The incident highlights the growing role of unmanned technology in warfare, potentially altering strategic dynamics in the Black Sea region.

The post Military milestone: Ukrainian naval drone sinks Russian kamikaze drone boat appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The U.S. decision may signal a cautious stance on Middle Eastern conflicts, potentially affecting diplomatic relations and market expectations.

The post Trump opts out of joint military strikes with Saudi Arabia in Yemen appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

AI-driven trade growth reshapes global economic dynamics, highlighting potential overcapacity risks and the need for sustainable demand.

The post AI-enabling goods drive 42% global trade growth in Q1 2026 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The massive short squeeze highlights the volatility and potential for rapid market shifts, reshaping trader strategies and psychological benchmarks.

The post $918M in shorts liquidated in 24 hours as Bitcoin blasts past $85K appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin's surge highlights the volatility and risks in crypto markets, impacting investor sentiment and potentially influencing regulatory scrutiny.

The post Bitcoin reclaims $87,000 as short sellers get wiped out appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin ETF Holders Back in the Black as Price Barrels Towards $87,000

Bitcoin exchange-traded fund holders are back in profit after the cryptocurrency’s latest surge. 

Posted on X on Monday, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart wrote that the rally on Monday morning in New York posted the average investor above the estimated ETF cost basis of $81,72 for the first time since January. 

Bitcoin shot above $86,000 despite key crypto legislation, the Clarity Act, getting blocked last week and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. The price of cryptocurrency was recently at close to $86,772 after trading as high as $86,837 earlier in the day. 

The coin’s price now sits over 30% below the all-time high it hit last year of $126,080. 

U.S. Bitcoin ETFs — managed by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and Morgan Stanley —  last week received net positive flows of over $6 million. Investors jumped back into buying shares of the products on Thursday and Friday, throwing nearly $593 million at the vehicles, according to Farside Investors data. 

Bitcoin in August started rallying after the Treasury Department said it would least double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks. It then had its best week since 2023. 

Bitcoin notched an all-time high in October but its run ended later that month after the biggest liquidation event in crypto history saw over $19 billion in bets closed. 

The coin continued its plunge after the Federal Reserve made it clear it was in no hurry to lower interest rates and investors increasingly threw money at artificial intelligence-related stocks. 

But the coin has since shrugged off news that the Federal Reserve was pivoting to hawkishness as investors pile back into the so-called debasement trade. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024 approved Bitcoin ETFs to trade in the U.S. and the funds had the most successful launch in the history of the investment vehicles. 

Investors previously put off from buying Bitcoin due to the complexities of cold storage and private keys can now buy shares that trade on stock exchanges that track the price of Bitcoin. 

The ETFs — managed by other top Wall Street fund managers — currently manage a total of $98.8 billion in assets, according to Coinglass data. 

This post Bitcoin ETF Holders Back in the Black as Price Barrels Towards $87,000 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Jordi Visser: Why AI Agents Make the BTC Bull Case

Crypto spent 15 years building rails — lending, tokenization, stablecoins — and Jordi Visser argues the users it was built for were never meant to be human. In this conversation with Grace Remington and Sean Hagan, Visser lays out his Ghost Rails thesis, comparing today’s moment to the 14-year gap between Netscape going public and the App Store finally putting the internet in everyone’s hands. He explains why AI agents, not retail wallets, are the inflection point for the agentic economy, and why that’s “extremely positive” for Bitcoin specifically. If you’ve wondered what actually breaks the liquidity-driven narrative around this asset class, start here.

Chapters:
00:00 — Betting on nominal growth: can AI outrun the U.S. debt load?
02:06 — Why Bitcoin is the only asset surviving 20 years
04:01 — Crypto built the plumbing, AI agents became the users
07:33 — Tokenization turns $900 trillion of illiquid assets into money
09:50 — What has to break before the top 10% finally buy Bitcoin
12:18 — The Santa Claus effect and why belief beats innovation
14:23 — Swarms working 24/7 and the exponential investors ignore
16:47 — Debt-financed data centers, cancer breakthroughs, and the bond market scare
19:19 — The AI doomsday soap opera
23:09 — Bitcoin demand for 30 years and the case for good deflation

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 Jordi Visser: Why AI Agents Make the BTC Bull Case first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Strategy and Strive Announce $182.7 Million Bitcoin Buy as Price Surges Past $86,000

Bitcoin treasuries kicked off Monday with a bang, with Strategy and Strive announcing they scooping up a combined 2,305 BTC for $182.7 million. 

Strategy said in a filing that it last week bought 950 bitcoins for $75.7 million — its first buy since August — and Strive snapped up 1,355 BTC for $107.7 million. 

The announcement comes as the price of the biggest cryptocurrency surges. Bitcoin’s price recently stood at $86,008, a 6% 24-hour rise, after hitting as high as $86,282 earlier on Monday. 

Strategy, the biggest corporate holder of bitcoin, also repurchased $174 million of its STRC perpetual preferred shares. The company has hit pause on buying this year to buy back its stock and build a cash reserve. 

On some occasions, the company even sold small bits of its BTC stash — despite founder and chairman Michael Saylor famously preaching to “never sell your bitcoin.”

After a 10-week hiatus, the company started buying bitcoin again in the final week of August, scooping up nearly $370 million in the leading cryptocurrency. 

Its bitcoin holdings now stand at 846,000 coins — worth $72.7 billion at today’s prices. 

Strive has continued its buying every week, going up the rankings of companies holding bitcoin. The Nasdaq-listed company is now the fifth biggest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency with 26,355 BTC worth $2.2 billion. 

Strategy’s stock (NASDAQ: MSTR) was trading 8% higher on Monday. Strive (NASDAQ: ASST) was trading slightly lower but on Friday hit above $30 per share — beating most targets given by Wall Street analysts. 

Bitcoin treasury companies have had a rough 2026. Strategy, Satsuma, Smarter Web Company, Sequans, Nakamoto, and Empery Digital have all sold bitcoin this year to repay debt, fund operations or finance buybacks, while others have folded or pivoted to AI infrastructure as their share prices collapsed.

Bitcoin’s Monday surge comes despite key crypto legislation, the Clarity Act, getting blocked last week. The Federal Reserve also raised interest rates but investors have shrugged off the central bank’s move. 

The coin’s price now sits over 30% below the all-time high it hit in October of $126,080.

This post Strategy and Strive Announce $182.7 Million Bitcoin Buy as Price Surges Past $86,000 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Russian Crypto Industry Could Be Operating Legally by Year-End: Central Bank

Russia’s crypto industry may have all it needs to start legally functioning by year-end, according to reports. 

The deputy governor of the country’s central bank, Vladimir Chistyukhin, said that regulations were moving ahead as scheduled, Interfax reported on Monday. 

Russia this year has pressed ahead with crypto legislation. President Vladimir Putin in August signed a law to set in stone the regulation of digital currencies and digital rights in the country — although using bitcoin for payments is still banned. 

“Right now we are talking about creating subordinate regulation; it is very large and significant,” Chistyukhin was quoted saying, adding that the “fine-tuning” of internal rules could be carried out before the end of 2026. 

Russia’s central bank has approved Bitcoin trading for the public on the country’s crypto exchanges. Law currency states that unqualified investors can buy 300,000 rubles ($3,582) worth of bitcoin and other assets through one intermediary; qualified investors have no limits. 

Sberbank, the biggest bank in Russia, plans to debut a Bitcoin and crypto wallet as well as digital asset custody by December. The bank in August said it expected trading volume with its new crypto rollout to hit 4 trillion rubles ($47 bln) in the first year. 

Using digital assets as a means of payment or legal tender within Russia has been prohibited in Russia since 2022. 

Despite Putin appearing to praise Bitcoin in the past, its use as a medium of exchange and currency has been banned for years. 

Russian lawmakers have made an exception for international payments — but most likely as a way to dodge Western sanctions.  

The U.S. and European governments cut Russia off from the SWIFT payments system after it invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Russian companies have been using Bitcoin to skirt around the penalties, according to the country’s finance minister. 

This post Russian Crypto Industry Could Be Operating Legally by Year-End: Central Bank first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Shrugs Off Clarity Act Fail, Blasts Past $86,000 

Long-awaited crypto legislation failed last week — but Bitcoin buyers don’t seem to care. 

The price of the leading cryptocurrency shot up Monday by nearly 7% over a 24-hour period, six days after lawmakers blocked the Clarity Act. 

Digital asset industry bigwigs have been calling for clear rules to be put in place to regulate the fast-moving space. But the key legislation aiming to do so in the form of the crypto market structure bill didn’t progress last week after Democrats mostly disagreed with the ethics side of the bill. 

Bitcoin’s price has shrugged off the bill’s collapse, and recently stood at $86,225 after touching as high as $86,247 Monday morning in New York. 

Over a 30-day period, the coin is up 10%. Bitcoin started a phenomenal run in August — its best in years — after the U.S. Treasury announced it would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations.

The asset’s price further benefited after U.S. President Donald Trump the same week hosted a meeting at the White House with crypto industry leaders and urged lawmakers to get what he called the “powerful” Clarity Act over the line. 

Both Republicans and Democrats blocked the bill but Democrats had mostly been accused of trying to deliberately stall it by pro-crypto lawmakers for months. 

The central sticking point for Democratic lawmakers was the conflict of interest posed by the Trump family’s crypto holdings. Beginning in the run-up to his return to office, the president and his sons launched a series of digital asset ventures, and Trump’s own financial disclosure reported roughly $1.4 billion in crypto-related income. 

The White House says his assets sit in a trust managed by his children and that no conflict exists.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, of the crypto industry’s loudest critics, told congress ahead of the vote that the bill “posed a massive risk to families.”

Though despite the bill not advancing, the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are pushing ahead with rulemaking. 

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. experienced positive net flows last week after having started the week with investors cashing out. 

On Thursday and Friday, investors bought nearly $593 million in shares in the products managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale, according to Farside Investors data. 

The Federal Reserve also last week raised interest rates — as expected — but the price of bitcoin hasn’t been affected by the central bank’s decision. Bitcoin has performed well in the past in a low interest rate environment. 

This post Bitcoin Price Shrugs Off Clarity Act Fail, Blasts Past $86,000  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

The Eurosystem launched Pontes on Monday, giving banks a live route to settle tokenized assets in central-bank money.

The European Central Bank (ECB) simultaneously began preparations to invest a small portion of its own funds in tokenized securities, with those purchases set to settle through Pontes. The move puts the ECB on both sides of Europe’s emerging tokenized-market infrastructure, providing the settlement rail while preparing to invest through it.

Pontes connects distributed-ledger market platforms with the Eurosystem’s existing TARGET settlement services, allowing tokenized securities transactions to complete using central-bank money. An initial group including Deutsche Bank, Santander, Société Générale and the European Investment Bank has completed onboarding, alongside DLT operators such as Clearstream, Axiology, Cashlink and SWIAT. More institutions are expected to connect over the coming months.

André Dragosch, Bitwise Europe Head of Research, described the system as effectively the “digital euro made available for banks,” allowing financial institutions to settle tokenized transactions with each other while retaining central-bank money as the settlement asset.

That characterization reflects the role Pontes could play in wholesale markets, where access to risk-free settlement money has been one obstacle to moving securities onto distributed ledgers. The Eurosystem’s 2024 DLT trials found that public- and private-sector participants viewed such access as critical to wider adoption.

The system launches with a limited set of services and will add functionality and longer operating hours over time, with full implementation targeted for 2028. The ECB has yet to identify a completed live settlement since Monday’s launch, leaving transaction activity as the next measure of whether the infrastructure gains traction beyond institutions that have already connected.

ECB prepares to become a buyer on its new settlement rail

The ECB’s planned investment program moves the project beyond providing infrastructure by giving the central bank direct exposure to the transaction lifecycle it is asking financial institutions to adopt.

Initial purchases will focus on euro-denominated tokenized securities issued by euro-area central governments, regional governments, agencies and European supranational institutions. The ECB said using Pontes will give it experience spanning trade execution, settlement, technology systems and portfolio management.

The allocation could initially be small relative to the central bank’s portfolio. The ECB’s own-funds holdings were worth €23.1 billion at the end of 2025, with government debt accounting for 73% of the portfolio. The central bank has not disclosed the size of the tokenized allocation or when purchases will begin, leaving its Executive Board to determine both after preparatory work is completed.

Those own funds are managed separately from monetary-policy portfolios and generate income that helps finance the ECB’s operating expenses. Their use gives the central bank a way to test tokenized markets without turning the purchases into an interest-rate or quantitative-easing instrument.

Pontes also arrives well ahead of Europe’s consumer-facing digital euro. The ECB plans a 12-month retail pilot beginning in the second half of 2027, involving 36 payment-service providers, merchants and central-bank staff. The ECB targets a potential first issuance in 2029, subject to adoption of the necessary legislation.

The two projects nevertheless show Europe pushing central-bank money deeper into digital infrastructure on separate tracks.

Dragosch pointed to earlier discussions over whether public blockchains could eventually play a role in the digital euro. The Financial Times reported in 2025 that European officials were considering networks including Ethereum and Solana among possible technological options as concerns grew over the expansion of dollar-backed stablecoins. The ECB said at the time it was examining centralized and decentralized technologies and had made no final decision.

For wholesale markets, Pontes provides a route today without waiting for that retail architecture to be resolved. Banks and securities platforms can begin connecting tokenized issuance and trading infrastructure to central-bank settlement while the Eurosystem expands Pontes and develops Appia, a broader initiative intended to produce a blueprint for an integrated European DLT financial ecosystem by 2028.

The commercial test now moves to transaction volume. Institutions already onboarded must decide which tokenized securities and workflows to route through Pontes, while additional banks and market operators weigh connections over the coming months.

The ECB’s eventual allocation will provide another signal: the size, timing and type of its first purchases will show how quickly Europe’s new settlement rail progresses from available infrastructure to a regularly used market.

The post ECB launches ‘digital euro for banks’ and prepares to buy tokenized bonds appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Some Bitcoin mining vardiff (variable difficulty) controllers can keep demanding work calibrated for a machine's former speed after it cuts hashrate. The miner can keep hashing and consuming electricity while accepted shares become vanishingly rare.

Bitcoin Optech highlighted the failure mode on Sept. 18, drawing wider attention to an analysis that mining engineer Eric Price published in July. The finding concerns pool-assigned share difficulty, not Bitcoin's network difficulty, and it describes a testable controller weakness rather than evidence of widespread miner losses.

How Bitcoin mining vardiff gets stuck

Pools assign each connection a share difficulty that is easier than Bitcoin's block difficulty. A higher assigned difficulty corresponds to a harder share target. The submitted shares let the pool estimate hashrate and account for contributed work, while a variable-difficulty, or vardiff, controller adjusts the assignment to keep shares arriving at a useful rate.

Price's controller analysis describes a trap after a miner slows sharply. If the controller recalculates only when a share arrives, the old, harder assignment makes the next share less likely. With no fresh share to trigger an update, the controller can hold the wrong difficulty, which keeps the share stream sparse.

Abrupt curtailment is operationally realistic. During a January 2026 U.S. winter storm, CryptoSlate reported a sharp network hashrate drop as miners reduced power use. The event was not linked to a vardiff loss.

A high share difficulty does not automatically erase a miner's expected credit over a long period. Pools can give a rare high-difficulty proof more accounting weight, as Braiins' pool documentation explains. The risk appears in the realized window: if no accepted share arrives, a pay-per-share miner receives no payment for that interval; if a few arrive, they remain payable. Under proportional accounting, missing shares can increase other participants' portion of the reward window.

The current Stratum V2 reference implementation avoids a permanent freeze by recalculating on a timer and lowering difficulty during a share drought. The analysis says recovery can still be slow on long-lived channels. That timer behavior belongs to the reference implementation, not to every deployment permitted by the Stratum V2 protocol.

The analysis and Optech identify ckpool as a deployed share-triggered example. How common the behavior is, and whether it has caused material real-world losses, has not been measured by the available sources.

Operators can now test the behavior directly. MARA Foundation's open-source shape-proxy acknowledges shares locally while forwarding a controlled fraction upstream. Step, ramp and stall profiles can make the pool see an apparent decline without changing the miner's physical output.

A falling assigned difficulty shows that the tested controller has a recovery path. A target that stays pinned is evidence of slow or absent recovery under that profile and observation window, though timer cadence, channel age and random share arrival can affect the result.

The post How cutting power to Bitcoin miners can actually burn more energy appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A coordinated attack drained 8.7 million FET and used a compromised NuNet minter key to create 408.5 million NTX.

The Sept. 19 attack emptied the Ethereum-side conversion contract used by SingularityNET’s bridge, removing 8,721,530 FET worth about $1.55 million at the time. Twenty-nine minutes later, a stolen NuNet minter created 408.5 million NTX and sent the tokens to the same receiving wallet, according to an on-chain forensic report prepared by Athena.

Fetch.ai subsequently paused AGIX-to-FET conversions and its Ethereum-side bridge contract as a precaution. The company said the affected infrastructure belonged to SingularityNET, primarily its Ethereum-Cardano bridge, while Fetch.ai’s own contracts and normal FET transfers remained operational.

The forensic report identified the affected contract as TokenConversionManagerV3, the legitimate Ethereum-side lock-and-release component of SingularityNET’s bridge. Its verified source matches SingularityNET’s public repository, and the contract is tied to the current Artificial Superintelligence Alliance FET token.

Investigators traced the loss to a compromised backend authorization key, not a flaw that let an attacker bypass the bridge contract. The transaction carried a valid signature from the address the contract was configured to trust, allowing its conversionIn function to release the entire FET balance to an attacker-controlled wallet.

The contract’s design magnified the damage. Its 1 million FET transaction cap applied to tokens moving out of Ethereum but was not enforced onconversionIn, allowing the attacker to withdraw 8.72 million FET in one transaction. The signed message also failed to bind the eventual recipient, meaning a valid authorization could direct the tokens to an address selected by the caller.

Same wallet connects separate compromised keys

The NuNet activity provides the strongest evidence that the FET drain formed part of a broader coordinated operation.

At 20:50 UTC, 29 minutes after the FET withdrawal, a NuNet minter key dormant since March 2023 created 408,532,878 NTX and sent the entire amount to the same wallet that received the stolen FET. The mint was equivalent to roughly 42% of NuNet’s documented token supply, according to the report.

A later forensic pass tightened that connection. At 19:36 UTC, 45 minutes before the FET drain, the NuNet minter sent 0.3667 ETH directly to the eventual receiving wallet, while another attacker-linked account moved 24.3 million NTX into it.

NTX sales through MetaMask’s swap infrastructure had also begun before the FET bridge was emptied, indicating that the operation involving the two compromised credentials was already underway ahead of the main withdrawal.

The attacker then began converting the assets. The stolen FET was routed through MetaMask’s swap infrastructure and exchanged largely for Ethereum, while more than 217 million of the newly minted NTX was sold through decentralized liquidity venues.

By about 1:10 UTC on Sept. 20, the central wallet held 547.89 ETH worth roughly $1.44 million and another 230 million NTX, according to the report.

Liquidity quickly became a constraint on the NTX side. Four later sales involving 38.55 million NTX increased the attacker’s ETH balance by only about 0.30 ETH as available pools were depleted. A separate 10 million NTX transaction routed through Mayan Protocol ultimately produced about 940 USDT for cross-chain dispatch.

The disruption later widened beyond the two assets examined in the forensic report. Bitvavo suspended WMTX deposits and withdrawals on Sept. 20 after citing an active security incident affecting the token, then temporarily halted trading. The exchange said customer balances remained safe.

Historical SingularityNET material shows WMTX, FET and NTX all used infrastructure connected to its Ethereum-Cardano bridge ecosystem. The available forensic evidence, however, examined the FET and NTX activity in detail and does not establish that WMTX was compromised through the same mechanism.

Fetch.ai said it was working with SingularityNET and paused conversions while it investigated the incident.

The report’s first tracking window found that the compromised FET bridge authorizer and NuNet minter credentials had not yet been rotated or revoked roughly five hours after the attack. By then, the FET bridge was empty and inactive.

That makes credential remediation central to restoring the affected services. Refilling the FET conversion contract while the same authorizer remains trusted could expose fresh liquidity to another signed withdrawal, while NuNet faces a separate risk as long as the affected wallet retains authority to create additional NTX.

Fetch.ai’s AGIX-to-FET conversion service and Ethereum-side bridge are therefore among the clearest operational markers to watch.

For WMTX, Bitvavo has said trading and transfers will remain restricted while it assesses the incident, leaving exchange reopenings and credential rotations as the next visible tests of whether the affected infrastructure is secure.

The post One wallet links $1.55 million FetchAI theft to massive 408.5 million NTX mint appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s rally toward $86,000 has pushed US spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) investors back into profit after months underwater.

Data from CryptoSlate showed Bitcoin gained about 6% over the past 24 hours, extending its September rebound and briefly trading near $86,000.

Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst James Seyffart said the move put the average US Bitcoin ETF holder above water for the first time since January. The funds’ estimated buys-only cost basis stands at about $81,722 per Bitcoin, while their net cost basis sits closer to current prices.

Bitcoin traded around $85,165 in Bloomberg Intelligence’s latest reading, clearing both levels and reversing much of the damage inflicted on ETF investors during this year’s downturn.

The turnaround has been dramatic. US Bitcoin ETF investors held about $86.32 billion in unrealized gains on Oct. 6, 2025, before the subsequent selloff erased that entire cushion. By Sept. 18, the cohort was sitting on an estimated $780 million unrealized loss.

Bitcoin’s latest advance has effectively repaired that drawdown. Capital flows have recovered more slowly, leaving ETF investors profitable again even as cumulative inflows remain well below their 2025 peak.

BTC's price recovery outruns ETF demand

The return to profitability has come well before a full recovery in ETF demand.

SoSoValue data show cumulative net inflows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs peaked at about $61.19 billion in October 2025 before falling to roughly $55.16 billion, leaving the products about $6.03 billion below their high-water mark.

The fund has recorded about $1.46 billion in net outflows so far in 2026. January accounted for roughly $1.61 billion of withdrawals and February another $206.5 million. March and April then brought a combined $3.29 billion of inflows before May and June reversed the improvement with about $6.94 billion of net withdrawals.

Demand strengthened again in the third quarter. July attracted about $172 million, followed by roughly $3.52 billion in August and another $314 million so far in September. Those inflows have steadied the cumulative total but have yet to replace the capital that left after last October’s peak.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin's price has recovered much faster.

Bloomberg Intelligence’s data show the cryptocurrency fell as low as about $58,642 during the downturn, leaving ETF investors well below both estimated cost-basis measures. Its subsequent rebound of more than $26,000 has carried the market back through the roughly $81,722 buys-only cost basis and toward the higher net measure.

That price appreciation has restored the value of Bitcoin already held inside the funds even as cumulative net inflows remain almost 10% below their October 2025 peak.

The setup differs from last year, when rising Bitcoin prices were accompanied by expanding ETF inflows and a growing pool of unrealized profits. This time, existing holders have moved back into profit while the cumulative capital committed to the products remains smaller.

The recovery is also uneven across the investor base. Bloomberg Intelligence’s buys-only cost basis sits near $81,722, giving those holders a wider cushion at current prices, while the net cost basis remains closer to Bitcoin’s market price and leaves that group nearer breakeven.

ETF breakeven will test investor conviction

That narrow cushion above breakeven is already being tested by volatile ETF flows, even though last week’s headline total looked almost unchanged.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs ended the week with just $6.21 million of net inflows, SoSoValue data show. Beneath that figure, however, investors moved sharply in and out of the products across individual sessions.

About $160 million entered the funds last Monday before roughly $450 million was withdrawn Tuesday and another $296 million Wednesday. The selling then reversed, with about $160 million returning Thursday and $433 million flowing in Friday, the strongest daily inflow since Sept. 3. Fidelity’s FBTC accounted for roughly $311 million of Friday’s total.

That left the funds almost flat for the week despite nearly $1.5 billion of gross daily inflows and outflows. Bitcoin ETF trading volume totaled about $16.17 billion, making the $6.21 million net subscription equivalent to roughly 0.04% of turnover.

The weekly result nevertheless marked an improvement from the previous period, when the funds recorded about $463 million of net outflows. More importantly, the sequence showed that heavy midweek selling did not develop into a sustained exit, with buyers rebuilding exposure rapidly over the final two sessions.

Moving ETF investors back into profit could now determine whether that re-risking continues. Holders who stayed through Bitcoin’s downturn can reduce exposure near or above their average entry levels without realizing the losses they faced earlier this year, creating the possibility of renewed selling as more positions move back into the black.

The next test is whether crossing above the ETF cost basis draws sustained new money into the products or gives investors who endured the downturn an opportunity to leave. Continued inflows would put fresh capital behind Bitcoin’s recovery, while another round of redemptions would show that the return to breakeven has released holders who were waiting for prices to recover

The post Bitcoin hits $86,000 putting ETF investors back in profit after $86 billion wipeout appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum developers are weighing Ethereum Quick Slots for Hegotá, a proposed faster block rhythm that would reduce waiting without expanding the network's per-second capacity. EIP-8198, or Quick Slots, remains Proposed for Inclusion rather than scheduled, and neither its eight-second draft parameter nor the 10-second alternative has been adopted.

That makes validator performance the deciding issue. Shorter slots could refresh onchain prices sooner and accelerate confirmations and finality, but validators would have less time to receive, check and attest to each block. The proposal's market benefits are modeled; its effect on the slowest operators remains the evidence Ethereum still needs.

The Hegotá meta-EIP lists Quick Slots as Proposed for Inclusion, while Ethereum's official roadmap says most of the upgrade's scope remains undecided. Developers are choosing whether to spend performance headroom on lower latency while preserving the broad participation that gives Ethereum its decentralization.

Ethereum Quick Slots: a faster clock with the same per-second capacity

The canonical EIP-8198 draft uses eight seconds as a placeholder, down from Ethereum's current 12-second slot. It also says the exact target should follow performance characterization and may change before deployment.

Ethlabs favors a more conservative first move. Its updated Hegotá position advocates 10-second slots first, with later cuts only as evidence of safety accumulates. An open sponsor rewrite likewise proposes 10 seconds, but it has not been merged into the canonical EIP.

The possible outcomes therefore extend beyond an eight- versus 10-second choice. Hegotá could start at 10 seconds, retain the draft's eight-second parameter, or leave the 12-second schedule unchanged if testing shows that a cut would be unsafe.

Under either shorter target, capacity per second stays broadly level only if the gas limit and maximum blob count per block fall in proportion to slot duration. Smaller blocks would arrive more frequently. Users could receive a first confirmation sooner, onchain markets could update more often, and systems that inherit Ethereum's cadence could react faster. Normal validator gas-limit voting would resume after the transition, and integer rounding could make blob capacity slightly lower rather than perfectly constant.

Keeping 32 slots in an epoch would also shorten epoch-based finality in wall-clock time. Under the draft's eight-second assumptions, EIP-8198 estimates finality falling from about 13 minutes to about 8.5 minutes. That is a proposal estimate, not an observed result from production Ethereum.

The same distinction applies to the draft's claim that a 12-to-eight-second change would reduce arbitrage losses by roughly 18%. The figure comes from a model in which those losses scale with the square root of the time between blocks. Ethereum has not operated an eight-second production regime that could demonstrate the result.

Independent work supports the direction more strongly than the exact magnitude. An empirical study of automated market maker losses found that faster blocks reduce losses to arbitrageurs, but the effect varied materially by trading pair. A newer jump-diffusion model found that sudden price jumps create a floor that shorter intervals do not eliminate.

Fresher prices could improve spreads and liquidity-provider economics while compressing some surplus available to searchers, builders and proposers. Yet fees, liquidity, volatility, jumps and burned base fees affect who captures the change. A separate Ethereum Research analysis shows why lower nominal arbitrage does not translate mechanically into a uniform 18% gain for users or liquidity providers.

Validator tails decide whether the trade works

Smaller blocks reduce peak payload size, but a faster cadence raises computational and bandwidth demands per second. Validators also face tighter absolute windows for propagation, validation and attestation aggregation. Average performance cannot settle the decentralization question because the network must remain usable for operators in slower regions, on weaker hardware and with varied client configurations.

An analysis of mainnet attestation timing found potential headroom for a shorter schedule alongside a meaningful tail. Some attestations in its sample arrived after the aggregation deadline contemplated for a six-second design, and timings differed across clients, operators and configurations. The study was exploratory and does not establish the safety of six, eight or 10 seconds.

Separate post-Pectra research found propagation delay strongly associated with reorg risk near the attestation boundary. Those observations support a distributional risk: reducing the timing margin could burden slower or poorly configured validators more than well-provisioned peers. They do not quantify validator reward losses under EIP-8198 or prove that either proposed target would centralize the network.

The proposal itself acknowledges incomplete knowledge about blob propagation, attestation aggregation, local block building and validator hardware. Developers have also linked Quick Slots to work on faster execution-payload broadcast, treating propagation improvements as part of the safety case rather than a later optimization.

The Ethereum Foundation Protocol cluster's Hegotá assessment placed Quick Slots in B tier after research teams offered stronger support than delivery-focused engineering teams. The practical requirements behind that split are clear: a complete specification, a full-spec prototype, a downstream-effects assessment and confirmation that Quick Slots will not complicate Ethereum's planned decoupled-consensus architecture.

Those requirements turn Hegotá's decision into an empirical test. A 10-second first step could deliver a measurable latency gain and defer a harder cut if client simulations and devnets show broad validator resilience. Eight seconds could remain the draft's ambition rather than the first deployment. If timing tails or reorg behavior worsen enough to favor larger operators, the market-quality benefit would carry a decentralization cost.

Ethereum Quick Slots could offer fresher markets, shorter transaction-inclusion waits and faster finality without increasing throughput. Broad validator resilience remains the condition that must be demonstrated before the faster clock is worth adopting.

The post Will proposed faster block times really fix Ethereum’s biggest market losses? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Solana stands at $117.79 on Monday and therefore above every hourly price of the past 90 days. The previous high of that span was $114.02 on September 18 at 20:00 UTC, and the live price sits 3.3 percent above it, having reached 118.19 during the day (CoinGecko, hourly series of 2,161 values, retrieved on September 21, 2026 at 17:24 UTC). Over 24 hours the gain is 7.35 percent, over seven days 15.36 percent, over 30 days 26.37 percent.

On the monthly scorecard Solana is the strongest of the five largest assets: BNB manages 15.96 percent over the same period, Ethereum 14.34, Bitcoin 11.74, XRP 3.60. Anyone who wants to place the wider market will find the reading for all major assets in our overview of crypto prices. For Solana itself a different question arises on Monday: where is the money coming from when the ETFs are barely supplying any?

Solana ETF inflows: twelve positive weeks, and ever smaller

The US spot ETFs on Solana have booked net inflows for twelve consecutive weeks and collected roughly $1.4 billion in the process, with assets under management at $1.62 billion (Solana Compass, September 20, 2026). The direction holds. The order of magnitude no longer does: in the week to August 28 the figure was still $153.87 million, in the week to September 4 it was $6.18 million. For the week to September 18, Solana Compass gives $60.7 million while SoSoValue's count arrives at $13.2 million. The gap comes down to which products are included, and both numbers are a fraction of what late August delivered.

Around 80 percent of the inflows land in a single product, Bitwise's BSOL, the only one that passes staking income through to investors: $1.145 billion in assets, 10.09 million SOL staked, a net annual yield of 5.31 percent. The products from Grayscale, Fidelity, VanEck and Morgan Stanley offer price exposure alone and take in correspondingly little.

To gauge what these inflows can actually move: $13 million to $61 million in a week equals 0.02 to 0.09 percent of the $69.2 billion market capitalisation. A seven percent daily gain does not come out of that. For comparison, the US Bitcoin ETFs booked $6.1 million in the same week, their quietest since October 2024. For both coins, ETF money is not carrying the current move.

What is moving the Solana price instead: forced buybacks and volume

Monday was a day of short liquidations across the market. According to CoinGlass data summarised by CoinDesk, positions worth $746.6 million were closed by force within 24 hours, $647.9 million of them bets on falling prices. Open interest across all futures markets rose 7.59 percent to $156 billion. How this squeeze lifted four of the five largest coins above their quarterly high at once is set out in our analysis of the Bitcoin advance beyond $84,000.

Solana carries one feature that stands out in the comparison: its 24-hour trading volume of $6.40 billion equals 9.2 percent of its market capitalisation. For Bitcoin the figure is 3.1 percent ($54.09 billion against $1,728 billion), for Ethereum 7.2 percent. Relative to its size, then, Solana trades three times as heavily as Bitcoin. That is why SOL runs harder than the market on days like this one, and it is the same reason it falls harder on pullback days.

The Solana network: 250 milliseconds per slot since September 18

On September 18 the Solana mainnet cut its target slot time from 300 to 250 milliseconds, the third stage of proposal SIMD-0525 after the steps from 400 to 300 milliseconds. Block production rises by almost 17 percent as a result, and an epoch now takes around 30 hours instead of 36 (KuCoin News). This is not the Alpenglow update, which rebuilds consensus and targets finality of roughly 150 milliseconds; that has a timetable of its own.

For the price the slot time is no driver, though for context it matters: the September 18 high that was beaten on Monday fell on exactly that day. What stakers and holders should have been checking since then is covered in our analysis of the seven-month high of September 18.

The Solana price levels: 114, 120 and the distance to the all-time high

Three numbers frame the price. First, $114.02, the old high of September 18: if the price holds above it, the breakout was real; if it slips back below, this was a squeeze spike of the kind seen in Monero, which set a fresh 90-day high on Monday and trades seven percent lower. Second, the $120 mark, named as the next target in our Solana price prediction of September 18, which the daily high of 118.19 came within 1.5 percent of. Third, the all-time high: despite the rally, SOL sits 59.8 percent below it (CoinGecko). Solana is not an asset breaking records at the moment. It is one working its way back out of a deep valley, roughly 74 percent above its low of the past 90 days.

What to check before you buy SOL or start staking

First, the inflows: Solana Compass and SoSoValue publish the ETF flows weekly, Farside daily. If the run of twelve positive weeks breaks, the institutional demand argument for SOL is gone for the time being, and the price hangs on spot and derivatives alone. If the run continues at a level of $10 million to $60 million, it is background noise rather than a driver.

Second, open interest after the squeeze: if the price holds above $114 while open interest is unwound, the advance stood on genuine demand. If both fall together, it was forced. That test needs two to three days, not two hours.

Third, the yield: anyone holding SOL earns a running reward through staking, which BSOL passes on to its investors at a net 5.31 percent. Staking on your own delivers a higher gross yield, in exchange for carrying custody and withdrawal periods yourself. Which providers pay what and how the lock-up periods look is set out in our comparison of staking platforms. The terms for the purchase itself, with fees and euro deposits, are gathered in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

Solana at a three-month high: what remains once the squeeze is over

The balance on Monday: Solana leads the big five over one month with 26 percent, stands above every hourly price since late June, and offers a staking yield that is filling the sector's largest ETF. What is missing is money from outside, because the ETF inflows have shrunk to a fraction since the end of August, and Monday ran on forced buybacks. The coming days will decide whether $114 becomes a floor. Only then is the breakout more than a squeeze.

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

The oracle network Switchboard is winding down. On September 19, 2026, Switchboard Technology Labs said that every one of its implementations is deprecated with immediate effect and that all support ends on September 25. Six days separate the announcement from the shutdown. If you are sitting in a lending protocol on Solana, holding a leveraged position or have posted collateral, your position during that window may hang on a price feed that nobody will be running much longer.

This article explains what a price oracle actually does, which protocols are named, what a survey of public pages on September 21 turned up, and what you should check before the deadline expires. The tax side of a forced exit is covered as well, because in Germany it can get expensive.

What a price oracle is and why it decides your liquidation

A price oracle is a service that writes prices from outside a blockchain into a smart contract so that the contract can calculate with them. A blockchain has no notion of market prices on its own. It knows which tokens sit at which address, but not what a token currently costs on an exchange.

That number is exactly what every lending and derivatives protocol needs without interruption. A lending protocol compares the value of your posted collateral with the value of your debt and derives from that whether your position is still adequately covered. A perpetual protocol uses the same price to calculate your profit, your loss and the point at which your position is closed by force. If the delivered price drops below a stored threshold, liquidation starts automatically. No human looks at it first.

The oracle is therefore not a side issue of the infrastructure. It is the number your money is measured against. Whoever supplies the price determines the moment of your forced closure. That is why an oracle provider shutting down is a different order of event for you as a user than any other service provider leaving the industry.

Briefly defined: A price feed is the individual price series for a trading pair that an oracle publishes. A protocol typically subscribes to many such feeds, one for each market it offers.

Switchboard shuts down: what was announced on September 19

The wording of the announcement is terse. According to Switchboard, all implementations are deprecated with immediate effect, and all support ends on September 25, 2026. By all consistent accounts the shutdown covers every chain Switchboard ran on, so not just Solana. The company itself names two replacements: Pyth Network and RedStone.

Several developments are given as reasons, which taken together hollowed out the business model. First, the cost of building your own oracle has fallen, because development work can now be done more cheaply with AI tools. Second, the prolonged bear market has squeezed protocol budgets. Third, large trading venues increasingly strike direct partnerships with data providers and skip the intermediate layer. Fourth, security incidents have damaged trust in oracle networks.

What the announcement leaves out matters just as much to you: there is no public commitment on how the feeds will behave after September 25. Whether they stop abruptly, freeze at the last value, or keep running unattended for a while cannot be inferred from the published statement. Each of those variants has different consequences for an open position.

Kamino, Jito, MarginFi and Drift: which Solana protocols are affected

Four large applications from the Solana ecosystem are named explicitly: Kamino Finance, Jito, MarginFi and Drift Protocol. The price of Solana stood at $111.99 on September 21, 2026 at around 06:50 UTC, up 3.33 percent within 24 hours and 10.5 percent over the week (CoinGecko). The market itself is signalling nothing about this. That is no contradiction, because an oracle migration is a process below the price level.

How big the affected protocols are

To gauge the scale, we pulled the deposited funds of the four protocols on September 21, 2026 at 06:58 UTC via the public DefiLlama interface. Kamino Lend held $1.39 billion on Solana, Jito Liquid Staking $1.16 billion, Drift $314.8 million and marginfi $47.0 million. Together that comes to roughly $2.91 billion.

This sum is expressly not the amount that hangs on Switchboard feeds. It describes how much capital sits in applications that appear in the reports as integrators. Which share of it actually depends on Switchboard prices and which has long since run on other oracles cannot be separated cleanly from the outside. The figure works as a yardstick for the scope, and not as a damage estimate.

Our own survey: where the shutdown notice was missing on September 21

This analysis was carried out by cryptoticker.io on September 21, 2026. Method: on the morning of September 21, 2026, between 06:56 and 06:58 UTC, we retrieved eight public pages over HTTP, stripped the delivered source of markup and searched it for the keywords switchboard, deprecat, sunset, shutdown, migrat, oracle, pyth and redstone. Objects examined: eight pages.

The result is striking. The developer documentation at docs.switchboard.xyz answered with HTTP 200 and mentioned its own name 234 times and the word oracle 51 times. For deprecat, sunset, shutdown and migrat there were zero hits. On the switchboard.xyz home page, also HTTP 200, no reference to a shutdown could be found either. At precisely the place an integrator looks first, nothing on the morning of September 21 pointed to a deadline four days away.

The applications looked similar. The home pages of kamino.com and marginfi.com returned HTTP 200 without a single hit on any of the keywords. drift.trade used the term oracle four times and Pyth once, Switchboard not at all. The page jito.network answered with HTTP 403 and was therefore closed to an automated retrieval. Both replacement providers, pyth.network and redstone.finance, were reachable with HTTP 200.

What this survey does not show

Three caveats belong with it. First, modern application pages load much of their content only via JavaScript; a plain source retrieval sees none of that. A banner that appears in the browser may be missing from our measurement. Second, status updates in this industry often run through Discord, Telegram or X, and those channels were not part of the query. Third, jito.network could not be checked at all because of its bot defences. The survey therefore shows that the notice was absent from the obvious public places, and not that the protocols failed to inform their users anywhere.

For your own practice the lesson stands regardless. Do not count on a shutdown deadline reaching you where you would normally look.

Stale price feed: how a frozen oracle triggers a wrongful liquidation

Briefly defined: A stale price feed is a price feed that is no longer updated and therefore reports an outdated rate. The chain still displays a number, it simply no longer matches the market.

Well-built protocols catch this case. They store a maximum age for each feed and refuse to calculate with older data. In practice that usually means borrowing and liquidations for the affected market are frozen until a fresh price is available again. For you that is the kinder variant, though it has a price of its own: you cannot reach your collateral while the market keeps moving.

The more unpleasant variant arises when a protocol carries on using the old value. The contract then calculates with yesterday's rate against today's market. If the frozen price sits above the actual one, a position stays open that should long since have been closed, and a shortfall builds inside the protocol that ultimately hits every depositor. If it sits below, a healthy position is liquidated even though it was adequately covered. In the second case you lose real funds because of a number that is wrong.

A third case is the switch itself. A migration to a different oracle changes the price source, and sometimes the update frequency and the deviation tolerance along with it. Even a small jump in the price series can tip the balance for a thinly collateralised position. Anyone sitting close to their liquidation threshold carries a raised risk in the days around such a changeover, without anything having moved in the market at all.

Pyth Network and RedStone: what separates the two replacement oracles

Switchboard names two successors itself. Pyth Network counts as the most widely used oracle on Solana and is therefore the obvious route for most of the affected applications. RedStone works on what is known as a pull model, where the price is written to the chain only once a transaction actually needs it. For protocols running across several chains, that lowers the running costs.

For you as a user the choice has two visible consequences. The update logic determines how closely the stored price tracks the market, and the deviation tolerance determines how large a price move has to be before a new value is written at all. Both influence how close you can run to your liquidation threshold without being caught out by a price jump. If you are using leverage, it is worth reading the protocol's documentation once the changeover is complete. If you trade with leverage, the best step after the switch is to check which price source your venue now uses and whether the liquidation rules changed with it.

What to check in your DeFi portfolio before September 25

The following order is sorted by urgency and can be worked through in half an hour.

One: take inventory

Open every application where you have funds and note three values for each position: the amount deposited, the debt taken on and the liquidation price shown. Without those three numbers the rest cannot be judged. Wallets that bundle several protocols usually show this on a single overview page.

Two: work out your buffer

Set the current market price against your liquidation price. A gap of a few percent is uncomfortable in calm times and a genuine risk in a week with an oracle migration. Either you add collateral or you reduce the debt. Both widen the gap.

Three: ask about the migration

Search the protocol's official channels for a statement on the changeover. What matters is not the announcement that a migration will happen, but the confirmation that it has, complete with date and new provider. If you find nothing, treat the position as unresolved.

Four: think through the worst case

Decide in advance what you will do if deposits and withdrawals for a market are frozen. If you need the money in the coming weeks, it does not belong in a position whose price source is being swapped out right now.

Holding period and tax: what an emergency exit costs in Germany

This is where it gets concrete for German investors. Crypto assets held privately fall under private disposal transactions under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. Anyone who has held a unit for longer than a year disposes of it tax free. Within the first year the gain is taxable and is charged at your personal income tax rate as soon as the sum of all private disposal gains in a year reaches the exemption limit of 1,000 euros. An exemption limit behaves differently from an allowance: once it is exceeded, the entire amount is taxable and not merely the part above it.

For the shutdown that means a forced exit a few weeks before the one-year mark can be expensive. If you would reach the deadline in November and sell in September because an oracle migration worries you, you have given away the tax advantage. That is no argument for sitting out an endangered position. It is an argument for choosing the moment deliberately instead of letting a deadline dictate it.

Two points are routinely overlooked here. A forced liquidation is a sale like any other for tax purposes and triggers the same assessment, even though you never initiated it. And swapping one token for another is also a disposal, even when no euro changes hands. Anyone collecting such events over months easily loses track of the acquisition dates; a tax tool with portfolio tracking takes that bookkeeping off your hands and reports the holding period for each unit. For a binding assessment of your individual case, your tax adviser remains responsible.

MiCA and DeFi: why investor protection will not help in an oracle failure

Since the European regulation on markets in crypto assets came into force, providers of crypto services in the EU have been subject to uniform authorisation and conduct obligations. Those obligations attach to a service provider, meaning someone who performs a service for you and has to answer for it. Services rendered in a fully decentralised way without such an intermediary are expressly carved out of the regulation's scope.

This case sits squarely in that gap. An oracle network that ceases operations is not a supervised institution that would have to file a wind-down notice. A lending protocol on Solana has no deposit guarantee, no complaints body and no claim to an orderly handover. If a position is closed because of an outdated price, there is no supervisory authority with which you could challenge the event.

No warning about DeFi follows from this, and no recommendation either. What follows is a sober classification: the protective framework you know from a regulated trading platform does not apply here. Anyone who wants that framework for part of their holdings keeps that part there and uses the decentralised applications with the rest.

Key compromise on August 29: why this shutdown is not an isolated case

The announcement does not come out of nowhere. On August 29, 2026, Switchboard suspended its oracle services on Aptos, Sui, IOTA and Movement after suspicion arose of a compromised key. We described the episode in detail at the time, including the question of which price series were affected: Switchboard oracle compromised. The feeds on Solana remained untouched according to the account given then.

Three weeks later comes the complete wind-down, and the damaged trust is itself named in the reports as one of the reasons. For you a pattern emerges that reaches beyond this single provider. In many decentralised applications the price supply is the point where the smallest number of participants has the largest effect. A hack strikes that layer, a retreat from the market strikes it just as hard, and in both cases you notice it first in your position.

The oracle business is under economic pressure that will not go away. When large trading venues source their data directly and the cost of building in-house falls, the intermediate layer thins out. Expect further providers to take this route, and for every application holding meaningful funds, make a point of establishing once where its prices come from.

Checking the Switchboard shutdown: your takeaways

1. Go through your open positions before September 25. Note collateral, debt and liquidation price for each position, and widen the gap to the threshold wherever it is tight. If you use leveraged products, compare the platform's liquidation rules against our perp DEX comparison.
2. Check the holding period before any emergency sale. An exit shortly before the annual cut-off costs you the tax exemption under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. A crypto tax tool shows you for each unit when the period expires.
3. Clarify your provider's price source when staking. Liquid staking applications depend on oracles too. Which platforms work how and what terms they offer is set out in our comparison of staking platforms.

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

Sources for the announcement: Crypto Briefing and Solana Compass.

Litecoin rose about 11.5 percent on Sunday to $63.57 (CoinGecko, September 21, 2026, 13:12 UTC), placing it 25th among the largest cryptocurrencies. Over the week it is up a good 17 percent, over 30 days by around 22 percent.

Litecoin has something many larger projects are still waiting for: its own exchange-traded fund on a US exchange. And that is exactly where something uncomfortable can be read off on this day.

The ETF is here, the capital is not

A spot ETF on Litecoin has traded on the Nasdaq since October 27, 2025, launched by Canary Capital. The product holds Litecoin directly and charges an annual fee of 0.95 percent.

Assets under management stood at around $5.49 million at the end of June 2026. For comparison: Litecoin's daily turnover on trading venues moves in an entirely different order of magnitude. A fund of that size does not move the price.

This gap is the real story. Approval of an ETF is generally regarded as an opening for institutional capital. In Litecoin's case the door has stood open for almost a year, and hardly anyone has walked through it.

What this says about ETF expectations

The same narrative forms around every ETF approval: access creates demand. With bitcoin that proved true, and billions flowed in. Litecoin shows the other possibility.

An ETF creates access. It does not create interest. Anyone with no reason to hold an asset will not buy it just because doing so becomes more convenient. For the ongoing debate about funds on further cryptocurrencies, that is the soberer benchmark than the bitcoin case.

Where the Litecoin price gain comes from

The day's gain of 11.5 percent comes from the broader market. Bitcoin reached its highest level since January at more than $85,000, triggered by the liquidation of short positions running into the hundreds of millions. In phases like this, the large, long-established assets rise along with it without needing news of their own.

Litecoin benefits from its standing: the coin has existed since 2011, is available on practically every trading venue and is seen by many investors as the more conservative choice within the crypto market. That brings inflows in upward phases without anything changing at the project itself.

The number that sets the frame

Litecoin trades about 85 percent below its all-time high. A gain of 22 percent in a month changes little about that. Anyone comparing today's level with the peaks of earlier cycles sees an asset that has lagged far behind its own records for years, while at the same time staying steadily among the 25 largest cryptocurrencies.

Together the two make up the profile: no growth story, but no project that disappears either.

What to watch

Two points can be checked and carry more weight than any forecast. First, whether the money in the Litecoin ETF rises in the coming months. If the product continues to attract barely any capital in a friendly market, the question is answered. Second, its behavior in the next downward phase: if Litecoin falls less sharply than this week's trending coins, its reputation as the more conservative choice is confirmed. If it falls just as hard, it was only another coin in a rally.

The current crypto prices give an overview of the wider market. The comparison of the best crypto exchanges shows which venues list Litecoin and at what fees.

Morpho rose about 12 percent on Sunday to $2.78 (CoinGecko, September 21, 2026, 13:12 UTC). On its own that would not be worth reporting on a day when almost everything is up. A different number is the notable one.

Morpho trades about 33 percent below its all-time high. Among the other big winners of the day the figure is 81 percent for Sui, 87 for Render and 90 for Arbitrum. Morpho is therefore the only name in the leading group anywhere within reach of its own record.

Why this number counts

The gap to the all-time high separates two kinds of price rise. An asset 90 percent below its high is recovering from a slump. An asset 33 percent below it has largely put the slump behind it and is trading near what the market credited it with in good times.

That is no buy recommendation and no seal of quality. It does shift the question, though: away from whether the price comes back, and towards why it held up so well in the first place.

What Morpho actually earns

Morpho is a lending protocol. Users deposit collateral and borrow other assets against it; the protocol mediates between the two sides and keeps part of the interest. What sets it apart from many projects with a similar description are the figures behind it.

The capital deposited in the protocol passed $10.7 billion in September. That puts Morpho second in lending behind Aave. The amount actively borrowed reached $5 billion for the first time at the start of September, around 95 percent of it in dollar-pegged stablecoins. The protocol runs on 45 chains and, annualized, generates more than $200 million in fees.

Whether that justifies the current price is a valuation question open to argument. That this is revenue and not an announcement is not.

Ten days, five integrations

Between September 9 and September 18, five institutional integrations went live or were announced. They include a lending infrastructure on Circle's Arc chain, which gathered around $220 million in deposits on its first day, lending markets against tokenized equities from Coinbase, and integration into a payments app available in more than 150 countries.

That density explains the price trend of recent weeks better than today's market push. Institutional integrations bring capital that arrives more slowly and leaves more slowly than that of speculators.

Where the risks lie

Lending protocols carry a risk that trading venues do not: when deposited collateral falls faster than positions can be unwound, bad debt arises. With $5 billion of capital lent out, that is not a theoretical point.

The fact that 95 percent of loans run in stablecoins dampens this risk on the lending side and shifts it onto the collateral. On top of that comes the spread across 45 chains: every additional chain brings usage and, at the same time, one more place where something can go wrong.

What to watch in the Morpho protocol

Three measures can be checked without forecasting. First, whether the amount actively borrowed stays above $5 billion, because it generates the fees. Second, whether the new institutional integrations bring volume or remain announcements. Third, the gap to the all-time high: if it keeps narrowing while the rest of the market falls back, the picture of an asset valued differently from its peers is confirmed.

The current crypto prices give an overview of how the wider market is moving. The comparison of the best crypto exchanges shows which venues list MORPHO.

Hedera rose about 12 percent on Sunday to $0.0921 (CoinGecko, September 21, 2026, 12:50 UTC). Trading volume climbed far more sharply than the price and came in at around $283 million. Over the week the token is up almost 18 percent.

Hedera stands out in this market. While the day's winners come mostly from the AI field or from large application chains, this network has been aimed at corporate users for years. The news flow fits that.

Ten million accounts on the Hedera mainnet

The Hedera mainnet has passed the mark of ten million accounts. A number like that should be read with care, because accounts are not users: a single application can create thousands of them. As an order of magnitude for activity on the chain it still serves.

Alongside that came connections to companies building identity and securities infrastructure. This is the clientele Hedera has targeted from the start, and it differs from the typical DeFi user base: decisions take longer, but they also last longer.

Why the volume matters more than the HBAR price

The most striking figure of the day is the jump in trading volume rather than the price gain. Volume rose about 81 percent against the previous day. With a price rise of 12 percent, that means considerably more market participants traded, and not just a few with large amounts.

This combination is regarded as more durable than a price jump on thin volume. It is no proof of continuation, but it rules out one of the most common explanations: a move that arises only from the absence of sellers.

The number that limits the cheering

HBAR trades about 84 percent below its all-time high. A gain of 12 percent changes little about that. Anyone comparing the current level with the peaks of previous years sees a network that is growing operationally while the token has not recovered a large part of its former value.

This gap between network metrics and price is no contradiction. It shows that the market values corporate connections differently from speculative narratives, at least in the short term.

The broader market as the real driver

September 21 was a strong day for the entire crypto market. Bitcoin reached its highest level since January at more than $85,000, triggered by the liquidation of short positions running into the hundreds of millions. In phases like this, assets that usually move little rise as well.

Part of the advance in HBAR therefore belongs to the market as a whole. The network figures explain why capital is landing here; they do not explain why it is flowing at all.

What to watch now at Hedera

Two things can be checked. First, whether the elevated trading volume holds for several days or disappears with the day's event. Second, whether the corporate connections turn into measurable activity on the chain, meaning transactions instead of announcements. Both can be tracked without forecasting.

The current crypto prices give an overview of the remaining assets. The comparison of the best crypto exchanges shows which venues list HBAR and at what fees.

A lawsuit accuses UK users of running six coordinated accounts to pull at least $278,000 from X's now-defunct Creator Revenue Sharing Program.

Eligible customers can request shares at the offering price, but allocations are not guaranteed.

The central bank plans to buy euro-denominated public-sector debt and settle the transactions through its new Pontes service.

Venice (VVV) has clawed back from under a dollar to a record $34, and the pitch behind it is simple: an AI chatbot that promises to forget you the moment you close the tab.

The HashFly browser experiment uses a digital neural model for Bitcoin hashing and projects greater efficiency from a hypothetical biological version.

XRP is moving higher, futures activity has surged, open interest is expanding and a large short squeeze has already taken place.

Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper has taken aim at Apple, Meta and other tech giants for keeping Bitcoin off their balance sheets.

Solana’s 5-year chart pattern approaches resolution as the asset coils for a 106% run to the rim, according to veteran Peter Brandt.

Ethereum's open interest on Binance surges to its highest level on Binance in over nine months following a major breakout in its trading price.

An altcoin breakout led by XRP and NEAR triggered $666 million in crypto short position liquidations over the last 24 hours.

TLDR

• Bitcoin price jumped nearly 7% despite the CLARITY Act failing to advance in the U.S. Senate.
• Bitcoin traded above $86,000 as buyers returned following last week’s political and market uncertainty.
• U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded nearly $593 million in combined inflows on Thursday and Friday.
• Lawmakers remain divided over crypto market rules, ethics provisions, and conflict-of-interest concerns.
• Bitcoin also held firm after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, keeping attention on ETF flows and regulation.

Bitcoin price climbed sharply on Monday, Sept. 21, even after the U.S. Senate failed to advance the Clarity Act last week. Bitcoin rose more than 6% during the session and traded above $85,000, showing that buyers returned despite the latest setback for federal crypto legislation.

Bitcoin Price Rises After Senate Vote

The Senate rejected cloture on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act on Sept. 15 by a 49-50 vote. The motion needed 60 votes to advance. The bill seeks to set clearer rules for digital commodities and divide oversight between federal regulators.

The setback initially pressured crypto markets, but Bitcoin later recovered. Recent Blockonomi coverage of Bitcoin ETF inflows reported renewed demand from U.S. spot funds as BTC moved toward higher price levels. The rebound also followed a sharp selloff around the Senate vote.

Clarity Act Stalls Over Key Disputes

Lawmakers remain divided over several parts of the market structure bill. Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about ethics rules and President Donald Trump’s family crypto interests. Republicans also faced internal opposition, leaving the measure short of the votes required to proceed.

The Clarity Act rejection came after lawmakers revised the proposal before the vote. The final draft included new ethics language and other changes aimed at addressing concerns raised during negotiations. The Senate could revisit the measure because a motion to reconsider remains possible.

ETF Demand Returns as Bitcoin Recovers

Bitcoin’s recovery also followed stronger demand for U.S. spot exchange-traded funds. As reported earlier, the funds added about $592.5 million across Sept. 17 and Sept. 18, reversing part of the heavy outflows recorded earlier in the week.

The fresh buying gave the Bitcoin price another source of support as the market recovered above $80,000. Analysts closely watch ETF flows because they show how much capital enters or leaves regulated Bitcoin products in the United States.

Fed Decision Adds Another Market Test

The Federal Reserve rate increase also failed to stop Bitcoin’s recovery. The central bank raised its policy rate by 25 basis points last week, while Bitcoin held near $76,000 shortly after the decision before moving higher in later sessions.

Bitcoin price now remains above levels seen before the Senate vote. Traders continue to track ETF demand, federal rulemaking, interest rates, and any renewed effort to advance crypto market structure legislation in Washington this week.

The post Bitcoin Price Breaks Higher—But One Risk Remains appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• WBD stock surged more than 10% after a major legal hurdle surrounding the Paramount Skydance merger eased.
• Paramount reached an antitrust settlement with California and other states that had challenged the takeover.
• The agreement reduces the risk of prolonged litigation and raises confidence that the merger can move closer to completion.
• Paramount accepted production, theatrical release, and editorial governance commitments as part of the settlement.
• Technical indicators show strong momentum, though the RSI near 76 suggests WBD stock has entered overbought territory.

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) shares jumped more than 10% on Monday as investors reacted to fresh progress toward its Paramount Skydance merger. WBD stock outpaced the broader consumer services sector as legal risk around the transaction eased.

Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc., WBD

WBD Stock Rallies as States Settle Case

Paramount Skydance settled with California and 11 other states that sued to block the Warner Bros. Discovery takeover. The agreement removes a major legal barrier that had weighed on the deal and WBD stock for months.

The settlement followed recent merger progress that kept regulatory issues at the center of trading. Paramount agreed to several conditions, including production commitments and measures covering editorial independence at CNN and CBS.

Paramount previously said it had secured regulatory clearances across 69 jurisdictions before the state lawsuits became the main obstacle. The settlement now reduces the risk of a prolonged antitrust trial and removes a source of uncertainty that had pressured merger expectations.

That shift gave traders a clearer path for assessing the timing of the proposed closing.

Merger Terms Drive Warner Bros. Discovery Shares

The settlement sets a $30 million financial penalty for each film below Paramount’s pledge to release 30 movies each year. Paramount also committed $1.5 billion to film and television production in California, helping state officials end their court challenge.

Warner Bros. Discovery shares had already gained during Monday’s early market action as traders tracked settlement talks. The confirmed agreement then increased confidence that Paramount can move closer to completing the transaction.

The deal values Warner Bros. Discovery at $31 per share in cash under the revised Paramount offer. Investors have therefore focused on the gap between WBD stock and the proposed purchase price as closing risk changes.

Technical Signals Show Strong Momentum

Technical indicators also show strong short-term momentum after the sharp rally. The MACD reading stands at 0.145, while the RSI of 75.84 sits above the common 70 level that traders often associate with overbought conditions.

The latest settlement progress around the merger remains the main company-specific driver for WBD stock. Media coverage remains moderate, while the broader market sentiment index stays in neutral territory.

Investors now await the remaining administrative and court steps required before the companies can complete the transaction. Monday’s 10.7% gain shows how strongly WBD stock responded as one of the deal’s largest legal hurdles moved closer to resolution.

The post Paramount Settlement Sends WBD Stock Sharply Higher appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Hyperliquid US plans center on Payward, Kraken’s parent company, bringing HIP-3 perpetual markets to American traders through a permissioned structure.
• Hyperliquid averaged about $9 billion in open interest during Q2 2026 as its 24/7 perpetual futures exchange continued expanding its activity.
• HIP-3 allows builders to define markets, manage oracles, set leverage limits, and operate independent margining and order books.
• Each HIP-3 deployer must stake 500,000 HYPE on mainnet, while additional asset listings use a shared Dutch auction process.

Hyperliquid US expansion is moving closer. Payward, Kraken’s parent company, outlined plans for HIP-3 markets targeting American traders. Grayscale reported that the 24/7 perpetual futures exchange averaged about $9 billion in open interest during Q2 2026. The platform continues growing while its offshore model limits access for US customers. 

Payward’s plan would create a permissioned route for selected Hyperliquid perpetuals. The proposed structure connects a US-facing operator with Hyperliquid’s builder-deployed framework. It does not confirm a launch date or approval in every state. It also tests US infrastructure. Hyperliquid US access will depend on product design, registrations, and market controls.

Hyperliquid US Expansion Takes Shape Through Payward

Grayscale described Payward as the company behind the proposed US channel. Payward is Kraken’s parent company and has expanded its derivatives and infrastructure operations. The plan would connect that corporate platform with Hyperliquid’s onchain order books.

The expansion targets HIP-3 markets rather than the entire offshore exchange. Hyperliquid documentation describes HIP-3 as builder-deployed perpetuals. A deployer defines each market, sets oracle rules, chooses leverage limits, and manages settlement.

That design gives each perpetual venue separate margining, order books, and deployer settings. The framework also uses the HyperCore trading stack and a unified API for HIP-3 assets. These features allow market creators to establish contracts outside the core listing process.

For US traders, the distinction matters. A permissioned product can apply eligibility checks, market limits, and operating controls before customers access contracts. The available markets would depend on the final arrangement between Payward and Hyperliquid.

Hyperliquid’s design does not transfer compliance responsibility to each market deployer. The US-facing operator would still need to establish customer onboarding, restricted jurisdictions, disclosures, and controls for leveraged contracts. Those requirements could shape the number and type of markets available at launch. Initial access may involve fewer US markets.

The proposed Hyperliquid US route therefore differs from direct access to the offshore platform. It would place the customer relationship, compliance process, and market interface within a US-facing structure. That setup could also determine how customers handle collateral, liquidations, and account restrictions.

Hyperliquid US Markets Will Use HIP-3 Builder Rules

Hyperliquid US activity has grown alongside demand for perpetual futures. Grayscale said the venue averaged roughly $9 billion in open interest during Q2 2026. Open interest measures outstanding contracts, not trading volume, but it shows the scale of positions held across the platform.

The exchange operates around the clock and supports crypto, commodities, indices, foreign exchange, and real-world asset markets. Hyperliquid’s platform describes these products as onchain and non-custodial. Its documentation separates HIP-3 venues from the core exchange.

HIP-3 deployers must stake 500,000 HYPE on mainnet under the published specification. The requirement applies for at least 183 days after deployment. Validators can slash the stake if market operations create protocol risks or violate listed conditions.

The framework allows any qualifying deployer to launch one perpetual DEX. The first three assets do not require auction participation. Additional assets use a shared Dutch auction, with deployers receiving defined reserve deployments.

These rules would shape any US rollout. Payward could select markets that fit its customer and risk framework. Hyperliquid’s rules would govern oracle design, leverage, margining, and settlement. The arrangement would not make every HIP-3 market available to US customers.

The market access plan also faces regulatory and operational questions. A US launch would need to address customer eligibility, disclosures, collateral, liquidations, surveillance, and state-level restrictions. None of those details appears in the reported announcement.

The Hyperliquid US plan signals a distribution route rather than a completed product launch. The exchange’s $9 billion average open interest gives the proposal scale, while HIP-3 supplies the market-building framework. Payward’s final structure will determine which perpetual contracts reach US traders.

The post Hyperliquid US Launch Brings HIP-3 Markets to American Traders appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Wells Fargo downgraded Netflix, adding pressure as concerns around user engagement increased.
• NFLX stock has fallen 10.6% in one week and 21.1% year to date.
• Netflix closed at $71.79, below the widely followed fair value estimate of $82.
• Buybacks, advertising, live programming, and AI projects remain key areas investors are watching.
• Streaming competition is shifting as major media companies pursue new partnerships and consolidation.

Netflix (NFLX) entered the week under pressure after Wells Fargo cut its rating, drawing fresh attention to engagement trends. NFLX stock closed at $71.79 after a sharp reset. Shares have fallen 10.6% over one week and 21.1% in 2026. The one-year total shareholder return stands at negative 41.5%.

Netflix, Inc., NFLX

NFLX Stock Faces Fresh Rating Pressure

Wells Fargo moved Netflix from Equal Weight to Underweight and lowered its price target from $80 to $57. The bank cited softer viewer engagement and higher live sports costs. The Netflix rating cut added pressure as investors reviewed the company’s ability to defend growth.

Longer-term returns tell a different story. Netflix has delivered an 86.6% total shareholder return over three years and 21.1% over five years. That record shows stronger past performance even as current trading reflects weaker momentum and higher scrutiny around future cash generation.

Valuation Gap Draws Market Attention

Netflix now trades below a fair value estimate of $82, leaving a gap from the $71.79 closing price. The gap gives investors a data point as they compare lower engagement with buybacks, advertising, live programming, and a shrinking share count.

Competition remains active. Paramount confirmed the end of its animation partnership with Netflix after the Skydance Animation combination. Two planned films will still reach Netflix. The Paramount and Netflix partnership update adds context around changing studio relationships across streaming.

Buybacks Meet Growth Questions

Netflix continues to return capital through share repurchases, reducing the number of shares outstanding. That can support per-share results when cash flow remains strong. However, investors continue to watch whether advertising, live content, and AI projects can generate enough cash.

The debate centers on execution. Netflix remains a subscription platform with global reach, but engagement trends now carry more weight. NFLX stock could stay sensitive to viewing data, content spending, advertising progress, and future free cash flow.

Streaming Competition Stays in Focus

The wider media market is shifting as Paramount moves its Warner Bros. Discovery transaction through legal and settlement discussions. Recent Paramount merger progress shows how rivals are reshaping scale, content ownership, and distribution across entertainment.

For Netflix, the near-term picture remains mixed. The share price sits below the cited $82 fair value estimate, while recent returns remain weak. Stronger engagement, steady cash generation, and progress in revenue areas may shape how NFLX stock trades after the recent selloff.

The post NFLX Stock Drops After Wells Fargo Warning appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• NBIS stock gained 5.60%, outperforming the Industrial & Commercial Services sector’s 0.52% rise.
• Nebius raised prices for premium AI compute services, including Nvidia GPU and AMD CPU instances.
• Strong enterprise demand and limited high-performance computing capacity continue to support Nebius’ pricing power.
• Technical indicators remain constructive, with MACD at 1.219 and RSI at 56.523.
• Analysts maintain broadly positive ratings, with an average price target of $287.48 and a high target of $410.

Nebius Group N.V. (NBIS) shares gained 5.60% as investor attention returned to artificial intelligence infrastructure demand and higher compute pricing. NBIS stock outperformed the Industrial & Commercial Services sector, which advanced 0.52%, while trading activity remained strong across the group.

Nebius Group N.V., NBIS

NBIS Stock Climbs Above Sector Peers

Nebius ranked among the sector’s most active stocks by turnover, with its shares rising about 5.70%. Comfort Systems USA fell 0.88%, while S&P Global gained 0.13%, showing stronger relative momentum for Nebius during the session.

The move follows Nebius’ decision to raise prices across premium Nvidia GPU and AMD CPU compute services. A recent AI compute pricing update showed increases across several high-performance products as tight capacity continues to meet steady enterprise demand.

Higher Compute Prices Support Growth

Nebius can collect more revenue from scarce computing capacity when customers accept higher rates. The company has also faced rising hardware, memory, power, and data center costs as it expands infrastructure for large artificial intelligence workloads.

Investors continue to watch customer demand, contract pricing, and capital spending. Low churn after rate increases can support revenue visibility, while heavy infrastructure spending still requires strong utilization to improve operating margins and shorten the payback period on new capacity.

Valuation Keeps Trading Volatile

The wider AI infrastructure market remains active. Nvidia’s Rubin platform rollout has added attention to performance and power efficiency across new systems, including deployments involving Nebius and other large cloud infrastructure providers.

NBIS stock can still move sharply during broader technology swings. High valuation multiples, large capital needs, supply constraints, and competition from major cloud companies can increase daily price changes, especially when traders adjust positions after strong rallies.

Technical Signals Remain Constructive

Technical readings remain mixed but supportive. The MACD reading of 1.219 points to positive momentum, while the RSI at 56.523 stays neutral. Williams %R at 30.797 also signals buying strength, though traders may continue watching price action closely.

Peer developments also remain relevant. CoreWeave’s Vera Rubin infrastructure deployment shows how independent AI cloud providers are expanding advanced capacity. Such spending keeps competition focused on access, efficiency, pricing, and deployment speed across the sector.

Nebius reported annual revenue of $529.80 million and net profit of $82.50 million in the provided industry data. Recent analyst coverage has remained broadly positive, with targets ranging widely, reflecting both expected growth and the risks tied to valuation and capital spending.

The post NBIS Stock Jumps 5.6% as AI Pricing Boosts Momentum appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin’s price is closing in on $87,000 following an explosive rally, which triggered over $1 billion in liquidations across the crypto derivatives market.

The cryptocurrency reached an intraday high at exactly $87,000 (at the time of this writing), with its total market cap climbing toward $1.8 trillion.

The move extends Bitcoin’s impressive recovery from approximately $75,000 last week and has pushed it to its highest price since January.

Shorts Get Crushed as BTC Rallies Higher

The sharp move caught leveraged traders positioned for further downside.

Data from CoinGlass shows that roughly $1 billion worth of positions were liquidated, of which $900 million were short. More than 139,000 traders saw their positions force-closed, with the single largest liquidation happening on Hyperliquid, which carried a face value of slightly over $20 million.

This massive imbalance suggests that forced short closures provided additional momentum as BTC cleared several resistance levels in quick succession – an avalanche-like event, if you will.

This is called a short squeeze or a liquidation cascade.

What Happens Next for Bitcoin?

Attention is now quickly shifting toward the $88,000 area and beyond toward $90K.

As CryptoPotato recently reported, the popular analyst Doctor Profit highlighted Bitcoin’s reclaim of its 50-week moving average, currently near $78,700, as a very important development from a technical price point. The analyst identified $88K as the next potential target.

Some other analysis places a major bearish block at around this level. Therefore, a sustained break above $88K could bring $90K and even $95K into focus, while the region around $80K and $82K has now turned into an important support zone.

The post Massive $1 Billion in Liquidations as Bitcoin Taps $87K: What’s Next? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin could be among the first major targets of a future quantum attack because many of the earliest units sit in addresses where their public keys are already exposed.

Bitcoin security researcher Justin Drake warned in a recent interview with analyst Denis Liu that this vulnerability does not mean users should panic, as BTC held behind hashed addresses can remain protected until they are spent.

Satoshi’s Early Coins Face a Different Risk

The September 21 interview focused on roughly 1 million BTC mined by Satoshi across 20,000 addresses. Drake explained that the units were mined in 50-BTC blocks, with each address holding one block reward.

“All of these early Bitcoin addresses are raw pub keys,” Drake told Liu. “There isn’t this hashing step, and so they’re all vulnerable.”

He described Satoshi’s holdings as a potential target for “the operator of a quantum computer,” putting them in a different position from BTC that has never been spent from a hashed address.

For ordinary holders, the security issue is tied to spending. A Bitcoin address generally contains a hash of its public key rather than the key itself. But once the cryptocurrency is spent, the public keys become visible to everyone.

The security researcher advised users to send change to a fresh address whenever they spend Bitcoin. If the assets stay in a new address and are never spent, their public key has not yet been exposed.

“Your public key is not revealed publicly when you send funds to a fresh address,” Drake explained. “It’s only revealed publicly the moment you spend from that address. So, so long as you put Bitcoin in a fresh address and you don’t spend, then you’re actually fine.”

He also pointed out that even the fastest quantum machines discussed in current research would need time to crack cryptographic keys.

Furthermore, he urged holders not to rush into post-quantum cryptography “which is still being developed.” According to him, early upgrades could introduce bugs, while scammers could also exploit the fear by sending fake messages claiming that holders must immediately move to a “post-quantum secure” wallet.

Bitcoin Developers Are Already Testing Solutions

As CryptoPotato reported in August, a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction reached mainnet late that month using MARA’s private SlipStream mempool and a system called Quantum Safe Bitcoin.

The approach worked without changing Bitcoin’s consensus rules, although its use is currently limited to private mempools.

A separate proposal, BIP-361, published in April, would gradually freeze Bitcoin addresses considered vulnerable to quantum attacks. The proposal would first stop users from sending BTC to older address types, followed by a stricter cutoff two years later that would prevent remaining legacy wallets from sending funds.

There is a disagreement over how much Bitcoin is really exposed. In April, analyst James Check put the credible Satoshi-era target at 1.716 million BTC, rather than the 6.9 million BTC figure often cited in broader discussions about exposed keys.

He argued that while a complete sale of those assets would put downward pressure on the market, it would not necessarily produce a catastrophic outcome.

The post Why Quantum Computers Could Steal Satoshi’s Bitcoin First appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The self-proclaimed Dogecoin killer posted an 8% price increase over the past week, but its pump was less impressive than many other altcoins, and it lost its prestigious second spot in the meme coin sector.

Moreover, several factors suggest Shiba Inu bears may soon regain control.

Losing Ground

The cryptocurrency community has long accepted that Dogecoin (DOGE) is the biggest meme coin by market capitalization, with SHIB as its main rival. That trend has held for years, but in the summer of 2025, another contender emerged and changed the game.

The token in question is MemeCore (M), and its market capitalization recently soared to almost $3.5 billion after a monthly price gain of around 35%. Meanwhile, Shiba Inu climbed just 3% over the same period, and its cap now stands at around $3.37 billion, making it the third-biggest meme coin and the 34th-largest cryptocurrency.

Recall that back in the day, SHIB ranked much higher, with its capitalization briefly pumping above $20 billion in 2024 and temporarily exploding beyond $40 billion in 2021.

Further Slip Ahead?

Right now, the gap between Shiba Inu and the fourth-largest meme coin (PUMP) looks significant at around $1.3 billion, but some worrying signals suggest the former may take another hit soon.

The first one is the waning Shibarium activity. Last week, Shiba Inu’s team implemented “a small but useful” update for the layer-2 scaling solution. Specifically, it refreshed its RPC listing in the Ethereum-lists/chains registry, and Chainlist now has updated connection details. However, the protocol still facilitates a negligible number of daily transactions.

Next on the list is the rising amount of SHIB tokens stored on crypto exchanges. CryptoQuant data shows the figure has risen to around 87.6 trillion, the highest since early August. This indicates many investors have abandoned self-custody and moved to centralized platforms, increasing immediate selling pressure.

Shiba Inu’s seasonal performance is another cause for concern. September has been a predominantly poor month for the meme coin, with its valuation finishing in the red three out of five times.

The post Shiba Inu (SHIB) Takes a Serious Hit: Is the Worst Yet to Come? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin is following a similar trajectory seen in 2022-2023, according to the latest observation by Doctor Profit.

The analyst said that the latest move above the 50-week moving average, in particular, set the stage for the breakout toward the $82,500-$83,000 area, which took place over the past several hours.

2022-2023 Structure Is Repeating

The MA50 Weekly is currently around $78,700. BTC recently pushed past that level and was trading near $85,000 at the time of writing after an explosive rally on Monday. Doctor Profit said a weekly close above the moving average would strengthen his bullish view. His observation stems from Bitcoin’s previous market structure in 2022-2023, when the crypto asset faced several rejections around the MA50 Weekly before eventually clearing it.

Bitcoin broke below the MA50 Weekly and then reclaimed it seven times. Five instances were followed by bull markets, while two became false signals. Those occurred once in 2011, when BTC had “virtually no liquidity,” and once in 2020 during the COVID-19 crash.

The current market is showing a similar pattern. The analyst explained,

“The recent bear trap adds another similarity to 2022-2023! Same rejections, for 3-4 Weeks followed by a shakeout, then a recovery above the moving average and breakout above the MA50 Weekly, exactly of what is happening right now! Bears interpreted weakness as confirmation of another collapse, but the market reversed. I see the same broader transition!”

The latest move puts the focus on the start of the next bull market phase, which analysts have been speculating about lately. Doctor Profit has identified $88,000 as the next target once the remaining resistance levels are cleared.

Even Bolder Target

Another market commentator believes that Bitcoin could be repeating a historical cycle. Crypto Patel flagged a 364-day gap between the crypto asset’s 2017 peak and 2018 bottom, followed by a similar 364-day gap between the 2021 peak and 2022 bottom. The analyst said the 2025-peak-to-2026-bottom also appears to follow the same timing.

Bitcoin is now retesting long-term trendline support after losing the major EC zone. If the historical pattern continues, Crypto Patel said the next major expansion could target $370,000. He stressed that price action must confirm the setup.

The post From Bear Trap to $88K: Analyst Reveals Why Bitcoin’s Rally Isn’t Over appeared first on CryptoPotato.

BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) bought 27,562 Ethereum (ETH) over the week to September 20 and reported combined crypto, cash, and moonshot holdings of $17.1 billion in a press release and 8-K filed September 21.

Total holdings rose $1.3 billion from the $15.8 billion BitMine reported a week earlier, when it added 27,180 ETH. The company marked its Ether at $2,688 per token, per Coinbase, up from $2,513 a week earlier. That mark puts the week’s purchases at roughly $74 million, with the treasury at 5,983,940 ETH.

Staked Total Flat Since Late August

BitMine Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee stated the company “has bought ETH each and every week since the inception of its ETH Treasury Strategy on June 30, 2025,” a track record he called “unmatched by any public company in the world.” The pace has swung this year; one July purchase fell to 7,430 ETH, down from more than 30,500, a slowdown Lee tied to share buybacks.

Holdings equal 4.9% of the 122.1 million ETH in supply, and BitMine puts itself 98% of the way to its target of owning 5% of all ETH, the plan it calls the Alchemy of 5%, 15 months after the strategy began.

BitMine stakes 5,067,309 ETH, worth $13.6 billion at its mark and 85% of the treasury, through MAVAN, its Made in America Validator Network. The staked count has held there for five consecutive weekly updates, even as the token total kept climbing.

Lee put projected annualized staking revenue at $357 million, up from $334 million a week earlier, rising to $421 million once the ether is fully staked, on a 2.62% seven-day yield.

Lee Sees Stronger Fourth Quarter

“We believe a crypto bull market is underway, having started in late June,” Lee said, citing “the rotation from AI back to crypto.”

He put Ether’s quarter-to-date lead over the S&P 500 at 6,519 basis points, called the run “a prelude to a potentially stronger up move in the 4th quarter of 2026,” and said the company expects institutions “to substantially increase their exposure in the final 3 months of 2026.”

Cash and marketable securities rose to $714 million from $549 million a week earlier. The release gave no reason for the increase. Alongside the ether, BitMine held 212 Bitcoin (BTC), a $180 million stake in Beast Industries and a $105 million position in Eightco Holdings (ORBS), up from $98 million.

BMNR traded $1.2 billion in average daily dollar volume over the five days to September 18, ranking 100th of 5,704 US-listed stocks, according to Fundstrat, Lee’s research firm. The release ranks BitMine first among ether treasuries and second among crypto treasuries overall, behind Strategy (MSTR), which the release said owns 845,080 Bitcoin worth about $75 billion.

The post BitMine Buys 27,562 ETH in a Week as Holdings Reach $17.1 Billion appeared first on CryptoPotato.