The breach highlights the vulnerability of crypto exchanges, prompting increased scrutiny and potential regulatory actions impacting market stability.

The post Circle freezes more than $800 million in USDC after $6.3 billion Binance breach appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Reddit's stock drop highlights the growing impact of AI on digital traffic dynamics, prompting platforms to innovate user engagement strategies.

The post Reddit shares tumble 30% after CEO warns Google AI is cutting search referrals appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Increased SEC scrutiny on AI claims may lead to stricter compliance costs and heightened investor awareness of AI-related risks and obligations.

The post SEC puts AI claims under the microscope as the spending boom accelerates appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Google's satellite AI haiku highlights potential for scalable space-based data centers, but faces challenges in power and thermal management.

The post Google’s Suncatcher satellite sends first AI-generated haiku from orbit appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The mass liquidations highlight the risks of high leverage in volatile markets and underscore the importance of robust security measures in exchanges.

The post 254,045 crypto traders liquidated in 24 hours as $1.67 billion in positions wiped out appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

SEC Charges Two Companies in $130 Million Crypto Trading Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged two foreign-operated, Colorado-incorporated companies with running a crypto investment fraud that used false federal filings to raise more than $130 million from tens of thousands of retail investors.

The defendants are BG Wealth Sharing Ltd. and DSJ Exchange Pty Ltd. A complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges that from at least October 2025 through June 2026, the companies induced investors in more than 40 states and several U.S. territories to join a “wealth-sharing program.” 

Participants were promised risk-free returns generated by so-called signals for crypto asset trading.

According to the complaint, BG Wealth claimed to be the world’s largest hedge fund, claimed registration with the SEC as an investment adviser, and said it partnered with a licensed and secure crypto trading platform, DSJ Exchange. 

The SEC says none of those claims were true. The complaint alleges the companies submitted false Form ADV and Form D filings to the SEC. Those filings were viewable on the agency’s website and shared with investors as evidence that the SEC had licensed or approved the firms.

Laura D’Allaird, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit, described the operation in a statement. 

SEC: Crypto scheme was ‘a Ponzi-like tactic’

“This alleged scheme was well-planned,” she said, citing social media, encrypted messaging channels, weekly live videoconferences and a mobile app used to engage investors. The complaint alleges the defendants displayed fake certificates bearing the SEC’s seal and made periodic payments to some investors, “a Ponzi-like tactic,” while misappropriating the remaining funds.

The SEC charged both companies with violating the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

It charged BG Wealth with violating Sections 204(a) and 207 of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The agency seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, and civil penalties against both companies, along with conduct-based injunctions against BG Wealth.

The Form ADV and Form D filings have been removed from the SEC website.

The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Assistance has issued investor alerts warning that scammers are using exempt reporting adviser filings to create a false impression of legitimacy. The agency encourages investors to check the background of anyone offering or selling a crypto investment through Investor.gov.

The SEC said it received assistance from the Alberta Securities Commission, the Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, the Texas State Securities Board, the Utah Division of Securities, the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions, the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, and other authorities.

This post SEC Charges Two Companies in $130 Million Crypto Trading Scheme first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Blockchain Firms Link North Korea to $6.3 Billion Binance Hack 

Blockchain analysis firms Chainalysis and TRM Labs have linked the $6.3 billion Binance hack yesterday to TraderTraitor, a unit associated with North Korea. If confirmed at this scale, the theft would be the largest crypto hack on record. 

Chainalysis puts the total at $6.4 billion in its own assessment. Chainalysis says funds began leaving Binance hot wallets across multiple blockchains around 4:20 p.m. Eastern Time on October 29. 

The firm said the attacker used an operational wallet funded through Tornado Cash to submit signed authorizations that allowed a Binance hot wallet to run attacker-deployed code. 

The attacker then swept assets into addresses under its control. Binance has said its initial investigation points to a compromised engineer’s laptop, which gave an attacker access to a service container and enabled unauthorized withdrawals. 

The exchange said it has found no evidence of a wallet private key leak.

The attacker reportedly tried to outpace freezes by converting stablecoins into ether and other assets that issuers cannot freeze. Chainalysis said the attacker swapped $325 million in stablecoins into $285 million in ETH over roughly 20 minutes, then sent the remaining $175 million to stopover wallets. Freezes began by 5:14 p.m. Eastern, according to the firm.

Market reacts to the hack

Bitcoin dropped toward $76,000 on Friday morning before trading near $77,400. Other crypto followed suit and posted declines of their own. Total market liquidations reached $1.5 billion, with bitcoin accounting for $468 million and ether for $358 million. 

Long positions, which bet on higher prices, bore most of the losses. The sell-off coincided with a separate incident at decentralized betting platform Polymarket, which suspended international trading after hackers drained more than $2.6 million from user accounts.

Binance said Thursday that the security incident affected about $6.3 billion in assets, surpassing the $1.5 billion Bybit hack of 2025, which was attributed to North Korean hackers. Former CEO Changpeng Zhao wrote on X, “It does look like a hack.” Zhao no longer runs the exchange but remains a key shareholder.

Stablecoin issuers moved to contain the fallout. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company froze more than $1.567 billion in USDT and that protecting the industry and its partners is its main priority. 

Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said Circle froze more than $800 million in USDC in coordination with law enforcement. First Digital CEO Vincent Chok said FDUSD stolen in the attack has been frozen. Binance says about $3 billion has been frozen onchain in total.

Binance has enough funds to cover the incident

Binance says it has reserved more than $6.34 billion of company funds to cover the incident. About $5 billion of that reserve is held in the same token assets that were affected, and the company is buying the remainder through market and OTC channels. 

The exchange says frozen and protected assets remain subject to verification and plans to publish an updated Proof of Reserves. 

Reuters, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that Binance is working with the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service.

Bitcoin may have further downside

Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoffrey Kendrick, wrote in an email to CoinDesk that the negative price action may have some way to go. He said a new base will form after assets are unfrozen and more details of the hack emerge. 

Kendrick argued that the incident could accelerate a shift toward decentralized exchanges. Chainalysis has warned that scammers are impersonating the firm, including those offering fund recovery and recruiting services. 

Victims should treat unsolicited recovery offers with caution and rely on official channels for updates.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading near $76,700.

This post Blockchain Firms Link North Korea to $6.3 Billion Binance Hack  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Tyler Evans: Bitcoin ETF Flows Flipped From “Highly Negative” to “Strong Accumulation”

Bitcoin has matured out of the bear market. So what’s next? Tyler Evans breaks down the Fed, the bond market, JPMorgan naming Bitcoin its best-performing asset class, ETF flows flipping to strong accumulation, and why the U.S. midterms could be pivotal heading into 2027. At the end of the day, he says, Bitcoin will just do its thing.

Chapters:
00:00 Tyler Evans Joins Bitcoin Magazine TV
00:11 Is Bitcoin’s Pause Before the Next Move Up?
01:25 The Fed, Kevin Warsh and the Bond Market
03:20 Institutions Buy as Bitcoin Flows Into the U.S.
04:43 Bitcoin vs. the AI Trade
06:09 VanEck’s All-in-One ETF and Bitcoin’s Allocation Problem
07:55 AI Agents and Bitcoin
09:01 Making Bitcoin as Easy as Apple Pay
11:02 Strategy Shareholders Approve Daily Dividends for Stretch
12:33 A Bitcoin Treasury Company Loses Access to Its Bitcoin
13:38 Qualified Custodians and Counterparty Due Diligence
14:56 MSCI Pushes Bitcoin Treasury Companies Out of Its Indexes
15:56 How Bitcoin Treasury Models Can Evolve
16:32 Where Bitcoin Goes by the End of 2027
17:48 ETF Flows and Reclaiming the 50-Week Moving Average

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

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

This post Tyler Evans: Bitcoin ETF Flows Flipped From “Highly Negative” to “Strong Accumulation” first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Doomberg: US Treasury Sanctions are “Wildly Bullish” for Bitcoin & Gold

What happens to reserve assets when you’re not allowed to sell them? Doomberg argues that U.S. pressure on allies to hold their Treasuries changes the math for central banks, and that in a crisis “you sell what you can sell, not what you want to sell.” That explains gold’s short-term weakness since February 28th, but in the long run he sees it as wildly bullish for gold and Bitcoin as neutral reserve assets. He also shares why younger, hyper-online generations are more likely to choose Bitcoin.

Chapters:
00:00 Doomberg on the Fed, Kevin Warsh and the Midterm Elections
01:21 Will Trump Restart the War in Iran After the Midterms?
03:11 Houthi Refinery Strikes, $110 Brent and Prices at the Pump
05:03 What a Renewed U.S.–Iran Conflict Would Mean for Global Markets
09:21 Doomberg’s Bull Case: Peace Deals and a Post-Midterm Boom
11:00 How a Diesel Shortage Turns Into a Glut
13:27 Europe’s Energy Crisis, French Bonds and U.S. Treasuries
16:38 Will Germany Bail Out France? The Future of the EU
19:02 Gold vs. Bitcoin as Reserve Assets
24:54 Christine Lagarde’s Early Exit and ECB Politics

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

This post Doomberg: US Treasury Sanctions are “Wildly Bullish” for Bitcoin & Gold first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Alex Thorn: 50-Week Signal Says Bitcoin’s Bottom is In

Galaxy’s new research note opens with a blunt call: “We believe the bottom is in.” Alex Thorn breaks down the evidence, starting with the fact that regaining the 50-week moving average after 20+ weeks below it has never been followed by a new low. He explains why Bitcoin’s resilience around $80K matters and why he thinks it’s contrarian to say long Bitcoin right now.

Chapters:
00:00 Bitcoin at $81K After the Fed: Is the Bottom In?
00:38 Galaxy’s 50-Week Moving Average Signal
02:10 Bitcoin’s Resilience Around $80K Amid AI Fears
02:54 Light Positioning: “The Crowd Is Not Here”
04:17 13F Filings: Hedge Funds Out, Sovereigns and Wealth Managers In
06:15 Tokenization Hype, the Narrative Pendulum and the Basis Trade
10:06 Strategy’s Daily Dividends, Strive and Tonight’s Earnings Call
12:27 Why the AI Build-Out Is a Debasement Machine
16:11 U.S. Debt, Fiscal Dominance and Bitcoin as Digital Gold
19:21 AI Cyber Attacks, Hardware Wallets and Multisig

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

This post Alex Thorn: 50-Week Signal Says Bitcoin’s Bottom is In first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Appia’s consultation findings expose a trade-off between pooling settlement liquidity and preserving competition among networks, with the architecture still open.

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Annual equity-ETF sales will rise from about ¥330 billion to ¥860 billion at book value from January 2027, with safeguards limiting immediate-shock claims.

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Remaining positions face automatic closure on January 22, 2027, while the March 5 withdrawal cutoff leaves earlier batch restrictions intact.

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CZ linked a claimed billion-dollar-plus holding to Binance’s Twitter investment; Yi He said annual revenue was sufficient to cover losses.

Read the full story on CryptoSlate

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he Federal Reserve asked for more information before changing interest rates. Eighteen and a half hours later, the economy supplied it: growth was strong, inflation remained elevated, and households were spending more without buying much more. But before investors could settle what that combination meant for Bitcoin, a Binance security breach raised a more immediate…

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In October 2026 the crypto market lost just under $6.5 billion, and almost all of it flowed out through compromised infrastructure: through staff computers, signing systems, build processes and websites. Only a small share of the damage traces back to flaws in smart contracts, the part of the stack the industry has been debating for years and pays audit reports for. For investors that means one thing: a project with a clean audit can still lose your money if access to its servers is open.

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on October 30, 2026. The basis is DefiLlama's public hack register, which records every reported incident with a date, a loss figure and an attack route. All 32 entries dated between October 1 and October 30, 2026 were counted.

$6.46 billion out of $6.50 billion: seven incidents carry almost the entire loss

The month's 32 incidents add up to $6.495 billion. Of that, $6.461 billion falls on seven entries the register files under frontend and infrastructure. That is 99.5 percent of the total from 22 percent of the cases.

The counter-calculation sharpens the picture. All the categories in which the program logic of a contract actually failed or was exploited come to less than $16 million together: faulty share calculations in ten cases ($5.1 million), governance attacks in three cases ($4.8 million), two bridge incidents ($4.6 million), one price oracle manipulation ($1.3 million), plus one case each of missing input validation and faulty payout logic. Four further incidents run under compromised keys and cost $17.3 million, the largest of them $16 million at the Indian exchange CoinDCX on October 21.

Frontend and infrastructure: what sets this category apart from a smart contract bug

A smart contract bug is a flaw in program code that sits on the blockchain. It is publicly readable, it can be audited, and whoever finds it can exploit it until the contract is replaced.

An infrastructure attack targets everything that stands around that code: a developer's computer, the server that triggers payouts, the software library a website is built from, the system that signs transactions. The code on the blockchain stays unchanged throughout. It merely executes what an attacker instructs it to do from a position the system treats as authorized.

That is the decisive difference when you assess a provider: in the first case an audit report helps. In the second, what counts is how well a company controls its internal access rights, its approval processes and its suppliers, and none of that appears in any public document.

The Binance incident of October 29: $6.3 billion to $6.36 billion through the signing system

The month's largest single item is the attack on Binance on the evening of October 29. The hack register lists $6.36 billion, Binance itself puts the impact at around $6.3 billion, and analytics firm Chainalysis arrives at $5.9 billion according to media reports. The funds left the exchange's wallets within about 20 minutes across ten blockchains.

On the cause, Binance has published a preliminary finding: through the compromised computer of a DevOps employee, an attacker is said to have gained access to a service container and triggered unauthorized payouts from there. No leak of private wallet keys has been demonstrated so far, the company said; the investigation of the full attack path is still running. How the computer was compromised, and how long the access lasted, is open. The exchange has pledged to cover all losses through its reserve fund and its own funds, has temporarily suspended withdrawals and has rebuilt the withdrawal service. On company figures around $3 billion has been frozen, of which $2.54 billion was most recently confirmed as verified. cryptoticker.io has traced the technical reconstruction of the signatures in detail.

Security firm TRM Labs attributes the attack, in its own words with high confidence, to the North Korea-linked group TraderTraitor. That is the assessment of a private analytics house, not an official finding; no state confirmation exists so far.

Supply chain attack: $93 million through a tampered software library

A supply chain attack pushes malicious code into a component that many providers use in common, and so reaches all of their users at the same time. The month's second-largest item falls into this category: on October 9, $93 million flowed out through an attack attributed to wallet maker Ledger. What happened there and which users were affected is what cryptoticker.io wrote up at the time of the incident.

The same pattern shows up three more times further down the month's list: at trading bot Bloom on October 26 with $953,000, at prediction platform Polymarket on October 29 with $2.7 million on the register's figure and $3.0 million to $3.1 million according to media reports, and at Predict Fun on October 27 with $400,000. At gambling platform Gamdom, $4.2 million was lost on October 13 through a key that leaked via the infrastructure.

One point in this is practically important for you: in a frontend attack the website looks exactly as it always does. The address in the browser bar is right, the certificate is right, and the page sits on the correct server. The only thing that has changed is what the page presents to your wallet for signature.

Smart contract audits cover the code, not the build pipeline

An audit checks what a contract does when it runs unchanged on the blockchain. The build pipeline, meaning the path from the source code of a website or app to the version that arrives in your browser, sits outside that scope. Nor does it include an employee's computer, a company's access management or an exchange's signing system.

The October figures therefore do not say that audits are useless. The finding is a different one: the audit badge on a project page tells you nothing about the biggest source of loss that month. Anyone drawing a conclusion from that 99.5 percent for their own custody does not end up with a better contract, but with the question of how much third-party infrastructure they expose their holdings to at all. An overview of devices that keep keys from leaving your own home is in the hardware wallet comparison.

MiCA: what an exchange in Germany owes on custody

Since the European legal framework MiCA took effect, providers that hold customer funds in crypto assets need a licence and must keep customer holdings separate from their own. That prevents no attack. It does determine who is liable in the event of a loss, who has to answer to the supervisor and which reporting duties apply after a security incident.

One important difference from a bank account remains: there is no statutory deposit protection for crypto balances. Reserve funds such as Binance's are voluntary pledges by a company, not a state guarantee. Whether a platform operates under regulation in Germany is something you can check before depositing; which providers work with a European licence is shown by our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Blind signing: the hardware wallet shows what the app withholds

Blind signing means confirming a transaction whose content the device does not display in plain text. This is exactly where a frontend attack takes hold: the tampered interface shows you a harmless operation, while the data presented for signature does something else.

A hardware wallet only helps against this attack if you actually read the device screen and compare it with what the website claims: recipient address, amount and type of operation. If one of those differs, you cancel. The device serves as the second, independent display; its value lies not in owning it but in looking at it.

Token approvals: the lever an attacker keeps longest

A token approval allows a smart contract to move a certain amount of your tokens. Many applications ask for an unlimited approval because it is convenient and saves fees. That permission stays in place until you revoke it, and it still works long after you have stopped using the application.

If somebody takes over the frontend of an application you hold an open approval with, they do not need your key. That is why the list of approvals you have granted is one of the few things you can check and trim yourself without specialist knowledge. It makes sense to limit approvals to the amount an operation genuinely needs, and to revoke old ones regularly.

Market reaction: the price shows the damage only faintly

The largest theft in the industry's history came through to prices comparatively quietly. Bitcoin traded at around $77,800 on the morning of October 30, 2.5 percent below its level 24 hours earlier, and ether at around $2,222, about 3.9 percent lower. Part of the explanation lies in the frozen funds: stablecoin issuers can block balances on request, and billions that are never liquidated create no selling pressure either.

The second half of the explanation is less comfortable. When an incident of this size barely moves the market, platforms lack the immediate financial incentive to secure their internal access routes at expense. There is no proof of that; it is an assessment, not an established fact.

What remains of the October figures in November

The register logs seven infrastructure incidents in a single month, and several of them hit platforms that are advertised in Germany. A repeat is neither announced nor ruled out. What can be decided today, by contrast, is the question of how much of your holdings sits on a platform whose inner workings you cannot inspect.

A rule of thumb from the figures: holdings you intend to trade in the coming weeks belong on a licensed exchange. Holdings you keep for longer belong where no third-party service container can trigger a payout.

Crypto hacks: 99 percent of the damage ran through the infrastructure

1. Split your holdings. Decide what share stays on the exchange and what share moves into your own custody. For the second part, the hardware wallet comparison gives you the choice of devices.
2. Check the platform's licence. Look up whether your provider works with a European licence and keeps customer holdings separate; the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges places the large providers.
3. Trim your approvals. Go through the token approvals your wallet has granted, revoke old ones and limit new ones to the amount required.

The raw data for this count is in DefiLlama's public hack register; the attribution of the Binance attack comes from the analysis by TRM Labs.

(As of October 30, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Protect yourself: Storing crypto safely, and guarding against hacks like the one at Binance.

On October 29, 2026, Binance said for the first time where the attack on the exchange is believed to have started: on a work device. According to the preliminary investigation the company published on its account on X, the incident may involve the compromised laptop of a DevOps engineer. Through that device an attacker is said to have gained access to a service container and from there submitted unauthorized withdrawal transactions. In the same statement, Binance put the estimated total damage at around $6.3 billion.

That is the first figure to come from the exchange itself. The estimates of the preceding days came from analysis of blockchain data and were lower. If you are a customer, the second half of the statement matters more than the size of the number: Binance says it has found no indication that the private keys of its wallets were taken. What that does and does not mean is set out below.

What Binance says about the cause: a compromised laptop in the DevOps team

DevOps is the team that keeps the bridge between software development and live operations at a technology company. People who work there hold access rights by the nature of the job that ordinary staff do not have: to systems that move money in the background, reconcile accounts and release withdrawals.

That is exactly where Binance's account begins. The statement on X of October 29, 2026 says the initial investigation suggests the security incident involves a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer. The precise attack path, it adds, will only be established by the further investigation. Both points are phrased as possibilities, and that is no accident: a week after an incident of this size, the forensics are not finished.

The statement attributes no misconduct to the employee. A device can fall into the hands of attackers through malware in a download, through a tampered development library, or through a message aimed at one individual. Binance has not said which of those routes it was.

Service container and withdrawal interface: how the path ran, according to Binance

A service container is a self-contained software package in which a single service runs, such as the approval of withdrawals. Containers are used so that a service stays isolated and does not affect the rest of the system when it fails. That isolation only protects as far as access to it is protected.

On Binance's account, the attacker gained access to such a container via the laptop and then triggered withdrawals that nobody had authorized. Technically, that is fundamentally different from what most people picture as a hacked wallet. No key was cracked. A system was made to treat a payout as valid.

How that mechanism looked on-chain is what we set out on October 29 in our report on the hot wallet outflow.

No stolen private keys: why the distinction counts

A private key is the string of characters that moves balances held at a blockchain address. Whoever holds it can spend the funds, and nobody can claw that back. That is why the question of whether keys were taken is the most important one after any incident.

Binance says it has found no indication of that. If it stays that way, it means the exchange's addresses remain under its control, and whatever is still sitting there can be moved once the gap is closed. It does not mean that the funds already gone would have been safe. Those transfers are settled on the blockchain.

For the wider assessment it also means that custody in this case did not fail at the cryptography, but at an access route in operations. A hardware wallet protects you against precisely that: the device never hands the key to an operating system, and no service container can instruct it. Which devices qualify and what they cost is in our hardware wallet comparison.

$6.3 billion: the range of damage figures from October 29

The figures for the size of the loss diverge widely, and they are still moving this weekend. Side by side, as of October 30, 2026:

• Around $2.8 billion drained from a hot wallet: the estimate from blockchain data that the first reports on October 29 started with.
• More than $5 billion: the figure in the CoinDesk live blog of October 29, at a point when around $2.5 billion was considered frozen.
• Around $6.3 billion: Binance's own estimate, published on October 29 on X.
• Around $6.36 billion: the calculation by blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, valuing each asset at its price at the moment it left. At October 30 prices, the same basket comes to around $6.23 billion on the firm's own figures.

Smoothing one of these numbers onto another would be wrong. The figures measure different things: the on-chain estimates count what went to identified attacker addresses, while the exchange's number covers the total damage on its own reckoning. Binance has not broken down how the $6.3 billion is composed.

Between $2.5 billion and $2.7 billion frozen: Tether, Circle and the Arbitrum Security Council

Part of the haul is no longer moving. Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC run through smart contracts whose issuers can block individual addresses. That is what happened, and it is the reason the ledger of this incident looks different from the big exchange thefts of earlier years.

Binance puts the verified frozen funds at $2.54 billion, of which more than $2.37 billion comes from blocks by Tether and Circle. In its statement of October 29, the exchange cites around $3 billion frozen together with partners from the blockchain industry. TRM Labs counts, as of October 30 at 00:30 UTC, around $2.7 billion blocked by issuers and by the Security Council of the Arbitrum blockchain, and around $2.4 billion that the attacker still holds in assets beyond the reach of issuers. What the Tether and Circle blocks cover in detail is something we counted up separately.

What is frozen is not recovered. A block stops the attacker from moving the tokens on or swapping them. Who ends up with them, and through which procedure, is decided much later, and in earlier cases that has taken years.

SAFU fund and company funds: what Binance promises on compensation

SAFU stands for Secure Asset Fund for Users, a reserve pot Binance set up in 2018 to cap customer losses after security incidents. Co-chief executive Yi He wrote on X that Binance will cover all losses from the incident through the SAFU fund and its own company funds, and that customer money is safe.

The fund is not a theoretical promise. Binance drew on it in 2019, when a theft took around 7,000 bitcoin off the exchange; customers had their balances replaced at the time. How large the pot is today, Binance did not say on October 29, and it gave no timetable for reimbursement either.

A pledge of this kind is a declaration of intent by the company, not a statutory deposit guarantee. For a bank account in Germany, deposit protection applies up to 100,000 euros per customer as a matter of law. That does not hold for balances at a crypto exchange, not even a licensed one. What a licence does deliver is in the next section.

Deposits and withdrawals suspended: where things stand on October 30

Binance has temporarily halted deposits and withdrawals. On our reading as of October 30, they are restarting coin by coin, with Solana and XRP still paused most recently while Bitcoin and Ethereum were already being processed again. The exchange has not named a date for full release.

For you, this is the part that hurts most, because it has nothing to do with the headline: as long as withdrawals for your coin are pending, you cannot reach your balance, regardless of whether the attack touched it at all. A transfer you start in this phase can sit in the queue without you being able to pull it back.

TraderTraitor: what TRM Labs attributes to the attacker

Since overnight there is an attribution from a firm that investigates such cases for a living. Blockchain analytics company TRM Labs assigns the attack to the group TraderTraitor, which it describes as North Korea's specialist unit for hacking operations, and writes that it reaches this judgement with high confidence. On its own account, the assessment rests on blockchain data and on findings from outside the chain. The FBI attributed the 2025 attack on the Bybit exchange to the same group.

The sequence TRM Labs describes adds to the exchange's account at one point that matters for the assessment. On Ethereum, it says, a Binance hot wallet was turned into an externally controlled sweeper through a delegation under the EIP-7702 standard. On nine further blockchains, by contrast, the wallets sent regularly signed transfers, from which the firm concludes that the signing infrastructure of those hot wallets was compromised. The outflow spread across ten blockchains, the bulk of it in about 20 minutes from 20:05 UTC. Binance itself has stated that it found no indication of private keys leaving. The two accounts stand side by side, and the difference has not been resolved.

For your access to your balance and for the reimbursement pledge, the attribution changes nothing. It is the assessment of an analytics firm, not an official finding; Binance has not endorsed it and has named no perpetrator. It is not irrelevant to recovery, though, because in past state-linked attacks frozen funds stayed tied up in proceedings for years.

Around $1.5 billion in liquidations: the market fallout on Friday morning

The market reacted more sharply to the news than to the number. On CoinGecko data, bitcoin trades at $77,563 on October 30, 2026, down 3.20 percent in 24 hours. Ether is at $2,225.86 and loses 4.03 percent, more than bitcoin. BNB, the exchange's own token, carries the incident most visibly: $702.35 after a drop of 6.27 percent. Solana stands at $96.73, down 3.43 percent, and XRP at $1.25, down 3.03 percent.

Leveraged positions were hit harder. Forced liquidations across the whole crypto market come to around $1.5 billion within 24 hours; the running tally is kept by Coinglass, whose extract CoinCentral reports at $1.5 billion on October 30. Reports vary between $1.49 billion and $1.54 billion depending on when they were taken, and the larger share falls on long positions. A running counter is not a fixed figure: anyone who opens it later sees a different window.

Leverage and liquidation: what a blocked account means with open positions

A liquidation is the forced closing of a leveraged position by the exchange, as soon as the margin no longer covers it. At five times leverage, around 20 percent of price movement against you is enough; at ten times, around 10 percent. The numbers above are the result of that mechanic in a single day.

The particular twist in an incident like this: paused deposits and withdrawals take away your ability to top up margin. Anyone holding a leveraged position who wanted to add fresh funds cannot do so while deposits for that coin are halted. The position keeps running anyway, and it is liquidated anyway.

Custody and key management: hardware wallet versus exchange account

The incident exposes a dividing line that blurs easily in day-to-day use. A balance on an exchange account is a claim against the company; the exchange holds the keys. A balance in your own wallet is property; you hold the keys. In the first case security rests on the operational security of a corporation, in the second on your own care.

Both carry a price. A hardware wallet costs money and requires you to store your recovery words so that neither fire nor strangers can reach them; lose them and the balance is gone, with nobody able to help. An exchange takes that burden off you and hands you in return the risk this October 29 has shown. Anyone holding larger amounts they do not trade usually shifts the trade-off towards self-custody.

Buying in Germany: MiCA licensing and what it covers

Since the EU's MiCA regulation, crypto service providers need a licence to serve customers in Germany; BaFin supervises them. The licence sets requirements for the segregation of customer assets, for custody and for reporting duties. Which duties apply in detail depends on the type of service.

What MiCA does not do: the regulation is no substitute for deposit protection, and it does not prevent a break-in through an employee device. It does require a provider to demonstrate how it holds customer assets, and it gives a supervisor access to that evidence. Which providers are licensed in Germany can be looked up in BaFin's register.

Holding period and tax: what a forced sale triggers in this situation

In Germany, gains from selling cryptocurrencies are tax-free after a holding period of more than one year; within the year they are taxable as a private disposal, with an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros a year.

This week that is more than a footnote. Anyone selling in panic and closing a position held for under a year loses the price and, on top of that, the clock that had been running. A liquidation counts as a sale for tax purposes, even if you did not trigger it. For the tax return you need the acquisition date of every single tranche, and when an exchange pauses withdrawals, the exports for that are not always available straight away. Securing the records now costs nothing.

Binance hack: the balance stays locked until release

The incident is confirmed by Binance, the cause has been named but not conclusively established, and the damage figure is the exchange's estimate, not an audited value. Three things make sense in this situation:

1. Check which part of your holdings sits on an exchange account and which in your own custody, and decide for the holdings you do not trade whether that is the right place for them. The hardware wallet comparison lists the devices and the prices.
2. In the phase of paused withdrawals, do not start a transfer you cannot pull back, and do not open a new leveraged position while you cannot top up margin. Where leveraged trading happens and on what terms is shown by the perp DEX comparison.
3. Look up whether your provider is licensed in Germany and how it segregates customer assets; the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges lists the providers with their terms.

(As of October 30, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Protect yourself: Storing crypto safely, and guarding against hacks like the one at Binance.

Binance is covering the losses from the attack of October 29, 2026 in full, by its own account. The exchange puts the affected sum at around $6.3 billion and states that it will cover all losses, from company funds and from an emergency fund. That fund is called SAFU and holds 15,000 bitcoin, according to Binance. For the first time, the exchange's reserve is being weighed against a sum it cannot cover on its own.

If you hold coins on a crypto exchange, more hangs on this episode than a damage figure. It shows what a reimbursement actually rests on in an emergency: on the solvency and the pledge of the provider, not on a statutory guarantee. This piece sorts the numbers, names the sources and shows which rules apply in Germany when a custodian fails.

$6.3 billion: what Binance itself says about the damage

Binance gives the estimated total impact of the attack as around $6.3 billion. The exchange writes that user funds are safe and that it will absorb all losses. Changpeng Zhao, co-founder and by his own account the largest shareholder, wrote on X that he expects full coverage of all customer balances. Zhao has not run the platform since 2023.

The sum clearly exceeds the previous record. At Bybit in February 2025, around $1.5 billion flowed out according to figures at the time. The current sum is therefore about four times that. Aravind Srinivasan, who heads systematic OTC trading at market maker GSR, told Reuters, as reported by CNN Business, that it is the largest attack of this kind so far.

What has already been frozen

Part of the funds is blocked. According to the firms involved, around $3 billion was identified and frozen in wallets attributed to the attacker. Tether chief Paolo Ardoino names more than $1.567 billion, Circle chief Jeremy Allaire speaks of several hundred million dollars. We have broken down the composition of these freezes in a count of our own (as of October 30, 2026).

Frozen does not mean recovered. Stablecoin issuers can block balances at an address so that they can no longer be moved. Whether and when these funds go back to Binance will be decided in proceedings that can take months.

SAFU fund: 15,000 bitcoin as a reserve for security incidents

The SAFU fund is Binance's emergency reserve for losses from security incidents. The abbreviation stands for Secure Asset Fund for Users. Binance set it up in July 2018 and finances it from ten percent of trading fees. In February 2026 the exchange moved the fund entirely into bitcoin and has held 15,000 BTC since, at average acquisition costs of $67,000 per bitcoin according to its own figures.

The dollar value of that reserve moves with the price. At a bitcoin level of $78,386 on the morning of October 30, 2026 (Coinpaprika), 15,000 bitcoin come to around $1.18 billion. That calculation is ours and is no more than the holding multiplied by the day's price. The figures in the reporting diverge: Crypto Briefing named a value of $1.27 billion on October 4, 2026, while reports from October 29 speak of around $1 billion. What stands up is the range between $1 billion and $1.27 billion, not a single value.

Against $6.3 billion in damage, the reserve therefore covers barely a fifth. Binance has pledged a floor for the fund: should its market value fall below $800 million, it is to be topped up to $1 billion. The exchange has also announced regular audits.

How the fund worked in 2019

The fund has a track record. In 2019 attackers took 7,000 bitcoin from Binance's hot wallets, worth around $40 million at the time. Binance covered that amount from the SAFU fund and customers lost nothing. The ratio was different then: the damage was well below the reserve. This time the fund alone is not enough, which is why Binance explicitly names company funds as well.

A laptop as the entry point: the cause as the exchange describes it

Binance names a compromised laptop belonging to an engineer as the preliminary result of its own investigation. This allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions, the exchange said according to CNN Business. A service container is a walled-off runtime environment in which a single service runs; whoever gains rights there can trigger the tasks that service is allowed to carry out.

Binance says it has revoked the affected address approval, temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks run, and brought in law enforcement agencies and analytics firms. Deposits were running again according to reports on Thursday evening, while withdrawals remained paused at first. Co-founder Yi He named a window of 48 hours for the resumption. No confirmation that withdrawals are in fact running again was available when this piece was completed.

North Korea: what three analytics firms attribute and what stays open

Three firms specialising in blockchain analysis attribute the attack to a North Korean group, each on its own reasoning. TRM Labs bases the attribution, by its own account, on robust findings both on and off the blockchain. Pangolin Intelligence of Singapore points to the analysis of the transactions and the comparison with earlier cases. A Chainalysis spokesperson told CNN Business the firm has high confidence that North Korea is behind the attack.

These are attributions by private companies, not an official finding and not a verdict. North Korea has denied accusations of this kind in the past. CNN has asked the North Korean mission to the UN as well as the FBI and the Secret Service for comment. In the previous record case at Bybit, North Korean groups were likewise held responsible.

Why the attribution matters in practice

How much comes back depends on where the attack came from. Chainalysis says it is tracking stolen funds moving across several blockchains, bitcoin and Ethereum among them. An analyst at Pangolin Intelligence told CNN the cat-and-mouse game has barely begun, and expects a network of money-laundering services to be used to swap the funds into other assets. The longer that takes, the more a reimbursement hangs on the company treasury rather than on recovered funds.

Deposit insurance: why crypto balances are not protected like bank money

Deposit insurance is a statutory protection that replaces bank balances up to a fixed sum if the institution fails. For bank deposits that sum stands at 100,000 euros per customer and institution in the EU. Crypto assets do not fall under it. Unlike bank deposits, balances in an exchange account are not automatically insured; a reimbursement is at the discretion of the exchange in question. That is exactly why Binance's pledge is the decisive factor in this case, and not a guarantee fund funded by everyone.

In practice that means: the larger the amount you leave on an exchange permanently, the more you rely on a single provider. Holders who keep positions for the long term and do not trade can move them into their own custody. Which devices do that and what they cost is in our hardware wallet comparison. The price is personal responsibility: lose the access key and there is no office that resets it.

How twelve providers word their pledges to customers is something we assessed before the current case: compensation after an exchange hack. That crypto assets are as a rule not covered holds even where banks themselves offer crypto services.

Section 45 of the Crypto Markets Supervision Act: who owns coins in custody in an insolvency

Germany has a mechanism of its own, and it applies not to a hack but to the insolvency of the custodian. Section 45 of the Crypto Markets Supervision Act assigns holdings in custody. In its wording: a crypto asset held in custody for a customer in the course of crypto custody business is deemed to belong to that customer. Under the law that does not apply where the customer has consented to the asset being disposed of for the account of the institution or of third parties.

Under subsection 2 the same rule covers the share in jointly held holdings and separately held private keys. Subsection 3 governs the costs: where a customer does not consent in insolvency proceedings to the transfer of the entire holding to another custodian, that customer bears the costs of segregation. This does not apply where the other institution's terms are unreasonable for them.

What that means in proceedings is something we worked through on a case of its own: segregation or insolvency estate. One point matters for placing the current case: Binance is not insolvent, and this section is no substitute for a reimbursement after an attack. It decides what happens when a custodian fails as a company.

MiCA segregation duty: what supervisors in the EU require

The MiCA regulation is the EU rulebook for crypto service providers and has applied in stages since the end of 2024. For custody it prescribes that providers keep holdings held for customers separate from their own. That separation is the load-bearing protection: what is held separately does not fall into the estate that the provider's creditors can reach.

An authorisation under MiCA is not insurance, however. There is no fund that steps in when an authorised provider loses coins. What the authorisation delivers are duties of segregation, of organisation and of supervision. The individual duties are set out in our overview of the MiCA duties for crypto companies.

Whether a provider actually holds the authorisation is something you can check yourself. BaFin keeps a register and ESMA one for the EU; both are public and free to query. That an authorisation is not granted automatically was shown by the rejection of bitcoin.de's application in October 2026. A list of the exchanges with an authorisation and their terms is in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Price reaction: BNB, bitcoin and ether on Friday morning

The market is giving ground without a fresh slump. Bitcoin stood at $78,386 on October 30, 2026, 1.74 percent below the previous day, and ether at $2,246, down 2.60 percent (Coinpaprika). BNB, the token of the Binance blockchain, traded at $714. The daily change ranged between a loss of 4.59 percent (Coinpaprika) and 5.03 percent (OKX) depending on the data source.

Against the overnight low the picture has steadied. After the news broke, bitcoin and ether both fell sharply; according to CNN both were trading around 2 to 3 percent down by Friday midday in Hong Kong, and therefore above their lows. Over the week bitcoin stands 3.84 percent lower and BNB 3.96 percent.

What the numbers do not say

A loss of under 5 percent against damage of $6.3 billion looks small. The moves can be explained by the pledge of full coverage and by the $3 billion frozen, which caps the outflow. That explanation cannot be proven: which part of the move traces back to the attack and which to the US Federal Reserve's rate decision of October 28 cannot be separated out of the price data.

Binance reimbursement: the SAFU fund covers barely a fifth of the damage

The case is still running, and the damage figure is an estimate by the exchange. Three steps make sense now all the same.

1. Check how much sits permanently in exchange accounts. For holdings you do not trade, your own custody is the alternative; the routes and the costs are in the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Look up your provider's authorisation in the register. Which exchanges carry a MiCA authorisation and what they cost is in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Read your exchange's compensation clause. The pledges twelve providers give their customers are collected in our assessment of compensation after exchange hacks.

What stays open is when withdrawals at Binance will run again, how much of the $3 billion frozen goes back, and whether the estimate of $6.3 billion holds. All three points decide which share of the reimbursement comes from the SAFU fund in the end and which from the company treasury.

(As of October 30, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Here is what is documented: on Friday, October 30, 333,649 Ethereum options expire on Deribit at 08:00 UTC, which is 9 a.m. in Frankfurt. That is 20.3 percent of all open contracts and, at an index level of $2,242.52, around $748 million in notional value. Our own read follows further down: the expiry does not explain the direction of the price, only why so little resistance is showing up.

Ethereum trades at $2,243 on Friday morning. Overnight the price fell as far as $2,170, and the session high so far is $2,254 (Kraken, as of October 30, shortly before 7 a.m. UTC). Since October 1, when the month opened at $2,684, 16.4 percent has gone. For where the price can point over a horizon of months, see our Ethereum price prediction.

333,649 contracts settle at 9 a.m., a fifth of open interest

We pulled the options book on Friday morning at around 6:45 a.m. UTC from Deribit's public options statistics and counted it ourselves. Open interest across all Ethereum expiries stands at 1,645,955 contracts. Of those, 333,649 run out today, or 20.3 percent. One contract represents one ether.

For a sense of scale: Bitcoin settles 134,238 contracts at the same expiry, which because of the higher unit price amounts to $10.52 billion. Measured in dollars, the Bitcoin expiry is therefore around fourteen times the size of the Ethereum one. Measured as a share of each market, the two dates are comparably heavy.

The monthly expiry on the last Friday is the largest regular date outside a quarter end. Saturday, October 31, by contrast carries only 39,055 contracts and barely registers.

68,199 puts in the money against 8,611 calls

An option is in the money when it has a value at settlement. For a put, that means a strike above the price; for a call, a strike below it. At $2,242.52 the split looks like this: 68,199 puts are in the money and 8,611 calls. The ratio is almost eight to one.

Across all strikes the book leans the other way. Open interest is 199,995 calls against 133,654 puts, a put-call ratio of 0.668. Calls are in the majority, but nearly all of them sit too far above the price to be worth anything.

The single largest position of this expiry is the $2,600 call with 37,506 contracts, 18.8 percent of all calls in this date. It expires worthless today unless Ethereum rises 16 percent in two hours. A buyer who paid the premium in September loses it in full.

Why 77 percent of all contracts expire worthless today

Of the 333,649 contracts in this expiry, 256,839 end without value, or 77.0 percent. For calls the share is 95.7 percent, for puts 49.0 percent. The 68,199 puts in the money carry a combined notional value of $153 million.

That has one consequence for the price which the headline hides: a holder of a put in the money already has the hedge in hand. They do not need to sell anything in the market, they receive the difference in cash. Selling pressure on an expiry day does not come from the options themselves, but from the unwinding of the offsetting positions that dealers hold in the spot market to hedge.

Bitcoin settles on its calculated point, Ethereum $157 below

Max pain is the strike at which the sum of all payouts to option buyers is smallest. We calculated it for both books from the same raw data: for every strike, the payout of all contracts added up, then the minimum.

For Ethereum it sits at $2,400. The price stands at $2,242.52 and therefore $157.48, or 6.6 percent, below. For Bitcoin it sits at $78,000, with the index at $78,346, or 0.44 percent above. Bitcoin runs into settlement practically on its calculated point, Ethereum well off it.

That is not a law of nature but an observation with a known weakness: max pain pulls prices only when dealers actively rebalance their offsetting positions, and with thin books they hardly do. At $748 million in notional against $10.5 billion on the Bitcoin side, the Ethereum book is the thinner one at this expiry.

$165 lower than in our preview of October 23

We already ran the numbers on this expiry on October 23. At the time 322,586 contracts were open, max pain sat at $2,500 and Ethereum at $2,407.76. Our preview closed with the line that below $2,400 the picture turns. That is exactly what happened.

Three numbers have shifted since. Open interest for today rose by 11,063 contracts to 333,649. Max pain slipped $100 to $2,400. And the price lost $165.24, or 6.9 percent. The detail of that earlier calculation is in our preview of the expiry from October 23.

The break came on Thursday evening. After the attack on a Binance hot wallet, Ethereum fell from a session high of $2,376.99 to $2,230.19 and closed at $2,249.01 (Kraken, daily candle for October 29). Binance now puts a figure on the damage itself and has pre-emptively halted withdrawals for individual networks; for Ethereum they continue, according to the exchange. Our running coverage is in our overview of the paused withdrawals of October 29.

The sentiment index falls from 51 to 30 within a day

The Fear and Greed Index from Alternative.me stands at 30 points on October 30, which puts it in fear territory. On October 28 and 29 it was still at 51 points, or neutral. A jump of 21 points in a single day is rare and mainly measures the volatility and trading volume of the past 24 hours, not a survey of investors. The methodology is on the index's own page.

For the expiry day that means one thing above all: the implied volatility priced into the options has risen lately. More expensive hedging is the reason the ratio of puts in the money comes out so lopsided.

After settlement, little is left on the futures market until late November

After today's date the rest of open interest is spread out as follows: 39,055 contracts on October 31, 44,767 on November 6, 46,236 on November 13 and 180,986 on November 27, the next monthly expiry. The largest single date of the year remains December 25 with 612,234 contracts, 37.2 percent of total open interest.

Between 9 a.m. today and November 27 there are four weeks in which no date of any weight is due on the futures market. Traders who pinned the moves of recent days on the expiry get a clean control test from Monday.

The day's range runs between $2,170 and $2,254

To the downside the overnight low at $2,170 is the first documented level. Below that comes $2,000, the strike with the highest open interest among the puts of the next date, 6,223 contracts for October 31. To the upside the session high at $2,254 caps the move, then max pain at $2,400.

All three levels are figures derived from the market, not a forecast. They work for placing your own position, not for deriving a direction.

Holding period and loss offsetting: where German investors stand

Private sales of crypto assets in Germany fall under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. After a holding period of one year the gain is tax free; below that, an exemption limit of 1,000 euros a year applies. A buyer who entered on October 30, 2025 paid $3,802.67 per ether (Kraken, daily close). That position turned one year old today and is no longer taxable on a sale, but it is also 41 percent under water.

The reverse also holds: losses from sales inside the one-year window can only be offset against gains from other private disposals, not against wages or investment income. Investors who realised gains on short-term sales this year can net them off until December 31. For the tools that track holding periods per purchase cleanly, see our hub on crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

On the political state of the one-year rule, which has been up for discussion for months, we keep a page of its own: crypto holding period, reform and current status. As long as nothing new appears there, the rule stands unchanged.

One note on the futures market itself: Deribit is not a regular route for retail investors from Germany, and the exchange does not readily take clients from the European Economic Area. The numbers in this article are to be read as market information, not as a guide to trading options. For leveraged positions in Europe, the regulated venues are in the perpetuals hub further down.

Our view: the expiry does not explain the slide

Our read: today's date is a sideshow, and the numbers say so themselves. Three pieces of evidence point that way. First, at $748 million the Ethereum book is small against the $10.5 billion on the Bitcoin side. Second, 77.0 percent of the contracts are already out of the money, their hedges long unwound. Third, the price sits 6.6 percent below max pain, and no pull has shown up anywhere in the past two trading days.

One point argues the other way and deserves to be taken seriously: a large part of the 68,199 puts in the money came into being in the past 48 hours, when hedging turned expensive. Whoever sold them holds the offsetting position in the spot market and unwinds it after 9 a.m. That can work in both directions in the short term. It cannot be forecast with any confidence, and we therefore do not claim it.

What does explain the slide sits one floor up: a security incident at the largest exchange, a sentiment index that loses 21 points in a day, and a month that has cost Ethereum 16.4 percent. How the ratio to Bitcoin developed in the process is what we wrote down on October 29 in our calculation of the ETH/BTC ratio.

October 30 expiry: with no anchor, the $2,170 level decides

Three steps into the weekly close:

1. Check your own holding period. Every purchase before October 30, 2025 is out of the one-year window. For the tools that track that per position, see the hub on crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
2. Measure leveraged positions against $2,170. The overnight low is the next documented level to the downside. Where your own liquidation price sits in relation to it is shown by your exchange's position screen; the regulated venues are in the hub on perpetual exchanges.
3. Check where your coins are held. Holders of ether on an exchange should know which deposit and withdrawal routes are open there right now. The comparison of trading venues is in the hub on crypto exchanges.

(As of October 30, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

North Korea is behind the Binance hack of 29 October 2026, according to two leading blockchain investigators. TRM Labs attributes the attack with high confidence to TraderTraitor, a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group, and Chainalysis also sees the same group as the likely perpetrator. Binance itself has not named an attacker. It puts the damage at around $6.3 billion and, according to its announcement on X, expects to reopen withdrawals within 48 hours, by Sunday morning at the latest. Here is everything known so far about the largest crypto theft in history.

Binance hack: the key facts

• Attacker: TRM Labs names North Korea's TraderTraitor and Chainalysis sees the same group; Binance and authorities have not confirmed it.
• Damage: about $6.3 billion according to Binance, $6.36 billion according to TRM Labs, spread across ten blockchains.
• Start: 29 October, 20:05 UTC; most of the funds left within about 20 minutes, a second wave followed around 23:05 UTC.
• Frozen: about $2.7 billion according to TRM Labs, about $3 billion according to Binance, mostly by Tether and Circle.
• Still with the attacker: more than 420,000 ETH and 18,270 BTC, together about $2.4 billion.
• Customers: Binance will cover all losses; deposits work, withdrawals are due to resume by Sunday, 1 November, around 04:36 UTC.

How the evening played out in the market is in our timeline with live ticker, the first report in our Binance hack story.

Who is behind the Binance hack? The North Korea trail

TRM Labs bases the attribution on its own on-chain data and intelligence from outside the blockchain. The pattern matches two earlier attacks: the $1.5 billion hack of the exchange Bybit in February 2025, which the FBI attributed to TraderTraitor, and the attack on KelpDAO in April 2026. In all three cases the attacker's wallet was funded in advance through the mixer Tornado Cash, and the required signatures had been collected before any money moved.

Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin also considers TraderTraitor the likely perpetrator. According to SecurityWeek, his investigators found proceeds from last month's Bitget exploit mixed with the Binance loot. Binance says it is working with law enforcement but has not named an attacker, and no authority has made an official attribution yet.

TraderTraitor is a subgroup of the North Korean hacking network widely known as Lazarus. It targets employees of crypto companies, often through rigged job offers or trading apps, to gain access to internal systems. That fits what Binance says about how the attacker got in.

How did the Binance hack happen?

According to Binance's official announcement, a DevOps engineer's laptop was compromised. Through it, the attacker reached a service container and submitted unauthorized withdrawals. Binance found no evidence of a private key leak. TRM Labs goes further: because wallets on ten blockchains were emptied in the same window with ordinary, validly signed transfers, the attacker apparently made the hot wallet signing system itself work for him. A single stolen key or a phishing page does not explain that.

On Ethereum he used the EIP-7702 feature. In our own on-chain analysis we checked the decisive transaction: 50 pre-signed authorizations for the hot wallet “Binance 14”, one for each possible transaction number, so that one would hit. That preparation suggests his access to the signing system was limited in time.

Where is the money from the Binance hack?

About $2.7 billion is frozen according to TRM Labs; Binance itself speaks of about $3 billion. Most of it was blocked by the stablecoin issuers: Tether froze about 1.77 billion USDT, Circle about 825 million USDC. How we counted the freezes ourselves is in USDT frozen. Ripple added 40.5 million RLUSD, World Liberty Financial 27.8 million USD1, and the Arbitrum Security Council pulled about $30 million in ETH and ARB out of the attacker's wallet at 00:08 UTC.

Beyond the issuers' reach are more than 420,000 ETH and 18,270 BTC, together about $2.4 billion. The attacker used the time before the freezes: he swapped about 325 million USDT into roughly 122,300 ETH through UniswapX and similar services at a discount of more than 10 percent, supplied 60 million USDT to Aave to borrow about 19,760 ETH, and moved 300 million USDT on Tron into the lending protocol JustLend. The bitcoin is being split into chunks of 1,000 and 100 BTC to blur the trail. Unlike after Bybit, the group is relying less on cross-chain bridges this time and more on large swaps and lending protocols.

When will Binance withdrawals resume?

Deposits are working normally, Binance says. Withdrawals remain paused while the exchange completes a security revamp of the withdrawal service and its related addresses. At 04:36 UTC Binance said it expects to resume them within 48 hours, which would be Sunday, 1 November, around 04:36 UTC at the latest. Binance has not said whether all coins will reopen at once or step by step. Which networks were paused before the full halt is in our story on Binance withdrawals.

Service Update. Deposits remain unaffected and continue to operate as normal. Withdrawals remain paused while our team completes a security revamp of the withdrawal service and its related addresses. We expect to resume within 48 hours, and will update with further details.

Binance (@binance) October 30, 2026

Will Binance cover the losses from the hack?

Yes, according to its own pledge. Binance will cover all losses from its SAFU emergency fund and company funds. Whether the exchange can absorb the damage is what we calculate in How much would it take to bankrupt Binance?. Binance plans to publish an updated proof of reserves once the security work is complete.

If you do not want to keep larger amounts on an exchange, you can hold them yourself, for example in a hardware wallet, or spread your funds across regulated crypto exchanges.

What the Binance hack means for Bitcoin, BNB and the market

On Friday at 10:30 UTC Bitcoin traded at $77,296 according to CoinMarketCap, 3.4 percent lower than 24 hours earlier. BNB lost 5.4 percent to $700.66, Ether 3.9 percent to $2,226 and Solana 3.5 percent to $96.51. Measured against the size of the theft, that is a restrained decline, put into context in Bitcoin price after the Binance hack. The North Korea trail has a sober consequence for the market: state hackers do not hold on to their loot, they convert it in tranches over weeks. The more than 420,000 ETH held by the attacker are therefore what traders are watching most closely.

Our view: for Binance customers the question of who did it changes little. Two dates matter: whether withdrawals really resume by Sunday, and whether the announced proof of reserves shows full coverage. If both happen, pressure on BNB and the market should ease. If either slips, a security incident turns into a question of trust.

All our articles on the Binance hack

• What happened: The Binance hack, On-chain analysis, Timeline of the crash, USDT frozen
• Your money: Binance withdrawals, Could Binance go bankrupt?, Binance review
• Market: Bitcoin price after the hack, How low can Bitcoin fall?, BNB crash, Ethereum crash, Solana crash, How to short Bitcoin
• Background: The biggest crypto hacks in history

Binance says it has set aside $6.34 billion to cover losses from the breach and the FBI and Secret Service are now working with the exchange as investigators trace the stolen funds.

Richard Teng said the attacker used a self-destruct mechanism and an EIP-7702 delegation that bypassed Binance's normal approval controls.

After Musk appeared to mock Binance’s $6.3 billion hack, CZ reminded him that the exchange’s $500 million bet on his Twitter takeover is now worth over $1 billion in SpaceX shares.

EIP-7702 lets ordinary Ethereum wallets run smart contract code, enabling batched and sponsored transactions. Here's how it works.

Israel's Supreme Court ruled that exploiting a coding flaw can count as computer intrusion, even when the software allowed the transaction.

While China bans crypto, Solana secures a regulated Hong Kong dollar gateway via a licensed Standard Chartered venture.

Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles has warned that Trezor hardware wallets may have been compromised by sophisticated implants, suggesting that the recent Ledger supply chain attack was not an isolated incident.

Dogecoin completes first daily death cross in 2026, with the market now paying attention.

While XRPL positions for expansion with $58.3M in stablecoin growth, an automated AI payment network claims a dominant first-place victory.

Stellar dominates the RWA market as institutional investors pump $111.5 million into the network, capturing 92% of daily tokenization growth.

TLDR

• Chevron shares gain 1.61% as adjusted third-quarter earnings reach $10.36 billion.
• Stronger refining margins lift Chevron’s downstream earnings to nearly $4.93 billion.
• Chevron generates $16 billion in operating cash flow during the third quarter of 2026.
• Chevron cuts net debt by $7.8 billion while maintaining strong quarterly cash flow.
• Chevron plans $7 billion in Venezuelan investments to support long-term production growth.

Chevron (CVX) shares climbed 1.61% to $235.19, gaining $3.73 during the trading session. The advance followed third-quarter 2026 results that showed stronger refining margins and higher earnings than last year. Meanwhile, the energy company reported $10.36 billion in adjusted earnings and $16 billion in operating cash flow.

Chevron Corporation, CVX

Chevron Reports Higher Earnings as Refining Margins Strengthen

Chevron reported third-quarter earnings of $9.92 billion, compared with $3.54 billion during the same period in 2025. Adjusted earnings reached $10.36 billion, equivalent to $5.28 per diluted share. However, reported diluted earnings per share reached $5.06, compared with $1.82 a year earlier.

The company attributed its stronger annual earnings to reliable operations, higher refined product margins, and improved crude oil realizations. However, unfavorable timing effects from rising energy prices partially offset these gains. Chevron also recorded a $160 million legal reserve, a $110 million impairment, and $24 million in pension settlement costs.

Adjusted earnings per share increased from $1.85 in third-quarter 2025 to $5.28 in 2026. Furthermore, year-to-date adjusted earnings reached $25.13 billion, compared with $10.49 billion previously. The company also recorded $12.73 in adjusted diluted earnings per share, against $5.80 last year.

Refining Performance and Production Support Business Growth

Chevron’s downstream segment delivered stronger results as higher refining margins supported earnings growth. U.S. downstream earnings reached $3.59 billion, compared with $638 million in third-quarter 2025. Additionally, international downstream earnings increased to $1.35 billion from $499 million during the previous year.

U.S. refinery crude throughput reached a record 1.09 million barrels per day during the quarter. The refineries also maintained crude unit capacity utilization near 98%, reflecting reliable operating performance. However, international refined product sales declined 9% because of supply disruptions linked to Middle East conflict.

Upstream operations generated $5.70 billion in earnings, compared with $3.30 billion a year earlier. U.S. upstream earnings reached $3.29 billion, while international upstream earnings contributed $2.41 billion. Meanwhile, total net oil-equivalent production averaged 3.98 million barrels daily, down from 4.09 million barrels in 2025.

Chevron Strengthens Cash Flow and Expands Investment Plans

Chevron generated $16 billion in cash flow from operations during the third quarter, compared with $9.4 billion previously. Additionally, free cash flow reached $12 billion, while adjusted free cash flow totaled $14.2 billion. The company also reduced total debt by $3.5 billion and net debt by $7.8 billion.

The company plans to invest $7 billion in its Venezuelan joint ventures over the next five years. The investment aims to increase production through projects focused on long-term growth and lower-cost operations. Additionally, Chevron secured agreements to reduce Bakken midstream costs by approximately 50%.

Chevron also announced an offshore oil and natural gas condensate discovery in Angola’s Lower Congo Basin. Furthermore, it signed an exploration agreement with Libya’s National Oil Corporation for the Sirte Basin. The company also started operations at its Louisiana oilseed-processing facility, expanding feedstock supplies for transportation fuels.

Chevron’s board declared a quarterly dividend of $1.78 per share, payable on December 10, 2026. Shareholders must appear on company records by November 18 to qualify for payment. These results highlight stronger refining contributions, improved annual earnings, and continued investment across Chevron’s global energy operations.

The post Chevron (CVX) Stock: Rises as Strong Refining Margins Drive $10.4 Billion Adjusted Q3 Earnings appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• ExxonMobil posts $15.4 billion in Q3 earnings as adjusted EPS climbs to $4.23.
• ExxonMobil announces $20 billion in 2027 buybacks alongside 44 years of dividend growth.
• ExxonMobil shares gain 1.33% as quarterly earnings rise and shareholder returns expand.
• ExxonMobil reaches major production milestones across Guyana, Kearl, and PNG LNG.
• ExxonMobil generates $25.7 billion in operating cash flow during the third quarter.

ExxonMobil (XOM) shares advanced 1.33% to $185.72 as the energy giant reported stronger third-quarter earnings. The company posted $15.4 billion in net earnings, supported by improved refining performance and higher energy product margins. Additionally, ExxonMobil announced a $20 billion share repurchase plan for 2027 and extended its annual dividend growth streak.

Exxonmobil Holdings Corporation, XOM

ExxonMobil Reports $15.4 Billion in Third-Quarter Earnings

ExxonMobil reported third-quarter 2026 earnings of $15.413 billion, compared with $14.525 billion during the previous quarter. Adjusted earnings reached $17.505 billion, representing an increase from $14.680 billion in the second quarter. Consequently, adjusted earnings per share climbed to $4.23 from $3.52 over the same period.

The company generated $25.7 billion in operating cash flow and $19.1 billion in free cash flow. Meanwhile, shareholder distributions reached $9.4 billion, including $4.3 billion in dividends and $5.1 billion in share repurchases. These results reflected stronger contributions from Energy Products and Specialty Products during the reporting period.

Energy Products delivered $7.169 billion in third-quarter earnings, compared with $5.465 billion in the previous quarter. However, Upstream earnings declined to $7.088 billion from $7.927 billion as lower prices affected quarterly performance. Chemical Products earnings also decreased to $735 million, while Specialty Products earnings increased to $1.285 billion.

$20 Billion Buyback Plan and 44-Year Dividend Growth Streak

ExxonMobil strengthened its shareholder return strategy by announcing $20 billion in planned share repurchases for 2027. The company expects to maintain this program under reasonable market conditions and its financial priorities. Furthermore, the announcement reinforces its existing capital return strategy following $5.1 billion in third-quarter buybacks.

The company also recorded 44 consecutive years of annual dividend increases, extending its long-standing shareholder distribution record. This streak exceeds that of 95% of companies within the S&P 500, according to ExxonMobil. Additionally, the company declared a fourth-quarter dividend of $1.07 per share, payable December 10, 2026.

Shareholders of record on November 16, 2026, will qualify for the announced quarterly dividend payment. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil reduced its net debt by nearly $11 billion during the first nine months of 2026. Its net debt stood at $22.1 billion on September 30, supporting its balance sheet position.

Production Milestones and International Expansion Strengthen Operations

ExxonMobil continued expanding its upstream operations while reaching major production milestones across several international assets. Guyana and Kearl each reached cumulative production of one billion barrels during the reporting period. Additionally, PNG LNG achieved cumulative production of 100 million tons.

The company also assumed operatorship of the Papua LNG project and increased its participation in international developments. ExxonMobil agreed to raise its working interest in Papua LNG to 34% and Mozambique’s Rovuma LNG project to 50%. These agreements strengthen its involvement in major natural gas developments across international markets.

Operational improvements also supported the company’s refining and manufacturing performance during 2026. ExxonMobil recorded its highest year-to-date global fuels utilization, excluding Middle East impacts, since available internal records began. Furthermore, it achieved record global diesel yield and North American diesel volumes, while Beaumont refinery investments increased distillate production approximately 40% since 2019.

ExxonMobil also advanced carbon capture and storage projects through Nucor’s startup and approval for Rose carbon storage. Meanwhile, the company reported $16.9 billion in structural cost savings since 2019. Its third-quarter results highlighted higher earnings, stronger cash generation, continued production growth, and substantial planned shareholder returns.

The post ExxonMobil (XOM) Stock: $20 Billion Buyback Plan and 44-Year Dividend Streak Boost Investor Focus appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• AbbVie stock gains 1.72% as third-quarter revenue climbs 10.3% to $17.4 billion.
• AbbVie reports adjusted EPS of $3.82 as earnings more than double year over year.
• Skyrizi and Rinvoq drive immunology revenue growth as Humira sales decline 31.2%.
• AbbVie raises its 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to a range of 13.95–13.99 per share.
• AbbVie announces a 5.2% dividend increase, with higher payments starting in February 2027.

AbbVie Inc. (NYSE: ABBV) shares advanced 1.72% to $295.79 after the pharmaceutical company reported strong third-quarter results. The stock gained $4.99 as revenue growth and higher earnings supported its performance. Meanwhile, the company raised its full-year 2026 earnings guidance and announced a dividend increase.

AbbVie Inc., ABBV

AbbVie reported third-quarter revenue of $17.404 billion, representing 10.3% growth from the previous year. Operational revenue increased 10.5%, reflecting stronger demand across its major pharmaceutical businesses. Additionally, adjusted diluted earnings per share reached $3.82, while GAAP diluted EPS stood at $2.37.

The results highlighted continued growth across immunology and neuroscience, alongside weaker performance in aesthetics. Furthermore, AbbVie completed its acquisition of Apogee Therapeutics to strengthen its immunology development pipeline. The company also increased its 2026 earnings outlook and announced higher shareholder distributions.

AbbVie Q3 Revenue Growth Driven by Immunology and Neuroscience

AbbVie’s immunology portfolio generated $9.165 billion in third-quarter revenue, increasing 16.3% year over year. Skyrizi contributed $5.776 billion, representing 22.7% growth on a reported basis. Meanwhile, Rinvoq generated $2.706 billion, marking a 23.9% increase during the quarter.

Humira revenue declined 31.2% to $683 million as competition continued affecting its sales. The combined performance of Skyrizi and Rinvoq supported overall immunology growth. Their revenue contributions also highlighted the portfolio’s changing composition following Humira’s declining sales.

The neuroscience division generated $3.389 billion, representing 19.4% annual growth. Vraylar revenue increased 14.3% to $1.068 billion, while Botox Therapeutic sales reached $1.080 billion. Additionally, Ubrelvy generated $449 million, and Qulipta contributed $398 million during the quarter.

Qulipta recorded 38.2% reported revenue growth, making it one of the portfolio’s strongest performers. Meanwhile, Vyalev generated $286 million as AbbVie expanded its neuroscience business. These results demonstrated broad growth across several treatments within the division.

Oncology and Aesthetics Deliver Mixed Third-Quarter Results

AbbVie’s oncology portfolio generated $1.696 billion in third-quarter revenue, increasing 0.8% year over year. Venclexta revenue rose 10.7% to $803 million, while Elahere increased 31% to $224 million. However, Imbruvica revenue declined 26.1% to $522 million, limiting the division’s overall growth.

The aesthetics portfolio recorded $1.176 billion in revenue, representing a 1.4% annual decline. Botox Cosmetic generated $669 million, increasing 4.9% compared with the previous year. In contrast, Juvederm revenue fell 11.9% to $222 million during the quarter.

AbbVie reported a GAAP gross margin of 75.4%, while its adjusted gross margin reached 85.1%. Selling, general and administrative expenses represented 23.5% of revenue on a GAAP basis. Additionally, adjusted operating margin reached 48.7%, compared with 36% under GAAP accounting.

AbbVie Raises 2026 Guidance and Announces Dividend Increase

Following its third-quarter performance, AbbVie increased its full-year 2026 adjusted diluted EPS guidance. The company raised its forecast from $13.76–$13.96 to $13.95–$13.99 per share. The updated range includes a $0.69 per-share impact from acquired research and development expenses and milestones.

AbbVie also completed its acquisition of Apogee Therapeutics during the quarter. The transaction strengthens its immunology pipeline and expands its potential treatment development opportunities. The acquisition forms part of the company’s broader strategy to support future pharmaceutical growth.

AbbVie announced a 5.2% increase in its 2027 dividend. The higher dividend will begin with the payment scheduled for February 2027. The announcement extends the company’s shareholder distribution strategy alongside its improving financial performance.

The latest results reflect continued revenue expansion across AbbVie’s major pharmaceutical businesses. Stronger immunology and neuroscience sales offset declines in selected oncology and aesthetics products. Meanwhile, higher earnings guidance and dividend growth provide further details about the company’s financial outlook.

The post AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) Stock: Rise as Q3 Revenue Jumps 10.3% and EPS Tops $3.82 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• AMD stock declined 6.5% in Friday’s premarket trading following Intel’s weak revenue forecast.
• Intel shares plunged 25% after its fourth-quarter outlook missed Wall Street expectations.
• Intel projected fourth-quarter revenue of $15 billion to $16 billion, below the $17.1 billion forecast.
• Intel expects PC chip revenue to drop more than 20% from the previous quarter.
• The company warned that weak PC demand could continue through the first half of 2027.
• AMD will report third-quarter earnings on November 3, with investors watching PC and data center sales.

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) shares fell 6.5% in premarket trading Friday, October 30, after Intel issued a weaker fourth-quarter forecast. AMD stock declined as investors weighed weak PC demand ahead of the company’s November 3 earnings report.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD

Intel Forecast Sends Chip Shares Lower

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) dropped 25% before the opening bell after projecting fourth-quarter revenue of $15 billion to $16 billion. Analysts expected $17.1 billion. Intel reported third-quarter revenue of $16.5 billion and adjusted earnings of 52 cents per share, above forecasts.

Intel expects PC chip revenue to fall more than 20% from the previous quarter, not total revenue. Intel’s client computing unit recorded $8.1 billion in quarterly sales, down 5% annually. A report on Intel’s latest earnings covered 78% annual growth in data center and AI sales.

AMD Stock Faces Questions Ahead of Earnings

AMD competes with Intel in desktop and laptop processors, but their products and customers differ. Intel’s warning has prompted closer attention to AMD’s PC chip sales, although Intel’s results do not show how AMD performed.

AMD will release third-quarter results on Tuesday, November 3, after US markets close. Management will hold a call at 5 p.m. Eastern. Investors will look for figures on client processors, data center chips, and the company’s outlook for the December quarter.

PC Demand May Stay Weak Into 2027

Intel expects the PC slowdown to last through at least the first half of 2027. Higher memory prices have raised computer costs and reduced demand, according to the chipmaker. AMD’s earnings outlook has drawn attention after options trading suggested a possible 6.8% share price move around its results.

AMD also announced plans this week to invest $1 billion in Meta as the companies expand their artificial intelligence partnership. The agreement concerns AI systems, not PC sales. Demand across those businesses could follow different trends when AMD releases its results.

Amazon Spending Adds to Market Pressure

Other technology shares also fell Friday. Amazon shares fell more than 7% before the market opened following its quarterly results. Concerns about Amazon’s AI spending added to the weakness in technology stocks as Nasdaq futures declined.

Intel’s forecast left traders assessing demand across chipmakers, including AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm. AMD’s November 3 report will provide direct evidence of its sales and margins. Friday’s premarket decline reflects market reaction, not a reported change in AMD’s performance.

The post AMD Stock Falls as Intel Forecast Clouds Outlook appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• RBLX stock declined in Friday’s premarket trading following Roblox’s third-quarter earnings report.
• Roblox’s daily active users dropped 9% year over year to 138 million.
• The company reported a quarterly loss of $0.32 per share, beating the expected $0.40 loss.
• Third-quarter bookings reached $1.7 billion, exceeding Wall Street’s $1.62 billion estimate.
• Roblox expects fourth-quarter bookings to decline between 10% and 15% year over year.

Roblox Corp. (NYSE: RBLX) shares fell in Friday’s premarket trading after the company reported fewer daily users and forecast weaker fourth-quarter bookings. RBLX stock declined despite lower losses and stronger bookings.

Roblox Corporation, RBLX

Average daily active users fell 9% from a year earlier to 138 million. Players spent 33.8 billion hours on Roblox, down 15% year over year.

RBLX Stock Faces Weaker Holiday Outlook

Roblox expects fourth-quarter bookings of $1.89 billion to $2 billion, down 10% to 15%. Management cited tough comparisons and said the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI could reduce activity modestly.

Recent coverage of gaming stocks also examines player numbers and spending. Roblox expects $380 million in fourth-quarter capital spending, including $140 million moved from the previous quarter.

Quarterly Bookings Beat Wall Street Forecasts

Roblox posted a loss of 32 cents per share, compared with an expected loss of 40 cents. Bookings reached $1.7 billion, above the $1.62 billion estimate, while revenue totaled $1.57 billion.

Revenue rose 16% from a year earlier, although bookings fell 12%. Roblox reported $364 million in free cash flow and projected full-year capital spending of $468 million.

Older Players and AI Tools Expand

Daily users aged 18 and older grew 18% year over year. India recorded 37% user growth, while Japan grew 33%. Intel reported 78% growth in data center and AI revenue this week.

Roblox reported three times as many daily AI asset uploads month over month. AI-enabled games increased 50% from the previous quarter, and more than 80% of its top 100 games used AI.

The company reported its strongest seasonally adjusted retention since 2021. However, it said spending among younger users in the United States remained difficult to improve.

Roblox Expands Game Publishing Options

Roblox said Build helped creators publish more than 70,000 games and attracted over 500,000 testers. It plans a wider U.S. release in December, followed by global expansion in 2027.

Universal Player aims to bring existing PC, console and mobile games onto Roblox. Its Everywhere program would also let selected games reach app stores as standalone titles during the first half of 2027. Separately, Sony launched a creator support program on October 29 for entertainment developers using Soneium. Roblox plans early access to Roblox Reality in the first half of 2027.

The post Roblox (RBLX) Stock Falls Despite Earnings Beat as Users Decline appeared first on Blockonomi.

Strategy posted net income of $19.53 billion in the third quarter of 2026, a sharp jump from $2.79 billion a year earlier. The surge came largely from a $20.91 billion gain on its Bitcoin holdings, which pushed operating income to a record high.

The company’s revenue, however, moved in the opposite direction and slipped 3% year over year to $125.4 million from $128.7 million. Gross profit was $89.6 million, with a gross margin of 71%, slightly below the $90.7 million reported a year earlier, when the margin was 70%.

BTC Yield Turns Negative

Strategy held 848,517 bitcoin as of October 25, with a market value of $68.9 billion against an original cost basis of $64.02 billion. Its average purchase price stood at approximately $75,446 per bitcoin. The company purchased $14.33 billion worth of BTC year-to-date and increased its holdings by 26% during 2026.

But Strategy’s BTC Yield stood at negative 3.7%. Despite this, Michael Saylor, founder and executive chairman of the company, said that “we’re at the beginning of the next bull market.” He went on to add,

“Banks are embracing Bitcoin, Bitcoin’s dominance among digital assets is growing, institutional demand is back, and Bitcoin’s price is 21% above its 200-week moving average. Digital Credit continues to grow, with $16 billion in notional value across ten publicly listed securities. Strategy continues to lead this industry with 84% market share and STRC returning to strength.”

Meanwhile, Strategy appears to have paused its recent BTC buying spree and focused on repurchasing STRC shares instead.

CFO Resigns

Separately, its Chief Financial Officer Andrew Kang is stepping down on November 5. The exec notified the company earlier this week that he was resigning for personal reasons. Strategy stressed that his departure had nothing to do with any disagreement over its operations, policies, or practices. He will remain available in an advisory role through December 31.

Reza Virasteh, who is currently executive vice president of operations, will take over as co-principal financial officer from January 1, alongside CEO and President Phong Le.

The post Michael Saylor Sees Next Bitcoin Bull Market Beginning as Strategy Reports $19.5B in Q3 Net Income appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Although all crypto eyes were on the Federal Reserve FOMC meeting on Wednesday and a few other major macro events, none of those were the moment of the week.

But first, let’s see how the week actually unfolded, starting from our previous market update from last Friday. At the time, BTC was fighting to stay above the key $80,000 support after getting rejected at $85,000, and investors braced for the FOMC meeting. Somewhat surprisingly, BTC dipped to a five-week low on Saturday at $79,100 before rebounding $2,000 on Sunday.

However, it couldn’t really maintain its position above $80,000 and dipped on a few more occasions by Tuesday. The bulls went on a mild run ahead of the FOMC meeting, pushing the asset to $81,700. It dipped before the meeting and jumped again to $81,800 after the central bank paused interest rate hikes as expected.

Another rejection followed, and BTC dropped to $80,500 on Thursday. The real impact came a day later, early on Friday morning, when reports emerged that the world’s largest crypto exchange had fallen victim to a major hack. Later on, the company confirmed the news, while on-chain data showed that the losses were somewhere around $6.3 billion, even though several entities, including Tether, froze roughly $3 billion.

This became by far the largest hack in the crypto industry. Naturally, bitcoin and almost all alts tanked, with the leading crypto asset dropping to a six-week low of $76,400 before rebounding by a grand. BNB dumped below $700, while SOL has slumped by over 7%. The liquidations skyrocketed to $1.5 billion, while the number of wiped-out traders jumped to over 235,000 on a daily scale.

Market Data

Market Cap: $2.690T | 24H Vol: $152B | BTC Dominance: 57.8%

BTC: $77,380 (-5.1%) | ETH: $2,225 (-7.4%) | XRP: $1.25 (-4.5%)

This Week’s Crypto Headlines You Can’t Miss

Ripple Clears Final OCC Hurdle for National Trust Bank. Ripple had a massive week, and perhaps the OCC approval stands out at the top. Company CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted the final green light for the establishment of Ripple National Trust Bank.

Your Trezor Could Be Compromised: Company Issues Urgent Warning to Customers. One of the leading hardware wallet manufacturers warned customers who bought some of its devices from CryptoBilis on or after March 2026 to move their funds to a newly created wallet with a new seed as soon as possible.

Polymarket Trading Disrupted After Users Report $2.6M in Losses. Hours before the massive Binance hack, Polymarket admitted that bad actors drained over $2.6 million from user accounts. The platform went into cancel-only mode for a while, and Polymarket said an external provider was compromised, not its internal infrastructure.

Bitcoin Sees Biggest Exchange Outflow in Five Weeks Ahead of Fed Decision. In just a single day before the key FOMC meeting, on-chain data showed that bitcoin investors had withdrawn almost 15,000 units from exchanges. The company said this was the largest daily net outflow in five weeks.

Strive Makes Largest-Ever Bitcoin Purchase With 6,182 BTC Buy. The Matt Cole-led company announced its most significant bitcoin purchase to date, accumulating 6,182 units for over $510 million. Meanwhile, the largest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency stood on the sidelines.

HYPE Price Rises 15% Following NYSE Plan to Bring Hyperliquid Perps to the US. Although most altcoins are deep in the red this week, the graph above shows that HYPE has clearly defied that trend. The asset exploded by 15% yesterday after ICE agreed to operate Trade[XYZ]’s Hyperliquid-based perpetual futures in the US.

Charts

This week, we have a chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin, and Hyperliquid – click here for the complete price analysis.

The post Binance Hacked for $6.3B, Fed Holds Rates, Bitcoin Crashes to 6-Week Low: Weekly Crypto Recap appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Using a bank card to buy crypto takes a few minutes, but deciding where to make the purchase may require a bit more consideration. Platforms differ in fees and speed, and rules aren’t the same in every country.

This review examines Paybis from a card buyer’s perspective, covering payment methods, supported nations, available cryptocurrencies, and the fees worth checking beforehand. It also highlights who could benefit the most from the service and what to confirm before completing a transaction.

Paybis at a Glance

What Is Paybis?

Paybis is a platform that simplifies buying cryptocurrencies. Users select the asset they want to purchase, choose their preferred payment option, and complete the transaction. The section below explains each step of the process in more detail.

Payment Methods

Paybis accepts card payments, with PayPal and bank transfers also being available.

Payment choice affects both cost and speed, and card payments are usually instant once your account is verified. Bank transfers often cost less but can take several days. A platform that offers both lets you choose based on what matters most to you.

Multiple payment options also provide a backup plan. Since some card issuers occasionally decline crypto transactions, you can switch to an alternative settlement method. If you want to buy crypto on Paybis with a credit card, the Paybis homepage is the place to start.

Keep one risk in mind, though, since many issuers treat crypto purchases as cash advances. That can add a bank charge, and interest may start on day one. For many users, a debit card can be the most affordable payment option. Still, policies on cryptocurrency transactions vary by issuer, so it’s a good idea to confirm the rules before buying

PayPal suits buyers who prefer not to enter card details, and you can Paybis allows you to buy Bitcoin with PayPal. Check the limits and fees for that method before you confirm.

Country Coverage

Paybis serves customers in 180+ countries. That is a wide reach for a card buyer who travels or lives abroad.

Wide coverage is a plus, but availability can still vary by region. Payment methods, spending limits, and local regulations are not always the same in the US, the EU, and other parts of the world. It’s therefore worth checking that the platform and its key features are available in your country before signing up.

Supported Cryptocurrencies

Paybis lists 90+ cryptocurrencies. A long list gives you room to start with one asset and add others later.

The fact that an asset is listed on a platform shouldn’t be viewed as an endorsement. Every cryptocurrency carries risk, and smaller tokens tend to be more volatile than established ones, often posting larger gains but also steeper declines. That said, always do your own research before buying and avoid investing more than you can comfortably afford to lose.

Fees: What to Check

This review does not quote fee percentages as they change and can vary by payment method and country. Read the quote on the final confirmation screen instead.

Four costs can apply to one purchase:

• Platform fee: The charge the platform adds to your order.
• Spread: A markup built into the exchange rate.
• Issuer charge: A cash advance or foreign transaction fee from your bank.
• Network fee: A charge that applies when you send crypto to another wallet.

Compare the total you pay with the amount of crypto you receive. That figure is more useful than any headline rate. For Paybis, check the current fee page before you order.

Verification and Security

Many crypto platforms require identity verification before allowing a first purchase. The exact requirements may depend on your location, so it’s a good idea to review Paybis’ verification process before creating an account. As a result, your first purchase may take longer than future transactions.

It is also important to protect your account. To do that, turn on two-factor authentication and double-check wallet addresses before you send anything.

Questions to Ask Before You Buy

A short checklist helps you judge any platform, including Paybis. Answer these before you pay.

• Is the service available in my country?
• Which payment methods can I use there?
• What is the total cost shown on the final screen?
• How long will my first order take?
• Do I plan to keep the crypto on the platform or send it to my own wallet?

Write down your answers. If one of them is unclear, pause and read the platform’s current terms. Support quality also matters. Ask a simple question before you commit a larger sum, and see how quickly you get a clear reply.

Paybis Pros and Cons

Pros

• The platform accepts card payments, PayPal, and bank transfers.
• It serves customers in 180+ countries.
• It lists 90+ cryptocurrencies.

Things to check

• Fees vary, so read the quote before you confirm.
• Payment methods and limits can differ by country.
• Credit card purchases may trigger a cash advance charge from your bank.

Who Is Paybis For?

Paybis could suit buyers who want flexibility. Users can choose from several payment methods, including PayPal and bank transfers, rather than relying solely on card payments. The platform’s broad international availability may help people outside major crypto hubs, while its long list of supported cryptocurrencies offers plenty of options for portfolio diversification.

Before creating an account, take a look at the fee page if you want to understand the exact costs involved. For larger purchases, it’s also worth comparing the total cost across multiple platforms to ensure you’re getting the best deal.

Verdict

Paybis offers several payment options, wide country coverage, and a long list of assets. Whether it fits you depends on the fees and limits in your country. Check both before you order.

A small test purchase is a sensible first step. It allows you to see the quote, the verification process, and the time to completion. Increase your amount only if the experience suits you.

If you plan to hold Bitcoin, learn how the Bitcoin halving affects new supply.

Risk warning: Crypto assets are volatile and can lose value quickly. Prices move in cycles, so read up on how crypto market cycles work. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This article is for information only and is not financial advice.

Disclaimer: The above article is sponsored content; it’s written by a third party. CryptoPotato doesn’t endorse or assume responsibility for the content, advertising, products, quality, accuracy, or other materials on this page. Nothing in it should be construed as financial advice. Readers are strongly advised to verify the information independently and carefully before engaging with any company or project mentioned and to do their own research. Investing in cryptocurrencies carries a risk of capital loss, and readers are also advised to consult a professional before making any decisions that may or may not be based on the above-sponsored content.

Readers are also advised to read CryptoPotato’s full disclaimer.

The post Paybis Review 2026: How to Buy Crypto with a Card or PayPal appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum has slipped toward $2.2K after another wave of selling extended the decline from the $2.8K highs. With ETH now trading inside a key demand zone that also aligns with the lower boundary of its short-term descending channel, the current area could decide whether the correction stabilizes or deepens toward lower support. Meanwhile, the Coinbase Premium Index has dropped to its lowest reading in over a year, pointing to notably weak demand from US investors.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

Ethereum’s daily chart shows that the ascending channel that carried the price higher from the June lows near $1.5K has been broken. After rejection from the $2.8K supply zone in September, ETH fell below the channel’s lower boundary and then retested it around $2.5K, where sellers rejected the price again. This failed retest suggests the former support has turned into resistance.

The decline has now brought the asset into the $2.2K–$2.3K demand zone, which is located below the consolidation after August’s sharp rally. Today’s candle briefly wicked toward $2.15K before recovering, indicating that buyers are responding. However, the rebound remains modest, and the zone has yet to produce a convincing reaction.

If this support holds, ETH could attempt a recovery toward $2.5K. On the contrary, a valid daily close below $2.2K would expose the $1.9K order block, which is the base of the August rally and the next major demand area visible on the chart.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart shows Ethereum trading within a descending channel since early October, characterized by consistent lower highs and lower lows. The upper boundary has acted as dynamic resistance, most notably on October 21, when the price was rejected decisively from the $2.5K zone. After several days of ranging between approximately $2.3K and $2.4K, ETH broke lower aggressively.

The sell-off briefly pushed the price to the channel’s lower boundary near $2.15K, where buyers stepped in. ETH is now consolidating around $2.24K, inside the horizontal demand zone. This confluence of channel support and horizontal demand makes the current region particularly important for the short-term outlook.

A successful defense could produce a relief bounce toward the $2.4K range highs and the channel’s upper boundary near $2.42K, and a potential breakout above it would weaken the bearish structure. On the other hand, a confirmed move beneath the lower trendline would signal that sellers have regained control, leaving the $1.9K region as the next likely target.

Sentiment Analysis

The Coinbase Premium Index on CryptoQuant measures the price gap between ETH on Coinbase, a venue widely used by US investors, and Binance. Positive readings indicate stronger buying from US participants, while negative values suggest weaker demand or heavier selling on Coinbase relative to the broader market.

Throughout mid-2025, the index remained largely positive as ETH rallied toward $4.7K. Since November 2025, readings have mostly stayed negative, coinciding with the asset’s prolonged downtrend. The metric briefly turned positive in September 2026 around the $2.5K-$2.6K consolidation, but it has since collapsed to approximately -0.21, which is arguably the deepest reading in the visible period, alongside the latest drop toward $2.2K.

This suggests US demand has weakened sharply. Notably, a similarly extreme reading in February 2026 occurred close to a local low, so the current figure could also reflect capitulation rather than sustained selling. Either way, the index would need to recover alongside price for ETH to defend the $2.2K support and challenge the $2.5K resistance. Otherwise, the excess supply and weak technicals could bring ETH back below $2K soon.

The post Ethereum Price Analysis: Is $2K Next as Coinbase Premium Hits Yearly Low? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Today, we take a closer look at Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin, and Hyperliquid.

Ethereum (ETH)

Markets turned turbulent today after Binance experienced the largest hack ever recorded at over $6 billion. Ethereum was quick to react, falling by 7% on the weekly timeframe.

The current resistance is found at $2,400, and this level used to act as support in the past, but buyers were unable to hold off the sell pressure. Considering the current market sentiment, a test of the $2,000 support appears likely in the coming days.

Looking ahead, sentiment is bearish, and the price is making lower lows. This may continue until ETH lands on the key support. Once there, bulls could send the leading altcoin into a relief rally.

Ripple (XRP)

XRP closes the week 6% lower as sellers continue their pressure after turning $1.3 into a resistance level. With that key line lost, buyers have likely moved closer to $1.17, which is the next support.

With the bearish momentum building up, the XRP price remains in a downtrend, which is expected to continue. The best chance to reverse this adverse move is at $1.17, which may give buyers an opening to return.

Looking ahead, the cross-border token is about to erase most of its gains from August as the correction unfolds. XRP needs to prevent a lower low under $1 if it wants buyers to regain confidence later.

Cardano (ADA)

ADA closes another week in red with a 10% loss after sellers returned in force, mostly due to the recent market turbulence related to the Binance hack. Unfortunately for bulls, the price also broke the $0.20 support, which is now acting as resistance.

With no relief in sight, Cardano’s token will have to fall lower until buyers become interested again. The closest support that could reverse this price action is found around $0.17. However, buyers could also wait for $0.15, which held well back in June.

Looking ahead, ADA is in a deep correction that is somewhat normal after its rally from $0.15 to $0.28. However, if the price continues to fall back to $0.15, then confidence in a sustained recovery will be low.

Binance Coin (BNB)

Even if Binance experienced the largest crypto hack on record, BNB only fell by 7% on the weekly chart. This shows that Binance is extremely resilient and its exchange is highly profitable if it is able to absorb billions in losses.

Nevertheless, the BNB price did land on the $690 support, which is currently being tested. If, for any reason, this level is lost again, then this cryptocurrency will likely fall towards $580 next.

Looking ahead, holders of Binance Coin are likely to be on edge in the next few weeks and months as this recent Binance hack finds its resolution. Any loss of trust in Binance will quickly translate into BNB’s price action.

Hype (HYPE)

In a surprising move, Hyperliquid will become the infrastructure layer for ICE (the owner of the New York Stock Exchange) as it deploys futures markets for US traders across crypto, equities, commodities, foreign exchange, and other real-world assets.

This announcement turned the chart extremely bullish just as the price was about to drop from its ascending channel. The timing of this could not have been better, and HYPE rallied back to $97. However, sellers returned again to stop it from hitting $100.

Looking ahead, Hyperliquid’s market position and fundamentals are perhaps the best in crypto right now, and the price action throughout 2026 showed it. But for the rally to continue, bulls need to turn $100 into support.

The post Crypto Price Analysis Oct-30: ETH, XRP, ADA, BNB, and HYPE appeared first on CryptoPotato.