Rising diesel costs could strain key sectors like trucking and agriculture, potentially leading to broader economic impacts and inflationary pressures.

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Zubimendi's potential departure could disrupt Arsenal's midfield dynamics and spark a competitive transfer market interest in January.

The post Zubimendi may seek January exit from Arsenal after losing starting spot appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Cohen's increased stake in GameStop signals strong insider confidence, potentially influencing shareholder trust and future market strategies.

The post Ryan Cohen buys $20M worth of GameStop stock, bringing total ownership to 43 million shares appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Flvio Bolsonaro's lead on Polymarket suggests shifting political dynamics in Brazil, potentially impacting future policy directions and alliances.

The post Flávio Bolsonaro overtakes Lula on Polymarket ahead of Brazil election appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Como's victory highlights their rapid rise in European football, showcasing the potential for smaller clubs to disrupt established powers.

The post Como defeats RB Leipzig 4-1 in stunning Champions League debut appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Ringleader of $245M Crypto Theft Pleads Guilty 

The man behind one of the biggest bitcoin thefts in history this week pleaded guilty.

Malone Lam, 22, a Miami resident from Singapore, on Tuesday admitted his role as ringleader of the international crime group which stole 4,100 bitcoins — worth over $230 million at the time — to fund a life of luxury. 

The U.S. Department of Justice said that from October 2023 and through at least May 2025, Lam and others hacked databases to steal crypto users’ information and con them into providing user logins and private keys. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies worth $245 million were taken in the theft. 

On one occasion, a co-defendant broke into a residence in New Mexico and stole a hardware wallet while Lam monitored the victim’s movements by hacking their iCloud account.

“This defendant led an international network that preyed on victims through deception, invaded their privacy, and stole hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in a statement. 

“If you build a cybercrime empire, we will find you, dismantle your operation, and hold you accountable,” Attorney Pirro added. 

The DOJ said: “The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act conspiracy used social engineering and occasional home break-ins to obtain information that allowed the conspirators to drain their victims’ cryptocurrency wallets.” 

The crimes started after a group of online gamers became friends before working together to commit the cybercrimes, the indictment read.

Lam and co-defendants laundered the stolen bitcoin and spent it on bottle service parties, private jet rentals, security guards, luxury handbags and watches, and properties in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, and Miami. 

The defendants would spend up to $500,000 a night on parties and give away designer handbags worth tens of thousands of dollars, Tuesday’s announcement read. 

Lam was arrested in 2024 at his rental home in Miami. 

This post Ringleader of $245M Crypto Theft Pleads Guilty  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Trezor Reveals Another Data Breach After Scammers Target Marketing Platform 

Trezor has warned that a data breach at the third-party marketing platform it uses for sending newsletters is leading criminals to target customers with phishing attacks. 

The top hardware wallet manufacturer said Wednesday that an unauthorized actor got access to Brevo’s system and sent emails to 347,000 Trezor customers. Brevo is a platform businesses use to send customer communications. 

Scammers managed to use Trezor’s domain name to send the email, making the phishing attempt all the more believable. The email contained a malicious link asking users to download an app and enter their wallet backup. 

The news comes after Trezor last month announced that data from 11,742 customers had been exposed after its third-party fulfillment partner, ShipMonk, was targeted. 

It then said last week that an additional 67,000 U.S. customers had their names, emails, phone numbers, shipping addresses and order numbers leaked in the breach. 

“We took down the domain at the DNS level within 20 minutes, preventing the link from working for anyone else and limiting access to 2,500 people who had clicked it before we took it down,” Trezor said on Wednesday. 

“These addresses might be potentially used for other phishing attacks in the future. No other Trezor system was touched,” Trezor added.

“We have suspended the Brevo account to stop further email distribution.”

Trezor reminded users that it never asks customers to ask for their wallet backups. 

Criminals have been targeting data this year, with scammers getting hold of customer information via crypto wallet Ledger’s payment processor Global-e to send phishing emails. 

Crypto wallet provider SafePal last month also announced a data breach that involved ​unauthorized access to about 39,798 customers’ order information, ‌including personal details such as names, addresses and purchase data.

This post Trezor Reveals Another Data Breach After Scammers Target Marketing Platform  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Updated Crypto Clarity Act Starts Circulating Days Before Key Vote 

A new draft of the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act has dropped with amendments.

As first reported by Eleanor Terrett from Crypto in America and Punchbowl’s Brendan Pedersen, the updated bill contains changes including requiring non-decentralized DeFi protocols to register with the CFTC, and changes around how credit unions deal in crypto, according to reporters. 

The specifics include that a decentralized finance app fails the test of being such a protocol test if someone can control or materially alter its functionality, if it doesn’t run solely on pre-established transparent encoded rules, or if someone can restrict or censor its use.

It also adds that a federal credit union may use a digital asset or distributed ledger system to perform, provide, or deliver any activity, function, product, or service it is otherwise authorized by law to perform.

Lawmakers were hoping a crucial vote on the crypto market structure bill would go ahead in August before their five-week recess. It was delayed and the Senate will now vote on it on September 15. 

The bill is not bipartisan yet, according to the reporters. Senate Republicans started circulating the updated legislation on Thursday. 

The Clarity Act drafts a framework to formally divide oversight between regulators, distinguishing which digital assets are securities, commodities or stablecoins. Crypto industry executives have long called for such rules to be in place. 

Though passed by the House of Representatives last July, it has been stalled this year, mostly because the banking lobby clashed with crypto companies over paying customers stablecoin yield. 

A new draft tackling the issue of ethics started circulating in July, banning government officials from promoting or making money from crypto — something Democrats have criticized the Trump family for doing. 

Despite the changes, a group of Democrats said the bill fell short and demanded amendments to the bill. 

Pro-crypto lawmakers have blasted Democratic politicians who they think are deliberately holding back the bill.  

President Donald Trump has urged lawmakers to get the legislation over the line. In August, he said that in order for the U.S. to remain the “undisputed leader in Bitcoin and crypto,” they had to pass the “very, very powerful legislation.”

This post Updated Crypto Clarity Act Starts Circulating Days Before Key Vote  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Nasdaq Invests $100M in Kraken Parent Company: Report 

Nasdaq Inc. is investing $100 million in crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, Payward, according to reports. 

The deal — not yet announced by either party — will help build out structure for tokenized stocks, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal values the crypto company at $21 billion, according to the report. 

It comes as Wall Street increasingly eyes up bitcoin and crypto-related infrastructure. Kraken has made deals this year and last with traditional finance firms and the S&P Dow Jones Indices in March made a deal to debut a new derivative contract on decentralized exchange Hyperliquid. 

Bloomberg’s report said that Kraken will distribute Nasdaq’s tokenized stocks on its own platform, giving customers the ability to own Nasdaq-listed stocks in a tokenized form. 

Wall Street has been eying up crypto companies and their infrastructure particularly because its interested in tokenizing assets like stocks. 

In January, the New York Stock Exchange said it was building a platform allowing traders to buy and sell tokenized versions of US-listed equities and exchange-traded funds and settle those trades on the blockchain, 24/7.

Just last week, Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, and fintech company SoFi Technologies announced a deal to route SoFi customers’ crypto orders through Kraken’s institutional trading platform and list SoFi’s stablecoin on the exchange.

Under the agreement, SoFi will send its digital asset order flow to Kraken Prime, Kraken’s prime brokerage arm, which launched in 2025. 

Kraken — like other crypto exchanges — is pushing into the traditional finance world, allowing users to trade stocks, bonds and other assets. The company has sold its app as a “primary account for everything.”

This post Nasdaq Invests $100M in Kraken Parent Company: Report  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Suffers On Renewed US-Iran Fighting 

Bitcoin’s price slid on Thursday after the price of oil shot over $105 a barrel thanks to renewed tensions in the Middle East. 

The biggest and oldest cryptocurrency was recently trading for $77,208 after sliding as low as $76,748 — down more than 2% over the past day. 

Its dip came after Iran signaled that it had no intention of backing down against U.S. forces. The two countries earlier this week stepped up attacks in some of the heaviest fighting since the war started in February. 

Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen this week hit Saudi Arabian assets, also pushing the price of oil up. 

War in the Middle East pushes oil prices higher and makes the chances of interest rate cuts lower because of inflation. Bitcoin has typically performed well in a low interest rate environment and has experienced sell-offs when the Federal Reserve pivots to hawkishness. 

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. 

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said at his first speech as leader of the central bank and said that inflation in the world’s largest economy had not come down enough. 

Traders are now pricing in an interest rate hike next week when the bank meets. 

Still,  bitcoin had one of its best runs in August after the U.S. Treasury said it would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations, in response to surging borrowing costs. 

The announcement hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold have benefited. 

Despite previously trading in line with risk-on assets like tech stocks, bitcoin has this year traded more in tandem with gold as the so-called debasement trade becomes hot again. 

Investors have bought the largest cryptocurrency — along with the precious metal — to hedge against the dollar’s decline. 

This post Bitcoin Suffers On Renewed US-Iran Fighting  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

OpenAI’s latest mathematics breakthrough could bring automated theorem proving closer to smart-contract security workflows.

On Sept. 8, the AI company said that roughly 10,000 concurrent AI agents produced a solution addressing the Navier-Stokes fluid-motion problem after about 88 hours. Formalization and verification in Lean, a software proof assistant, required another 17 hours using GPT-6 Astra.

The system generated an analytical proof showing that an initially smooth fluid can develop a singularity in finite time while retaining finite energy, establishing cases C and D of the Millennium Prize formulation. OpenAI released both the proof and its Lean formalization for independent scrutiny.

For crypto developers, the more immediate implication lies in the process. Formal verification uses mathematical specifications and theorem proving to establish whether smart-contract code behaves as intended, an area where human guidance can make verification costly and labor-intensive.

AI could move the security bottleneck upstream

The scale of OpenAI’s experiment closely resembles a scenario mathematician Terence Tao described five days before the announcement.

Tao warned that autonomous AI systems backed by enormous computing resources could eventually generate complex Navier-Stokes solutions and formally verify them in systems such as Lean while keeping much of the iterative discovery process out of public view.

His concern centered on what researchers might lose along the way. Failed approaches and intermediate discoveries often produce insights that outlive the final proof, while a largely autonomous system could deliver a correct result without transferring the same depth of understanding to humans.

That concern carries into smart-contract security as theorem proving becomes more automated.

Ethereum documentation says formal verification establishes whether a contract satisfies properties developers have specified in advance. Poorly written or incomplete specifications can allow vulnerabilities to escape detection even when verification succeeds.

More capable AI systems could therefore reduce the work required to construct proofs while increasing the importance of deciding what those proofs should cover. Access controls, withdrawal conditions, accounting invariants and privileged functions still have to be expressed accurately before a prover can test them.

That could reshape the economics of formal verification for DeFi protocols, bridges and tokenized-asset platforms, where manual effort has limited how widely the technique is deployed.

The next test is whether systems capable of handling research mathematics can be adapted to production software and produce proofs developers and auditors can meaningfully inspect.

Firms that can combine automated theorem proving with rigorous specification design could verify more contracts before deployment while concentrating human expertise on defining the failures that must never occur.

The post OpenAI’s math breakthrough exposes the next weak link in crypto security appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Consensys announced plans on Sept. 9 to operate MetaMask separately from its Ethereum infrastructure business, giving the consumer wallet and the protocol builder distinct management and investment priorities. For holders of ether, the split puts a practical question at the center of the growth story: how much activity will reach the networks that use ETH?

The clearest example is already inside MetaMask. Its Money Account runs on a separate blockchain, Monad, while the new Consensys will include software used for both public Ethereum and private institutional networks. The economic effect depends on where transactions happen and who receives the fees.

Under the announced structure, the existing Consensys Software Inc. continues as MetaMask. Its protocols and institutional infrastructure operations become a newly formed company carrying the Consensys name, including the Linea blockchain and software such as Besu and Teku. Joe Lubin leads MetaMask as chairman and CEO and serves as executive chairman of Consensys, whose CEO is Mike Kriak.

The businesses are set to operate independently, according to MetaMask's announcement, with the separation expected to be completed by the end of 2026. MetaMask says the change requires no action from users and does not change their app, assets, keys or access.

The wallet has its own economics

A wallet is the interface through which users choose what to hold, trade and spend. That position gives its operator a business opportunity separate from the blockchain's transaction charges.

MetaMask's swaps guide makes the distinction visible in its fee breakdown. It lists a 0.875% MetaMask fee separately from the network fee and the exchange rate quoted for the trade. Those are different payments for different parts of the same transaction.

The wallet's fee is therefore not a measure of Ethereum's fee income. A larger volume of fee-paying swaps could expand the wallet business, but the effect on ETH still depends on the networks used, the work each transaction requires and the fee conditions there.

Money Account adds another route. Introduced on June 30, it converts deposits into the mUSD stablecoin and uses Monad as its home network. MetaMask says deposits enter a DeFi vault that allocates funds across lending markets. Veda provides the infrastructure and Steakhouse curates the vault.

This lets the consumer proposition center on a dollar balance and financial functions rather than on holding ETH. Customer sales of ether or departures from Ethereum remain unestablished. Counting every Money Account deposit as new demand for Ethereum block space would conflate the two networks.

The product's yield also belongs in a different category from an ordinary wallet balance. MetaMask says returns are variable and the account is not a bank account or insured deposit product. Smart-contract, liquidity and protocol risks can lead to losses. Keeping control of signing keys does not remove the risks of the contracts a user chooses to enter.

The institutional side raises a similar distinction at the network level.

Besu is part of the infrastructure portfolio identified in the separation. Its private-network documentation defines a permissioned network as separate from Ethereum Mainnet and Ethereum testnets. Such networks typically have their own chain identifier and use proof-of-authority consensus, in which approved validators run the network.

An institution can therefore use Ethereum-compatible software without making each transaction an Ethereum Mainnet transaction. The software relationship is real; a Mainnet gas bill requires activity on Mainnet.

That is a different mechanism from the fee sponsorship CryptoSlate examined in August. A sponsor paying a user's Ethereum gas bill changes who supplies the ETH, while the network charge remains. Moving execution to a separate network changes which system processes the transaction in the first place.

The distinction helps separate four activities that can otherwise be bundled into a single adoption headline:

Private infrastructure can be commercially important while having a different relationship with ETH from a public network.

The routes that still benefit ETH

MetaMask remains Ethereum-first while supporting multiple ecosystems, and the new Consensys retains public-network work alongside its institutional business. Those commitments preserve routes through which growth can benefit Ethereum's native asset.

On public Ethereum, gas is paid in ETH. The base fee is burned, removing that ETH from supply, while the priority fee goes to the validator. Activity that uses this system has a direct fee relationship with the asset even when a wallet makes the process easier for the user.

Linea, which remains with the infrastructure business, offers another stated route. Its July 2025 tokenomics document identifies ETH as its gas token and describes a design allocating 20% of gas fees after Ethereum Layer 1 costs to ETH burning, with the remainder used for LINEA burning.

That historical design is not a current measurement of how much ETH is being burned. It does, however, explain why the institutional and protocol business cannot be treated as uniformly detached from ETH. Public networks, private networks and the consumer wallet have different economic connections to the asset.

For investors, the useful next evidence is the distribution of actual activity: which networks handle transactions, what fees they generate and how much of those fees reaches Ethereum or uses ETH. For MetaMask users, the immediate question is simpler: which service they are using, what it charges and which risks sit behind the balance shown on screen.

The separation gives the two businesses distinct operating mandates. Ethereum's software can reach more users and institutions through both. How much of that growth benefits ETH will be determined by the transactions and fees that follow.

The post MetaMask and Consensys split exposes the gap between Ethereum adoption and ETH demand appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Every card payment creates a timing problem for the company behind it. A card program may owe Visa through daily settlement before money arrives from its customers, leaving a short but recurring funding gap.

Visa's onchain lending initiative, announced Sept. 8, targets that gap. Credit Coop, an onchain credit protocol, supplies revolving stablecoin facilities that can fund settlement and sweep later cardholder payments toward repayment.

The design brings a conventional form of receivables finance onto blockchain rails. Smart contracts handle draws, cash-flow control and repayment, while authorized Visa settlement files remain central to underwriting and facility sizing. The result is a hybrid credit market in which execution becomes more visible while the decisive commercial data and risk terms stay permissioned.

The settlement gap becomes collateral

Stablecoin-linked card programs settle obligations on Visa's schedule even when cardholders pay on a different schedule. That mismatch can be especially difficult for a young program whose transaction volume is rising faster than its access to bank credit or warehouse financing.

Visa says the funding need is growing with its stablecoin business. The company reported more than 160 stablecoin-linked card programs in its fiscal second quarter of 2026, with payment volume on those programs nearly 200% higher than a year earlier. Stablecoin settlement had also recently exceeded a $20 billion annualized run rate, more than 15 times the prior-year pace, Visa said.

Each figure measures a different part of the business. The program count describes network reach, the growth rate covers card-payment activity, and the settlement run rate annualizes a more recent flow. Credit Coop's outstanding loan principal is a separate measure. The combination still points to a growing pool of programs that may need short-duration capital against settlement receivables.

According to Visa's detailed description, a participating program draws from a stablecoin-denominated revolving facility to meet a settlement obligation. Funds move toward Visa's settlement address. Later, cardholder proceeds flow through Credit Coop's Spigot contract, a programmable lockbox that services interest and replenishes the line before remaining cash reaches the borrower's operating account.

Visa characterizes the model as secured only by settlement receivables. That description sets it apart from the familiar DeFi structure in which a borrower posts more liquid crypto collateral than the loan is worth. Here, the asset supporting the advance is the payment stream generated by cardholders.

The chain records draws and repayments, providing timestamps, token movements and a history of contract execution. Visa said Credit Coop had processed more than 3,000 borrow events and 9,000 repayment events across participating facilities.

A second evidence layer sits inside Visa. Credit Coop receives each program's authorized daily settlement files through a secure pipeline, Visa says, then uses those records with the onchain history for facility sizing, disbursement and repayment verification. Public transaction data can document token movements, while the Visa feed connects those movements to a specific settlement obligation and the program's operating performance.

That gives Visa an expanded role. Its rails create the timing gap, and its records help lenders decide how much capital should bridge it.

The track record is large, concentrated and self-reported

Visa said the Credit Coop model had financed more than $2.5 billion of cumulative settlement volume since 2023, with zero defaults. The company also said greater lender participation had reduced borrowing costs for participating programs by as much as 30%.

Both claims require careful scale. Cumulative financed settlement volume measures throughput through revolving facilities. The same capital can be advanced, repaid and used again, so the $2.5 billion figure says little by itself about principal outstanding or capital at risk on a given day. It also should not be read as Credit Coop revenue, total card spending or market share.

The provenance is equally important. Visa's companion settlement-financing explainer says Credit Coop provided the program figures and that the onchain event counts were measured as of Aug. 19, 2026. It said the zero-default status should be reconfirmed before publication. For the claimed borrowing-cost reduction, Visa supplied no facility-level rates, sample size or calculation methodology.

Rain, a payments company and Visa principal member, accounts for most of the disclosed activity. Visa said Rain has used a Credit Coop revolving facility since August 2023 and had financed about $2 billion of cumulative settlement volume through more than 2,000 borrow events and 7,000 repayments as of Aug. 19.

Three years of repeated draws and repayments show an operating system with meaningful use. The available figures reveal less about the shape of its credit risk. Starting facility sizes, current exposure, lender concentration and performance through a loss period remain outside the disclosure.

Karta offers a view of where Visa thinks this model can lead. Visa says the card company launched and scaled with Credit Coop financing before moving to a larger institutional facility.

Karta's own June announcement confirms the later capital package: a $15 million Series A and a $125 million credit facility from Community Investment Management. Its announcement does not mention Credit Coop, so Visa is the source for the link between Karta's early growth and the onchain facility.

The sequence suggests one possible role for onchain credit. Repeated settlement draws and repayments can help a smaller program build an operating history before it seeks conventional institutional capital. That makes the blockchain facility a bridge into private credit rather than a replacement for it.

Programmable priority still leaves a loss question

Credit Coop's secured-line documentation says a facility can include multiple lenders and assigns them priority repayment through Spigot-controlled cash flows. The contract enforces the configured route for money that reaches it.

Credit Coop's technical materials also identify the human and software dependencies around that promise. The protocol assigns important powers to an arbiter and a Spigot owner. Its edge-case documentation describes possible revenue-contract changes, diverted cash flows, malicious control and complications in post-default execution. Those are design risks, with no indication that they occurred in the Visa-linked facilities.

The facility-specific legal protections remain out of view. Public disclosures do not name every lender behind the Visa-linked programs or provide the complete waterfall governing losses. They leave unanswered whether borrowers contribute first-loss equity or reserves, whether guarantees or insurance apply, and how far a lender's claim extends after controlled receivables run short.

A programmable lockbox improves a lender's control over incoming value. It cannot create value when customers fail to pay or when a receivable is disputed. It also cannot route money that never enters the controlled path. Any resulting loss would depend on protections and contractual claims that Visa and Credit Coop have yet to detail publicly.

That boundary defines the experiment more clearly than the label “onchain lending.” The useful product is a senior claim on payment flows, serviced at blockchain speed and informed by Visa's private records. The public chain supplies evidence of execution. Visa's data and the facility contracts determine how much that evidence says about credit quality.

This is a credible product-market fit for onchain credit because it solves a recurring financing need created by card settlement. It also strengthens Visa's position inside the market: the network supplies the rail, the crucial underwriting data and the context that turns a token transfer into a credit signal.

The post Visa’s $2.5 billion crypto credit bet puts card settlement financing onchain appeared first on CryptoSlate.

US exchange-traded funds tied to Ethereum, XRP, and Solana attracted almost $59 million on Sept. 9 as Bitcoin products lost $120.24 million, offering another example of how capital is shifting between regulated crypto exposures.

The wider market barely reflected that rotation. BlockchainCenter’s Altcoin Season Index stood at 37, well below the 75 threshold at which three-quarters of the largest eligible tokens are outperforming Bitcoin over 90 days.

That divergence is becoming a defining feature of the expanding crypto ETF market. Investors have more ways to move beyond Bitcoin, but their money remains concentrated in a handful of large assets rather than cascading through the broader token market.

Wall Street’s rotation is staying inside a small ETF club

The Sept. 9 session showed how easily an institutional altcoin trade can develop without becoming a broad crypto trade.

ETH funds took in $34.75 million, XRP products attracted $12.29 million, and Solana added $11.73 million while Bitcoin funds posted their second consecutive day of withdrawals.

Those numbers do not prove investors redeemed Bitcoin ETFs and immediately bought the three alternatives. However, they do show that demand was moving in opposite directions across the largest regulated crypto categories.

The pattern extends beyond a single session.

Over the 30 days through Sept. 9, Bitcoin ETFs still dominated with $3.42 billion of net inflows, while Ether attracted $1.76 billion. Solana and XRP added $200.88 million and $185.32 million, respectively.

Together, those four assets accounted for roughly $5.57 billion of about $5.64 billion in 30-day net inflows across completed spot crypto ETF categories tracked by SoSoValue.

The products below them attracted only a fraction of that capital.

Hyperliquid funds recorded $54.77 million over the same period, and Chainlink $19.21 million. Hedera attracted $2.54 million and Avalanche $1.3 million, while Dogecoin, Litecoin and BNB registered small net outflows. Polkadot recorded no net flow.

Assets under management reveal an even wider divide. Bitcoin and ETH products held $99.33 billion and $15.69 billion, respectively, while XRP and Solana had grown to roughly $1.5 billion each.

Hyperliquid, the next-largest category, held about $464 million. Chainlink stood below $182 million, and every other completed category was below $60 million.

That hierarchy gives investors enough regulated alternatives to rotate away from Bitcoin without venturing much farther into the broader crypto market.

In previous cycles, traders often expected Bitcoin gains to migrate first into ETH, then large-cap tokens and eventually smaller speculative assets. ETFs create another route: institutional portfolios can shift allocations among Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Solana while leaving most of the token market untouched.

An altseason still requires money to travel much further

The broader market data shows that transition has yet to happen.

BlockchainCenter defines altseason as a period when 75% of the top 50 eligible cryptocurrencies outperform Bitcoin over 90 days. Its reading of 37 on Sept. 9 means fewer than half that required share had done so.

Data from CoinGecko also shows that Bitcoin retained 56.64% of total crypto market capitalization, compared with 56.02% three months earlier and 56.54% a year ago. Its share has therefore remained broadly stable even as regulated access expanded across an increasingly long list of alternative tokens.

That makes the distinction between an ETF altcoin rotation and altseason increasingly important.

Ethereum, XRP, or Solana can attract hundreds of millions of dollars from funds without lifting Dogecoin, Avalanche, Polkadot, or dozens of tokens with little connection to institutional portfolio construction.

Even the growing number of approved products does not guarantee that a bridge will form. On Sept. 9, Hedera, Avalanche, Dogecoin, Polkadot, Litecoin and BNB products all recorded zero net flows, despite Bitcoin money leaving the market and three larger altcoins attracting capital.

For fund issuers, the next challenge is therefore less about getting another crypto asset into an ETF wrapper than persuading investors to move beyond the handful they already favor.

A prolonged period of Bitcoin redemptions would provide the clearest test. If ETH, XRP, and Solana continue absorbing some of that demand while smaller ETF categories remain largely dormant, Wall Street could see increasingly frequent altcoin rotations without delivering the broad altseason crypto traders are waiting for.

The post Wall Street’s altcoin ETF rotation is not producing an altseason, and the old playbook may be breaking appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A Superfluid bug let an attacker drain more than $100,000 from GoodDollar reserves by creating excess G$ on Celo.

GoodDollar said on Sept. 9 that 86,588 cUSD was exchanged out of its Celo reserve and another $20,857 from its XDC reserve after a malicious Super App bypassed Superfluid’s liquidation safeguards. External G$ liquidity pools were also affected, though neither project has disclosed the losses there.

GoodDollar is a decentralized universal basic income protocol that distributes G$ tokens daily to registered users. Its reserve is backed by stablecoins, with yield generated through DeFi investments used to support G$ issuance and UBI distributions.

GoodDollar’s dashboard shows more than 963,000 unique UBI claimants and 2.3 billion G$ distributed through the program, making the reserve central to the token’s economic model and the daily distribution system built around it.

Celo bug hit network holding 28% of G$ supply

About 2.4 billion G$ crypto tokens circulate on Celo, roughly 28% of the token’s 8.7 billion circulating supply and second only to the 4.19 billion on Fuse. Ethereum holds about 1.82 billion G$, while XDC accounts for 292.5 million.

Superfluid’s Security Council said the vulnerability was specific to its Celo deployment. A malicious application was able to bypass a whitelisting requirement and leave insolvent G$ balances active when they should have been liquidated. Those excess balances were then exchanged against assets in the GoodDollar Reserve and other liquidity pools.

Superfluid detected insolvent accounts on Sept. 3 and traced the liquidation failure to the Super App bug the following day. It deployed a hotfix, reinstated Super App whitelisting on Celo and closed the affected accounts. The council said other Superfluid networks were not exposed to the same flaw.

GoodDollar said its Celo and XDC reserves were not depleted, citing monitoring alerts, emergency pauses and existing protocol safeguards. Claiming, G$ transfers and identity verification have resumed on Celo.

Reserve operations on Celo and XDC remain paused, however, while bridging is suspended and liquidity in external pools remains limited. GoodDollar has advised users against swapping G$ until liquidity improves, warning that thin markets could produce significant slippage and prices that diverge from normal levels.

Meanwhile, the XDC loss remains unexplained. Superfluid said the underlying vulnerability existed only on Celo, yet GoodDollar reported another $20,857 exchanged out of its XDC reserve. Neither project has disclosed how the excess G$ reached or affected that network.

GoodDollar said it plans to address the excess G$, restore liquidity and reopen the remaining paused functions. GoodDollar and Superfluid are preparing separate incident reports that should provide a fuller accounting of external-pool losses and explain how the Celo exploit produced an outflow on XDC.

The post A crypto project paying nearly 1 million people a daily income just had its reserves looted appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Binance is removing the Pax Dollar stablecoin (USDP) from its platform altogether. The exchange announced the move on September 10, 2026 at 06:00 UTC. For holders in the European Economic Area, though, the date in the headlines is not the one that matters. Spot trading ends on September 24, and for EEA users that market had been closed for a year and a half anyway. Your date is a different one: you can withdraw USDP from Binance until November 24, 2026, 03:00 UTC. After that, the exchange decides what happens to any remaining balance, and it commits to neither a destination asset nor a rate.

Between those two dates sits a second, quieter deadline that the English-language coverage has largely missed: Binance Convert for USDP also closes on September 24. For EEA users, Convert was the last remaining way to swap a USDP balance into something else inside the exchange. Once it goes, the only route left until the end of November is a withdrawal to an external address. This article sorts out the dates, explains why holders in the EEA ended up in this position at all, and shows what you can do with a leftover balance.

What Binance is doing with USDP and which deadline counts for you

A delisting is the removal of a token from an exchange's trading line-up. The token does not disappear from the world, it disappears from that one platform. With USDP, Binance goes a step further than in a routine delisting: the exchange is winding down every service around the token in stages, from lending to yield products to the payment function, and at the end it closes deposits and withdrawals as well.

USDP, short for Pax Dollar, is a US dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by the New York issuer Paxos. A stablecoin is a token whose price is meant to track a currency, as a rule backed by cash and short-dated government bonds held at the issuer. Its price therefore barely moves, and whoever holds it effectively holds a dollar placeholder on a blockchain.

To gauge how much of it is still in circulation, we queried two independent trackers on September 10, 2026 at 12:37 UTC. CoinPaprika lists USDP in rank 503 with a market capitalization of around $29.1 million, a price of $0.9979 and daily turnover of roughly $6.2 million, 64 percent above the previous day. DefiLlama independently reports around $29.0 million in circulation at a price of $0.9955. The two counts sit close together, so the price is slightly below a dollar, in a range of about $0.9955 to $0.9979. That is a snapshot and explicitly not a price statement for the weeks ahead.

For a sense of the order of magnitude: Paxos now runs a second, far larger stablecoin in USDG, which DefiLlama data puts at around $3.25 billion. USDP amounts to less than one percent of that. This delisting therefore hits a token that has shrunk over the years, not a market leader.

The USDP timetable from the first lending freeze to the last withdrawal

Binance is not shutting the services down in one go but in several waves over a good ten weeks. The dates below come from the exchange notice of September 10, 2026; all times are in UTC, and central European summer time runs two hours ahead.

September: the products fall away

It starts on September 11. At 03:00 UTC the one-click buy and sell function disappears, at 06:00 UTC margin lending ends. On September 16, Binance Pay and the mining pool follow at 03:00 UTC, flexible lending along with VIP loans at 07:00 UTC, and margin trading at 10:00 UTC. On September 17, spot copy trading ends at 03:00 UTC; open positions are closed at the market price or, where that is not possible, moved into the spot account. At 07:00 UTC the same day, Binance Earn closes: flexible and locked products are unwound automatically and credited to the spot account together with accrued earnings.

On September 23 at 02:00 UTC, the conversion of dust balances ends. September 24 is then the day trading itself stops: spot trading, trading bots and Gift Card are dropped, and open orders are removed automatically. For Binance Convert, the sources give 02:00 or 03:00 UTC on that day. Anyone relying on that function should therefore not leave it to the last hour but allow a day's buffer.

From September 25: only out, no longer in

On September 25 at 03:00 UTC, Binance switches deposits off. More precisely: transfers arriving after that point are no longer credited. Anyone sending USDP to their Binance address from then on does not have a balance, they have a problem. That is the moment the exchange becomes a one-way street.

Why EEA holders have been unable to trade USDP since March 31, 2025

For the deadlines to make sense, a piece of the backstory belongs here. On March 31, 2025, Binance removed nine stablecoins from trading for users in the European Economic Area in order to comply with MiCA, the European crypto regulation. The affected tokens were USDT, FDUSD, TUSD, DAI, AEUR, UST, USTC, PAXG and USDP. Trading pairs in MiCA-compliant stablecoins such as USDC and in euros were untouched, and Binance advised affected users at the time to swap their holdings into USDC, EURI or euros.

MiCA, the regulation on markets in crypto-assets, requires issuers of asset-referenced tokens to hold an EU authorization and to report regularly on their reserves, among other things. Anything that fails those requirements may no longer be offered for trading on European platforms. Which issuers have cleared that bar is broken down in our MiCA register of stablecoin issuers.

What matters for the current situation: the 2025 step took away European users' ability to trade, not their ability to hold. Holding, depositing, withdrawing and the Convert function were explicitly left in place. That is exactly why the most likely case today is a leftover balance that has sat untouched on the account for a year and a half: selling was not possible, and nobody saw a reason to clear it out. For that leftover balance, the September 24 headline deadline is irrelevant, because trading had long been closed to you anyway.

Binance Convert closes first and is the quiet September deadline

Binance Convert is the swap function alongside the order book: you pick two assets, are shown a rate and swap at a fixed price, with no order and no spread arithmetic. For EEA users it had been the only way since March 2025 to turn a blocked stablecoin into something tradable inside the exchange.

That door closes on September 24, 2026. After that the balance is still sitting on the account, but it can no longer be converted within Binance. In practice: if you would rather hold your USDP remainder as USDC or as euros on the exchange, the end of September is the last moment for it. Miss it, and until the end of November the only route left is the one out, meaning a withdrawal to a wallet or to another platform.

Whether the Convert function for USDP is in fact still available in your account depends on your country of residence and your verification status. You can check that in a minute by setting up a swap of a very small amount in your account without confirming it. If the interface shows a rate, the route works. If a restriction message appears, plan straight for a withdrawal. Anyone thinking about a move anyway will find the providers that operate under regulatory supervision in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

November 24, 2026 is the hard cut-off for the USDP withdrawal

On November 24, 2026 at 03:00 UTC, USDP withdrawals from Binance end. That is the date that counts for a holder in the EEA, and it is a good ten weeks away. Until then you can send your balance to an address of your choosing, to a wallet of your own or to another platform that accepts USDP.

Three things matter in practice. First, the network has to match: USDP exists on several blockchains, and a withdrawal on the wrong network lands at an address that does not know the token. Second, a withdrawal fee applies, and on a small remaining balance it quickly eats a noticeable share. With very small amounts it can therefore be cheaper to swap via Convert before September 24 and withdraw the proceeds bundled with other holdings. Third, the old rule applies to every withdrawal: a test transfer with a tiny amount first, then the rest.

You may know this pattern from earlier cases. When Binance dropped four tokens in the summer of 2026, the process followed the same script; we traced it in the Binance withdrawal deadline for ALCX, ARDR, NFP and POND. The delisting of ICX, SCRT and STORJ in August followed the same sequence. The difference here: with those tokens, trading ended first for everyone, whereas with USDP trading was never the issue for you.

What happens from November 25 and what Binance does not promise

From November 25, 2026, 03:00 UTC, Binance reserves the right to convert remaining USDP balances into another stablecoin. It is worth reading closely what that says and what it does not.

The exchange does not name the target stablecoin. No conversion rate is promised either. And the exchange frames the conversion as a possibility, not as a commitment. Should a conversion not be feasible, Binance says it will keep the withdrawal open as far as the network allows. That is a safeguard in users' favor, but it hangs on a condition that sits with the exchange and not with you.

Anyone writing or reading that remainders will automatically be converted into USDC is going beyond the source. What is documented is only this: Binance can convert, guarantees neither destination nor rate, and otherwise keeps the withdrawal open as long as that remains technically possible. Staking a leftover balance on a condition of that kind is a bet with nothing behind it.

Does that make USDP worthless? What Paxos says about redemption

No, and this point separates the case cleanly from other shutdowns. A delisting at Binance ends neither the token nor the issuer. Paxos continues to issue USDP, and according to the company every token remains redeemable at one US dollar, backed by cash and cash equivalents. There is no announcement that Paxos is ending redemption because of Binance's decision.

That is a different matter from a network shutdown of the kind announced for individual blockchains recently. There the token really does become inaccessible if you miss the deadline. Here you are not losing value, you are losing a place of custody. Anyone who withdraws USDP from Binance holds a working stablecoin somewhere else afterwards. That takes the panic out of it without making the deadline any less real: a balance that after November 24 is decided on by the exchange rather than by you is still one you are better off moving beforehand.

Where to put the remainder: another exchange, euros or your own wallet

There are essentially three destinations for a USDP balance, and which one fits depends on what you were planning to do with the money anyway.

A swap inside Binance while Convert still runs

The most convenient route, but the one with the earliest deadline. Anyone swapping into euros, USDC or another tradable asset by September 24 saves the withdrawal fee and the whole network question. For small remainders under about fifty euros this is usually the most sensible option, because a separate withdrawal otherwise costs a substantial share of the amount.

A move to another platform

Anyone wanting to keep USDP as a dollar position sends it to an exchange that still carries the token. Watch two things: that the destination platform actually accepts USDP on the chosen network, and that it operates under regulatory supervision. The second point has not been a side issue since MiCA, because it determines which products are open to you there at all.

Self-custody in a wallet of your own

Self-custody means the private keys are held by you and no service provider sits in between. A deadline like this one makes the argument for it: the token's price has not changed, the rules of the platform it was sitting on have. Anyone wanting to hold USDP for the longer term is independent of an exchange's product decisions with a wallet of their own. The price for that is responsibility, because a lost recovery phrase cannot be restored by anyone.

Tax in Germany: why swapping a stablecoin counts as a disposal

One point tends to get overlooked with stablecoins precisely because the price barely moves: for tax purposes, swapping one crypto-asset for another or for euros is a disposal, not a neutral rebooking. Whether tax arises from it depends on the holding period and on the result. Anyone who has held the position for more than a year sits inside the tax-free range under the German rules on private disposal transactions, and with a USDP remainder from the MiCA switch of March 2025 that is the likely case.

The transaction should still be documented. A swap you carry out in September appears in the 2026 tax return, and the proof of the holding period is on you. A gain or loss from the dollar movement can matter too if you sell inside the one-year period. Which tools log transactions cleanly and produce a report for the tax office is shown in our comparison of crypto tax tools. That does not replace binding advice: for an individual case, the route leads to a tax adviser.

Check in five minutes whether the USDP delisting affects you

Most readers are not affected by any of this, because they have never held USDP. A quick look is still worth it, precisely because a remainder from the days before the MiCA switch can sit unnoticed.

Sign in to your Binance account and check the balances in the spot wallet for USDP. Turn off the filter for small amounts while you do, otherwise exactly the remainders this is about will disappear. Think of holdings outside the spot account as well: amounts locked in Earn products are booked back to the spot account automatically, but not until September 17. Anyone looking before that will find them elsewhere.

If you find nothing, the topic is closed for you. If you find something, note two dates: September 24 for the swap inside the exchange and November 24 for the withdrawal. And anyone regularly active on several platforms should make that check a habit. Delistings arrive with a few weeks' notice, and a notice that appears at six in the morning on an English-language announcement page reaches hardly anyone by itself.

Withdrawing USDP from Binance: what you take away

1. Check today whether a USDP remainder is sitting in your account. Show small amounts, and look inside Earn products too. If you are reconsidering the provider anyway, the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges helps with the assessment.
2. Decide before September 24 whether you swap or withdraw. With very small amounts a swap via Convert is usually cheaper, with larger ones the move is worth it. Anyone wanting to hold the position themselves for good will find suitable devices in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document the transaction for the 2026 tax return. Date, amount, value and destination platform are the minimum; a tax tool or portfolio tracker takes the logging off your hands.

The actual finding behind this case is unspectacular and therefore easy to miss: a balance on an exchange is a claim against a company whose product policy can change. The token still has its value, access to it had an expiry date. Between those two sentences lies the reason deadlines like November 24 can hurt at all.

Sources: Binance exchange notice on the USDP delisting of September 10, 2026 (announcement at Binance) and the timetable write-up with Paxos context at crypto.news. Market figures from our own query at CoinPaprika and DefiLlama, September 10, 2026, 12:37 UTC.

(As of September 10, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Since September 9, 2026, customers of BW-Bank have been able to buy and sell crypto assets through their existing securities account. Access runs through BW Nextbroker, while execution and custody sit with the Austrian provider Bitpanda. Anyone planning to use it should settle three questions first: who the contractual counterparty is, where the crypto assets actually sit, and who declares the tax. All three answers turn out differently from what the familiar securities-account setting suggests.

What BW-Bank has offered since September 9, 2026

The LBBW group is extending its work with Bitpanda Enterprise into retail banking. Until now the partnership, agreed in April 2024, covered corporate banking, with custody and trading for companies. After a pilot phase that started in late July 2026 and was open to selected retail clients at first, the offering is now open to BW-Bank retail customers in Germany.

Rainer Zeeb, head of the securities department at BW-Bank, is quoted in the release of September 9 saying the cooperation gives customers convenient access to crypto assets. Nadeem Ladki, Global Head of Bitpanda Enterprise, places digital assets as a fixed part of the investment world. Bitpanda supplies the technical infrastructure for trading and custody through the relevant group company.

The move stands out because this is a Landesbank, a German state bank, and not a neobroker. Crypto custody is a licensed activity in Germany, and since MiCA has applied in full across the EU, only authorised providers may offer crypto services. Bitpanda says it has held a MiCA licence from BaFin since January 2025. The bank therefore does not act as custodian; it opens a route inside its own interface.

The ten crypto assets available in BW Nextbroker

BW-Bank's product page names the tradable assets. There are ten of them: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL), Litecoin (LTC), Chainlink (LINK), Cardano (ADA), Tron (TRX), Polkadot (DOT) and Hedera (HBAR).

That selection is small next to what specialist trading venues list. For most investors it covers the bulk of the market by market capitalisation. Anyone who wants to hold one particular smaller token will not find it here and will still need an account with a specialist crypto exchange. Whether the list will be extended, the bank does not say.

The route in comes with conditions. You need a securities account at BW-Bank and an activated Nextbroker login. From Nextbroker you are forwarded to the integrated Bitpanda platform, where buying, selling and administration take place. The bank's regular Nextbroker page, incidentally, does not carry crypto assets in its own list of products; it names equities, bonds, ETFs, funds and certificates. Crypto sits there as a separate menu item of its own.

Your counterparty is Bitpanda, not the bank: what that means for you

The most important sentence in the whole offering stands in the bank's own notes. The contractual counterparty for the crypto business is Bitpanda GmbH, or a group company named in its terms of business. BW-Bank is explicitly not a party to that agreement.

This is not a formality. It answers the question of whom you turn to in a dispute. With a faulty securities order the bank is your counterpart, and the familiar routes of complaint and arbitration apply. With a crypto order in the same interface it is the crypto service provider. The term that describes this is intermediation: the bank provides the access, the contract forms between you and the provider.

In practice that means reading Bitpanda's terms of business before you place your first order, not your bank's. They set out which law applies, which entity you are dealing with and how complaints are handled. That the same construction now turns up at several German institutions is something we worked through on September 6 for Sparkasse and Volksbank; the fee models there differ considerably from trading on an exchange.

Custody without your own wallet: who holds your keys

Bitpanda holds the crypto assets you buy. That puts the private key with the provider, not with you. In technical terms this is custodial storage: a third party holds the keys and keeps internal records of who is owed what amount. The counterpart would be self-custody on a hardware wallet of your own, where nobody but you has access.

For many newcomers custody by a provider is the more comfortable route, because no key can go missing. The price for that is counterparty risk: if the custodian runs into difficulty, access to your holding hangs on how that is wound up. Anyone who does not want that needs the option of moving holdings out to an address of their own.

And this is exactly where a question stays open. BW-Bank's product page says nothing about withdrawals to an external wallet. It describes buying, selling and administration within the platform. Whether a transfer to an address you control is possible, and on what terms, is something you have to clarify with the bank or in the provider's conditions before your first purchase. For self-custody that is the decisive question.

Order limits in the securities account: 1 euro minimum, 50,000 euros per trade

The bank names clear amount limits for crypto trading. The minimum stake per order is 1 euro. At the top end a single order is capped at 50,000 euros, and 500,000 euros are possible per day.

The low minimum amount is practical for small, regular purchases. The daily cap will never become an issue for the vast majority of retail investors. More relevant is the limit per order for anyone who wants to move larger amounts in one go: a position of 120,000 euros cannot be built in a single step but breaks into several orders, each with its own transaction fee and its own execution price.

Anyone who wants to buy on an ongoing basis should also check whether an automated savings plan is offered or whether every instalment has to be triggered by hand. The product page describes single orders; it does not list a crypto savings plan.

What the transaction fee costs, and why the bank does not name it

For every executed crypto order, buy as well as sell, BW-Bank says a transaction fee is charged by Bitpanda. The bank does not give a figure for it. It points to the provider's fee page.

That is an important difference from the securities business, where the bank's schedule of prices and services fixes the costs. With crypto assets, pricing authority sits with the provider, and a fee schedule can change without the bank having to change anything. So take the fee page in hand yourself shortly before your first purchase instead of lifting a figure from a review.

Watch two items that can arise separately: the stated transaction fee and the spread, meaning the gap between the buying and the selling price. The spread appears in no fee table as a percentage, yet it works like a mark-up on the price. With the offerings from Sparkassen and Volksbanken it was exactly this combination of commission and spread that made up the gap to a specialist trading platform.

Deposit protection and crypto assets: why the securities-account setting gives no cover here

Because the access sits inside the securities account, a mistaken assumption suggests itself: that crypto assets thereby fall under the same protection as cash balances and securities. That is not the case. Deposit protection covers bank balances, meaning money in an account. Securities in a custody account are segregated assets and belong to you anyway, not to the bank.

Crypto assets are neither the one nor the other. They are not a bank balance and so are not captured by deposit protection. What happens if the custodian becomes insolvent hangs on its custody model and on the legal system it is subject to. BW-Bank points out explicitly that crypto assets can be subject to extreme price swings that may lead to the total loss of the capital invested.

That is not an argument against the offering, but it is an argument for not treating the holding as safer just because it turns up next to equities and funds in the same view. The interface is shared; the legal position is not.

Crypto capital gains tax at a bank: why nothing is withheld at source

With equities and funds in the custody account of a German bank, taxation runs largely automatically: the institution withholds capital gains tax and passes it on. With crypto assets, under the law as it stands, that is different. Gains from a sale count as private disposal transactions under section 23 of the Income Tax Act, and there is no tax withheld at source.

Concretely, that means you declare the transactions yourself in your tax return, in the Anlage SO schedule. For that you need the acquisition date, acquisition cost, disposal date and disposal proceeds for each position. The bank and the provider explicitly do not provide tax advice, and a ready-made tax certificate of the kind you get in the securities business is not envisaged for this part.

Anyone holding crypto assets through several routes, say through the bank access and additionally at an exchange, should bring the records together from the start. After the fact, acquisition dates can often only be reconstructed laboriously, and those are exactly what decides tax exemption. A portfolio tracker with a tax function takes that bookkeeping off your hands. That a securities-account setting means no automatic withholding is something we already took apart on August 27 using the example of equity accounts at crypto exchanges; the direction there is reversed, the risk of confusion the same.

The December 31, 2026 cut-off: why the acquisition date counts

The taxation of crypto assets is currently being decided anew, and the timing of your purchase could become the decisive factor in it. A departmental draft from the Federal Ministry of Finance dated September 8, 2026 would treat crypto assets in future as income from capital assets, with flat-rate withholding tax regardless of the holding period. Under the draft this would capture only crypto assets acquired after December 31, 2026.

None of that is settled. The draft is in early coordination within the federal government, no bill is before the Bundestag, and the one-year holding period under section 23 of the Income Tax Act continues to apply unchanged. What is known about it we wrote up in detail on September 8 under the title "Crypto holding period and grandfathering".

For you, what follows from that is no rush to buy, but care in documenting. Record the date, quantity and price for every acquisition, whatever route you buy through. Should a cut-off date become law, this record is exactly what decides which regime applies to which position.

Bank or crypto exchange: the questions to settle before your first purchase

Access through your own bank has a real advantage: one interface, one login, a known counterpart for the rest of your investments. Against that stand points you have to check actively, because the familiar setting hides them.

cryptoticker.io compiled this assessment itself on September 10, 2026. It rests on the publicly available BW-Bank product page on the crypto cooperation and its Nextbroker page, both retrieved with HTTP 200 on that day, plus the release of September 9, 2026. Five points were checked: tradable assets, access requirements, contractual counterparty, custody and amount limits. Not verifiable were the actual level of the transaction fee, the spread and the question of whether withdrawals to an external wallet are possible; on all three the product page gives no information.

Four questions to your bank or to the provider are therefore worth asking before your first purchase: how high is the transaction fee for the order size you are planning? How wide is the spread at the moment of execution? Is a transfer to a wallet address of your own possible? And what statement do you get at the end of the year in order to declare the transactions in the Anlage SO schedule?

Checking the BW-Bank crypto securities account: what to take away

1. Settle who your counterpart is before you order. The contractual counterparty is the crypto service provider; the bank explicitly is not. Read its terms, and compare the cost frame with what a specialist trading platform charges for the same order.
2. Ask about withdrawals to an address of your own. If they are not offered, your holding stays in third-party custody permanently. Anyone who wants to hold the keys themselves needs a different route for that and a suitable hardware wallet.
3. Keep clean acquisition records from the start. No withholding at source means the burden of proof sits with you. A tax and portfolio tool collects the acquisition date and cost for each position while the data is still retrievable.

Sources to read up on: the BW-Bank product page on the crypto cooperation and the report of September 9, 2026 in IT-Finanzmagazin.

(As of September 10, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

On Wednesday evening, owners of a hardware wallet found an email in their inbox with the subject line “Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability”. The message looked like a security warning from the manufacturer Trezor, and it arrived through that company's genuine sending channel. Trezor made clear the same evening that the message had not come from it. That removes the piece of advice which tops almost every guide: look at the sender address.

This article explains how to recognise a forged security warning when the technical authenticity checks in your mail client all report green, and which four minutes of work protect you from the most expensive mistake a crypto investor can make.

What Happened on September 9: A Warning Email Through the Genuine Channel

Trezor said on its account on X on September 9, 2026: “Please be aware that the email named 'Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability' is not coming from us, and it's a phishing attempt. Do not click on any link.” According to Decrypt, the post went live at around 4:30 pm US Eastern time, shortly after 10:30 pm in Germany. Recipients had already been reporting the message for hours.

What sets this apart from the usual forgeries is the route the mail took. The Block reports that the messages were sent through the company's legitimate official domain; the target of the attack was an external service provider that the manufacturer uses to send customer mail. Trezor has not publicly named the provider. The company had the linked landing page taken down and announced an investigation. By its own account, the wallet itself was never affected.

For you as a recipient, that means the mail sat in your inbox among genuine messages from the same sender, with the same layout, from the same domain. No typo in the name, no clumsy translation, no suspicious attachment.

STM32 Entropy: Why the Invented Flaw Sounded So Credible

The forgery claimed that developers had found a critical hardware-level flaw in microcontrollers of the STM32 family. Roughly one device in four was affected, the mail said, and the fault weakened the randomness of the recovery phrase. That is how Decrypt describes the content of the message.

Entropy is the cryptographic term for the amount of randomness a key is generated from. The less randomness goes into that step, the smaller the space of possible keys becomes, and the easier one of them is to guess. A genuine entropy weakness would be the gravest finding imaginable for a wallet, because it hits every device in the same production run and not just a single account.

That is exactly where the scam draws its force. The attackers invent no overdue payment and no frozen account. They pick up the one worry that every hardware wallet owner carries anyway. Microcontrollers from that product line sit in countless industrial devices, the term is easy to look up, and the history of cryptocurrencies does contain real randomness failures. The claim is verifiably false, yet it is not obviously absurd. Anyone who has self-custodied Bitcoin for years reads a line like that with a raised pulse.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC: What These Three Checks Prove and What They Do Not

Modern mail clients test every incoming message against three mechanisms. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) publishes, in the domain, a list of the servers allowed to send on its behalf. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) attaches to every message a cryptographic signature belonging to the domain. DMARC ties both results together and tells the recipient what should happen when one of them fails.

The site Cryptopolitan quotes a recipient whose copy of the warning mail passed all three checks. That is neither a contradiction nor a failure of the technology. It follows from what these mechanisms actually guarantee. What they establish is that a message travelled through a server the domain owner has authorised for the purpose. About the author of the text, the three checks say nothing.

A company that sends newsletters and service mail will as a rule authorise a specialist delivery provider for the job. If attackers gain access to that provider's interface, they send from the authorised channel. SPF matches, DKIM signs, DMARC reports green. The green tick in the mail client confirms in this case exactly what it is meant to confirm, and still not a word of the message is true.

Remember the boundary in these terms: these checks secure the channel, not the content. Deriving trust in a call to action from them confuses the two.

Why a Breach at a Service Provider Still Does Not Open Your Wallet

A hardware wallet is a device that generates the private key and keeps it inside a sealed chip. Transactions are signed on the device; the key does not leave it, not even during signing. Attackers who break into a manufacturer's mailing provider get distribution lists, names, email addresses and, depending on what is stored there, order or delivery data. The key is not among them.

That is the good news, and at the same time the reason the attackers take the detour through email. They need you as their tool. The entire effort behind this campaign aims at a single moment: you typing your recovery phrase into a form. If that fails, the break-in at the provider was worthless to them.

In practice one calm rule follows from this. No manufacturer will ever ask you to enter, upload, photograph or submit your word list for verification. There is no technical process that would require it. If you are only now choosing a device, or want a second one as a backup, our hardware wallet comparison is a better starting point than any link in an email.

Four Data Breaches in Thirty Days: Our Count of Our Own Coverage

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on September 10, 2026. Method: a query of our own article database through the Strapi programming interface for all German-language posts created on or after January 1, 2026, whose slug contains one of eight terms (phishing, betrug, datenleck, scam, fake, identitaets, warnung, masche). The 16 results of that query were reviewed.

Ten of them date from the past thirty days. Four cases concerned the same kind of event: customer or order data held by a crypto provider leaked at a contracted service provider. The address records of two wallet manufacturers and of a Bitcoin savings plan provider were affected; one of the cases is the address leak at a logistics provider, which we covered here. Three further posts among the ten are BaFin warnings about providers operating without a licence.

The finding is unspectacular, and important for exactly that reason: the raw material for personally tailored phishing mail is currently produced on a monthly cycle, and it is produced mostly at the firms that send, pack and ship on behalf of the crypto providers. Once you are on such a list, you stay on it.

The limits of this count belong to it. It remains open whether the same recipients appear on several lists, how many German customers were affected in each case, and how many incidents occurred that we did not report on. What is measured here is our own coverage, and not the market.

Five Sentences That Appear in No Genuine Wallet Warning

When the sender address drops out as a criterion, the content is what remains. These formulations do not occur in genuine manufacturer communication:

• A request to enter, confirm, validate or submit your recovery phrase “for verification”.
• A deadline of a few hours, combined with the announcement that your balance will be at risk afterwards.
• A link that leads straight to an input form instead of to the manufacturer's home page or blog.
• A request to install an update from a file in the mail instead of through the manufacturer's official application.
• A salutation with your full name and delivery address, meant to create familiarity. After an address leak that no longer works as proof of authenticity; it is closer to a warning sign.

The last point reverses a habit that worked well for many years. A personal salutation used to count as an indication of authenticity, because bulk mail was impersonal. Since address records started leaking regularly, it no longer serves that purpose. How far this now goes is shown by the case of the forged security letters that arrived by post in the letterbox over the summer.

How to Check a Security Email in Four Minutes

The procedure is always the same, whatever the manufacturer and however genuine the mail looks.

1. Do not click any link in the message. Not even “just to look”.
2. Ignore the sender address completely. In this case the sender works as a signal in neither direction.
3. Open the manufacturer's site through a bookmark you set yourself, or type the address by hand. Not through a search engine: ads placed above search terms are an attack route of their own.
4. Look in the manufacturer's blog or status area for a notice about the alleged incident. A genuine flaw of that magnitude is published there, and not distributed by email alone.
5. Check the company's official channel on social media. In the case described here, the all-clear stood exactly there, a few hours after the mail went out.
6. Report the message as phishing in your mail client and delete it afterwards.

Four minutes is a generous estimate. What counts in any case is the order: you leave the mail before you decide anything.

If You Have Already Clicked: What Now Matters for the Seed Phrase

A click on its own gives nothing away. A page you have opened cannot read out your recovery phrase, because it is nowhere on your computer if you store it properly. The seed phrase is the list of usually twelve or twenty-four words from which every key in your wallet can be restored. Whoever holds it holds the balance, without ever touching the device.

The only question that matters now is therefore this: did you type those words in anywhere, upload them, or photograph them and send them off? If not, the incident is over for you. Change the password of the affected mail account anyway if you use the same combination elsewhere.

If you did, speed counts. Set up a new wallet with a new recovery phrase on a clean device and move the balances there, starting with the largest position. From the moment of entry the old wallet counts as open, permanently and irreversibly; a password or a PIN changes nothing about that. Then check every application you granted approvals to with the old address, and revoke them.

Record the process in writing, with date, time and amount. You will need that record later for a police report and for the tax treatment of a loss.

Exchange Account Instead of Wallet: Why the Same Scam Looks Different There

Anyone holding a balance at an exchange receives mail of a different kind: alleged withdrawals, account freezes or proof requests under the European crypto market regulation MiCA. The pattern is the same, the lever is another one: the target is login data and the second factor. We wrote up how to recognise that variant using the example of the forged withdrawal request.

Three settings noticeably lower the risk there, and all three are set in a few minutes. First, a withdrawal whitelist: withdrawals then go only to addresses you have registered beforehand, and new addresses take effect only after a waiting period. Second, a second factor through an authenticator app or a security key instead of SMS, because a phone number can be taken over through a SIM swap. Third, a separate email address that you use exclusively for exchange accounts and that appears in no newsletter.

What is still open belongs to the picture as well. The security researcher Jameson Lopp and Nick Neuman, head of the custody provider Casa, consider it possible that the attack through the mailing provider hit more than one manufacturer; Neuman reports similar messages sent to customers of a second wallet provider. That is the assessment of two named experts, not a confirmed fact, and the companies concerned have so far not commented conclusively. For your own behaviour it changes nothing in any case: the procedure above applies to every mail, whoever the sender is.

Recognising a Forged Security Warning: What You Take Away

1. Set a bookmark to your wallet manufacturer's site today and use only that one in future. If you find in the process that you want to replace your device or add a second one, compare the models in the hardware wallet comparison instead of through a link from your inbox.
2. Activate the withdrawal whitelist and an app-based second factor on every exchange account. Which trading venues offer these settings and operate under European supervision is shown in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Decide where your recovery phrase is kept, and leave that place unchanged. The word list belongs on paper or metal, never in a file, never in a form. If you hold amounts on your computer, you should also check which application is suitable for that, for instance in the software wallet comparison.

The attackers proved this week that they can use a manufacturer's genuine letterbox. What they cannot do: take the words out of your safe. That part you decide.

Sources: Trezor statement on X of September 9, 2026; Decrypt of September 9, 2026.

(As of September 10, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

If your LSK sits directly on the Lisk Chain or is locked up in staking there, you have to bridge it to Ethereum before October 31, 2026. Whatever is still on that chain on the day is unreachable afterwards. If your LSK is already on Ethereum or with an exchange, there is nothing for you to do at all.

That is the short answer. The longer one matters more, because it contains a date that appears in no headline. Leaving the Lisk Chain means clearing two waiting periods, and they run one after the other rather than side by side: unlocking staked tokens takes three days, and the bridge transfer to Ethereum that follows takes at least seven. Lisk therefore tells holders explicitly to start no later than ten days before the shutdown. Your actual deadline is October 21, 2026.

Coverage of the shutdown appeared at the end of August and correctly described what the company intends to do. The calculation that decides the outcome for holders does not appear in those reports. This article closes that gap. It shows which of the three possible places your tokens can sit demands which action, why the seven days cannot be shortened by any technical means, where the clock actually starts running, and what you should record for your own bookkeeping.

What Lisk shuts down on October 31, 2026 and what keeps running

Lisk is one of the oldest names in the industry. The project launched in 2016 with a network of its own, moved to a layer-2 architecture in 2024, and announced in August 2026 that it would refocus the business entirely on payment and treasury software for companies. A layer-2 chain is a network in its own right that bundles its transactions and writes the proofs for them into Ethereum; security therefore comes from Ethereum, while execution happens alongside it. That chain is now being closed.

Three things are being shut down: the Lisk Chain itself on October 31, 2026, the Lisk DAO together with its voting contracts and governance forum, and the programs running on the chain, such as the DAO fund. For development teams operating applications on the Lisk Chain, Lisk has opened a migration path together with the Celo team; it is not mandatory.

The token keeps running. LSK continues to exist, keeps its existing contract on Ethereum, and takes on the role of a loyalty point in the new business model: companies are meant to receive rewards in LSK and later pay fees with them. There is no token swap, no change to the denomination, and no new contract. Anyone holding LSK will hold the same token after October 31 as they do today, simply in a different place. Base joins Ethereum as a second main network going forward.

The pattern is a familiar one by now. We have seen it in the same form across several chains recently and summarised the general chain of actions in a separate article: Blockchain shut down: what happens to your coins and what to check now. Lisk is the most recent case in that series, and because of the staking it is the most laborious.

Exchange, Ethereum or Lisk Chain: where your LSK sits decides everything

Before you do anything, settle a single question: which network is your LSK on right now? There are three answers, and they call for completely different responses.

First, LSK on a trading platform. If your tokens sit in an account with a trading platform, there is nothing for you to do. The contract on Ethereum stays unchanged, and the burn of 100 million tokens is a single on-chain event rather than a migration, which is why existing trading pairs keep working. Lisk names Binance, OKX and Kraken as well as decentralised venues on Ethereum as places where LSK trades, and states explicitly that listings will be preserved. A residual risk remains all the same: a platform can delist a token at its own discretion at any time. If your holdings sit there, it is worth checking your platform's announcement page before you rely on the process running itself.

Second, LSK on Ethereum in your own wallet. Here, too, there is nothing to do. The contract on Ethereum carries the address 0x6033f7f88332b8db6ad452b7c6d5bb643990ae3f and remains untouched. If your wallet shows the token under the Ethereum network, you are done.

Third, LSK on the Lisk Chain or in staking. Only in this case does timing become critical. On the Lisk Chain, LSK carries a different contract address than on Ethereum, namely 0xac485391eb2d7d88253a7f1ef18c37f4242d1a24. The token uses the same address on Base, which makes the two harder to tell apart in a wallet menu. What counts is therefore the network selection in your wallet. If it says Lisk, you need to act.

The special case that affects most people: anyone staking LSK through the Lisk portal necessarily holds those tokens on the Lisk Chain. Staking and rewards continue until the shutdown day, but they do not end automatically with a repayment. Nobody sends your tokens back to you. You have to unlock them yourself and move them across yourself.

Why the bridge to Ethereum takes at least seven days

The waiting period is not an arbitrary choice by the provider but a consequence of how the chain is built. The Lisk Chain is what is known as an optimistic rollup, based on the OP Stack and part of the Optimism ecosystem. An optimistic rollup initially assumes transactions are valid and writes them to Ethereum; only afterwards does a window open in which any observer can submit a fraud proof. That window is called the challenge period and lasts seven days on practically every chain of this design.

While the window is open, a withdrawal to Ethereum is not final, and the bridge therefore does not release the tokens yet. That applies to every withdrawal through the canonical bridge, regardless of the amount and regardless of how busy or quiet the chain happens to be. Canonical means the bridge consists of the contracts that belong to the chain itself rather than the offering of a third party. Nothing shortens those seven days within the canonical bridge.

The clock on the seven days starts only at the prove step

This is where the mistake sits that actually causes people to miss the deadline. A withdrawal through a canonical bridge consists of three separate transactions, and you have to trigger all of them yourself.

1. Initiate the withdrawal. You connect your wallet to the bridge, set the direction to Lisk to Ethereum, select LSK and the amount, and confirm.
2. Submit the prove transaction. Roughly an hour later you return to the bridge and submit the proof for your withdrawal on Ethereum. The seven days start running at this point, not at the first step.
3. Claim the withdrawal. Once the challenge period has expired you send the closing transaction and your LSK is credited on Ethereum.

Anyone who forgets the second step, or catches up on it days later, pushes the entire deadline back by exactly that much. And anyone unaware of the third step will believe after a week that the money has vanished, when it is merely waiting for a confirmation. All three steps require gas fees on both chains, so steps two and three need ether in the same wallet. Anyone holding only LSK and no ether gets stuck at the proof step, and in practice that costs more missed deadlines than any technical problem.

Unstaking LSK: a three-day wait and a penalty fee that still stands

For stakers, a second clock runs before the bridge one. Staked LSK is locked, and releasing that lock carries a waiting period of three days before you can even reach the tokens. Only then can you trigger the first bridge step.

On top of that comes a point that decides real money and that may change over the coming weeks. Lisk has put a resolution on winding up the DAO to its own community, which among other things proposes scrapping the penalty fee for early unstaking entirely. As of September 10, 2026, the official help pages still state that the fee continues to apply for now and will only fall away once the resolution has been adopted and the staking contract updated; the company says it will announce the date through its own channels.

That leaves an uncomfortable trade-off, and it is the reason this article does not offer a blanket recommendation. Unstake immediately and you may pay a fee that disappears within days. Wait, and you burn time from a window that only leaves ten days of buffer to begin with. Lisk itself advises stakers to wait for the fee to be abolished and then start straight away. What is right for you depends on the size of your holdings: with small amounts, the fee can be lower than the risk of missing the deadline.

In practice that means setting yourself a reminder for October 1. If the fee has not fallen away by then, unstake regardless. What is left of the buffer will still cover both waiting periods and one failed attempt.

How to calculate the real deadline: why October 21 is the date that counts

The arithmetic is simple, which is exactly why it stands out that nobody has written it down. Three days of waiting after unstaking, at least seven days of challenge period, ten days in total. Ten days before October 31, 2026 is October 21, 2026. A staker who starts on that day has, on paper, not a single day of buffer left.

Realistically you should start earlier. The seven days are a floor, not a promise. Network congestion on Ethereum, a forgotten prove transaction, a wallet without the ether for the gas fee, or simply a weekend in between all stretch the process out. For holders who are not staking, the same logic applies with seven days instead of ten, which puts the last possible start date at October 24.

A comparable case from our own archive shows how tight such windows become in practice: when the Harmony mainnet was shut down, the chain of actions ran along similar lines, though without the three-day staking lock. The process is documented step by step in Harmony is shutting down its mainnet. The difference with Lisk is the second waiting period, and it turns a one-week deadline into a ten-day one.

Step by step: moving LSK from the Lisk Chain to Ethereum

The full process, in the order you work through it:

1. Check your holdings. Open your wallet and switch to the Lisk network. Note the amount sitting there and whether any part of it is staked.
2. Prepare gas. Make sure the same wallet holds ether on Ethereum and a small amount of ether on the Lisk Chain. Without both you will come to a halt halfway through.
3. Unstake. Release the lock in the Lisk portal and wait out the three-day period. Skip this step if you have not staked.
4. Initiate the withdrawal through a canonical bridge. Lisk points to the bridge overview in its own portal and recommends the canonical routes there, specifically Superbridge and Lisk Bridge.
5. Do not forget the prove transaction. Return roughly an hour after initiating and submit the proof. The seven days run from here.
6. Claim and verify. After the challenge period, send the final transaction and check in your wallet under the Ethereum network that the full amount has arrived.
7. Decide on custody. Only now does the question arise of where the tokens belong permanently. Anyone planning to hold a larger position for years is safer with a hardware wallet than with a browser extension; we have broken down the differences between the devices in our hardware wallet comparison.

What happens if you miss the deadline

Lisk leaves no doubt about this. The help page on the chain shutdown states in as many words that LSK still sitting on the Lisk Chain after October 31, 2026 becomes inaccessible and that there is no way to withdraw or recover it. There is no grace period, no application form and no customer service desk that resolves it after the fact. That is why this article insists on the arithmetic at such length.

Canonical bridge or third party: what the faster route costs

Alongside the canonical bridges there are providers that settle withdrawals from optimistic rollups in minutes rather than days. Technically these providers do not shorten the challenge period. Instead they front you the amount on Ethereum out of their own funds and collect the withdrawal themselves once the seven days are up. You pay a premium for that, and it varies with utilisation and amount.

This shortcut has a price beyond the fee: you swap the waiting period for counterparty risk. Between your deposit and the credit, your money depends on the solvency and the contract quality of a third party. For small amounts that can be a defensible trade-off when time is running short. For a position that matters to you, with six weeks left on the clock, there is no reason to take that risk.

A third option is often overlooked in discussions and is the simplest one for many people: some trading platforms accept deposits directly on the Lisk Chain. Where that works, you send the tokens there and have bypassed the bridge. Check it beforehand in the deposit menu of the platform in question, though, and never send tokens on spec to an address whose network you have not confirmed. A deposit on the wrong network is the second most common way to lose tokens for good.

What burning 100 million LSK means for the circulating supply

The winding-up resolution has a second part that concerns the token. 100 million LSK from the DAO treasury are to be burned permanently, cutting total supply from 400 million to 300 million. Around 47 million LSK are to pass to Lisk Ltd. Small residual balances in older contracts may, according to the company, remain permanently inaccessible. No further burns are planned, according to the help pages.

What that means for the price, nobody knows, and this article does not claim otherwise. What can be said is how the order of magnitude fits together. On September 10, 2026, CoinGecko data put around 233.1 million LSK in circulation at a price of roughly 0.098 euros and a market capitalisation of just under 23 million euros. The burn hits balances that had been sitting in the organisation's treasury and were not being traded at all. What it affects is future supply; the amount circulating today is untouched.

The history belongs in the picture as well: LSK reached its all-time high on January 6, 2018 at around 29 euros. Anyone who bought in back then and has left the tokens on the Lisk Chain ever since loses more than a residual value if they miss the deadline. They also lose the ability to document the loss for tax purposes at all.

What to record for your own bookkeeping

Moving between two networks creates transactions on both chains, and those turn up later in every reporting tool. Whether such a bridge transfer is to be treated as a disposal for tax purposes or as a mere relocation between your own addresses is a question of assessment that a tax adviser answers on the facts of your specific case. This article expressly does not make that call.

Regardless of that: what you do not record today, you will not reconstruct in two years, because the chain will be switched off by then and its block explorer may well have disappeared too. So note down when you unstaked, how much LSK was moved, which transaction hashes on the Lisk Chain and on Ethereum belong to it, which fees were incurred and which bridge you used. A dated screenshot of the bridge overview costs you a minute. If you want to capture this kind of activity on an ongoing basis, our overview of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers lists the usual suspects.

One note on holding periods, because the question is bound to come up: whether a bridge transfer restarts a holding period depends on how the transaction is classified for tax purposes. That question, too, belongs in expert hands.

The three most common mistakes when a chain shuts down

The calendar mistake. The published date is read as the date to act on. In fact it is the date by which everything has to be finished. With Lisk there are ten days between the two.

The halfway mistake. The first bridge step is triggered, the confirmation appears, and the job is considered done. The prove transaction and the claim are missing, and the tokens are stuck. On a chain with a shutdown date, that is the most expensive mistake of all.

The gas mistake. The wallet holds only the token that is meant to move, but no ether for the fees on Ethereum. The process stops halfway, and topping up usually only works through a platform whose own deposit can again take days.

Checking your Lisk exposure: what to take away

1. Check today which network your LSK is on. If it is on Ethereum or with a trading platform, you are done and need do nothing further. If you are tidying up your custody arrangements anyway while you are at it, our crypto exchange comparison helps you line up the terms.
2. Mark October 1 as your start date if you have staked. If the penalty fee has been dropped by then, unstake immediately; if it has not, weigh the fee against the deadline risk and act anyway. For the question of where the tokens go afterwards, the hardware wallet comparison is worth a look.
3. Work through the bridge in three transactions and document each one. Initiate, prove after about an hour, claim after seven days. The records belong in the same file as the rest of your evidence; which tools automate that is covered in the overview of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

The evidence for all deadlines and procedures in this article comes from the company's announcement, Introducing the New Lisk, and from the official help pages on the LSK token, which describe the three-stage withdrawal route and the waiting periods in as many words.

(As of September 10, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

If a message titled "Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability" landed in your inbox this week, apparently from Trezor, telling you that one in four devices shipped with a defective chip and inviting you to run an entropy check in your browser, stop. Do not click anything in it. Trezor did not send it.

The company confirmed on Wednesday that attackers had gotten into its email infrastructure and used it to blast a fake security warning to customers. The email is a seed harvester dressed up as an apology, and it is one of the more convincing phishing attempts the hardware wallet space has seen in years.

What Does the Fake Trezor Security Alert Actually Claim?

The email opens with the tone of a company confessing to a disaster. It claims Trezor's engineering team found a hardware-level defect in the STM32 microcontrollers inside its devices, that the flaw was baked in at the factory, and that roughly one device in four is affected. It says the bug produces recovery phrases with as little as 40 bits of entropy, leaving seeds open to brute-force cracking.

It then does something clever. It tells the reader never to enter a recovery phrase on a website or share it with anyone. Two paragraphs later, it invites that same reader to click a link and run an "entropy check tool" that verifies BIP-39 checksums across 12, 18 and 24-word phrases, validates SLIP-39 shares, and exports extended public keys.

That contradiction is the entire scam. The warning buys credibility, then the tool collects exactly what the warning told you to protect. Anyone who works through that checker hands over enough material to drain their wallet, and in the case of an xpub export, hands over a full map of their addresses and balances even without the seed.

Why Did Trezor Users Fall For The STM32 Story?

Because a nearly identical bug was real six weeks ago, just at a different company.

Starting on 30 July 2026, attackers exploited a firmware flaw in Coinkite's Coldcard wallets. A regression shipped in March 2021 caused affected devices to generate seed phrases using a weak software randomness source instead of the hardware random number generator, cutting effective entropy from around 128 bits to as low as 40 bits on some models. Attackers drained roughly 1,816 BTC, close to 116 million dollars, from more than 5,200 addresses across four waves. Later tallies pushed the figure past 130 million dollars.

Read that against the phishing email again. Forty bits of entropy. Seeds generated before a cutoff date. Brute-force exposure. Migrate to a new seed. The scammers did not invent a threat model. They copied a documented one, swapped the brand name, and sent it to a customer list that had spent August reading about exactly this failure mode. That is why it worked on people who normally spot phishing at a glance.

How Did The Phishing Email Come From A Real Trezor Address?

This is the part that stripped away the usual defences. The message did not arrive from a lookalike domain with a swapped character. It arrived through Trezor's own legitimate sending infrastructure after attackers compromised a third-party email provider.

Trezor said it took down the domain used in the attack and is investigating how the attackers gained access to its legitimate domain. The company has said wallets, private keys and recovery backups stored on devices were never exposed. The compromise sat in the marketing pipeline, not the product.

The problem may be wider than one brand. Casa co-founder Nick Neuman said he had heard of the same campaign hitting Bitbox users and suggested a shared marketing email provider had been compromised.

What Should Trezor Owners Do Right Now?

If you only opened and read the email, nothing has happened to your funds. Delete it and move on.

If you clicked the link and entered any portion of your recovery phrase, a SLIP-39 share, or your device PIN into that page, treat the seed as burned. Generate a fresh seed on a device you trust and move everything to the new addresses immediately. Do not wait to see whether anything happens, and do not reuse the old backup for anything.

If you exported an extended public key, your funds are not directly at risk, but the attacker can now watch your balances and link your addresses. That makes you a target for follow-up scams, including phone calls and physical letters, both of which Trezor customers have already reported this year.

Going forward, the rule is unchanged and it is the only rule that matters. No legitimate wallet manufacturer will ever ask you to type your recovery phrase into a browser, for any reason, including a check that claims to protect you. Verify announcements on trezor.io or the verified Trezor account on X, and treat unexpected email as hostile regardless of what address it appears to come from.

Is This Part Of A Bigger Pattern In 2026?

It is, and the pattern is not about broken devices.

This is the third failure at a Trezor vendor in four weeks. An August incident at ShipMonk, the partner handling Trezor order fulfilment, pushed the number of exposed customers above 80,000 by early September, leaking names, phone numbers and home addresses. Trezor had already warned 66,000 users after a support portal breach in 2024, and rival SafePal leaked close to 40,000 records last month.

The hardware keeps holding. The companies sitting around the hardware, holding customer contact details, keep leaking. Combine a leaked customer list with a compromised sending domain and a real vulnerability at a competitor, and you get a phishing email that reads like the genuine article.

For anyone holding coins on a hardware wallet, the practical takeaway is that your device being secure and your data being secure are now two separate questions, and only one of them is in your hands.

The draft adds registration requirements for controlled trading protocols and leaves its ethics provisions largely unchanged.

OpenDesign put 13 AI models through the same design tasks. DeepSeek V4.1 Flash landed a point and a half behind GPT-6 Astra and roughly 70 times cheaper.

The ECDSA.Fail challenge cut a resource benchmark for one component of a potential quantum attack by 86%.

Head of Product Ryan Kass says the return to Coinbase Wallet reflects a broader trading strategy, with the self-custody app serving as a testing ground for new assets and experiences.

Bitcoin couldn't escape today's inflation-driven selloff, but a bearish pattern on its chart is about to flip for the first time since November.

Senate Republicans have unveiled an updated version of the CLARITY Act ahead of a crucial Sept. 15 procedural vote.

Ripple has burned 15 million RLUSD in its latest major treasury move, even as the stablecoin’s market capitalization continues to surge toward new highs.

MoneyGram’s new Stellar-powered Visa card brings instant USDC retail checkouts and mobile wallet support to Latin America.

Bitcoin slipped below $77,000 on Sept. 10 as hotter inflation data pushed Fed hike odds sharply higher.

XRP Healthcare shuts down after ex-Ripple devs validate years of red flags and comment on a critical $452,000 wallet security vulnerability.

TLDR:

• Ripple Treasury expands GSmart AI across forecasting, liquidity, risk, reconciliation, and reporting tools.
• GSmart uses deterministic financial engines while AI interprets policies and explains treasury recommendations.
• Risk Insights has reached 60% of eligible Ripple Treasury customers, according to the company.
• Forecast Insights now reaches 44% of eligible customers and tracks emerging liquidity gaps.

Ripple Treasury has expanded GSmart AI with new tools aimed at enterprise treasury operations. The update adds AI capabilities across forecasting, liquidity, risk, reconciliation, and reporting.

GSmart keeps financial calculations deterministic while allowing AI to interpret policies, data, and recommendations. The expansion comes as companies seek wider AI adoption without giving up human control over financial decisions.

Ripple Treasury Expands GSmart AI Capabilities

GSmart already operates across Ripple Treasury’s enterprise customer base, according to the company. The latest expansion adds policy-governed agents for several core treasury processes.

Each agent monitors its assigned process and proposes a specific action. It also cites the relevant policy clause before sending the recommendation for human approval.

Knowledge Studio provides the governance layer behind these workflows. Treasury teams can define policies and controls that guide how GSmart operates.

The system checks proposed actions against those controls before presenting them to a person. Financial teams therefore retain approval authority over treasury actions.

Ripple Treasury SVP Renaat Ver Eecke said the approach keeps AI within existing treasury policies. He also described the system as Treasury-Native AI rather than a separate AI layer.

GSmart AI Adds Forecasting, Risk and Treasury Analytics

The expansion also includes Analytics Studio and its Ask GSmart assistant. The tool lets treasury teams retrieve information and insights from their financial data through conversational queries.

Ripple Treasury reported adoption across its eligible customer base. Risk Insights has been enabled by 60% of eligible customers, according to the company.

Risk Insights identifies exposure anomalies and policy breaches for treasury teams. Forecast Insights has also reached 44% of eligible customers.

Forecast Insights compares expected and actual cash flows to identify emerging liquidity gaps. Those tools extend GSmart’s role beyond data interpretation into ongoing treasury workflows.

Ripple cited a governance challenge facing enterprises as AI agents spread. Gartner projects that the average Fortune 500 company could use more than 150,000 agents by 2028.

Only 13% of organizations currently believe they have suitable AI agent governance, according to Gartner. Ripple says GSmart addresses that gap by separating financial calculations from AI interpretation.

Deterministic engines handle financial calculations, while AI interprets policies, detects patterns, and explains recommendations. The approach keeps people responsible for approving financial decisions as Ripple expands AI across treasury operations.

The post Ripple Treasury Expands GSmart AI Across Enterprise Treasury Operations appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Circle will end new USDC minting on the Noble blockchain via Circle Mint starting October 13, 2026.
• The Noble USDC contract pauses completely on January 12, 2027, following a redemption window.
• CCTP V1 burn limits on the Noble blockchain start shrinking October 31, 2026, before shutdown.
• Circle opens a manual USDC redemption portal for Noble holders beginning January 13, 2027.

Circle is discontinuing USDC support on the Noble blockchain. The stablecoin issuer confirmed the shutdown as part of its move to CCTP V2, a newer cross-chain transfer protocol.

New minting of USDC on Noble through Circle Mint stops October 13, 2026. The Noble USDC contract pauses completely on January 12, 2027.

Why Circle Is Winding Down USDC on Noble

Circle says Noble will not receive CCTP V2. 

The chain is being left behind as Circle consolidates its cross-chain infrastructure around the newer protocol. CCTP V2 offers faster finality and stronger security than the legacy CCTP V1 system Noble currently runs.

The company confirmed the decision in a blog post published this week. All USDC on Noble stays redeemable 1:1 throughout the transition, according to the post. 

Circle Mint customers keep normal Noble access through October 12, 2026. Existing withdrawals and redemptions on Noble continue without changes through that date.

After that date, minting new USDC to Noble via Circle Mint gets disabled. Redemptions still work, but CCTP V1 burn limits start shrinking on October 31, 2026. Those limits reach zero on a rolling basis as the January deadline approaches.

Circle’s broader presence in Cosmos is not changing. Injective and other IBC-connected chains remain active partners. USDC continues to settle transactions across Cosmos DeFi outside of Noble.

What Noble Users Need to Do Before the Deadline

Institutional and self-custody holders have a three-month window to move funds. USDC stays transferable on Noble from October 13 through January 12, 2027. Circle recommends three exit paths during that stretch.

Holders can deposit into a centralized exchange that supports Noble USDC. A DEX swap on Noble works too. Users can also burn USDC through CCTP V1 to a supported destination chain before the window closes.

Circle plans to publish a list of known exit venues. The company says it is not running its own exit interface. After December 1, 2026, CCTP exits may narrow to chains still accepting CCTP V1 burns, based on the blog post.

Developers who built CCTP V1 support for Noble face a separate deadline. 

Circle wants Noble removed as a supported route before January 12, 2027. Any integration still relying on that route stops working once the pause hits.

Holders who miss the window are not locked out entirely. Circle will snapshot all remaining Noble balances on the pause date and open a manual redemption portal. That process begins January 13, 2027, for wallets meeting Circle’s compliance and security checks.

The post Circle Cuts Off USDC Support on Noble Ahead of 2027 Shutdown appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• OKX launched pre-IPO perpetual futures linked to OpenAI and Anthropic for European traders.
• Traders can take long or short positions with leverage of up to 10 times.
• The contracts provide price exposure but do not give traders shares, voting rights, or company ownership.
• OKX also added 100 tokenized stocks and ETFs, including Nvidia, Google, Palantir, SPY, and QQQ.
• European X-Perps trading volume has increased fourfold since MiCA’s transition period ended in July.

OKX has expanded its European derivatives offering with new pre-IPO perpetual futures linked to OpenAI and Anthropic. The products give traders exposure to changes in the private companies’ valuations without granting ownership rights. The launch adds another route for investors seeking access to major technology firms before any public listing.

The contracts allow traders to take long or short positions with leverage of up to 10 times. However, the products do not represent shares in OpenAI or Anthropic. Traders are only speculating on valuation movements through derivative contracts offered by the exchange.

OKX, OpenAI Pre-IPO Markets Reach Europe

Interest in private technology companies has increased as firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic remain outside public stock markets. Direct access to private shares is usually limited to funding rounds, employees, institutions, or approved investors in secondary markets.

OKX is not the first crypto platform to offer this type of market. Hyperliquid already provides OpenAI and Anthropic-linked markets through HIP-3. Binance also lists pre-IPO perpetual contracts tied to both artificial intelligence companies.

Alongside the pre-IPO products, OKX is expanding its tokenized stock offering in Europe. The exchange is making 100 stocks and exchange-traded funds available for trading around the clock.

The list includes Nvidia, Google, Palantir, SPY, and QQQ. These tokens track the market price of the related security, but holders do not receive company shares or voting rights. Some tokens can also be moved from OKX to self-custody wallets.

European Derivatives Volume Continues to Grow

OKX Europe CEO Erald Ghoos said demand for the company’s derivatives products has been rising. The exchange reported that European trading volume in its X-Perps product increased fourfold after MiCA’s transition period ended in July.

The latest expansion gives OKX more products tied to both private and public markets. OpenAI and Anthropic contracts target demand for pre-IPO exposure, while tokenized stocks offer round-the-clock access to listed securities through crypto-based products.

The structure of the OpenAI and Anthropic perpetual contracts remains different from buying private shares. Traders do not gain equity, voting rights, or direct claims on either company.

The same distinction applies to tokenized stocks on OKX. They follow the price of listed assets but do not replace traditional ownership. The exchange is using these products to further broaden its European market offering as demand for crypto-based trading tools grows.

The post OKX Unlocks OpenAI Exposure With 10x Leverage appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Bitcoin fell more than 2%, briefly dropping to $76,748 as oil prices surged above $105 per barrel.
• Renewed Middle East tensions and attacks on Saudi assets raised concerns about energy supply and inflation.
• Higher oil prices reduced expectations for rate cuts and increased bets on a possible Federal Reserve rate hike.
• Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said U.S. inflation had not fallen enough, adding pressure on risk assets.
• Bitcoin had performed strongly in August after U.S. Treasury buyback plans weakened the dollar and supported alternative assets.

Bitcoin (BTC) price fell on Thursday as oil prices moved above $105 a barrel amid renewed conflict in the Middle East. The cryptocurrency traded near $77,208 after touching $76,748, leaving it more than 2% lower over 24 hours. Rising energy prices and changing interest rate expectations added pressure across global markets.

Bitcoin Falls as Oil Prices Surge

Oil prices climbed after Iran signaled that it would continue confronting U.S. forces. Fighting between the two sides intensified earlier this week, adding fresh concern about energy supplies from the region. Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen also targeted Saudi Arabian assets. The attacks added to pressure on crude prices and kept traders focused on possible supply disruptions across the Middle East.

Higher oil prices can raise inflation by increasing transport, production, and household energy costs. That can make interest rate cuts less likely when central banks are trying to control price growth. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said inflation in the United States had not fallen enough. Traders then increased bets that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates at its next policy meeting.

Bitcoin has often reacted to changes in U.S. monetary policy. Lower rates can support demand for risk assets, while tighter policy can reduce liquidity and push investors toward cash or interest-bearing assets.

Dollar Weakness Supports Alternative Assets

Bitcoin still entered September after a strong August run. The U.S. Treasury had announced plans to at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations as borrowing costs moved higher. The move weakened the dollar and supported assets that do not pay interest. Bitcoin and gold both benefited as investors searched for alternatives during a period of concern about currency purchasing power.

Bitcoin has also shown a closer relationship with gold this year than with technology stocks. Investors have used both assets as possible hedges against a weaker dollar, although short-term price moves remain sensitive to inflation data, oil prices, and Federal Reserve policy.

The latest decline leaves Bitcoin below the $80,000 level that traders had watched earlier in September. Market attention now remains on Middle East developments, energy prices, and the Federal Reserve meeting next week. Any further rise in oil could keep inflation concerns active. A change in rate expectations could also affect Bitcoin as traders reassess liquidity conditions and demand for alternative assets.

The post Bitcoin Falls as Middle East Tensions Escalate appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• XRP ETFs attracted $12.29 million, extending their positive inflow trend.
• Bitwise led XRP fund inflows with $9.30 million, while Grayscale added $2.98 million.
• XRP ETFs recorded about $185 million in net inflows over 30 days.
• Bitcoin ETFs posted $120.24 million in outflows for a second straight session.
• ARKB recorded the largest Bitcoin ETF withdrawal at $77.98 million.

XRP ETFs extended their run of positive flows on Wednesday as investors added $12.29 million to US-listed products. The inflows came while Bitcoin ETFs recorded a second straight day of withdrawals, showing a clear split across major crypto funds. XRP traded near $1.40 as total XRP ETF net assets ended the session at $1.51 billion. The contrast kept investor attention on capital flows across listed asset products during Wednesday trading.

XRP ETFs Extend Positive Inflow Streak

Bitwise led XRP ETF inflows with $9.30 million, while Grayscale’s GXRP added $2.98 million. Total trading value reached $23.58 million during the session. Over the past 30 days, XRP ETFs have attracted about $185 million in net inflows.

The products have also shown steady demand during wider market weakness. The first US spot XRP ETF started trading on Nasdaq in November 2025 and drew $243 million on its first day. By mid-December, XRP ETFs had recorded 30 straight days of inflows, a streak Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse noted on X.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted $120.24 million in net outflows on Wednesday. Ark and 21Shares’ ARKB led losses with $77.98 million leaving the fund. Grayscale’s GBTC lost $27.22 million, while BlackRock’s IBIT saw $19.53 million in withdrawals.

Morgan Stanley’s MSBT was the only Bitcoin fund to finish positive, adding $4.49 million. Bitcoin ETFs generated $2.05 billion in trading value and closed with $99.33 billion in net assets. Bitcoin remained near a key level watched by institutional investors.

Ether and Solana Funds Attract Capital

Spot Ether ETFs recorded $34.75 million in net inflows. BlackRock’s ETHB led with $22.94 million, while ETHA added $9.71 million. The 21Shares TETH fund received another $2.10 million. No fund posted an outflow.

Ether ETF trading activity reached $852.09 million, while net assets finished at $15.69 billion. Solana ETFs also gained $11.73 million. Bitwise’s BSOL accounted for $11.18 million, and Morgan Stanley’s MSOL added about $558,150.

HYPE ETFs ended the session with $5.29 million in net outflows. All withdrawals came from Bitwise’s BHYP fund, making the product the only major crypto ETF group in the data to post a clear daily loss.

Trading activity for HYPE ETFs reached $31.08 million, while net assets closed at $464.29 million. The latest fund data showed XRP, Ether, and Solana ETFs attracting fresh capital as Bitcoin and HYPE products faced redemptions.

The post XRP ETFs Stay Green as Bitcoin Redemptions Grow appeared first on Blockonomi.

The dispute between Blockstream and the party claiming to be a white-hat hacker has taken a sharper turn, according to Samson Mow’s latest update.

The hacker has accused Blockstream of serious security failures, while claiming that the company allocated only $1.5 million, or possibly nothing, to secure $5 billion in assets.

Fresh Clash With Blockstream

Calling this a “flagrant neglect of security,” the hackers demanded that Blockstream pay a 10% bug bounty from its own funds and warned that failure to do so could result in a 15% loss for Liquid users.

The message also accused Blockstream of being “delusional, greedy, and arrogant” over its handling of security. The hackers further said they planned to publish the private key needed to decrypt their conversations afterward.

Meanwhile, Liquid has kept the sidechain paused as Blockstream and Federation members work on further security fixes, address a chain split, and prepare for a coordinated restart. Users have also been told not to send Bitcoin to Liquid peg-in addresses until the network is back online.

The latest message comes after roughly 4,000 BTC, worth around $320 million at the time, was taken from Liquid’s Federation wallet on September 6. The party behind the withdrawal initially claimed to be white-hat hackers and said the funds would be returned once Blockstream fixed the security issue and patched all affected nodes. After Blockstream confirmed the bridge nodes had been patched, 3,400 BTC was returned to the Federation wallet, while roughly 598 units remained with the hackers.

Consequences Ahead

Mow, in a separate tweet, warned the hackers that they may be underestimating the consequences of what they have done. He said that Blockstream’s decision to communicate with them through PGP was already a “courtesy” and questioned whether publicly admitting to taking the BTC and then demanding a bounty was really a “wise move.”

The former Blockstream Chief Strategy Officer also suggested that the group had left behind more clues than it might realize and cautioned that trying to return the funds does not necessarily mean they can simply walk away from the incident.

“As a white hat, the road only widens; as a black hat, you’re forever on edge. Dreaming of walking away with assets unscathed is nothing but delusion. Some doors, once opened, can never be closed again.”

The post Liquid Hackers Call Blockstream ‘Delusional, Greedy, and Arrogant,’ Demand 10% Bounty appeared first on CryptoPotato.

ZEC has undoubtedly become crypto’s rock star lately, with its price skyrocketing to a ten-year high above $1,200.

However, certain worrying signals suggest that a short-term pullback may abruptly replace the rally.

Are the Bears Coming?

Earlier this month, ZEC surpassed $1,200 for the first time since 2016 and reached almost $1,300. Currently, it trades around $1,220 (per CoinGecko), representing a 150% monthly increase and a staggering 2,450% explosion on a yearly scale. The main drivers behind the spectacular surge include the launch of Grayscale’s ZEC ETF, along with other factors, which you can explore in our detailed article here.

Nonetheless, three key developments suggest the asset’s relentless climb may be coming to an end. The first one is the TD Sequential indicator, which, according to analyst Ali Martinez, has flashed a sell signal on the 3-day chart.

“The last time this setup appeared, on May 19, it resulted in a 64% price correction. Worth paying attention to this one,” he said.

The second is ZEC’s Relative Strength Index (RSI), which has surged past 70. This indicates that the token has entered overbought territory and could be gearing up for a pullback. Conversely, ratios under 30 are typically considered bullish.

Last but not least, investors have been shifting from self-custody to crypto exchanges. This development is interpreted as bearish because it increases immediate selling pressure.

$10K on the Way?

Despite the worrying signals mentioned above, many market observers believe ZEC still has plenty of fuel left to post further gains. X user Altcoin Sherpa described the $1,000 and $1,100 levels as “interesting,” adding they would rather see price spend time in a specific region and “base out” than check the exact price for the bottom.

“I still think this is a fantastic one to buy though for this cycle,” the analyst concluded.

Crypto With Harris ₿ argued that as long as the price stays above $1,050, “there is no need to worry.” In his view, the masses buying now out of FOMO could trigger a major pump to a new all-time high of $10,000, and he predicts ZEC could reach that milestone before Ethereum (ETH).

The post 3 Reasons Why Zcash (ZEC) Can Plunge Following Its 150% Monthly Explosion appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has backed the CLARITY Act once again ahead of its September 15 Senate vote.

He argued that the bill could give US crypto markets a clearer framework and help bring institutional capital and tokenized assets into the country.

Armstrong Lays Out His Case for a Yes Vote

Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on September 10, Armstrong described the CLARITY Act as “ready to get a yes vote” and told viewers that people he had spoken with in the Senate were on board.

“Law enforcement groups are now on board. Many banks are on board. The crypto companies are on board,” he said, while also pointing to hundreds of pages of input from both Republicans and Democrats.

The Coinbase chief also noted that his company had previously raised concerns about the bill but now believes the issues it considered non-negotiable changes have been sorted.

“All of those must-have issues that we raised our hands on last time have now been resolved,” he said.

As CryptoPotato reported in August, Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture before the lawmakers went on recess, setting September 15 as the date for the procedural vote. The measure needs 60 votes, meaning Republicans cannot pass it without support from at least seven Democrats or independents.

The political negotiations also include ethics provisions covering digital-asset holdings and projects linked to elected officials, including President Donald Trump.

Armstrong characterized the White House proposal as containing “very strong” ethics provisions, while Democrats have sought additional measures, including divestiture. He added that the discussions appeared to be close to a solution, calling the issue one of the last pieces to fall into place.

The crypto executive also drew a link between regulatory clarity and institutional adoption. Pointing to the GENIUS Act, he noted that more than 150 large companies integrated stablecoins within three months of its passage.

In his view, CLARITY could act as a regulatory “checkbox” for institutional investors and help bring tokenized equities and perpetual contracts to the US. According to Armstrong, even if the bill doesn’t pass, the alternative is already taking shape through the SEC and CFTC.

Last month, he predicted that clarity would arrive through either congressional action or agency rules, after CFTC Chairman Michael Selig had earlier outlined how the agency could use its existing authority to establish a crypto trading framework if Congress stayed deadlocked. Armstrong therefore framed September 15 as a decision point rather than the only route to new rules.

Bitcoin to $400,000 by 2030

He also connected the regulatory debate to broader financial conditions, arguing that excessive government spending can push investors toward Bitcoin “almost like gold.” Furthermore, he pointed to regulated stablecoins as structural buyers of US government debt, creating demand for Treasury bills and potentially helping lower rates.

On Bitcoin itself, Armstrong maintained that $400,000 by 2030 remains a reasonable target. He believes the cryptocurrency’s one-year downturn may have already reached its bottom, noting that the next halving is about a year and a half away and that previous market run-ups have tended to come right before those events.

“I think the next year or two is going to be good for Bitcoin,” he stated.

The post Coinbase CEO Backs CLARITY Act to Secure ‘Yes’ Vote on September 15 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Solana is up nearly 33% over the past month, following the market’s broader resurgence since August 19.

It currently trades just south of the $100 psychological mark, and multiple market observers expect a new rally soon. Others are more cautious, seeing a risk of a double-digit correction.

The Upward Scenario

X user Ash Crypto recently claimed that SOL is displaying “one of the most bullish setups in crypto right now,” pointing to three major signals that have all flipped in favor of the bulls. According to the analyst, those include the first green monthly candle in 10 months, the monthly MACD, which is on the verge of a bullish cross, and the monthly RSI, which has finally broken a two-year downtrend.

The Black Bull and Gerla also chipped in. The former described SOL as “a $500 token trading at $100,” while the latter believes the asset has completed its manipulation phase and could now be gearing up for a surge towards $500 and then $1,000.

Whale activity and strong institutional interest reinforce the positive scenario. A few days ago, analytics platform Lookonchain revealed that the large investors known as HURDw purchased almost $30 million worth of SOL over the last three weeks. For his part, X user Ted disclosed that a whale scooped up $9 million in Solana, opining that smart money has shifted its focus to altcoins.

Spot SOL ETFs have posted mainly green candles lately, signaling growing appetite for the asset from hedge funds, pension funds, and other conservative investors. This requires the issuers of these products (Bitwise, Fidelity, Grayscale, VanEck, Franklin Templeton, and other financial giants) to buy Solana tokens, thus potentially setting the stage for a further price increase.

Moreover, SOL’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) has plunged below 30, indicating that the asset has entered oversold territory and could be gearing up for a surge. The ratio runs from 0 to 100, where climbing above 70 is interpreted as bearish.

Major Plunge Ahead?

X users BATMAN and Crypto with Haris ₿ are among the pessimists. The former thinks SOL appears to be weakening, adding that the Stochastic oscillator is also forming a bearish divergence.

Crypto with Haris ₿ revealed that his trades are currently at an unrealized loss of over $180,000 but refused to close the positions, anticipating a crash for BTC to $62,000 and a plunge for SOL to $80.

The post Top Solana Price Predictions as SOL Bulls Battle to Hold the $100 Line appeared first on CryptoPotato.

US President Donald Trump proposed a $5,000 “dividend” payment to every adult American citizen if Republicans keep control of Congress after the midterm elections.

The country has around 245 million citizens aged 18 and above, making the program’s estimated cost a whopping $1.2 trillion. The idea sparked major controversy, with some X users claiming part of that sum could flow into the cryptocurrency market and potentially create a major altseason. It is also worth watching how this stimulus package could affect Bitcoin (BTC). Here’s what three of the most popular AI-powered chatbots said on the matter.

You can also check our dedicated video on the matter and much more.

Rise Sharply at First and Then?

According to ChatGPT, if Trump actually gives $5K to each adult American, BTC would probably experience a strong initial pump. OpenAI’s platform does not expect people to spend most of the stimulus to gain exposure to the primary cryptocurrency, but it noted that even if they distribute a small amount of that sum, they could still move the price up.

The chatbot also claimed the announcement alone could trigger huge speculation, as traders would probably “front-run the payments” by buying Bitcoin, altcoins, technology stocks, and other risk assets before the money reached bank accounts.

“BTC could therefore rally well before the actual distribution,” it predicted.

ChatGPT assumed that the real danger would come after the initial enthusiasm. If the program were financed through additional government borrowing and introduced while the economy is still struggling, it could lead to higher inflation and amendments to the Fed’s monetary policy.

“This creates two opposing forces for Bitcoin. Inflation and currency debasement strengthen its “digital gold” narrative, but higher yields and tighter monetary policy generally hurt speculative assets. Bitcoin might therefore surge initially, then experience a sharp correction if the bond market or Fed pushed back,” ChatGPT concluded.

Perplexity stated that such a decision would be “mildly bullish” for BTC in the short term but not “a standalone bull market trigger.” Like ChatGPT, it said the long-term effect would largely depend on the Federal Reserve’s actions and the overall condition of the American economy.

Like Last Time?

Google’s Gemini made an interesting comparison between Trump’s idea and the stimulus packages distributed to Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020-2021, locals received several rounds of benefits to help them cover basic needs after the spread of the disease caused lockdowns and major unemployment.

The chatbot noted that back then, some people used part of the distributed cash to purchase BTC, which eventually triggered a bull run. Recall that the leading digital asset collapsed below $5,000 in March 2020, while approximately a year and a half later it skyrocketed to a new record of almost $70,000.

“A $5,000 payout per American would total $1.2 trillion – exceeding all three COVID checks combined. If passed, it would likely trigger an even more substantial rally for BTC than the one from 2021,” Gemini predicted.

The post What Will Happen to Bitcoin (BTC) if Trump Distributes $5,000 to Each American: 3 AIs Speculate appeared first on CryptoPotato.