Solana's resilience is notable, but its stake concentration poses systemic risks, potentially impacting network stability and decentralization.

The post Fidelity report finds Solana resilient but flags concentration in stake, hosting and clients appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The dominance of synthetic tokens over issuer-sponsored ones highlights potential risks in investor rights and market dependency on custodians.

The post Only 10.7% of tokenized stock market cap is issuer-sponsored appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Uniswap's reliance on Robinhood Chain highlights the volatility and concentration risks in DeFi, emphasizing the need for diversified revenue streams.

The post Uniswap posts record $14.81 million monthly revenue as Robinhood Chain drives over half appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Rising bank rates could curb stablecoin growth, impacting monetary policy, regulation, and competition between banks and digital currencies.

The post BIS paper finds banks could slow stablecoin growth by raising rates appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The surge in tokenized stocks on Base highlights DeFi's evolving role in equity markets, potentially influencing future token launches and regulations.

The post Coinbase tokenized stocks in DeFi soar to $262M on Base platform appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Poetic Justice: Scammer Lost $5M in Bitcoin After Being Targeted by Ledger Thieves

Call it poetic justice: one of the biggest victims of last week’s Ledger theft happened to be a scammer themself, according to blockchain analysts, and lost nearly $5 million in bitcoin. 

In a post Thursday, Chainalysis wrote that a crook lost 60 bitcoins worth about $4.8 million they’d stolen via a so-called task scam. 

According to Chainalysis, the address was linked with a con where people were paid to fake sales and reviews of real items. They were told to add their own money in order to get paid — and then stolen from. 

But the mastermind behind the task scam moved the stolen money to Ledger addresses which were then targeted by different scammers last week.

“On Sep 22, the person behind the scam moved the proceeds into three separate Ledger addresses,” Chainalysis said. “On Oct 9, thieves emptied all three. One transfer each, into the same wallet. The wallet is reported as stolen funds.”

Paris-based Ledger last week said it had started an investigation after customers in South East Asia reported they’d lost funds after buying from Malaysia-based reseller, CryptoBilis. 

Ledger has since said that the scam was a massive organized crime operation where a group installed implants into devices and put them back on the market. The implants could read users’ seed phrases so criminals could then drain wallets. 

Calling it one the most “sophisticated attacks” the digital asset industry has experienced, Ledger is yet to reveal how much money has been lost — but blockchain investigator Specter said $86 million had been drained. 

And the task scam conman, according to Chainalysis, was one of the victims.

Ledger has said that it is working with law enforcement to “follow the funds and dismantle the attackers’ infrastructure” and has made sure no other vendors have been targeted by scammers. 

CryptoBilis has stopped selling Ledger products, the company said. 

Criminals have targeted bitcoin hardware sellers this year, with a huge attack taking place in July on the popular Coldcard products. 

Crooks were able to steal close to $120 million in bitcoin from Coldcard users because the devices had a firmware bug which led to faulty seed generation, allowing hackers to guess investor seedphrases. 

This post Poetic Justice: Scammer Lost $5M in Bitcoin After Being Targeted by Ledger Thieves first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

BFFS26 Denver: Joseph Kelly on Bitcoin Custody and Credit; Alan Lane on Banking Lessons

The Bitcoin for Financial Services Summit (BFFS26) returns to Denver October 20–22, 2026, bringing together CPAs, wealth advisors, attorneys, lenders, and finance leaders who are building Bitcoin into their practices. Now in its second year, the summit has grown to more than 30 sessions across two full program days, with a speaker lineup drawn from the firms defining Bitcoin custody, credit, and advisory.

Headlining the program are Joseph Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Unchained, who opens the summit with a keynote on custody, credit, and trust at scale; Alan Lane, former CEO of Silvergate Bank, on lessons for Bitcoin and banking; Patrick Lowry, CEO of Samara Asset Group, on holding Bitcoin as a public-company treasury reserve; and Colin Crossman, Wyoming’s Deputy Secretary of State, on the regulatory outlook for banks, exchanges, and advisors. Additional speakers include Kate Goldman of Anchorage Digital, Sam Baker of River, Eric Yakes of Epoch Ventures, Daniel Hillery of UTXO Management, Moish Peltz of Falcon Rappaport & Berkman, and CJ Konstantinos of Peoples Reserve.

Sessions focus on practical application: bringing Bitcoin into wealth planning and family offices, Bitcoin-backed lending and mortgages, treasury accounting and valuation, retirement and income planning, charitable giving strategies, mining as an asset class, and fiduciary duty when clients hold Bitcoin. Dedicated workshops will offer continuing education credit for financial advisors and CPAs.

“Last year proved that financial professionals want more than a Bitcoin primer. They want to know how to serve clients who already own it,” said Jordan Guess, CPA, co-host of the summit in a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine. “This year’s program is built around the questions advisors and accountants are actually getting from clients, answered by the people building the infrastructure.”

The summit opens Tuesday, October 20, with the Better Money Invitational golf tournament at City Park Golf Course, hosted with Bitcoin Sports Network, followed by a welcome party at The Space sponsored by Falcon Rappaport & Berkman. Evening programming includes wine and whiskey tastings, and Thursday begins with an optional sunrise hike in the Rocky Mountains.

BFFS26 is co-hosted by Jordan Guess and Wyatt O’Rourke of BFFS Media, producers of the Bitcoin for Financial Services podcast. Sponsors include Unchained, Anchorage Digital, UTXO Management, River, SOUND HSA, SustainHash, and Stormrake.

Registration is open now at https://www.bffs.media/summit.

Media contact: Wyatt O’Rourke, wyatt@bffs.media

This post BFFS26 Denver: Joseph Kelly on Bitcoin Custody and Credit; Alan Lane on Banking Lessons first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Sazmining Now Sells Jack Dorsey’s Proto Immersion Hashboards 

Bitcoin mining just got a lower barrier to entry. 

Sazmining announced Thursday that it is now selling Proto’s immersion hashboards directly to individual and institutional buyers through its mining-as-a-service platform. Previously, the hardware was mostly in the hands of large-scale operators.

Each hashboard delivers roughly 200 TH at around 15 J/TH, and buyers own them outright while Sazmining handles deployment, monitoring and maintenance at a US facility. Mining rewards go straight to the owner’s wallet.

The move follows a multi-megawatt supply deal between Sazmining and Proto — the bitcoin mining arm of Jack Dorsey’s Block (NYSE: XYZ) — which both companies expect to expand as demand grows.

“Because of our aligned-incentive model, Sazmining only earns when we produce bitcoin for our clients,” said Kent Halliburton, CEO and co-founder of Sazmining. 

He also pitched mining as a form of bitcoin acquisition diversification: rather than paying the market price on the day of purchase, a miner’s costs are spread across the machine’s working life.

Wyoming-based Sazmining, founded in 2018, operates renewable-powered facilities across the US, Paraguay, and Norway. It says its fleet runs more than 20 percentage points ahead of the Bitcoin network’s carbon-free share.

Proto is Jack Dorsey’s Block’s bitcoin mining play. The Twitter founder has spent years arguing bitcoin is the foundation of “a more open financial system,” funding everything from Cash App’s buy-and-send rails to the Bitkey self-custody wallet, and he framed mining as the obvious missing piece back in 2021: “Bitcoin mining should be as easy as plugging a rig into a power source.” 

Block formally announced it was building an open bitcoin mining system in January 2022, with the stated aim of making mining “more distributed and efficient.”

This post Sazmining Now Sells Jack Dorsey’s Proto Immersion Hashboards  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Hot Inflation Data Puts Bitcoin Under Pressure, but ‘Difficult’ Isn’t ‘Bearish’: CoinShares

Bitcoin’s price has dropped this week as new inflation data has come in hot. 

But while the largest cryptocurrency’s near-term setup is difficult, it’s not “fundamentally bearish,” according to European asset manager CoinShares’ Head of Research, James Butterfill. 

In a report Friday, the analyst said that bitcoin’s near-term challenge stems from a macro environment that’s caught in an awkward middle ground: inflation is too elevated for the Fed to ease up, while the economy is too resilient to force a policy pivot. 

“Bitcoin and the broader digital asset market have moved lower on the resulting hawkish repricing, a reminder of how sensitive Bitcoin remains to monetary policy over short horizons,” he wrote. 

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at $81,473, down 2% over a seven-day period. 

The price of the leading cryptocurrency dropped Wednesday after data showed that U.S. consumer prices shot up more than expected in September. 

Then, on Thursday, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said that U.S. producer prices rose in September at the fastest pace in more than four years. 

This has weighed on bitcoin’s price because higher inflation means the Federal Reserve may hike interest rates. Higher borrowing costs can restrict the liquidity the digital coin needs to rally. 

The Federal Reserve hiked rates in September and will meet at the end of this month. 

But Butterfill added that investors should be patient and advised investors to instead think in the long-term and not react to any single weekly data point. 

“For investors, that argues for reading the coming weeks as a data-driven range rather than a trend, and for sizing digital asset exposure against a strategic allocation rather than against this week’s print,” he wrote. 

Bitcoin spent the first half of 2026 in a bear market but had its best quarter in years after surging in August and September. Analysts have now said the leading cryptocurrency is now back in a bull market after trading above its 365-day moving average. 

This post Hot Inflation Data Puts Bitcoin Under Pressure, but ‘Difficult’ Isn’t ‘Bearish’: CoinShares first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Deutsche Bank To Debut Bitcoin Custody Within Weeks: Report

German multinational Deutsche Bank is just weeks away from its crypto custody service, according to reports. 

The lender — which is Germany’s biggest — also plans to ​expand the custody platform into Asia next year​, according to a Friday Reuters report, which quoted its corporate banking chief. 

Top banks worldwide are debuting or planning to debut crypto custody services, with BNY Mellon, State Street, Standard Chartered, U.S. Bank, and Citigroup all committing to direct crypto custody over the past 18 months.

Deutsche Bank first officially announced plans to debut a bitcoin custody service for European corporate and institutional clients in September, with the German multinational at the time saying service was subject to the completion of the applicable regulatory timeline.

Friday’s report added that the service will support custody of ​major ⁠cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin before moving to services that help clients move money into and out of ⁠stablecoins.

Gerald Podobnik, co-head of the corporate ⁠bank, was quoted by Reuters saying that the financial system will need to “offer tokenized or blockchain solutions.” 

A number of top banks have started using the technology that powers bitcoin, the blockchain, for their own products in recent years. 

Stablecoins and tokenization in particular have become a hot topic as traditional financial firms aim to accelerate certain services. 

Crypto custody is often a starting point for banks moving into the digital asset space. BNY Mellon in 2022 became the first major U.S. bank to offer digital asset custody services.  

Banks like Citi and Standard Chartered have this year debuted or announced plans for bitcoin custody around the world. 

This post Deutsche Bank To Debut Bitcoin Custody Within Weeks: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

The Oct. 15 release blocks a cached-authentication route to Eclair's API and requires direct browser interfaces to add a backend.

Read the full story on CryptoSlate

Understand the crypto stories that matter and what to watch next. Get The Catalyst in your inbox

There's a Bitcoin company that's now offering investors a 15% annual dividend, paid in small installments every business day. While a 15% dividend is high enough to grab everyone's attention, the more revealing number is what buyers agreed to pay for it. On Oct. 15, Strive priced seven million shares of its new SATS preferred…

Read the full story on CryptoSlate

Understand the crypto stories that matter and what to watch next. Get The Catalyst in your inbox

Borrowing costs, missed interest income, and futures fees can all eat into returns even when Bitcoin holds its value. That's a big problem, and it gets even worse when inflation stays high. September's US inflation report showed consumer prices up 3.7% year over year, fueling concerns about the dollar's purchasing power. That same inflation pressure…

Read the full story on CryptoSlate

Understand the crypto stories that matter and what to watch next. Get The Catalyst in your inbox

Converted Intersect-administered budgets reduce ADA exposure, while milestone release and stablecoin cash-out conditions still govern access to usable money.

Read the full story on CryptoSlate

Understand the crypto stories that matter and what to watch next. Get The Catalyst in your inbox

Visa's Inyo rollout and Mastercard's BVNK platform give businesses stablecoin funding routes, subject to eligibility and rollout limits.

Read the full story on CryptoSlate

Understand the crypto stories that matter and what to watch next. Get The Catalyst in your inbox

The community treasury of Cardano has almost exhausted its own spending allowance. Of the 500 million ADA the network has permitted itself for the current budget period, 457,395,629 ADA are committed through approved payouts. That is 91.5 percent. What remains is 42,604,371 ADA, around $9.5 million at the current price, and that remainder is meant to last until the period ends in the summer of 2027.

If you hold ADA, this is no administrative footnote. The treasury funds the developers, the infrastructure and the marketing behind the network. When the allowance grows tight, the coming votes decide whether work under way keeps being paid for or stands still for months.

What the Net Change Limit governs at Cardano

The Net Change Limit, NCL for short, is the ceiling on everything that may flow out of the Cardano treasury within a defined span of time. It does not cap the treasury balance itself, but the sum of approved payouts in that period.

The current limit is 500 million ADA and applies to epochs 613 to 713. An epoch at Cardano lasts five days. The period began on 13 February 2026 and ends, on this count, at the end of June 2027. For comparison: the limit for the preceding period was 350 million ADA, so the increase amounts to a good 43 percent.

The figure was settled not through a protocol change but through what is known as an InfoAction. That is a governance proposal with no technical effect, by which the community puts a direction on record. In epoch 647, 62.35 percent of the stake-weighted DRep voting power supported it, CryptoSlate reports. Every individual payout still needs the approval of the DReps and the constitutional committee afterwards.

457 million ADA from 30 approved payouts

cryptoticker.io has analysed the public governance data of the Cardano blockchain, examining all 105 payout proposals submitted since Conway governance began. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on 17 October 2026.

The result for the current year: 30 proposals were enacted, together 457,395,629 ADA. The largest single item is a payout of 120 million ADA to the AlphaGrowth Cardano PRIME programme, approved in July. Behind it come 62.1 million ADA for the maintenance initiative run by Input Output and Ensurable Systems, 50 million ADA for the joint fund with Draper Dragon and 32.9 million ADA for the Cardano Vision 2026 programme.

Across the whole stretch since 2025, the 70 enacted payouts add up to 804,427,136 ADA. The figures rest on the proposals as submitted; what counts in each case is the amount stated in the proposal.

Treasury and spending cap are two different things

One confusion is worth avoiding, because it crops up regularly in discussion forums. The treasury balance stood at around 1.378 billion ADA in epoch 661 and has in fact risen against epoch 650, from about 1.337 billion ADA.

The treasury fills up continuously from transaction fees and from the protocol's reserves. The spending cap moves independently of that: inflows, donations and returned grants do not free it up again. The network therefore has ample money, but in this period may spend only another 42.6 million ADA of it.

29 failed proposals worth 230 million ADA

The second half of the analysis explains why the allowance has not long since been blown despite the high number of proposals. In the current year, 29 proposals worth 230,725,260 ADA in total expired without securing the necessary approval. Against 30 approved proposals stands almost the same number of failed ones.

The most recent case concerns a payout of 11,787,063 ADA for deploying the security firm OpenZeppelin in the Cardano environment. The proposal expired in epoch 661. Before that, among others, a 20 million ADA envelope for the Cardano Builder DAO, 39.8 million ADA for Tweag's infrastructure work and several attempts to fund the Cardano Summit 2026 all failed.

DReps rejecting proposals is everyday business at Cardano, not an emergency. How the voting weights come about and what role the constitutional committee plays in it, we set out in our piece on the DRep vote about the constitutional committee.

The open proposal: 22 million ADA for tokenised copper

Exactly one payout proposal is currently up for a vote, and it is an unusual one. Under the title Cardano Strategic Copper Reserve, the US company Toto Finance Inc. asks for a one-off payout of 22,000,000 ADA, about $4.9 million at the current price.

With the money, according to the proposal, certified COMEX grade 1 copper cathodes are to be bought, stored in an approved US warehouse and represented as tokens under the ticker CuTT on Cardano. One token is to stand economically for one certified pound of copper. The proposal names a holding period of 18 to 24 months and provides for returning the proceeds of the later sale, together with unspent funds, to the treasury by month 36.

The breakdown is itemised in the proposal: 14,724,409 ADA or 66.93 percent for the copper itself, 2,640,000 ADA for technology and project management by Toto Finance, 3,533,859 ADA for external operations and auditing, 441,732 ADA for execution and 660,000 ADA for independent administration. Independent oversight is to be appointed; the proposal names a US member firm of PwC as preferred, without any engagement being in place.

Were the proposal to pass, 20,604,371 ADA would be left under the cap for the rest of the period. That is why this single vote draws more attention than its sum might at first suggest.

The timetable up to mid-November

The proposal was submitted in epoch 661 and lapses if it finds no majority by the start of epoch 668. On the blockchain's current pace, that transition falls on 15 November 2026. Until then DReps can cast their votes and change them again.

The current epoch 662 ends on 21 October. Every epoch boundary is a possible moment for ratification, because Cardano evaluates votes at the epoch boundary. That means the dates to watch are 21 October, 26 October and the following five-day steps up to mid-November.

You can check the state of every vote yourself, without relying on reports. The official governance interface GovTool lists the proposals with vote tallies and deadlines.

ADA at $0.2233, almost 13 percent below the weekly high

ADA costs $0.2233, according to CoinGecko on Saturday morning. Over seven days it is down 11.96 percent, over 24 hours down 3.38 percent. The weekly high was $0.2557, the weekly low $0.2188. That puts the price 12.7 percent below the high and only 2.0 percent above the low.

Over 30 days the arithmetic looks different: there, a gain of 12.56 percent still stands. Market value is $8.39 billion, which means rank 17. In circulation are 37.56 billion ADA out of a maximum of 45 billion.

No direct connection between the budget position and the week's price action can be drawn from these figures. The setback fell in a week in which Bitcoin and Ether also gave ground.

Levels above and below

On the downside the weekly low at $0.2188 is the next level to watch, behind it the round $0.20 mark. On the upside lies the weekly high at $0.2557, and before it the $0.25 mark, where the price last lingered on 12 October.

These are observation points from the week's course, not price targets. How the levels have developed over recent months is shown by our continuously maintained overview of the ADA price.

Buying route, custody and holding period in Germany

If you want to buy ADA in Germany, the usual route runs through an exchange with MiCA authorisation. Since the regulation took hold, providers addressing customers in the EU need a licence from a European supervisor; in Germany that is BaFin. Which providers are licensed and how their fees differ is set out in our crypto exchange comparison.

One point counts more often at ADA than at other coins: governance runs on delegated stake. Leave your ADA sitting at an exchange and you generally leave it to the exchange whether, and to whom, the voting right is delegated. To vote yourself or appoint a DRep, you need your own wallet. How staking returns differ between providers is shown by the staking platform comparison.

For tax, the one-year period under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act still applies: hold for longer than twelve months and you pay no income tax on the gain. Whether the rule survives is politically open; we have gathered the state of the debate in our piece on the reform of the crypto holding period. Staking can touch the period, so with larger holdings it is worth looking at your own tax documentation before you delegate.

Leveraged products on ADA also exist. There, the distance to the liquidation price decides whether a move of a few percent ends the position. With a coin that loses 12 percent inside a week, that distance is used up quickly.

Cardano budget: 42.6 million ADA of room left until the end of June 2027

The spending allowance is 91.5 percent committed, the treasury itself is well filled, and the last open proposal will be decided by 15 November at the latest. Three things are worth taking from this:

1. Keep an eye on the voting dates. Every epoch boundary from 21 October onwards can decide the copper proposal. Anyone holding ADA through an exchange who wants a say should first check whether the provider passes the voting right on at all: a point the exchange comparison lists per provider.
2. Settle your own custody. At Cardano, governance and staking hang on the same key. To delegate yourself you need a wallet under your own control; the differences in returns are shown by the staking comparison.
3. Count the holding period in. Before a sale it is worth checking the acquisition date, because after twelve months no income tax falls due on the gain in Germany. The state of the political debate is in the overview of the holding period.

What follows in the summer of 2027 is open. Towards the end of the period at the latest, the community will have to vote on a new allowance, and the experience of the past two rounds shows that this is no formality either.

(As of October 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Next Thursday ends a story that began in January to considerable applause. On 22 October 2026 Bitwise pays out the last shareholders of its Dogecoin fund BWOW in cash. The net asset value of 21 October is what counts, and the security has not been tradable since 14 October. For the price of Dogecoin this has so far been a non-event: the coin stands at $0.0803 on Saturday midday, 2.5 percent below the previous day.

The wind-down is interesting for another reason: it lays bare how small the regulated fund market for Dogecoin has actually remained after a year of exchange trading. The two largest remaining US products together manage $22.5 million. That is 0.18 percent of Dogecoin's market capitalisation of $12.56 billion, and around 3.7 percent of what changes hands on exchanges in a single day.

The timetable up to 22 October

Bitwise announced the wind-down on 10 September, with immediate effect for the fund structure and a staggered schedule for investors. The notice names four dates, three of which have already passed.

Anyone still holding shares need do nothing. The payment runs through the custodian bank, with no application and no deadline. As its reason, Bitwise says in the mandatory notice only that the firm continuously optimises its product range to meet the changing needs of investors. No fund size appears in the notice. All it gives is the house figure: more than 70 products and $9 billion in client assets.

What is left of the US fund market for Dogecoin

After BWOW departs, three spot products remain on the market. Two of them publish their figures daily, and both sit at almost the same level.

Converting the two reported holdings into coins gives, at the current price, around 280 million Dogecoin. In circulation are 156 billion units. The regulated fund wrapper therefore holds roughly one Dogecoin in five hundred. For a sense of scale: the coin's turnover alone came to $612 million over the past 24 hours, 27 times the entire fund assets.

Why a small fund closes sooner than a large one

An exchange-traded fund carries costs that barely grow with its size. The custodian, the auditor, legal advice, the exchange listing fee and the market maker quoting prices every trading day cost almost the same at $10 million in assets as at $1 billion. Revenue, by contrast, comes solely from the management fee, and that is measured against assets.

What this means can be worked through on the two remaining funds. At 0.35 percent on $11.41 million, Grayscale takes in just under $40,000 a year. REX-Osprey charges 1.5 percent, more than four times as much, and arrives at around $167,000 even though its fund is slightly smaller. Both sums are enough for a niche product inside a large fund family, where custody and audit are spread across many funds. As a standalone business, neither pays its way.

Therein lies the reason why products of this size disappear quietly, long before anyone notices. It is not the price that decides this but the inflows. Bitwise waited ten months and then pulled the cord.

German investors were never on the distribution list

The wind-down of BWOW affects almost nobody in Germany, and there is a supervisory reason for that. US funds produce no key information document under the European PRIIPs regulation. Without that document a broker in the EU may not sell the security to retail clients. Anyone with a securities account in Germany could therefore not buy BWOW through the regular route at all, and the same applies to GDOG, DOJE and TDOG.

Access to Dogecoin in securities form runs in Germany through exchange-traded notes backed by real coins. Which products exist, what to look for in the issuer and the collateral, and how this differs from buying directly, is set out in our overview of crypto ETFs and ETPs in Germany. The second route remains buying the coin itself through a regulated crypto exchange, with self-custody or custody at the exchange.

Tax hangs on the wrapper, not on the coin

At this point the product question becomes a money question, and more sharply than with equities. A directly held Dogecoin is, for tax purposes, a different asset from a security that tracks the same coin.

For a direct holding, section 23 of the German Income Tax Act applies. A gain from a sale within one year counts as a private disposal transaction and is taxed at the personal rate, but stays outside the calculation up to the exemption limit of €1,000 per calendar year. Exceed that limit and the whole amount becomes taxable. After twelve months of holding, the gain is tax-free. That holding period was in the balance several times this autumn: the Bundestag rejected its abolition on 9 October by 445 votes to 132, the cabinet date passed without a decision, and the Federal Ministry of Finance is keeping its counsel. We track the current state continuously in our overview of the crypto holding period.

With a security the arithmetic looks different. There, flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent applies in principle, plus the solidarity surcharge and church tax where applicable, withheld by the bank holding the account, with the €1,000 saver's allowance as a tax-free amount. Whether a physically backed crypto ETP nonetheless falls under section 23 in an individual case depends on how it is structured and whether it securitises a claim to delivery of the coins. No article answers that question across the board; the key information document of the particular product does, and a tax adviser in case of doubt. Anyone who has spread purchases across several platforms will find, in our comparison of crypto tax tools, the programs that track acquisition dates and holding periods automatically.

Three points count now: what form the holding takes, when it was acquired, and whether the supporting records are complete. The first two determine the type of tax, the third the burden of proof before the tax office.

The price this Saturday

Dogecoin trades at $0.0803 at midday on 17 October, the equivalent of €0.0715. Over the past 24 hours the range ran from $0.0793 to $0.0828, with a volume-weighted average of $0.0804. Over seven days it is down 6.9 percent, over thirty days down 1.5 percent. From the all-time high of $0.7316 the coin is 89 percent away.

The intraday low at $0.0793 sits close to the level at which the price steadied last week as well. On the upside it gets tight at $0.0828, the high of the current 24 hours. Both are daily marks and not trend lines; anyone looking at longer periods will take their bearings more from the February low, which we wrote about on 14 October when the price still stood at $0.0845. Dogecoin has given up a further 5 percent since then without either level breaking.

Our assessment of the retreat from the niche

From the editorial team's point of view, the closure of BWOW is not a signal against Dogecoin but one about the product landscape. The evidence: the coin ranks 12th by market capitalisation at $12.56 billion and turns over $612 million on a quiet Saturday. At the same time the four US funds together have not gathered even $25 million in ten months. The demand is there, then; it simply is not looking for a fund wrapper.

Against that stands an objection worth taking seriously: a market without institutional vehicles remains carried by retail investors and is therefore more prone to swings. At Bitcoin the ETF wave bundled demand that had not existed before. For Dogecoin that effect has so far failed to appear, and after Bitwise's retreat it has become less likely for this year. No price forecast follows from this. Any purchase of crypto assets can lead to a total loss.

BWOW wind-down: the money moves on 22 October, the coin stays

For Dogecoin held in German accounts and wallets, next Thursday changes nothing. What has changed is the position of everyone who had backed a regulated US product: of four funds three remain, and two of them together manage as much as the coin turns over in three and a half trading hours. Anyone sorting out their holdings anyway can take the week as an occasion to record the acquisition date and holding period for each position. By the turn of the year that determines the 2026 tax bill.

(As of October 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Monero released point version 0.18.5.4 of its software on Saturday, and the price of XMR stands at $558.19, at the top of its weekly range. The two together are the occasion for this article: a maintenance release that leaves the network rules untouched, and a coin up 6.93 percent over the week while Bitcoin gives up 1.37 percent over the same stretch.

A point version is an interim release that fixes bugs without changing the rules of the network. If you hold XMR in self-custody, no deadline applies to you, but you should know which version you are running. If you want to buy XMR from Germany, you run into an entirely different problem, and it has nothing to do with this release.

Monero 0.18.5.4 fixes bugs in DNSSEC, checkpoints and block lists

The release is called “Fluorine Fermi, Point Release 5.4” and describes itself as a bug-fix version. Two corrections head the release notes: the daemon again validates DNSSEC signatures for checkpoints, block lists and update queries correctly, and the JSON interface again accepts numbers in text form.

DNSSEC is a signature over entries in the Domain Name System proving that an answer really comes from the responsible server and was not altered in transit. The daemon is the program that keeps a copy of the Monero blockchain in the background and coordinates with other nodes. Checkpoints are fixed verification points in the blockchain at which a node checks whether it sees the same history as the rest of the network. A block list records entries that have been reported as problematic.

A node that does not validate a signature cleanly will, in the worst case, accept manipulated checkpoints. An attacker would need control over the victim’s name resolution to pull that off, and that is laborious. The weakness is fixed now all the same.

The previous version 0.18.5.3 appeared on 6 October and was marked as strongly recommended by the developers. Eleven days lie between the two releases, a short gap for software of this kind.

The official source for the current version

The authoritative source is the project’s download page. It carries the current files for Windows, macOS, Linux and the command-line tools. Get the software only from there or from the project’s repository, never through a link in a search ad: fake wallet pages have surfaced in the top search results several times in recent weeks.

Monero price this week: $558 and a gain of 6.93 percent in seven days

XMR trades at $558.19 and €496.61 according to CoinGecko, as of Saturday morning at 8:56 a.m. German time. Over 24 hours it is down 0.17 percent, over seven days up 6.93 percent, over 14 days up 2.11 percent and over 30 days up 11.07 percent. The range in the past 24 hours ran from $545.30 to $569.82.

With a market value of around $10.5 billion, Monero ranks 13th among the largest crypto assets. Daily turnover is about $93.77 million, and 18,818,637 XMR are in circulation. That leaves it 30 percent short of the record high of $797.73 reached on 14 January 2026.

How the week compares with the broader market

The comparison is what makes this week notable. Bitcoin stands at $81,519 and is down 1.37 percent over seven days, Ethereum loses 2.68 percent, XRP 6.96 percent and Cardano 10.74 percent. Among the 25 largest crypto assets, apart from the stablecoins and the tokenised credit product Figure Heloc, only three are up on the week: TRON at 1.31 percent, LEO Token at 1.62 percent and Monero, the last of these clearly in front.

Why XMR is climbing against a falling market

No single cause can be demonstrated, and Monero has no inflow data of the kind that exists for the Bitcoin ETFs. One obvious explanation does not hold either: Zcash, the other large privacy asset, trades at $1,161.83 and is down 4.80 percent over the week. There is no question, then, of strength across the whole group.

One structural property can be demonstrated. Monero has no running calendar of token unlocks. At many younger projects, fresh supply from team and investor allocations reaches the market every week and can be sold. That pressure is absent here. It explains no single day’s move, but it does explain why an asset of this kind need give up less in weak market phases than a token with a running unlock schedule.

The levels over the longer run, not just today’s reading, are tracked on our continuously maintained Monero forecast page.

A point release without a consensus change: the difference from a network upgrade

A distinction is worth drawing here, because the two are often conflated. A network upgrade, a hard fork in technical language, changes the rules by which blocks count as valid. Anyone who does not update their software then ends up, after the cut-off date, on a blockchain the rest of the network no longer recognises. With a point release that does not happen.

The release notes for 0.18.5.4 name no consensus change and no cut-off date. The only announced break lies further ahead: acceptance of numbers in text form at the JSON interface, which this version restores, is due to disappear with version 0.19. That affects programs talking to a node over that interface, not users of an ordinary wallet.

For holders, that means no deadline is running. An up-to-date software version remains the cheapest security measure available all the same.

Monero in Germany: six large exchanges no longer list XMR

The real bottleneck for German investors lies not in the software but in access. On 5 October 2026 cryptoticker.io found that six large trading venues no longer offer XMR to customers from Germany; the details are in our article on why Monero has disappeared from the large exchanges.

The reason is regulatory, not technical. A trading venue licensed under the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets must be able to attribute transactions to a customer. At Monero, ring signatures and encrypted amounts hide the sender, the recipient and the size of a payment. A ring signature mixes the real signer of a transaction among several possible signers, so that from outside it cannot be told which of them paid. For a supervisor who has to enforce anti-money-laundering duties, that is where the conflict arises.

MiCA and the anti-money-laundering regulation: the 1 July 2027 cut-off

MiCA is the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets and governs who may offer crypto services in the European Union. For Monero a second layer comes on top: the European anti-money-laundering regulation provides that from 1 July 2027 providers may no longer work with anonymity coins. An anonymity coin is a crypto asset whose protocol deliberately hides the parties to a payment and the amounts involved.

What that date means in concrete terms was set out by cryptoticker.io on 23 August 2026 using Zcash as the example; the same logic hits Monero. The order matters here: providers are meant, not ownership. A ban on holding self-custodied XMR is not in the regulation.

In practical terms this framework shifts the question from buying to custody. If the route through a licensed European exchange narrows over the medium term, what counts is how well you can manage your holdings without an exchange. An overview of the devices for that is in our hardware wallet comparison, and anyone looking for a licensed trading venue for the rest of a portfolio will find one in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Self-custody of XMR: seed, view key and the software version

Monero works with two different keys, and many holders do not know the distinction. The spend key confers control over the balance. The view key allows only a look at incoming payments, without access to the money. A view key is therefore the right tool when a tax adviser or an accounting program is to get sight of the account without gaining control over it.

The recovery phrase, the seed, is 25 words long at Monero and is not interchangeable with the 12- or 24-word phrase of other wallets. Lose it and you lose the balance; store it digitally and malware will take it sooner or later. Paper or stamped metal, kept separately from the device, remains the state of the art.

What happens at the first start after an update

One point about the software version regularly causes alarm in practice. A wallet that keeps its own copy of the blockchain downloads many blocks after a longer break. Expect a wait, then, at the first start after an update before the balance is shown in full again. An empty balance in that state is normal and not a sign of a loss.

Holding period and tax: how the tax office treats XMR gains

For crypto assets held privately, Germany applies the private disposal transaction under section 23 of the Income Tax Act. After a holding period of more than one year, a gain on sale is tax-free. Within the year the personal tax rate applies, provided the total of all such gains in a year exceeds the exemption threshold.

At Monero a further feature complicates the proof: the blockchain does not reveal the amounts. A holding period therefore cannot simply be documented later through a public blockchain explorer. All the more important are your own records of every inflow, every outflow and the price at the time. The view key from the previous section is the right tool for that. Which programs keep such records is shown in our overview of crypto tax tools.

Switching your own wallet, say from desktop software to a hardware device, is not a sale; the holding period keeps running.

Weekly high $558, weekly low $520: the range of the past seven days

The daily values of the past seven days give, according to CoinGecko, a weekly low of $519.73 on 11 October and a weekly high of $558.15 today, Saturday. The price therefore stands at the top of its weekly range.

As an observation, not a price target: above the current quotation lies the round $600 mark, and only then the area around the January high at $797.73. On the downside, the weekly low at $519.73 is the next point of reference; below it begins the zone from which the 30-day calculation draws its gain of 11.07 percent. Which of these levels holds is not known in advance.

Monero update: below $520 the weekly gain loses its floor

Three steps follow from this article:

1. Check your software version. Look up which version your Monero wallet is running, and get 0.18.5.4 only from the official download page. If you would rather keep your holdings on a device than on your computer, the choice is in the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Clarify your route of access. Before buying more, the question is whether your own trading venue still offers XMR at all, and for how long. For the rest of a portfolio, the overview of regulated crypto exchanges is worth a look.
3. Catch up on your records. Note inflows, outflows and prices while they can still be attributed, because the blockchain will not supply them later. Suitable programs are listed in the overview of crypto tax tools.

(As of October 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

XRP trades at $1.31 on Saturday morning. The price has lost 2.7 percent over the past 24 hours, market capitalisation stands at $82.4 billion and that leaves XRP fifth among all cryptocurrencies (CoinGecko, as of October 17). The date that shapes the coming fortnight is not in the chart, however, but in the ledger: in the night of November 1, Ripple's next escrow contract for up to 1 billion XRP expires.

The headline is the same every time: a billion tokens pours into the market. The number that counts is a different one, and over the past twelve months it averaged 300 million. This article weighs the two against each other and shows how to read the actual net amount yourself before the month turns. Where the price can point over a horizon of months is set out in our XRP price prediction.

XRP at $1.31: where the price stands on Saturday morning

The trading range of the past 24 hours ran from $1.29 to $1.35. Across all exchanges, XRP worth around $1.25 billion changed hands in that period. 63.13 billion tokens are in circulation.

Two reference points from the daily data of the past two months put that in context. The highest level in that period was $1.66 on August 22. From there the price stands a good 21 percent lower today. The average of the past 20 daily closes is around $1.42, clearly above the current level. Both figures are calculated from CoinGecko's own daily data.

55 escrow contracts from 2017: how the monthly release works

An escrow in the XRP Ledger is a lock written into the protocol: a quantity of tokens is placed on a contract and stays unavailable until a set point in time, not even reachable by the owner. Ripple created 55 such contracts in December 2017, each for 1 billion XRP, each expiring on the first of a month. That is reported by Tokenpost, citing the ledger data on the November date.

The decisive part of the construction is the way back. Whatever Ripple does not use in a given month can be placed into new contracts at the end of it. The process therefore consists of two entries: the release at the start of the month and the renewed lock afterwards. Count only the first and you are counting a number that has looked the same every month for nine years and says nothing about the market.

Ripple itself reported 37,656,053,914 XRP in its own holdings as of June 30, 2026, of which 32.6 billion sat in escrow contracts. That disclosure is the last figure confirmed by the company; the ledger estimates circulating since then put the escrow balance between 31.4 and 31.7 billion XRP, depending on the survey date. The range stays a range here instead of being smoothed into a single value.

1 billion on November 1: what the ledger has earmarked for the month's turn

The next expiry is dated November 1, 2026 at 00:00 UTC, which is 1 a.m. German time in the night of November 1. Germany is already on winter time by then; the clocks change on October 25. The earmarked amount is up to 1 billion XRP. How much of it actually stays in circulation becomes clear only in the days that follow.

The October date shows the pattern in detail. The billion left escrow in four transfers of 400, 200, 300 and 100 million XRP. Within the month, 700 million of that went back into new contracts. 300 million tokens stayed out. What happened to those 300 million, whether they were sold, passed on to partners or merely rebooked, cannot be read from the ledger data alone, and nobody should claim otherwise.

Twelve releases, 8.4 billion returned: what stayed in circulation net

Across the twelve releases from November 2025 to October 2026, the picture adds up to one clear number. 12 billion XRP were released in that period. 8.4 billion went back into new contracts. That leaves 3.6 billion tokens outside on a net basis, an average of 300 million a month.

That is 70 percent which never reached the market. Little room is left for the expectation that the first of the month reliably brings a billion in fresh selling pressure. The net amount is no trifle either: 3.6 billion XRP equal 5.7 percent of today's circulating supply of 63.13 billion tokens, built up over a year.

$393 million against $1.25 billion in daily turnover

The net amount can be translated into dollars and set against trading. 300 million XRP are worth around $393 million at today's price of $1.31. Against that stands a trading volume of about $1.25 billion in a single day.

The entire monthly net release therefore amounts to just under a third of what is traded on an ordinary Saturday anyway, spread over 30 days. In pure arithmetic that is around $13 million a day, roughly 1 percent of daily turnover. An order of magnitude that can move a price when it meets a thin market, but not one that forces a direction.

To see at what fees and under whose supervision you can buy XRP yourself, the providers are listed among the best crypto exchanges. The fee per order weighs more heavily on small amounts than the monthly release does.

Friday's fund flows: $2.4734 million out, Canary the only loser

The second source of demand alongside the spot market is delivering little at present as well. US spot ETFs on XRP recorded a net outflow of $2.4734 million on Friday. The money left a single fund, the Canary XRP ETF under the ticker XRPC, which nevertheless carries cumulative net inflows of $484 million since launch. The figures come from SoSoValue and were compiled by PANews.

Net assets under management across all XRP spot ETFs stand at $1.471 billion, and cumulative net inflows since launch at $1.800 billion. Measured against market capitalisation, the funds hold 1.79 percent of the total XRP value.

Placed side by side, this weekend's two figures make for a quiet picture: on the supply side a net release of around $393 million a month, on the demand side a fund outflow of $2.5 million a day. Both flows are small against ongoing trading.

What has changed since Friday's Evernorth analysis

On Friday we looked at the treasury company Evernorth, listed on the Nasdaq since October 12 with 473 million XRP on its balance sheet. That can be read in our analysis of the Evernorth balance sheet and the flat price from October 16.

The price has given way since. At midday on Friday XRP stood at $1.34, today it is $1.31, a fall of a good 2 percent in 24 hours. Friday's low of $1.2827, named in that analysis as the lower edge, was not breached; the low of these 24 hours sits just above it at $1.29. The edge is holding its second test in a row.

In substance, the escrow date adds a supply question that played no part on Friday. The Evernorth balance sheet describes tokens bought that had already been withdrawn from the market. The monthly release describes tokens that could be fed into it. Both processes act on the same supply, but in opposite directions.

The levels: $1.29 below, the 20-day line at $1.42 above

On the downside the low of the past 24 hours at $1.29 is the first reference point, and Friday's low of $1.2827 sits directly beneath it. Together the two form a narrow zone in which buyers stepped in on two consecutive days. If it gives way, no catch line formed in recent trading exists until the area around $1.20.

On the upside the more interesting level is not the day's high at $1.35 but the average of the past 20 daily closes at around $1.42. The price last ran there on October 10 and 11, before falling below the line. A daily close above it would be the first signal that the move since the start of the week was more than a counter-move.

Both levels are observation points, not price targets. A price target presupposes an author who stands behind it, and for XRP over the coming fortnight there is none.

Holding period and tax allowance: the tax question before November 1

For investors in Germany the turn of the month has a side that has nothing to do with the ledger. For tax purposes XRP counts among other assets. A sale falls under private disposal transactions pursuant to section 23 of the German Income Tax Act.

Two figures follow from that, and anyone planning an order in the coming weeks should know both. The first is the one-year holding period: hold the tokens for longer than twelve months and the gain carries no income tax. The second is the allowance of 1,000 euros per calendar year, which applies to all private disposal transactions taken together. Exceed it and the entire gain is taxable, not merely the excess.

In concrete terms, for the days before November 1: if you hold tokens from the autumn of 2025, check the acquisition date of every single tranche before reacting to any move. A sale a few days before the twelve months are up costs the full personal tax rate, a sale a few days after costs nothing. Tools that record acquisition dates and sequence are set out in our comparison of crypto tax software.

The one-year holding period itself remains under political scrutiny. We keep track of where the reform debate stands on our page on the crypto holding period. This text does not replace tax advice; for your own situation your tax adviser remains responsible.

MiCA authorisation and the reserve requirement: the buying route in the XRP Ledger

Since the European regulation on markets in crypto-assets applies in full, providers addressing customers in the EU need authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. For the buying route that means two things: behind an authorised provider stands a European supervisor with a complaints channel, and duties apply on the separation of client and own holdings.

On custody, the XRP Ledger adds a detail that many notice only on their first transfer. Every account in the ledger must hold a reserve that stays permanently tied up and cannot be sent. Move tokens from an exchange to an address of your own and you plan for that amount, or the first transfer fails on an account that is empty in arithmetic terms although it shows a balance.

The release on November 1 can be followed in the ledger itself. The escrow contracts are publicly visible, and every release and every renewed lock appears as its own entry with a timestamp. To know the net amount, do not wait for a headline: count the return entries in the days after the first of the month and subtract them from the billion. That is the calculation made in this article for twelve months.

Our assessment: the monthly release is not a billion in selling pressure

From the editorial team's point of view the escrow date is regularly told too large. The evidence sits in this text: of twelve billion XRP released, 8.4 billion went back into new contracts, 3.6 billion stayed out on a net basis, an average of 300 million tokens a month or around $393 million. Against daily turnover of $1.25 billion that is roughly 1 percent a day.

One point speaks against it, and it deserves to be taken seriously. The net amounts of the past twelve months are no promise for November. Ripple is under no obligation to put a particular share back, and in months with high funding needs the share can turn out smaller. The record of the past is documented, the intention for the next date is not. To know the figure, read it in the ledger after November 1 rather than estimating it beforehand.

XRP escrow: 300 million tokens decide, not the billion

Three steps follow from this for the fortnight until the month turns:

1. Establish the acquisition date of every tranche. For holdings from the autumn of 2025, a few days decide tax exemption after twelve months. Tools that keep acquisition dates and sequence in good order are set out in our comparison of crypto tax software.
2. Note the two levels. Below, the zone from $1.2827 to $1.29; above, the 20-day line at around $1.42. Only a daily close outside that range alters the starting position; everything in between is the move of the current week.
3. Count the net amount after November 1. What matters is the billion less the return entries into new contracts, not the headline on the first of the month. If you still need an exchange for that, the providers with their fees and supervision are listed in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

(As of October 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The bitcoin price stands at $81,437 on Saturday morning, $526 below its level at the same time on Friday. The real news of the morning sits not in the chart but in an interview: according to Gerald Podobnik, co-head of its corporate bank, Deutsche Bank is only weeks away from holding bitcoin and ether in custody itself for institutional clients. Frankfurt is the first market. This article sets out what that means in practice, which assets are covered from day one, and why retail investors gain nothing from it for now.

Bitcoin price on Saturday morning: $81,437 and €72,460

Bitcoin trades at $81,437 at around 6:50 a.m. German time on Saturday, October 17. In euros that is €72,460. Over the past 24 hours the loss stands at 0.62 percent, and at 1.29 percent over the week. The 24-hour range runs from $80,761 to $82,816, a span of $2,055 or a good 2.5 percent between low and high. The market value of all bitcoin in circulation stands at $1.64 trillion. All figures come from the CoinGecko market query and refer to Saturday morning.

That leaves $44,643 to the all-time high of $126,080. Put differently, the price would have to rise by 54.8 percent to reach the old peak again. That puts the daily dip in context. Half a percent down on a Saturday morning is not an event; the picture since mid-October is another matter.

Podobnik talks about weeks, not months

Gerald Podobnik, co-head of Deutsche Bank's corporate banking business, said in an interview with Reuters on October 16, 2026 that the launch of the bank's own custody for digital assets was only weeks away. He gave no exact date and named no first client. That is the difference from the statement of September 16: back then the bank wrote of a launch still this year, subject to completion of the relevant supervisory procedure. Year-end has become weeks.

Formally, one condition still stands before the launch, and it does not rest with the bank. The service goes live only once the supervisory procedure is complete and the technology has been signed off. The bank puts it the same way on its own product page. The date to mark in a calendar is a window, not a day.

Bitcoin, ether and three tokens: the scope on day one

The bank names five assets for the start: bitcoin, ether and the three e-money tokens USDC, EURC and EURAU. Stablecoin transfers, tokenised deposits and digital securities are to follow later. The service is offered not through an app but through the existing channels of the corporate bank, namely the Autobahn portal and the Corporate Bank portal.

The target group is narrowly drawn and consists of institutional and corporate clients: asset managers, investors, multinational companies, and state or state-linked bodies. Germany is the first market, and settlement sits in Frankfurt. Podobnik holds out the prospect of expansion to Asian financial centres in 2027 without naming a location. A custody account for retail clients is not part of the announced package.

E-money token is no throwaway phrase here but a defined term from the European regulation on markets in crypto-assets: an e-money token tracks exactly one official currency and must be fully backed. EURAU is the euro token in which Deutsche Bank holds a stake through its fund subsidiary. Its presence alongside USDC and EURC shows where the bank actually wants to take the service: towards payments and settlement rather than trading.

Why only now: BaFin application in 2023, Taurus deal in 2023, announcement in September

The backstory reaches three years back. In 2023 Deutsche Bank applied to BaFin for a licence for the crypto custody business. In September of the same year it signed a global contract with the Swiss infrastructure provider Taurus, which supplies the technology for custody and tokenisation. After that it went quiet for a long time. The official announcement came only on September 16, 2026, which we covered in detail at the time.

Roughly three years therefore lie between application and launch. That is not a sign of hesitation alone but also a consequence of the legal framework: operating custody for third-party crypto-assets requires a licence in Germany, and the European crypto-asset regulation recast the requirements on segregation, liability and documentation during that period. Article 75 of the regulation provides, among other things, that client holdings be held separately and returned on demand at any time.

The route there is notable: according to industry observers this is not a fresh authorisation application as a crypto-asset service provider but a notification to the home supervisor. A bank with a full banking licence has to register the service rather than apply from scratch. That explains how months could suddenly turn into weeks.

The keys sit with the bank, not with the client

The technical core of the offering is quickly described: Deutsche Bank manages wallets and private keys on behalf of its clients. A private key is the string of characters that allows bitcoin to be moved. Whoever holds it controls the holdings. That control is exactly what the client hands to the bank here, and in return the client is spared building custody of its own.

As safeguards the bank names hardware security modules, a split into warm and cold storage, multi-person approvals for transfers, and backup and failover procedures. Clients can tailor the approval paths themselves, setting for instance the amount above which two signatures are required. Warm storage is connected to the network and allows fast movement; cold storage is separated and therefore slower.

One point remains even in the safest design, and the bank writes it into its own statement: crypto-assets are not covered by deposit insurance. A balance in a current account is protected by law up to €100,000 per client and institution; a bitcoin in custody is not. Protection there comes from the segregation of holdings and the right of separation in insolvency, not from a guarantee fund.

Retail clients are not included: the gap stays with exchanges and brokers

For investors in Germany the launch changes nothing about their own route to buying, at least for now. Buying bitcoin today still runs through a crypto exchange, a broker, or one of the banks and savings banks that already offer trading through partners. Custody therefore stays either with the provider or in the investor's own hands. Self-custody means a device that keeps the key offline; the common models and their costs are set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

The news still has an indirect effect. Once asset managers, foundations and companies can leave their holdings with a large European bank, a hurdle falls away for that group which regularly became a deal-breaker in investment committees. Whether inflows follow will show up not in the announcement but in the holdings a few months from now. So far only the intention is documented.

Friday's ETF flows: $82.39 million out

The American spot bitcoin ETFs lost a net $82.39 million on Friday, October 16. BlackRock's fund recorded the largest single outflow at $71.78 million, followed by Fidelity at $10.61 million. The figures come from SoSoValue and were documented on Saturday morning in market reporting.

That flips the picture from the previous day. On Thursday the same funds gathered a net $5.06 million, carried solely by BlackRock at $16.79 million. A small gain has turned into an outflow equal to roughly 1,011 bitcoin. For comparison, miners bring about 450 new bitcoin to the market each day. Friday's outflow therefore weighs a good two days of production.

What has changed since our bitcoin article of October 16

On Friday morning the price stood at $81,963 in our report on the ETF standstill, fund flows were at plus $5.06 million, and the levels were set at $79,806 below and $82,508 above. Three things have happened since.

First, the price took the upper level: the 24-hour high stands at $82,816, which is $308 above Friday's mark. It did not hold there. Second, the lower level of $79,806 still stands, with the daily low of $80,761 staying barely $1,000 above it. Third, the standstill in fund flows is no longer a standstill but an outflow. The price sits $526 lower on Saturday than on Friday, even though it was higher in between.

The levels for the weekend: $80,761 below, $82,816 above

On the upside the next level with a reason behind it is $82,816, the high of the past 24 hours. That is where the market found sellers on Friday. A close above it would be the first argument that the recovery since the drop below $80,000 is more than a counter-move.

On the downside the first level is $80,761, the low of the past 24 hours, followed by the round number at $80,000, which was briefly breached on Thursday. Volumes are thin at the weekend and the ETFs do not trade because the American exchanges are closed. Both widen swings in either direction without a new piece of news behind them.

The editorial view: custody weighs more than the daily dip

Our assessment: of this morning's two pieces of news, the smaller one is the more important. A loss of 0.62 percent and an ETF outflow of $82.39 million are daily noise, and October has seen bigger single days. That a bank with a balance sheet in the trillions is holding bitcoin in custody on its own books, by contrast, changes the list of possible counterparties for every institutional investor in Europe.

The evidence sits above: application to BaFin since 2023, technology contract with Taurus since 2023, official announcement on September 16, 2026, a timeframe of weeks given on October 16, 2026, Germany as the first market. Three things speak against it, and we are not concealing them: there is no date, there is no named first client, and the service does not reach retail investors. Reading a price impulse into this news reads more into it than is documented. This is expressly not a recommendation to buy or sell.

One-year holding period and a change of custodian: moving is not selling

For investors in Germany, custody carries a tax question. Gains from the sale of bitcoin are tax-free under section 23 of the Income Tax Act if more than a year lies between purchase and sale. This holding period is currently up for political debate, but it remains the law in force.

The distinction matters: a mere change of custody, meaning the transfer of your own bitcoin from an exchange to your own device or to a custodian, is not a sale and does not restart the clock. What counts is the date of acquisition, not the storage location. Several purchases at different times do require clean records for each tranche, otherwise the period cannot be proven in case of doubt. Documentation is the taxpayer's responsibility in a dispute.

One more note for context: when large custodians enter the market, holdings move between addresses without anyone selling. On-chain movements alone therefore say nothing about selling pressure. That holds in both directions and is one of the most common false conclusions drawn from large transfers.

Bank custody: no launch in 2026 without the regulator's green light

Deutsche Bank's launch hangs on a condition the bank names itself, not on a date. Until then the situation for retail investors stays unchanged. Three steps make sense now:

1. Check your buying route if a purchase is coming up. Fees and spreads differ far more sharply on €100 than on €10,000. The terms of the providers available in Germany are set out in our comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Settle your custody. Holdings meant to sit for more than a year do not belong in a trading account. Which devices do the job and what they cost is shown in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Secure your acquisition data. Date, quantity and price for each tranche belong in a record that stays readable after a change of provider. Tools for that are listed in the overview of tax tools and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

AI companies charge by the token, and most people burn them on jobs a cheap model could do. Here's how to spend less and get better results, from your first prompt to your first agent.

Tesla's new Roadster flips through the air, jumps a row of Teslas and lands on SpaceX thrusters. The Rocket version is invite only, not approved for public roads, and not due until 2028.

Calif showed an untethered jailbreak on an iPhone 18 Pro running iOS 27.0.1 at Hexacon in Paris. It survived a reboot, but no tool or bug details are public yet.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire told Reuters the USDC issuer plans to enter about 40 emerging and developing markets, citing rising demand in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

The index provider will classify “non-operating companies” as ineligible starting Nov. 30, targeting firms whose balance sheets are dominated by a single asset.

Ripple CTO Emeritus issues urgent warning over wallet scam notification.

Cardano founder names one major milestone that remains before he considers his long-term ADA vision fulfilled.

Ethereum's founder Vitalik Buterin has stirred discussions about Bitcoin and AI after spotlighting a key difference between both rapidly emerging technologies.

XRP searches sink 90% year-over-year, yet the price holds above $1.25.

Shiba Inu could exit the correction sooner than it seemed at first.

TLDR:

• Cardano Leios is the final requirement in Charles Hoskinson’s personal definition of a complete Cardano network, but the upgrade remains in public testing.
• Musashi Dojo’s Earth phase peaked at 26.8 TxkB/s, roughly six times the current Praos ceiling, but the metric measures data throughput rather than TPS.
• Linear Leios is targeted for phase one of the Dijkstra hard fork in late 2026, subject to governance approval, pool readiness, and staged parameters.
• Hoskinson offered no technical description of the Midnight concept he called his magnum opus, leaving the announcement short of a product confirmation.

Cardano Leios has become Charles Hoskinson’s stated finish line for the network he founded. In an October 17 exchange, Hoskinson said Cardano would be complete only after the throughput upgrade reaches mainnet. The comment defines his personal completion standard, not a formal release declaration. 

Cardano Leios remains on a public testnet, where its first phase peaked at 26.8 TxkB/s. That figure measures transaction data per second, rather than transactions per second. Hoskinson also teased an undeveloped Midnight concept he called his career’s magnum opus. He supplied no technical design, launch date, or product specification for the privacy-focused partner network.

Cardano Leios Sets the Final Bar for Network Completion

Hoskinson’s reply did not change Cardano’s roadmap or create a new governance action. It instead framed Leios as the last major element in his original design. He cited decentralized consensus, on-chain governance, continuous development, eUTXO, Plutus, scalability, formal methods, and independent node clients.

He also described a network that can improve through its own governance processes. The statement therefore concerns completeness in the founder’s view. It does not confirm that every future feature, application, or engineering task has ended. He noted that millions of people already hold ADA, which makes the final milestone relevant beyond the engineering team.

Cardano Leios is an Ouroboros extension designed to expand throughput without replacing the Praos chain. Block producers publish larger endorser blocks beside regular Praos blocks. A stake-weighted committee verifies these blocks and creates a certificate for their contents. The arrangement leaves the underlying proof-of-stake chain in place.

Under the design, the committee is weighted by staking share. Certified endorser transactions enter the ledger through the existing Praos sequence. Its objective is to process more transaction data while preserving the consensus system already used on mainnet.

Midnight enters the story separately. Hoskinson said he had almost completed a concept that only Midnight could deliver to crypto. He described it as the magnum opus of his career and said it could address many industry problems. The post contained no architecture, feature list, timeline, or governance proposal.

That leaves the announcement as a personal preview, rather than a confirmed product release. Neither the Midnight tease nor the Leios milestone establishes an immediate effect on ADA.

Cardano Leios Testnet Result Needs Context Before Mainnet

Musashi Dojo launched on June 23 as the public Cardano Leios testnet. Its Earth phase reached a peak of 26.8 TxkB/s, compared with 4.51 TxkB/s for mainnet using Praos alone. The test result is roughly six times the current mainnet ceiling.

TxkB/s measures transaction kilobytes processed each second. It is not a TPS reading, and it cannot be treated as a direct mainnet transaction count. The trial tested the full protocol across real distances and latencies. It was the first public network run rather than a simulation.

The initial phase exercised the protocol publicly, including Praos blocks, endorser blocks, stake votes, and certificates. The development report listed more than 127,000 blocks, 30,000 endorser blocks, and nearly 8,000 certificates. Engineers also found five incidents during testing, including forks and synchronization failures.

The report said they were implementation bugs rather than design failures. Those results still apply to the testnet environment, not production conditions.

Linear Leios is slated for the first phase of the Dijkstra hard fork, targeted for late 2026. The date remains subject to Cardano’s on-chain governance process. DReps, stake pool operators, and the Constitutional Committee must ratify a hard fork action.

Stake pools must then register BLS keys for Leios voting. Parameter changes will raise throughput in steps after activation instead of a single network-wide jump.

The post Cardano Leios Testnet Logs 26.8 TxkB/s Ahead of Mainnet Push appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Sui Network reported more than $500 million in institutional commitments for its DeFi protocols, but it did not disclose deployed liquidity or adoption figures.
• The Bitcoin blockchain remains the security reference for Sui contracts, which carry cryptographic rights tied to Bitcoin rather than replacing the original chain.
• Sui Agent Payments lets autonomous agents pay Alibaba Cloud for AI and cloud service calls in USDC, with users defining spending limits beforehand.
• Sui market analysts cited $0.85 to $0.90 as SUI support and a possible $1.30 to $1.40 range if buyers clear descending resistance.

Sui Network has issued new institutional and payments updates aimed at decentralized finance. The layer-1 blockchain said it has exceeded $500 million in institutional commitments across its DeFi protocols. Its latest updates also place the Bitcoin blockchain at the center of contract design. Separately, Sui Agent Payments now lets autonomous software purchase Alibaba Cloud services with USDC. 

Every payment settles on Sui, while users set spending limits before agents act. The announcements broaden the project’s use cases beyond token trading. They do not, however, establish immediate demand for the SUI token. Adoption, transaction activity, and enterprise use determine eventual impact.

Sui Network Contracts Reinforce Bitcoin’s Role in DeFi

The reported commitment figure represents capital intended for Sui-based DeFi products. It does not automatically show deployed liquidity or daily trading volume. Still, it signals that institutional participants are exploring the network’s financial infrastructure. 

The Hashi protocol sits within that effort. Sui Network presents it as a way to reduce procedural barriers around institutional DeFi activity. The stated goal is to improve trust, efficiency, and operational coordination for larger participants.

Bitcoin forms the security reference for the contract side of the announcement. Sui contracts hold cryptographic rights connected to Bitcoin, preserving a link to the original blockchain. That design aims to let participants use Bitcoin-related value without treating Sui as a replacement for Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin blockchain therefore remains the verification anchor in this model. For institutions, that relationship could provide a familiar security basis while applications use Sui’s faster execution environment.

The setup also addresses a persistent institutional concern: how to access DeFi without weakening custody and audit controls. Cryptographic claims can help establish which rights are attached to a contract. Yet the practical value depends on legal structure, counterparty arrangements, and redemption processes. 

Sui Network has not detailed activity tied to the $500 million figure. It also has not quantified the number of institutions using the Bitcoin-linked contracts. Those measures will matter more than announced commitments when market participants assess traction. 

Sui Network Agent Payments Shift Adoption into Focus

Alongside the contract update, Sui Network has integrated Alibaba Cloud services into Sui Agent Payments. The tool allows AI agents to make USDC payments for cloud and AI service calls. Users set spending ceilings in advance, rather than approving every transaction manually. 

Agents can then make payments per call as they access a requested service. Each settlement is recorded directly on the Sui blockchain. The approach shifts costs from standard subscriptions toward usage-based billing.

The model could fit businesses that operate automated workloads at variable volumes. It may also support developers building software agents that need controlled recurring access to infrastructure. USDC offers a stable-value payment unit for those microtransactions. 

However, more USDC activity does not automatically create direct buying pressure for SUI. The token’s role in transaction fees could matter, but the relationship depends on actual service use. No adoption figures or transaction volumes were provided for the rollout.

Market watchers will focus on observable evidence after the launch. Relevant indicators include the number of active agents, Alibaba Cloud service calls, USDC settlement volume, and repeat enterprise users. According to analyst Bitguru, he identifies $0.85 to $0.90 as a support area for SUI. 

A  possible recovery range is present between $1.30 and $1.40 if price clears descending resistance. That technical outlook requires buyers to hold support and show stronger volume and open interest.

The post Bitcoin Blockchain Backs Sui Network Contracts and Agent Payments appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Dogecoin price traded near $0.0802 on October 17, down roughly 7.6% from its weekly opening and below the $0.081 reference.
• Trader Tardigrade linked the latest monthly trendline test to contacts in 2017 and 2020, preceding earlier rallies on his chart.
• Ali Martinez reported approximately 600 million DOGE added by large holders since October 12, alongside a daily TD Sequential buy signal.
• CoinGlass showed modeled liquidation concentrations around $0.0773 and $0.0844, while DOGE remained below the daily Bollinger midpoint.

The Dogecoin price traded near $0.0802 on October 17, down roughly 7.6% from its weekly opening. The decline carried the token beneath the $0.081 level highlighted by analyst Ali Martinez.

Analyst Trader Tardigrade compared the monthly setup with earlier contacts along a long-term support trendline. His interpretation pointed to a potential repeat of previous recoveries, while Martinez cited whale accumulation and a daily buy signal.

DOGE coin market data shows weakness across several daily and weekly indicators. The weekly session opened at $0.08678 and included a low of $0.07770. Buyers were attempting to recover ground lost during the latest October decline. 

Dogecoin Price Retests Monthly Trendline as Whales Add Tokens

Trader Tardigrade said the Dogecoin price had returned to a monthly support trendline associated with earlier rallies. He marked contacts in 2017, 2020 and 2026, separated by three-year and six-year intervals. His post placed the token just below that line again.

Martinez focused on a daily TD Sequential buy signal near $0.081. The indicator counts sequences of price changes to flag possible trend exhaustion. It can identify a potential turning point without confirming that demand has reversed the decline.

He also cited Glassnode figures showing roughly 36 billion DOGE last moved around that price. The cost-basis distribution records previous on-chain transfers, rather than orders waiting to buy.

The Dogecoin price remained below that cluster as whale accumulation increased. Martinez cited Santiment balances rising from roughly 55.6 billion to 56.2 billion DOGE between October 12 and October 16.

He described the change as approximately 600 million tokens added by large holders. Valued at $0.08025 each, those tokens equal about 48.2 million dollars. That calculation does not establish the prices paid for individual purchases. 

His longer-range recovery scenario depended on the $0.081 area holding and a rebound developing. Martinez identified potential profit-taking zones at $0.16 and $0.17, where approximately 12 billion and 14 billion DOGE previously moved.

From $0.08025, those levels imply gains of about 99% and 112%, respectively. The analyst supplied no timeline for reaching either zone.

Weak Daily Signals and Liquidation Clusters Frame Recovery

The Dogecoin price traded near $0.08025 on the daily chart, between a $0.08094 session high and a $0.07982 low. Bollinger Bands placed the 20-day midpoint at $0.08847, the upper boundary at $0.09958 and the lower boundary at $0.07736.

That left the token approximately 9.3% below the midpoint and 3.7% above the lower band. The Awesome Oscillator remained negative near minus 0.00803, with its latest histogram bars below zero.

The weekly Binance Dogecoin price also sat beneath all four displayed simple moving averages. The 20-week reading stood at $0.08163 and the 50-week at $0.10188. The 100-week and 200-week averages were $0.17248 and $0.13765, respectively. Weekly Chaikin Money Flow registered minus 0.06. 

On October 15, DOGE appeared among four altcoins showing technical buy signals, when it traded near $0.07977. Martinez had previously outlined nearer recovery levels of $0.087 and $0.094. Reaching them from $0.08025 would require advances of roughly 8.4% and 17.1%. Both levels exceed the daily Bollinger midpoint but remain below the 50-week moving average.

The three-day CoinGlass heatmap placed prominent modeled liquidation concentrations near $0.0773 and $0.0844. Smaller clusters appeared around 0.078–0.079 and 0.083–0.0836. These bands estimate exposure to potential forced closures, rather than completed liquidations.

Its price path showed a slide from above $0.084 on October 14. The Dogecoin price recovered toward $0.0825 on October 16 before returning toward $0.080.

The Dogecoin price had regained $0.10 after a 25% weekly rally by September 23. The latest daily quote represents a subsequent decline of approximately 19.8% from that round reference.

Separately, Bitwise planned to convert its Dogecoin fund holdings to cash on October 14. Its schedule set cash distributions to shareholders for October 22. 

The post Dogecoin Price Tests Historic Trendline as Whales Add 600M DOGE appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• OKX CEO Star Xu recalled several Bitcoin crises, including early network attacks and exchange failures.
• The Mt. Gox collapse and Bitcoin scaling disputes raised concerns about cryptocurrency’s long-term survival prospects.
• Xu explained that resolving major cryptocurrency industry crises can take several months or one year.
• OKX founder believes cryptocurrency markets become stronger after addressing past failures and security weaknesses.

OKX founder and CEO Star Xu has recalled several crises that nearly brought Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry to collapse. His remarks follow renewed discussions about Bitcoin’s history of market crashes and how digital assets have survived previous downturns.

Speaking on the New Era Finance Podcast, Xu described early network attacks, the Mt. Gox collapse and the FTX bankruptcy. He explained that resolving major industry problems can take several months or even a year before recovery begins.

Star Xu Recalls Bitcoin’s Early Crises and Mt. Gox Collapse

Star Xu said Bitcoin faced repeated threats during its early development, particularly between 2011 and 2012. Network forks, security concerns and disputes over mining power raised questions about whether the cryptocurrency could survive.

Among the problems he recalled were hash power attacks and disagreements over how Bitcoin should operate. These incidents occurred when the network was smaller and its infrastructure was still developing.

The OKX founder then pointed to the 2014 collapse of Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange. The platform filed for bankruptcy after reporting approximately 850,000 BTC missing, leaving thousands of customers unable to access their funds.

The collapse damaged confidence in centralized cryptocurrency exchanges and led to years of legal proceedings. More than a decade later, Mt. Gox creditor repayments remain connected to the exchange’s bankruptcy process.

Xu also recalled Bitcoin’s scaling disputes, which divided developers, miners and businesses over the network’s transaction capacity. The disagreements eventually contributed to the creation of Bitcoin Cash through a hard fork in August 2017.

The debate centered on competing proposals to increase transaction throughput while preserving Bitcoin’s decentralized structure. Xu described these disputes as another period when the industry’s future appeared uncertain.

OKX CEO Points to FTX Collapse and Stronger Industry Standards

The discussion later turned to FTX, whose November 2022 bankruptcy disrupted cryptocurrency markets and exposed serious failures in customer fund management. The exchange’s collapse triggered withdrawals across competing platforms and increased pressure for stronger custody controls.

Xu said the industry has repeatedly worked through such problems, although resolving them often requires considerable time. In his view, cryptocurrency businesses become better prepared after addressing the weaknesses exposed during each crisis.

The fallout from FTX renewed attention on exchange reserves and whether customer assets were properly separated from company funds. Years later, former Mt. Gox executives have continued proposing recovery measures, showing how long unresolved exchange failures can remain relevant.

During the podcast, Xu discussed OKX’s approach to handling customer assets and explained why he rejects using deposits for speculative investments. He pointed to monthly proof-of-reserves reporting as one measure intended to help customers verify exchange holdings.

OKX has since expanded beyond conventional cryptocurrency trading through partnerships involving traditional financial institutions. Earlier this month, the exchange secured new funding from Circle, Ripple and Standard Chartered at a $25 billion valuation.

The company is also pursuing tokenized securities and stablecoin services as more regulated financial businesses enter cryptocurrency markets. Its planned tokenized stock trading platform with Intercontinental Exchange forms part of that expansion.

Xu maintained that Bitcoin’s past recoveries support his confidence in the industry’s longer-term development. He expects stablecoins, regulation and tokenized financial products to play larger roles during the coming decade.

The post OKX CEO Star Xu Says Bitcoin Nearly Died Several Times but Came Back Stronger appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• PUMP price climbed 3.92% to $0.004649 following Pump.fun’s launch of Hyperliquid-powered perpetual futures trading services.
• Pump.fun now offers Bitcoin contracts with 40x leverage and Ethereum perpetual contracts with 25x.
• Hyperliquid handles order execution, margin requirements, and liquidations, while Pump.fun provides the trading interface directly.
• Pump.fun charges up to 0.10% per order and restricts perpetual trading in certain jurisdictions.

Pump.fun’s native token, PUMP, has climbed 3.92% over the past 24 hours to trade at $0.004649 following its derivatives expansion. The recovery follows earlier PUMP token price movements and buyback activity, as traders assess the platform’s latest trading service.

PUMP recovered from a Thursday low near $0.00427 and crossed $0.004482 around midnight before approaching its daily high. The price movement comes as Pump.fun introduces leveraged Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual futures powered by Hyperliquid’s trading infrastructure.

PUMP Price Recovers as Pump.fun Expands Into Perpetual Futures

PUMP traded near $0.004649 during the latest market update, rising approximately 8.9% from its Friday intraday low. Meanwhile, Pump.fun has introduced Bitcoin perpetual contracts offering up to 40x leverage, while Ethereum contracts support up to 25x. 

Traders can open long or short positions without purchasing the underlying cryptocurrencies, although leveraged positions carry liquidation risks.

The rollout follows an October 9 discovery of perpetual trading data within Pump.fun’s application programming interface. That data included funding rates, trading volumes, and open interest sourced from Hyperliquid’s HyperCore mainnet.

Pump.fun uses Hyperliquid’s existing order books rather than operating a separate derivatives engine. HyperCore handles execution, margin balances, and liquidations, while Pump.fun provides the interface used to submit trading instructions.

Hyperliquid has continued expanding its derivatives business throughout 2026, attracting traders across cryptocurrencies and other asset markets. Earlier Hyperliquid trading activity and open interest growth showed rising demand for its perpetual contracts.

Pump.fun previously integrated HyperEVM trading on August 26, allowing users to trade supported tokens against USDC. The perpetual futures launch builds on that earlier connection while adding leveraged positions to the platform.

Pump.fun Publishes Perpetual Trading Fees and Regional Restrictions

Pump.fun’s updated fee schedule sets a builder fee of up to 0.10% on each perpetual order. The charge applies when traders open, increase, or close positions through the platform.

Bridge transfers carry an additional Pump.fun fee of up to 0.25%, excluding charges collected by third-party operators. Hyperliquid’s trading and funding charges remain separate, while its account activation fee applies to first deposits.

For example, a $10,000 order would cost $10 at the maximum builder fee. The actual charge may be lower, depending on the rate applied during order confirmation.

These fees introduce another potential revenue source for Pump.fun, which previously relied heavily on memecoin trading activity. Earlier PUMP buyback and revenue figures showed weekly revenue reaching $15.16 million in September, exceeding Hyperliquid’s $15.06 million.

The new service excludes traders located in the United States and Ontario, alongside other restricted jurisdictions. Pump.fun’s terms specify that Hyperliquid manages positions and settlements, while users remain responsible for monitoring their collateral.

The restrictions come amid wider discussions about regulating decentralized derivatives markets. Recent Hyperliquid regulatory developments have examined how perpetual contracts fit within existing financial market rules.

Other companies are pursuing different routes into the derivatives market. Kraken’s parent company, Payward, previously outlined plans for regulated Hyperliquid perpetual trading through its U.S. operations.

Pump.fun’s terms confirm that traders can access existing Hyperliquid positions through other compatible interfaces. Their positions remain subject to Hyperliquid’s margin requirements, funding payments, and liquidation rules.

The post PUMP Price Jumps as Pump.fun Launches Hyperliquid Perpetual Futures Trading appeared first on Blockonomi.

Less than two months after indicating that it will add SOL, LINK, and AVAX to its Schwab Crypto platform, Charles Schwab has opened direct crypto trading to its broader retail client base.

At the same time, Deutsche Bank is reportedly preparing to launch institutional custody for the two largest digital assets, BTC and ETH.

Schwab Opens Crypto Trading Broadly

According to a recent report, the banking behemoth has opened Schwab Crypto to all eligible US retail clients, expanding a rollout that initially began with selected customers. The platform allows investors to hold and trade cryptocurrencies directly alongside stocks and other traditional investment products.

Schwab Premier Bank serves as custodian, while Paxos handles trade execution and sub-custody. It’s worth noting, though, that crypto holdings are not covered by Securities Investor Protection Corporation protections in the same way as securities held in a conventional brokerage account.

Charles Schwab’s latest move follows another recent expansion. As we reported in late August, the bank said it would move beyond BTC and ETH for certain services, adding SOL, LINK, and AVAX.

It has roughly $12 trillion in client assets, making its direct entry particularly notable for retail crypto adoption.

Deutsche Bank Targets Institutional Clients

In another major adoption development from earlier this week, Deutsche Bank said it is preparing to launch its own digital-asset custody service in Germany within the next few weeks, as Reuters reported. The initial offering will support Bitcoin and Ethereum custody, before expanding into stablecoin transactions.

The German banking giant also plans tokenized deposits and blockchain-based securities issuance, including digital bonds.

“I believe that, as the financial system, we will need to offer tokenized or blockchain solutions to our clients ​as additional ​services alongside ⁠our traditional ones … but not necessarily to replace what we are doing today,” commented Gerald Podobnik, co-head of the bank.

Moreover, Deutsche Bank intends to move beyond Europe by expanding the business into major Asian financial centers next year as part of a broader push to capture growth in the digital economy.

The post 2 Banking Giants Make Major Crypto Moves as Schwab and Deutsche Bank Expand Into Digital Assets appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Although bitcoin rebounded from the dip below $80,000 and now sits two grand higher, the risk of another deep correction has not been completely eliminated.

Analysts are watching the $84,000 resistance as the immediate recovery level, while one longer-term scenario envisions the cryptocurrency plummeting to $68,000 first before going after its 2025 all-time high.

$68K First, Rally Later?

Daan Crypto Trade argued that BTC managed to sweep liquidity while still saving its daily close. He described the recent move as a good example of why waiting for candle closes actually matters. However, he warned that the recovery now needs to continue, which it hasn’t.

The analyst said BTC must reclaim at least $84,000 in the coming trading days, as remaining and consolidating below it could leave the asset vulnerable to another gradual move south. A successful recovery above $84,000, though, would instead put the untapped highs around $87,000-$88,000 back in focus.

This aligns with BTC’s recent price moves, as the asset has repeatedly struggled around the $84,000 area after tumbling toward $80,000. Weakening buyer pressure has intensified uncertainty around the recovery attempt, and the macro landscape dealt another blow earlier this week with a higher-than-expected September CPI reading.

Meanwhile, fellow analyst EGRAG CRYPTO noted that investors should not necessarily interpret another substantial correction as the end of the bull market. Using a 2023 fractal, he added that BTC previously experienced a 22% pullback before its next major expansion wave. Applying similar math to the current numbers would mean a drop to $68,000.

EGRAG identified $84,800 as the 0.5 Fibonacci “battlefield” and $68,000 as a possible shakeout zone before a potential move toward $114,000-$125,000, provided the broader structure remains intact.

Buying Opportunity?

CryptoGoos offered a different way of assessing the current market structure through BTC’s supply in profit. His strategy is to accumulate when the percentage falls toward what he considers a historically important support line, before gradually taking profits once the metric exceeds 80%.

The analyst expects multiple local tops during the current cycle rather than one clean vertical move. Other recent BTC indicators have also painted a mixed picture. For instance, bitcoin has remained above its 50-week moving average for several consecutive weeks, which some analysts view as evidence that the broader recovery is intact.

However, it has repeatedly failed to break through the $86,000-$89,000 resistance region, while more than $1 billion in profits were recently realized after it last climbed above $87,000.

The post Bitcoin’s Road to $125K Could Include a Brutal Drop to $68K: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin continued to be volatile at the end of the business week, dipping below $80,000 for the first time in a month, before rebounding by roughly $2,000.

Most altcoins have turned red once again, with XRP sliding back to $1.30, and ZEC plunging by over 5% after it was rejected at $1,200.

BTC Calms at $81.5K

After the price calamity on October 9, which drove BTC to just over $80,000, the asset managed to regain some traction and returned to $83,000 during the weekend. It climbed to $84,000 on Monday morning, but it was quickly rejected there and plummeted to $81,000. Major price fluctuations continued, with a bounce off that drove it to the same upper boundary it hit on Tuesday and held until Wednesday afternoon.

Then came the CPI data for September, which showed inflation was slightly higher than expected. Bitcoin reacted with an immediate leg down to under $82,000. The PPI data released a day later showed that inflation is indeed not going away. Alongside other macro reasons, such as the major crash of the KOSPI and the Nikkei, Bitcoin dived again. This time, it dipped below $80,000 to mark a monthly low.

Bitcoin rebounded again rather quickly and jumped to almost $83,000 on Friday. Another rejection followed, though, and the cryptocurrency now struggles at $81,500, while the macro pressure builds.

Its market cap is down to $1.630 trillion on CMC, while its dominance over the alts has dipped below 60%.

Alts See Heavy Selling

Ethereum is down by 1% to $2,430, BNB has slipped by a similar percentage to $723, while XRP struggles at $1.31 after a 2.4% decline. The landscape around SOL, HYPE, DOGE, LINK, XMR, and ADA is similar.

More painful declines come from ZEC (-5.2%), RAIN (-7.4%), and TAO (-5.5%). ZRO, STRK, and PYTH lead the adverse trend with double-digit price drops. In contrast, BTW, TIA, and LIT have defied the overall trend and have marked some gains.

The cumulative market cap of all crypto assets has declined by 1% over the past 24 hours, and it’s down to $2.740 trillion.

The post These Alts Bleed the Most as Bitcoin (BTC) Settles Below $82K: Weekend Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Although BTC is already down by several grand since its local peak, the real trouble could be around the corner as reports emerged hours ago that US President Donald Trump is preparing a fresh wave of attacks against Iran during the weekend.

The US stock market also plummeted again on Friday, especially the Nasdaq 100, which, according to the analysts at the Kobeissi Letter, is close to a technical correction.

Macro Pressure Builds

The initial reports claimed that the POTUS has asked Iran for permission to strike its Pickaxe Mountain nuclear site without retaliation, but the authorities in the Middle Eastern country rejected the request. The claims come from IRIB state media correspondent Morteza Ghoroghi, who said: “Trump’s statements today point to war within the next 24 hours.” He also suggested that Iran’s military forces are “in a state of complete readiness.”

Shortly after, new reports indicated that Trump went to Mar-A-Lago for the first time since May 1, which is the same location where he started the war against Iran on February 28. Oil prices responded with an immediate uptick. Brent crude oil jumped from under $106 to a monthly peak of $110.

BREAKING: Brent crude oil surges to nearly $110, its highest level since September 15, as Iran places its armed forces on the highest alert for 72 hours and mobile bomb shelters being rapidly deployed in Tel Aviv.

US oil is now at $100. https://t.co/WKJ45cFVtF

— The Strait Report (@StraitReport) October 17, 2026

Stock Market Pressure

The other macro pressure on BTC could come from the overall stock market state. Earlier this week, the major KOSPI and Nikkei crash led to a correction in the crypto market as well. Now, US equities are under pressure, with the S&P 500 down by 2% last week.

The Nasdaq 100 had its biggest weekly decline since April 2025, dumping by 3% on Friday alone. The tech sector has erased over $3 trillion (more than the entire crypto market) in the past 10 days. The Kobeissi Letter argued that the Nasdaq 100 is just 2.5% away from “entering a technical correction.”

There it is folks.

The Nasdaq 100 is now down -3% on the day and on track for its biggest weekly decline since April 2025.

US tech stocks have erased over -$3 trillion in market cap in just 10 days.

This puts the Nasdaq 100 just ~2.5% away from entering a technical correction.

As outlined below, we are in a “Bear-Bull Market.”

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) October 16, 2026

These corrections are not isolated. The Indonesian stock market recently experienced its worst daily dump in 28 years, plunging by over 11%.

Will BTC Fall Below $80K?

The primary cryptocurrency dipped below the key $80,000 support earlier this week for the first time in a month but managed to rebound above that level immediately. However, the growing pressure explained above could lead to another substantial leg down, especially if the US indeed strikes Iran over the weekend.

Bitcoin didn’t respond immediately to the major developments on previous weekends, but waited until Sunday evening and Monday morning when traditional financial markets started to open. For now, the asset remains at $81,500, down by 1.5% weekly and by over 6% from its local top marked a few weeks ago.

The post Bitcoin Under Pressure as Trump Reportedly Prepares to Strike Iran Within 24 Hours appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The Core Team behind the popular project has unveiled its first-ever Pi Ecosystem Summit, a three-day online event scheduled to begin in a month.

It will focus on new platform updates, developer tools, applications, and an upcoming hackathon as Pi Network continues trying to expand real-world utility for Pi.

What Will Be Announced

According to the latest publication on the only official Pi Network X channel, the three-day event will include platform updates, developer-tool demonstrations, app showcases, and discussions between devs and the Core Team. This could be particularly important, as the summit highlights how developers use Pi’s infrastructure and what additional tools or support they need to build more useful services for the vast Pioneer base.

Perhaps the most notable part of the entire event would be the upcoming Pi hackathon, with more details expected during the summit. The event is also expected to extend Pi Network’s increased focus on developers throughout the year. The team already has recurring online gatherings scheduled twice a year, including Pi Day and Pi2Day. Both are related to dates mathematically connected to 3.14.

Pi Network is introducing the first-ever Pi Ecosystem Summit, a three-day online event on November 17–19, 2026!

While Pi Day and Pi2Day celebrate progress across the broader Pioneer community and network, the Pi Ecosystem Summit will focus on developers, the Pi platform, and the apps and utilities they build to serve Pioneers and expand Pi’s utility.

The Summit will feature new platform announcements, developer tool demos, partner and community app showcases, conversations with developers, and details about an upcoming all-new Pi hackathon.

Developers and Pioneers can explore resources for building on Pi and discover apps and utilities across the ecosystem.

Go to the Pi mining app to learn more!

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) October 16, 2026

Pi Day brought the Launchpad MVP, Mainnet-enabled Pi App studio functionality, second migrations, and important protocol groundwork. Pi2Day, on the other hand, expanded the ecosystem further through SoloHost, Pi Sign-in, and PiVerify.

Another Big Date

The summit arrives during an active period for the Core Team as they spent the recent months upgrading the underlying protocol, addressing KYC and Mainnet migration bottlenecks, and exploring stablecoin utility through its fresh partnership with Open Standard.

That collaboration, announced just a few weeks ago, could eventually include OUSD-related rewards and additional payment use cases, although the team emphasized that PI will remain the ecosystem’s primary cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, the native token’s price recently tumbled to well below $0.08. Although it has rebounded from the $0.077 lows, it still hasn’t reclaimed the $0.08 support.

The post Pi Network Announces First-Ever Ecosystem Summit: Here’s What Pioneers Need to Know appeared first on CryptoPotato.