The escalating conflict in Yemen exacerbates humanitarian crises, destabilizes the region, and complicates peace efforts, impacting global security.

The post Over 200,000 displaced in Yemen as fighting escalates: IOM appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

AWS's new AI toolchain could accelerate robotics innovation by lowering development costs and integrating NVIDIA's advanced AI capabilities.

The post AWS rolls out a physical AI toolchain for robots and autonomous machines appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Integrating Bitcoin payments into AI networks could revolutionize decentralized compute markets, enhancing autonomy and efficiency in AI transactions.

The post Spiral is adding Bitcoin payments to Mesh LLM so machines can buy AI compute appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The initiative could democratize AI research, empowering smaller labs and reshaping federal funding dynamics, but equitable access remains crucial.

The post Trump administration plans to unveil over $1 billion in private AI science pledges at White House summit appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The lack of a permanent legislative framework for crypto regulation may lead to ongoing market instability and fragmented compliance standards.

The post French Hill says SEC and CFTC crypto rules are no substitute for the CLARITY Act appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

CFTC Chair Says New Crypto Rulemaking Will Prevent Another FTX-Style Collapse

Pro-crypto regulator Mike Selig has said that pushing ahead with new rules will stop another collapse like FTX. 

Speaking on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Co. show Wednesday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair said that crypto exchanges will have the chance to register with the regulator in order to safeguard digital asset spot markets. 

Once one of the most popular crypto exchanges, FTX quickly and abruptly went bankrupt in 2022 due to mismanagement. Its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is now serving 25 years in prison for fraud and other crimes after $8 billion in customer funds was stolen. 

The CFTC and other regulators are pushing ahead with rulemaking for the crypto space, despite lawmakers last month blocking the long-awaited Clarity Act. 

“Four years ago, we saw the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, where he stole over $8 billion in customer funds. That can’t happen under our regime,” Selig said. 

“Actually, Sam Bankman-Fried’s subsidiary that was CFTC registered, all the funds were safe and secure because they were segregated, and we have some of the most stringent requirements of any federal agency when it comes to markets — we want to bring that to the crypto world,” he added. 

Selig added that some exchanges may choose to remain under the state regimes, while others will register federally. 

The CFTC is relying on powers it already has to regulate crypto markets. The watchdog this week sought public comment on a framework that would create a new federal registration category, called a “crypto asset market,” for exchanges offering leveraged, margined or financed crypto trades to retail customers. 

Exchanges that don’t offer leverage could stay under state licenses. But the agency reads “leverage” broadly, which could bring even fully paid trades under its oversight unless customers take delivery of their crypto.

CFTC Chair Selig, formerly chief counsel at the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, last month said that the regulator was preparing for the transition of markets moving “24-7, on-chain.”  

Both the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission have taken a more friendly approach to regulating the crypto industry since U.S. President Donald Trump took power. 

This post CFTC Chair Says New Crypto Rulemaking Will Prevent Another FTX-Style Collapse first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

US Investors Want to up Their Crypto Holdings: Charles Schwab

Forget stocks — U.S. investors are more interested in upping their bitcoin holdings, according to new research. 

Charles Schwab’s 2026 Modern Wealth Survey dropped on Wednesday, and showed that current cryptocurrency investors want to keep adding to their holdings. 

The research revealed that a total of six in 10 plan to invest more over the next 12 months — a higher share than among owners of all other investments measured, including ETFs (56%), stocks (52%), bonds (42%), and mutual funds (41%). 

“Existing cryptocurrency investors are certainly leaning in, particularly younger investors who are driving much of the interest and momentum in cryptocurrency,” Head of Digital Assets at Charles Schwab, Joe Vietri, said in a statement. 

“But to me, the bigger story is that cryptocurrency is increasingly viewed as a complement to traditional investments.”

Charles Schwab is the country’s largest custodian for registered investment advisors, and earlier this year began a phased rollout of Schwab Crypto to retail clients, giving them direct access to bitcoin trading along with educational content and professional support. 

Schwab also offers crypto-linked exchange-traded funds, bitcoin futures, and its own Schwab Crypto Thematic Index ETF. CEO Rick Wurster has said Schwab clients hold more than 20% of all crypto exchange-traded products across the industry.

Wednesday’s report added that one in five Americans overall own cryptocurrency today, and another one in five say they don’t own it but are interested in buying it. Among investors, nearly half own cryptocurrency. 

It further noted that millennials are the most likely to own cryptocurrency, and are more than four times the rate among Boomers. 

The online survey was conducted by Logica Research from August 24 to September 17, 2026, among a national sample of 2,000 Americans ages 21 to 75. 

This post US Investors Want to up Their Crypto Holdings: Charles Schwab first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Jack Dorsey’s Block Gifts One Bitcoin to Lucky ComplexCon Attendee

Jack Dorsey’s Block is pushing so hard for bitcoin adoption, it gifted 1 BTC to a lucky conference attendee at this year’s ComplexCon in Los Angeles. 

The fintech giant attended the Complex Networks yearly event at the weekend in a bid to introduce newbies to the leading cryptocurrency through — in its words — “culture, shopping and play.”

Block’s Cash App had a stall at the event with a fishing game dubbed “Lightning Lake”, allowing attendees to win small amounts of bitcoin. 

But one fortunate player was lucky enough to scoop up a whole coin — worth $85,000 at the time. 

“We wanted bitcoin to feel approachable, tangible and fun,” Maria Pesce, Head of Bitcoin Marketing at Block, told Bitcoin Magazine. 

“People could go from never having used bitcoin to paying with it, all in a trip around the lake.”

She added: “At Block, our goal is to make bitcoin everyday money, and ComplexCon gave us a chance to introduce bitcoin to a new audience through culture, shopping, and play.”

Block has long pushed for bitcoin adoption via its companies and products: Cash App allows users to send, receive and buy bitcoin and Square point-of-sale terminals accept the orange coin via the Lightning Network.  

NYSE-listed Block this month even debuted an advertising campaign to make the push for people to use the leading cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange.  

Dorsey, who in 2021 left Twitter to focus his efforts on payments and Bitcoin adoption in 2021, has repeatedly said he wants the cryptocurrency to be the global currency and “everyday money.”  

Block even piqued the interest of celebrities at ComplexCon: Kanye West’s daughter North West and rapper French Montana were spotted by Lightning Lake trying to fish for bitcoin. 

This post Jack Dorsey’s Block Gifts One Bitcoin to Lucky ComplexCon Attendee first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Quantum Issue: Bitcoin Quantum Exposure at Block 950,000 

Exposure Decomposition 

Migration estimates are useful for relative sizing, not as forecasts of real-world coordination, fee pressure, or user behavior.

Bitcoin Quantum Exposure Analysis Brief – Block 950,000 Page 1 

Top-Level Analysis 

1. The headline exposure figure overstates practical theft risk. 

The raw view shows 6,900,573 BTC exposed, but it intentionally treats exposure as a cryptographic condition: a public key has appeared on-chain. That is the right starting point, but it is not the same as economic loss risk. A live exchange wallet, an institutional multisig, a dormant early address, and an abandoned key can all be cryptographically exposed while having very different abilities to migrate. 

2. Active and known-entity exposure is less concerning than raw exposure implies. 

The active >=1 BTC filter captures 3,331,639 BTC, or 48.28% of all exposed supply. This is a large amount of bitcoin, but it is concentrated in 46,163 groups rather than millions of unmanaged holders. The largest visible active exposures include operational entities such as exchanges, brokers, custodial multisig operators, stablecoin infrastructure, and mining-related wallets. These entities are among the most likely to monitor quantum developments, coordinate wallet rotations, and migrate before a practical attack window opens. 

This does not make the exposure irrelevant. It creates coordination and execution risk. But it is meaningfully different from lost-key risk: active custodial and exchange balances are generally the coins most likely to move first in a credible threat scenario. 

3. The core long-term problem is dormant and non-responsive exposure. 

When active entities are removed and the view is narrowed to never-spent or inactive balances of at least 1 BTC, exposed supply is 3,413,767 BTC. After removing known operational entities while retaining Satoshi-attributed coins, the remaining exposed supply falls to 2,277,978 BTC across 73,658 groups and 1,096,018 UTXOs. 

That 2.28M BTC segment is the cleanest approximation in this dataset of the harder-to-mitigate exposure surface: early holders, inactive self-custody, old address reuse, dormant P2PK outputs, and coins that may be lost or otherwise unable to respond. This is where the practical quantum risk is most persistent. 

4. Quantum attack economics make the target set smaller still. 

A capable quantum adversary would still face operating costs, limited throughput, opportunity costs, transaction fees, and operational risk. The rational target set is therefore unlikely to be every exposed key. It is more likely to start with the highest-value exposed balances. 

Applying balance thresholds shows how quickly the practical attack surface compresses. With known entities removed and only dormant or never-spent balances included, the >=10 BTC view still contains 2,187,481 BTC but only 39,897 groups and 365,830 UTXOs. At >=100 BTC, the target set drops to 351,654 BTC across just 675 groups and 33,573 UTXOs.

Bitcoin Quantum Exposure Analysis Brief – Block 950,000 Page 2 

Script-Type and Threshold Observations 

Filtered to only show never-spent + inactive balances, known operational entities removed, Satoshi coins retained unless excluded by the balance threshold. 

Displayed totals may differ by a few BTC from KPI totals due to dashboard rounding at the script-type level. 

Important threshold note 

The apparent crossover from P2PK dominance at the >=10 BTC threshold to P2PKH dominance at the >=100 BTC threshold should not be interpreted as P2PK risk disappearing. It is primarily a filter artifact: the Satoshi-attributed P2PK outputs in this dataset are 50 BTC per key, so they are included at >=10 BTC and excluded once the pubkey balance threshold exceeds 50 BTC. That exclusion causes the P2PK bucket to collapse from roughly 1.716M BTC to about 10k BTC in the >=100 BTC view. 

Bottom Line 

Data source: Bitcoin Quantum Exposure Dashboard snapshot at block 950,000. This analysis assumes the dashboard methodology PDF supplied separately to the editor.

This piece is featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Quantum Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

This post The Quantum Issue: Bitcoin Quantum Exposure at Block 950,000  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Wicked.

Bitcoin Magazine

Russia’s Sberbank Given Green Light to Custody Bitcoin 

Russia’s largest bank has announced it is the first in the country to have been approved to custody bitcoin. 

Sberbank said in an announcement Wednesday that the Bank of Russia gave the company the green light for “digital currency record-keeping” and to facilitate the transfer of such assets. It said that bitcoin and other, smaller cryptocurrencies were given approval. 

Russia is fast moving ahead with regulating digital assets in the country. Russian President Vladimir Putin this month signed a law to set in stone the regulation of digital currencies and digital rights in the country. 

“Customers will be able to conduct cryptocurrency transactions via SberBank Online, SberInvestments, and the SberBusiness online banking platform,” the bank said in a statement, adding that no new apps or platforms will be released. 

It added: “For users, this means that digital currency transactions are moving into familiar banking interfaces — complete with standard customer identification, transaction monitoring, and reporting.”

Before mass rollout, the bank will provide the service for a limited number of customers, it continued. 

Sberbank in July revealed plans to debut a Bitcoin and crypto wallet as well as digital asset custody by December. The Bank of Russia in July published draft regulations for crypto trading, and the State Duma has this year prepared the comprehensive regulation of digital assets.  

Despite the rollout, using digital assets as a means of payment or legal tender within Russia is still banned. Using crypto as a form of payment has been prohibited in Russia since 2022. 

President Putin has appeared to praise Bitcoin in the past, once saying that the leading cryptocurrency can’t be stopped. 

This post Russia’s Sberbank Given Green Light to Custody Bitcoin  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

XRP traded around $1.43 on Oct. 7, down 5.46% over 24 hours. Five tracked US spot XRP ETFs held an estimated $1.7 billion at the previous day's close, according to market data tracker Maketo.

The holdings total is accumulated exposure. The latest net flows were much smaller, and the ETF sector contained withdrawals as well as additions: Franklin and Canary recorded outflows on Oct. 6, even though the five funds collectively received net inflows. The exchange-wallet decline used to support a supply-squeeze story also includes a storage migration that left coins under the same exchange's control.

ETF inflows and wallet withdrawals tell a smaller story

Maketo estimated that its five tracked funds held $1.7 billion, or about 1.13 billion XRP, at the Oct. 6 close. It values the coins at its own daily closing price and estimates some holdings when issuers do not publish a coin count.

Its flow data for the same date showed $3.14 million of aggregate net inflows. The past-week total was roughly $3.9 million, alongside $112 million over the past month. The weekly and monthly figures cover the tracker's trailing periods.

The rounded daily breakdown showed about $11 million entering Bitwise's fund. Franklin recorded roughly $4.1 million leaving, while Canary lost about $3.3 million. Grayscale and 21Shares were flat. Bitwise's additions outweighed withdrawals elsewhere, leaving the sector positive.

Canary's shares-outstanding table shows its share count moving from 23.35 million on Oct. 5 to 23.14 million on Oct. 6, consistent with net redemptions. That identifies a fund where exposure was being reduced, without naming the investors or showing where any underlying XRP changed hands.

There is also a distinction between investors selling ETF shares on an exchange and shares being redeemed from the fund. Individual shares trade in the market, while authorized participants handle creation and redemption units.

The exchange picture is also mixed. An Oct. 7 reading from ledger data tracker XRP Insights, taken at 08:00 UTC, counted 21.98 billion XRP in 699 publicly attributed wallets across 24 exchanges. That includes cold storage and some reserves backing wrapped tokens, so it is broader than readily tradable inventory.

Selling can also occur within an exchange's pooled customer accounts. As an accounting matter, XRP moving from one customer's ownership to another's need not alter the exchange's total on the ledger. That lets sellers trade existing exchange inventory even while coins are being withdrawn.

Comparing the same wallets over seven days, the tracker reported a decline of 26.5 million XRP, or 0.13%. Binance-attributed balances fell by 33 million XRP, while Upbit's rose by 11.5 million.

The monthly figure looked much more dramatic: a 1.63 billion XRP decline. XRP Insights attributed most of that fall to an Uphold storage migration into newer wallets outside its tracked set. Excluding Uphold, the decline was 75 million XRP, or 0.54%.

Even the adjusted measure can include transfers into untracked wallets. A recorded withdrawal may reflect an exchange moving its own storage rather than customers taking coins away.

Ripple's Oct. 1 cycle released 1 billion XRP and re-escrowed 700 million, according to XRP Insights' ledger tracker. The remaining 300 million left escrow; that change in availability does not establish that the coins were sold.

Heavy futures trading leaves price leadership unresolved

At 14:29 UTC on Oct. 7, CoinGlass recorded $3.97 billion of XRP futures turnover over 24 hours against $801.56 million of covered spot turnover. Open interest stood at $3.35 billion. Its XRP price reading was $1.4308, down 5.46% over the same rolling day.

Futures activity was roughly five times the covered spot figure. Gross turnover counts trading activity rather than net bearish exposure, leaving open whether futures sellers led the price move or followed it.

Open interest includes outstanding long and short positions. To distinguish a leveraged unwind from fresh positioning, price, funding and liquidation data need to be considered together. A fall in open interest alone would not establish forced liquidations.

The backdrop also extends beyond XRP. Bitcoin was around $83,100 in CryptoSlate's Oct. 7 snapshot, below its Oct. 6 reference close of $85,557.56.

The dated redemptions identify where ETF exposure was reduced. The dominant XRP sellers remain unidentified. The next useful signals are stronger net ETF additions, exchange movements traced beyond storage migrations, and derivatives data showing how positions changed during the fall.

The post XRP ETFs now hold $1.7 billion but took in just $4M last week appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum’s slide toward $2,500 has put about $1.35 billion of leveraged long positions at increasing risk of liquidation.

CoinMarketCap data showed roughly $1.35 billion of ETH long exposure sat at liquidation levels below the prevailing price, compared with about $999.78 million of shorts vulnerable above it. The figures represent positions exposed across a range of lower price levels rather than a single liquidation threshold.

The nearest pressure point is already approaching. About $112.83 million of ETH longs on Hyperliquid were positioned to liquidate around $2,511, CoinMarketCap said. When ETH traded at $2,605.65, the distance to that level had narrowed to about 3.6%, compared with a 7.4% cushion a day earlier.

The risk comes after ETH fell 5.9% over the last 24 hours to $$2,570 as of press time, according to CryptoSlate's data, extending a break from the $2,700 area that had contained the token despite several days of institutional selling.

ETH longs take the first hit as $2,500 comes into focus

Available data shows that the latest price break triggered a sharp wave of forced closures before Ethereum has even reached the nearest major liquidation cluster.

CoinGlass data showed $233.36 million of ETH positions were liquidated over the last 24 hours, with long traders accounting for $221.87 million, or about 95% of the total.

Of this, roughly $226.22 million was wiped out over 12 hours, including $216.11 million of long exposure.

Notably, Ethereum also accounted for the largest single liquidation across the broader crypto market, with a $26.64 million ETHUSDC position on Binance forced closed.

The scale of those losses makes the remaining liquidation map more consequential. Liquidation maps do not mean every identified position will automatically be closed. They instead show where leveraged trades become increasingly vulnerable as prices move through successive thresholds.

A continued decline toward $2,500 would therefore test whether the first wave of liquidations has removed enough leverage to stabilize the market or whether another layer of long positions remains vulnerable below it.

However, current market positioning suggests that risk has not disappeared.

CoinGlass showed a 3.32 long-to-short ratio among Binance ETH/USDT accounts, while the comparable ratio on OKX stood at 2.13. Binance’s largest traders were also skewed toward longs, with a 2.34 ratio by accounts and 1.62 when measured by positions.

Those metrics do not measure the dollar value committed to either side, but they show bullish positioning remains widespread even after more than $220 million of long bets were erased.

Funding rates, however, have turned negative.

Data from CoinGlass shows Ethereum’s open-interest-weighted funding rate stood at -0.0041%, while its volume-weighted rate was -0.0034%. Negative funding indicates stronger demand for short exposure, with short sellers paying longs to maintain perpetual futures positions.

That shift raises the prospect of increasingly crowded positioning on both sides if traders continue buying the decline while others add shorts after the breakdown.

ETF withdrawals remove another source of support

Ethereum’s weakening price is also coinciding with a sharp deterioration in demand for US spot Ether ETFs.

The funds recorded about $202 million of net outflows on Oct. 6, their largest single-day withdrawal since Sept. 16. The move extended the current outflow streak to six sessions and brought total withdrawals during the run to roughly $408 million.

The latest withdrawal also marked a significant acceleration. Investors had pulled almost $206 million from the funds across the previous five sessions combined, meaning Oct. 6 alone nearly matched that amount.

Ether had initially absorbed those withdrawals while holding near $2,700, suggesting ETF selling was not immediately translating into weaker prices. That resilience has now broken, with another large outflow arriving as ETH slipped toward $2,500.

Despite the recent retreat, the funds have accumulated $13.55 billion in cumulative net inflows since their launch, according to SoSoValue, leaving the latest withdrawals as a reversal within a much larger pool of institutional capital already committed to Ethereum.

Nonetheless, the outflows put greater focus on whether institutional investors begin treating the lower price as an entry point or continue reducing exposure.

Continued redemptions would remove a source of spot demand at a time when Ethereum is already struggling to regain its previous range. A reversal in flows, however, could signal that investors see the latest decline as an opportunity rather than the start of a deeper pullback.

The post Ethereum falls 6%, leaving $1.35 billion in long bets at risk of liquidation appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Japan’s October 6, 2026 auction of ten-year government bonds attracted more competitive demand relative to the debt sold, even as its average yield rose to 3.101%. For Bitcoin, higher returns on Japanese debt raise a question about how a sustained shift in bond allocation could affect global financing.

The Ministry of Finance’s result put the average yield up from 2.995% at the September 1 sale, an increase of 10.6 basis points. Competitive auction coverage, the amount sought by participants divided by the amount accepted, rose from about 3.29 times to 3.76 times.

The yield tail narrowed from 1.6 to 0.2 basis points. That gap measures the yield at the lowest accepted price against the average yield. Alongside the higher coverage, the smaller tail points to firmer demand at the higher yield.

The backdrop is two earlier weeks of foreign-debt selling. MOF’s October 1 flow release recorded net long-term debt sales of ¥1.9049 trillion during September 13–19 and ¥684.5 billion during September 20–26. Together, those weekly observations amount to net sales of ¥2.5894 trillion.

The series covers designated major Japan-resident reporting institutions and classifies foreign securities by issuer residence. It does not identify US Treasury sales, currency conversion, reinvestment into Japanese government bonds or Bitcoin transactions.

The potential financing pressure on Bitcoin

If Japanese institutions persistently prefer domestic bonds over overseas debt, reduced foreign bond demand could raise borrowing costs and weigh on capital available for risk-taking.

The authors of a Bank for International Settlements working paper identify global funding conditions and speculative motives as important drivers of cross-border Bitcoin and Ether flows. Their 2017 to mid-2024 sample supports the relevance of funding conditions to crypto flows.

Institutional portfolio allocation also differs from leveraged yen carry trades, which involve positions financed with borrowed yen. A ten-year auction yield does not measure the short-term cost of that borrowing. In their August 2024 analysis, BIS researchers described how deleveraging and margin increases amplified that month’s market turbulence. It illustrates how financing stress can spread across markets, without demonstrating a current unwind.

The next useful evidence is whether foreign-debt selling continues alongside independently observed funding stress. That pattern would be consistent with the proposed Bitcoin financing channel; renewed buying and calm funding would weaken the interpretation.

The post As Japanese institutions sell ¥2.6 trillion in foreign debt, here’s what Bitcoin investors need to watch appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin traded below $84,000 on Oct. 7 as US Treasury yields near 5.3% offered investors a competing interest-bearing alternative. Higher yields can raise the return investors expect to justify speculative crypto exposure.

The historical relationship is less straightforward. CryptoSlate's comparison of 2,435 matched daily changes since January 2017 found weak linear relationships between Bitcoin returns, nominal and real Treasury yield changes, and dollar-index returns. The daily relationships also remained weak in the post-ETF trading period.

The US ten-year nominal par yield was 5.27% on Oct. 6, down from 5.31% a day earlier. Bitcoin's market price was about $83,086 at 14:25 UTC on Oct. 7. The Oct. 5 nominal yield was the highest observation in the daily series examined, which begins in January 2017.

Bitcoin nevertheless gained 84.2% from January 10, 2024, the day before US spot Bitcoin ETF trading began, through Oct. 5, 2026. Over that period, the ten-year nominal yield rose 127 basis points and the real yield rose 113 basis points. This measures Bitcoin's price performance and shows that rising yields and a rising Bitcoin price can coexist; it establishes no ETF-driven explanation for the gain.

The inflation-adjusted alternative has strengthened too. Treasury's ten-year real par yield stood at 2.91% on Oct. 6, down from 2.95% the previous day. The Oct. 5 reading was also the highest in the daily series examined since January 2017.

Those levels describe the reward available from a competing interest-bearing alternative. They can make speculative exposure harder to justify, but they do not establish that a yield increase caused Bitcoin's latest decline. Today's investment hurdle and the measured relationship between Bitcoin returns and yield changes are separate questions.

What the post-ETF comparison shows

The full daily sample runs from Jan. 4, 2017, through Oct. 5, 2026. The post-ETF sample covers 682 matched daily changes from Jan. 11, 2024, through Oct. 5, 2026.

The later window follows the SEC's historical approval of spot Bitcoin ETP shares on January 10, 2024. BlackRock's IBIT began trading on Nasdaq on January 11, 2024. Those dates define the comparison period; the analysis does not isolate the effect of ETFs.

The table shows Pearson correlations. Values near zero indicate little linear co-movement, while a negative value means the variables tended to move in opposite directions. Neither yield measure had a strong negative daily relationship with Bitcoin returns in the later sample.

The comparison uses Coinbase Bitcoin observations, nominal Treasury yields and real Treasury yields from FRED, alongside DXY observations distributed by Yahoo Finance. DXY is the ICE currency index, a different measure from the Federal Reserve's broad trade-weighted dollar index.

Observations were matched by date, with missing data omitted rather than filled. Returns between consecutive common dates can span weekends or holidays. Closing times differ across the series, so the comparison does not use synchronized intraday observations.

Monthly sampling changes the picture. Across 116 full months from February 2017 through September 2026, correlations were -0.081 for nominal yield changes, -0.228 for real yield changes and -0.164 for DXY returns.

For the 32 full post-ETF months from February 2024 through September 2026, those figures were +0.207, +0.126 and +0.002, respectively. Both yield relationships turn positive in the later monthly sample, while the dollar relationship approaches zero. With only 32 observations, those shifts do not establish a lasting change.

Monthly figures use the last common observation date in each month, excluding October's incomplete month. The change across frequencies limits any broad conclusion from the daily results, including claims that ETFs insulated Bitcoin from macro conditions. These correlations describe co-movement and do not establish causation or predict future returns.

S&P Global's pre-ETF research also found that crypto's relationship with interest rates varied over time and did not establish monetary-policy causality. Its different crypto and rate measures make its coefficients unsuitable for direct comparison here.

Yields near 5.3% can make the competition for capital more demanding. Nominal yields, real yields and DXY provide context for assessing Bitcoin's appeal.

The post Bitcoin price has risen 84% since January 2024 while Treasury yields climbed appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Evernorth delayed its Nasdaq debut after shares of the SPAC taking the XRP treasury company public lost half their value.

Armada Acquisition Corp. II, which currently trades under the XRPN ticker, closed Tuesday at $19.20, down 50.3% from $38.65 a day earlier, according to data compiled by StockAnalysis. The shares had traded as high as $53 on Oct. 2 after closing at just $10.58 on Sept. 28.

In an Oct. 6 filing, Evernorth said an administrative delay had pushed completion of its merger with Armada to around Oct. 9 from Oct. 7. Trading of the combined company on Nasdaq is now expected to begin around Oct. 12, instead of Oct. 8. Evernorth said the delay is not expected to affect the closing.

Investors now face a longer wait after a speculative surge in Armada shares began reversing just days before the XRP treasury vehicle was due to formally enter public markets.

A near-quadrupling unwinds in days

XRPN’s rally accelerated after Armada shareholders approved the Evernorth transaction on Sept. 30.

The stock closed at $23.43 on Oct. 1, surged as high as $53 the next day and finished that session at $39.42. It remained at $38.65 on Oct. 5 before collapsing to $19.20 Tuesday.

Even after losing half its value, XRPN remained about 81% above its Sept. 28 close, reflecting how quickly investors had bid up the vehicle ahead of the merger.

Some of that volatility may reflect the shrinking supply of Armada shares available to investors seeking exposure before Evernorth becomes the listed company.

Armada reported 23 million shares subject to redemption at June 30, backed by $241.2 million in its trust account, equivalent to about $10.49 per share, according to its quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Evernorth subsequently said only about $48 million of trust proceeds are expected to remain for the combined company when the transaction closes.

Using Armada’s June redemption value as a rough guide, that amount would correspond to approximately 4.6 million shares remaining from the original 23 million redeemable shares, implying redemptions approaching 80%.

The companies have not yet disclosed the final redemption count, so that figure remains an estimate rather than the confirmed post-merger public float.

Heavy SPAC redemptions can leave relatively few shares available for trading. That can exaggerate price moves when investors pile into a deal and produce an equally sharp reversal once demand fades.

XRPN’s swings therefore offer an imperfect measure of what the fully combined Evernorth will ultimately be worth. Investors are currently pricing a SPAC awaiting transaction completion, rather than the final capital structure of the XRP treasury company.

Evernorth’s 473 million XRP bet moves closer to market

Still, the underlying transaction would create what Evernorth says will be the largest publicly traded company focused primarily on an XRP treasury.

The company expects to hold about 473 million XRP at closing, along with roughly $300 million in gross cash proceeds from the transaction. That includes $225 million from private placements, $30 million from convertible-note financing, and approximately $48 million remaining from Armada’s trust before transaction expenses.

Investors backing the transaction include Ripple, SBI Group, Arrington Capital, Pantera Capital, Kraken and GSR, according to Evernorth’s Oct. 1 announcement.

Evernorth is pitching the vehicle as more than a listed wrapper around an XRP stockpile. Chief Executive Asheesh Birla said the company plans to deploy capital across the XRP ecosystem to increase XRP exposure per share over time.

Evernorth presents that strategy as part of its pitch to investors ahead of the merger. Tuesday’s decline highlights the risk of attaching that premium to a thinly traded acquisition vehicle before investors know exactly how many shares will remain in circulation after closing.

The next disclosures may therefore be more important than the two-day administrative delay itself.

Once the transaction closes, Evernorth should provide a clearer picture of the final redemption count, cash delivered from Armada’s trust and the combined company’s share structure. The merger will also bring other potential sources of equity supply, including Armada’s outstanding warrants, into sharper focus.

Those numbers will give investors a firmer basis for deciding whether XRPN’s remaining premium reflects the value of Evernorth’s XRP strategy or the temporary scarcity of shares available before the deal closes.

The post XRP treasury SPAC drops 50% in a day ahead of Evernorth’s Nasdaq debut appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Stellar trades at around $0.20 on October 7, 2026, down 6.27 percent in 24 hours. The XLM price hit $0.199392 at its low, the first time in this downward move that it has traded below the round 20-cent mark. No project-specific trigger sits behind it: Stellar is falling in step with a market that is broadly giving way this Wednesday, and a liquidation wave in the futures market pulled it further down.

For you as a holder or a prospective buyer, three things here are verifiable, and none of them is a price forecast: whether a leveraged position sits dangerously close to its liquidation price, whether a sale falls inside the one-year tax window, and where the coins actually sit should an exchange run into trouble. This article places the numbers in context and names the part of it that is in your hands.

Stellar at $0.20: The Trading Day in Numbers

Stellar is quoted at $0.20048, or €0.179156. The range of the past 24 hours runs from a high of $0.214726 to a low of $0.199392, so the price has covered just under seven percent of its band over the day and settled at the lower end. On a weekly view it is down 9.81 percent, while over 30 days it is still up 6.32 percent. That is the real finding: the slide of the past few days has eaten up the monthly gain, but has not yet reversed it.

With a market capitalisation of $7.02 billion, Stellar ranks 20th among the largest cryptocurrencies. Trading volume over the past 24 hours comes to $186.66 million. There are 35.04 billion XLM in circulation out of a total of 50.0 billion, so roughly 30 percent of the total supply has yet to reach the market. The price sits 77.1 percent below the all-time high of $0.875563, set on January 2, 2018. Over one year it is down 48.16 percent.

Where These Numbers Come From

The basis is market data from CoinGecko on the 25 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation, as of October 7, 2026, stablecoins excluded. All 25 entries on that list were checked. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on October 7, 2026.

The 20-Cent Level as a Round Number on the XLM Chart

Round numbers have no mechanical effect on a price. What they do have is a cluster of orders: sell limits, bids, stop orders and the liquidation prices of leveraged positions all sit conspicuously often on even values when people set them. That is precisely why a level such as $0.20 becomes a zone where more volume changes hands than two cents higher up.

In Stellar's case, the same zone has already played a part twice in this move. In late September, according to our coverage of September 29, the price stood at $0.22; in mid-September it broke above $0.19. The 20-cent mark therefore marks the middle of the band in which XLM has been oscillating for weeks. That the price now sits at the lower edge does not automatically mean it will stay below it. It means the band is being tested from below.

A plain observation applies when placing the levels above and below: above $0.2147, the day's high, lies the next zone where sellers have shown up this week. Below $0.19 the price drops out of the band in which it spent September. Both values appear in this article as observed price levels, not as price targets.

Liquidation Wave in Futures: The Figures Diverge

A liquidation is the forced closure of a leveraged position by the exchange as soon as the collateral posted no longer covers the loss. The exchange then sells into the market automatically, which pushes the price down further and shoves the next position past its threshold. This mechanism explains why price moves appear in minutes with no fresh news behind them.

How large the wave was this Wednesday is reported differently across the trade press, and that spread is left unsmoothed here. Finance Magnates names more than $400 million in leveraged long positions closed within a window of about 20 minutes. Mitrade puts the figure for the day at around $550 million. CoinGape arrives at roughly $700 million over 24 hours, of which about $650 million was on the long side and $50 million on the short side. The direction is the same in all three accounts: it hit almost exclusively positions that had bet on rising prices.

For the market capitalisation of all cryptocurrencies, CoinGape reports a drop to $2.9 trillion, more than $100 billion less than the previous day. These totals are media figures and not our own survey; they appear here with their provenance, because the order of magnitude is what separates an isolated case from a market event.

Bond Yields and Oil as Drivers of the Pullback

The explanation for the pullback lies outside the crypto market. Rising yields on US Treasuries make it more expensive to hold assets that throw off no running income, and Bitcoin and XLM are among them. According to the US Treasury, the yield on ten-year US government bonds stood at 5.15 percent on October 6, 2026. On October 1 it was 5.12 percent, on October 5 it was 5.19 percent. The figure for October 7 had not yet been published at the time of writing.

These numbers matter more than they sound, because a higher yield of around 5.3 percent was circulating in market commentary that day. The official US Treasury series does not confirm that for the days published so far. The level is high and the trend of the past week points upward, yet the jump to 5.3 percent is not documented. Anyone testing the stated reason for the price decline is well advised to test the number along with it.

As a second driver, the market reports from CoinDesk name a firmer oil price with Brent quoted above $101 a barrel, plus a stronger dollar. A third factor is the news flow around Iran, which appears in the same reports as the trigger for renewed selling pressure in the bond market. These three points are attributions by the outlets named, not measurements of our own.

Stellar, Bitcoin and XRP: The Day's Losses Compared

Stellar's decline only falls into place with the larger assets set beside it. Bitcoin is down 2.6 percent at $83,453 and reached a low of $82,823 after a high of $85,788. Ethereum gives up 4.88 percent to $2,567.60, XRP 4.62 percent to $1.43, Solana 3.0 percent to $116.87. Cardano loses 5.42 percent to $0.2574.

At 6.27 percent, Stellar sits at the bottom of that row and is therefore markedly weaker than Bitcoin. This is no special case. It is the usual pattern of a day like this: the smaller the market capitalisation and the thinner the order book, the harder the same volume of selling lands on the price. On daily turnover of $186.66 million, a wave of selling moves XLM visibly more than it moves Bitcoin with its many times the liquidity.

The move had a run-up as early as October 3. Our English coverage from that day described a decline of a good five percent to around $0.214, accompanied by sharply higher altcoin inflows to exchanges, which pointed to profit-taking. Four days later the price is some seven percent lower. The difference between then and now is the driver: back then holders were selling their stacks, today exchanges closed leveraged positions by force.

Funding Rate and Liquidation Price in Leveraged XLM Trading

Two terms decide whether a day like this becomes expensive for you. The liquidation price is the price at which the exchange closes your leveraged position automatically, because the margin posted has been used up. The funding rate is the periodic payment that flows between the long and short sides of a perpetual futures contract and keeps the contract price tied to the spot price; it costs the dominant side of the market money continuously, regardless of where the price goes.

In an environment where several hundred million dollars of long positions are closed in a single day, neither value is a footnote. Anyone holding a leveraged XLM position can read the distance between the current price and the liquidation price in the position overview of their exchange, and widen it with additional collateral or a smaller position. How the platforms display these values and what fees they charge differs considerably; a look at our comparison of the best perp DEXs shows the differences in contract sizes, leverage tiers and liquidation logic.

Without leverage, this risk disappears entirely. A price decline of 6.27 percent then remains a price decline of 6.27 percent and does not turn into a total loss of the position. That is the sober reason a day with a liquidation wave mostly looks unpleasant for unleveraged holders and can become existential for leveraged accounts.

MiCA and the Route to Buying XLM in Germany

Anyone looking to buy or sell in a market like this first makes a decision about the provider. Since the EU's MiCA regulation took effect, trading platforms for crypto-assets need authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider in order to approach customers in the EU; in Germany, BaFin grants that permission and supervises it. For you this is a concrete check rather than a formality: an authorised provider is bound by requirements on segregation of client funds, complaints procedures and disclosure, an unauthorised one is not.

That this authorisation is not a given became clear only yesterday: according to our coverage of October 7, BaFin has refused the MiCAR licence to futurum bank AG, the operator of bitcoin.de. Which platforms hold a permission, and what they charge for buying, selling and withdrawals, is set out in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges. On a purchase of a few hundred euros, the gap between two providers quickly reaches a full percentage point, and that weighs noticeably alongside a price decline of a good six percent.

Holding Period and Loss Offsetting on Stellar Sales

A price decline is not only an annoyance in tax terms; it is first of all a question of dates. On private sales of crypto-assets in Germany, a gain is tax-free after a holding period of one year; within the first year it counts as a private disposal and is taxed at your personal income tax rate. There is an exemption threshold for this, which applies per year and above which the entire gain becomes taxable.

From that follows an order of operations that has nothing to do with the price. Before you sell into a falling market, it is worth looking at the purchase date of every single tranche. If a tranche sits shortly before the end of its one-year holding period, selling today may cost more tax than selling in a few weeks. If you sell at a loss, that loss can be offset against gains from other private disposals within the same category of income, including across tax years.

Running this calculation by hand becomes unpleasant from the third tranche onward, because every part holds its own purchase date and its own entry price. The tools in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers read exchange transactions and assign tranches by purchase date. That does not replace a binding tax assessment of your individual case; the tax advisory profession is responsible for that.

Self-Custody: Moving XLM from the Exchange to Your Own Wallet

A day of high volume and fast price moves is the day trading platforms come under load. Self-custody means you hold the private keys to your coins yourself and are therefore independent of whether an exchange happens to be reachable or has halted withdrawals. The price for it is personal responsibility: if the keys are lost, there is no office that resets them.

For Stellar there is a particularity here that matters before the first transfer. An XLM account has to hold a minimum reserve in order to exist on the network; a completely empty account does not exist. Anyone withdrawing their holdings therefore cannot take the last XLM along. On top of that, deposits to exchange accounts at Stellar usually need a memo, because several customers pay into the same address and the memo establishes the assignment. A transfer without a memo lands in the exchange's pooled account and has to be traced by hand.

Which devices support Stellar, and how the models differ in backup procedures and handling, is set out in our hardware wallet comparison. What decides it is less the model than the question of whether you keep the recovery phrase somewhere that survives a house fire and a move.

Stellar Has No Native Staking in the Protocol

Because falling markets regularly bring questions about running income, this clarification belongs here: Stellar has no native staking. The network runs on the Stellar Consensus Protocol, in which selected nodes reach agreement through quorum slices. There is no deposit a holder locks up there, and no protocol reward they receive for it. An inflation payout that existed in the network's early days was switched off in 2019.

What is offered under the name of staking for XLM is therefore something else: a loan to a provider who earns the yield from using the coins themselves. That adds a counterparty risk which simply holding does not carry. Anyone examining such offers examines first who the contractual partner is, and what happens to the deposited coins if that partner becomes insolvent.

Stellar at the 20-Cent Level: The Key Points for Your Decision

The price stands at $0.20, the decline is 6.27 percent over a day and 9.81 percent over a week, and the reason for it lies in the bond market and the futures market, not with Stellar itself. What follows from it is a short list:

1. Leverage first. Look at the distance between the price and the liquidation price of every open position, and do not shrink it by buying more on credit. How platforms structure leverage tiers and liquidation logic is shown in the comparison of the best perp DEXs.
2. Purchase date before price decision. Look at the date of every tranche before you sell into this market, and factor in the one-year window. The tools in the comparison of crypto tax software assign tranches automatically.
3. Settle custody before things get tight. Decide on a quiet day whether the holdings stay on the exchange or move into your own custody, and mind the minimum reserve and the memo at Stellar. The devices are listed in the hardware wallet comparison.

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

$10 XRP is one of the most searched price targets in crypto, and right now it looks further away than it did a year ago. XRP trades at $1.42 on October 7, 2026, down 4.7% on the day after slipping below the $1.50 level it had defended for two weeks. It is down 22.5% year to date, while Bitcoin is down less than 5%.

That has not stopped the forecasts. Banks, research desks, chart analysts and even AI chatbots have put $10 on the table, some for 2026, some for 2030. In this article we look at who is claiming what, read the current and historical XRP charts, and run the one calculation most of these forecasts skip: what $10 would mean for XRP's market cap, and whether that number makes sense. You can follow the live XRP price on our prices page.

Who Says XRP Can Reach $10 or More?

The $10 forecasts come from very different places, and the dates attached to them range from this December to 2041. Here is what is actually out there.

Three things stand out. First, the serious institutional calls (Standard Chartered, Bitget) all sit in 2027 to 2030, not 2026. Second, the near-term $10 calls rest on chart patterns or on a chatbot meme, and the chart-based one assumed a $3.40 breakout that has not happened. Third, even the bullish 247 Wall St piece that walks through the 2030 scenarios concedes that $10 needs proof of real demand from XRP Ledger activity, not just another bull market. And when Yahoo asked ChatGPT about the Grok call in January, it gave $10 in 2026 an 18% probability and called it an extreme bull case.

XRP Price Today: What Does the Chart Say?

$XRP opened Tuesday at $1.497, sold off sharply around 05:00 UTC to $1.45, and then ground lower for the rest of the session to a low of $1.413 before a small bounce to $1.426. That is a 4.72% daily loss and a clean break below the $1.50 line that had capped and then supported price since the August breakout.

The key levels on the daily chart:

• $1.50: former support, now resistance. Price held above it from September 21 to October 6 and lost it today.
• $1.55 to $1.65: the late-September swing highs. A reclaim of this zone is needed before anyone can talk about $2 again.
• $1.38: the 200-day EMA, currently flat to slightly rising. This is the first real test below. XRP has bounced off this average twice since August, around August 29 and September 11.
• $1.30: horizontal support from the September 16 low, where the last 200-EMA break was bought back within a day.
• $1.20 and $1.00: the August base. The entire move from $1.00 to $1.50 happened in two candles on August 19 and 20, which means there is very little traded volume between those levels to act as support.
• $0.90: the deeper support line sitting under the August lows.

Momentum has turned too. The 14-day RSI dropped from the high 50s to 46, back below its signal line and below the neutral 50 mark for the first time since mid-September. There is no oversold reading yet, so there is room for further downside before a relief bounce becomes statistically likely.

The structure since August is a wide range between $1.30 and $1.65. Today's candle pushes price back into the middle of that range. The 200 EMA at $1.38 decides what comes next: a hold there keeps the range intact, a daily close below $1.30 opens the $1.20 to $1.00 gap. Nothing on this chart points at $10, or at $3 for that matter, in the near term.

XRP All Time High: What Does History Tell Us?

XRP has had three major cycles, and each one tells us something about how far this coin can run and how long it stays down afterwards.

1. 2017 to 2018. XRP traded below $0.01 for years, then went vertical in the final months of 2017. The all time high of about $3.84 came in January 2018. The monthly closing high was closer to $2.00, which shows how much of that peak was a single wick. XRP then spent six years below that level and bottomed near $0.15 in March 2020.
2. 2021. The next cycle peaked at roughly $1.96 in April 2021, a lower high, and this during a period when the SEC lawsuit kept XRP off most US exchanges. Price fell back to around $0.30 by 2022 and flatlined near $0.50 through 2023 and most of 2024.
3. 2024 to 2025. The election-driven rally in November 2024 took XRP from $0.50 to $3.00 in roughly two months. A second push in July 2025 reached about $3.66, just shy of the 2018 record. That was the first time XRP had retested its all time high since 2018, and it failed to break it.

From the July 2025 peak, XRP has fallen more than 60%, touching $1.00 in August 2026 before the current bounce to $1.42. This is the fourth drawdown of more than 60% in XRP's history. Bulls point out that the previous three were each followed by rallies of around 1,000%. Bears point out that XRP has never set a new all time high in eight years and that the 2025 attempt failed at the same price zone as 2018.

The lesson from history is that XRP moves in explosive, short bursts rather than steady uptrends. Both the 2018 and 2025 peaks were reached in under three months of parabolic movement. The question for $10 is therefore not "can XRP move fast" (it can) but "can it sustain a market cap three times larger than anything it has ever held". That is where the math comes in.

What Would XRP's Market Cap Be at $10?

At $10 per coin, XRP would be worth about $631 billion. The calculation is simple: there are 63.09 billion XRP in circulation today, and 63.09 billion times $10 gives $630.9 billion. Today, at $1.42, the market cap is $89.96 billion, so $10 means growing the market cap seven times over, a gain of 604%.

A few comparisons put $631 billion into perspective:

• It is more than Ethereum ($313B), Tether ($184B) and BNB ($103B) combined, and roughly a quarter of the entire top-10 crypto market today.
• It is about three times the largest market cap XRP has ever held. At the July 2025 peak of $3.66, with around 58 billion coins circulating, XRP was worth roughly $210 billion.
• Supply keeps growing. Ripple can release up to 1 billion XRP from escrow every month. Even if most goes back into escrow, circulating supply has grown from around 58 billion to 63 billion in a little over a year, which raises the bar for every price target.
• The fully diluted valuation at $10 is about $1 trillion, since total supply is 100 billion XRP. That is where the market would eventually have to settle if escrow is fully released.

For context, Bitcoin needed 16 years, a spot ETF wave and treasury-company buying to reach $1.67 trillion. XRP at $10 would need to get 38% of the way there with a fraction of Bitcoin's ETF holdings. US spot XRP ETFs currently hold around 1.5% to 1.7% of supply versus more than 6% for Bitcoin, according to 247 Wall St.

Can XRP Reach $10? The Bull Case vs the Bear Case

So is a $631 billion XRP possible? Possible, yes. Likely on the timelines most headlines use, no. Here is what each side would have to be right about.

What the bull case needs

1. A full crypto bull cycle. XRP has only ever made its big moves when Bitcoin was running. The 2028 halving is the next scheduled catalyst, which is exactly why the credible $10 calls cluster around 2028 to 2030.
2. ETF demand to triple or more. ETFs are the one buyer group that kept adding while XRP fell. Getting from 1.7% of supply to 5% or more would absorb a meaningful chunk of escrow releases.
3. Real usage on the XRP Ledger. RLUSD, institutional lending (the Clearpool and Cicada proposal), payments and tokenization need to create demand for XRP itself, not just for the stablecoin that runs on top of it. This is the weakest link today.
4. A new all time high first. $10 is not on the table until XRP clears $3.84. It has tried once in eight years and failed.

What the bear case points to

1. The chart. XRP is down 22.5% in 2026, just lost $1.50, and sits in a range with a 200 EMA that is barely rising. Momentum is pointing down, not up.
2. Supply growth. A seven-fold price increase while supply grows means the market cap has to grow by more than seven times. Escrow releases are a permanent headwind that Bitcoin does not have.
3. The scale. $631 billion would make XRP double the size of Ethereum, a network with far more applications, fees and developer activity. The market would need a reason to pay that premium.
4. Pattern of failed peaks. Both XRP peaks were short parabolic spikes that could not hold. A $10 wick in a frenzy is more plausible than a $10 monthly close.

Our read. A $10 wick during a mania phase around 2028 to 2030 is a tail scenario that cannot be ruled out, because XRP has done 1,000% moves before. A sustained $10, meaning a $631 billion market cap that holds, requires XRP to become the second largest crypto asset by a wide margin with fundamentals to match, and nothing in the current data shows that happening. For 2026, the question is answered by the chart: XRP would need to rise 604% in under three months from a level where it is still losing support.

XRP Price Prediction: Our Verdict on the $10 Target

XRP can reach $10 only in a scenario where the whole crypto market roughly doubles and XRP takes a far bigger share of it than it holds today. That is a 2028 to 2030 story at the earliest, and even then it is a cycle-peak outcome rather than a base case.

• In 2026: no. XRP is at $1.42, below $1.50 and 604% away. Not a single credible source argues for $10 this year; the only one that did was a chatbot that retracted it.
• By 2027 to 2028: unlikely but not impossible. This is Standard Chartered's window and it depends on a full bull market plus ETF inflows that triple. A new all time high above $3.84 would be the first signal that the path is open.
• By 2030: a genuine tail scenario. Bitget and Standard Chartered both land here, and three past drawdowns of 60% were each followed by moves of around 1,000%. A fourth would take XRP from the August low of $1.00 to roughly $10.

What to watch in the meantime is much more mundane: whether the 200-day EMA at $1.38 holds this week, whether XRP can reclaim $1.50 and the $1.65 September high, and whether ETF holdings keep growing while the price does not. Those are the inputs. $10 is the output, and it is a long way off.

Shiba Inu has been trading on Solana since October 4. Anyone searching a Solana app for the ticker SHIB since then gets several results. On Wednesday afternoon two different tokens carried that ticker and both were flagged as verified, and the one with by far the most holders was not Shiba Inu but a different memecoin. The short answer to the question of what counts now: the address decides which token you are dealing with, never the ticker, and the usual safety rule for Solana tokens points in the wrong direction in this case.

This piece explains what happened technically on October 4, what the canonical issue on Solana looks like, how you tell it apart from namesakes, and what applies legally and for tax when buying through a decentralised exchange in Germany.

SHIB on Solana since October 4: Sunrise, Wormhole and nine trading venues

On the afternoon of October 4, 2026 the bridge project Sunrise announced that SHIB had been listed on Solana; a few minutes later the official Shiba Inu account and the Solana account confirmed the report. Sunrise is a bridge built on Wormhole technology. A bridge is a program that makes a token from one blockchain available on another, without the token being issued twice independently of each other.

The announcement named nine venues, among them Jupiter, Raydium, Phantom, Kamino Swap and Mayan. In the first minutes after the start the market observer Solana Compass counted a good 3,000 trades from around 1,400 wallets and starting liquidity of about 514,000 dollars with roughly 1,500 holders. The circulating supply on Ethereum was untouched by this: no new SHIB were created.

For you as a holder, nothing changes for now. Your SHIB on Ethereum stay where they are. All that is new is a second trading route, and with it a second address you need to know if you want to use it.

Two verified SHIB tickers on Solana: 23,693 holders on the wrong token

A query of Jupiter's token interface for the term SHIB returned 20 hits on Wednesday. Two of them carry exactly the symbol SHIB, and both are flagged as verified in the list:

• Shiba Inu, canonically bridged, address shib5gSoVKPjwkXrxRk7SbQFzb2R9rQB3TgQWYX4RwW: 2,984 holders, around 144,800 dollars of liquidity.
• shibwifhat, address F6qoefQq4iCBLoNZ34RjEqHjHkD8vtmoRSdw9Nd55J1k: 23,693 holders, around 59,500 dollars of liquidity. An independent memecoin that uses the same ticker and has existed on Solana considerably longer.

On top of that came a third hit with a lower-case symbol and 102 holders, as well as a series of tokens named "Shiba Inu" but running under the symbol SI. Several of them had one or two holders and around 3,500 dollars of deposited liquidity each, a pattern typical of freshly created imitations. 17 of the 20 hits were classified as unknown.

The holder count weighs more heavily here than the liquidity. Anyone who simply types "SHIB" into a wallet or on a decentralised exchange and takes the first known result lands with some probability on the memecoin with the 23,693 holders and not on Shiba Inu. Both are marked as verified, both look reputable in the list of hits. The flag says only that a token is known and not an obvious scam. On the question of whether it is the token you are looking for, the flag says nothing.

The canonical mint address: what a mint on Solana even is

On Ethereum every token has a contract address. Shiba Inu runs there under 0x95ad61b0a150d79219dcf64e1e6cc01f0b64c4ce. On Solana the counterpart is called the mint address: an account on the blockchain that records how many units of a token exist and who may create them. The mint address is the only unambiguous identifier of a Solana token. The name and the ticker can be assigned by anyone, as often as they like, and that is exactly what has happened with the ticker SHIB.

The canonical issue of Shiba Inu on Solana carries the mint address shib5gSoVKPjwkXrxRk7SbQFzb2R9rQB3TgQWYX4RwW. The beginning of the character string is no accident but a so-called vanity address, that is, a deliberately computed address with a readable opening. That is convenient and at the same time a trap: an address beginning with the same four characters can equally be computed by anyone else. The opening alone proves nothing; only the complete string counts.

Mint authority and freeze authority: the well-known rule of thumb misleads here

A simple test rule circulates about Solana tokens and appears in many guides: the mint authority and the freeze authority should both be set to null. The mint authority is the address allowed to create further units; the freeze authority is the address allowed to freeze someone else's balance. If both are null, nobody can mint more or block anything.

On the canonical SHIB issue on Solana the freeze authority is null, but the mint authority is not. That permission sits with a program belonging to the bridge. This is part of how it works: anyone bringing SHIB from Ethereum to Solana has the units locked on Ethereum, and the same amount is minted on Solana. On the way back it is burned on Solana and released again on Ethereum. Without an active mint authority the bridge could not do that.

The memecoin shibwifhat, by contrast, has a mint authority of null. Anyone applying only the rule of thumb therefore treats the bridged Shiba Inu of all things as suspicious and the other token as clean. With bridged tokens an active mint authority is the normal case. The real question is therefore who holds it.

Four decimals on Solana, eighteen on Ethereum: a source of error when converting

One difference appeared in no announcement and jumps out the moment you recalculate: Shiba Inu has 18 decimals on Ethereum, the Solana issue has four. Decimals set how many fractions a unit can be divided into, and they determine how a blockchain stores the raw figures.

In practice that means the same amount of SHIB sits in the data on the two chains as a completely different raw figure. Anyone transferring holdings from a block explorer or an interface into a spreadsheet by hand without carrying the decimals along miscalculates by fourteen orders of magnitude. For a tax return and for any holdings list of your own, that is the most likely source of error in the whole chain switch.

38.95 billion out of 589 trillion SHIB: how small the Solana issue is

How much Shiba Inu actually sits on Solana? The mint address itself answers that. On Wednesday afternoon around 38.95 billion SHIB had been issued there. The entire circulating supply at the same time stood at a good 589 trillion SHIB.

That is 0.0066 percent, so roughly one in 15,100 SHIB. The market value of the Solana issue was around 210,000 dollars, measured against a market capitalisation of about 3.18 billion dollars for Shiba Inu as a whole. The new route is therefore a footnote in the holdings and not a shift in the market. Anyone reading the announcement as a price driver overestimates it considerably.

For the scarcity arithmetic the step changes nothing, because not a single SHIB is added or disappears. What sits on Solana is locked on Ethereum. How the burn balance has developed alongside it we recalculated on October 5 in our own analysis of the burned amounts.

Cross-checking the mint address: how to check which SHIB is genuine before you buy

The check takes two minutes and replaces every rule of thumb. The procedure works for any Solana token, not just this one:

1. Obtain the address, do not search for it. Get the mint address from a source belonging to the project, for instance the project's official channel, and match it against an independent token registry. Jupiter publishes its verified addresses at verified.jup.ag. Never take an address from a direct message, a comment or an article, not even from this one.
2. Compare it in full. Check the complete character string, not just the beginning and the end. Vanity addresses with the same opening are cheap to generate.
3. Search by address in the app. Paste the address into Phantom, Jupiter or another application instead of typing the ticker. That rules out the mix-up, no matter how many tokens are called SHIB.
4. Look at the mint's data. The decimals, the issued amount and the two permissions are in every Solana explorer. The official procedure is described in the Solana documentation on token verification. With a bridged token, expect an active mint authority and ask which program it belongs to.
5. Small amount first. The first time, send an amount whose loss would not hurt, and check whether it arrives with the expected mint address.

Anyone not wanting to take that route has a simple alternative: buy SHIB through a provider authorised in the EU and do not switch chains at all. Which houses hold an authorisation is set out in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Base58 against 0x: two address formats, one irreversible mistake

Ethereum addresses begin with 0x and consist of hexadecimal characters. Solana addresses are written in Base58, a string of digits and letters without the easily confused characters zero, capital O, capital I and lower-case l. The two formats cannot be converted into one another.

From that follows the most important rule when switching chains: SHIB from Ethereum never belongs at a Solana address, and vice versa. The switch runs exclusively through the bridge. A mistaken transfer between the chains is as a rule not recoverable, because nobody on the target chain holds the key to that address.

Buying through a decentralised exchange: no supervised provider, no complaint channel

The European crypto regulation MiCA imposes obligations on crypto service providers, that is, companies offering trading, custody or exchange. Those companies need an authorisation, must segregate client funds and must maintain a complaints body. In a swap on a decentralised exchange there is no such company facing you. There is no authorisation, no supervision by BaFin, no complaint channel and no compensation if you end up with the wrong token.

That is how these venues are built. Anyone who knows it makes a deliberate decision; anyone who does not know it mistakes an unsupervised swap for a banking transaction.

A swap on Solana and Section 23 EStG: the disposal stands, even on a mistaken purchase

A swap from one token into another is a private disposal transaction in Germany under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. The gain is taxable if less than a year lies between acquisition and disposal. Since 2024 an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros applies to all private disposal transactions of a year taken together. Exemption threshold means: if it is exceeded, the entire amount is taxable and not only the part above it.

Important for the case at issue here: if you accidentally buy a namesake, the swap has taken place all the same. The disposal of the coin you put in counts for tax even if what you bought is worthless. Whether and how such a loss can be claimed depends on the individual case and belongs in the hands of a tax adviser.

So for every chain switch, record the signature of the Solana transaction and the hash of the Ethereum transaction, along with the date, amount and euro value. Which programs write that down automatically is shown in our overview of tax tools and portfolio trackers.

Custody on two chains: what a wallet has to manage for ERC-20 and SPL

SHIB on Ethereum is an ERC-20 token, SHIB on Solana an SPL token. SPL stands for Solana Program Library and is the standard by which tokens on Solana are built. A wallet that knows only Ethereum does not display the Solana holding, and a pure Solana wallet does not know the Ethereum holding.

Anyone holding both needs either two applications or a wallet that supports both networks. With a hardware device there is the added point that a separate application has to be installed on the device for each network, and that each network has its own derivation path, that is, its own derivation of the addresses from the same recovery phrase. The phrase stays the same, the addresses are different. Which devices cover which networks is set out in the comparison of hardware wallets.

Shibarium alongside: 155,798 dollars tied up in applications

A look at the proportions within the project's own ecosystem helps with placing it. In the applications on Shibarium, Shiba Inu's own network layer, around 155,800 dollars were tied up on Wednesday according to data from DefiLlama. The starting liquidity of the Solana issue was above that at about 514,000 dollars, and the current holding, at around 145,000 dollars, is in the same order of magnitude.

Both figures move in the low six-figure range, while the market capitalisation of Shiba Inu is about 3.18 billion dollars. Trading still takes place overwhelmingly on Ethereum and on centralised exchanges. The Solana route is an option, not a relocation.

SHIB on Solana: The key points for your decision

1. If you do nothing, nothing happens. Your SHIB on Ethereum are untouched by the announcement. A chain switch is a voluntary decision, not a migration you would have to follow. Anyone who only wants to buy more anyway stays with an authorised provider from the overview of regulated crypto exchanges and saves themselves the question entirely.
2. If you trade on Solana, work with the address. Copy the mint address from a project source, match it against a registry and search the app for the address instead of the ticker. With the bridged issue, expect an active mint authority and check which program it belongs to. For custody on both chains, the comparison of hardware wallets helps with the question of which device carries both networks.
3. Write down every swap. The signature, hash, date, amount and euro value belong in your own records before you close the page. A swap remains a disposal transaction even when it has gone wrong. Suitable programs are listed in the overview of tax tools and portfolio trackers.

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

Litecoin is 15 years old today. The chain's first block carries the timestamp October 7, 2011, 07:31:05 UTC, and on precisely this anniversary Litecoin is losing around 6 percent within 24 hours. The price moved between 65.83 and 66.24 dollars over the course of the day, and stood at 58.81 in euros. The network behind it, meanwhile, is running as busily as it rarely does: 156,026 transactions were confirmed in the past 24 hours, and the confidential MWEB area holds more than 563,000 LTC according to market reports, more than ever before.

That contradiction is the heart of the day. The chain's metrics point up, the price points down, and the reason for the loss does not lie with Litecoin itself but with the broader market. Anyone holding LTC should therefore keep two things apart: what has changed about the network, and what is merely down to last night's appetite for risk.

The genesis block of October 7, 2011: what Charlie Lee fixed on day one

The block numbered 0 was created on October 7, 2011 at 07:31:05 UTC. Its coinbase entry, the first transaction that creates new coins at all, contains a sentence from the newspaper: "NY Times 05/Oct/2011 Steve Jobs, Apple's Visionary, Dies at 56." That entry is not decoration. It verifiably dates the chain's start no earlier than that, because the text points to an event that must have happened before it.

Charlie Lee announced the project publicly two days later, on October 9, 2011, in a forum post under the name coblee, which pointed to the still-operating project site litecoin.org for downloading the software. The intention is there in one sentence too: the aim had been to create "silver to Bitcoin's gold." The technical specifications from that announcement still hold today: Scrypt as the hashing procedure, a block time of 2.5 minutes instead of 10, a maximum supply of about 84 million coins and a premine of just 150 coins.

Incidentally, coinbase entry here does not mean the trading platform of the same name. What is meant is the data field in the block into which the producer of a block may write free text. Bitcoin used the same spot in 2009 for a headline from the Times article about bank bailouts.

15 years of operation: block height 3,191,147 and no documented total outage

On October 7, 2026 the chain stood at block 3,191,147, and the most recent block was a few minutes old at the time of measurement. Over 15 years the network has processed around 300 million transactions according to industry reports and has been through three halvings, that is, three halvings of the reward per block. No documented total outage of network operation is known for that period.

That is less spectacular than it sounds, and more important. For an investor, availability is the basis of every other property: a chain that stands still will not let you sell at the wrong moment. Litecoin has a longer record in that discipline than almost any other project apart from Bitcoin, and it has outlived thousands of competitors that started out with bigger promises.

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on October 7, 2026. It is based on the public block data of the Litecoin chain; three figures were checked: the genesis block, the current block height and the number of transactions in the past 24 hours.

156,026 transactions a day: what the chain is actually used for

156,026 confirmed transactions in 24 hours is a high figure for an altcoin of this size. Litecoin is predominantly used as a payment and transfer rail, not as a platform for applications. Low fees and the short block time make it one of the coins that have been firmly built in at payment processors and ATM operators for years.

For placing the price, that means this: demand for block space depends more here on actual use and less on speculative cycles than at projects whose activity consists almost entirely of trading their own token. It does not mean that use carries the price. The past 24 hours are the proof of that.

MWEB in one sentence: more than 563,000 LTC sit in the confidential area

MWEB stands for Mimblewimble Extension Blocks and is an extension activated in 2022 that makes the amounts and counterparties of a transfer unreadable to third parties. Technically it is a separate area attached to the main chain: you push coins in, move them confidentially there and push them out again. Anyone who does not push anything in notices nothing of it.

According to the chain data reported today, more than 563,000 LTC sit in this area, an all-time high. At a price of around 66 dollars that corresponds to a value in the order of 37 million dollars. That is a small part of the circulating supply, but the trend is unambiguous and practically relevant for you, because this area is precisely the point at which trading venues react differently.

The price falls around 6 percent to about 66 dollars while the broader market loses 3 percent

The day's measurements lie between 65.83 and 66.24 dollars, the loss within 24 hours at 6.03 percent in dollars and 5.51 percent in euros. Market capitalisation stands at about 5.1 billion dollars, rank 23. Around 84 percent is missing to the all-time high of May 2021.

On the technical side, TokenPost reported in the morning a support at 64.21 dollars and an immediate resistance at 70.04 dollars; the price stood there at 67.71 dollars after a daily low of 66.54. At the same time LTC remains clearly above its 50-day line at 57.71 dollars and its 200-day line at 51.57 dollars. In the short term the structure has therefore turned, in the medium term it has not.

These levels are points of observation, not a forecast. Anyone who uses them uses them as boundaries for their own decisions, and the boundaries shift with every trading day.

An oil price above 101 dollars and nine-figure sums in long liquidations

Litecoin's loss is not an isolated case. Bitcoin was quoted at around 82,878 dollars on Wednesday and thus 4.29 percent weaker, Ether at 2,559.69 dollars and 5.91 percent weaker. The broader market gave up about 3 percent to 2.85 trillion dollars according to reports.

The day's market reports name three things as the trigger: a renewed rise in the oil price, with Brent above 101 dollars after attacks on tankers and supply risks in the Middle East, higher yields on US government bonds and a firmer dollar. On top of that came a wave of forced selling of leveraged positions. The figures differ depending on the time window and data provider: for a single hour more than 403 million dollars of liquidated long positions were reported, and for 24 hours CoinGlass cites around 550 million dollars according to Cointelegraph.

Such liquidations amplify a downward move mechanically, because the exchange sells the trader's position itself as soon as the collateral no longer suffices. That often hits leveraged positions on smaller coins harder than on Bitcoin, because there is less liquidity in the order book there.

Grayscale wants to bring the Litecoin Trust to NYSE Arca

A second development coincides with the anniversary: according to reports by U.Today and TokenPost, Grayscale is pursuing the conversion of its Litecoin Trust into an exchange-traded product on NYSE Arca. Zach Pandl, the firm's head of research, publicly backed the coin, which he described as an "OG altcoin," that is, an altcoin from the earliest days.

For you in Germany, a US listing changes nothing about access for now. It is interesting as a demand signal, and there caution is in order: our own analysis of September 21, 2026 showed that an already existing Litecoin exchange-traded product attracted barely any inflows. A listing creates a wrapper, not buyers. How exchange-traded wrappers for crypto assets work in Germany and what distinguishes them from a direct purchase is set out in the overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.

The European route is in any case closer to hand for German portfolios. Only on October 5, 2026 did Litecoin move up into an altcoin ETP listed on Xetra, replacing another asset there.

The buying route in Germany: MiCA authorisation, spot purchase and the ETP wrapper

Three routes are open, and they differ considerably in tax and legal terms. First, the direct purchase of the coins at a trading venue authorised under the EU regulation MiCA; make sure the provider actually holds the authorisation for Germany and is not merely advertising a registration in another member state. An overview of the venues under European supervision is kept at regulated crypto exchanges. Second, the wrapper, that is, an ETP or ETN in your bank portfolio: convenient, but without coins of your own and therefore without self-custody. Third, leveraged trading, which after today brings the most obvious warning with it.

Holding period, leverage and custody: what applies to LTC holders legally and for tax

For directly held coins, the one-year holding period under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies in Germany: if you sell later than a year after buying, the gain from private disposal transactions stays tax-free. Within the year the exemption threshold of 1,000 euros applies, and if it is exceeded the entire gain is taxable. What is decisive is a clean allocation of the individual purchases, because without a traceable sequence the period cannot be demonstrated per tranche. For an ETP in a portfolio this rule does not apply; there, withholding tax is generally due.

On leverage, today's arithmetic is instructive. A position with tenfold leverage is wiped out entirely at a 10 percent loss in the underlying, and LTC has lost 6 percent within a single day today. So check what distance your liquidation price has from the current level, and reckon with the daily low, which today stood at 66.54 dollars.

With custody, MWEB comes into play. Not every wallet and not every trading venue supports deposits and withdrawals into the confidential area, and individual venues accept amounts from there only to a limited extent for reasons of money-laundering prevention. If you want to use MWEB, establish beforehand whether your trading venue will take a withdrawal from that area back again. Otherwise the coins sit there confidentially but unsellable.

What 15 years demonstrate and what they leave open

What is demonstrated is the operating record: a chain that has run since 2011 with no known total outage, has three halvings behind it, has processed around 300 million transactions and today confirms 156,026 in a single day. Also demonstrated are the all-time high in the confidential area and a large asset manager's interest in an exchange wrapper.

What stays open is whether demand for the coin comes of it. Against that speaks the gap of around 84 percent to the all-time high of 2021 and the finding that an existing exchange-traded product has so far attracted barely any money. In favour speaks a pattern of use that does not depend on a narrative. Both sides belong in the weighing-up, and neither of them is a forecast.

Litecoin after 15 years: Your next three steps

1. Settle custody before you move anything. Check whether your wallet supports MWEB and whether your trading venue takes withdrawals from the confidential area back again. Anyone wanting to hold the coins themselves will find the devices and their differences in the hardware wallet overview.
2. Recalculate leverage and the distance to liquidation. After a day with nine-figure sums in forced selling, the distance to the liquidation price is the most important number in your account. How funding costs and liquidation logic work on the platforms for perpetual contracts is set out in the overview of perp DEXs.
3. Document your purchase dates. The one-year period can only be demonstrated per tranche. Record the date, quantity and price of every purchase; the tools for that are in the overview of tax and portfolio tools.

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

Cardano staking currently pays between 2.1 and 2.7 percent a year. The lower figure is what delegators actually receive on average after pool costs have been deducted; the upper one is what the calculation from the protocol parameters yields before a pool subtracts its costs. Everything this article explains lies between those two values: how the reward pot comes about, why it turns out differently from epoch to epoch, and at which three points something comes off your gross yield.

The price is supplying the uncomfortable backdrop right now. Cardano is quoted at 0.2274 euros, or 0.2540 dollars, and has given up 7.6 percent in euros and 8.3 percent in dollars within a day. A yield of a good two percent a year is eaten up by a day like that in a few hours. That is no argument against staking, but it puts the order of magnitude in place: at Cardano, staking is a side income on a holding you want to keep anyway, not an interest rate that offsets the price trend.

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on October 7, 2026. It is based on the ten protocol parameters Cardano sets for the current epoch 660, together with the chain balance of reserve, treasury and circulating supply and the stake figures for epochs 659 and 660. Every number in this text is calculated from that, and every calculation is written out so that it remains possible to follow.

Cardano staking in one sentence: delegation without a lock-up

Staking at Cardano means delegation. You do not transfer your ADA to a pool, only the voting weight your balance carries in consensus. The coins stay in your wallet, under your key, and they remain available at all times.

Delegation is the assignment of a wallet's voting weight to a stake pool, without the coins changing owner or address. The Cardano documentation puts it unambiguously: you can spend your ADA normally at any time, regardless of how you have delegated them. There is no minimum term, no notice period and no stretch of time in which a sale would be blocked.

That sets Cardano apart from networks in which staked balances are tied up for days or weeks. Anyone who sells in the middle of an epoch at Cardano loses at most the claim to the reward for precisely that period, not access to the capital. A deposit of two ADA for registering the stake address falls due once, 45 cents at today's rate; that amount is not a fee but is repaid when the address is dissolved.

What a stake pool actually does

A stake pool is a permanently operated node that produces blocks on behalf of its delegators and passes on the rewards paid out for that on a pro-rata basis. How often a pool gets its turn depends on how much stake falls to it. The larger its share of the total stake, the more frequently it is selected as block producer.

For that the operator puts up 500 ADA, currently around 114 euros, and bears the running costs for servers, monitoring and updates. He recoups those costs through two fees, and both feed through to your yield. More on that later, because that is precisely where the greater part of the gap between 2.1 and 2.7 percent arises.

Where the reward comes from: reserve, treasury and the pot per epoch

Cardano creates no new money for staking rewards. Total supply is fixed at 45 billion ADA, and whatever is not yet in circulation sits in a pot called the reserve. A fixed percentage is drawn from that reserve every epoch, and rewards are paid only out of that.

An epoch is the network's accounting period and lasts exactly five days. The current epoch 660 began on October 6, 2026 at 21:44 UTC and ends on October 11, 2026 at the same time. Over a year that comes to 73 epochs, and 73 is the number by which every annual yield at Cardano is multiplied.

The calculation for the pot runs in three steps, and all three values are in the chain as protocol parameters:

• The reserve currently holds 6.08 billion ADA.
• Per epoch, 0.3 percent is drawn from it, which comes to 18,233,715 ADA.
• Of that amount, 20 percent goes to the network's treasury, so 3,646,743 ADA. What remains is 14,586,972 ADA as the reward pot for all delegators and pool operators together.

The treasury is the network's own exchequer, out of which development and infrastructure projects are paid for by vote; it currently carries 1.37 billion ADA. Every euro of staking yield is therefore netted against a fixed fifth for network funding before anything is distributed at all.

Because the withdrawal is a percentage of the reserve and the reserve gets smaller with every withdrawal, the pot shrinks structurally. That is the reason the Cardano staking yield has fallen over the years and will keep falling without anything about the rules changing. Transaction fees from the respective epoch are added on top of the pot, but they barely register against the reserve share.

2.1 to 2.7 percent: what the protocol parameters yield

The gross yield can be calculated directly from the reward pot and the circulating supply. One detail is decisive here, and it is what makes many yield figures come out too high: the share of the pot that falls to non-delegated ADA stays undistributed and flows back into the reserve. The reference figure is therefore total circulating supply, not active stake.

Total circulating supply amounts to 38.92 billion ADA. With a pot of 14,586,972 ADA that works out at 0.0375 percent per epoch and thus, over 73 epochs, a gross yield of 2.74 percent a year. The service StakingRewards reports an actual reward rate of 2.12 percent for Cardano on October 7, 2026. The difference of a good half a percentage point is not measurement noise but precisely the sum of pool fees and missed blocks.

Translated into amounts: 1,000 euros corresponds to 4,397 ADA at today's rate. That becomes 93 to 120 ADA a year, so 21.20 to 27.40 euros. Anyone expecting staking to produce an order of magnitude that beats an instant-access savings account is working with the wrong figure.

How much ADA is staked at all

In epoch 660, 21.27 billion ADA is lodged as active stake. Against the freely circulating holding of 36.80 billion ADA that is 57.8 percent; against total circulating supply including the treasury, 54.6 percent. Both values are correct, they merely have different denominators, and anyone comparing yield figures should check which of the two is meant.

Little has shifted compared with the previous epoch: epoch 659 showed 21.32 billion ADA, so 48 million ADA more. A shift of 0.2 percent of the stake within five days is normal operation and not a signal.

Block luck and pool performance: the payout varies by epoch

The protocol parameters are stable over months. What varies from epoch to epoch is the performance of the individual pool, and for a reason that has nothing to do with quality: the selection of the block producer is a random procedure. Over many epochs a pool receives on average the blocks that correspond to its share of stake, but in a single epoch more or fewer.

A small pool that can statistically expect two blocks per epoch produces, in practice, sometimes none and sometimes four. Zero blocks mean zero reward for all of its delegators in that epoch. At a pool working close to its ceiling and expecting thirty blocks per epoch, the same spread is barely noticeable. That is the real reason returns vary more at small pools, and it cannot be optimised away by any choice of pool, only smoothed by size.

On top of that come genuine outages: a node that is unreachable at the moment of its slot loses the block with no replacement. These two effects together explain why two delegators with an identical stake receive different amounts in the same epoch.

The saturation point at 77.8 million ADA: what k = 500 triggers

Cardano deliberately limits how much stake is worthwhile in a single pool. The parameter for that is called k and currently stands at 500. It describes the number of pools across which the network would ideally like to see the stake spread.

The saturation point is the amount of stake beyond which a pool receives no additional reward for additional stake. That limit follows from total circulating supply divided by k: 38.92 billion ADA divided by 500 is 77.8 million ADA, around 17.70 million euros at today's rate.

If a pool exceeds that limit, its reward claim stays put while being spread across more delegators. For each individual the return falls. Checking saturation is therefore not fine-tuning but the step with the greatest leverage on your yield, and it takes two minutes.

The second part matters: a pool can also be too small. Between heavily saturated and very small lies a broad middle ground in which the yield is practically identical. Anyone delegating there has settled the question well enough.

The fixed cost of 170 ADA per epoch hits small pools hardest

Every pool may retain a fixed amount for its operating costs before distribution. The protocol prescribes a floor of 170 ADA per epoch for that, currently 38.66 euros, over a year 12,410 ADA or around 2,822 euros. That amount is absolute, not proportional, and that makes it the decisive item for small pools.

Measured against this epoch's pot, it looks like this:

• A pool with 1 million ADA of stake earns around 375 ADA gross per epoch. The 170 ADA of fixed costs swallow 45.4 percent of that.
• At 5 million ADA it is 1,874 ADA gross, and the fixed costs account for 9.1 percent.
• At 10 million ADA, 4.5 percent of 3,748 ADA gross goes on fixed costs.
• At 30 million ADA it is 1.5 percent, and at the saturation point only 0.6 percent.

A pool with one million ADA can therefore work in technically impeccable fashion and still deduct almost half of the gross reward from its delegators, purely because it spreads the fixed costs across too little stake. That is the most frequently overlooked cause of a disappointing staking yield, and it appears in no advertisement.

Pool fee and pledge: how gross becomes net

Alongside the fixed costs, every pool levies a percentage margin on the remainder. Customary values are in the low single digits; nothing is prescribed here by law. What a pool charges is publicly visible, and overviews of providers and terms are gathered in our comparison of staking platforms.

The third parameter is called pledge. The pledge is the operator's own contribution, which they put into their own pool and thereby tie up as security. Via the parameter a0, which stands at 0.3, a high pledge slightly increases the pool's reward. More significant in practice is the signal: anyone with their own money in their own pool has an interest in the node running.

Net, the calculation therefore reads: gross claim minus 170 ADA or more in fixed costs, minus margin, multiplied by the epoch's block performance. That is how 2.74 percent gross becomes the 2.12 percent that arrives on average. At a small, poorly running pool considerably less can be left; at a large, reliable pool with a low margin, somewhat more.

Around 19 days to the first payout: the route across four epochs

The most common disappointment on getting started is not a yield but a waiting time. After delegation nothing happens at first, and that has a structural reason: Cardano keeps three stake snapshots at once, so that block production and the reward calculation work on stable data.

Anyone delegating in epoch 660, that is, by October 11, 2026, goes through this timetable:

1. At the start of epoch 661 on October 11 the stake is recorded, but is not yet effective.
2. In epoch 662 from October 16 it becomes active stake and counts towards block production.
3. During epoch 663 from October 21 the reward for epoch 662 is calculated.
4. At the start of epoch 664 on October 26, 2026 it is paid out.

From today to the first credit that is a good 19 days, and after that a payment arrives every five days. Changing pool triggers the same waiting time again, which is why frequent redelegation lowers the yield instead of improving it. The rewards land directly in the balance of the same wallet and compound without any action on your part, which bends the curve slightly upwards over the years.

Staking rewards and the tax office: the 256-euro threshold and the holding period

For investors in Germany, staking rewards are relevant for tax twice over, and differently each time. On inflow they count as other income under Section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act and are captured at the personal tax rate. What counts is the euro value at the moment of the credit, regardless of whether you sell the ADA later.

An exemption threshold of 256 euros per calendar year applies for all other income taken together. The word threshold is to be taken literally here: if it is exceeded, the entire amount is taxable, not only the part above it. Calculated with today's yields, that threshold is reached at a stake between roughly 9,300 and 12,100 euros, depending on whether you reckon with 2.74 or with 2.12 percent.

On a later sale, Section 23 and the one-year period then apply: after twelve months of holding, the disposal gain is tax-free. Every payout every five days starts its own period, and 73 inflows a year mean 73 acquisition events that belong documented individually.

This classification is no substitute for tax advice, and individual cases can differ. Anyone delegating larger amounts should clarify the treatment in advance with professional advice.

Choosing a stake pool: how to check saturation before delegating

From everything above follows a short checklist, and it is sorted in order of effect. The first point delivers more than the three that follow combined.

1. Saturation: if the pool is well above the limit of 77.8 million ADA, a fixed claim is spread across more heads. Far below it, the fixed costs feed through. The middle ground is the quiet zone.
2. Fixed costs and margin: 170 ADA per epoch is the floor, more may be charged. At small pools this item is the real brake on yield.
3. Block performance across several epochs: a single weak epoch is chance, a run of them is a finding.
4. Pledge: the operator's own capital in their own pool is an indication of reliability, not proof.

Anyone staking through an exchange or a broker instead of directly from their own wallet checks two further things: how high the provider sets its own share, and whether the coins are in its custody during staking. Anyone who cares that the trading venue is authorised in the EU checks that before the first deposit and not after.

The technical foundations of this article are in the official documentation: on delegation and the availability of the coins at Cardano Docs, on pool selection and the procedure on the official Cardano site.

Cardano staking: The key points for your decision

At Cardano the yield comes out of a shrinking reserve pot, not out of growth. The figure today is 2.74 percent gross and 2.12 percent net on average, and the gap between them arises almost entirely in the choice of pool. The coins remain available at all times throughout, which makes staking at Cardano a decision with a low price, as long as you do not overestimate the order of magnitude.

1. Reckon with two percent, not five: check against your own amount whether the return outweighs the effort and the tax obligation, and keep the 256-euro limit in view. Tools for records and an overview can be found in the comparison of tax and portfolio tools.
2. Check your pool's saturation before you optimise anything else. Where you can buy ADA and withdraw them into your own wallet is shown by the comparison of crypto exchanges.
3. Put October 26, 2026 in the diary if you delegate today: if the first credit then fails to appear, your pool produced no block in epoch 662. If it fails to appear across several epochs, the pool is the wrong one; authorised trading venues for the route there are listed in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

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

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake urged holders to calmly move funds to unused addresses, warning that AI-driven math could break crypto signatures before quantum computers do.

Claude Haiku 5.5 costs about 75% less to run than its predecessor and targets high-volume jobs like summaries and live customer support. It arrives 15 days after Opus 5.5.

The House Financial Services chairman credited the SEC and CFTC for stepping in after the Clarity Act's collapse but said only "permanent law change" can secure U.S. leadership.

Tether, issuer of the USDT stablecoin, will help Kazakhstan's central bank study a tenge-pegged token and put real-world assets on a blockchain.

Seoul's Yoido Full Gospel Church says data on 850,000 members may be compromised, and a security firm found signs AI helped run the attack.

Top Ethereum researcher Justin Drake is urging the crypto industry to prepare for “bunker mode,” warning that rapid advances in AI could potentially expose weaknesses in ECDSA and put wallets with revealed public keys at risk.

Ripple ends the "XRP Killer" narrative by integrating Canton Network to secure Wall Street's RWA pipeline.

Chainlink (LINK) has surged roughly 24% since Sept. 1, but the rally has failed to attract a comparable influx of new wallets, with address growth rising by less than 2%, according to Santiment.

Flare CEO Hugo Philion challenges Ripple’s David Schwartz, using proxy infrastructure to unlock the passive XRP lending market.

Solana gains rapid adoption, especially after its price saw an impressive surge in September, putting the leading altcoin in the spotlight.

TLDR

• LEVI falls after Q3 revenue hits $1.6 billion despite stronger profit margins.
• Direct-to-consumer revenue rises 2% as U.S. sales stay under continued pressure.
• Adjusted EPS climbs to $0.48 as quarterly net income reaches $169 million now.
• Levi Strauss raises full-year EPS guidance to a range of $1.54 to $1.56 per share.
• Company plans a $100 million share buyback and raises its quarterly dividend.

Levi Strauss & Co. shares fell after the company reported higher third-quarter revenue but weaker direct-to-consumer growth. LEVI closed at $19.51, down 4.97%, then slipped another 1.18% to $19.28 after hours. However, stronger margins and higher profit guidance provided support against concerns surrounding slower U.S. and DTC demand.

Levi Strauss & Co., LEVI

Levi Strauss Q3 Revenue Reaches $1.6 Billion

Levi Strauss reported third-quarter net revenue of $1.61 billion, representing 4% reported growth from a year earlier. Organic revenue increased 5%, supported by gains across Europe, Asia, wholesale, and the Beyond Yoga business. However, U.S. revenue declined 1%, creating pressure on the company’s largest regional market.

The Americas generated $839 million in revenue, up 4% from $806 million one year earlier. Europe produced $442 million, while Asia generated $293 million as reported sales increased 4% and 5%, respectively. Meanwhile, Beyond Yoga revenue rose 9% to $36 million during the quarter.

Profitability strengthened sharply as operating margin reached 13.8%, compared with 10.8% one year earlier. Adjusted EBIT margin increased to 15.5%, while gross margin expanded 450 basis points to 66.2%. Tariff refunds contributed significantly to the margin improvement, although Levi Strauss reinvested part of the benefit.

DTC Growth Misses Levi Strauss Expectations

Direct-to-consumer revenue increased only 2%, while comparable sales remained nearly flat during the third quarter. DTC accounted for 45% of total company revenue, making its slower growth a key earnings concern. Furthermore, the U.S. DTC business declined 1% despite stronger performance across parts of Asia.

Asia DTC revenue rose 8% on a reported basis and 11% organically during the quarter. However, European DTC revenue fell 2% as reported, while organic revenue declined 1%. E-commerce provided stronger momentum and increased 10% on both reported and organic bases.

In contrast, wholesale revenue increased 6% as all geographic segments posted growth during the quarter. Europe and Asia delivered particularly strong wholesale performance and helped offset weaker direct sales trends. Management expects DTC growth to improve during the fourth quarter as holiday demand strengthens.

Levi Strauss Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance

Levi Strauss posted net income from continuing operations of $169 million, compared with $122 million last year. Adjusted net income increased to $189 million from $136 million, reflecting higher revenue and stronger operating margins. Adjusted diluted earnings per share reached $0.48, up from $0.34 one year earlier.

The company raised full-year adjusted EPS guidance to between $1.54 and $1.56. Previous guidance called for adjusted earnings between $1.46 and $1.52 per share. Levi Strauss also expects organic revenue growth of about 6% and reported growth near 7%.

Levi Strauss plans another $100 million accelerated share repurchase under its existing authorization. The company also declared a $0.16 quarterly dividend, representing a 14% increase from last year. Still, the stock decline showed that slower DTC growth outweighed stronger margins and improved full-year profit expectations.

The post Levi Strauss & Co. (LEVI) Stock: Falls After Q3 Revenue Hits $1.6B and DTC Growth Disappoints  appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Applied Digital revenue jumps 322% to $341.9 million in fiscal Q1 2027 results.
• HPC hosting revenue reaches $262.6 million as AI data center demand expands.
• Adjusted EBITDA rises to $64.4 million from $0.5 million in the prior year.
• APLD closes down 6.04% before rebounding 0.96% during after-hours trading session.
• Debt reaches $6.4 billion as expansion and financing costs pressure earnings.

Applied Digital reported fiscal first-quarter 2027 revenue of $341.9 million, up 322% year over year. APLD closed at $23.81, down 6.04%, before gaining 0.96% after hours to $24.04. The results showed data center growth, although higher costs and financing expenses widened the loss.

Applied Digital Corp., APLD

Revenue Growth Accelerates Across Core Operations

Services revenue reached $262.8 million, up 225% from $80.9 million one year earlier. Tenant fit-out work drove growth, while ChronoScale added $23 million from GPU hardware sales. Data center rental and other revenue added $79.1 million after hosting operations began.

Adjusted revenue rose to $300.4 million from $64.2 million during the prior-year quarter. Meanwhile, adjusted EBITDA increased to $64.4 million from $0.5 million in the comparable period. Net Operating Income reached $58.8 million, reflecting stronger core hosting performance.

Applied Digital reported a $221 million net loss for common stockholders. The loss equaled $0.76 per diluted share, compared with $0.07 previously. Higher compensation, fees, interest costs, and derivative losses pressured earnings.

HPC Hosting Drives Applied Digital Expansion

Applied Digital’s HPC Hosting business generated $262.6 million in quarterly revenue. The segment produced $33.4 million in operating profit from rent and fit-out services. Live capacity at Polaris Forge 1 reached 250 megawatts after the latest phase entered service.

The company holds leases covering about 1.41 gigawatts of critical IT load across five campuses. Those agreements represent about $36 billion in contracted base-term revenue across U.S. projects. Applied Digital expects Polaris Forge 2 to lift delivered capacity to 300 megawatts by year-end.

Expansion moved beyond the United States through an agreement covering one gigawatt in Finland. Management still centers execution on North Dakota, where power availability supports large data center projects. The company also secured power arrangements that could support further campus growth across the Dakotas.

Debt and Costs Remain Key Financial Factors

Applied Digital ended August with $3.7 billion in cash and restricted cash. However, total debt reached $6.4 billion after the company raised capital for construction. Interest expense climbed to $77.4 million from $8 million as debt balances increased sharply.

Selling, general, and administrative expenses rose 289% to $114.7 million during the quarter. Stock-based compensation contributed $51.7 million, while personnel and professional service costs climbed. Services cost of revenue also increased as tenant fit-out activity expanded across the HPC business.

Applied Digital continues building AI-focused campuses backed by long-term hyperscaler contracts and major power commitments. Revenue growth strengthens its scale, while debt and reported losses remain financial pressures. Fiscal first-quarter results showed stronger operating momentum alongside higher financing and corporate costs.

The post Applied Digital (APLD) Stock: Revenue Jumps 322% as AI Demand Surges appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Amazon stock gains 0.98% as Prime Big Deal Days tests weaker consumer demand
• Consumer confidence falls to its weakest since 2014 as Amazon runs its major sale
• AWS generated $16.6 billion of Amazon’s $27.5 billion operating income in Q2
• Amazon Haul offered more than six million U.S. products priced below $10 in July
• Advertising revenue reached $19.8 billion in Q2, rising 26% from a year earlier

Amazon (AMZN) traded at $258.81, up 0.98%, after recovering from an intraday low near $253.30. The stock moved above $258 by early afternoon and remained near its session highs. The move came as Amazon continued its Prime Big Deal Days event during weaker consumer confidence.

Amazon.com, Inc., AMZN

Prime Big Deal Days Tests Consumer Spending

Amazon opened Prime Big Deal Days on October 6 as consumer confidence remained under pressure. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell to 81.9 in September, Reuters said. That marked its weakest reading since 2014 and added pressure across consumer-focused stocks.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR Fund declined 0.47% during the week ending October 2. Amazon remains the fund’s largest holding and carries significant weight within the consumer discretionary sector. Therefore, Amazon’s holiday sales performance could influence broader sentiment around discretionary spending.

Amazon has expanded its lower-priced offerings as households manage tighter budgets and shifting spending habits. The company reported 17% growth in worldwide paid units during the second quarter. Its Amazon Haul platform also offered more than six million U.S. products below $10 in July.

Amazon Expands Groceries and Low-Cost Products

Amazon has also increased its focus on groceries as it expands everyday retail categories. Monthly active customers purchasing perishables increased more than 50% since the beginning of 2026. The growth supports Amazon’s push beyond traditional online shopping into frequent household purchases.

Amazon reported second-quarter results before September’s sharp decline in consumer confidence. However, Prime Day timing affected comparisons between the second and third quarters. Management said third-quarter growth would increase nearly 400 basis points after excluding Prime Day timing effects.

Amazon expects third-quarter revenue between $197 billion and $202 billion. That range represents growth of roughly 9% to 12% from $180.2 billion one year earlier. The company’s quarterly results will provide more detail about retail demand during the current holiday period.

AWS and Advertising Support Amazon’s Business

Amazon Web Services generated $16.6 billion of Amazon’s $27.5 billion second-quarter operating income. However, the total included about $1.2 billion from tariff refunds and an energy contract accounting benefit. AWS therefore remains a major contributor to Amazon’s overall operating performance.

Advertising also continued expanding during the quarter and generated $19.8 billion in revenue. The segment increased 26% and added another high-growth business alongside Amazon’s cloud operations. These businesses give Amazon revenue sources outside its core online retail operations.

Amazon also reported $62.6 billion in second-quarter GAAP net income. That figure included $53.4 billion in non-operating pre-tax income, mainly linked to its Anthropic investment. Meanwhile, Amazon continues spending heavily as it expands infrastructure, cloud capacity, and its broader logistics network.

The post Amazon (AMZN) Stock: Rises as Prime Big Deal Days Test Consumer Demand appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Dell stock rises 1.30% after new NVIDIA-powered Windows creator systems launch.
• XPS 16 Creator Edition brings powerful local computing to creative professionals.
• Dell Creator Edition Desktop targets sustained, high-demand desktop workloads.
• Dell Pro Precision with GB300 brings advanced enterprise compute into Windows.
• New Dell systems target creators, developers, and enterprise AI teams worldwide.

Dell Technologies (DELL) stock rose 1.30% to $581.47 after the company expanded its Windows computing portfolio. The launch targets creators, developers, and enterprise teams running advanced workloads directly on local systems. Dell developed the new systems with NVIDIA and Microsoft to support broader desktop and mobile computing needs.

Dell Technologies Inc., DELL

Dell Expands Windows Portfolio With New High-Performance Systems

Dell introduced the XPS 16 Creator Edition as its first XPS laptop built around NVIDIA RTX Spark hardware. The system combines powerful graphics, unified memory, and local computing within a premium portable design. Dell designed the device for creative production, software development, demanding applications, and advanced local processing.

The laptop combines a Blackwell GPU, Grace CPU, and up to 128GB of unified memory. That shared memory supports large models, complex 3D projects, and multi-layer 8K video editing. Meanwhile, dedicated hardware supports ray tracing, video encoding, gaming, and demanding professional creative workloads.

Dell also equipped the laptop with a 3.2K tandem OLED display for professional creative work. The display supports 100% DCI-P3 coverage, high brightness, and variable refresh rates up to 120Hz. Furthermore, the system includes USB4 ports, HDMI connectivity, an SD card reader, and an audio jack.

Dell Adds Compact Desktop for Continuous Local Computing

Dell also introduced the Creator Edition Desktop with the same RTX Spark hardware platform. The desktop supports up to 128GB of unified memory and sustained workloads without laptop thermal limits. Therefore, users can run longer rendering, development, and local processing tasks across demanding desktop workflows.

The desktop provides up to one petaflop of FP4 computing power for advanced workloads. Dell said the system can support models containing as many as 200 billion parameters. Its larger desktop design also allows sustained performance during longer creative and development sessions.

Dell positioned the desktop as an option for creators needing continuous local computing capacity. The system can also run background agents while supporting development, rendering, and other professional software. However, Dell has not announced a specific release date and only said availability will follow soon.

Dell Pro Precision Targets Enterprise Workloads on Windows

Dell also renamed its Dell Pro Max workstation range under the Dell Pro Precision brand. The updated lineup includes Dell Pro Precision systems using GB10 and GB300 hardware configurations. Dell aims to simplify branding while expanding its workstation offering for enterprise development and engineering teams.

Dell Pro Precision with GB300 will support Windows and fit into existing enterprise computing environments. The workstation delivers up to 20 petaflops of FP4 compute and 748GB of coherent memory. It can also support models containing up to one trillion parameters directly on local hardware.

Windows Subsystem for Linux gives developers access to Linux frameworks without leaving their Windows environment. Meanwhile, Dell uses MaxCool technology to manage sustained performance during extended high-demand workloads. The XPS 16 Creator Edition opened for U.S. Best Buy pre-orders on October 7.

The post Dell Technologies (DELL) Stock: Rises on NVIDIA RTX Spark PC Launch  appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• KIDZ AI joins AFCOM to strengthen its GPU cloud strategy and data center reach.
• AFCOM membership expands KIDZ AI’s access to data center operators and experts.
• KIDZ AI adds AFCOM membership after joining the Open Compute Project network.
• The company continues evaluating GPU cloud and AI infrastructure opportunities.
• KIDZ stock fell 7.72% to $2.1501 despite the latest infrastructure expansion.

KIDZ AI (KIDZ) expanded its data center industry reach by joining AFCOM as a Solution Provider Member supporting future infrastructure development. The move supports its GPU cloud plans while strengthening connections across power, cooling, facility operations, deployment, and infrastructure planning. However, KIDZ stock fell 7.72% to $2.1501 after reversing sharply from an early intraday spike during Wednesday trading.

KIDZ AI Inc., KIDZ

KIDZ AI Expands Access to Data Center Operators

AFCOM connects 2,000 data center and IT infrastructure professionals through more than 30 chapters across North America and Australia. Its network includes operators, technology providers, infrastructure specialists, facility teams, and other participants serving mission-critical data center environments worldwide. Therefore, membership gives KIDZ AI broader access to operational knowledge relevant to high-density GPU infrastructure deployments and commercial planning.

The association also runs industry research, educational programs, regional chapters, and events covering data center operations, management, and infrastructure planning. These resources address power requirements, cooling systems, facility management, operations, and emerging workloads linked to artificial intelligence infrastructure. As a result, KIDZ AI can use AFCOM resources and industry contacts while developing its GPU cloud commercialization strategy.

The new membership also follows KIDZ AI’s recent acceptance into the Open Compute Project as a Bronze Member. OCP focuses on open hardware designs, technical standards, infrastructure engineering, and collaborative development across modern computing environments worldwide. Meanwhile, AFCOM adds stronger exposure to the operational and commercial requirements surrounding data center deployment, management, and expansion plans.

GPU Cloud Strategy Extends Beyond Core EdTech Business

KIDZ AI continues to build its AI infrastructure strategy alongside its established education technology operations and proprietary learning systems. The company develops learning systems that combine artificial intelligence, AI agents, robotics, and other technology tools for education markets. At the same time, it is evaluating GPU cloud platforms, AI compute infrastructure, and related data center opportunities.

Management plans to use AFCOM and OCP relationships to support infrastructure planning, deployment decisions, technical engagement, and future commercial initiatives. These industry connections can help the company understand practical requirements before committing resources to broader infrastructure expansion and commercialization. They also provide access to operators and decision-makers responsible for power, cooling, facilities, deployment, and high-density computing environments.

KIDZ AI has not announced specific GPU capacity, data center locations, investment amounts, infrastructure partners, or commercial launch dates publicly. Therefore, AFCOM membership currently represents ecosystem development and industry engagement rather than a confirmed large-scale infrastructure deployment program. The stock reaction shows shares remained under pressure despite the company’s continued effort to expand its AI infrastructure network further.

The post KIDZ AI Inc. (KIDZ) Stock: Expands GPU Cloud Plans Through AFCOM Network appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin (BTC) was trading near $84,000 after another failure to break above its yearly open at $87,700. Bitfinex said the next move will depend more on renewed spot demand than on increased futures leverage.

Bitcoin had reached $87,200 on October 2, before retreating below the key level. The rejection marked the third failed breakout in the past ten days. The question now is whether it will flip the trend.

Leverage Drops as Demand Slows

According to Bitfinex, futures activity drove much of the move, with open interest rising by $2.1 billion before the September payrolls report. Futures open interest then fell by $1.5 billion as traders closed positions after the data.

Aggregate futures open interest now stands at about 625,000 BTC, its lowest level since January 1. The decline suggests lower leverage.

At the same time, spot demand has also weakened, with US spot Bitcoin ETFs recording $241.1 million in net inflows from September 28 to October 2. That was about 90% below the $2.39 billion recorded a week earlier. The nine-day inflow streak also ended on September 30 with a $148.7 million outflow.

ETF Demand and Key Levels

BlackRock’s IBIT recorded $450.2 million in inflows, while Fidelity’s FBTC saw $168 million in outflows. Bitfinex attributed the weaker demand partly to the average ETF holder’s cost basis of about $84,320.

Meanwhile, ETF inflows have averaged about $65 million when Bitcoin trades within 2% of that level, compared with $136 million when it trades more than 10% above it. Bitfinex sees $86,000 as an important level, while a drop below $82,600 could put ETF holders back in losses.

Beyond ETF flows, the $84,000 to $84,500 range holds roughly 867,000 BTC. It is the largest cost-basis cluster, with about 75% of Bitcoin supply in profit. Weak payroll growth has also raised expectations of an October rate pause, although inflation, spending and Treasury yields remain elevated.

Bitfinex expects BTC to consolidate between $84,000 and the yearly open. Stronger ETF inflows could support a move toward $90,000. Sustained trading below $81,300 could bring $77,000 and the True Market Mean near $77,200 into focus.

The post Bitcoin Struggles to Break Higher as ETF Demand Weakens: Bitfinex Alpha appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Russia has taken a major step toward a regulated crypto market. The Bank of Russia has registered the country’s first digital asset operators under rules that came into force on September 1st.

The regulator added five firms to its digital depository register and four to its crypto exchange register. Sberbank is among the newly approved custodians. VTB Bank was listed in both categories.

Crypto Rules Take Shape in Russia

The move follows a law signed by President Vladimir Putin in August. It created a formal framework for crypto exchanges, custodians, brokers, and investors, with the Bank of Russia overseeing the market. Crypto still cannot be used to pay for goods and services in Russia.

Sberbank is already preparing products for the new market. The bank plans to launch its first crypto offerings on December 1st. Bitcoin, Ether, and USDT are expected to be supported at launch. The central bank said the approved firms must follow the new transaction rules and bring their operations fully in line with the legislation by September 1, 2027.

There’s an interesting contrast in how quickly Russia and the US are moving on crypto rules. In the latter, the industry is still waiting for clearer rules. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, which aimed to define whether different digital assets fall under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), failed to clear a Senate procedural vote last month.

The bill fell short of the 60 needed, due to roadblocks over ethics rules for senior officials with crypto interests, including President Donald Trump, as well as concerns around investor protection and illicit finance.

Wallet Demand Rises

Demand for hardware crypto wallets also picked up sharply in Russia. Data released in August from two major retailers pointed to a clear jump in sales during 2026. M.Video said unit sales on its marketplace climbed 107% in the second quarter compared with the first three months of the year. Sales by value also rose 92%.

Wildberries saw a similar trend. According to RIA Novosti, citing the marketplace’s parent company RWB, hardware wallet sales by units increased 84% in the first half of 2026 from the same period last year. Sales value was up 60%.

The post While America’s CLARITY Stalls, Russia’s Crypto Market Gets Official Operators appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Chainlink’s LINK has rocketed by approximately 24% since the start of September, but the latest on-chain data from Santiment reveals an unusual disconnect as new wallet creation has barely moved in the right direction.

Today’s price correction, though it’s happening alongside the rest of the market, has raised questions about whether demand is keeping pace with the recent rally or whether another leg down is in the making.

The Good and the Bad

The analysts from Santiment Intelligence noted that Chainlink averaged 1,249 new addresses per day during the four weeks ending October 6, compared with 1,225 during the four weeks leading up to September 1. This is a very modest increase of less than 2%, even though the native token rocketed by almost 25% within the same period.

The contrast with other chains such as Solana is worth mentioning. Santiment reported that new SOL addresses skyrocketed 33% alongside a price surge of around 20% over comparable periods. Ethereum looked more similar to Chainlink, with new addresses remaining relatively flat. However, ETH’s price increase was a lot more modest during that period at 11%.

It’s worth noting, though, that Santiment’s metric counts LINK activity on Ethereum mainnet, so it doesn’t capture tokens bridged through Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) or held through exchange-traded products.

$LINK is up 24% since Sep 1. Are new wallets following? Not really, according to our data.

LINK went from $11.22 to $13.96 between the Sep 1 and Oct 6 closes.
New LINK addresses averaged 1,249 a day over the four weeks to Oct 6, against 1,225 in the four weeks to Sep 1. That’s a rise of under 2%.
Over the same windows, Solana’s new addresses rose 33% on a ~20% price move.
Ethereum’s new addresses were flat while ETH gained ~11%.

One caveat: this counts LINK on Ethereum mainnet. LINK bridged through CCIP or held through ETFs doesn’t show up here.

The headlines keep coming, but the new wallets do not.

Explore LINK network growth in Sanbase: https://t.co/TLd0ygMsnh

— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) October 7, 2026

Nevertheless, Chainlink has generated substantial headlines and price momentum, but that has yet to translate into a significant influx of new on-chain wallets. Separately, as we reported recently, the number of non-empty LINK wallets had declined to 912,020 while the asset rallied to a multi-month peak of over $15. This suggested that some smaller holders were using this run to secure profits.

LINK Slides

LINK was rejected at the recent high of $15.80, and the past 24 hours have been quite painful, with the token slumping to $13.40 as of press time. Beyond the broader market correction, another plausible reason explains its pullback.

Further on-chain data from Onchain Lens showed that GSR has transferred another 303,010 LINK to Binance after receiving the tokens from a Gnosis Safe. This was the second major asset transfer to the leading crypto exchange over the past couple of days, with the total exceeding 578,000 LINK (valued at $8.25 million). Similar developments could intensify the immediate selling pressure but also be mimicked by smaller investors.

The post LINK Is Up 24% in Weeks: But This Key Growth Metric Is Barely Moving appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Arthur Hayes, the former BitMEX CEO and co-founder of crypto investment firm Maelstrom, told CNBC at the Gamma Prime Investing Conference in Singapore that humanity is “wasting multi-trillion dollars” on AI data centers.

His bet is that the overbuilding ends in a crash and a bailout, and that Bitcoin and other crypto absorb the money that follows.

Overbuilt, Then Bailed Out

The buildout, he argued, will leave computing power “extremely cheap and extremely plentiful.” “If you study financial history and you study every single major technological rollout, it always is overbuilt. There always is a crash, and there always is a bailout,” he stated, pointing to the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and other episodes since.

“Thankfully, we have Bitcoin and other crypto to soak up that excess liquidity, and so we know the asset that’s going to perform the best when the bailout comes,” he added, telling investors “you just have to be patient.”

He claimed SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are among the end users behind demand for computing power, and that none of them makes money.

His contention is backed by Anthropic’s own numbers, with the firm recently sharing a prospectus ahead of a possible IPO that showed $4.6 billion in 2025 revenue, up from $400 million, against net losses near $42 billion, including a $34 billion noncash charge.

Additionally, compute and infrastructure cost $7.33 billion, which was over half of $12.65 billion in operating expenses.

According to Hayes, once the data centers under construction are finished, infrastructure providers will want payment for the compute Anthropic and the other AI firms committed to, which he expects in late 2027 or 2028.

He did leave room for a different outcome, though, where AI could become “so useful” over the next 12 months that demand expands enough for AI companies to become profitable. Some suppliers already earn money, he noted, including the likes of Nvidia.

The Debt Behind the Argument

As CryptoPotato reported in September, Hayes had pointed out that compute demand from some of the biggest artificial intelligence builders backs more than $1 trillion of investment-grade debt.

According to him, a downgrade would leave insurers tied to that debt short of capital, pushing Washington to buy compute as a last resort or print money to rescue them.

Before that, the crypto investor had predicted that AI spending would slow next year, then contract, with bailouts bigger than 2008 that could possibly take Bitcoin near $1 million.

The post Arthur Hayes: AI Is Overbuilt, and Bitcoin Could Benefit From It appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin is trading below $84K after failing to continue its latest push toward the $90K region. While the general structure remains constructive, the latest pullback and weakening futures taker activity suggest that BTC may need to consolidate before attempting another breakout.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

The daily chart shows a significant structural improvement over the past several months. BTC has reclaimed both the 100-day and 200-day moving averages, currently positioned around $72K. The two averages have also converged, with the shorter-term average turning higher. This bullish crossover could potentially further strengthen the longer-term trend.

Meanwhile, the price has also moved decisively above the $75K area, which now represents an important demand zone. Holding this region would keep the broader sequence of higher lows intact and preserve the bullish recovery structure. A deeper correction toward $70K, however, would still leave the larger trend relatively constructive, although losing that area would weaken the setup considerably.

On the upside, BTC is facing a substantial supply zone around $88K. The market has repeatedly struggled to establish a daily close above this region. But a convincing breakout would expose the next major resistance area around $96K.

Momentum also remains positive but has cooled. The daily RSI is still above the neutral 50 level while leaving considerable room before reaching overbought territory. This suggests that the market is not yet displaying the type of momentum exhaustion typically associated with a major top.

BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart presents a more cautious picture. BTC established an ascending triangle pattern from the September lows, with several successful tests reinforcing the structure. However, the price is now breaking below that trendline and has fallen toward $84K.

The immediate area around $84K is therefore important. If buyers reclaim this zone and restore the broken trendline, the recent decline could prove to be only a temporary shakeout. In that scenario, BTC could retest the $88K resistance area and potentially challenge for a valid breakout once more.

Conversely, a sustained move below $84K would increase the probability of a deeper correction toward the $75K-$78K region. That area coincides with the previous breakout and should be viewed as the first major support beneath the current range.

The 4-hour RSI has also fallen sharply to around 38, showing that short-term momentum has deteriorated and is approaching oversold territory. This could allow for a relief bounce, but RSI alone does not confirm a reversal.

Sentiment Analysis

The taker buy/sell ratio provides a notable warning sign. The metric compares aggressive market buying with aggressive market selling, with readings above 1 indicating that taker buying is dominant and readings below 1 suggesting that sellers are more aggressive.

The latest reading has dropped below 1 and is sitting around 0.994, significantly declining from its September highs. This indicates that aggressive buying pressure has weakened as BTC moved toward the $88K resistance area.

More importantly, the taker buy/sell ratio has been trending lower since its August peak even as Bitcoin remained relatively elevated. This divergence suggests that the latest advance has not been accompanied by steadily increasing aggressive futures demand.

That does not necessarily imply an immediate bearish reversal. However, it makes a clean breakout above $88K less convincing unless the metric begins recovering. A renewed move above 1 in the taker ratio, alongside a breakout in price, would provide stronger confirmation that buyers are regaining control.

The post Bitcoin Price Analysis: What’s Next for BTC After Sharp Drop Below $84K? appeared first on CryptoPotato.