Tesla's Roadster reveal underscores the brand's innovation but highlights ongoing production delays, impacting consumer and investor confidence.

The post Tesla signals October 1 reveal for long-delayed Roadster appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Democrats' success in blocking GOP maps may stabilize congressional districts, potentially affecting party dynamics in future elections.

The post Democrats block GOP-friendly voting map ahead of 2026 midterms: WSJ appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Uniswap's dominance highlights its pivotal role in DeFi, potentially reshaping competitive dynamics and accelerating innovation in decentralized finance.

The post Uniswap processes over $70B in monthly volume, surpassing next three DEXs combined appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Putin's warning may deter European military involvement, potentially stabilizing tensions but complicating Ukraine's defense strategy.

The post Putin warns Europe against sending troops to Ukraine appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The breach highlights vulnerabilities in fintech security, emphasizing the need for robust verification processes to protect sensitive customer data.

The post Revolut confirms customer data breach from fake government requests appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s ‘Unusual Mix’: Bearish Inflation Print, Bullish Buyback Failure

Bitcoin’s path higher just got harder in the short term, but the setup further out may be improving, according to a new report. 

In a Friday note, European asset manager CoinShares’ Head of Research, James Butterfill, said firmer-than-expected core inflation raises the odds of tighter Fed policy and could cap bitcoin below $80,000 for now. 

But the longer-term case, he argued, rests on the U.S. Treasury’s bond buyback programme failing to bring down long-end yields — a failure that could ultimately feed the debasement narrative that has supported both bitcoin and gold.

“The result is therefore a somewhat unusual policy mix for Bitcoin,” the report read. “Today’s CPI data is negative at the margin, increasing the probability of tighter monetary policy and potentially limiting the immediate upside. 

“But the apparent failure of the Treasury’s current buying programme increases the likelihood of much more substantial intervention further ahead.”

It continued: “If that happens, it could become one of the more powerful medium-term catalysts for Bitcoin.”

Data on Friday revealed that the consumer price index, excluding food and energy, climbed 0.3% in August from a month earlier — higher than expected. 

According to CME’s FedWatch tool, traders think there is a 85% chance interest rates will be higher after the Federal Reserve meets next week. Bitcoin has typically performed well in a low interest rate environment. 

But the U.S. Treasury’s expanded bond buyback programme has so far failed to materially suppress long-term yields. 

If yields stay stubbornly high, Butterfill said, pressure will build on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to escalate to a much larger, “bazooka-style” buying programme aimed at forcing borrowing costs down.

Bitcoin in August had one of its best runs in years after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the department would double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks. 

The announcement and subsequent price surge has led some to say the much talked-about debasement trade is back. The so-called debasement trade is when investors buy an asset as a way to hedge against a currency losing value. 

Bitcoin and gold have both benefited as part of the trade as the dollar weakens. 

This post Bitcoin’s ‘Unusual Mix’: Bearish Inflation Print, Bullish Buyback Failure first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Blockstream Tells Hackers To Return Remaining Bitcoin Stolen in Liquid Theft

Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream has refused to negotiate further with hackers who last week stole 4,000 bitcoins from its Liquid network. 

Writing on X Friday, Blockstream said that the hackers still had time to return the funds before the company would work with law enforcement. 

White-hat hackers on Sunday withdrew about $320 million from the federation wallet that backs Liquid, a sidechain by Blockstream. After negotiating with Blockstream, they returned most of the funds but kept 598.5 coins worth over $46 million — demanding it as ransom. 

“Blockstream will not pay a ransom for the return of stolen funds,” the post read. “Taking assets without authorization and withholding their return is a crime, not responsible disclosure. It is not white-hat activity. It is theft.”

It added: “We will work with law enforcement, exchanges, service providers, forensic specialists, and other relevant parties to trace and recover the assets and identify those responsible.”

“We will not pay for the return of stolen property. We will not abandon our users. The Bitcoin community will not stop pursuing the funds.”

Liquid, or L-BTC, is a layer-2 created by Blockstream that allows users to fast move assets backed 1:1 with bitcoin. One of the assets, LBTC, is a token backed by bitcoin that allows for quick settlement — a bit like the Lightning Network. 

Hackers were able to get the funds by exploiting an inflation bug on the Liquid sidechain to create over 4,000 LBTC that did not exist before and cash them out for real, on-chain bitcoins. 

The hackers then had an exchange with Blockstream via messages written into Bitcoin blocks. 

In one message, the white hats wrote: “Please fix the bug first. The chain is under risk at latest commit right now. Make sure every node is patched. Then we will transfer the money back safely after confirming the fix.”

In the latest message, the hackers slammed Blocksteam as “delusional, greedy, and arrogant,” and threatened to reveal all of Blockstream’s encrypted messages in the exchange unless the company allowed thieves to keep 10% of the bitcoins. 

“You SHALL pay 10% using your own money as bug bounty or you will cause all your holders a 15% loss for your irresponsibility and stinginess,” the message read. 

The Bitcoin community is still reeling after hackers in July were able to steal over 1,800 bitcoins worth close to $140 million from Coldcard wallet holders. 

Users of the popular hardware wallet, created by Coinkite, were targeted because the product’s manufacturer did not use a true random number generator, allowing hackers to essentially guess investor seedphrases. 

This post Blockstream Tells Hackers To Return Remaining Bitcoin Stolen in Liquid Theft first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Italy’s Second Biggest Bank UniCredit Is Weighting up Crypto Custody: Report

Italy’s second largest bank is considering expanding into digital asset offerings, including custody, according to reports. 

According to a Friday Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter, Milan-based UniCredit is selecting a technology provider that would allow it to build the infrastructure needed to hold digital assets and facilitate their buying and selling. 

Bloomberg’s reporting added that tokenized investment products and fixed-income securities, the use of stablecoins and exposure to cryptocurrencies were all on the cards. 

The news comes as other banks in Europe expand crypto offerings. Spain moved first on retail, with BBVA rolling out bitcoin trading and custody to all customers via its app, using its own custody infrastructure rather than a third party; Santander’s Openbank followed with its own trading service.

Cecabank — a Spanish custodian with over €400bn under management that acts as backbone for 100+ financial institutions — went live with crypto custody in June via a partnership with Bit2Me.

And in Germany, Deutsche Bank is building custody with Bitpanda’s technology arm, while Taurus and DZ Bank got BaFin approval in January for its meinKrypto platform. 

New regulation in the European Union — Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) — gives banks a legal definition, a supervisor, and a familiar set of obligations to launch crypto services. 

UniCredit is one 37 lenders across 15 European countries working together to create a company called Qivalis with the aim of issuing a euro-denominated stablecoin.

Last year, the bank said it was offering professional clients a structured product tied to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust exchange-traded fund, with full protection against losses.

This post Italy’s Second Biggest Bank UniCredit Is Weighting up Crypto Custody: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Government Defeated as Lords Back UK Digital Assets Strategy

The UK government suffered a defeat in the House of Lords on Wednesday as peers backed an amendment requiring the Treasury to draw up a national strategy for regulating digital assets.

The upper chamber approved the measure by 194 votes to 138, with Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers combining against a near-solid bloc of Labour votes. Baroness Neville-Rolfe, a Conservative former Treasury minister, moved the amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill.

The new clause, titled “Digital assets strategy,” would require the Treasury to prepare, publish and consult on a strategy for regulating and developing digital assets and related digital financial market infrastructure in the UK.

The regulation of digital assets includes “cryptoassets, qualifying stablecoins, Central Bank Digital Currencies, tokenised securities and other digital and tokenised financial assets,” according to the draft. 

The UK is in the process of drafting a sweeping new crypto bill. The country’s Financial Conduct Authority finalised its regulatory framework for cryptoassets in June, with the regime due to take effect on 25 October 2027. The authorisation gateway for firms opened on 30 September and runs to 28 February 2027. 

Britain is trailing behind Brussels and Washington with digital asset regulation. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation has applied to service providers since 30 December 2024. 

And the U.S. under President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law in July 2025, establishing a federal framework for dollar-backed tokens. Broader market-structure legislation remains unfinished: the Clarity Act cleared the House in July 2025 by 294-134 but has been stuck in the Senate over DeFi, stablecoin yield and ethics provisions, with a procedural vote set for next week. 

This post Government Defeated as Lords Back UK Digital Assets Strategy first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Spikes, Shrugs off Hot US Inflation Data

Bitcoin’s price rose on Friday — despite data revealing that U.S. inflation had risen. 

The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap was recently trading for close to $78,749 after jumping 2% over a 24-hour period. At one point on Friday morning in New York, bitcoin rose as high as $79,607. 

Bitcoin’s price spike came after news dropped that U.S. consumer prices accelerated in August, reinforcing ​expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next week.

The consumer price index, excluding food and energy, climbed 0.3% in August from a month earlier, which was higher than expected. 

Inflation in the U.S. has been difficult to tame due to the war with Iran, which has lifted oil prices, in turn raising the costs of food, gasoline and other goods. 

Higher inflation typically means the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates, which in turn could stop bitcoin’s price climbing higher. 

According to CME’s FedWatch tool, traders think there is a 85% chance interest rates will be higher by next week. The Federal Reserve will meet next week and reveal what it will do with borrowing costs. 

Bitcoin has typically performed well in a low interest rate environment because it means people can buy more of the cryptocurrency with increased liquidity. 

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh, who took the helm in January, last month gave his first speech as head of the U.S. central bank and said he had “more work to do” to fight inflation. 

The U.S. is currently in the grips of an affordability crisis and rising oil prices are a hot topic ahead of the midterm elections. 

U.S. President Donald Trump has reassured voters that prices will get under control and repeatedly put pressure on the central bank to lower interest rates. 

Bitcoin in August had its biggest run in years following positive regulatory news and an announcement from the U.S. Treasury. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the department would double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks, helping non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold. The cryptocurrency then benefited from President Trump urging lawmakers to get key crypto legislation, the Clarity Act, over the line. 

This post Bitcoin Price Spikes, Shrugs off Hot US Inflation Data first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed a same-owner requirement for stablecoin transfers that would sharply narrow how customers can move tokens such as USDT through licensed crypto firms. The measure remains at the consultation stage and is not yet an operative rule.

Under the SEC Board-approved Sept. 3 consultation principles, stablecoins entering a customer account at a digital asset operator would have to come from an account or wallet verified as belonging to that customer. Withdrawals would likewise have to go to an account or wallet verified as the customer’s own.

The consequence is explicit: a stablecoin deposit from another person’s account, or a withdrawal to another person’s account, would be prohibited.

How the proposed ownership gate would work

As drafted, the restriction would stop a customer from using a Thai SEC-supervised platform to receive a transfer from someone else’s wallet or to send stablecoins to another person’s wallet. Its reach is limited to transfers conducted through supervised digital asset operators, rather than peer-to-peer transfers that take place entirely outside those firms.

The proposal would also require stablecoin transfer values to be consistent with a customer’s income source and financial position. Inbound and outbound transfers would each be capped at 5 million baht per day, per person, per operator.

The cap would not apply to transfers between customer accounts through SEC-supervised operators when both firms comply with the Travel Rule. The Sept. 11 consultation also lists cap exemptions for specified operator business transfers, certain Bank of Thailand-authorized operators and stablecoin/baht market makers. It remains unclear whether that cap waiver would affect the separately stated same-owner test, and consultation could add implementation detail.

The SEC said it developed the measures after observing significant growth in stablecoin transaction volume and value, particularly involving USDT. It also cited patterns that it associated with risks tied to money laundering, cybercrime and the circumvention of rules governing international money transfers.

The ownership test would be separate from Thailand’s finalized Travel Rule. That rule requires digital asset operators to collect information about transfer parties, check counterparties and verify ownership or control of certain self-hosted wallets. It takes effect on Feb. 27, 2027.

As described, the stablecoin proposal would add a stricter condition when a transfer crosses the boundary of a licensed operator: the outside sending or receiving account would have to belong to the platform’s customer, not another person.

On Sept. 11, the SEC opened the public consultation, with comments due by Sept. 25, 2026. It did not announce an effective date for the proposed stablecoin restrictions. Until final rules are issued, the same-owner restriction remains a proposal.

The post Thailand’s stablecoin proposal would block transfers to other people’s wallets appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin failed to break $80,000 on Sept. 11 as US stocks climbed about 1% and long-dated Treasury yields stayed near levels not seen in years.

Bitcoin registered an intraday high of $79,890, still short of the $80,000-$82,000 resistance zone identified by digital asset trading firm QCP. The S&P 500 closed up nearly 1%, while the Dow and Nasdaq followed closely.

That split is not proof that Bitcoin has decoupled from macro conditions yet or that sellers around $80,000 have become the dominant market force. Nevertheless, Bitcoin still has to show it can reclaim the level that has capped its recent advance.

Bonds eased from their peaks, but conditions stayed tight

August core CPI rose 0.3% on the month, keeping the Fed decision central to Bitcoin’s weekend setup.

The 10-year yield briefly touched 4.9915%, its highest level in almost three years, while the 30-year reached 5.424%, a 19-year high. The yields later pulled back to roughly 4.95% and 5.341%, respectively.

The move left the 10-year yield near 5%, maintaining a demanding backdrop for risk assets. Markets priced about an 85% probability of a quarter-point Fed rate increase the following week.

Bitcoin’s weaker showing narrowed the weekend question: was the cryptocurrency only lagging an equity rebound, or was resistance near $80,000 becoming an obstacle in its own right?

The options market sets a two-level test

QCP reported that the Sept. 12 Bitcoin options expiry carried at-the-money implied volatility near 46%, compared with roughly 38%-40% across the rest of the curve.

Turnover was concentrated in Sept. 12 calls at $78,500 and $80,000, and QCP also saw steady demand for $75,000 puts expiring Sept. 11 and Sept. 18.

Call activity kept upside exposure active near spot, while the puts showed that investors were still paying for downside protection.

QCP’s levels reduce the weekend setup to support at the $76,300-$76,500 zone and resistance at the $80,000-$82,000 range.

A weekend break can establish direction, but cannot by itself distinguish macro pressure from Bitcoin-specific selling.

Wednesday’s Fed decision is the verification event

The Federal Reserve’s Sept. 15-16 meeting includes a new Summary of Economic Projections.

The test is whether Bitcoin can sustain a move beyond QCP’s range after the announcement. A break above $80,000–$82,000 would strengthen the recovery case; a loss of $76,300–$76,500 would weaken the consolidation case. Neither outcome alone would establish the cause.

The post Bitcoin’s $80,000 ceiling looks fragile after stocks shrugged off near-5% Treasury yields appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Hardware wallets might be able to protect your keys, but the paperwork from buying them could expose your identity.

To buy a hardware wallet, you give a company your name and address so it can send you a device designed to put you in control of your money. Once you've unpacked the box and set it up, there is little reason to think about the order again.

However, somewhere in the delivery business a record of that purchase may survive for years.

In a Sept. 4 update to its shipping-provider breach disclosure, Trezor said approximately 67,000 additional US customers were affected, including orders from 2019 to 2021. It said ShipMonk, the shipping company tasked with delivering the devices, gave it written assurances that it deleted the records. The company now lists 80,689 affected customers overall.

Trezor says its systems and devices were unaffected and that the contents of parcels weren't exposed. The leaked information included only contact and delivery details, so no funds were stolen or misappropriated.

And while the financial damage so far is zero, those contact details create a bigger problem for the customer that has outlasted the purchase and could continue well into the future.

The device they bought will continue protecting their money, but the information used to deliver it could help a stranger impersonate someone they trust.

The device and the person

The Bitcoin network records coins and who can spend them. Wallets hold the private keys that authorize spending: the secrets that let their owner instruct the network to transfer money.

Hardware wallets keep those secrets in a dedicated device. When you make a payment, it can approve the transaction without handing the private key to the computer running the accompanying software.

That separation means a problem with the computer doesn't automatically become a loss of money.

You also need a way to recover access if the device breaks or disappears, which is where wallet backups step in. The way they work depends mostly on the setup, but it's usually a sequence of words that can recreate the wallet on another device.

However, that recovery mechanism can also help a thief who obtains it, which is why Trezor's backup instructions advise against sharing the backup or keeping digital copies.

Any attacker who persuades the wallet owner to hand over that information bypasses all the device's protections. But convincing a person that a request for their backup is legitimate has always been the hardest part of this type of scam.

Even the tiniest bit of personal information can make that message much more convincing. An email addressed to you by name that refers to an order you recognize feels different from a generic warning sent to a million inboxes. Letters delivered to your home can easily look like official correspondence, even when their instructions are fraudulent.

Ledger's record of phishing campaigns includes physical letters directing recipients to scan a code or visit a website where they are asked for their recovery words. Those campaigns show how physical mail can carry the scam.

The phrase ‘wallet leak' can obscure what someone has actually obtained. Contact information can help a scammer approach an owner; the wallet's secrets can give them access to the money.

An order might have been a gift. The buyer might have stopped using the device or sold their coins. A shipping record is a clue to a past purchase, but it leaves plenty of uncertainty about what the buyer owns today.

An imperfect clue can still be enough to select a target for deception. The owner then has to assess messages from strangers who may know details that were guaranteed to remain private. The secret inside the hardware wallet and the information outside it are part of the same discussion of personal security, even though they require different protections.

Wallet orders outlive their delivery

Shipping information has a legitimate purpose, as someone has to put the right parcel on the right route, resolve a failed delivery, and handle a return. Given the size and scope of that logistical operation, companies selling devices internationally often rely on other businesses to do that for them.

Problems start when what should be temporary operational information becomes a permanent corporate asset. Keeping an old record costs very little, and deciding where every piece of information went can require work across departments and vendors.

The original reason for collecting it will most likely expire long before the system that stores it does.

Across businesses, information can persist in database replicas, support-system exports, and backups long after its removal from the application staff use every day. Establishing that a record is gone requires a process that accounts for the ways it was stored and shared.

The Federal Trade Commission's business guidance starts from a pretty straightforward principle: collect and retain sensitive information only for a legitimate business need, know where it goes, and dispose of it securely. Its guidance also addresses service providers, because outsourcing a task doesn't absolve the company of the need to understand how the information is handled.

A deletion clause that most contracts have is part of that process, and so is a vendor's assurance that the clause has been followed. But neither one is the same as direct evidence that every relevant system has applied the retention policy.

You can check the address on the parcel and confirm receipt of the device, but you can't inspect the fulfillment partner's databases several years later. The company choosing the partner needs to demand evidence, define retention periods, and test whether those terms are being honored.

That makes privacy a product responsibility as well as a user habit. Advising customers to be careful with their backup addresses doesn't resolve the fate of a record already entrusted to a retailer and its contractors.

Payment cards can be replaced with a new number and compromised passwords can be retired. But home addresses can remain valid long after the original purchase is forgotten, and a copied record can't be recalled from everyone who received it.

Even moving doesn't erase the association. Old addresses can still help someone match other records or impersonate a business the customer once dealt with. The ongoing cost is partly financial security and partly the effort of deciding which communications deserve attention.

Privacy has to survive the wallet purchase

There are ways to keep deliveries more private. Parcel lockers, neutral packaging, and separate contact details for online orders can make these scams much harder to pull off.

However, there's a limit to how much you can push each of these measures. Locker operators can require identification, payment providers can retain billing information, and having a hardware wallet sent in a blank box doesn't delete the retailer's records.

Buying through an unfamiliar or secondhand seller can introduce a different problem if the device's origin becomes harder to trust.

These protections work at different points in the purchase. Buyers need to know which protection they are paying for and which organizations will receive their details.

For manufacturers, the biggest improvement needs to happen before a breach notice. It means collecting less where possible, separating information that doesn't need to travel together, and establishing evidence that contractors dispose of records when their job is over.

Legitimate obligations don't automatically require keeping every old phone number and delivery address available throughout the commercial relationship.

Hardware wallets protect private keys by keeping them away from an ordinary computer. Protecting the person who buys one requires work throughout the business delivering it. Manufacturers choose the warehouse and negotiate the contract, so they can demand evidence that old records have been removed.

Those decisions help determine how much trust a customer must keep extending long after they open the box.

The post The biggest vulnerability in your Bitcoin wallet might be the shipping label appeared first on CryptoSlate.

August’s inflation report left the Federal Reserve with a mixed signal: gasoline drove much of the headline increase, but monthly core inflation accelerated. That combination kept Governor Christopher Waller’s conditional case for a rate hike in play even as Bitcoin held its daily gain.

CryptoSlate's live Bitcoin market data had BTC at $78,683, up 2.08% over 24 hours, when trading closed in the US for the week. In contrast, Reuters reported that futures had moved to about an 85% probability of a quarter-point increase at the Fed's September 15-16 meeting, from about 70% before the inflation report. CME says its FedWatch probabilities are derived from 30-Day Fed Funds futures.

The policy tension lay inside the inflation report: annual core inflation eased, while its latest monthly pace picked up.

CPI composition cut both ways

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the consumer price index increased 0.4% in August on a seasonally adjusted basis after a 0.1% rise in July. The unadjusted 12-month rate stayed at 3.4%.

Gasoline supplied the clearest reason to look beneath the headline. Its index rose 3.9% and accounted for more than one-third of the monthly all-items increase, while the broader energy index gained 2.1%.

That composition could support a limited relief case for Bitcoin. An outsized contribution from a volatile component does not carry the same policy signal as a similarly broad increase across the basket.

The report did not, however, deliver an energy-only inflation story. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.3% in August after a 0.2% increase in July. Its annual rate eased to 2.4% from 2.5%, creating the central split: the longer-run measure improved while the latest monthly pace accelerated.

Other parts of the basket showed pressure too. Shelter rose 0.3% in August, and services excluding energy services were up 3.0% over 12 months. Gasoline explained a large share of the headline move, but not the entire report.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller had made August inflation central to his next decision. In a September 3 speech, Waller said continued progress toward the Fed's 2% goal would incline him to support holding the policy rate steady. He also said a hot report, or evidence that progress had reversed, could lead him to consider a hike at the September 15-16 meeting.

Waller described that view as a reaction function, not a commitment. His comments do not determine how he or the committee will vote. They do show why the monthly core acceleration cannot be dismissed simply because annual core inflation edged lower.

Waller also said core inflation was useful for seeing through energy volatility and that broader spillovers from earlier energy increases had not appeared so far. At the same time, he identified renewed energy pressure and a possible rise in longer-term inflation expectations as risks the Fed should watch.

The August report therefore landed between the two sides of his test. Annual core inflation moved closer to target, but the latest monthly core reading moved away from the pace seen in July. The futures response showed that traders gave substantial weight to the latter risk.

September’s energy risk lies beyond August CPI

Bitcoin's 24-hour move still needs careful handling. During Saturday trading, Bitcoin has fallen to around $77,500 into thin weekend liquidity.

Also, Friday's release describes August, so it cannot include the sharper oil-price move that developed in September.

CryptoSlate's pre-CPI analysis highlighted that timing gap. The new energy shock is not evidence inside August CPI, and it would be premature to say it has already spread into broader prices. It can still matter through future inflation data and expectations, the channels Waller identified as policy risks.

August CPI gave policymakers a reason to look through part of the gasoline-led jump, but faster monthly core inflation complicated the case for a hold. Whether September’s energy pressure persists or spreads remains a separate risk for subsequent data and inflation expectations.

The post Why Bitcoin initially held its gain as rate traders put September hike odds at 85% appeared first on CryptoSlate.

When you send money to someone abroad, the confirmation on your phone is only your half of the transaction: the other half belongs to the person who has to use it. Their rent may be due in local currency. Their nearest cash collection point may be across town. They may want to spend some of the money immediately and keep the rest in dollars.

Transfers can take seconds and leave recipients with an afternoon's work. Stablecoin payments compete in that everyday setting. These privately issued digital tokens are designed to track a currency, usually the dollar, and move across blockchain networks. Recipients can also keep them, retaining dollar exposure until they want to convert the money into the currency used at home.

But receiving a dollar token isn't the same as receiving money in a local bank account. Whether it's better depends partly on what the recipient intends to do next. The same transfer can be convenient for someone already using a crypto app and very difficult for their parent who wants cash for the week.

Where stablecoins stop being cheap

Consider a transfer that begins with euros in a bank account and ends with reais available to spend in Brazil. Senders using stablecoins might first fund an exchange account and buy tokens, then transfer them to the recipient. At the other end, the recipient sells those tokens and withdraws the proceeds into a local account.

The blockchain handles the movement of the token, but it doesn't set every exchange rate or control the price of every service around that movement. An inexpensive transfer between digital addresses can therefore be surrounded by more expensive transactions.

Some costs are explicit fees, while others are built into the exchange rate. Services can advertise low transfer fees while supplying fewer reais for each euro than a competitor. Households experience both as less money received, regardless of where the charge appears on the receipt.

Bank of Italy researchers examined $200 USDC transfers across routes connecting Italy with five countries in a paper published in July. Its Brazil results show how the same pair of countries can produce very different comparisons depending on which way the money travels.

USDC transactions were conducted in March 2026; Wise simulations were conducted on April 14. These are a small set of dated observations, not current quotes or market-wide averages. Dollar amounts are calculations from the paper's percentages.

The cheaper route switched with the direction of the payment. That makes sense once the transfer is understood as a sequence of purchases and withdrawals in different markets. Someone selling tokens in one country faces a different set of prices and services from someone buying them there.

The World Bank's remittance-price work also includes exchange-rate margins in the cost of sending money. Comparing the sender's total spending with the recipient's payout captures costs that an advertised fee can leave out. Country averages provide context, while individual households need quotes for the route and payout method they will actually use.

Speed depends on those surrounding services too. Tokens may appear in a wallet within seconds, while conversion or withdrawal requires a banking step that takes a day. Recipients who need the local payout have to wait for that step before they can spend.

Well-connected exchanges and fast domestic payment systems can make the last step painless. Recipients in Brazil may have little reason to care which network carried the token if the proceeds become spendable in the app they already use.

That's a much more demanding standard than counting how quickly a blockchain confirms a transfer, but it's also the standard payment services are supposed to meet.

Stablecoins give the recipient another choice

There's also another reason a simple cheapest-route comparison can miss the appeal of digital dollars: it often assumes the recipient wants to convert everything immediately.

Imagine, instead, someone receiving $200 who wants the local-currency equivalent of $120 for expenses and wants to retain the rest in dollar form. It's a hypothetical household, but it exposes two separate decisions: how to move the money and what to hold once they receive it.

Stablecoins can combine those decisions. Recipients can convert part of the balance and retain the rest, provided the available services and local rules permit it. Alongside any savings on the transfer, they gain control over how much to convert.

Keeping dollars brings exchange-rate risk for people whose expenses are in local currency. Dollars can also lose purchasing power, and holding them as tokens adds dependence on the issuer's reserves and redemption arrangements. Stablecoin balances generally lack the deposit insurance that eligible bank accounts provide.

Still, the ability to choose when and how much to convert can have genuine household value. It's different from a provider deciding that a transfer must be paid out entirely in local currency, and different again from a sender insisting the recipient learn a new financial system simply because the sender prefers it.

Access to the issuer follows its own rules. Circle Mint serves institutions obtaining and redeeming USDC, while retail users often buy and sell through exchanges or payment providers. Circle's EEA redemption policy provides a separate route for eligible holders under European rules. Households may therefore have redemption rights even when they can't open institutional accounts.

For someone sending money home, those rights work with the services they can actually reach. Redemption with an issuer still leaves the recipient needing local conversion or cash access, with support they can understand if something goes wrong.

Familiarity has an economic value here. Recipients who know the person behind the counter can ask for help; relatives using the same app can explain an unfamiliar step. Those relationships save time and reduce mistakes. They also spare the sender from becoming unpaid technical support for the whole family, a cost absent from blockchain fee estimates.

Recipients deserve a say in how they get their money. The sender's preferred app becomes a poor choice if using it means giving someone else a task they didn't ask for.

The best payment is the one you can actually use

Much of the appeal of remittance technology comes from making small payments less expensive. Fees that look modest in a comparison table add up when the same family pays them every month.

In a purely illustrative example, reducing the all-in cost of a $200 monthly transfer from 5% to 2% saves $6 each time, or $72 across twelve transfers. That's the relevant financial gain; whether it comes from a stablecoin, a bank, or a specialist payment company is secondary to whether the household can actually receive it.

The comparison also needs a fixed starting point. If the sender has $200 in total, adding a fee on top produces a different result from deducting that fee from the amount sent. Comparing only the advertised transfer amounts can accidentally compare different budgets.

Getting started takes work too. New customers may need to verify their identity and fund another account before learning which network their recipient supports. Sending to the wrong address or an unsupported network can make recovery difficult or impossible, depending on who controls the receiving account. Experienced crypto users may navigate those steps easily, while first-time customers need help that the quoted transfer price may exclude.

Conventional services impose their own work. Cash collection can require travel and waiting, while account access may depend on documents the recipient lacks. Providers with excellent apps in the sending country can offer poor service at the destination. The comparison has to include the effort each route demands from both people.

Payment companies can take on much of that work themselves. They might move stablecoins between their own accounts and pay out ordinary money through a familiar local system, handling the conversion and network choices for the household.

For someone paying for food, a familiar local balance may be the whole point. The company can choose its settlement method while the customer chooses where to spend.

Other recipients will prefer the wallet because retaining the token is the point. Services that offer both choices let households decide how much of the balance to convert, with the costs explained before they commit.

Sending money home is a personal financial transaction. The sender has often already decided who needs the money and what they want it to accomplish. The payment service earns its fee by carrying that intention through to the recipient.

For one family, that may mean more local currency for the week's expenses; for another, it may mean keeping part of the payment in dollars. Both depend on what the person receiving the money can do with it.

The post Stablecoins make sending money easy until someone needs to spend it appeared first on CryptoSlate.

On Wednesday, September 16, 2026, the VeChainThor network switches on the Interstellar hardfork. The point that matters for you as a holder: the switchover is not a time of day but a block height. Activation happens at block 25,902,540, and when exactly that block falls is for the chain itself to decide. Anyone holding VET on an exchange will lose the ability to deposit and withdraw for a few hours around that point. Anyone running their own node has to swap the software beforehand. Anyone holding their tokens in self-custody needs to do nothing at all.

For this article cryptoticker.io did not take the announcement on trust but measured: the mainnet's actual block time across three time windows, and the software versions of the nodes a public VeChain node can see at this moment. Both measurements appear further down with date, method and sample size.

Interstellar and VIP-255: what is being changed on VeChainThor

Interstellar is the name of the upgrade, VIP-255 the number of the improvement proposal behind it. VIP stands for VeChain Improvement Proposal and denotes a formal proposal to change the protocol, voted on by the holders of Authority and Economic nodes. According to VeChain, the vote on VIP-255 ran from August 10 to 17, 2026 on the VeVote platform and passed.

In substance, Interstellar brings the VeChainThor virtual machine up to Ethereum's level. Eleven Ethereum improvement proposals from the Cancun, Prague and Osaka upgrades are adopted in a single fork: EIP-1153, EIP-5656, EIP-6780, EIP-7939, EIP-2537, EIP-7951, EIP-7823, EIP-7883, EIP-2935, EIP-7825 and EIP-7934. A hardfork is a protocol change that is not backwards compatible: nodes running old software treat the new blocks as invalid and drop out of consensus.

What Interstellar expressly does not touch is set out in the VeChain team's official announcement: there is no token migration, no swap, no new contract addresses, no change to the VET supply, to VTHO generation or to the staking rules. Blob transactions, of the kind Ethereum introduced for rollups, are not part of the package.

Block height instead of clock time: why the date is only approximate

Chain upgrades are tied to a block number because every node sees the same block number but not the same clock. For you that means every time of day you read about Interstellar is a projection. It is only as accurate as the chain keeps its rhythm.

VeChainThor works with fixed ten-second slots. If the authority node responsible produces no block in its slot, the slot stays empty and the average time per block rises above ten seconds. It is precisely that deviation that decides whether activation arrives on schedule, a quarter of an hour later or half a day later.

Activation on the testnet came at block 25,891,380 according to the node software release notes and took place around September 9. The mainnet follows at block 25,902,540.

Our measurement: 10.0012 seconds per block over 24 hours

This analysis was carried out by cryptoticker.io itself on September 12, 2026. Method: the current block was fetched through the public node mainnet.vechain.org and compared with the blocks 8,640, 60,480 and 259,200 positions earlier; the difference between the timestamps gives the mean block time in each window. That amounts to 259,200 blocks examined, roughly thirty days.

The state at the time of measurement: block 25,870,700, timestamp 18:54:10 UTC on September 12, 2026. That left 31,840 blocks to go until activation.

• 24 hours: 8,640 blocks in 86,410 seconds, a mean of 10.0012 seconds per block. A single slot stayed empty.
• 7 days: 60,480 blocks in 604,960 seconds, a mean of 10.0026 seconds. 16 empty slots, or 0.03 percent.
• 30 days: 259,200 blocks in 2,592,400 seconds, a mean of 10.0015 seconds. 40 empty slots, or 0.02 percent.

Projecting the remaining 31,840 blocks forward at those three rates puts activation on September 16, 2026 between 11:21 and 11:22 UTC. The VeChain team's announcement names 11:15 UTC. The gap of some six minutes arises because the announcement assumes a flat ten seconds, while the chain runs one to three thousandths above that on average.

The practical lesson from these figures is that VeChain keeps its rhythm remarkably clean. On a chain that misses 40 out of 259,240 slots in thirty days, an activation date four days out shifts by minutes, not hours. So you can plan for the morning of September 16, but you should not schedule a window that has to be accurate to within ten minutes.

Thor v2.5.0: the node version that supports Interstellar

The network's reference software is called Thor. Release v2.5.0 from the start of September contains the Interstellar rules along with both activation heights, for testnet and mainnet. The release notes state the obligation plainly: operators have to update to v2.5.0 before the relevant block height. Configuration files do not need to be touched; the update runs in place.

Everyone running a node of their own is affected: authority masternodes, public RPC providers, exchanges, custodians and every company with its own connection to the chain. Anyone operating an application that talks through a third-party RPC endpoint depends on that provider's update discipline.

79 percent of the visible nodes are ready, 21 percent are not

On to the second measurement of our own. The peers endpoint of a public VeChain node reveals the software identifier of every counterparty it is currently connected to. cryptoticker.io queried that endpoint six times at two-second intervals on September 12, 2026 at 18:55 UTC and deduplicated the responses by peer identifier. The result: 105 unique counterparties.

• 83 nodes were running Thor v2.5.0 and are therefore equipped for Interstellar. That is 79.0 percent.
• 22 nodes were running older releases: 15 on v2.4.4, three on v2.4.0, two on v2.4.2, and one each on v2.4.1 and v2.4.3.

Those 21 percent are no reason to panic, but they are not nothing either. A node on v2.4.x will reject the blocks produced after the fork and remain stuck at the old state. That becomes noticeable to you as a user if your wallet or your portfolio tracker talks to exactly such an endpoint: balances and transactions appear to freeze there even though everything continues on the chain.

What this measurement does not show belongs in the picture as well. It is one public node's view of its immediate counterparties and therefore not a complete picture of the network. Whether the authority masternodes that actually produce the blocks have been updated cannot be read from it, because the peer list names versions but not roles. The low rate of empty slots suggests block production is running stably; it is not evidence of the producers' software versions.

Binance suspends VET deposits and withdrawals: the window on September 16

Exchanges follow a standard procedure at hardforks: they stop deposits and withdrawals some time before activation, update their nodes, wait for a few confirmations and reopen. On September 11 Binance announced that it would suspend VET deposits and withdrawals from September 16 at 19:15 Korean time, which corresponds to 10:15 UTC. Trading itself continues during the pause according to the announcement; deposits and withdrawals will be released again once the network is stable.

Three practical consequences follow. First, if you want to move VET from an exchange to your own wallet before the fork, plan that for September 15 or the morning of September 16 by 10:00 UTC at the latest. Second, a pause on transfers is not a trading pause; your holding remains sellable. Third, reopening "after stabilisation" is a soft deadline with no time attached, and it occasionally takes half a day.

Other trading venues announce such pauses individually, usually in their announcements or status area. Whether your provider has announced anything at all is the question you have to settle yourself: how to reach the pages that can be relied on is set out in our guide to exchange status pages. If you want to check at the same time how transparently your trading venue operates overall, the regulated addresses are in the crypto exchange comparison.

VET in your own wallet: why there is nothing to do here

For self-custodians Interstellar is a non-event. The official announcement states expressly that ordinary VET and VTHO holders need take no action: addresses remain valid, private keys remain valid, holdings do not change. Whatever you have in a hardware or software wallet will still be sitting there unchanged afterwards.

There is one qualification all the same, and it concerns the display rather than the holding. Wallet apps talk to the chain through nodes the maker either runs or buys in. If your app is hooked up to a node still running v2.4.x after the fork, it will show stale data. The remedy is unspectacular: wait a few hours, update the app, and switch the node in the settings if necessary.

Anyone keeping their tokens on an exchange anyway and using the occasion to think about moving into self-custody should take a calm look at the devices and how they differ. A hardfork is a good prompt for that, because it brings home what your access currently depends on.

The eleven EIPs: what developers can use from September 16

The technical core of VIP-255 is the alignment of the VeChainThor VM with Ethereum. Two groups can be distinguished.

New opcodes for contracts

EIP-1153 brings transient storage, meaning storage that exists only for the duration of a transaction and lapses afterwards. That makes reentrancy locks and similar patterns considerably cheaper. EIP-5656 adds the MCOPY instruction for fast copying of memory areas, EIP-6780 restricts the behaviour of SELFDESTRUCT, and EIP-7939 adds an instruction for counting leading zero bits.

Cryptography the chain can verify itself

EIP-2537 brings arithmetic operations on the BLS12-381 curve, EIP-7951 the verification of signatures on the secp256r1 curve. The second curve is the one built into smartphones, security chips and passkeys. For VeChain that means a signature generated by a phone's security chip can be verified directly on the chain, without an expensive detour through a contract. EIP-2935 makes historical block hashes available through a system contract, and EIP-7823 and EIP-7883 adjust modular exponentiation and its costs.

Gas limit and block size: two new ceilings

Two items in the package affect capacity rather than cryptography. EIP-7825 sets a fixed ceiling on the gas of a single transaction, specifically 16,777,216 gas. EIP-7934 caps the size of a block in its encoded form at 8 mebibytes.

Both limits serve robustness: a single enormous transaction can no longer fill a block on its own, and oversized blocks can no longer crawl through the network. This becomes relevant for developers who deploy very large contracts in one go or pack bulk operations into a single transaction. Anyone running such processes should put them through the testnet before September 16, where Interstellar has been active since September 9.

What can go wrong in a hardfork and how you will notice

The most common disruption is not a chain split but a display gap. Typical symptoms around activation: a withdrawal stays on "processing" longer than usual. A block explorer shows a different state from your wallet. A decentralised application reports errors when sending.

In all three cases waiting is the right first reaction. What you should avoid is the thing fraudsters count on at every upgrade: messages prompting you towards a "migration" or a "wallet verification". Interstellar involves no migration. Any prompt to enter your seed phrase or to send tokens to an address so that they can be "converted" is an attempted theft.

A second reflex is worth having as well: check deadlines not when they appear in the news but all together. Going through the market's current cutoff dates once a month, in one pass, means running into an expired deadline less often.

Timeline to activation

The sequence in the order in which it affects you:

• By September 15: node operators swap their software to Thor v2.5.0. Developers test against the testnet.
• September 16, from around 10:15 UTC: Binance stops VET deposits and withdrawals. Other trading venues set their own windows.
• September 16, around 11:20 UTC: block 25,902,540 falls and Interstellar goes live. On our measurement the point lies six to seven minutes behind the announced time.
• Afterwards: exchanges reopen transfers without a fixed time, as soon as their nodes follow along stably.

Checking VeChain Interstellar: what to take away

1. Bring transfers forward. If you want to move VET before the fork, get it done by the morning of September 16. Which trading venues announce such windows cleanly is shown in the crypto exchange comparison.
2. Establish what applies to you. Your own node means an obligation to update to Thor v2.5.0; your own wallet means doing nothing. Anyone wanting to settle the difference between an exchange balance and self-custody for good will find the devices in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Stay calm and collect the dates. Display errors after a fork usually resolve themselves; real deadlines do not. Anyone keeping holdings and cutoff dates in one place will find suitable tools in the comparison of analytics platforms.

The sources at a glance: VeChain's official announcement on Interstellar and VIP-255, and the release notes for Thor v2.5.0 with both activation heights. The block time and version figures come from our own survey of September 12, 2026.

(As of September 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

A crypto CFD and a purchased coin look almost identical on screen, yet in law they are two different things. With a CFD you enter into a contract with a provider on the difference in price, and not a single coin ever moves to you. With a direct purchase the crypto asset itself belongs to you, and you can withdraw it to a wallet of your own. Almost everything else follows from that one distinction: the leverage you are allowed, the tax treatment, the custody arrangement, and the question of who stands behind your money if things go wrong.

This guide places both routes side by side, using the rules that actually apply in Germany. The supervisory figures come from BaFin's general administrative act on contracts for difference, the tax figures from the German Income Tax Act as currently in force. At the end there is an assessment of which product suits which type of investor.

What is a crypto CFD, and what do you actually own?

A contract for difference, or CFD, is an agreement between you and a provider on the difference between the price when a position is opened and the price when it is closed. If the price moves your way, the provider pays you the difference; if it moves against you, you pay. The asset the contract refers to, known in the trade as the underlying, is never transferred. A crypto CFD on Bitcoin therefore gives you exposure to the price, but no Bitcoin.

Two terms determine the size of such a position. The notional value is the full amount the contract is written on. The initial margin is the share of that amount you have to put up yourself for the position to be opened. The ratio between the two gives you the leverage: pay in ten percent of the notional value and you are trading at 10:1.

A direct purchase works differently. You transfer money to a crypto exchange, buy the crypto asset there and have it credited to your account. From there you can withdraw it to a wallet whose keys you hold yourself. There is no leverage on this route as long as you borrow nothing; the most you can lose is what you put in.

Why crypto CFD leverage stops at 2:1 in Germany

Retail clients in Germany face a hard ceiling, and for cryptocurrencies it is stricter than for any other asset class. The relevant text is BaFin's general administrative act of July 23, 2019 (file reference VBS 7-Wp 5427-2018/0057), issued under Article 42 of the European MiFIR regulation. The act prohibits the marketing of CFDs to retail clients and exempts only those contracts that meet a series of protective conditions.

The first of those conditions is initial margin protection: a minimum deposit, tiered by underlying. The act sets out these rates:

• 50 percent of the notional value where the underlying is a cryptocurrency. That equals 2:1 leverage.
• 20 percent for equities as the underlying, so 5:1.
• 10 percent for commodities and equity indices other than the leading indices expressly named.
• 5 percent for the named leading indices, for gold, and for currency pairs including at least one minor currency.
• 3.33 percent for currency pairs made up of two major currencies, the highest permitted ratio of 30:1.

Crypto sits at the strictest end of that scale, and the reason is spelled out in the act's own explanatory statement: the higher the leverage, the larger the possible loss relative to the capital committed. Anyone offered leverage beyond 2:1 on crypto assets is either not being treated as a retail client or is not dealing with a provider that follows German supervisory rules. Reading the terms and checking the licence therefore belongs before the first trade, and that is exactly what our crypto broker comparison is for.

Custody and counterparty risk: where your crypto sits when it matters

Counterparty risk is the danger that the other side of a contract cannot meet its obligation. With a CFD that risk is the core of the product: your claim is against the provider, not against an asset you own. If the provider fails, everything depends on how your balance is classified there in law and which compensation scheme it belongs to. Both are stated in the client information and should be read before the account is opened.

With a direct purchase the risk shifts. Leave the coins on the exchange and you still hold a claim against a company. Withdraw them to a wallet whose keys only you know and the counterparty risk disappears, replaced by a different one: responsibility for the key. Lost is lost, and nobody can restore access. Which of the two mistakes is easier to avoid is for each investor to judge; the range of trading venues and their custody models is in our crypto exchange comparison.

One practical side effect is often overlooked: a CFD cannot be used to pay for anything, to stake anything or to send anything to another address. The product ends with settlement in euros. Anyone who wants to use crypto assets rather than merely bet on their price cannot avoid buying them outright.

Margin close-out: when the provider force-closes your position

Margin close-out protection is the second mandatory condition in the BaFin act. It requires the provider to close open CFDs as soon as the sum of the cash in the CFD trading account and the unrealised net profits of all open positions falls below half of the total initial margin protection. The technical term is close-out; in everyday language people speak of forced liquidation.

A simple calculation shows what that means. On a crypto CFD with a notional value of 2,000 euros you have to deposit 1,000 euros of initial margin. The close-out threshold sits at half of that, so at 500 euros. Once the position has lost 500 euros in value the provider closes it and the loss is realised. At 2:1 leverage that corresponds to a 25 percent fall in the underlying. For an asset capable of moves like that in a single day, this is not a theoretical limit.

Leveraged positions on crypto trading venues follow the same mechanics under a different name and with different thresholds. How to work out the point at which a position is closed is set out step by step in our article on the liquidation price. A direct purchase without credit has no such point: a position that owes nobody anything cannot be closed against your will.

Negative balance protection: why retail clients no longer face margin calls

A margin call arises when the capital in a trading account no longer covers the loss and the difference has to be settled out of the investor's other assets. BaFin prohibited exactly that arrangement for retail clients back in its general administrative act of May 8, 2017; providers had until August 10, 2017 to implement it.

The 2019 version refined the safeguard and turned it into negative balance protection. It caps a retail client's total liability across all CFDs at the funds held in the trading account concerned. A CFD position therefore cannot cost you more than the money you have deposited. A total loss of the account remains possible, and at 2:1 leverage a halving of the underlying is arithmetically enough to produce one.

The same set of rules contains a prohibition that is easy to check in practice: providers may not grant retail clients money or benefits in kind for opening a CFD account. The only exceptions are realised profits and information and research tools. So anyone being marketed crypto CFDs with a deposit bonus is looking at a provider that pays no attention to this requirement.

The standardised risk warning and what the regulators' loss rates show

Every advertisement and every piece of client information about CFDs has to carry a prescribed warning. Its wording is fixed in the act and opens like this: "CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage." A figure follows that each provider has to calculate and disclose for itself, namely the percentage of retail client accounts that lose money trading CFDs with it.

That rate is not decoration but the most informative detail on a provider's page. BaFin documents where the order of magnitude comes from in the explanatory statement to its act, citing studies by other European supervisors. Cyprus's CySEC examined around 290,000 client accounts at 18 larger CFD providers from January 1 to August 31, 2017; 76 percent of those accounts ended with an overall loss, averaging some 1,600 euros per account. Spain's CNMV arrived at roughly 82 percent of retail clients losing money over a 21-month period between the start of 2015 and the end of 2016.

Both figures cover CFDs as a whole rather than crypto underlyings specifically, and both are a few years old. As an order of magnitude they still hold: the typical outcome of a leveraged short-term trade is a loss. Investors who assess their own odds differently should look up the percentage at their own provider before depositing.

Costs compared: spread, overnight financing and fees

The cost structure is the second major difference between the two routes, and it works in opposite directions. With a CFD you usually pay no order commission but the spread, the gap between the buying and selling price, plus financing costs for every night a leveraged position stays open. Those costs accumulate with time: the longer the position lives, the more price movement it takes simply to break even.

With a direct purchase the costs arrive at the front and the back instead: a buy order, possibly a withdrawal fee to your own wallet, and later a sell order. In between, holding costs nothing. That reverses the logic. For a position held for a few hours the cost side of a CFD is often cheaper; for a holding period of months or years it is systematically more expensive. Actual rates differ considerably from provider to provider and do change, which is why the fee schedule belongs at the start of any comparison.

Tax on crypto CFDs: derivative transactions, flat rate and the deleted loss basket

For tax purposes CFDs are derivative transactions. The profit falls under section 20 (2) sentence 1 no. 3 of the German Income Tax Act and therefore counts as investment income. The special rate of 25 percent applies, plus the solidarity surcharge and church tax where relevant. The holding period is irrelevant: whether a position was open for ten minutes or ten months changes nothing about the tax.

The saver's allowance of 1,000 euros a year can be deducted from the income, or 2,000 euros for jointly assessed spouses. Important for anyone sitting on losses: the separate loss-offsetting basket for derivative transactions, which allowed losses to be set off only up to 20,000 euros per year, no longer appears in the law as it currently stands. The relevant sentences 5 and 6 of section 20 (6) were deleted by the 2024 Annual Tax Act. What remains is the restriction on equity losses, which may still only be offset against equity gains.

In practice that means your provider withholds the capital gains tax if it settles for tax purposes in Germany. With providers based abroad you have to declare the income yourself in the KAP schedule. Keeping the records straight for that is legwork; tools that consolidate trading data and produce a report are listed in our comparison of crypto tax tools.

Tax on buying coins: how the one-year holding period under section 23 works

Crypto assets bought outright fall under an entirely different regime. Purchased coins count as other assets within the meaning of section 23 of the Income Tax Act, which provides that a private disposal transaction exists where no more than one year lies between acquisition and disposal. Conversely, a gain is tax-free once that year has elapsed. Sales within the period are taxed at your personal income tax rate, and gains stay tax-free if the total gain from all private disposal transactions in the calendar year stays below 1,000 euros. That is an exemption threshold, not an allowance: one euro above it makes the full amount taxable.

That establishes the economically largest difference between the two products. Buy a crypto asset and hold it for more than a year and, as the law stands today, you pay no tax on the price gain. Track the same price move through a CFD and you pay 25 percent plus surcharges on every profit, regardless of how long you held it.

This legal position is, however, up for debate. Our article of September 8, 2026 on the grandfathering cutoff date in the draft bill describes which date is named there for existing holdings and what about it remains open. A draft bill is not a law; until a legislative process is complete, the one-year period applies unchanged.

MiCA or MiFID II: which regime applies to which product

The two routes also run on separate regulatory tracks. A CFD is a financial instrument under the European markets directive MiFID II, as the legal basis of the BaFin act already shows, resting as it does on Article 42 of MiFIR. For the provider that means an investment services licence with everything attached to it: suitability assessment, best execution, cost transparency.

Trading in crypto assets themselves falls instead under the European crypto regulation MiCA, which creates its own authorisation regime for crypto asset service providers. The practical consequence for you as an investor is that two different permissions have to be checked. A provider offering both needs both. Anyone wanting to verify a licence will find BaFin's company database and the European register of authorised providers freely accessible online.

Who a crypto CFD suits, and who is better off buying coins

A clear assessment can be drawn from the rules. A crypto CFD can make sense for an experienced, short-term trader who works with leverage deliberately, monitors the position, wants to trade falling prices and factors in the financing costs. The capped leverage and negative balance protection make the product more predictable in Germany than its reputation suggests.

Anyone looking instead to build wealth over the long run, to actually own crypto assets, to hold them in their own custody or use them, and to make use of the one-year period, is clearly better served by buying outright. The cost structure matches the holding period, the tax rule is more favourable, and what you end up with is an asset rather than a contract. For beginners torn between the two that is a strong argument: here the simpler product is also the more attractive one for tax.

There is a hybrid as well, and it is the most common mistake: trading with leverage without knowing the close-out threshold. Anyone using leverage should know before opening at what price the position will be closed and what that costs.

Crypto CFD or buying coins: what to take away

1. Settle first what you want: price exposure or ownership. If you want to hold, move or use coins, only buying outright gets you there. Trading venues with their custody and fee models are in the crypto exchange comparison.
2. With a CFD, work out two numbers before you open. Initial margin on crypto assets is 50 percent of the notional value, and close-out bites at half of that. Check the provider's loss rate and financing costs as well, set side by side in the broker comparison.
3. Assign every profit to the right tax basket. CFD profits are investment income taxed at 25 percent, coin gains are tax-free after a year's holding period. Trading both calls for clean records; suitable tools are listed in the tax tool comparison.

(As of September 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

When you stake ether, you never receive the reward the network pays out. You receive what is left once your provider has taken its cut. How large that cut is appears on the page where you decide to stake at only a handful of providers. On September 12, 2026 we pulled the public staking and fee pages of 14 routes through which you can stake Ethereum from Germany. Five of them name a specific commission figure. The range runs from zero to fifty percent, depending on which part of the reward the provider touches.

cryptoticker.io compiled this survey itself on September 12, 2026.

Ethereum staking fees: what your provider keeps from your reward

The staking commission is the share of the rewards that the operator of your validator keeps for its work before the rest reaches you. It is not a fee you transfer, and it appears on no invoice. It is simply deducted from the yield, and that is exactly why it is easy to overlook.

That makes it the most important number in the whole offer. The yield itself is beyond your influence: it follows from the protocol and is identical for everyone. According to the reading from validatorqueue.com that we took on September 12, 2026, the network APR stood at 2.46 percent. At that level, the commission decides the difference between a usable offer and a pointless one. A ten percent commission costs you roughly 0.25 percentage points a year, which is one tenth of your entire yield.

The APR, meaning the reward rate annualised without compounding, is the number every provider puts in the shop window. Whether it is stated before or after the provider's own commission is rarely spelled out alongside it.

Consensus layer and execution layer: why the staking commission consists of two numbers

A validator earns in two separate places. The consensus layer is the layer of Ethereum on which validators are rewarded for proposing and attesting blocks; the protocol itself pays out this reward and it accounts for by far the larger part of the yield. The execution layer is the layer on which transactions are processed; that is where user tips and proceeds from block building accrue, known in the trade as MEV.

Some providers distinguish between the two pots, and that can distort a comparison entirely. The operator stakefish shows a commission of zero percent on the consensus reward on its Ethereum page and, at the same time, fifty percent on the pot of tips and MEV. Anyone who looks only at the first number takes this for a free offer. The calculator on the same page shows a combined APR of 2.61 percent, made up of 2.51 percent protocol reward and 0.09 percent from tips and MEV. The fifty percent therefore reaches into the smaller of the two parts, which is why this model works out cheaper in practice than the bare number suggests.

Keep the question in mind for your own offer: which of the two pots does the stated percentage refer to? A provider that names a single commission and means both layers is more expensive than one that charges fifty percent and means the tips alone.

How we checked: 14 Ethereum staking routes on September 12, 2026

The method in one sentence: on September 12, 2026 we pulled the publicly reachable staking, fee and documentation pages of 14 providers and protocols through which investors in Germany can stake ether, and noted which commission figure appears in the text there.

We checked Lido, Rocket Pool, StakeWise, stakefish, Everstake, Allnodes, P2P.org, Kiln, Figment, Ledger Live, Kraken, Bitpanda, Coinbase and Bitvavo. Twelve of these fourteen pages answered with HTTP 200 and were readable. Coinbase and Bitvavo refused our requests with status 403, so their terms are missing from this survey. As a reference for the network data we additionally pulled ethereum.org and validatorqueue.com, both with HTTP 200.

The result in one sentence: of fourteen routes checked, five name a specific commission figure on their own page. A sixth names the figure of a partner. For the remainder, the page either says nothing at all about the commission or merely notes that one is charged.

Five providers name a number: Lido, Everstake, Allnodes, P2P.org and stakefish

The picture is clearest at the protocols that have to document their rules publicly in any case. The documentation of Lido states that the protocol keeps ten percent of the staking rewards, one half of which goes to the node operators and the other into the protocol treasury. Lido is a liquid staking protocol, meaning a service that swaps your staked ETH for a tradable share token, in this case stETH.

Everstake likewise names ten percent commission on its Ethereum page, with entry from 0.01 ETH and a stated yield range of 3.4 to 10 percent that varies by tier. For institutional amounts from $500,000 and for stakes from 320 ETH, the provider points to separate, negotiable terms.

Allnodes shows ten percent commission on its Ethereum staking page, entry from 0.01 ETH and a current yield of 2.9 percent plus 0.1 percent. The page also records that the service runs technically through StakeWise.

P2P.org is the cheapest provider with a stated figure in our survey: five percent validator fee on native Ethereum staking, at a stated net reward rate of 2.9 percent and a minimum stake of 32 ETH. For the variant with distributed validator technology the page names a fee of seven percent at up to 3.05 percent, and in combination with EigenLayer seven percent at up to 3.25 percent.

stakefish, finally, separates the two layers as described above, with zero percent on the consensus reward and fifty percent on tips and MEV, at a minimum stake of 32 ETH.

Ledger Live names the figure of a partner

Ledger Live occupies a middle position in this list. The page explains that staking in the wallet runs through Kiln for native staking and through Lido for liquid staking, and in doing so names Lido's ten percent explicitly, split between node operators, the DAO and an insurance fund. For Kiln itself no commission figure appears there, although an average yield of about 3.5 percent against about 3 percent at Lido does. For stakes from 32 ETH, Ledger points to Figment and a validator of its own.

Kraken, Bitpanda, Kiln and StakeWise: when the staking fee is missing from the page

At the custodians through which most investors in Germany actually stake, matters look different. Kraken's German-language staking page lists Ethereum at 2.44 percent in the bonded variant and writes alongside it that the rates shown are estimates and stand before its own commission. How high that commission is does not appear on the page.

Bitpanda lists Ethereum in its staking overview at 2 to 4 percent and states explicitly that a commission is charged for providing the staking services and deducted automatically before the rewards are paid out. Here, too, the percentage is missing. The page additionally points out that with Ethereum, unlike other assets, an unbonding period follows from the protocol itself, so you cannot get back out again immediately at any time.

Kiln's home page carries yield figures, among them 2.6 percent for Ethereum, but no commission. At StakeWise we found no commission figure on the home page either. At Rocket Pool, home page and documentation answered with HTTP 200, yet no commission figure appeared in the extracted page text, which is why we list the provider as not checked and not as a provider without a figure. At Figment the home page was reachable; the Ethereum subpage answered with HTTP 404.

That a figure is missing from a marketing page does not mean it cannot be found anywhere. It often sits in the terms of use, in a help article or in the statement. The point is a different one: at the place where you make the decision, it is missing. How far that can go is shown by our own survey of the Bison app from September 6, 2026, which produced a retained share of 27 percent of the staking rewards for that provider. That is our own reading and not an outside confirmation, but it shows the order of magnitude at stake here. Anyone who wants to compare will find the offers bundled in our comparison of staking platforms.

Gross APR and net APR: how to work out your Ethereum yield yourself

The calculation is straightforward once you have both numbers. Take the network APR, subtract the commission from it, and you have your net yield before tax.

With the network APR of 2.46 percent measured on September 12, 2026, it looks like this: at five percent commission you keep roughly 2.34 percent. At ten percent you keep roughly 2.21 percent. At 27 percent you keep roughly 1.80 percent. On ten staked ETH, calculated over a year, that comes to roughly 0.234, 0.221 and 0.180 ETH respectively. The gap between the cheapest and the most expensive model thus amounts to a good fifth of your yield.

A second checkpoint is the reference figure. If a provider advertises a rate that already applies after its commission has been deducted, as P2P.org does with its net reward rate of 2.9 percent, you must not subtract the commission a second time. When in doubt, ask in writing whether the advertised number is meant gross or net. An answer by email also serves as evidence later on.

Entry queue: why your ETH currently earns nothing for about 32 days

The commission is only one half of the calculation. The other is the time your stake is tied up without earning anything. Ethereum admits new validators to the active set only at a limited speed, and anyone who wants to join joins a queue.

On September 12, 2026 we measured 1,857,828 ETH in the entry queue at validatorqueue.com, with an estimated waiting time of roughly 32 days and 6 hours. The exit queue stood at zero, and the delay until actual payout after an exit at 7.9 days. 910,898 validators were active, and in total 43.1 million ETH sat in staking, which is 35.29 percent of the supply.

For comparison: in our own reading from August 17, 2026, 2,229,411 ETH stood in the entry queue, at roughly 39 days of waiting time. The queue has therefore grown shorter since then, yet it remains long enough to change your calculation. Anyone depositing today effectively earns in only about eleven of twelve months in the first year, and that depresses the actual yield more than the difference between five and ten percent commission does.

At liquid staking protocols and at custodians you often notice nothing of this queue, because they balance it out in the background against an existing stock. It has not disappeared for that reason. It then surfaces elsewhere, for instance in a discount when the share token is swapped back into ETH.

Liquid staking, pool or your own validator: where which commission applies

The three routes into Ethereum staking differ not only in price, but also in who carries the liability when things go wrong.

Your own validator

You need 32 ETH and run the software yourself or have it run for you. You then pay the commission to the technical service provider, in our survey five percent at P2P.org or the tiered model at stakefish. The keys and the risk of a penalty for validator misbehaviour, known in the trade as slashing, stay with you.

Liquid staking

You hand over any amount you like and receive a share token that remains tradable. The commission is transparent, in our survey ten percent at Lido. In return you additionally carry the risk that the share token trades below the value of the deposited ETH for a time.

Staking through a custodian

The most convenient route, and in our survey the least transparent one. At Kraken and Bitpanda no commission figure appears on the staking page. In return you need no technology of your own. The provider takes over custody, and with that you carry the risk that it fails.

Staking tax: why the commission does not automatically lower your tax-free allowance

In Germany, staking rewards have to be recorded for tax purposes at the moment they accrue. In practice that means what matters is the amount actually credited to you. If the provider deducts its commission before crediting you anything, only the smaller amount accrues to you from the outset. If instead it credits you the full amount and bills the commission separately, the starting position is a different one.

So establish which of the two cases applies at your provider, and do it before you carry the earnings over into your tax return. The statements are the right evidence for this, not the display in the app. How to record and document the earnings cleanly is a topic in its own right; you will find the tools that suit it in our comparison of crypto tax tools. This article does not replace tax advice, and with larger holdings professional support is worth the money.

What this survey does not show: Coinbase, Bitvavo and the open points

Part of the honesty of a survey of one's own is what it fails to cover. Coinbase and Bitvavo refused our requests on September 12, 2026 with status 403, so their terms are missing here entirely. At Rocket Pool and Figment the page was reachable, but we were unable to find the commission figure in the extracted text; we list both as not checked and not as providers without a figure.

This survey is also a snapshot of public pages and not an audit of statements. We hold no accounts with these providers and have therefore not recalculated whether the commissions named are actually billed that way. What a page says today may read differently tomorrow. And yield figures fluctuate with network utilisation in any case.

What the survey does show is more modest for that reason and useful all the same: at the place where you make your decision, a majority of the routes checked give you no commission figure. Those that do name one sit between five and ten percent on the consensus reward.

Checking the Ethereum staking fee: what to take away

1. Get the commission figure in writing. Open your provider's staking page and look for a percentage. If you find none, check the terms of use or ask support in writing, separately for the consensus reward and for the tips. Which providers come into question at all you can see in the comparison of staking platforms.
2. Work out the net yield before you deposit. Take the current network APR, subtract the commission and factor in the waiting time in the first year. Only that number is comparable with another offer, and only afterwards is it worth looking at trading venues in the exchange comparison.
3. Settle the tax side straight away. Note down whether your provider credits gross or net, and secure the statements from day one. A tool from the comparison of crypto tax tools takes the collecting off your hands.

(As of September 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

If you hold an account with Revolut and want to know whether the data incident of 11 and 12 September 2026 affects you, there are exactly two reliable routes: the notification the company sent to affected customers, and a subject access request of your own under Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation. Everything else is guesswork. Having received no message is not an all-clear; all it establishes is that no notification arrived.

This case differs from the breaches that usually occupy the industry. No server was broken into, no malware was planted and no password was cracked. An unauthorised party asked Revolut for customer data, and the request came in over the genuine, correctly authenticated email domain of a government agency. Revolut treated it as lawful and handed the documents over. For holders of Bitcoin that is particularly awkward, because the material released includes the complete transaction history.

What Revolut handed over, and what the company says remained untouched

The data categories come from CoinDesk's reporting of 12 September 2026, which draws on the notifications sent to those affected. They name passports and driving licences, the selfies from identity verification, names, dates of birth, occupations, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, IBANs, account statements, withdrawal logs and the entire transaction history including all Bitcoin activity.

Revolut told BeInCrypto that it had identified a sophisticated external identity attack in which an unauthorised third party submitted fraudulent information requests via the email domain of a legitimate government agency; systems and customer funds were unaffected. According to the company, police, data protection and financial supervisors were brought in, and the agency concerned was informed that an unauthorised account is operating inside its domain. Revolut does not say which agency, citing the ongoing investigation. The number of people affected also remains open; the company speaks of a limited number, and the investigator zachXBT, whose tip made the case public, described the target as a small circle of wealthy users.

What the notifications state explicitly did not leave: credentials, passcodes and the biometric templates behind facial recognition. That distinction matters, because it determines which protective measure achieves anything at all. An attacker who never had your password is not locked out by a new one.

How to tell whether you are one of the notified Revolut customers

Revolut says it wrote to affected customers individually; customer reports date those messages to 11 September 2026. There is no public list, and for good reasons there will not be one. The check is therefore yours to make.

The notification from Revolut and how it differs from a phishing email

A notification under Article 34 GDPR is a company's communication to affected individuals telling them that their data was exposed in a personal data breach carrying a high risk. It sets out the incident, the categories of data involved and the recommended measures. How you recognise one: a message of this kind does not ask you to enter credentials through a link, approve a payment or connect a wallet using a recovery phrase.

This is where the second wave begins. A breach of this kind produces forged messages within days that pose as the company's response, and this time the attackers hold names, home addresses, IBANs and account movements. That makes the fakes unusually credible. Check every incoming message inside the Revolut app itself rather than through a link in an email, and stick to the rules we set out in our guide to checking the genuine sender domain.

An Article 15 subject access request as documented proof

Article 15 GDPR gives you the right to ask a company what personal data it processes about you and to which recipients it has disclosed that data. It is the second part that matters here: the request forces a statement on whether your documents were part of the disclosure. The deadline is one month, extendable by a further two months in complex cases, and the company has to tell you if it extends.

Put the request in writing, name the incident with its date, ask explicitly about the recipients of your data, and request a copy of the notification if one was sent to you. Keep the reply. Anyone who later wants to bring a claim or lodge a complaint needs that correspondence as the foundation.

Why the Bitcoin transaction history is the most dangerous part of the package

An ID document can be replaced, an IBAN changed, a home address moved if it comes to that. The Bitcoin history, by contrast, points at a public database that nobody can take back. Whoever knows your deposits and withdrawals at a provider knows amounts, timestamps and, in many cases, the counterparties on the chain.

From the account statement to cluster analysis of your Bitcoin addresses

Cluster analysis is the technique of assigning several Bitcoin addresses to a single economic entity on the basis of shared characteristics, for instance because they appear together as inputs in one transaction. As long as nobody knows who a cluster belongs to, it stays an anonymous set of addresses. A withdrawal log with an amount and a timestamp supplies the missing anchor point, and from that moment the cluster carries a name and a home address.

An uncomfortable calculation follows. The attacker sees not only that you own Bitcoin, but can estimate through the linked addresses how much of it is still there and whether it is moving. We described what such a package of identity, home address and traceable wealth can lead to when we covered events in France: kidnappings and extortion with a crypto connection regularly started there with lists of exactly this kind.

Emergency data request: the mechanism behind the fake government enquiry

An emergency data request is a law enforcement request for information that a company answers on grounds of imminent danger, without a court order and without the scrutiny it would otherwise apply. The procedure exists because there are cases in which hours count. It has also been a known point of entry for years, because the only check is the judgement of an employee faced with an urgent enquiry that looks official.

The sequence is well documented in the specialist literature: someone gains access to an official mailbox or creates an account inside an agency domain, writes an urgent request for information from there, and receives the data because the recipient is trained to serve public authorities promptly. This is precisely the pattern Revolut describes in its statement when it speaks of an unauthorised account inside an agency's domain.

Why checking the sender domain, SPF and DMARC did not hold here

SPF, DKIM and DMARC are technical procedures that let the recipient of an email establish that it really was sent from the stated domain and was not altered in transit. These procedures answer a single question: does the message genuinely come from this domain? On whether the person behind the mailbox is authorised, they say nothing.

That is the counter-test to a recommendation we have issued ourselves. Checking the sender domain remains correct and catches the overwhelming majority of attacks. It only stops working at the moment an attacker controls an account inside the genuine domain, because then every technical check passes and nothing is right all the same. Anyone relying on that signal alone is mistaking a passed authentication for a passed authorisation check.

What changing your password after this data breach does, and what it does not

The usual advice after a breach runs: change your password, switch on two-factor authentication, check your devices. Here that is only half right, and the half that does not hold is the more important one. What left the company, according to the notifications, was not credentials but identity documents and account history. A new password takes nothing away from the attacker, because he never had the old one.

What genuinely helps is aimed at the follow-up attacks. That includes requiring a hard confirmation for withdrawals in the app, refusing phone enquiries from supposed staff on principle and hanging up, and assuming with every call that cites your real account details that those details may come from this incident. The caller who knows your last transfer is no longer proof that the call is genuine.

Immediate measures: identity misuse, account security, crypto holdings

The measures fall into two groups. One concerns your identity and makes sense regardless of whether crypto is involved. The other concerns your holdings and the question of where they should sit in future.

ID data cannot be recalled

A leaked scan of an ID document stays out there. What remains is observation: check your credit file regularly for enquiries and contracts you do not recognise, and have your bank explain its rules for opening accounts and changing addresses. Where a suspicion of identity misuse arises, it belongs in a police report, because establishing when the misuse happened later decides questions of liability. Germany's financial supervisor has already warned about this pattern; we have worked through the BaFin warning on identity misuse in the crypto sector in detail.

Home address plus Bitcoin holdings: take the physical risk seriously

The most unpleasant part of this package lies outside the digital world. Whoever holds a home address, a photo from an ID document and proof of wealth has everything needed for an attack at the front door. In practice that means: no public references to crypto holdings on social networks, no deliveries of hardware accessories to your home address, and no amounts named in conversation with acquaintances. Anyone self-custodying larger sums will find the devices that allow an access lock via an additional passphrase in our hardware wallet comparison, so that a coerced access does not release the entire balance.

This caution is not a panic reaction. It matches what those affected by earlier leaks in this industry have described in hindsight, and it costs nothing but habit.

Where German Revolut customers can complain

German customers are as a rule in a contractual relationship with Revolut Bank UAB, based in Lithuania and licensed as a credit institution by the Lithuanian central bank and the European Central Bank; alongside that, the company runs a German branch. For data protection, the provider's own privacy notice names the Lithuanian data protection authority as the lead supervisory authority. Check the details in your own contract documents, because the responsible entity can differ depending on the product and the date you signed up.

This order makes sense: first the Article 15 request to the company, then the complaint to a data protection authority once the reply has arrived or the deadline has passed. A complaint to the data protection authority responsible for where you live remains open to you under the General Data Protection Regulation; in cross-border cases it passes the matter to the lead authority. Without the prior correspondence, the complaint lacks its foundation.

How to reorganise your crypto holdings after a data breach

A data incident at a provider is a good occasion to review how your holdings are split, and to do it without haste. The decisive question is less which provider counts as the safest. The more useful thought is how much wealth needs to sit with any single provider at all. A trading account needs the amount that is actually being traded. Everything beyond that is a decision that could equally go the other way.

Self-custody means holding the private keys to your own coins yourself instead of entrusting them to a provider. That shifts the risk, it does not remove it: anyone self-custodying carries the risk of loss alone and needs a backup plan for the recovery phrase that survives a house fire and a house move. For many investors a split is the sensible middle path, with a small part kept ready to trade at the provider and the rest moving into self-custody.

The order matters here: the backup plan first, then the move. Anyone shifting balances in the agitation after bad news makes the most expensive mistakes of the year in that particular week.

What this case shows about KYC data at crypto providers and neobanks

KYC stands for "know your customer" and denotes the legally mandated identity check that banks and crypto service providers have to carry out before opening an account. That check is not negotiable, and at every regulated provider it creates a record made up of an ID photo, a selfie, an address and account movements. The Revolut case shows that the attack surface of this record is not made only of servers, but also of the procedures a company uses to answer requests for information.

A practical question for choosing a provider follows from that: how does the house handle official requests for information, does it publish figures on them, and how quickly does it inform those affected? Anyone looking for a new trading venue will find the providers licensed under the European supervisory framework in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges. A licence is not a promise of protection against this line of attack, but the assurance that a supervisor is responsible and reporting duties apply.

The incident joins a chain that has hit European crypto investors several times this year. The type of article is always the same because the questions are the same; our write-up on the Trezor data breach and how to check whether you were affected transfers step by step to this case.

Frequently asked questions about the Revolut data breach

Is my money at Revolut now at risk?

According to the company, systems and customer funds are unaffected by the incident, and none of the available sources contradicts that. The event is a release of documents to an unauthorised party, not access to accounts. The risk lies in what is attempted with those documents afterwards.

Do I have to change my Bitcoin addresses?

For the history already disclosed, changing addresses achieves nothing, because the past sits immutably in the chain. For future incoming payments it is still sensible to use new addresses and not to hold balances permanently on addresses that can be tied directly to a withdrawal from a provider account.

What about the claim of millions of Revolut records from the summer?

That is a different matter. The claim about a large-scale data set that surfaced on the darknet in July 2026 has no documented connection to the September request for information. Mixing the two is misleading, because the categories of data involved and the route of attack differ.

How do I know an email really comes from Revolut?

Reliably, not from the email alone. Open the app and check whether the same message is sitting in your inbox there. That rule carries more weight after this case than it did before, because a passed domain authentication simply does not prove authorisation.

Revolut data breach: what to take away

1. Establish whether you are affected, do not estimate. Check in the Revolut app whether a notification is waiting, and independently of that file a subject access request under Article 15 GDPR with an explicit question about the recipients of your data. Anyone who wants to switch provider afterwards can shortlist candidates through the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Decouple your holdings from your identity record. Decide what amount has to stay ready to trade at the provider, and move the rest into self-custody, with the backup plan in place before the move. The device selection including the passphrase function is in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Plan for the second wave. Expect calls and messages in the coming weeks that know your real account details, and treat every approach as unconfirmed until you have seen it in the app yourself. If you need a software solution for the part kept ready to trade, the software wallet comparison helps with the choice.

(As of September 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Sources: CoinDesk on the data categories involved and Revolut's statement to BeInCrypto.

If you failed to declare gains from Bitcoin or other crypto assets in earlier German tax returns, you face a question with a clear answer: a voluntary disclosure that exempts you from prosecution under section 371 of the German Fiscal Code only works for as long as the offence has not been discovered and none of the statutory blocking grounds applies. That window is currently getting shorter. The German Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act has applied since January 1, 2026, and in the 2027 calendar year crypto service providers will transmit data for the 2026 reporting period to the Federal Central Tax Office for the first time.

This article explains how a subsequent declaration works in practice, which years are still open at all, what causes a voluntary disclosure to fail and what it costs. It does not replace advice: a voluntary disclosure is a document with criminal law consequences and belongs in the hands of a tax adviser or a lawyer specialising in tax law. Draft it yourself and forget a single year or a single exchange, and you lose the exemption from prosecution for everything.

Why Your Crypto Data Will Sit With the Federal Central Tax Office From 2027

The Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act, KStTG for short, was adopted on December 22, 2025 and transposes the EU directive DAC 8 into German law. DAC 8 is the eighth version of the EU administrative cooperation directive; it extends the automatic exchange of information between tax authorities to crypto assets. The reporting obligation falls on the service providers themselves: exchanges, brokers, custodians and intermediaries that exchange or transfer crypto assets for customers. Investors themselves report nothing to the authorities.

According to the Federal Central Tax Office, what gets reported is the aggregated transaction data of the wallets, together with name, address, tax residence, tax identification number, date of birth and transaction volumes. Providers deliver to the Federal Central Tax Office by July 31 of the following calendar year in each case, and the office passes the data on to the EU central register and to the partner states of the international framework by September 30. The first of these transmissions covers the year 2026 and takes place in 2027.

For everyday purposes that means two things. First, providers are already asking for tax residence and tax identification numbers; anyone who does not respond must expect restrictions on their account. Second, from 2027 the tax office will hold a body of data that can be matched against the return you filed. A data match is not criminal proceedings, but it is the route by which discrepancies come to light.

What the 2026 Reporting Year Does Not Do

The report covers the period from 2026 onwards. It brings no retroactive analysis of the years 2017 to 2025. That is the most common misconception in this field, and it leads to wrong conclusions in both directions. Anyone who believes old years are thereby automatically exposed panics needlessly. Anyone who believes old years are therefore safe underestimates the collective information requests with which tax authorities have already demanded user lists from individual trading venues in the past.

Section 153 Correction or Section 371 Voluntary Disclosure: What the Difference Is

Both routes correct an incomplete tax return, but they start from different points and carry different consequences.

The duty to notify and correct under section 153 of the Fiscal Code applies where someone subsequently realises, before the assessment period expires, that a return they filed is incorrect or incomplete and that tax may be understated as a result. The wording of the statute requires this to be notified without delay, meaning without culpable hesitation. What is meant is the case without intent: an item was overlooked, an exchange was forgotten, a swap was mistakenly treated as tax free.

The voluntary disclosure under section 371 of the Fiscal Code, by contrast, is the route for cases where tax evasion is in play, meaning deliberate conduct. It leads to exemption from prosecution where three conditions come together: full correction for all unbarred tax offences of one type of tax over the last ten calendar years, no blocking ground, and timely payment of the evaded tax plus interest.

In practice the line between the two cases often cannot be drawn cleanly, because intent is an internal fact. Advisers therefore frequently frame a correction so that it simultaneously meets the requirements of an effective voluntary disclosure. That is the real reason a self-drafted letter to the tax office can be dangerous: it may satisfy section 153 while falling short of the completeness that section 371 demands.

Which Years You Have to Declare: Assessment Period and Limitation on Crypto Gains

Two periods run alongside each other, and they are regularly confused. One decides whether the tax office may still assess the tax. The other decides whether the offence can still be prosecuted.

The assessment period is set out in section 169 of the Fiscal Code. For income tax it is normally four years. In cases of reckless understatement it extends to five years, and in cases of tax evasion to ten years. On top of that comes the suspension of commencement: the period only begins at the end of the year in which the return was filed, and at the latest three years after the tax year. So if you never filed for 2018, you must expect the assessment for that year to still be open.

Limitation under criminal law follows its own rules and is irrelevant to the question of whether back tax has to be paid. What matters is the practical consequence: a year can still be open for tax purposes even though nothing threatens under criminal law. It still has to be paid, plus interest.

How to Work Out Which Years Are Open in Your Case

The starting point is unspectacular: dig out your own tax assessments from the last ten years and lay your trading history alongside them. What counts is the timing of every sale and every swap; the account balance at year end is irrelevant to this. Swapping one coin for another counts as a disposal of the first coin for tax purposes, even though no euro changed hands. It is precisely these swaps that are missing most often from old returns, because they do not feel like a sale.

The Blocking Grounds of Section 371(2): When a Voluntary Disclosure Comes Too Late

Exemption from prosecution does not arise where one of the blocking grounds named in the statute has already occurred. Among others, the law names notification of an audit order under section 196 of the Fiscal Code, notification that criminal or administrative fine proceedings have been opened, the appearance of an official for a tax audit, and discovery of the offence where the offender knew of it or had to reckon with it. A separate blocking ground applies as soon as the understated tax exceeds 25,000 euros per offence.

The blocking ground of discovery is the reason the reporting procedure from 2027 matters for this subject at all. An offence is discovered where the authority holds a suspicion concrete enough to make a conviction appear likely. A blanket data match is therefore not automatically a discovery. But anyone who has already received post from the tax office about specific crypto transactions should assume the clock has run out and take advice before sending any further letter.

The blocking ground of the audit order is equally underestimated. It bites for the audit period, and it does so from notification onwards, not only from the start of the audit. Anyone with an announcement of a field audit in their letterbox who then writes a voluntary disclosure will no longer achieve exemption from prosecution for the audited years.

Completeness Instead of a Partial Disclosure: Why Half a Correction Fails

Since 2011 there has been no such thing as an effective partial voluntary disclosure. The law requires correction in full, for all tax offences of one type of tax over the last ten calendar years. Translated, that means: anyone who reports only the gains from a single exchange and leaves out an account with a second provider has not made an effective voluntary disclosure but has handed the authority part of the evidence.

For crypto holdings this is the hardest requirement of all, because the traces lie scattered. The typical picture is one large exchange, a small secondary account from the early days, a decentralised application, a staking service and a hardware wallet whose transactions appear in no report anywhere. If one of these sources is missing, it is missing from the declaration.

If you first have to establish an overview, the sensible route is a portfolio and tax tool that merges transactions from several sources and produces a report for each year. Which providers can import which exchanges, wallets and protocols is shown in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers. The tool does not replace advice, but it supplies the numerical basis without which no adviser can work.

The Most Common Mistake: The Forgotten First Exchange

Many holdings begin with a small account from the years 2017 to 2021, often at a provider that has since left the market or been taken over by another. That is exactly where the purchases sit that determine the acquisition cost of later sales. Without that data the gain cannot be evidenced, and without an evidenced gain the tax office estimates.

From 25,000 Euros of Evaded Tax: The Surcharge Under Section 398a

Where the understated tax exceeds 25,000 euros per offence, the exemption from prosecution falls away. The case is not lost as a result: section 398a of the Fiscal Code provides that prosecution is waived where the evaded tax plus interest is paid and an additional sum is settled on top. Under the wording of the statute this surcharge amounts to 10 percent of the evaded tax up to an evaded amount of 100,000 euros, 15 percent between 100,000 and 1,000,000 euros and 20 percent above 1,000,000 euros.

The surcharge is not refunded if the proceedings are later reopened after all; it can, however, be credited against a fine. What is decisive is the evaded tax, not the gain and certainly not the portfolio value. If you failed to declare 40,000 euros of gains, the tax on that will often fall below the threshold depending on your tax rate.

Which Records You Need From Exchange, Wallet and Tax Tool

A subsequent declaration is, in the end, an arithmetic exercise with supporting evidence. What is needed for each year is a complete transaction list with timestamps, the matching of acquisitions and disposals in order of acquisition, the prices at the relevant time and the fees. Added to that are the records for transactions that are not sales and still count for tax: staking income, lending interest, airdrops and mining rewards.

You obtain the transaction history from the trading venues themselves, usually as a file in the account area. Anyone whose account was with a provider that has since closed needs the support route and should start early. An overview of the regulated trading venues, including the question of who issues usable annual statements, is in our comparison of crypto exchanges. For wallets with no provider behind them, only the blockchain itself helps: collect addresses, export transactions, explain inflows.

A practical note on sequence: first establish the data basis, then calculate, then draft. Work the other way round and set up the letter to the tax office before the analysis, and you risk exactly the incompleteness on which the exemption from prosecution founders. Incidentally, the data basis also determines whether your holdings can evidence the conditions for a tax-free sale after the one-year holding period has elapsed at all.

What the Draft Bill of September 8, 2026 Changes About the Situation

On September 8, 2026 a draft bill from the German Federal Ministry of Finance became known which would in future treat crypto assets as investment income and subject them to the flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent plus the solidarity surcharge, regardless of the holding period. Under the draft, the new rules would apply only to holdings acquired after December 31, 2026; for holdings acquired before that date the one-year holding period would remain in place. Automatic tax deduction by the service providers is not envisaged until 2028.

None of this has been enacted. A draft bill is a working document from the ministry, not a law; coordination within the federal government is under way, and no bill is before the Bundestag. For the current year 2026 the rule in section 23 of the Income Tax Act with its one-year holding period applies unchanged.

For the question of a subsequent declaration the draft changes nothing about the legal position of the past. It does change the urgency, because it directs the attention of the tax administration to a field that is becoming transparent anyway. Anyone with open years is therefore not choosing between two tax regimes, but between a correction on their own initiative and a correction after being asked.

Evasion Interest and Costs: What a Subsequent Declaration Really Costs

The back payment itself is only the first item. Interest comes on top, and here a close look at the statute pays off. Interest on additional tax claims under section 233a of the Fiscal Code has stood at 0.15 percent for each month since 2019, so 1.8 percent a year. For the remaining interest under the Fiscal Code, which includes evasion interest under section 235, half a percent for each month continues to apply, so 6 percent a year. Over eight or ten years that adds up considerably, and payment of the interest is a condition of the exemption from prosecution, not a later side effect.

Then there are the costs of advice. They depend on the effort of reconstruction and not on the portfolio value; a holding with twenty transactions is worked through in a few hours, a holding with several thousand transactions across five platforms is not. Prepare the data basis cleanly yourself and you will noticeably reduce this item.

What Happens If You Do Nothing

For the time being the assessment stays as it is. If an audit follows later, the blocking grounds have taken effect, the exemption from prosecution is lost, and on top of the tax and the interest criminal proceedings loom. For amounts below the de minimis thresholds such proceedings often end with a monetary condition; above them they do not. The tax itself falls away in none of these cases for as long as the assessment period is running.

Crypto Subsequent Declaration: What to Take Away

The legal position is confusing; the next steps are not.

1. Get your data basis together before you write anything to the tax office. Collect the trading history of all accounts and wallets from the last ten years and merge it. Which tools import several sources and issue annual reports is shown in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
2. Request missing records now, not later. Exports from closed or acquired trading venues take weeks. Which providers supply usable annual statements is set out in our comparison of crypto exchanges.
3. Have the declaration drafted professionally once the figures are in place. Completeness across all years and all sources decides the exemption from prosecution, and it cannot be repaired afterwards. Calculate the expected tax burden in advance, for instance with the tools from our comparison of crypto tax software, so that the back payment plus interest does not become the second surprise.

The legal bases can be read in the original wording: voluntary disclosure in section 371 of the Fiscal Code and the reporting procedure at the Federal Central Tax Office.

(As of September 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice and not tax or legal advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The fintech company fulfilled a fraudulent information request sent from a government agency's own email domain, exposing ID documents and full crypto transaction histories for a "limited" number of users.

A week after launch, complaints are rolling in from users that GPT-6 Astra has been nerfed. OpenAI's last model went through the same cycle in July.

Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne each gave £36 million, and between them beat what every UK party raised last year.

The surveillance mod on GTA V brings the privacy fight to Los Santos, where players can demolish the cameras tracking them.

OpenAI's new image model promises sharper detail and more precise editing. We ran it against Google's Nano Banana 2 across six categories to see how it compares.

RippleX head of product highlights XRP’s potential in institutional credit.

A sharp price rebound took bears who had expected a further drop by surprise, with Solana returning above $100.

The circulating supply of RLUSD stays above $1 billion in the XRP Ledger, currently at $1,053,014,745.

BNB Chain emerges as the largest blockchain by real world asset growth, accounting for a massive $3.6 billion in the metric amid growing adoption.

SHIB holder count could be understated with 1.8 million addresses highlighted.

TLDR:

• S&P 500 earnings growth for 2026 is now forecast at 32%, up from roughly 24% before second-quarter results.
• About 86% of reporting S&P 500 companies beat estimates, well above the long-term average of 67.5% overall.
• Communication Services’ 2026 profit growth forecast jumped to 51% from 26% as AI-driven gains spread.
• Barclays raised its 2026 S&P 500 EPS forecast to $365 and lifted its year-end index target to 7,950.

Wall Street’s 2026 earnings outlook has shifted sharply higher as artificial intelligence spending strengthens profits across technology, advertising, cloud computing, and related industries. S&P 500 earnings are now projected to rise 32% in 2026, up from roughly 24% before second-quarter reporting began.

The revision followed a strong earnings season, with 86% of companies beating analyst expectations, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data highlighted by The Kobeissi Letter. LSEG also found that 86% of 492 reporting companies topped estimates, well above the long-term average of 67.5%.

AI Drives S&P 500 2026 Earnings Forecast to 32%

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nathaniel Welnhofer identified the AI infrastructure buildout as the clearest driver behind the stronger 2026 earnings outlook. However, the gains have moved beyond chipmakers and now include cloud services, digital advertising, data centers, and investment income.

Communication Services recorded the largest upward revision among major sectors. Its projected 2026 earnings growth increased to 51% from 26% at the start of the second quarter.

Alphabet contributed through stronger advertising and AI monetization, while other companies also produced large earnings surprises. Consumer Discretionary followed, with projected growth climbing from about 12% to 32%.

Amazon played a major role in that upgrade after reporting profit at roughly three times market expectations. Target, Walmart, TJX, Ross Stores, and Estée Lauder also beat estimates and raised guidance.

Source: X

The Bloomberg chart also showed Energy earnings projected to rise about 83% in 2026. Information Technology profits were forecast to increase roughly 59%, underscoring the breadth of the revision cycle.

The quarter also contained an important accounting effect. Reuters reported that aggregate S&P 500 second-quarter earnings were tracking about 52% higher from a year earlier. Yet, excluding large mark-to-market gains at Alphabet and Amazon, earnings growth would still have reached about 33%.

That would remain the strongest pace since 2021. Amazon recorded $53.4 billion in second-quarter non-operating pre-tax income, largely linked to investments including Anthropic. Alphabet also booked substantial unrealized investment gains.

Goldman Sachs estimated that AI infrastructure companies generated roughly one-third of S&P 500 EPS growth during the quarter. That contribution shows how deeply spending has entered the earnings picture.

Wall Street Raises Targets as AI Earnings Boom Broadens

The stronger profit outlook is already feeding into higher market targets. Barclays raised its 2026 S&P 500 EPS estimate to $365 from $337. The bank also lifted its year-end index target to 7,950 from 7,800. It cited continued AI investment and healthy economic activity as supporting factors.

UBS, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup have projected year-end index levels of 8,000 or higher. Those forecasts reflect stronger expected profits, but the earnings expansion still carries identifiable risks.

Rising memory costs are pressuring technology margins, while higher interest rates and persistent inflation could restrict valuation expansion. Barclays also flagged the sustainability of AI spending as a key uncertainty.

For now, the data show that artificial intelligence is influencing more than market sentiment. It is reshaping earnings estimates, sector forecasts, and expectations for broader corporate profitability.

The shift marks a measurable change from the pre-season outlook, as stronger reported results translated directly into higher profit expectations for 2026.

The post AI Supercharges S&P 500 Earnings as 2026 Growth Forecast Hits 32% appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Bitcoin price faces a dense $77,100 to $80,200 supply area after long-term holders released up to 539,000 BTC during a 30-day period.
• A close above the 365-day moving average at $81,700 would test the $83,600 Metcalfe band before the $88,700 trader band becomes relevant.
• U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted a fourth straight daily outflow, losing $13.29 million Friday and $462.73 million for the week despite $2.60 billion in trading.
• Ether ETFs collected $216.41 million Friday, but the differing flows do not prove money moved directly out of Bitcoin products.

Bitcoin price stalled after a rapid advance from beneath $65,000 in mid-August to above $82,000 within several weeks. BTC traded near $77,100 on Friday, beneath a dense collection of technical and on-chain barriers. CryptoQuant’s assessment says the trend looks constructive, yet it identifies several levels buyers must clear.

Bitcoin price needs a close above the 365-day moving average at $81,700. That threshold rejected the early-September advance and has historical weight in CryptoQuant’s framework. The firm views a close above it as bull-phase confirmation, not a brief resistance breach. 

Bitcoin Price Faces a Dense $77,100 to $81,700 Barrier

Long-term holders form the nearest obstacle. CryptoQuant estimates that this cohort sold as many as 539,000 BTC during one 30-day window in 2026. The sales occurred between $77,100 and $80,200, creating an area where former holders may sell into rebounds. Bitcoin price trades at the lower end, so demand must absorb supply before higher resistance matters. 

That supply zone sits below the 365-day average, turning the route higher into a sequence rather than one breakout. Bitcoin price has already failed there once, after the move above $82,000 lost traction. CryptoQuant also tracks a 200-day moving average near $70,000. It identifies that area as the first technical support if selling pressure increases.

The $77,100 to $80,200 band represents more than a chart line. It groups coins released by investors who held them through earlier market phases. Repeated tests can clear such supply if buyers take the offered coins. Failed rebounds leave the same holders with another opportunity to reduce exposure.

Buyers still face two further levels if the $81,700 average gives way. The three-times Metcalfe valuation band stands at $83,600. It derives network-value estimates from active addresses. CryptoQuant calls it a valuation ceiling buyers must clear near the present range. The trader realized price upper band, at $88,700, forms another resistance point. 

That final band tracks the cost basis of active traders. Profit margins usually widen as spot prices approach it. CryptoQuant says earlier approaches have coincided with increased selling pressure. Therefore, a move through $81,700 would not settle the Bitcoin price breakout question by itself.

Bitcoin ETF Flows Turn Focus Toward $83,600 Ceiling

ETF flows add a separate near-term signal. U.S. Bitcoin ETFs posted $13.29 million in net withdrawals on Friday, extending a four-session outflow streak. The group lost $462.73 million during the week, with $2.60 billion traded. Its net assets closed at $97.58 billion. 

The Bitcoin price stayed near $77,000 during the withdrawal run. That information does not prove that fund redemptions caused the price retreat. It does show that recent institutional transactions did not provide consistent demand during the test of overhead supply. The contrast with ether funds stood out.

Ether ETFs took in $216.41 million on Friday and finished a fourth consecutive week of net inflows. The split does not prove a direct rotation into ether products. Still, the different flows show that ETF demand has become selective. It coincides with overhead supply and the failed $81,700 test. 

The moving average offers a clear reference point for the next move. A strong close above $81,700 would put $83,600 firmly in focus. A rejection keeps the $77,100 to $80,200 supply zone active. Bitcoin’s price would then face the same seller concentration that capped its latest rally.

Downside levels also carry weight. CryptoQuant places the next visible support at the 200-day moving average near $70,000. A second on-chain accumulation cluster lies between $62,000 and $65,000, where roughly 476,000 BTC accumulated this year. The $77,100 to $80,200 area, $81,700, and $83,600 now map the levels buyers need to reclaim before $88,700 enters focus.

The post Bitcoin Price Tests $81,700 as Long-Term Supply Caps the Rally appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Sen. Lummis says the revised CLARITY Act includes 114+ Democratic changes before the September 15 vote.
• The House passed the bill 294-134 in July 2025, including support from 78 Democrats across party lines.
• The Senate Banking Committee advanced its version 15-9 in May 2026, while Senate passage still needs 60 votes.
• The bill would split SEC-CFTC oversight and add registration, disclosure and customer asset safeguards.

Sen. Lummis escalated pressure on Senate Democrats Saturday, arguing they should support the CLARITY Act after securing more than 100 requested changes. In a September 12 post on X, the Wyoming Republican said Democrats would bear responsibility if the legislation fails.

Her argument centers on negotiations completed before a crucial September 15 procedural vote. The vote could determine whether Congress advances comprehensive cryptocurrency market structure legislation before the November midterm elections. Supporters still need bipartisan backing as Senate advancement requires 60 votes.

Lummis Presses Democrats After 114+ CLARITY Act Changes

Sen. Lummis released revised legislative text on September 10 after lawmakers negotiated during the August recess. She said the approximately 630-page draft incorporated more than 114 Democratic provisions.

That record now forms the core of her political argument. Democrats helped rewrite substantial parts of the proposal, while unresolved disagreements continue over consumer safeguards, ethics and financial regulation.

The revised CLARITY Act includes provisions addressing protocols claiming decentralization while retaining centralized control. Regulators would determine when those businesses fall under specific federal compliance requirements.

Those requirements could include Commodity Futures Trading Commission obligations and Bank Secrecy Act rules. The revision also narrows certain decentralized-finance provisions to spot and cash digital commodity transactions.

Additionally, the legislation clarifies digital asset powers for credit unions. More broadly, the proposal would divide cryptocurrency oversight more clearly between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC.

It would also establish registration systems for digital asset intermediaries. Those entities would face disclosure requirements, customer asset segregation standards and protections addressing conflicts of interest.

The legislation already demonstrated bipartisan support in the House. At the time, representatives passed it 294-134 in July 2025, with 78 Democrats supporting the measure. The Senate Banking Committee later advanced its version 15-9 in May 2026. However, those earlier votes have not produced a publicly confirmed 60-vote Senate coalition.

September 15 Vote Tests Whether Senate Has 60 Votes

Democratic lawmakers continue seeking stronger protections despite the revisions. Their concerns include illicit finance, consumer protection, securities law loopholes, financial stability and presidential cryptocurrency conflicts.

Banking groups have also raised concerns about stablecoin rewards and possible deposit outflows. Consequently, the September 15 procedural vote remains dependent on bipartisan support.

Sen. Lummis has argued that congressional legislation would provide more durable market rules than regulation through federal agencies alone. However, her warning that consumers would have “zero federal protection” if the CLARITY Act fails goes beyond the current regulatory landscape.

The CFTC already has authority to pursue fraud and manipulation involving spot digital commodity markets. Nonetheless, it lacks comprehensive oversight authority covering those markets.

The SEC has also issued a 2026 interpretation covering crypto assets and proposed disclosure requirements for some crypto-related investment contracts. Those measures provide limited federal oversight, but they do not establish the comprehensive statutory spot-market structure envisioned by the legislation.

That distinction explains the importance of Tuesday’s vote. Failure to secure 60 votes would stall the current effort as the congressional calendar tightens. Nevertheless, success would not immediately make the legislation law.

Instead, it would allow the measure to proceed toward further Senate debate and amendments. For Sen. Lummis, that procedural hurdle now supports a simple political case: Democrats helped write the revisions, and the next vote tests whether they support them.

The post Democrats ‘Wrote the Fix’ and ‘Must Pass It,’ Lummis Says Ahead of CLARITY Act Vote appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• XRP ETF developments include a Cryptex S-1/A that lists XRP as an eligible 4.36% index component, with a 4.41% indicated fund weight.
• The Cryptex Digital Market Cap ETF table puts XRP above Chainlink, Solana, and Avalanche, yet the proposed multi-asset product is still pre-effective.
• Listed Funds Trust moved the Teucrium 2x Short Daily XRP ETF effectiveness date to Oct. 11, though the filing does not set a debut date.
• The amendment gives no stated reason for the timing change and does not cite the CLARITY Act, Senate negotiations, or a regulatory decision.

XRP has appeared in two U.S. fund-registration updates that describe separate products and stages. A Sept. 11 pre-effective amendment for the Cryptex Digital Market Cap ETF lists XRP as an Eligible Component. This XRP ETF update gives XRP a 4.36% weight in the underlying Cryptex Digital Market Cap Index. The document does not signal that any shares have begun trading.

The same table places XRP above Chainlink, Solana, and Avalanche by index weight. It also shows a 4.41% prospective fund allocation after Cryptex applies its additional eligibility screens. Separately, Listed Funds Trust changed the effectiveness date for its Teucrium 2x Short Daily XRP ETF to Oct. 11. That amendment does not announce a trading date.

XRP ETF Update Gives XRP a 4.36% Cryptex Index Weight

The Cryptex Digital Market Cap ETF is designed to follow the components and weightings of its digital-asset index. It is a proposed multi-asset crypto product, rather than a single-asset XRP fund. The preliminary prospectus says the shares are intended for Nasdaq under the ticker BAGZ. It has not become effective.

The Sept. 11 filing presents the index composition as of Sept. 8. XRP carries a 4.36% index weight and a 4.41% indicated fund weight. Chainlink stands at 3.15%, Solana at 2.80%, and Avalanche at 2.13% within the index. Each appears as an eligible component in the table.

Bitcoin and Ethereum hold the largest index allocations, at 25.83% and 13.55%, respectively. The index contains 36 assets, while the proposed fund screen leaves 19 constituents. Those screens address the proposed product’s own listing and operational requirements. They can alter a constituent’s final fund allocation.

The XRP ETF filing does not mean the Commission has approved the Cryptex product. A pre-effective S-1/A is a registration and disclosure step before sales may begin. The proposed product must become effective and complete its exchange-listing process. It also must satisfy the terms set by its sponsor and service providers.

XRP ETF Short Fund Filing Moves Effectiveness to October 11

A separate Sept. 11 filing came from Listed Funds Trust, not from Cryptex. Post-Effective Amendment No. 606 covers the Teucrium 2x Short Daily XRP ETF. It designates Oct. 11, 2026, as the new effective date for a previously filed amendment. It also identifies the form as Amendment No. 608 under the Investment Company Act.

The XRP ETF document says its sole purpose is to delay the fund’s effectiveness. It gives no explanation for the change and names no scheduled first trading day. For that reason, the record does not support describing the action ads an SEC decision to delay a launch. The trust submitted an amendment that sets a later effective date under Rule 485(b).

The Teucrium fund seeks negative twice XRP’s daily return before fees and expenses. It uses financial instruments, including swaps, instead of directly shorting XRP. If XRP falls 3% in one trading day, the stated objective would target roughly a 6% gain before costs. Actual returns can differ from that target after expenses and compounding.

The XRP ETF product resets its exposure each day. Compounding and volatility can cause returns over longer periods to differ from negative twice XRP’s cumulative move. The prospectus warns that investors can lose money even when XRP declines over a longer period as daily results compound. It describes the fund as a short-term trading vehicle requiring active monitoring.

The September amendment does not cite the CLARITY Act, Senate negotiations, or political opposition. It incorporates earlier registration materials by reference and changes only the effective date. The filing provides no trading date, exchange symbol, or new investment strategy for the Teucrium fund.

The post XRP ETF Filing Puts XRP Above SOL, LINK, AVAX as Short Fund Moves appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Ben Delo’s £36M Reform UK donation sets a British political record, surpassing the previous £10M high.
• Delo’s reported 2026 support for Reform UK now totals about £44M after £8M in earlier contributions.
• The £36M payment nearly matches the roughly £38M Reform UK had raised since its 2021 launch, before the gift.
• Current UK rules impose no general cap on permissible domestic donations, though reporting rules still apply.

BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo has donated £36 million to Reform UK, setting a record for the largest single contribution to a British political party. The payment gives Nigel Farage’s party substantially more funding as it prepares for the next general election.

Delo originally intended to contribute £1 million monthly until the election, which must take place by mid-2029. Instead, he transferred the planned support through one payment. He said the approach would give Reform a “level playing field” while reducing the party’s need for continuous fundraising.

The £36 million contribution exceeds Britain’s previous single-donation record of £10 million. That amount came through businessman John Sainsbury’s bequest to the Conservative Party. Delo’s payment also surpasses crypto investor Christopher Harborne’s previous £9 million contribution to Reform.

Delo Front-Loads £36M as Political Funding Rules Face Review

The timing reflects concerns about possible changes to political-finance rules before the election. Delo said providing the money immediately would protect his planned support from future legislative restrictions.

However, existing UK rules place no general ceiling on donations from permissible domestic donors. According to the Electoral Commission, eligible individuals and organizations can contribute unlimited amounts.

Political parties must still verify donors and meet reporting requirements. Therefore, Delo’s contribution falls under established rules governing permissible domestic political funding.

Meanwhile, the government has proposed separate restrictions targeting overseas electors and cryptocurrency payments. One proposal would impose a £100,000 annual donation limit on overseas electors.

The government also plans a moratorium on political contributions made directly with crypto assets. Those measures target foreign financial influence rather than imposing a general £100,000 cap on domestic donors.

Importantly, the record payment was made as a conventional political donation. It was not transferred through Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency despite Delo’s BitMEX background.

Reform’s Funding Base Expands After Delo’s Latest Contribution

Delo had already provided Reform with £8 million during 2026 before making the latest payment. His reported support for the year now totals about £44 million.

Electoral Commission figures showed he contributed £4 million during the second quarter alone. That represented roughly 75% of the £5.3 million Reform raised during that period.

The scale becomes clearer when compared with the party’s previous fundraising. The Independent reported Reform had received roughly £38 million since its 2021 launch before this payment.

Consequently, the latest contribution alone is almost equal to the amount Reform collected during that earlier period. It significantly expands the party’s available financial resources before 2029.

Delo’s connection to the cryptocurrency industry also brings attention to his past at BitMEX. He co-founded the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange alongside Arthur Hayes and Samuel Reed.

In 2022, he pleaded guilty in the United States to failing to establish a Bank Secrecy Act-compliant anti-money-laundering program. President Donald Trump granted Delo and other former BitMEX executives full pardons in March 2025.

Separately, Metropolitan Police recently expanded an investigation into allegations involving possible foreign political donations following an undercover investigation. Reform denies wrongdoing and says it will cooperate.

There is no indication that the investigation concerns Delo’s £36 million payment. The donation nevertheless gives Reform an unprecedented funding boost ahead of the next UK election.

The post BitMEX Co-Founder Ben Delo Gives Reform UK Record £36M Donation appeared first on Blockonomi.

UniCredit is exploring an expansion into digital assets that would add crypto custody and brokerage, and has started selecting a technology provider to hold the assets and handle client transactions, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

As per the report, the discussions are early, and no final decision has been made. Areas under consideration include custody and brokerage, tokenized investment products and fixed-income securities, and stablecoin applications for clients. UniCredit has not disclosed which providers it is weighing, how much it might spend, or when it would choose one.

Any crypto services would fall under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, whose grace period ended on July 1. MiCA requires crypto-asset service providers to hold a license and lets authorized firms passport custody and trading across the 30-country European Economic Area.

Building on Earlier Crypto Moves

Selecting an outside technology provider is the path other large banks have taken into crypto custody. Deutsche Bank tapped Swiss firm Taurus for digital asset custody and tokenization after what the vendor called a detailed selection and due diligence process.

UniCredit has already put crypto products in front of clients. The bank opened a five-year, dollar-denominated certificate linked to BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) to professional clients in July 2025, with full capital protection at maturity, a cap of 85% on returns and a $25,000 minimum. It was the first product of its kind in Italy.

In December 2025, UniCredit and state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti structured Italy’s first tokenized minibond on a public blockchain, a €5 million issue for E4 Computer Engineering recorded on Polygon.

UniCredit also belongs to Qivalis, an Amsterdam consortium that has grown to 37 European banks across 15 countries and plans to launch a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin on Ethereum in the second half of 2026. The token would be backed one-for-one by euro deposits, subject to approval from the Dutch central bank.

Banks Push Into Digital Assets

Other large lenders have already started selling crypto to clients. BBVA began offering Bitcoin (BTC) trading and custody to private banking clients in Switzerland, and Israel’s Bank Leumi lined up Galaxy to run trading and custody for a 2027 launch covering Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL).

UniCredit is also expanding in digital markets beyond crypto. On September 8, it bought a minority stake in VC Trade, a Frankfurt platform that digitizes bond and loan deals. The platform sits in debt markets, separate from the crypto plans, and has handled more than €90 billion across over 600 transactions.

The post UniCredit Weighs Crypto Custody and Brokerage, Hunts for a Technology Provider appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have launched a pilot infrastructure for issuing, holding, trading, and settling corporate bonds as digital tokens.

Called Demat 2.0, the model is being integrated directly into the nation’s existing regulated securities market, unlike many tokenization experiments built on standalone blockchain platforms.

$116M Tokenized and Counting

India’s approach allows corporate bonds to be created natively on a distributed ledger maintained by market infrastructure institutions, with ownership records held by the country’s statutory depositories. As written on Demat 2.0’s explanatory page, the system is connected to the RBI’s wholesale digital rupee through its Unified Market Interface. This allows the securities and cash legs of a transaction to settle at the same time.

This so-called atomic delivery-versus-payment model eliminates the period previously needed when one party has transferred an asset while still waiting for the other side to complete the payment. The statement also noted that three companies have already issued tokenized bonds worth a total of ₹1,025 crore (or $116 million).

REC Limited led the charge, becoming the first issuer on September 7, raising ₹500 crore from 18 investors. Larsen & Toubro followed suit with the same amount from four investors, while IIFL raised ₹25 crore from a single investor on September 9.

SEBI said issuers can receive funds on the same day as bidding, compared with the traditional two-to-three-day process. Secondary-market investors could get their proceeds immediately as well.

Smart contracts can also automate coupon and redemption payments directly into investors’ CBDC wallets. Separately, investors can use their existing demat accounts rather than create an entirely different blockchain wallet infrastructure.

Beyond Bonds?

The statement noted that tokenized bonds remain legally identical to conventional ones as existing rules covering credit ratings, disclosures, debenture trustees, and investor protection continue to apply. Given the evident growth of the real-world asset (RWA) industry, India’s authorities said the rollout of their local system will come in three stages.

The current phase is focused on institutional corporate bond issuance. The second will introduce secondary-market trading and expand access to retail investors, while the last one could bring additional regulated entities onto the network and explore tokenization of other financial instruments.

The infrastructure remains private and permissioned, with nodes initially operated by depositories and stock exchanges. This is important because India’s initiative is not an attempt to move its securities markets onto public blockchains; rather, it aims to combine DLT-based ownership, smart contracts, and central-bank money within its existing financial system.

The post India’s Demat 2.0 Could Change Bond Tokenization: Here’s How It Works appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Swiss-based asset manager 21Shares has outlined its investment case for XRP, citing regulatory clarity, institutional access, growing XRPL utility, and a predictable supply.

Nevertheless, it outlined one major risk, which continues to haunt the underlying asset.

Why Bullish on XRP?

Given Ripple’s years-long battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the favorable outcome in the past year or so, 21Shares’ report identified regulatory clarity as the first pillar. The conclusion in August 2025 removed what the asset manager described as a major compliance obstacle for institutions, and the regulatory environment for the asset improved further in 2026, giving it considerably clearer treatment than it had under the previous SEC tenure.

Perhaps related to regulatory clarity is the second pillar: expanding institutional access. Recall that several spot XRP ETFs hit Wall Street last November and attracted over $1 billion in a month and a half. As recently reported, the cumulative inflows reached a new all-time high above $1.7 billion, even during this difficult year for the asset.

Next, 21Shares outlined the actual network usage, as the report noted that XRP Ledger has processed close to $500 billion in on-chain value during the past 12 months. At the same time, Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin expanded from a market cap of $72 million to $1.6 billion in less than two years.

Tokenized assets on XRPL have also grown substantially, recently hitting $4 billion. The network continues to target payments, stablecoins, and real-world assets.

Crypto commentator Vincent Van Code also weighed in on 21Shares’ report, arguing that Ripple’s broader infrastructure strengthens that proposition. They described it as an “out-of-the-box, turnkey end-to-end solution” for institutions looking to adopt digital assets.

Lastly, the report mentioned XRP’s fixed maximum supply of 100 billion tokens, with no ongoing inflation schedule and a small amount permanently burned through transaction fees.

Major Uncertainty

Despite all the bullish comments explained above, 21Shares highlighted an important weakness in that thesis, as more XRPL usage does not automatically mean more XRP demand. Institutions can use the network while holding XRP only temporarily. In some cases, they might only barely use the token.

The crucial question here is whether expanding payments, stablecoins, and tokenized assets will ultimately translate into sustainable value accrual for XRP.

For investors convinced that global finance will increasingly move on-chain, 21Shares argued that XRP provides one of the more regulated and institutionally connected ways to gain exposure to that trend. However, the investment case still depends on adoption eventually translating into actual demand for the underlying asset, which continues to struggle against the $1.40 resistance as of press time.

The post Why Ripple (XRP)? 21Shares Highlights 4 Reasons Investors Should Take Notice appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The analyst at CryptoQuant weighed in on BTC’s notable price resurgence, which drove the asset from under $65,000 to over $82,000 within a few weeks, and, more specifically, on the subsequent rejection and what could follow around the corner.

They believe the overall setup remains constructive, but the cryptocurrency has to overcome a stack of technical and on-chain resistance levels, which are right in front of it.

Which Level Decides BTC’s Fate?

The weekly report by CryptoQuant identified Bitcoin’s 365-day moving average, currently located at $81,700, as the asset’s most important level. Recall that BTC briefly exceeded that level at the start of September, but the bears stepped up and quickly rejected the move.

Historically, bull markets have “officially” begun once the cryptocurrency closes above this moving average. A successful close above $81,700 could confirm a new bullish phase and open the door for another major leg up. However, its continuous inability to break through could lead to a longer consolidation phase or even to a more profound decline.

On the downside, bitcoin’s rally won’t be confirmed by simply moving past the $81,700 obstacle, as there are a few others on the way up. At first, CryptoQuant found the 3x Metcalfe valuation band, which sits at $83,600 and stands as the next big resistance. This level halted BTC in May and has previously coincided with important cycle turning points.

If taken down, there’s one more at $88,700, which is the trader realized-price upper band. History shows that selling has intensified once the cryptocurrency approaches this line because active traders begin sitting on increasingly large unrealized profits.

539K BTC

CryptoQuant noted that the most immediate problem is considerably closer as long-term holders sold as much as 539,000 units between $77,100 and $80,200 throughout the year, creating what the analysts described as the heaviest nearby on-chain supply wall.

Bitcoin would need to absorb this supply before making another convincing attempt north, while the downside is better defined. The 200-day MA around $70,000 represents the first major technical support, followed by another substantial on-chain cluster between $62,000 and $65,000, where approximately 476,000 BTC were accumulated this year.

Overall, CQ’s analysts are still bullish on BTC, but under one critical condition: the asset must clear $81,700 soon, then $83,600, and eventually $88,700 before the recovery can develop into a more profound rally.

The post Bitcoin’s 24% Rally Hit a Wall: CryptoQuant Reveals What Comes Next appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Popular analyst CryptoGoos outlined a remarkably simple BTC trading strategy that has successfully tracked and identified the asset’s most important cycle bottoms and tops.

If it plays out again, the next major buy signal could be happening as we speak (or as you read). The idea is quite interesting – instead of relying on complicated indicators, moving averages, and on-chain metrics, investors should look into the US midterm elections.

This striking historical pattern shows that Bitcoin has struggled during every previous midterm election year before recovering strongly once the vote was out of the way. That makes this year and the following several months highly interesting.

No Good Midterm Year

Given the fact that BTC was essentially an unknown internet magic money in 2010, we won’t count that midterm election year. Instead, we will focus on 2014, 2018, and 2022. A quick look into that shows that all three were ugly. 12 years ago, BTC had already collapsed following the extraordinary 2013 bull market and the failure of Mt. Gox.

Fast forward to the 2018 bear market, the cryptocurrency plunged from almost $20,000 to under $3,500. The 2022 example was no better, as the asset entered another brutal downturn amid aggressive Fed rate hikes, the deterioration of Terra/LUNA, and a broader crypto credit crisis. Days after the November 8 midterm election, FTX imploded, which resulted in the last leg down of that cycle with BTC slumping toward $16,000.

Research from CryptoQuant found that BTC declined by more than 60% during each of those three midterm election years. As such, the similarities with 2026 are hard to ignore. The cryptocurrency remains far below its October 2025 all-time high despite its most recent recovery.

Signal to Buy?

The more interesting part of CryptoGoos’ conclusion is what comes after the vote, as BTC has historically rebounded strongly in the 12 months following the US midterm elections. Data tracking the previous three cycles puts the average subsequent gain at over 50%.

Obviously, this doesn’t guarantee that the election itself mechanically leads to a sharp bitcoin price uptick. A more reasonable explanation is that midterm years tend to coincide with several conditions that can pressure risk assets, such as political uncertainty, reduced investor appetite, changing fiscal expectations, and, in BTC’s particular case, the historically weak part of its four-year cycle.

Once the election passes, one major source of uncertainty goes away, and markets can start pricing the next two years of fiscal, regulatory, and monetary policy with considerably more confidence.

If investors choose to follow CryptoGoos’ strategy and accumulate BTC now ahead of the midterms, the first sales should begin with a 25% offload next year, followed by a more significant 50% dump in 2028 and another 25% in the post-election 2029.

The post This Bitcoin Election Strategy Has Worked 3 Times: Here’s When It Says to Buy BTC appeared first on CryptoPotato.