming next.

The post Ripple (XRP) Prints an Extremely Bullish Signal: Is This the Perfect Buying Opportunity? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Crypto.com is moving closer to launching single-stock futures in the United States after the SEC acknowledged a Form 1-N filing from North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex).

CEO Kris Marszalek revealed the company is now “authorized” to bring single-stock futures to the market through OG.com, which is its CFTC-regulated standalone prediction market platform launched in February.

US Single-Stock Futures

In a post on X, Marszalek also said the team is working with the SEC and CFTC for the offering in the US. Single-stock futures are contracts linked to the future price of individual stocks. They allow traders to take positions on stocks through futures contracts rather than buying the underlying shares directly.

The SEC document, dated September 16, confirms the filing was made under Section 6(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Crypto.com is not the only platform looking to bring single-stock perpetual futures to the US. According to The Wall Street Journal,  Kalshi is also seeking regulatory approval for the products. The prediction market operator reportedly plans to offer around 60 perpetual contracts tied to major stocks and ETFs, including Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia. The planned stock contracts would target companies with market values of at least $100 billion.

Coinbase also filed notice registrations with the SEC to offer single-stock perpetual futures domestically. Earlier this month, the company said it is working with both regulatory watchdogs to bring the products to the US market.

The development reflects a push by relatively newer platforms to expand into areas long dominated by traditional financial firms.

Prediction Markets Push

The latest development comes days after Robinhood announced expanding its partnership with Crypto.com and OG.com as prediction markets continue to grow on its platform. The companies said Robinhood will begin routing some football event contracts to OG.com from September 8.

As part of the deal, Robinhood Markets will take equity stakes in the two after OG.com becomes an independent trading platform. The stakes will be priced in line with Citadel Securities’ recent investment in Crypto.com Group at a $20 billion valuation.

The post Crypto.com Gets Green Light to Bring Single-Stock Futures to the US appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Charles Hoskinson says the cryptocurrency industry is about to do to artificial intelligence what it once did to cryptography, and he thinks the spending spree behind today’s AI data centers is heading for a bust.

In the September 16 episode of the Deeptech Insights podcast, the Cardano founder argued that blockchains could give AI payment rails, data ownership, provenance, and distributed computing as the infrastructure boom runs into economic limits.

Why Hoskinson Thinks Crypto Eats AI

Hoskinson said spending 10 times more on data centers every year cannot continue because there is not enough electricity to support that pace. Companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic also need to become profitable at scale, he said, with pre-training creating much of the financial pressure.

The developer compared AI’s position today with cryptography when he entered the industry, saying that cryptographers objected to being associated with cryptocurrency, a stance that ended once cryptocurrency had the money to hire the best cryptographers. He expects AI to follow the same path within five to ten years.

“Cryptocurrencies are going to eat AI because we solve all the hard problems that AI can’t solve,” Hoskinson said.

The problems in question are payments, alignment and data provenance.

His alignment argument is that blockchains create shared rules among participants, while AI companies make their own decisions about issues such as free speech and acceptable behavior.

A blockchain-based system, in his view, could provide a shared mechanism for those rules rather than leaving them to individual companies. Blockchains could also track who created data and how it changes hands, creating records for intellectual property and automated royalties when AI systems use someone else’s work.

The Input Output CEO also raised the idea of pooling ordinary phones and GPUs together as a training resource, arguing that would beat building new data centers altogether.

He compared it to the fiber optic buildout of the late 1990s, when about 90% of the cable laid nationwide sat unused for close to a decade before demand caught up. He expects something similar with data centers: overbuilding now, then a shift toward smaller local models running on personal hardware, like Apple’s M5 Mac Studio.

If frontier AI increasingly runs on networks of smaller machines instead of centralized data centers, Hoskinson argued, cryptocurrency is “the only coordinating technology that exists to do that.”

The Regulatory Backdrop Hoskinson Says Won’t Move Until 2029

In the podcast, Hoskinson also predicted the CLARITY Act won’t clear Congress until 2029, blaming what he called three mistakes by the Trump administration, tying crypto’s image to Trump-branded tokens and putting an inexperienced “crypto czar” in charge of building consensus.

He argued Democrats have little reason to compromise now when waiting for a majority could get them a stronger bill later.

That lined up with what happened just a day before the episode aired. The US Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act on September 15, falling short of the 60 votes needed to move the bill forward.

Hoskinson isn’t new to attacking the bill either. Back in March, he called an earlier draft a “horrific trash bill” that would trap new projects in securities status by default, although he said assets like Cardano and XRP would likely be grandfathered in.

The post Charles Hoskinson: Crypto Will Eat AI as the Data Center Boom Goes Dark appeared first on CryptoPotato.