Ethereum's volatile market cap shifts underscore its sensitivity to macroeconomic factors, impacting its global asset ranking significantly.

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Mecka AI's rapid valuation growth highlights the increasing importance of real human motion data in advancing robotics and AI capabilities.

The post Mecka AI nears $500M valuation as new funding round takes shape appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Kalshi's move could reshape financial markets by merging crypto innovations with traditional equities, potentially altering trading dynamics.

The post Kalshi seeks US approval for single-stock perpetual futures on Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The investments by Trump and Musk could significantly influence Republican strategies and voter dynamics in key battleground states.

The post Trump, Musk invest millions in 2026 midterms to boost Republican candidates appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Decentralizing Robinhood Chain's sequencer could enhance censorship resistance, impacting governance and revenue dynamics in crypto ecosystems.

The post Arbitrum co-founder addresses decentralization concerns over Robinhood Chain appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

Blockstream Tells Hackers To Return Remaining Bitcoin Stolen in Liquid Theft

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

Government Defeated as Lords Back UK Digital Assets Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Spikes, Shrugs off Hot US Inflation Data

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Canada’s banking regulator has finalized a narrow change to its crypto capital rules that should reduce capital overstatement for some market-neutral positions without broadly easing how banks must treat digital-asset risk.

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions’ 2027 guideline, published Sept. 10, treats all regulated exchanges of traditional financial assets as one exchange when banks calculate delta risk for qualifying Group 2a crypto exposures. That allows positions in the same crypto asset on different qualifying regulated exchanges to receive full capital recognition when they also have the same time to maturity.

What changes, and what does not

The change addresses a specific mismatch between trading practice and capital calculations. In its May consultation backgrounder, OSFI said banks primarily use market-neutral strategies for crypto exposures and that prices for the same asset tend to move almost identically across major regulated exchanges. Treating each venue separately could therefore make the calculated risk, and the capital held against it, larger than the underlying position warranted.

The final treatment does not create unconditional offsetting. It applies only to Group 2a exposures that satisfy the guideline’s hedging-recognition tests, including product structure, regulatory approval or qualifying clearing, liquidity and data-history conditions. Positions associated with unregulated exchanges do not gain the same cross-exchange recognition, and differences in time to maturity still matter.

In plain terms, Group 2a contains crypto exposures that qualify for limited hedging recognition, while Group 2b covers the Group 2 exposures that do not. The framework retains a 94% correlation parameter for calculating delta or vega capital within a Group 2a bucket. Delta and vega risk weights remain 100%, and banks cannot recognize diversification across different Group 2a crypto assets.

Group 2b treatment is substantially stricter. For each Group 2b asset, a bank must deduct from common equity tier 1 capital the greater of its absolute aggregate long or short position. If the prescribed market-risk and credit-valuation-adjustment calculation produces a higher requirement, the bank must use that higher amount.

OSFI also kept Canada’s aggregate gross exposure limit for Group 2 crypto assets at 5% of Net Tier 1 capital, with an exclusion for certain client-clearing derivatives. A breach makes all of the institution’s Group 2 exposures subject to the Group 2b treatment.

The result is targeted relief rather than a broad capital easing. Banks can remove an exchange-specific penalty for a tightly matched hedge that meets the rule’s conditions, but they still face high risk weights, conservative treatment for non-qualifying assets and a firm exposure ceiling.

The guideline takes effect Nov. 1, 2026, for institutions with an Oct. 31 fiscal year-end and Jan. 1, 2027, for institutions with a Dec. 31 fiscal year-end. The effective dates match those laid out when OSFI opened consultation in May.

The post Banks get cross-exchange crypto hedge relief under Canada’s new 2027 capital rule appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says Bitcoin’s latest bottom is already in, even as the cryptocurrency remains below a level that historically confirmed recoveries.

Armstrong said in Sept. 10 interviews with Bloomberg and CNBC that he expects Bitcoin to trend higher over the next one to two years as the market approaches its next halving, while calling $400,000 by 2030 a “reasonable target.”

“I personally think we’ve seen the bottom of the Bitcoin price in this cycle,” Armstrong said, framing the view as his own rather than a Coinbase forecast.

The call comes with Bitcoin trading around $77,000, roughly 39% below the record $126,198 reached in October 2025. That leaves Armstrong wagering on a turn in the cycle before Bitcoin has reclaimed either its old high or a technical level that has historically helped distinguish durable recoveries from bear-market rallies.

Bitcoin still has one historical hurdle to clear

The immediate test sits above $80,000, where Bitcoin has repeatedly struggled and where its 50-week moving average has become an increasingly important marker.

Galaxy Research put that average at $81,473 on Sept. 2 and said a weekly close above it would strengthen the argument that Bitcoin’s bear market had ended.

In four of Bitcoin’s five completed bear markets, the first upside break of the 50-week average came after the cycle low had already been established. The exception was the shorter downturn between Bitcoin’s two record highs in 2021.

That history broadly supports Armstrong’s sequencing: a bottom can occur before the market produces clearer confirmation that a new cycle has begun.

Bitcoin has already supplied some evidence for that view.

The cryptocurrency climbed 25.4% in August, rising from $62,899 to $78,852. Most of the move came during the week ended Aug. 23, when Bitcoin gained 23.5%, producing its largest weekly increase in dollar terms on record. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds attracted $3.4 billion during the month, their strongest monthly inflow since July 2025.

Galaxy attributed the rally to renewed demand for the debasement trade, policy developments in Washington, short liquidations, and momentum buying. Bitcoin also fell far enough below its previous record to attract investors who viewed the asset as cheap relative to other risk assets trading near their highs.

Some of those forces make the rebound less conclusive. Short covering can accelerate a rally without establishing sustained demand, while momentum buyers can retreat quickly if Bitcoin fails to extend the move.

That puts the weekly close around the 50-week average at the center of the next test. A decisive break would place Armstrong’s bottom call alongside a signal that has appeared near the end of most previous Bitcoin bear markets. Continued rejection would leave the market below a threshold that has historically separated recovery from consolidation.

The $400,000 target depends on a much bigger cycle

Armstrong’s longer-term forecast assumes the rebound eventually becomes much larger than a return to Bitcoin’s previous high.

At roughly $77,000, Bitcoin would need to climb more than fivefold to reach $400,000. The target would also put the cryptocurrency more than three times above its October 2025 record.

Armstrong tied his optimism to Bitcoin’s historical four-year cycle and the approach of the next halving, expected around 2028. The programmed event will reduce the block subsidy paid to miners, tightening the rate at which new Bitcoin enters circulation.

His one-to-two-year outlook places the next phase of the recovery around that period, though Bitcoin still faces nearer-term resistance before investors can test the broader cycle thesis.

The first hurdle sits around the low-$80,000 range. Galaxy’s moving-average analysis makes a weekly break above that zone the clearest technical confirmation of Armstrong’s call, while other analysts have also identified resistance around $80,000 to $84,000 after the recent run-up.

Sustaining that move may depend increasingly on spot demand. August’s ETF inflows helped absorb supply during the rebound, but Bitcoin has since struggled to extend gains beyond $80,000 even as shorter-term momentum indicators improved.

A successful weekly close above the 50-week average would put Armstrong’s bottom call in line with the pattern that followed most previous Bitcoin downturns. Another rejection would leave the market inside the same recovery zone it has occupied since August, forcing investors to wait longer for evidence that the next cycle has actually begun.

The post Coinbase CEO sees Bitcoin at $400,000, but first it has to clear $81,000 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia working paper published this month found that public notifications of large crypto transfers were followed by sharply different trading activity on Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Non-whale Bitcoin wallets became active and traded in the alerted whale's direction most strongly during the first 15 minutes. Ethereum participation, by contrast, remained comparatively stable.

The Philadelphia Fed working paper matched public Whale Alert notification times with on-chain Bitcoin, Ethereum and Wrapped Bitcoin transfers through the end of 2025.

Wrapped Bitcoin, or WBTC, was observed on Ethereum. The authors defined a whale wallet as one that had made at least one transfer worth more than $50 million, excluding large wallets associated with exchanges or smart contracts. Keeping only events without another whale transaction within two hours on either side left 6,645 BTC and 5,075 ETH whale transactions.

Bitcoin's response peaked within 15 minutes

The raw data showed active non-whale Bitcoin participation rising most among small and medium wallet groups in the first 15 minutes after an alert. In full-sample regressions, buy participation increased by 14.81 percentage points for small wallets, 23.72 points for medium wallets and 3.50 points for large wallets after whale buys. Following whale sells, sell participation rose by 12.95, 29.52 and 2.95 points, respectively. The same-direction activity then waned toward normal within an hour.

Ethereum did not show the same broad response. Post-alert participation stayed comparatively stable across wallet groups. The clearest immediate same-direction result appeared among the largest non-whale cohort after whale sells, while medium ETH sellers reached only the study's weaker 10% significance threshold. Those classifications describe wallet activity rather than the identities of the people or organizations controlling the addresses.

The volatility results also split by network. Whale alerts were associated with a temporary rise in realized Bitcoin volatility at short horizons. By 24 hours, the effect on BTC volatility from BTC and ETH alerts had reversed, while the response to WBTC alerts was statistically indistinguishable from zero. Ethereum realized volatility was lower after alerts, leading the authors to say large Ethereum-network transfers tended to occur during periods of declining volatility.

The authors interpret the gap as a market-structure difference. Ethereum activity often runs through exchanges, smart contracts and layer-2 venues, where many user transactions can be aggregated into larger balance transfers. The contrast persisted across Ethereum's September 2022 shift to proof of stake, weighing against consensus design alone as the explanation.

The evidence remains observational. Wallet-size groups are transaction-based proxies, one owner may control multiple addresses, and exchange activity was excluded. The event study establishes patterns in wallet activity and volatility around public alerts, not that the alerts caused every observed response.

The post Philadelphia Fed finds Bitcoin traders follow whale signals faster than Ethereum users appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Circle is offering $400 million in stock for Tazapay because a stablecoin can cross a blockchain in seconds and still fail as a payment if the recipient cannot receive usable local money.

The proposed acquisition, announced Sept. 8, would bring a cross-border payments operator inside the company that issues USDC. Circle said Tazapay connects to more than 60 banking and fintech partners and supports payout rails across more than 100 markets. Those links supply the local licensing, banking access, currency conversion and fiat delivery that an onchain transfer cannot complete by itself.

Circle's announcement did not state a price, but its Form 8-K says the aggregate consideration will be Circle Class A stock equal to $400 million, adjusted for Tazapay's debt, transaction expenses and cash. The final share count will depend on Circle's volume-weighted average closing price over the 20 trading days before completion.

What Circle is buying

Circle's core product already handles the onchain leg. USDC provides a dollar-denominated settlement asset, while Circle Payments Network, or CPN, supplies rules, routing and technical coordination among financial institutions. Tazapay would add an operating company at the edges where fiat enters and leaves that system.

In its acquisition announcement, Circle reported that Tazapay processed more than $25 billion in annualized payment volume as of July 31, 2026. It also reported more than 60 banking and fintech partners, payout rails across more than 100 markets and said about 60% of Tazapay's transaction volume involved stablecoins.

Those are company-supplied figures. The release does not define how the annualized volume was calculated, whether the number is gross or net, or whether a payment can be counted at multiple stages. The stablecoin share should not be read as USDC volume because Circle described stablecoins collectively.

Even with those limitations, the combination is strategically legible. Tazapay has been a CPN design partner since 2025, according to Circle. Jeremy Allaire, Circle's co-founder and CEO, said combining USDC with Tazapay's banking relationships, local payout rails and institutional customers would accelerate worldwide adoption.

That forecast describes the distribution problem Circle is trying to solve. Issuing a widely used stablecoin does not guarantee access to every local banking system. A payout operator can connect the token to regulated entities, foreign-exchange conversion and recipient accounts. Owning Tazapay would give Circle a more direct way to coordinate those capabilities with USDC and CPN, subject to the transaction closing and an integration plan that has not yet been disclosed.

CPN's current design draws a line between network coordination and the regulated work done by participating institutions.

In the network's self-managed fiat-payout model, an originating financial institution works with the sender, performs required checks and converts fiat into stablecoins. A beneficiary financial institution receives the stablecoins, converts them into local currency and pays the recipient. CPN coordinates quotes, routing and settlement between them.

Circle sets CPN's rules and Circle Technology Services operates the network. But Circle's governance explanation says the operator does not hold customer funds, manage customer accounts or become a party to transactions between participating institutions. Those institutions transact at their own risk and retain the responsibilities attached to their roles.

The proposed acquisition therefore has a precise boundary:

The phrase “vertical integration” can suggest that every layer moves under one legal and operational roof. The disclosed transaction does not establish that. Circle would own Tazapay if the purchase closes, but Tazapay's bank and fintech partners would remain independent institutions.

Circle's current CPN documentation also describes a managed mode. Under that option, Circle handles licensing, custody, compliance, treasury and settlement for customers that want stablecoin payments without holding digital assets themselves. Fiat Payouts, by contrast, remain a self-managed product delivered through payout partners.

Tazapay could support either side of that architecture. Its routes might expand the partner choices available to self-managed payments, while its operating entities and customer base could support a more integrated managed service. Circle has not said which path it will take or whether Tazapay will serve both.

Tazapay's own structure shows why the integration cannot be reduced to connecting a new API. The company said its stablecoin-related services are provided exclusively through Tazapay Canada and that its Singapore entity does not provide digital payment token services. Singapore permissions cover separate payment activities. The last mile is a collection of licensed entities, contracts and local capabilities, not a single global authorization.

That complexity is the scarce infrastructure Circle appears willing to acquire. Blockchain settlement can be reproduced in software. Regulated permissions, bank connectivity, payout performance and institutional relationships are built market by market.

What the deal does not settle

The acquisition is not complete. Circle expects it to close in 2027, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals, including approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. The 8-K also makes clear that the consideration and final share count can change with closing adjustments and Circle's pre-closing stock price.

Circle has not disclosed Tazapay's revenue, expected contribution to its results, quantified synergies, integration cost or margin profile. It also has not said whether Tazapay's routes will remain available on the same terms to companies that compete with Circle or USDC. The transaction can be evaluated as a strategic move, but not yet as a demonstrated financial return.

Enterprises could gain a more unified route spanning stablecoin settlement and local payouts if Circle integrates the systems without narrowing network choice. Tazapay customers could gain access to USDC liquidity and Circle's broader product distribution. Circle could capture more of the workflow around a USDC payment rather than supplying only the settlement asset and orchestration layer.

Ownership also creates a new tension for CPN participants that value the network as a neutral marketplace. If Circle were to steer volume toward its own subsidiary, independent beneficiary institutions could face a competitor that also helps set network rules. The disclosed documents do not say Circle will favor Tazapay, so that remains a governance question rather than an announced policy.

The acquisition sets up a measurable test. If broader payout coverage and tighter integration improve execution while preserving participant choice, Tazapay could deepen CPN's network. If Circle-owned routes receive preferential treatment, the network could become more vertically integrated and less neutral.

Circle is not buying every bank account at the end of a USDC transfer. It is proposing to buy the ability to coordinate more of the journey to those accounts. That is why the deal reaches beyond ordinary adoption: it treats regulated conversion and local delivery as strategic infrastructure rather than an interchangeable service attached to the blockchain.

Settlement speed remains only one layer. The harder advantage lies in turning digital dollars into money that recipients can actually use.

The post Why Circle is spending $400M to fix the last mile holding stablecoins back from real-world payouts appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Nesa’s NES token returned to trading on Binance Alpha and regained Ethereum funding on Kraken on Sept. 10 after venue-specific interruptions tied to an Aug. 24 token-contract security incident.

The restorations are not a network-wide relaunch or a single recovery plan. Binance Alpha is using two snapshots to separate eligible 1:1 swaps from refunds on its platform. Kraken said NES covered by its funding incident would migrate 1:1 to a new Ethereum contract, while BNB-chain funding would remain disabled.

That distinction matters beyond the two exchanges: neither notice gives a universal migration process for NES held in a private wallet.

What Binance and Kraken users need to do

On Binance Alpha, Binance said users who held NES before Aug. 24 at 14:51 UTC must also have held an eligible portion when trading was suspended on Sept. 5 at 04:00 UTC to receive the 1:1 swap for that portion.

Additional NES acquired after the Aug. 24 cutoff is excluded from the 1:1 swap and is subject to separate refund treatment. Binance said users with eligible net purchases during the specified window would receive an email with refund details within seven business days. The announcement does not disclose the complete refund formula or support a claim that every affected holder will be made whole.

Binance’s announcement scheduled trading to reopen at 08:00 UTC on Sept. 10. Users should check which snapshot category applies to their balance and monitor the email address linked to their account.

At Kraken, the exchange’s incident page said NES would be migrated 1:1 to a new Ethereum contract. It scheduled Ethereum deposits and withdrawals to return at 14:00 UTC on Sept. 10 and marked the funding incident resolved 12 minutes later.

Kraken said NES funding on BNB Chain would remain disabled and only Ethereum-based NES would be supported going forward. Customers moving NES to or from Kraken should select Ethereum and verify the new contract details in Kraken’s official notice before transferring funds.

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The exchange-managed actions do not determine what happens to NES outside Binance Alpha or Kraken. Self-custodied holders should not assume that Binance’s snapshot windows or Kraken’s automatic migration apply to tokens in their own wallets.

As of press time, Nesa’s public official site and general wallet documentation did not provide incident-specific self-custody migration steps. Until Nesa publishes or directly verifies a route, holders should verify any contract address and migration process through its official channels before approving a contract interaction or moving old-contract tokens.

The post Crypto exchange recovery rules split NES holders into winners and losers after $286M exploit fallout appeared first on CryptoSlate.

When a crypto exchange reports that deposits and withdrawals are “delayed”, it sounds like a footnote. At Kraken it has turned this week into a condition that has now lasted seven days, and that falls on this particular day together with a deadline that is final for one of the affected tokens. The short answer to the question of what you have to do: check today whether your coin is listed as disrupted on the exchange's status page, and do not rely on what the trading view shows you. Both sources come from Kraken, and they contradict each other.

This analysis was carried out by cryptoticker.io on September 11, 2026. We pulled the exchange's public status page and its public market data interface on the same morning and compared them line by line. What came out of it appears in no announcement by the exchange.

What Kraken Reports as a Funding Incident and What It Means for Your Account

Funding is the umbrella term at a crypto exchange for everything that brings balance onto the account or takes it off again: deposits from your own wallet, withdrawals to your own wallet, plus transfers in euros or dollars. Trading itself is expressly not part of it. That very separation explains why the current situation feels so harmless: prices are running, charts are updating, buying and selling work. Only the way out is blocked for part of the networks.

Kraken keeps a separate entry for every single network on its public status page. Such an entry can take four states, and the most important dividing line runs between “operational” and everything else. Where it says degraded performance, it means in the language of the exchange: the gateway for this network is working, but not reliably. A withdrawal may go through, it may take hours, it may get stuck. No commitment as to when the condition ends comes with it.

Disrupted Since September 4: 19 Networks From the Cosmos Ecosystem

The incident at issue carries the title “Funding delays for select blockchain networks” at Kraken and was opened on September 4, 2026 at 21:43 UTC. It names 19 affected networks: Akash (AKT), Babylon (BABY), Celestia (TIA), Cosmos (ATOM), dYdX (DYDX), Dymension (DYM), Fetch.ai (FET), Initia (INIT), Injective (INJ), Juno (JUNO), Kava (KAVA), Mantra (MANTRA), Neutron (NTRN), Osmosis (OSMO), Saga (SAGA), Secret Network (SCRT), Sei (SEI), Terra Classic (LUNA) and THORChain (RUNE).

That list has a pattern you should not miss. Almost all the chains named belong to the Cosmos ecosystem or speak its transfer protocol. That points to a shared technical cause in the connection path rather than 19 independent failures on the same evening. Kraken itself has published nothing on the cause to date. Eight status updates since September 4 contain essentially the same sentence: work on a solution continues. The most recent of those updates is dated September 10, 12:33 UTC.

The incident still sits at the processing state “identified”. That means the cause is known to the exchange and the fix is in progress. This state names no target date, and Kraken has not supplied one since.

Our Own Analysis: 725 Funding Services Checked, Nine Flagged as Disrupted

For this article we pulled the status page on September 11, 2026 at around 12:55 UTC via its public data interface. The page timestamp reported in the response itself is 12:29:12 UTC on the same day. The analysis covers 831 entries spread across seven areas. By far the largest of them is “Digital Currency Funding” with exactly 725 individual services, meaning one entry for every combination of coin and network.

Of those 725 services, nine were not on “operational” at the moment we pulled the data. Sorted by the time since which each entry has been flagged as disrupted:

• Stablr Euro (EURR) and Stablr USD (USDR) on Ethereum: both since August 12, 2026, 10:16 UTC. The associated incident reaches back further: it was opened on May 24, 2026, after a problem occurred in the underlying smart contract. Kraken suspended deposits and withdrawals for both tokens and set the markets to “post only”.
• MemeCore (M) on BNB Chain: since August 19, 2026, 08:20 UTC. Here the exchange released withdrawals again after a few hours and instead switched off deposits as a precaution.
• Fetch.ai (FET), Juno (JUNO), Mantra (MANTRA), Osmosis (OSMO) and THORChain (RUNE): all since September 4, 2026, 21:43 UTC, so for exactly one week.
• Polkadot (DOT): since September 11, 2026, 10:05 UTC, the morning of this article.

What is remarkable about this list is less its length than what is missing from it. Of the 19 networks the September 4 incident originally named, only five are flagged as disrupted today. Cosmos (ATOM), Celestia (TIA), Injective (INJ), Sei (SEI) and ten others are back on “operational”, while the incident itself formally stays open. Anyone reading only the incident notice therefore assumes 19 networks are affected, while by our measurement it is five. The reliable information sits in the individual service entries, not in the headline above them.

One limit of this survey belongs with it: it is a snapshot of a single data pull. It says nothing about how many withdrawals were actually delayed, how long an individual transaction took and how many customers were affected. Only the exchange has those figures, and it does not publish them.

Polkadot (DOT) Since This Morning: The Second, Separate Incident

The Polkadot entry is not part of the Cosmos disruption but an incident of its own with its own notice. Kraken opened it today at 10:05 UTC: it was investigating a problem with the Polkadot funding gateway, deposits and withdrawals might be delayed, all other funding methods were working normally. At 11:14 UTC came the follow-up that the cause had been found and a fix was being deployed.

That is the usual course of events, and in most cases such an entry has disappeared again after a few hours. It is still relevant to you, because it shows how quickly a network can slip into this state. Anyone who checked yesterday evening whether DOT was withdrawable had a green display in front of them. This morning that answer no longer holds.

Why the Trading Interface Reports “enabled” While the Status Page Shows a Disruption

Alongside the status page, Kraken runs an open market data interface that keeps a status entry for every tradable asset. We pulled it in the same working step: 843 entries, of which 841 carry the note “enabled”. Only two assets, ANSEM and NATG, sit there on “withdrawal_only”, meaning they may be withdrawn but not deposited.

JUNO shows as “enabled” in that interface. So do FET, MANTRA, OSMO, RUNE and DOT. The same exchange, the same minute, two opposing statements about the same coin.

Technically that is not a contradiction, because the two systems answer different questions. The market data interface describes whether an asset is generally cleared for trading. The status page describes whether the gateway to the respective network is working right now. In practice the difference is awkward all the same, because many portfolio trackers, trading apps and tax tools read their status information from the market data interface. Anyone relying on that gets a completely unremarkable display for a disrupted coin. The disruption is simply not provided for in these tools.

The JUNO Case: A Delisting Deadline Meets a Broken Withdrawal Gateway

Two processes converge here that are each known on their own and together add up to a problem. At the end of August, Kraken announced that it would remove 21 assets from its offering. Affected are XTER, IR, GAIA, SCA, VANRY, BNC, SBR, RBC, MIR, JUNO, HDX, ACA, MULTI, RIZE, EPT, MAT, CQT, CXT, BKS, VULT and M. The dates are set out in the exchange's notice and are unambiguous: deposits and trading end on September 11, 2026 at 14:00 UTC, withdrawals on December 10, 2026 at 15:00 UTC. Whatever is still sitting in the account after that, Kraken sells itself between December 14 and 18.

The exchange states the consequence of that sale unusually plainly. Several of the affected assets have only thin or inactive markets left, it says, so the proceeds could be well below the prices last seen and in some cases minimal or zero. That is not our reading; it is what the delisting notice says.

Two names from that list now also appear in our disruption analysis: JUNO has been flagged as disrupted since September 4, MemeCore (M) since August 19. For JUNO that means in concrete terms: trading ends today at 14:00 UTC, so the convenient route of simply selling the position and leaving the proceeds in euros falls away. What remains is the withdrawal to your own wallet, and that runs through exactly the gateway that has been flagged as disrupted for a week. Anyone who does not get that withdrawal through by December 10 ends up in the automatic disposal.

Three months is a lot of time for that, and the disruption will in all likelihood be fixed long before. Even so, it is the difference between a task you handle today in five minutes and one you have to sort out with customer support in December under time pressure. For MemeCore (M) the situation is more relaxed: there, according to the status notice, only deposits are switched off, while withdrawals were released again on the same day.

Checking the Funding Status Yourself: The Two Addresses You Need

The good news about this case is that you need neither an account nor a tool for the check. Kraken puts its status page openly on the web, and it is readable in a browser. At status.kraken.com you will find the “Digital Currency Funding” area with the 725 individual services. There you look for the name of your coin and read off the state next to it. Anything other than “operational” is a reason not to leave your withdrawal until the last day.

The second address is the exchange's own delisting notice. It sits at support.kraken.com and names the affected assets along with all three dates. You can open both pages without signing in, and both are the position the exchange commits to itself.

This check is not a Kraken peculiarity. Almost every larger exchange runs a page of this kind, and in a separate analysis of several exchange status pages on September 7 we showed how differently detailed these pages are kept. Anyone regularly active on several venues should bookmark the relevant addresses once. Which venues offer that kind of transparency at all is, incidentally, a usable selection criterion and feeds into our crypto exchange comparison.

Stablr USD and Stablr Euro: When a Disruption Lasts Three Months

The oldest open entry in our analysis is also the most uncomfortable one. On May 24, 2026, Kraken suspended deposits and withdrawals for the two stablecoins Stablr USD (USDR) and Stablr Euro (EURR), because a problem had occurred in the underlying smart contract. In the same breath the exchange stated that there was no indication its own wallets or systems were affected, and set the markets to “post only”. The last substantive status update on this is dated July 1, 2026 and says work on a solution continues.

That leaves this incident open for more than three and a half months. For a stablecoin, a token whose entire purpose is to be redeemable one to one against a currency at any time, that is a remarkable condition. It shows that “temporarily suspended” is a very elastic statement at an exchange. There is no deadline by which an exchange would have to resolve such a state.

What “degraded performance” Does Not Mean Legally at an Exchange

A status notice is operational information, not a commitment. No entitlement to a withdrawal within a particular period follows from the entry “degraded performance”, and it is not an admission of fault either. Conversely, “operational” does not mean that an individual withdrawal will go through; it can get stuck for entirely different reasons, such as a source-of-funds check or a missing approval on your side.

This distinction matters so that you hold the right expectation. The status page tells you whether a known problem exists. It does not tell you when it will be fixed, and it does not replace a query to customer support when a specific transaction is stuck.

Withdrawal Stuck: These Steps, in This Order

If a withdrawal is not going through for you right now, work through the following order before you write to customer support. It costs a few minutes and answers most cases.

Network Status First, Everything Else After

Check on the status page whether your coin or your chosen network is listed as disrupted. Many coins can be withdrawn over several chains, and the entries differ: a token can run normally on Ethereum and stand still on a second chain. If the entry is disrupted, your withdrawal is as a rule still sitting in the queue and is not lost.

Check Whether Another Network Is Open

If your preferred route is flagged as disrupted but another one is on “operational”, you can often simply switch the withdrawal route. Make sure that your receiving wallet really supports the chain you choose. A withdrawal to an address on the wrong chain is the most expensive mistake in this whole process and is usually not recoverable.

Only Then Support and Documentation

If the status stays green and your withdrawal is stuck anyway, the cause most likely lies with your account rather than with the network. Then it is a matter of approvals, checks or a stored withdrawal address. How to secure that route in advance is something we have described using the example of the withdrawal whitelist.

Move Delisted Tokens in Time Instead of Letting Them Be Liquidated

For the 21 assets whose trading ends today at 14:00 UTC, a logic of their own applies. After the trading halt only the transfer remains. Where to depends on the token: some remain listed on other venues, others practically nowhere. Which routes exist for this and what to watch out for during the transfer is set out in our piece on delisted tokens and fallback exchanges. The announcement itself and its dates we wrote up in our coverage of the trading halt for 21 tokens.

Anyone shying away from the effort should take the exchange's warning seriously that the disposal proceeds in December may be minimal or zero. With a holding of a few euros that is a defensible decision. With a position of any size it is not.

What This Case Says About Custody on an Exchange

The actual lesson of this episode has little to do with Kraken. As long as your coins sit on a trading venue, your access depends on that venue's infrastructure. If a gateway is not running, your balance is there, visible and tradable, but it does not come out. That is no accusation against a single exchange but a property of custody with a third party.

No panic follows from this, and no immediate withdrawal of all holdings. What follows is a split: what you actively trade belongs on the trading venue. What you want to hold for longer belongs in custody that nobody else has a switch for. Which devices come into question for that and how they differ is set out in our hardware wallet comparison, linked in the final section.

Checking Kraken's Funding Status: What to Take Away

1. Check today whether your coin is affected. Open the “Digital Currency Funding” area on the status page and look for your asset. If it says anything other than “operational”, do not plan your withdrawal for the last day. Where else you can trade is set out with the respective providers in our exchange comparison.
2. If you hold one of the 21 delisted assets, act before 14:00 UTC. After that, selling is no longer possible and only the withdrawal until December 10 remains. For JUNO that route currently runs through a disrupted gateway. Whether your venue is supervised at all is answered by a look at the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Separate your trading holdings from your long-term holdings. What you do not move does not have to sit on the exchange. The right custody for the dormant part is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The liquidation price is the level at which your trading platform closes a leveraged position without asking, because the collateral you posted no longer covers the accumulated loss. You need that single number before you enter, not afterwards. For a long position it can be estimated in one line: liquidation price ≈ entry price × (1 − 1 ÷ leverage + maintenance margin rate). With an entry at $77,000, ten times leverage and a maintenance margin rate of 0.5 percent, the liquidation price works out at roughly $69,685, or 9.5 percent below the entry. The rest of this article explains where each part of that formula comes from, why your exchange shows a slightly different figure, and which running costs squeeze the buffer further.

What Is a Liquidation Price in Crypto Trading?

Opening a leveraged position means borrowing buying power. You put up an amount as margin, the exchange supplies the rest, and the position moves at full size. Margin is simply the collateral you post for that one trade. If the price runs against you, that amount melts away. The liquidation price marks the point at which it has melted so far that the exchange will no longer carry the risk.

The term liquidation describes the forced close itself: the platform sells your long position, or buys back your short position, without needing your consent. On most trading screens the liquidation price sits right next to the entry price, usually in red. For Bitcoin you see this figure in every perpetual view; where the price has gone since is covered in our Bitcoin price prediction.

Liquidation Is Not a Stop-Loss

A stop-loss is your own order: you set the price at which the position closes, and you decide how much loss you accept. Liquidation is the exchange pulling the emergency brake, and it carries an extra liquidation fee. The practical difference is large, because an exit you set yourself usually leaves capital behind, while a liquidation at high leverage consumes the entire margin of that position. Anyone trading with leverage therefore sets the exit personally instead of leaving it to the emergency brake.

How to Calculate the Liquidation Price for a Long Position

The underlying idea is simple. Your collateral covers a certain drawdown, roughly the inverse of the leverage. At ten times leverage you post ten percent of the position value, so the position tolerates around ten percent of decline. Because the exchange steps in before that point, the maintenance margin is added on top.

The calculation needs three inputs:

1. Entry price: the price at which the position was actually filled, not the price you meant to enter.
2. Leverage: the ratio of position size to your margin. With $1,000 of collateral and a $10,000 position, leverage is ten.
3. Maintenance margin rate: the share of the position value you have to keep at a minimum for the position to stay open.

For a long that gives: entry price × (1 − 1 ÷ leverage + maintenance margin rate). For a short the signs flip: entry price × (1 + 1 ÷ leverage − maintenance margin rate). The calculation applies to an isolated position in a linear USDT contract and leaves out fees and funding costs. As an estimate before entry that is enough; the binding figure sits in the position row on your platform.

Why the Maintenance Margin Shifts the Calculation

The maintenance margin is the floor below which a position counts as undercollateralised. That floor always sits below the initial margin, and the gap between the two is your room to move. The rate depends on position size and on the asset traded; the leverage you choose plays no part in it. The larger the position, the higher the tier and the higher the percentage required. Exchanges publish tier tables for this, in which the rate rises with the position value.

A solid order of magnitude comes from the documentation of the decentralised exchange Hyperliquid: there the maintenance margin equals half the initial margin at maximum leverage, which depending on the asset works out at between 1.25 percent for assets with 40x maximum leverage and 16.7 percent for assets with 3x maximum leverage. In practice that means a liquid asset such as Bitcoin carries a rate in the low fractions of a percent up to a few percent, while a thinly traded altcoin can carry a multiple of that. Applying the same leverage to a small coin therefore leaves less buffer than with Bitcoin, even though the leverage number looks identical.

Why Your Number Differs Slightly

Run the numbers yourself and compare them with the exchange display, and a few dollars of difference usually remain. Three items that feed into the platform's own calculation explain it: the opening fee already paid, the closing fee held in reserve and, depending on the model, a liquidation fee. All three reduce the available margin before the price has moved at all. The difference always points the same way: the real liquidation price sits closer to the entry than the estimate.

Worked Example: 10x Long on Bitcoin at $77,000

Assume you open a long position on Bitcoin at an entry price of $77,000. You post 1,000 USDT as isolated margin, leverage is ten, so the position size is 10,000 USDT. Your exchange applies a maintenance margin rate of 0.5 percent at this tier.

Filling in the numbers: 77,000 × (1 − 0.1 + 0.005) = 77,000 × 0.905 = $69,685. If the relevant price falls to that level, the position is closed. The distance is $7,315, or 9.5 percent. Without the maintenance margin the arithmetic point would sit at $69,300, so the exchange steps in around $385 earlier.

The Same Entry, Three Leverage Levels

The calculation becomes interesting in comparison. With an identical entry price of $77,000 and the same maintenance margin rate, the picture is this:

• Leverage 2: liquidation at around $38,885, which is 49.5 percent of room.
• Leverage 10: liquidation at around $69,685, 9.5 percent of room.
• Leverage 25: liquidation at around $73,535, 3.5 percent of room.
• Leverage 100: liquidation at around $76,615, 0.5 percent of room.

The last line is the real finding. A hundred times leverage does not survive a price move of half a percent. Bitcoin produces moves of that size regularly within minutes, around inflation data or central bank meetings for instance. A 100x trade is therefore less a bet on direction than a bet that the market will stand still for the next few minutes.

Short Positions: Why the Liquidation Price Sits Above Your Entry

On a short you earn when prices fall, so a rally is what threatens you. The liquidation price moves upwards accordingly. For a 20x short entered at $77,000 with a 0.5 percent maintenance margin rate, the formula gives: 77,000 × (1 + 0.05 − 0.005) = $80,465. A rise of 4.5 percent ends the position.

One structural difference from a long matters here. A long position's loss is capped at zero on the downside, while a short position's loss is arithmetically open to the upside. In practice liquidation catches that case long before, which is why short traders find the liquidation threshold sitting particularly close to the entry as soon as a market turns into a recovery. Anyone trading both sides should therefore set up the calculation separately for each direction rather than mirroring a rule of thumb.

Isolated Margin or Cross Margin: Which Margin Mode Sets Your Buffer

The margin mode decides which capital is liable for a position, and it shifts the liquidation price more sharply than most settings in the trading menu. In isolated margin mode, only the amount you assigned to that single position is liable. If the trade goes wrong, you lose that amount and nothing else. In cross margin mode, the entire free balance of your trading account is liable. The liquidation price moves further away as a result, because more capital stands ready to absorb the loss.

The price of that greater distance is the size of the damage. A liquidation in cross mode can empty the trading account in one go, while in isolated mode only the assigned margin is affected. For building a position that means: cross moves the threshold, isolated limits the consequences. Anyone holding several positions at once should also bear in mind that in cross mode a single bad trade eats into the buffer of every other position.

Adding Margin Moves the Threshold but Solves Nothing

Almost every platform allows you to add margin to an isolated position after the fact. That pushes the liquidation price further away and buys time. Arithmetically, paying into the position is the same as lowering the effective leverage. The function becomes dangerous when it turns into a habit: every top-up raises the amount lost in a later liquidation. A limited loss turns step by step into a large one.

Mark Price Instead of Last Price: Which Price Triggers Liquidation

What triggers the close is, as a rule, not the last traded price on your own exchange but the mark price. That is a smoothed reference price built from prices on several venues. Hyperliquid describes its own method as liquidations using the mark price, which combines external exchange prices with the state of its own order book.

This construction protects you from a whole class of incidents. If the order book on a single exchange thins out for a moment and one sell order pushes the last price far down, that spike triggers no wave of liquidations as long as the reference price stays stable. The flip side: you can be liquidated even though the price on your chart never touched the liquidation price, because the reference price stood lower elsewhere. Anyone checking their threshold should therefore use the platform's mark price display rather than the candle chart.

What Funding Rate, Fees and Slippage Take Out of Your Buffer

A perpetual contract has no expiry date. To keep its price tethered to the spot market, the long and short sides pay each other a balancing payment at fixed intervals, the funding rate. When the market sits in a pronounced bullish mood, the longs pay, and the payment is taken from the margin. Over several days that adds up to a noticeable amount, which shrinks the distance to liquidation without the price having moved at all. How this mechanism works in detail, and what part it plays on decentralised venues, is taken apart in our piece on what a perp DEX is.

On top of that come the trading fees on opening and closing, plus slippage, the difference between the expected and the actual execution price. In fast market phases slippage is no marginal item: when the liquidation is triggered, the exchange sells at exactly the moment when many positions are being closed in the same direction anyway. The price achieved then regularly sits below the arithmetic liquidation price. That is precisely why at high leverage levels no remainder of the margin is usually left, even though the calculation before entry produced a small residual amount.

A Realistic Buffer Instead of a Bullseye

From these items follows a workable rule. Treat the calculated liquidation price as an optimistic boundary and plan your own exit noticeably ahead of it. Putting the stop-loss at the same price where the forced close is waiting effectively gives you a second liquidation at the same spot. A distance that can absorb fees, funding and an unfavourable fill is the actual purpose of the whole calculation.

Partial Liquidation, Insurance Fund and Auto-Deleveraging: What Happens Next

For large positions the forced close does not run in a single step. Hyperliquid, for instance, initially places only 20 percent of the position into the order book as a market order for positions above 100,000 USDC, and then waits 30 seconds before the orders cover the whole position. The purpose of that staging is to protect the market: a large position thrown into a thin order book all at once moves the price and thereby liquidates the next position.

If the proceeds are not enough, the second safeguard takes over. When a position falls below two-thirds of the maintenance margin, a dedicated liquidator pool at Hyperliquid takes on the position, and its earnings go to the community of depositors. Centralised exchanges run an insurance fund for this, fed by the surpluses of successful liquidations and covering shortfalls. Only when that buffer is not enough either does auto-deleveraging come into play: the exchange then forcibly closes the opposing positions of profitable traders to balance the books.

For you as a user an uncomfortable conclusion follows. Even a position that is right can be closed in an extreme market phase, because the other side has defaulted. Anyone deploying larger amounts should therefore check how the chosen platform handles that case and how large its insurance fund is. If you want to compare venues on those terms, the conditions and safeguards are set out in our overview of crypto brokers.

How Much Leverage German Retail Traders Are Allowed

The calculation above applies everywhere in technical terms. Legally, in Germany, it runs into a hard limit. In its general decree on contracts for difference, BaFin laid down that a provider must demand an initial margin of 50 percent of the notional value from a retail client on a CFD on a cryptocurrency. That corresponds to leverage of two to one, and therefore to the most generous buffer in the whole table above: close to 50 percent of price decline before the threshold is reached.

The same decree sets out two further protections that matter in connection with liquidations: a margin close-out protection, which closes the position automatically when it is undercollateralised, and negative balance protection, which prevents a trade from turning into a claim against you. Anyone trading perpetual contracts at 20 or 50 times leverage on a platform outside that framework is operating in an environment where neither guarantee applies. Between two percent and fifty percent of room lies the actual substance of this regulation.

Why the Number in the Menu Is Not the Whole Truth

Many platforms show a slider up to 100x but apply the high tier only to small position sizes. As soon as the position grows, the next tier of the maintenance margin table takes effect and the effective leverage falls automatically. The leverage figure on display is therefore an upper limit for small amounts, not a guarantee for every position size. Check your exchange's tier table before you deploy a larger sum.

Five Mistakes That Pull the Liquidation Price Closer

Most forced closes originate in the position size, not in a wrong view of the market. Five patterns come up again and again:

1. Leverage is mistaken for a measure of risk. What counts is the position size relative to the whole account, not the number in the menu. Twenty times leverage on two percent of the account is more harmless than three times leverage on the entire balance.
2. The buffer is calculated without costs. Funding, fees and slippage are missing from the estimate and push the actual threshold closer to the entry.
3. Nobody recalculates after adding to a position. Every increase in size shifts the average entry price and with it the threshold. The old figure carried in your head is then wrong.
4. The margin mode stays on cross although the position was meant as a single bet. The entire account balance is liable, without anyone having decided that consciously.
5. The position is held over a weekend or a data release. Thin order books and scheduled figures produce exactly the short, violent moves that a tight buffer cannot absorb.

All five points can be checked in two minutes before entry. Public data sites such as Coinglass additionally show how much capital was force-closed across the market per 24 hours; a glance at that places your own position size in the context of what the market is doing.

After a Liquidation: Why You Should Save the Exchange Statement Immediately

A liquidation is a completed event with a realised result. For sorting it out later you need three records from your account: the statement of the closed position with timestamp and execution price, the breakdown of funding amounts paid, and the fee statement for the period. Many exchanges keep these extracts available in the account only for a limited window, and after a delisting or an account closure they are sometimes no longer retrievable at all.

How it is treated for tax depends on which instrument you traded and in which country you are liable to tax; that question belongs in the hands of a tax adviser and cannot be answered in general terms. What you can do regardless is document everything without gaps. A portfolio tracker that pulls the trading history from the exchange automatically takes that work off your hands and keeps the data even once the trading account has long been empty. The effort is a one-off, the benefit stays.

Calculating Your Liquidation Price: What to Take Away

1. Work out the threshold before every entry. Entry price × (1 − 1 ÷ leverage + maintenance margin rate) for a long, with the signs reversed for a short. Note the figure together with the planned exit before the order goes out. Which venues offer which maintenance margins and safeguards is set out in our comparison of the best perp DEXs.
2. Check the margin mode and the position size separately. Isolated limits the damage, cross moves the threshold. Together the two decide how much a single bad trade costs your account. Calculators and position monitoring are covered in our overview of the best analytics tools.
3. Save the statement as soon as a position has been closed. Trading history, funding and fees belong exported and archived, ideally automatically. Suitable tools are set out in our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

An inactivity fee is a fixed amount a provider debits purely because nothing has happened on an account for a defined period. It does not depend on trading, on a withdrawal or on the size of the balance, but on standstill. Anyone who opened a second account at a crypto exchange years ago and then forgot about it may have been paying there for months without noticing.

Two providers have touched their rates in recent weeks, and in both cases the move was upwards. This article explains the mechanics behind it, shows with two documented cases how high the amounts now run, and walks through checking your own dormant account. First, though, the result of our own survey, which is decisive for that check: on publicly accessible fee pages, the answer is very rarely there.

What an inactivity fee is and when a crypto exchange charges it

The term comes from the classic brokerage business. A broker earns on orders; if those dry up, the account still costs money, because account and reporting obligations carry on. The inactivity fee shifts those costs to the customer. Crypto trading venues have adopted the model, partly for trading accounts, partly for the payment cards that go with them.

The trigger is almost always a period without defined activity, twelve months being the usual span. What counts as activity differs considerably, and this is the point where most readers get it wrong: a mere login counts with some providers, not with others. What matters there is a movement of money, that is, a purchase, a sale, a deposit or a withdrawal.

The second peculiarity concerns how it is calculated. Unlike a trading fee, the amount is a flat rate. On an account holding 4,000 euros it is barely noticeable. On a residual balance of 60 euros it eats the account up in less than a year. That is exactly why the fee systematically hits the small, forgotten holdings and not the large ones.

Crypto.com raises its inactivity fee to 5.95 dollars from September 1, 2026

The first documented case concerns the Crypto.com prepaid card. The provider's fee and limit overview states that after twelve months without cardholder-initiated financial activity, a fee of 4.95 US dollars applies for each month of inactivity. It goes on to say that this amount will be raised to 5.95 US dollars with effect from September 1, 2026. As soon as there is activity on the card again, the charge ends and the twelve-month counter starts over.

Two qualifications belong with it, so the figure is placed correctly. The overview quoted applies to the prepaid card in the United States, not automatically to card products from the same provider in the European Union. And it concerns the card, not the trading account. The value of the example therefore lies less in the amount than in the mechanics: a provider states openly from when it charges a dormant product, how high the rate is and what stops it. Those are precisely the three pieces of information you need for your own account.

The increase of one dollar looks small. Over twelve months it is 71.40 US dollars instead of 59.40, and it runs on quietly for as long as nobody touches the card.

Dormancy fee after a withdrawal from the EU: the second case

The second case comes from Luno and shows the harsher variant. The provider has pulled out of several regions, among them the European Economic Area, and has asked customers there to close their accounts. For balances still sitting there after the communicated cut-off date, consistent reports from several trade outlets say a monthly inactivity fee of 2 US dollars applies from September; from December a dormancy fee of 50 US dollars is added, making up to 52 dollars a month in total. The provider's help page on this process does not answer automated requests; in a browser it is reachable.

How this withdrawal played out for the customers affected was described in detail by cryptoticker.io on August 8, 2026. What counts for the context here is the order of magnitude: 52 US dollars a month is no longer an administrative contribution but an amount that consumes a typical residual balance entirely within a few months. The difference between 2 and 52 dollars lies in the word alone. An inactivity fee charges a dormant account; a dormancy fee charges an account the provider regards as definitively abandoned.

Our own survey: 15 fee pages retrieved, 6 were usable

That leaves the question facing every reader with a dormant account: how do you find out whether your provider charges something like this? To answer it, we measured the obvious route a customer takes first, namely a look at the public fee page without logging in.

cryptoticker.io compiled this survey itself on September 11, 2026. Method: for 15 trading venues and brokers relevant to European investors, one publicly linked fee or terms page each was retrieved using an ordinary browser identifier, the visible text was extracted from the source code and searched for the keywords inactivity, dormant, dormancy and the German equivalents.

The result came out more clearly than expected. Eleven of the 15 addresses answered with status code 200; four rejected the automated request with a 403. Of the eleven reachable pages, however, only six delivered enough readable text at all to answer the question; with the remaining five, the content is only assembled in the browser through JavaScript loaded afterwards, so the retrieved document contains practically nothing. On balance, the question could not be answered from the public document on nine of the 15 pages.

Of the six usable pages, exactly one mentioned the keyword at all. At eToro, the fee overview lists, in the section on the money account, the entry inactivity fee with the value free. Third-party sources list a monthly inactivity fee for trading accounts at the same provider; that statement could not be confirmed on the provider's page, and it is therefore not passed on here as fact. At Kraken, Bitpanda, OKX, Bybit and BISON, the keyword did not appear in the retrieved text.

What this survey expressly does not do: it is no proof that the providers named charge no such fee. One page each was checked, not the complete schedule of prices and services, not the terms of use in full and not the logged-in customer area. Four pages were blocked for retrieval, five more were unreadable without a browser. The survey therefore measures how findable the information is, nothing more.

Why the fee is rarely on the public fee page

There is a sober reason for that. Fee pages are sales pages. They set trading fees, spreads and savings plans side by side, because that is exactly what new customers compare. A charge that only bites after a year of standstill plays no part in that decision and therefore sits elsewhere: in the schedule of prices and services, in the general terms and conditions, or in an article in the help section.

On top of that comes the technical hurdle from the survey. Five of the pages checked only assemble their tables in the browser. For a reader that is invisible; for any search across pages it is a wall. Anyone wanting to know what applies at several providers cannot avoid visiting each one. For choosing a new trading venue, an ordered overview of the crypto exchanges relevant to European investors helps, but the question of dormant accounts remains, in every case, one you settle inside your own account.

Inactivity fee and dormancy fee: the difference that decides the amount

The two terms get mixed up in everyday use, but they describe different stages. An inactivity fee is an ongoing contribution for an account the provider continues to run. A dormancy fee is the rate for an account that, from the provider's point of view, has been given up and is only being administered because money is sitting in it.

The sequence is typical: first a small monthly amount runs, then after a further period the large one is added. The Luno case shows both stages on a timetable, September for one, December for the other. For your own check that means searching the terms for both terms and watching for deadlines that come in stages.

A third variant belongs here too, even though it is not a fee in the narrow sense: the minimum withdrawal. If the balance falls below it, the money can no longer be moved out, and the fee runs regardless. In that case the amount is effectively lost without anyone having withheld it.

What resets the counter: login, trading or payments

This is the most important detail in the terms, and it decides how much work is involved. If a provider requires only a login, a date in the calendar will do. If it requires customer-initiated financial activity, as the quoted Crypto.com overview puts it for the card, logging in is not enough.

What counts in such cases is a real movement: a purchase, a sale, a deposit or a withdrawal. Anyone who only wants to keep a dormant account alive typically triggers a small purchase. That incurs trading fees and possibly a spread, and on a sale in Germany the one-year holding period for a private disposal transaction starts running again for the holdings concerned. A transaction made purely to avoid the fee can therefore end up costing more than the fee.

For most dormant accounts, closing is the cheaper route. If you have not used an account for years, you lose nothing by withdrawing the balance and closing it.

Checking your dormant account: these five steps in this order

First: draw up a list of all your accounts. Search your inbox for confirmation emails from the years of the last market cycles, supplemented by your browser's password store. Anyone who bought Bitcoin on a second or third platform in 2021 typically finds more there than expected.

Second: log in and look at the actual balance, separated into crypto holdings and cash in euros or dollars. The two can be treated differently.

Third: in the logged-in area, open the schedule of prices and services or the fee page and search for inactivity, dormant and dormancy. Judging by the survey above, the public page is enough in only a few cases.

Fourth: go through the account statements or the transaction history for the past twelve months. A charge already running shows up there as a recurring entry with an identical amount each time, usually at the start of the month.

Fifth: decide. Either withdraw the balance and have the account closed, or set a reminder that prompts you to generate activity before the deadline expires. A middle course, in which you simply leave the account lying there, is precisely the case the fee charges for.

Minimum withdrawal and residual balance: when the fee eats the account

The unpleasant situation arises when the fee is larger than what could still be withdrawn. With a minimum withdrawal of ten dollars and a balance of eight, there is no regular way out while the monthly charge keeps running. What applies in that position is set out solely in the terms of the provider in question, and the rules differ: some houses cap the fee at the balance available, others stop charging at a balance of zero and close the account.

No general legal advice can be derived from that, because the applicable law, the provider's place of business and the agreed terms interact. Anyone affected with a meaningful amount at stake should settle it with the provider in writing and ask to be told the legal basis for the charge. The related case of a balance left behind after an exchange closes has been worked through by cryptoticker.io in a separate article on residual balances and cut-off date fees.

What a MiCA licence regulates here and what it does not

Since the transition periods ended, providers serving customers in the European Economic Area need authorisation under the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets. That authorisation requires, among other things, holding client assets separately from the firm's own, and it obliges providers to state costs clearly. It contains no upper limit for account maintenance, inactivity or dormancy fees.

A practical distinction follows from this. A licence raises the likelihood that the fee is set out cleanly somewhere at all and that a contact inside the EU remains reachable. It says nothing about how high the rate may be. And it no longer bites where a provider leaves the market: that is precisely the situation in which the highest of the amounts documented here have appeared.

Announcing fee changes: how the message reaches you at all

Fee changes are announced, usually by email to the address on file and with a few weeks' notice. This is the point at which the system becomes unreliable for dormant accounts: anyone who has not used an account for years often has an old address on file there, filed the sender into the promotions folder at some point, or simply does not read the message.

Anyone deliberately keeping a dormant account should therefore do two things: bring the address on file up to date and put the provider's sender on an allow list in the inbox. Both take a few minutes and are the only connection through which a change reaches you at all.

For taking stock, the same thinking applies as with a tax return: an account that appears in no overview does not get checked either. If you bring your holdings together in one place anyway, a dormant account shows up at the next reconciliation.

Checking the inactivity fee: what to take away

1. List every account before you check anything. Search the inbox and the password store and note down the providers. A tool that brings holdings together across several platforms makes this inventory permanent rather than a one-off; you will find the selection in the overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
2. Search for the terms in the logged-in area, not on the public fee page. According to the survey of September 11, 2026, the question could not be answered at all on nine of 15 public pages. While you are at it, note where the provider is based and whether it is authorised in the EU; which houses those are is shown in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Decide instead of letting it lie. Either withdraw the balance and close the account, or set a reminder before the deadline and update the email address on file. If you want to consolidate your holdings anyway, move them to a trading venue you use regularly; the candidates are in the comparison of crypto exchanges for European investors.

Sources to read up on: the Crypto.com fee and limit overview for the prepaid card with the rate of 4.95 US dollars and the increase from September 1, 2026, as well as the eToro fee overview, the only one of the six usable pages on which the keyword appeared at all.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Bitwise is closing its Dogecoin ETF. The fund trading under the ticker BWOW is being wound up: the last trading day on NYSE Arca is October 14, 2026, and anyone who has not sold their shares by then will receive the cash equivalent on October 22, 2026. The provider announced this on September 10, 2026 at 3:28 p.m. New York time.

For most European readers this is not a portfolio question but a market question. BWOW was a US product that a retail investor could not normally reach through a European broker at all. The episode is interesting all the same, because it answers a question that has been hanging over the altcoin funds since they launched: is it enough for a crypto product to be approved and tradable for it to actually be bought? For this fund the answer is demonstrably no. And something practical follows from that for you, whether you buy Dogecoin through a securities wrapper or directly at a crypto exchange.

What “Dogecoin ETF discontinued” means: the three Bitwise dates

Bitwise Investment Advisers, the fund's sponsor, resolved on the liquidation with effect from September 10, 2026. Three dates structure the process, and they appear verbatim in the provider's announcement.

October 14, 2026: the last trading day on NYSE Arca. Until the close on that day, shareholders can sell their shares on the secondary market, that is, on the exchange to another buyer. The same day the fund converts its Dogecoin holdings into cash. After the close it ceases operations.

October 15, 2026: before the opening bell, the creation of new BWOW shares ends. That is the mechanism through which an exchange-traded fund grows; take it away and the product can only shrink.

October 22, 2026: remaining shareholders receive the net asset value of their shares, calculated as of October 21, paid out in cash. Net asset value, usually abbreviated NAV, is the fund's assets divided by the number of shares outstanding, in other words the arithmetic value of a single share.

Bitwise adds one sentence that matters more than it sounds: “Shareholders do not need to take any action during this process.” No application is required; the wind-up runs automatically. Anyone who would rather sell than be paid out, though, has to act by October 14.

Why Bitwise is closing the Dogecoin ETF: 722,000 dollars in fund assets

The official reasoning is brief. Bitwise says it is liquidating the fund “as it continues to optimize its product range to meet evolving investor needs”. The company expressly does not cite trading volume, fund size or outflows as the reason. That reticence is standard in the industry and no reproach in itself.

The fund's figures are public, however, and they are clear. The trade publication Cryptopolitan compiled them on September 11, drawing on the fund documents as well as data from The Block, SoSoValue and ETF.com. According to those, on September 8, 2026 BWOW held assets of around 722,000 US dollars (721,815 dollars precisely) and roughly 8.2 million DOGE. For comparison: Bitwise says it manages around 9 billion US dollars in client money.

The decline can be traced quarter by quarter. At the end of 2025 the fund reported net assets of 1.15 million US dollars; by June 30, 2026 it was 473,547 dollars. In the first half of 2026, according to these documents, no new shares were created while 20,000 shares were redeemed. Cumulative performance since inception stood at minus 45.37 percent in the August monthly data. Part of that is simply how Dogecoin traded over the same period, not a flaw in the product.

Trading stayed thin as well. In its opening week BWOW reached around 3 million US dollars in daily turnover and never came close to that figure again. Bitwise announced the fund on November 25, 2025; trading began on November 26.

What is happening to Dogecoin right now: price, market cap and ETF outflows

The coin itself is technically untouched by the fund closure. Dogecoin traded at around 0.0836 US dollars at about 09:50 UTC on September 11, 2026, with a market capitalisation of roughly 14.3 billion US dollars, ranking twelfth among the largest cryptocurrencies; those are our own readings, taken from Coinpaprika. On the day it was down a good 2 percent. The all-time high of around 0.753 US dollars dates from May 8, 2021 and is therefore more than five years old.

More telling than the daily price is demand through the fund wrapper. Over the preceding 30 days the three US Dogecoin funds together recorded around 670,530 US dollars in net outflows, according to the SoSoValue data cited by Cryptopolitan. Cumulative net inflows since inception added up to a mere 11.77 million US dollars. Across all US Dogecoin products, cumulative trading volume to September 10 came to about 300 million US dollars.

Liquidation explained: what happens to the shares between October 14 and 22

Liquidation at an exchange-traded fund means the fund's assets are sold and the proceeds distributed to shareholders. The fund disappears, the money does not. That is precisely what separates an orderly fund closure from an insolvency, where creditors are served and investors stand in line.

In practice two routes run side by side. Sell on the exchange by October 14 and you get the market price a buyer is paying at that moment. That price can deviate from net asset value in either direction, and with a thinly traded product the deviation tends to be larger. Don't sell, and on October 22 you are wired the NAV as of October 21, carrying the full Dogecoin price risk until then.

Bitwise says it has coordinated the wind-up with the NYSE so that delisting and liquidation proceed in an orderly fashion. The company also filed a Form 8-K with the US securities regulator SEC, according to Cryptopolitan: the mandatory disclosure for material events at a listed issuer.

Why BWOW mostly does not concern you as a European investor

Some context matters here, so that this news does not turn into false urgency. BWOW is a US trust under American securities law, not a fund set up under European rules. For distribution to retail investors in the EU it lacks the key information document required by the PRIIPs regulation, that three-page mandatory document without which a broker may not sell a packaged investment product to retail clients in Europe.

Concretely that means BWOW was, as a rule, not available through a European securities account at a local crypto broker. Those affected are above all investors holding through a US broker. If you are unsure whether that includes you, a sober look at your portfolio overview settles it: no BWOW listed there, and the matter is closed for you.

ETF, ETP and ETN: the difference that counts for a European portfolio

Because the terms get muddled in everyday use, a clean separation is worth the space. An ETF is an exchange-traded investment fund whose assets are legally segregated from the assets of the fund company. An ETP is the umbrella term for exchange-traded products as a whole. An ETN, finally, is an exchange-traded note, that is, a claim against the issuer.

For cryptocurrencies this is not hair-splitting. In Europe, individual coins cannot be packaged as a classic UCITS fund for regulatory reasons, because such a fund has to diversify broadly. That is why local products come almost without exception as collateralised bearer notes: legally you hold a claim that is backed by deposited crypto holdings. If the issuer fails, the collateral is what protects you, not the segregation of fund assets.

Alongside that stands the direct route, where you hold the coins yourself, in your own wallet or at an exchange. Choosing between these routes is a trade-off between portfolio convenience and self-custody, and it has tangible consequences for fees, taxes and for whom you are trusting when it matters.

The 21Shares Dogecoin ETP: what is tradable in Europe and what it costs

Anyone in Europe wanting exposure to Dogecoin through a securities account currently ends up, in practice, at the 21Shares Dogecoin ETP with the ISIN CH1431521033 and the German securities number A4A5WJ. The key data come from the product profile at justETF, retrieved on September 11, 2026.

The product was launched in Switzerland on April 8, 2025 and tracks the performance of Dogecoin through a bearer note collateralised with corresponding crypto holdings. Replication is physical and income is accumulated, that is, retained in the product rather than distributed. Fund assets come to around 9 million euros, and the paper is eligible for savings plans.

The most important item sits in the line below: the total expense ratio is 2.50 percent a year. This ongoing fee, usually referred to as the TER, is taken out of the product's value day by day, regardless of whether the price rises or falls. On an investment of 1,000 euros that works out at 25 euros a year for the wrapper alone. It is a multiple of what broadly diversified equity ETFs cost, and it is the price of the convenience of holding a coin in your familiar portfolio. Whether that is worth it depends on how long you intend to hold and how high the fees are on the alternative; a look at an exchange comparison answers the second half of that question.

One note on scale that fits this article's theme: 9 million euros is not an unusual figure for a European crypto ETP, but nor is it a comfortable one. Anyone taking the lesson of BWOW seriously keeps an eye on their product's fund size instead of glancing at it once at purchase.

Approval is not demand: what the SEC listing standards changed in September 2025

The backdrop to the flood of products in recent months is a rule change. On September 17, 2025 the US regulator SEC approved generic listing standards for exchange-traded commodity and trust shares. Since then not every single product needs its own rule-change procedure; if a fund meets the criteria, it can be listed.

That has noticeably increased the number of filings and launches and shortened the time to listing. It has changed nothing about demand. This is exactly the gap that the BWOW closure makes visible: a product can clear every hurdle, list on one of the world's largest exchanges, be reachable through every major US broker, and still be discontinued after ten months for lack of interest.

Where the ETF money went instead: Hyperliquid, Zcash and Chainlink

The figures from the Cryptopolitan analysis allow a comparison within the same product class, and it is unambiguous. To September 10, 2026 the US Dogecoin products reached around 300 million US dollars in cumulative trading volume. Products on Hyperliquid stood at about 2.1 billion over the same period, Zcash products at around 1.5 billion and Chainlink funds at roughly 680 million.

Inflows show the same picture in a different currency. According to estimates compiled by ETF.com and quoted by Cryptopolitan, Solana spot products gathered almost 880 million US dollars in total and XRP products around a billion. Cumulative net inflows across all three US Dogecoin funds came to 11.77 million dollars by contrast.

Putting those numbers in context belongs to the job: they are snapshots from third-party sources, not audited annual accounts, and they measure trading activity and fund flows, not the quality of a network. What they show reliably is a ranking of institutional interest as of the reporting date.

What the closure says about memecoins as an investment product

Dogecoin is the oldest and best known memecoin, meaning a cryptocurrency whose value derives largely from recognition and community rather than from a technical application. At rank twelve and a good 14 billion US dollars in market capitalisation, the coin is anything but a footnote.

That is exactly what makes the finding interesting. A large, visible and loud following evidently does not translate automatically into demand through a securities account. The people who trade Dogecoin mostly do so where they already are: on crypto exchanges, in wallets, through apps. Too little was left over for the route through a fund wrapper with an annual fee.

No verdict on the coin follows from this, and certainly no forecast for its price. What follows is a sober observation about distribution channels: with Dogecoin, demand sits in the crypto-native channel, while for other assets it migrates more strongly into the regulated securities world.

Tax: why a cash settlement can work like a sale

Caution is in order here, in two directions. According to Cryptopolitan's account, the SEC filing notes that the distributions are taxable events. That statement refers to US tax law and to US shareholders. The Bitwise press release itself says nothing about tax treatment; I checked it expressly on that point.

Nothing can be derived from it for taxation in Europe, and I am not claiming anything here either. The general mechanism is no secret, though: when a fund is wound up and you receive a cash payment, your position ends, and an ended position is as a rule a disposal for tax purposes. How it is classified in your specific case depends on the product type, the location of your account and your personal circumstances.

In practice that means: if a wind-up does affect you, collect the settlement statement and the provider's notice for your tax records, and clarify the classification with your tax adviser. Anyone wanting to keep track of many transactions will find suitable support in a specialised tax tool. This article is not tax advice.

How to spot that a crypto product is heading for closure

The warning signs at BWOW sat openly in the documents for months. These patterns transfer to any exchange-traded crypto product you hold.

The first sign is shrinking fund assets. At the Bitwise product, net assets fell from 1.15 million to 473,547 US dollars within six months. Every provider publishes this figure, usually updated daily on the product page.

The second sign is an absence of share creations. In the first half of 2026 not a single new BWOW share was added, while shares were redeemed. A product no fresh money flows into has its growth behind it.

The third sign is thin exchange trading. After an opening week of around 3 million US dollars in daily turnover, the fund never reached that level again. For you as an investor that is doubly unpleasant, because thin trading widens the gap between bid and ask and makes every exit more expensive.

A fourth point concerns the provider's communication: when a product is pulled from marketing material and product overviews, that is often the harbinger. Check these metrics once a quarter and a wind-up will not take you by surprise; you can decide at your own pace instead.

Dogecoin ETF discontinued: what to take away

1. Check whether this affects you at all. BWOW is a US product without a PRIIPs key information document and was as a rule not available through European portfolios. If the ticker is not in your portfolio overview, you need do nothing. Anyone holding through a US broker has until October 14, 2026 to choose between selling themselves and the automatic cash payout on October 22. Which providers come into question for the securities route is shown in the crypto broker comparison.
2. Compare the cost of your wrapper against the direct route. The Dogecoin ETP tradable in Europe carries an ongoing fee of 2.50 percent a year. Weigh that amount against the fees and effort of buying directly before you settle on a route; the terms offered by the trading venues are in the crypto exchange comparison.
3. Keep an eye on fund assets and trading turnover. Shrinking assets, absent share creation and thin trading were readable at BWOW for months. Put a quarterly date in the calendar for that check, and file the statements from any wind-up for tax purposes straight away, for which a portfolio tracker is well suited.

One closing point of context, because it tends to get lost in the excitement around individual products: a fund closure is not a default and not a loss of your money. The process is an orderly retreat in which the assets are sold and paid out. A wind-up only becomes unpleasant when it catches you unprepared and forces you to exit at a bad moment. The story of the first altcoin funds can thus be carried a little further: we covered the launch of the Dogecoin ETF in September 2025, and this is now the other end of the same story.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Sources: press release from Bitwise Investment Advisers of September 10, 2026 on the liquidation of the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF, published via PR Newswire; product profile of the 21Shares Dogecoin ETP (ISIN CH1431521033) at justETF, retrieved on September 11, 2026; analysis of the fund data by Cryptopolitan of September 11, 2026 citing The Block, SoSoValue and ETF.com; own price reading at Coinpaprika on September 11, 2026.

If you run your own node on the Lightning Network using the Alby Hub software, you have had one concrete job since September 9, 2026: check the version number. If it reads anything between v1.7.0 and v1.18.5, and the management interface is reachable from the open internet, an attacker can gain unauthorised access and drain funds, according to the provider. Which puts the answer to the central question right at the top: check the version, close off access from the internet, update to v1.24.0, and change the unlock password afterwards.

Everything else in this article answers the questions that follow from there. Who is actually affected by the flaw, how do you tell that your installation was never exposed in the first place, and why is the fix older than the warning now making the rounds in the trade press.

What Alby Hub is and who actually runs this software

Alby Hub is software that lets you run a node on the Lightning Network yourself. The Lightning Network is a payment layer built on top of Bitcoin that moves small amounts almost instantly and at very low fees: two participants open a payment channel and only the opening and closing of that channel are recorded on the blockchain. A node, in that picture, is the machine that keeps such channels open and forwards payments.

The difference from an ordinary wallet app is decisive in this case. An app on your phone connects to somebody else's service and has no address of its own on the network. Alby Hub, by contrast, is a program that runs permanently, on a small machine at home, on a rented server, or as an application on a desktop computer. And a program that runs permanently has an interface through which it is administered.

That interface is precisely what the September 9 report is about. The people affected are therefore those who settle their bitcoin payments themselves rather than having somebody settle them. For the variant hosted by Alby, none of the reports describes a case.

Which Alby Hub versions are affected: v1.7.0 through v1.18.5

The provider has rated the flaw as critical and drawn a clear line around the affected range: versions v1.7.0 up to and including v1.18.5, all of them releases from before August 2025. From the 1.19 series onwards the flaw is fixed. According to reports so far, exactly one user is confirmed as affected.

A CVE number, the internationally standard identifier for a vulnerability, does not appear in the September 9 reports. The provider has announced that technical details will follow later, as is customary with responsible disclosure: first as many operators as possible should update, then the precise workings of the attack are described. For you that means you cannot yet check the provider's assessment for yourself. The recommended course of action does not depend on it.

One point that tends to get lost in the excitement: the version range alone does not decide the matter. An old release on a machine reachable only within your own home network was, by the provider's description, never exposed. The version number is one half of the check, reachability the other.

Why only a publicly reachable management API is exposed

The management API is the interface through which Alby Hub is administered: opening channels, triggering payments, issuing access for apps. A programming interface of this kind is at heart an address that accepts commands. Sitting behind the front door of your own network, it can only be reached by someone already inside that network. Sitting openly on the internet, it can be reached by anyone who knows or finds the address.

By the provider's account, the flaw only becomes exploitable in that second situation. Anyone who has deliberately made their node reachable from outside, say to operate it from a phone while travelling, belongs to the group at risk. Anyone who only operates it inside the home network does not.

That distinction is why the first recommended measure is not the update but the lock-down. An update takes a few minutes and, if it comes to it, a restart. Taking access off the internet takes one move in the router and works immediately.

Checking your Alby Hub version: where the number sits and what it tells you

The Alby Hub interface carries an information page showing the version alongside the node backend in use; the release notes for v1.24.0 point to exactly that page. Read the string off there and compare it against the range above. Anything below 1.19 needs updating, regardless of whether your node was ever reachable from outside.

If you have no access to the interface, the installation itself offers a way in: the file name of the downloaded package carries the version, and with a container installation it is written into the image used. If none of these routes gives an unambiguous answer, treat the installation as affected and update.

The checks in the right order

Reachability first, then the version, then the update. That order is not a formality. Update first and you leave access open throughout the download and the restart. Lock down first and you take away the flaw's precondition, then handle the rest at your own pace.

The fix is a good twelve months older than the warning

This is where the case gets more interesting than a routine call to update. For this article, cryptoticker.io retrieved the project's release overview on September 11, 2026 and evaluated the 40 most recent entries. The result puts the timeline in order.

The last affected release, v1.18.5, was published on July 31, 2025. The first entry of the 1.19 series in that overview is v1.19.1 of August 29, 2025; v1.19.2 followed the same day and v1.19.3 a day later. The current release, v1.24.0, dates from August 14, 2026. Between the first corrected release and the public warning of September 9, 2026 there is therefore a good twelve months.

One observation from the same evaluation belongs here, because it can cause confusion during the check: a standalone release numbered v1.19.0 does not appear in that overview, even though the coverage names it as the first corrected version. So if you search the list for v1.19.0 and come up empty, you have not searched wrong. What matters for you is the current release anyway, not the first corrected one.

cryptoticker.io compiled this evaluation itself on September 11, 2026. Method: retrieval of the project's release overview via the GitHub programming interface, evaluation of the 40 most recent entries by number and publication date. What could not be verified is which code change exactly fixed the flaw, since the technical details have not yet been published. Nor is it possible to establish from outside how many operators are still running an old release today.

The release notes for v1.24.0 also list a series of hardening measures that all point in the same direction: sensitive calls such as access to the recovery words and to the log now require a key with full access; the limit on failed unlock attempts was moved from the individual address to the installation as a whole; the silent acceptance of an empty unlock password inherited from old releases was removed; and a security policy was added to the documentation. Whether any of these changes is connected to the flaw now reported, the provider does not say.

Updating to v1.24.0: these steps in this order

The provider recommends raising the installation to v1.24.0. The routes there differ depending on how you run it, but the pattern stays the same.

1. End reachability from the internet before you do anything else.
2. Check that you have a backup of the recovery words and the channel data. A node with open payment channels is not a program you can simply reinstall at will.
3. Apply the update and restart the installation.
4. Look at the information page to see whether the new number is actually there.
5. Change the unlock password if the node was ever openly reachable.

A warning that comes from running Lightning nodes in general rather than from this report: restoring a node with open channels from an old backup risks publishing an outdated channel state. That can cost you funds. So read the provider's notes on backups before the update instead of working from memory.

Port forwarding, reverse proxy, tunnel: where reachability actually comes from

Hardly anyone makes their node public by accident. It happens at three typical points, and all three are deliberate decisions that are later forgotten.

The first is port forwarding in the router. It passes requests from the internet through to a device on the home network, and it stays in place until somebody removes it. The second is a web server placed in front, publishing the interface under an address of its own, often set up so the connection runs encrypted. The third is a tunnelling service that builds a connection from outside to inside without anything being changed on the router. The third route in particular is convenient and leaves no trace in the router to remind you later.

If you genuinely need access while out and about, you are better off putting it inside a private network that the phone dials into, rather than placing the management interface openly on the net. And anyone holding meaningful amounts sensibly separates the sum kept ready for everyday payments from the rest, which belongs on a device with no network connection. Which devices qualify and what sets them apart is covered in the hardware wallet comparison.

Changing the unlock password: why the update alone is not enough

The unlock password protects the running installation: without it, the software does not release its keys. The provider explicitly recommends changing it after the update if the installation was openly reachable before, and contacting the provider's security address on any suspicion of an incident.

The thinking behind it is simple. An update closes the door. What it does not undo is that somebody may have walked through that door beforehand and taken a key with them. Raise the version and leave the password as it is, and you have fixed the cause while leaving the possible consequence in place.

The same goes for the access you have granted to individual apps. Go through the list of those connections once after the update and remove anything you no longer use or cannot place.

What happens if you do nothing

Two things should be kept apart. Funds in payment channels are tied to keys that sit on your device; they do not vanish because a report appears, and they do not hang on a deadline either. There is no deadline in this case, unlike with a delisting at an exchange.

The risk is a different one: for as long as an affected release sits openly on the net, the route the provider describes stays open. And the technical details can be expected to be published at some point. From that moment the flaw is reproducible for anyone who cares to look for it. Anyone who has updated by then is out of it.

Run it yourself or have it held for you: what this case says about self-hosting

It would be the wrong conclusion to take from this report that running things yourself is a mistake. A node you run yourself makes you independent of a provider's opening hours, freezes and withdrawal deadlines. The price is the duty to keep software current, and that duty is exactly what has become visible here.

What the case shows is something more modest: the attack surface does not arise from holding the keys, but from being operable remotely. Add convenience and you add attack surface. That equation cannot be configured away, only entered into knowingly.

For most readers, a sober split follows from it. The amount you pay with day to day belongs in a software wallet or in a node that is conveniently reachable. The rest belongs on a device that is not attached to the network and makes nothing operable.

Ledger, BitBox02 and Core Lightning: the fourth wallet incident in four weeks

The case is one in a series. On August 21, 2026, BitBox closed three security holes with firmware 9.26.5; on August 25, Ledger fixed a flaw in its Ethereum app where the display could show something other than what was actually signed; and at the end of August a vulnerability in Core Lightning became known that forced node operators to act. Now Alby Hub joins them.

The cluster is no proof that self-custody has become less safe. It suggests rather that this field is now being searched and disclosed systematically. For you as an operator, one unspectacular habit follows: once a month, check whether a new release exists for every device and every piece of software that holds keys. That costs ten minutes and deals with most such reports before they reach you.

If you want first-hand evidence: the September 9 report is documented at The Hacker News, among other places, and the current release together with its release notes sits in the project's overview for v1.24.0.

Closing the Alby Hub flaw: what to take away

1. Check reachability today, then the version. If the management interface is reachable from the internet and a release below 1.19 is running, take it off the net immediately. If you would rather keep your everyday amount in a lean application than in a node of your own, you will find the candidates in the software wallet comparison.
2. Update to v1.24.0 and change the unlock password. Back up first, then update, then read the version number back. And separate the amount you move daily from the amount that just sits there; the devices for that are in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Put a monthly update slot in the calendar. Four incidents in four weeks are not an outlier but the normal state of an industry where people are actively looking. Ten minutes a month for every device and program that holds keys, plus a look at the software wallet comparison if you want to replace an application.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Greenberg Traurig said documents were posted to the dark web, while BakerHostetler recorded a near-doubling of law-firm incidents in 2025.

A rapidly changing interest rates market has changed the near-term outlook on the Bitcoin chart. Here’s why.

The company is seeking clarity on antitrust rules as researchers call for restraint and experts warn that competition encourages companies to overlook risks.

Fresh operating data shows crypto trading bouncing back, but the company's fastest-growing business these days isn't traditional trading at all.

BWOW will stop trading October 14, with cash payments to remaining shareholders expected October 22.

A simulated fruit-fly brain hooked up to Coinbase has turned a $100 Bitcoin trading experiment into a small profit.

Bitcoin experienced its third one-block reorganization in less than a month on Sept. 11 after competing blocks from SpiderPool and AntPool briefly created two versions of the blockchain at the same height.

Tom Lee doubles down on a "face-ripper" Ethereum rally as ETH jumps over 7% following the U.S. inflation report.

BlackRock has accumulated about $250 million of Ethereum’s over the last 20 days while the asset continues to show mixed price actions.

21Shares explains why US ETFs doubled their XRP holdings to $200 million after the SEC verdict.

TLDR:

• USDe and sUSDe are now live on TRON through Stargate Finance for cross-chain transfers.
• The launch gives TRON users access to Ethena’s dollar-pegged and rewards-bearing assets.
• JustLend DAO and SUN.io will be among the first TRON platforms to support the assets.
• Ethena gains exposure to TRON’s 403M+ accounts and growing stablecoin settlement ecosystem

USDe is now live on the TRON network, alongside its yield-bearing counterpart sUSDe, following an announcement from TRON DAO and Ethena Labs.

The two organizations confirmed the integration on September 11, 2026, from Geneva and Lisbon. Users can bridge, hold, and transfer both digital dollar assets across TRON through Stargate Finance.

The launch links Ethena’s stablecoin products with one of the largest stablecoin settlement networks worldwide.

Stargate Bridge Opens Access Across TRON

TRON DAO confirmed the launch through its official X account, stating that “USDe and sUSDe are now live on #TRON.” The announcement also highlighted Stargate Finance, which enables users to “bridge, hold, and transfer both assets” across the network.

This extends Ethena’s lineup to TRON’s existing user base immediately. USDe joins TRON’s stablecoin options as an added dollar-pegged token for daily use.

Meanwhile, sUSDe gives TRON users first-time access to Ethena’s rewards-bearing product on this chain. Both tokens will remain connected to liquidity held across Ethena’s other supported networks.

This setup supports interoperability within Ethena’s broader multichain strategy going forward. Support across TRON’s core decentralized finance applications is expected within the coming weeks.

JustLend DAO and SUN.io are named as the first platforms to add support. Wider adoption across wallets and exchanges is expected next. TRON counts more than 403 million accounts.

Justin Sun, Founder of TRON, said: “Millions of people rely on the TRON network every day to make payments, save, and move value globally.” He added that USDe and sUSDe “broaden the options available to users” on the network.

Ethena Deepens Its Multichain Stablecoin Strategy

Guy Young, Founder of Ethena Labs, said TRON has “a massive user base that already holds and moves digital dollars“ at scale. He added that the integration means users “can hold a dollar that accrues rewards” on a network they already use.

Young called the move part of a wider effort to reach more users globally. He also pointed toward continued collaboration between the two teams going forward.

This integration extends USDe’s presence beyond a dozen networks it already supports. The asset is already connected with several centralized exchanges and decentralized finance platforms elsewhere.

Adding TRON strengthens USDe’s position within the wider multichain stablecoin landscape. It also places sUSDe on a network built for high transaction volume.

For TRON, the addition supports its positioning as decentralized infrastructure built for everyday financial use. The network has focused heavily on stablecoin settlement and payment applications in recent years. Adding Ethena’s products gives TRON users another rewards-bearing option within the same ecosystem.

Both companies indicated that further integrations are planned beyond this initial TRON launch. Wallets, exchanges, and payment providers are expected to add support gradually over time. The move reflects a continued push toward wider digital dollar accessibility across TRON’s ecosystem.

The post Ethena’s USDe and sUSDe Go Live on TRON Through Stargate appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Active tokenized stock market cap surged 314% in 2026, reaching $4 billion by September 9.
• bStocks and Robinhood captured 87.8% of tracked issuer trading volume in September so far.
• DeFi total value locked for tokenized stocks jumped to $289 million, now 7.2% of active cap.
• Stock-paired meme markets generated a combined $5.4 billion across BNB and Robinhood Chain networks.

Binance Research said the tokenized stock market is shifting from an issuance race toward distribution and usage. The research team found active tokenized stock market capitalization has risen 314% this year to $4 billion.

Monthly trading volume increased from $237 million in January to $7.9 billion in August, while turnover rose from 0.23x to 2.14x.

Binance Research said stronger platforms will convert users, retain liquidity and give tokenized stocks added on-chain utility.

Trading Activity Outpaces Issuance

Binance Research found active tokenized stock market capitalization rose from $965 million to nearly $4 billion by September 9. On-chain market capitalization reached $4.7 billion over the same period.

The research team said this expansion reflects steady growth in the number of tokenized stocks available to traders.

According to Binance Research, trading volume expanded far faster than the underlying asset base. Monthly issuer volume rose from $237 million in January to $7.9 billion in August. That represents an increase of more than 33 times within eight months.

Market turnover also increased sharply across the same window, the report said. Turnover moved from 0.23x average active market cap in January to 2.14x in August. Turnover peaked at 3.32x in July before easing the following month.

Binance Research said the gap between issuance and trading shows tokenized stocks are being used more actively than before.

Investors appear to be trading positions rather than holding them passively. The research team pointed to this as a sign of the market maturing.

Distribution Now Drives Growth

Binance Research said issuer distribution has changed rapidly since the middle of 2026. bStocks and Robinhood accounted for just 0.8% of tracked issuer volume in June. Their combined share rose to 82.3% in August and 87.8% in September month-to-date.

The report also tracked a similar pattern at the network level. BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain combined for 2.3% of tracked chain volume in June. That figure rose to 83.0% by August and 88.2% by early September.

Binance Research noted the token mix within bStocks is becoming less concentrated over time. The five most-traded tokens’ combined share of volume fell from 98.7% to 84.6%. QQQ’s individual share of volume dropped from 95.2% to 66.0% across the same period.

Binance Research said user data shows existing trading relationships help drive adoption of tokenized stocks. The team found 58.5% of early bStocks users had already traded perpetuals or direct equities. Among SPCX perpetual traders, 8.6% converted into bStocks compared with 0.6% into direct equities.

On-Chain Usage Is Rising

Binance Research reported DeFi activity tied to tokenized stocks grew substantially through the year. Active DeFi total value locked rose from $21.6 million in January to $289.1 million by September 9. That share of active market cap increased from 2.2% to 7.2% over the period.

The research team said liquidity pools account for the largest portion of this DeFi activity. Binance Research reported 65.4% of DeFi total value locked sits in liquidity pools. Lending accounts for 28.1%, while yield tokenization makes up 5.7% of the remaining total.

Binance Research also tracked bStocks collateral use growing alongside broader lending activity. Outstanding borrowing rose from 5.5% of deposited collateral in June to 46.2% by September 10. Roughly $3.1 million was borrowed against $6.8 million in collateral by that date.

According to Binance Research, tokenized stocks are also appearing in memecoin-paired trading pools. Stock-paired meme markets generated about $2.49 billion on Robinhood Chain between July 26 and September 9. BNB Chain recorded roughly $2.90 billion in similar volume across the same window.

The post Tokenized Stocks Market Shifts from Issuance to Distribution, Binance Research Says appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Robinhood crypto trading volume rose 61% to $17.5 billion in August. However, total activity stayed 38% below August 2025 levels.
• Bitstamp processed $10.1 billion, or 58% of the August crypto total. The Robinhood App handled the remaining $7.4 billion.
• Robinhood event contracts reached 4.7 billion trades in August. Activity fell 23% monthly but increased fifteenfold from one year earlier.
• Total platform assets rose 26% annually to $384 billion. Funded customers reached 28.6 million, while margin balances hit $21.5 billion.

Robinhood crypto trading volume climbed 61% month over month to $17.5 billion in August, reversing July’s slowdown across its platforms. Bitstamp handled $10.1 billion, while the Robinhood App generated $7.4 billion. Yet total crypto turnover fell 38% from August 2025, showing the rebound stayed below last year’s pace. Robinhood released the figures Thursday.

The release also showed rapid growth outside digital assets. Customers traded 4.7 billion event contracts, 15 times the year-earlier total. Meanwhile, platform assets reached $384 billion, up 26% annually. The figures place crypto’s rebound within broader operations spanning equities, options, margin lending, cash, futures, and prediction markets.

Robinhood Crypto Trading Volume Rebounds as Bitstamp Leads

Robinhood reported $10.9 billion in crypto turnover during July, its quietest month since April. August added $6.6 billion, lifting average daily notional volume from $352 million to $565 million. Robinhood crypto trading volume therefore recovered sharply within one month, although yearly comparisons stayed negative.

Bitstamp trading volume reached $10.1 billion, rising 53% from July’s $6.6 billion. The exchange supplied 58% of the combined August total. Robinhood completed its Bitstamp acquisition and began including customer crypto held there in platform assets in June 2025.

Activity through the main app grew faster during August. App-based turnover rose 72% to $7.4 billion from $4.3 billion in July. Its daily average reached $239 million, compared with Bitstamp’s $326 million. However, app volume fell 46% annually, while Bitstamp trading volume declined 30%.

Robinhood crypto trading volume also excludes activity recorded on Robinhood Chain. The company excludes that network turnover from brokerage and exchange transaction totals. This distinction keeps blockchain activity from changing the $17.5 billion operating metric.

Broader account figures strengthened during the same month. Total platform assets increased 8% from July and 26% from August 2025. Funded customers reached 28.6 million, adding about 120,000 customers monthly and 1.9 million annually. Robinhood labels the monthly figures preliminary and unaudited.

Margin balances rose 4% from July to $21.5 billion. That figure marked a 72% yearly increase. Cash and deposit balances also climbed 37% annually to $19.6 billion. Robinhood crypto trading volume therefore recovered alongside higher assets, customer numbers, and lending balances.

Event Contracts Expand While Lawmakers Review Trading Rules

Robinhood event contracts reached 4.7 billion trades in August. Activity fell 23% from July’s 6.1 billion contracts but grew fifteenfold annually. Average daily volume totaled 152 million contracts, down from 197 million in July.

Each contract generally settles at $1 or zero. Buyers receive $1 when their selected outcome occurs, while incorrect positions expire without payment. Available markets cover subjects including elections, Federal Reserve decisions, and sporting events.

Robinhood distributes event contracts through regulated exchanges, including Kalshi and ForecastEx. Rothera, its joint venture with Susquehanna International Group, launched in June. The venue had processed more than 3.5 billion contracts by Robinhood’s second-quarter results.

Revenue figures show the product’s growing weight. Robinhood event contracts generated $156 million during the second quarter, more than ten times the year-earlier amount. Crypto transaction revenue fell 38% to $100 million during that period. Total quarterly revenue reached a record $1.31 billion.

Meanwhile, lawmakers continue reviewing who may trade political contracts and which markets platforms may list. The PREDICT Act would restrict senior officials, lawmakers, staff, spouses, and dependents from trading contracts tied to specific political events.

State authorities and exchange operators also dispute whether certain sports contracts fall under federal derivatives rules or state gambling laws. Robinhood lists its products as exchange-traded contracts for eligible users, rather than conventional sportsbook wagers.

Despite August’s 61% rebound, Robinhood crypto trading volume stayed below the prior year’s level. Securities lending revenue fell 32% annually to $36 million.

The post Robinhood Crypto Trading Volume Jumps 61% to $17.5B in August appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• OCC proposal shifts third-party oversight from blanket rules to risk-based bank standards.
• Comptroller Jonathan Gould says the plan cuts regulatory friction for community banks nationwide.
• New guidance clarifies exactly how the OCC supervises core service providers used by small banks.
• Banks gain more flexibility to tailor vendor risk management to their size and complexity.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency moved to ease compliance pressure on community banks this week. The agency proposed new guidance on third-party risk management.

Besides, the plan ties oversight requirements to actual risk rather than broad process rules. Regulators say the change gives smaller lenders room to grow.

OCC Proposal Targets Third-Party Risk Management

The OCC published the proposal on its website, framing it as part of a broader push to cut regulatory friction. Under the plan, banks would size their oversight of vendors to the harm a given relationship could actually cause. 

A bank’s own scale, complexity, and risk profile would shape how much scrutiny each vendor relationship gets.

The current approach, the agency said, leans on rigid, process-heavy checklists that treat every vendor the same way. That model forces small banks to spend resources on low-risk contracts the same way they do on high-risk ones. The new guidance would drop that uniform standard in favor of a risk-based one.

The OCC also addressed how it monitors core service providers, the firms that supply banks with technology and back-office systems. 

Many community banks rely on a small pool of these providers for core banking functions. The agency said clearer supervision standards would help banks handle due diligence and contract negotiations with these vendors.

Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould linked the move to a wider policy agenda. He said the proposal cuts unnecessary friction while tailoring supervision to real risk. 

Gould added that the changes aim to strengthen banks’ ability to manage vendor relationships without added burden.

Community Banks Get More Flexibility Under New Rules

Gould tied the announcement to remarks from the U.S. Comptroller’s account, which credited President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for prioritizing community banks. 

The account said both officials view strong community banks as central to stronger local economies. That framing positions the proposal as one piece of a larger effort touching bank regulation this year.

The OCC said the combined changes give banks more room to manage risk while offering new products and services. Community banks often serve as primary lenders to small businesses and local residents. 

Vendor oversight costs have been a recurring complaint from smaller banks. Larger competitors often carry bigger compliance staffs to absorb the same burden.

The agency framed the proposal as part of a continuing effort rather than a single fix. It said it has taken a series of actions already aimed at rightsizing supervisory burden for community banks. 

The OCC did not set a specific timeline for when the guidance would take final effect.

Industry watchers will likely track how the proposal moves through public comment. Third-party risk management has drawn scrutiny across the banking sector since several high-profile vendor failures in recent years. 

How the OCC balances flexibility with adequate oversight will shape the rule’s final form.

Lighter third-party rules could make banks more open to working with crypto firms. Exchanges and stablecoin issuers often struggle to get banking partners due to strict vendor risk checks. 

A risk-based approach might let banks evaluate crypto relationships on their actual risk profile instead of blanket restrictions. That shift could ease a longstanding bottleneck in crypto’s access to traditional banking services.

The post OCC Proposes Lighter Third-Party Rules for US Community Banks appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• SUI price prediction centers on $0.71–$0.73 support, with $0.85 above and the $0.62–$0.63 floor below if selling continues.
• Sector rotation weighs on SUI as Ethereum and Solana advance. Meanwhile, SUI falls 1.40% to $0.730 against a broadly flat market.
• Stablecoin growth contrasts with lower total value locked, while continuing token unlocks add circulating supply during softer spot demand.
• Bitguru targets $0.85 and $0.92 after a $0.70 defense. Ali Martinez places the channel ceiling near $0.84, with both tracking similar support.

SUI is down 1.40% to $0.730 over 24 hours, trailing a broadly flat market. That relative weakness reflects rotation away from lagging Layer 1 tokens and a fragile chart structure. Ethereum and Solana advanced while SUI lost ground, sharpening the contrast across large-cap networks.

The SUI price now sits inside the $0.71 to $0.73 support area watched by traders. This SUI price prediction centers on whether buyers can defend that floor and interrupt the decline. A hold could reopen $0.84 to $0.85, while failure exposes the $0.62 to $0.63 multi-year base. Market structure, rather than headlines, drives the immediate setup.

SUI Price Prediction Puts the $0.71 Floor in Focus

Bitguru identifies $0.70 as the immediate support zone after SUI extended its pullback. His SUI price prediction sets $0.85 as the first recovery target, followed by $0.92. That path requires buyers to absorb sales and preserve the lower boundary as support.

Ali Martinez tracks a nearby channel floor at $0.71. He says he would buy SUI again if that level holds. His SUI price prediction maps the channel ceiling near $0.84, closely matching Bitguru’s first target. Both charts therefore center on the same narrow band.

A rebound must recover $0.73 and hold above recent supply. From there, the 200-day moving average near $0.85 offers the next technical test. A close above that average would place SUI beyond the cited rebound target. However, rejection could keep price compressed between support and the moving average.

Downside risk grows if sellers force a decisive close below $0.71. Such a move would weaken Martinez’s channel and invalidate the immediate rebound route. This SUI price prediction then shifts toward the $0.62 to $0.63 floor. That zone marks a wider multi-year base and the next stated support area.

Michaël van de Poppe presents a different momentum reading across several time frames. His charts show weekly bullish divergences on RSI and MACD for the dollar pair. He also identifies matching three-day divergences on both indicators. 

Similar weekly and three-day signals appear on the SUI-to-Bitcoin pair. Divergences show momentum improving while price stays depressed, though they do not confirm a reversal alone.

SUI still trades about 85% below its high, based on van de Poppe’s assessment. That distance highlights the scale of the earlier decline. It also explains why traders require a confirmed support reaction before treating divergence as a trend change.

Sui Network Growth Meets Lower TVL and Token Unlocks

On-chain activity gives traders a less uniform picture. Stablecoin balances have expanded across Sui Network, adding more dollar-linked liquidity. However, total value locked has fallen sharply. The split shows that available liquidity has not translated into broader DeFi deposits.

Supply also complicates the SUI price prediction. Continuing token unlocks add coins to circulation and create a persistent overhang. New supply can limit rebounds when spot demand does not keep pace. This pressure matters most while price trades near a support boundary.

Network developers continue adding uses despite the softer market structure. Sui Insiders reported that WaaPxyz and Cetus Protocol now support autonomous wallets for AI agents. Those agents can hold tokens, fund operations and manage automated liquidity positions on Sui.

XStableAI announced a partnership intended to bring precious metals and foreign-exchange markets onto Sui Network. No public adoption data accompanied the initial announcement.

Buybacks counter part of the new circulation. Van de Poppe says the Sui Foundation has purchased roughly 600,000 SUI through open-market buybacks. Continuing unlocks add supply against that amount.

Stablecoin growth, TVL changes and buyback activity therefore point in different directions. Meanwhile, scheduled token unlocks continue adding circulating supply during a period of weaker demand.

The post SUI Price Prediction Eyes $0.85 if Buyers Defend $0.71 Support appeared first on Blockonomi.

Ethereum developers have tentatively scheduled the Glamsterdam upgrade for Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet on October 6 at 13:53 UTC, even as private devnet testing continues to uncover bugs.

The date gives developers a path toward a December mainnet release, but it remains conditional on whether the next testing phase can produce a stable network.

Glamsterdam Date Depends on Devnet Testing

Protocol specialist Christine D. Kim noted in her latest newsletter that developers agreed to the October 6 Sepolia date while acknowledging several caveats, the biggest of which is that Glamsterdam has yet to run successfully on a stable private devnet.

Glamsterdam-Devnet-9 launched on September 1 with 1,000 validator nodes, making it the largest devnet of its kind by node count so far. But the network is not finalizing, meaning too few validators are correctly proposing and attesting to the chain head.

Ethereum Foundation (EF) developer operations engineer Stefan Starflinger said the size of the network exposed problems, noting it “showed that there are still quite a few edge cases and issues” left to address. He added that the previous devnet, Devnet-8, had an even more serious flaw, a bug that could freeze the entire network if a validator proposed a block sharing its parent’s hash.

Separately, EF researcher Maria Silva flagged a bug tied to EIP-8037, the State Creation Gas Cost Increase, which will require every execution-layer client to update its code.

Because of those fixes, another devnet is coming, and as of this week, the one to watch is Devnet-11, not 10 as originally planned. Parithosh Jayanti, the Ethereum Foundation developer operations engineer who chaired the call, said that if the new devnet fails again, “we’d have to take it case by case” on whether October 6 still works.

Hoodi and Mainnet Dates Remain Uncertain

Developers have also held off on setting a date for Hoodi, Ethereum’s second public testnet in the rollout, with Enrico del Fante of Consensys arguing that waiting a few more weeks before committing to Hoodi would be sensible given the problems found on Devnet-9.

The uncertainty extends to the main network. Developers still hope that the upgrade can reach Ethereum mainnet before the end of 2026, but the Sepolia date does not make the outcome more certain, especially since client implementations are not yet considered ready for mainnet.

As CryptoPotato reported previously, Ethereum’s broader roadmap has penciled in Glamsterdam’s mainnet activation for December 2026, ahead of a separate push toward quantum-resistant infrastructure targeted for 2029.

That plan, tied to the Hegotá upgrade that follows Glamsterdam, points to Ethereum shipping major changes roughly twice a year, a pace it kept last December when Fusaka activated on schedule.

The post Ethereum Targets October 6 for Glamsterdam Sepolia Fork appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Crypto asset manager Bitwise is shutting down its spot Dogecoin exchange-traded fund roughly 10 months after the product launched, as the firm moves to optimize its product range to meet changing investor needs.

The fund, BWOW, currently trading on NYSE Arca, is expected to continue trading until October 14, its final trading day.

Investor Demand Dries Up

According to the official press release, investors can sell their shares on the secondary market until trading closes that day, after which BWOW will cease operations. The remaining shareholders will receive the net asset value of their shares as of October 21 in cash on October 22, and Bitwise said investors do not need to take any action during the process.

The firm has also coordinated with NYSE to facilitate the fund’s delisting and liquidation.

Back in November 2025, Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley had stated,

“DOGE is simply a 12-year-old coin based on a picture of a cute dog, people doing good, and the common ideal in crypto that people should have the freedom to do as they choose. And, against the odds, it has kept its relevance – and its value – longer than just about anything else in crypto.”

Bitwise’s decision comes as the market for spot Dogecoin ETFs struggles to attract steady investor demand. The first DOGE ETF launched in September 2025 and generated significant attention at the time. But the products have since seen limited interest.

Data compiled by SoSoValue revealed that Dogecoin ETFs posted about $318,000 in net inflows last month, reversing the small outflows recorded in July. September has been considerably weaker, however, with more than $343,000 already leaving the funds. The fund saw more money leave than come in. Its lifetime net outflow stood at $1.23 million.

Fresh Bullish Signal

The past month has been relatively steady for the OG meme coin. It gained nearly 20% over the past month as the broader crypto market rallied. After reaching a recent high of $0.09, though, it slipped back to around $0.084.

Ali Martinez thinks DOGE could be ready for another bounce. The analyst identified a buy signal from the TD Sequential on the asset’s four-hour chart. Martinez said the signal has worked well recently. The last three times it appeared, DOGE went on to rebound 6.96%, then 2.71%, and 11.25%.

The post Bitwise Pulls the Plug on Dogecoin ETF Just 10 Months After Launch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP Ledger Foundation CTO Denis Angell has suggested that an integration between X Money and XRP could let users move funds from the payments platform into the token and access yield-generating tools on XRPL.

His idea goes beyond simply adding crypto payments to X Money, as he sees a possible connection between X’s wallet product and XRPL’s lending and asset-management features, with users potentially moving between a consumer payment account and on-chain financial products.

Angell Sees X Money as a Potential XRP On-Ramp

“If with X Money you can transfer from your X Money account right into XRP and then use the primitive on the XRP Ledger to drive yield generation, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” Angell said.

He added that the important part would be having “some sort of integration, some sort of onboarding, on-ramp, off-ramp to XRP” within the X social app.

The comments came as Angell discussed the XRPL Foundation’s work on bringing more traditional financial functions onto the ledger. He pointed to the lending protocol, which he said is currently on the network and can be voted in, as a way to generate yield.

Angell also highlighted the single asset vault as one of his favorite developments. He described it as similar to a mutual fund, where users deposit assets into a pool and a strategy built on top of it can generate yield that remains in the pool until users withdraw.

The broader goal, he explained, is to put “TradFi primitives into the protocol rather than just writing smart contracts.” That includes financial products such as stocks, bonds, and options.

X Money Still Doesn’t Touch Crypto

For now, that on-ramp does not exist. X Money currently works as a fiat-based wallet, letting users hold balances, send free transfers to other X Money users, receive direct deposits, and spend through a Visa debit card, earning up to 6% annual yield along with cashback.

It launched to a limited group of Premium+ subscribers in June before expanding to more paid users by late July, with no crypto or stablecoin support. Musk had floated the idea of crypto integration as far back as March, when he reposted a claim that X Money would eventually add high-yield savings, loans and crypto integration, calling the vision “big.”

Nothing on that front has shipped since, and X’s more recent payments work has centered on the dollar system it already has, although, according to reports, there have been talks over paying creators on the social platform in stablecoins.

The post Could Elon Musk’s X Money Use XRP? XRPL Foundation CTO Weighs In appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum (ETH) is retesting a resistance line it has only reached twice before, in 2021 and again around 2025, and trader Crypto Patel says that makes this the “biggest breakout setup yet” for the cryptocurrency.

In a chart posted Friday, Patel mapped a path toward $5,000, then $10,000, then $15,000 if the line breaks, even as ETH was trading near $2,500, still less than half its all-time high.

The Chart Behind the $15K Call

“$ETH is retesting a multi-year resistance zone for the 3rd time after holding its long-term accumulation support,” stated Patel as he shared a chart that traced a descending trendline from 2018 to 2021, marked by three lower highs before ETH broke out into that year’s rally.

The same horizontal resistance capped the price at the 2021 peak and again near 2025, and the current test is drawn as the third touch of that line.

Below it, a wide band the analyst called the “Best Accumulation Zone” has caught every major pullback since, with a rising trendline running through it that ETH is still sitting just above, around $2,460 on the chart’s own reading.

The target ladder is more granular than the $5K, $10K, $15K shorthand in Patel’s caption suggests. The chart itself marks $3,270 and $4,892 as the first two levels, with $5,500 also flagged, before the path opens toward $10,000 and then $15,000.

At the time of writing, spot ETH had changed little in 24 hours, but it was down about 1% on the week and roughly 44% below where it had been trading a year ago. However, over one month, it showed gains of 31%, although even that jump kept the asset 50% below its August 2025 all-time high.

Trading volume jumped close to 28% in the past 24 hours to near $16.3 billion, a sign of fresh activity around the level Patel is watching.

Experts Split Between Breakout and Pullback

Analyst NoName, posting on Thursday, offered a different perspective, noting that ETH had just finished a Wave 3 impulsive move and writing that “the next phase of the structure should be a Wave 4 correction.”

They pointed to $2,324 as the first support to watch, with a bounce toward $2,784 to $2,966 possible if buyers defend it, or a drop to the $2,112 to $2,222 zone if it fails. Only a daily close under $2,050 would scrap the setup entirely.

Several other market watchers have also been keeping an eye on the $2,500 to $2,550 area, with some expecting a move toward $3,000 after a strong weekly close above resistance and others anticipating a retreat toward $2,000 first.

The post Analyst Flags Ethereum Breakout Setup With $15K Target appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Earlier this year, Pi Network’s native token surged to nearly $0.30 after Kraken allowed trading services with it. Since then, the asset has been in a steep downtrend and now trades around $0.09.

The big question is whether the price can rise above the $0.30 mark again before the end of 2026, or whether that was the maximum for this year. Here’s what three of the most widely used AI-powered chatbots think on the matter.

Mixed Predictions

According to ChatGPT, PI can exceed $0.30 and spike to as high as $0.60 sometime this year, but such a major increase will depend on vital catalysts rather than speculation alone. OpenAI’s platform suggested potential positive factors include listings on leading crypto exchanges or a broader altcoin rally.

PI began trading at the start of 2025 and is available for trading on platforms like Bitget, Kraken, OKX, and others. However, the industry’s heavyweights Binance and Coinbase have not yet embraced the token. Recall that the former asked its community whether they want to see PI on the exchange, and the vast majority answered “yes.”

In conclusion, the chatbot suggested that PI’s highest price in 2026 will most likely be around $0.35-$0.45, with $0.42 set as a specific estimate.

“A short-lived move toward $0.50 is plausible, but without a major listing or explosion in genuine usage, I don’t see it approaching $1,” it added.

Google’s Gemini took a similar stance, saying a pump above $0.30 and a new local peak of $0.36 are possible “under favorable market conditions.” According to it, the main drivers include mainnet ecosystem expansion, real-world utility adoption, and broader bullish momentum across the entire crypto sector.

Perplexity was much more pessimistic, claiming that a new rise above $0.30 before the end of the year is highly unlikely. At the same time, it assumed that a solid resurgence may still occur given the upcoming protocol 27, which is about to be implemented on September 15. However, the team has not always met its deadlines, so delays remain a possibility.

Sentiment Flips Bullish?

X user Crypto With Gopal recently opined that PI is printing a double-bottom formation, with buyers defending the 0.08-$0.09 support zone and the price slowly building higher lows.

He believes a breakout above the $0.10-$0.12 range could ignite the next rally, saying bulls have shown signs of reclaiming control.

The post Pi Network (PI) Keeps Struggling Under $0.10: 3 AIs Predict Its Maximum Price for 2026 appeared first on CryptoPotato.