CoreWeave's growth potential is promising, but its substantial debt and market skepticism could impact its long-term financial stability.

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Anthropic's IPO could redefine investor appetite for AI amid economic and political uncertainties, influencing future tech market dynamics.

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A Tesla-SpaceX merger could reshape the tech landscape, influencing market dynamics and regulatory frameworks while sparking investor interest.

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The scrutiny over Zacharia's false claims could undermine trust in the administration, affecting market perceptions and her job security.

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The successful Bitcoin Staking initiative by Stacks could enhance liquidity and yield opportunities in decentralized finance, attracting more institutional interest.

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Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s Volatility Has Fallen Within S&P 500 Ranks, Study Shows

Stocks and shares are a safer bet than buying bitcoin? Not so fast. 

According to research from crypto asset manager Grayscale, the digital coin’s realized volatility fell within the distribution of S&P 500 constituents — with a meaningful number of large-cap stocks exhibiting more price swings. 

Bitcoin’s price surged in August and September, giving it its best quarter in years and leading a number of analysts to declare that it’s back in a bull market. 

“As the asset has matured, with deeper liquidity, broader institutional participation, and more regulated access venues, its price swings have narrowed considerably from the extremes of its early years,” the Grayscale’s head of research, Zach Pandl, wrote in a Wednesday note. 

“That shifts the question from whether to own a volatile asset to how to size an allocation.”

He added that bitcoin’s volatility has declined to 43% over the past year, from an average of 64% over the past 10 years and 81% five years ago. 

It is now lower than that of 19% of S&P 500 constituents. “For those comfortable owning volatile equities, Bitcoin’s price fluctuations may be less daunting than assumed,” the report added. 

December data from K33 Research revealed that 2025 was the least volatile year for the asset so far. 

Bitcoin’s price became notorious for wild swings in its early days — with drawdowns of over 80% in the space of months. 

But as more investors have piled into the asset — especially since the 2024 approval of U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds — it’s become harder to move its price. 

Still, bitcoin at one point in 2026 was down over 50% from the all-time high it hit last October . It has since recovered and was recently trading for $82,485 — 35% below its record of $126,080. 

The coin in August benefited from news that the U.S. Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The so-called debasement trade — where investors buy an asset to hedge against a weakening currency — has become popular again, especially as the dollar has dropped. 

This post Bitcoin’s Volatility Has Fallen Within S&P 500 Ranks, Study Shows first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

US Hoovers up Bitcoin While the World Runs on Its Digital Dollars: Report

America is accumulating bitcoin while exporting dollar-pegged stablecoins to everyone else, according to a new Chainalysis report. 

The blockchain data said in its Wednesday report, “North America: Inside the Growth of Agentic Commerce,” that the U.S. became a net importer of Bitcoin in 2026 — for the first time since 2022.

According to the data, institutions this year have been buying bitcoin while retail largely sells. 

“A dollar stablecoin is a way to hold dollars without an American bank account, and Americans already have one,” the report read. 

“The rest of the world is pivoting to a digital dollar because it meets a need that American users don’t share. Meanwhile, Americans are leaning harder on bitcoin as an infinitely scarce store of value.”

It added that U.S. dominance keeps climbing: Since the 2024 launch of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, America’s share of global Bitcoin activity has risen every single reporting period — even as the overall U.S. crypto economy ($2.78 trillion) contracted 2.2% in a brutal bear market, retaining most of 2025’s near-doubling.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved bitcoin ETFs in January 2024 after a decade of denying the products. 

Managed by Wall Street titans like BlackRock, Fidelity, and most recently, Morgan Stanley, the funds had the most successful debut in the history of ETFs. 

Institutions and Wall Street can now buy shares of the funds which track the price of bitcoin and take care of buying and selling the digital coin. 

The approval of the ETFs has helped the industry mature, the report noted, and helped the U.S. become an overall bigger bitcoin investor. 

Stablecoins, meanwhile, have turned U.S. debt into a “currency-of-choice for peer-to-peer economies as well as businesses working across borders,” the report continued. 

“In the 2026 period we continued to see stablecoins enter new use cases most especially abroad, benefitting the U.S. companies, and the U.S. government, with billions of dollars in economic activity,” it added. 

Since Donald Trump became president, he has signed a number of pro-crypto laws and executive orders. The GENIUS Act, signed in 2025, allows banks and other entities to issue stablecoins if they back the tokens with assets like U.S. Treasuries and provide monthly disclosures of their reserves.

This post US Hoovers up Bitcoin While the World Runs on Its Digital Dollars: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Ledger Says Organized Crime Group Spent Millions Targeting Hardware Wallet Users

Ledger has issued a statement following reports from customers of loss of funds and tampered devices, calling it one the most “sophisticated attacks” the digital asset industry has experienced. 

The hardware manufacturer said Thursday that a “highly organized criminal group” bought Ledger devices and installed implants that could read users’ seedphrases before then putting them back into the supply chain via resellers. 

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. 

The company then said it confirmed that one of the impacted users’ devices contained an unauthorized hardware implant. 

It isn’t clear how much money has been lost from the tampered devices but blockchain investigator Specter said $86 million had been drained. Ledger did not respond to Bitcoin Magazine’s written questions. 

“[The criminal group] built their own logistics and technology infrastructure with seeds collector servers, draining and laundering infrastructures. They were patient, they spent millions, and they struck in one coordinated operation, draining wallets,” Ledger said in a Thursday statement. 

“There was no flaw in Ledger’s chip, operating system or servers. Ledger’s systems were not compromised. This was an attack on the distribution channel after the devices left our control.”

The company said that in its “largest investigation to date” it sent employees to other markets — including Europe — to make sure other supply chains hadn’t been targeted. 

It said that screened devices were clean and authorized resellers and distributors in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong have suspended their sales. 

Ledger added that it was working with law enforcement to “follow the funds and dismantle the attackers’ infrastructure.”

It isn’t clear how many customers had been targeted from Ledger’s statement. 

The crypto industry is still reeling after hackers in July were able to steal close to $120 million in bitcoin from Coldcard users.  

There have also been a number of data breaches this year, with scammers targeting Ledger to get customer information via the company’s payment processor Global-e.

This post Ledger Says Organized Crime Group Spent Millions Targeting Hardware Wallet Users first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Briefly Slides Below $80,000 On More Hot Inflation Data

Bitcoin’s price momentarily dipped below $80,000 on Thursday following more hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data. 

The price of the biggest cryptocurrency recently stood at $81,028 after dropping as low as $79,805 on Thursday morning in New York. 

Over a 24-hour period, it’s only down over 1% after making a recovery. But over the past week, it’s shed nearly 3% of its value. 

Data Thursday from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics showed U.S. producer prices rose in September at the fastest pace in more than four years.

The numbers came one day after September’s Consumer Price Index came out higher than expected. 

Bitcoin has news that high prices won’t go away in the world’s largest economy — leading traders to bet that the Federal Reserve may keep interest rates higher for longer. 

The Federal Reserve will make a decision on what to do with interest rates at the end of this month. 

Bitcoin’s price has previously done well in a low interest rate environment as when borrowing costs are cut, more liquidity can be used to buy the cryptocurrency. 

But the Fed this year has raised interest rates, with the head of the central bank claiming that getting inflation down in the U.S. is its number one priority. 

The biggest cryptocurrency is currently nearly 36% below the record of $126,080 it touched last October. 

Despite the dip this week, analysts have declared the asset to be out of the bear market it spent most of 2026 following a rally in August and September. 

This post Bitcoin Briefly Slides Below $80,000 On More Hot Inflation Data first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Latin America’s MSTR: How OranjeBTC is Running the Saylor Playbook in Brazil | Gui Gomes

Bitcoin is “likely the best collateral one could ask for,” says OranjeBTC CEO Gui Gomes. He explains how digital credit, Bitcoin-backed loans, and new financial products are pushing Bitcoin deeper into global financial markets, including a first-of-its-kind Bitcoin-backed loan in Brazil. He also shares why every step brings Bitcoin closer to becoming the world’s reserve currency.

Chapters:
0:00 – OranjeBTC CEO Gui Gomes on Running the Strategy Playbook in Latin America
0:32 – Why Brazil Ranks No. 1 in Grassroots Bitcoin Adoption
1:57 – Brazil’s Advantages for Building a Bitcoin Treasury Company
3:38 – Brazil’s New Bitcoin Regulations and VASP Licensing
5:23 – Brazil’s Elections and the Shift Toward a Pro-Market Economy
7:22 – Lower Rates, the Real and Brazil’s Next Growth Phase
8:27 – How Global Investors Can Buy OranjeBTC Shares
9:21 – DIGI11: Bringing STRC and SATA to Brazilian Investors
11:21 – How DIGI11 Delivered Its First Dividend
14:08 – Bitcoin as Collateral and the Future of Digital Credit

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

This post Latin America’s MSTR: How OranjeBTC is Running the Saylor Playbook in Brazil | Gui Gomes first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

River’s net holdings figures show concentration, while issuer disclosures separate fresh purchases from merger transfers, expected financing and share buybacks.

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The October 12–15 custody build raises a supply question, but the balance data cannot establish completed sales.

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Streami and Pravang are among 16 affected financial companies as the FSC outlines plans for a wider security overhaul.

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Hyperliquid force-liquidated 1,650 ETH early on Oct. 15, and the tracked wallet held a new 2,500 ETH long by 13:16 BST.

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Bitcoin registered an intraday low of $79,730 before recovering to around $82,000 as surging US wholesale inflation intensified a cryptocurrency selloff that triggered nearly $940 million in liquidations. This price action extended losses as stronger-than-expected inflation data raised concerns about another interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve. According to CoinGlass, 176,506 traders were liquidated…

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Solana carried the single largest share of trading in tokenized equities again over the past week: around 31 percent of weekly volume across all blockchains, ahead of BNB Chain with 26 percent, Robinhood's blockchain with 25 percent and Base with 18 percent. The figures come from data provider Blockworks, cited by CoinDesk. For Solana it is the first weekly lead in 14 weeks, after Robinhood had led for six weeks running.

The interesting part is less the ranking than what this trading actually is. Buying a tokenized Tesla or Nvidia share through a Solana address does not buy a share. It buys a certificate issued by a company that tracks the share price. That sounds like a technicality, and in Germany it decides the tax burden, what is left if the issuer goes insolvent, and whether the provider may sell the product to retail clients at all.

Solana carries the largest share of tokenized equity trading again

The weekly number is only one of several measures, and the sources measure different things. Blockworks counts the share of weekly volume across all blockchains and arrives at about 31 percent for Solana. Crypto Briefing reports a share of around 65 percent for a single day in the week of October 11, based on volume at decentralised exchanges. Both figures stand side by side because they do not count the same thing: a daily figure swings more than a weekly one, and decentralised exchange volume leaves out centralised platforms such as Robinhood. Presenting either number as Solana's market position rounds off reality.

The order of magnitude of the overall market is not in dispute. Across all blockchains, weekly volume came to just under $3 billion on the same surveys, with volume on decentralised exchanges at $12.4 billion year to date through early October. The stock of tokenized equities on Solana peaked in mid-September at $684 million. Crypto Briefing puts the number of wallets holding such tokens in a range of 727,000 to 850,000. Most of the activity on Solana is concentrated at the decentralised exchange Raydium, with 63 to 70 percent.

For a sense of scale: daily equity turnover at Deutsche Börse is regularly above these weekly figures. Tokenized equity trading is a small, fast-growing side market, not a competitor to the regulated floor. That matters for perspective, because the products nevertheless arrive with the promise of being tradable around the clock.

What an xStock is in law: a bearer note rather than a share

The most widespread product on Solana is the xStocks range from Backed Finance, a firm that now belongs to Kraken. As set out in our October 14, 2026 article on tokenized equities as collateral, these tokens are in law tracker certificates in the form of bearer notes. The base prospectus was approved by the Liechtenstein financial market authority and subsequently passported into the European Economic Area.

A bearer note is a document in which an issuer promises the holder a payment. Applied to an equity token, that means you hold a claim against Backed Finance, the size of which is measured by the price of the underlying share. You do not own the share itself. The same construction appears in other providers' products, among them the bStocks from the Binance group, which according to the provider are to be backed one for one by the underlying share in regulated custody.

MiFID II instead of MiCA: why the crypto regulation does not apply here

For crypto investors in Germany, the European regulation on markets in crypto-assets has been the familiar framework since 2024. That regulation does not apply here. It expressly excludes financial instruments from its scope, and a token built as a certificate or a note is a financial instrument. The European markets in financial instruments directive, MiFID II, applies instead, together with securities trading and prospectus law.

The practical consequence is concrete. A provider holding only a crypto licence under the crypto-asset regulation may not sell such products to retail clients. It needs authorisation as an investment firm. Kraken opened xStocks to clients in the European Economic Area on exactly that basis. Which trading venues operate in Germany under which licence is therefore the first question before the first purchase.

That the distinction is no paper tiger is shown by how far behind the traditional houses are. Morgan Stanley has pushed its own launch of equity tokens back to 2027, as we reported; in Germany the bank does not sell such tokens to retail clients in any case. We set out the background in our article on the Morgan Stanley delay.

Where investors in Germany can trade tokenized equities

Access is patchy, and that is the most common source of misunderstanding. Kraken offers xStocks in the European Economic Area. On 360X, a platform supervised by BaFin, a small number of names have been tradable against stablecoins since February, five in concrete terms. Robinhood's tokens on US equities are not readily accessible in Germany. Binance accepts bStocks as collateral in cross and portfolio margin accounts, but requires a suitability assessment at the lower tiers.

Then there is the decentralised route through a Solana wallet and an exchange such as Raydium. There is no entry check there, but no investor protection either: no advice, no suitability assessment, no deposit guarantee and no German paying agent. Taking that route means trading a security without the safeguards that were built for securities. Which platform brings which licence to equity trading is set out in our overview of crypto brokers.

The backing and the issuer risk

The decisive point on issuer risk is not the coverage ratio but who holds the backing and under which law. An issuer can have the shares sitting at a regulated custodian without them being separated from its own assets in insolvency. The token holder then queues up among all creditors with an ordinary claim. If the backing is ring-fenced as segregated assets or through a special purpose vehicle, that changes the order.

This detail does not appear in the marketing but in the base prospectus and the product documentation. Investors who cannot find it have not read the most important information about their paper. Three things belong together in the prospectus: the name of the issuer, its registered office together with the supervisory authority, and the section on backing.

No voting rights, no annual general meeting

An equity token securitises economic participation in the price. A voting right at the annual general meeting is practically never included, and a shareholder's information rights do not travel with it either. On dividends it depends on the structure: some products credit the distribution to the token's value, others pay it out, and both are set out in the terms of the respective issuer.

For pure price speculation that mostly makes no difference. For anyone looking to hold a position over years and collect dividends along the way, it is the difference between a security and a bet on one. The question, then, is not whether the token tracks the price well, but what is left of the share besides the price.

Taxation follows investment income, not the crypto holding period

This is where the most expensive misconception sits, and it affects every investor in Germany. With crypto-assets, a gain is tax-free after a holding period of one year, because it counts as a private disposal. For tokenized equities, the prevailing view is that this one-year rule does not apply: the paper is classified as an investment that generates income from capital assets. Flat-rate withholding tax then falls due, plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, regardless of how long you have held the paper. That is how our October 14, 2026 article puts it, describing this classification expressly as the prevailing view rather than settled law.

Two consequences are regularly overlooked. First, loss offsetting: losses from capital assets can only be set against gains of the same kind, not against gains from crypto sales. Second, tax withholding: whether anything is withheld at all depends on whether the provider acts as a domestic paying agent. At foreign trading venues that is usually not the case, and the income then has to be declared by you. Holding both product types in one portfolio calls for records that keep them apart; the tools for that are in our overview of tax software and portfolio trackers.

One qualification belongs here: the tax treatment of these products is not conclusively settled, and it hangs on the specific structure of the individual token. On a larger position, the question is one for a tax adviser rather than a forum.

63 percent of trading happens outside US market hours

The real appeal of these products sits in a single figure: through August 2026, 63 percent of trading in tokenized equities on Solana took place outside regular US market hours. That is precisely what a traditional securities account cannot deliver. Reacting to news on a Sunday evening is possible with an equity token, where the exchange only offers it on Monday.

The price for that is liquidity. Outside the trading hours of the underlying, the issuer cannot adjust its hedge in the market, and the spread between bid and offer widens. In quiet hours the token price therefore regularly sits away from the last exchange price. That is not a flaw in the product but its construction, and it is the reason a market order at the weekend is a bad idea.

Alpenglow on October 21: the consensus switch reaches the equity tokens too

On October 21, Solana changes its consensus mechanism with Alpenglow, according to developer firm Anza at around 14:50 UTC, at the start of epoch 1064. The official upgrade overview cites a target finality of about 150 milliseconds. During the transition, user transactions will briefly not be included in blocks, and the Firedancer and Frankendancer clients are unsupported in that window; validators need a version based on Agave 4.3.0. The details for stakers are in our article on Alpenglow and epoch 1064.

Two points matter for trading in equity tokens. First, the window itself: an order planned for midday on October 21 should not be placed during the migration. Second, a metric that will cause confusion afterwards. Because validator votes will no longer appear as transactions in blocks, Solana's reported transaction count falls sharply without usage declining. CoinDesk's report on the date describes this as well. Reading that number as a demand signal in the coming weeks means reading it wrong.

What has changed since last week

Compared with our October 14 piece, which focused on the use of tokenized equities as collateral, the market side has turned: Robinhood led weekly volume then, and since October 13 Solana has been back on top. Nothing about the product itself has changed, neither the legal form nor the tax classification. That is the real message of this week. A market share changes within seven days; an issuer's prospectus does not.

Solana's own price plays a secondary role here. SOL was quoted at around $105.82 on Thursday evening, after an intraday low of $100.99 and a high of $106.33, down a good 1.6 percent over seven days (CoinGecko). For trading in tokenized equities the SOL price matters only through transaction fees, since trading is done against stablecoins.

Equity tokens on Solana: the prospectus decides, not the market share

Three steps to place a product like this before you commit money:

1. Identify the issuer and the prospectus. The issuer's name, registered office and supervisory authority, plus the section on backing in the base prospectus. If one of those is missing, the insolvency question is unanswered. The licence your trading venue works under is shown in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Settle the route in. Through an authorised platform with a securities licence, the investor protection of the markets in financial instruments directive applies; through a decentralised exchange it does not. Which provider offers equity trading in Germany is set out in our overview of crypto brokers.
3. Set up the tax separation. Equity tokens and crypto-assets belong in separate records, because the one-year rule applies only to the crypto-assets and losses cannot be offset against each other. The right tools are in our comparison of tax software and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 15, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

NEAR trades at about $5.26 on the afternoon of October 15, 2026, roughly €4.69, and stands 9.25 percent above the previous day. That stands out above all against the wider market: Bitcoin gains 0.96 percent on the same day, Ether 0.61 percent. The premium comes less from the project itself than from the derivatives trade around the NEAR price. A leveraged position has built up there over recent weeks, hit a record on October 12 and has been shrinking since.

For holders, that matters more than the percentage figure. A price driven by leveraged positions behaves differently from one carried by spot buyers: it rises faster, and it falls faster. This article sorts the numbers, sets out our own survey of the running financing costs, and works through the points that decide the outcome in Germany, from the holding period to custody.

NEAR at $5.26: 9.25 percent above the previous day, 122 percent above mid-September

The hard numbers as of October 15, 2026: NEAR is quoted at $5.26. Over 24 hours that is a gain of 9.25 percent, over seven days 13.54 percent, over 30 days 121.82 percent. The intraday low was $4.54. That puts the coin at number 19 among the largest cryptocurrencies, with a market capitalisation of around $6.89 billion and daily turnover of about $1.26 billion. Just under 1.31 billion NEAR are in circulation.

One figure belongs alongside all of this and should temper the enthusiasm: the all-time high of $20.44 dates from January 16, 2022. Despite doubling over the past month, NEAR is still 74.2 percent below that level. The doubling since mid-September is a recovery inside a very deep valley, not a return to old highs.

What NEAR Protocol actually is

NEAR Protocol is a layer-1 blockchain, an independent network with its own settlement, comparable to Ethereum or Solana. The NEAR token pays network fees and secures the network through staking. Technically, the project is known for accounts that are not tied to a single key, and for NEAR Intents, a product that settles swaps across blockchains. Since network upgrade 2.13 on July 20, 2026, NEAR has also supported signatures under the NIST ML-DSA standard, designed to withstand future quantum computers.

Open interest: $1.92 billion was outstanding on October 12

Open interest is the sum of all futures contracts on a coin that are currently open, measured in dollars. The figure shows how much capital is tied to a coin through derivatives, and it says nothing about whether those positions are betting on rising or falling prices.

According to CoinGlass data, reported among others by U.Today and Cointribune, open interest in NEAR reached a record of about $1.92 billion on October 12, 2026, with the price around $5.88. Some outlets cited $1.95 billion for the same day; the range of published values therefore runs from $1.92 billion to $1.95 billion. For comparison: in July and August the figure sat between $300 million and $450 million. The climb began in mid-September and passed the billion mark within days.

The counter-move matters just as much. On October 13, open interest fell 16.52 percent within 24 hours to about $1.54 billion, according to CoinGlass, after the price had been turned back at the $6.00 mark. You can look up the current values yourself on the CoinGlass futures overview for NEAR. Today's gain is therefore being made on a much smaller leverage base than the advance three days ago.

Funding rate: who pays whom on a perpetual

A perpetual, or perp, is a futures contract with no expiry date. To stop its price drifting away from the spot market, the two sides pay each other a balancing fee at fixed intervals, the funding rate. When it is positive, the buyers, the longs, pay the sellers. When it is negative, the payment runs the other way.

That fee is the reason a leveraged bet on rising prices costs money even when the price stands still. At a rate of 0.01 percent per settlement and three settlements a day, the total comes to a good 11 percent a year, calculated on the position size rather than the capital put up. Traders working with five times leverage pay that fee on five times their own equity.

74 of 86 perp markets charge the longs on October 15

To establish how expensive a long position on NEAR currently is, we counted through every publicly visible perpetual market on NEAR. The basis is 86 markets at the venues that disclose their funding rate and their open positions. cryptoticker.io carried out this survey on October 15, 2026.

The result is unambiguous: in 74 of the 86 markets the funding rate is positive, in seven it is negative, in five it stands at zero. The positive values range from 0.0001 to 0.36 percent per settlement. The picture becomes clearer still at the large venues. All seven markets with more than $100 million in open positions charge the longs:

• OrangeX, around $511 million open, funding plus 0.0122 percent
• Hyperliquid, around $333 million, plus 0.0013 percent
• Binance, around $282 million, plus 0.0077 percent
• WEEX, around $255 million, plus 0.0001 percent
• Gate, around $204 million, plus 0.0100 percent
• Bybit, around $179 million, plus 0.0100 percent
• LBank, around $162 million, plus 0.0073 percent

In plain terms: the market is crowded on the buy side, and that side is paying for its position. Positive funding across every large venue signals confidence, and it is at the same time the condition under which a move to the downside can turn unusually fast. When many longs come under pressure at once, their forced closures trigger further ones. The market showed how quickly that happens on the morning of October 15, when positions worth more than $489 million were liquidated within an hour. Which platforms offer perpetuals at all, and what financing costs apply there, is set out in our overview of the best perp DEXs.

Wintermute calls NEAR the winner of the AI rotation and warns against buying the dip

Market maker Wintermute published a market report on October 13, 2026 that names NEAR explicitly as the main beneficiary of the rotation into AI-adjacent crypto projects. On the firm's account, NEAR took the lead in the AI segment while the large tokens fell. Wintermute names two drivers: the protocol upgrade with post-quantum signatures, and a short squeeze, meaning forced buybacks from sellers who had bet on falling prices. The firm's analyses are published on the Wintermute insights page.

On the wider market, the same report cites a tighter stance from the US Federal Reserve, rising yields on US Treasuries and outflows from the spot ETFs on Bitcoin and Ether. Altcoins lost 3.7 percent on average, and only 11 of 66 large projects closed higher. NEAR was one of those eleven.

The second half of the assessment is the important one, and it gets lost in many reports. Wintermute considers buying into altcoin rebounds an unjustified risk for as long as US Treasury yields are unstable and for as long as net inflows do not return to the Bitcoin ETFs. That is a trader's stance rather than a forecast, and it sits deliberately alongside the day's price gain.

What a short squeeze does to the price

In a short squeeze, investors who bet on falling prices have to close their positions when the price rises. To do so they buy the coin back, which pushes the price higher still. The effect is violent but finite: once the shorts are closed, that demand disappears. An advance driven mainly by a squeeze therefore has no base of buyers underneath it to hold it up.

$4.54 and $6.00: the two levels where NEAR last turned

On the downside, the freshest level is the intraday low of $4.54 from October 15. Below that begins the area around $4.90 and the round five-dollar mark, where NEAR briefly failed on October 13 after the sale of server operator FastNEAR to Nasdaq-listed SVRN.

On the upside, $6.00 is the level with the clearest evidence: the price was turned back there on October 12, the same day open interest hit its record. That combination is the real signal. A level where a price fails with record leverage behind it can meet sell orders on the second attempt from investors who got out too late the first time.

For the longer line, then, the question of whether NEAR holds the five-dollar mark as a floor on the next setback counts for more than today's session.

Holding period: one year decides the tax on NEAR gains

In Germany, cryptocurrencies held as private assets fall under the private disposal rule of section 23 of the Income Tax Act. If you sell your NEAR within a year of buying, the gain is taxable at your personal rate. If you sell after more than a year, the gain is tax-free. For sales inside the year there is an exemption threshold of €1,000 per year, covering all private disposals taken together.

With a coin that has gained 121.82 percent in 30 days, that deadline is no side issue. Anyone who bought in mid-September and sells today realises a taxable gain at the full rate. Holding the same position to mid-September 2027 means paying nothing on it. For many investors that difference is larger than the gap between a good and a bad moment to sell.

Keep in mind that the one-year rule is politically in motion. The cabinet date for the planned change passed without a decision, while the December 31 cut-off is unaffected; the details are in our report on the crypto holding period and the cabinet date that passed. One point holds regardless: every single tranche has its own purchase date, and you need to be able to document it.

Buying NEAR in Germany: MiCA separates spot trading from perpetuals

For buying NEAR itself, the position in Germany is settled. The EU's MiCA regulation has governed trading in crypto assets since 2024, providers need authorisation, and in Germany BaFin supervises the licensed service providers. NEAR spot trading is offered both by the large international venues and by several providers licensed in Germany.

Perpetuals, the subject of this article, are a different matter. These contracts are not crypto assets in the sense of MiCA but derivatives, and they fall under a separate rulebook. The large venues that carry the highest open positions in the survey above therefore offer these products to retail investors in the EU only in limited form, or not at all. Trading with leverage from Germany in practice means a much smaller set of platforms than the survey above covers.

What the leverage cap means in practice

For retail investors in the EU, leverage on crypto derivatives through regulated providers is capped at twice the stake. That cap is not an obstacle but the reason a position survives a setback: at two times leverage you need a price fall of around 50 percent for a forced closure, at ten times leverage around 10 percent is enough. NEAR has run through a range from $4.54 to above $5.26 on this day alone, about 16 percent.

Staking and custody: lockup, validator and the wallet question

NEAR runs on proof of stake. You can delegate your tokens to a validator, an operator that produces blocks, and receive a share of the network rewards for it. Two points matter here. First, the delegated balance is not immediately available: withdrawing involves a waiting period of several epochs, in practice around two to three days. Sellers caught in a fast move cannot reach their tokens during that window. Second, staking rewards count as other income in Germany and are taxable in the year they are received, whether or not you sell them. The reward varies with the number of tokens staked across the network and with the fee charged by the chosen validator.

On custody, NEAR follows the same rule as any other coin: tokens on a trading venue belong to you economically but sit at that venue's disposal. After a price gain of 122 percent in a month, the amount that would be frozen in a venue outage is a different one from four weeks ago. A position built to be held over months is best moved into your own wallet, leaving at the venue only what you intend to move in the short term.

NEAR at $5.26: as long as longs pay, waiting costs money

The day's gain rests on a leverage base that has shrunk since the record of October 12, and on a buy side that pays for its position in 74 of 86 markets. That is a sturdier footing than three days ago, and an expensive one at the same time. Three steps follow from it:

1. Record the purchase date and the deadline. Note the purchase date for every NEAR tranche and work out the one-year deadline. Which tools track that automatically is covered in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
2. Weigh the cost of leverage against the holding period. If you are invested through a perpetual, project the funding rate across the holding period you have in mind before you roll the position on. Holding the position in spot instead lets the tokens work; the terms are in our comparison of the best staking platforms.
3. Match custody to the size of the position. Check which part of your NEAR has to sit on a trading venue and which belongs in your own wallet. The terms offered by licensed providers are in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

(As of October 15, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Babylon Labs wants Aave V4 to accept real Bitcoin as collateral without that Bitcoin ever leaving the Bitcoin blockchain. The proposal has been in Aave's governance forum since Wednesday, October 14, 2026. Nothing has been decided: this is an ARFC, the stage before the vote. Holders of Aave therefore get a concrete template for the first time showing how much the protocol would earn from Bitcoin collateral.

What Babylon has proposed for Aave V4

The proposal is titled “Onboard Native BTC as Collateral to Aave V4 via Babylon Trustless Bitcoin Vaults” and was filed by Babylon Labs. It was preceded by a temperature check, which the proposal passed. The first use case is named clearly: borrowing stablecoins against native Bitcoin.

At Aave an ARFC is not a decision but a proposal with a rationale and a blueprint. It gathers feedback from the community and the assessment of the risk service providers before any vote takes place. The sequence is set at Aave, and it appears in this proposal too: first feedback and risk analysis, then a Snapshot vote, then an AIP with the full risk parameters for the on-chain vote.

ARFC stands for Aave Request for Final Comments. It is the stage at which a proposal is technically described in full but has not yet received a single vote.

Aave price $148.30, 13 percent below last week's level

Aave costs $148.30, or €132.39, according to CoinGecko as of Thursday midday. Over seven days that is 13.16 percent less, over 24 hours 6.56 percent. The weekly high stood at $171.52 on Monday, the weekly low is $148.19 and therefore practically at the current price. The day's range ran from $147.94 to $158.98.

The 30-day view turns the picture around: there it shows a gain of 16.59 percent. The week was weak, then, the month was not. With a market capitalisation of $2.29 billion Aave sits at rank 46, on daily turnover of $269.4 million. From its high of $661.69 in May 2021 it is 77.59 percent short. In circulation are 15.44 million AAVE of the 16 million maximum that will ever exist.

Almost the entire crypto market fell this week, and Bitcoin gave up considerably less than Aave in the process. Babylon's proposal is therefore not a price driver that could be seen in the weekly numbers. It is news about the protocol's revenue, and that works through quarters, if at all.

Trustless Bitcoin Vaults: the Bitcoin stays where it is

The heart of the proposal is the custody question. The Bitcoin stays in a Taproot UTXO on the Bitcoin blockchain. It is not wrapped, not sent across a bridge and not held by a custodian. That is the difference from everything running as Bitcoin collateral in DeFi so far.

A Taproot UTXO is an unspent output of a Bitcoin transaction whose spending conditions are set through the Taproot format. Put simply: an amount of Bitcoin with a condition attached as to who may move it and under what circumstances.

On Ethereum a representation token is created for it under the ERC-20 standard with eight decimal places. It is minted when a vault is activated and burned when the position ends. It can only be transferred between the contracts of the integration itself, and the total amount always corresponds exactly to the Bitcoin tied up in active positions. The representation is therefore not a freely tradable token but an accounting entry.

Two new spokes in the hub-and-spoke architecture

Aave V4 is built on a hub-and-spoke pattern: a hub holds the liquidity, the spokes are the markets drawing on it. The proposal wants to set up two new spokes. The Babylon Spoke lists native Bitcoin as its only collateral. The BTC Vault Swap Spoke handles settlement after a liquidation. Both draw their liquidity from an Aave V4 hub; which hub instance that is, the proposal does not specify.

Four settings are already fixed and are not meant as adjustable levers. Native Bitcoin is collateral only and cannot be borrowed. The liquidation fee is set to zero. The option for liquidators to receive shares instead of collateral is switched off. And the target health factor, which otherwise determines how far a position is wound back in a liquidation, has been removed.

What happens to the Bitcoin in a liquidation

The most interesting part of the proposal is not in the figures but in how a liquidation runs, and it explains why the liquidation fee can be zero. Until now a liquidator at Aave takes part of the collateral and sells it on the market. Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain cannot be realised that way, because the liquidator works on Ethereum.

The proposal solves this in three steps. First, a liquidation always seizes exactly one BTCVault, not a percentage of a position. Second, any liquidator may sell the seized vault to the BTC Vault Swap Spoke without permission and receives WBTC at the oracle price, less a discount. WBTC is the wrapped Bitcoin token the integration starts with. Third, arbitrageurs step in, repay the WBTC debt and redeem the real Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain in return.

The discount on the sale is thus the liquidator's actual compensation, and it replaces the liquidation fee. Three values at the swap spoke are adjustable: this sale discount, a minimum reserve for the arbitrageurs' profit and the recipient of the fees. The proposal gives figures for none of these three.

To see how collateralised loans differ across platforms, the terms sit side by side in our crypto lending comparison. The mechanics of liquidation are the point where providers differ most.

The revenue split: the first $500,000 goes entirely to the Aave DAO

Here the proposal becomes unusually precise, and here lies the actual substance for AAVE holders. Two income streams count as qualifying revenue: the hub liquidity fee on the interest that borrowers pay in the Babylon Spoke, and the liquidation fees arising through the adapter and the BTC Vault Swap Spoke.

The first $500,000 of that income per year goes entirely to the Aave DAO. Above that a tiered split applies, divided in each case between the DAO, Babylon and token buybacks:

• $500,000 to $2 million: 78 percent DAO, 18 percent Babylon, 4 percent token buyback
• $2 million to $4 million: 72.5 percent DAO, 22.5 percent Babylon, 5 percent buyback
• $4 million to $6 million: 67 percent DAO, 27 percent Babylon, 6 percent buyback
• above $6 million: 61.5 percent DAO, 31.5 percent Babylon, 7 percent buyback

The buyback splits 85 percent into AAVE and 15 percent into BABY, Babylon's token. The repurchased tokens go in equal parts to the Aave DAO and the Babylon Foundation. Distribution is monthly. In addition, the adapter may charge a Babylon interest fee, a share of the base interest the borrower pays at Aave. How large that share is does not appear in the proposal.

The share flowing directly into AAVE buybacks is in single digits at every tier: 4 to 7 percent of qualifying revenue. Even at $6 million of annual income that would be around $420,000 for buybacks, 85 percent of it in AAVE. Against a market capitalisation of $2.29 billion that is a small number, and nobody should read it as a price driver.

Which risk parameters are still missing

The figures on which everything hangs for borrowers do not appear in the proposal. There is no loan-to-value ratio, no liquidation threshold and no supply cap. On this the proposal says in as many words that the risk parameters for both spokes would be supplied by Aave's risk service providers. That is the usual procedure at Aave, but it also means there is no basis today for estimating how much stablecoin a single Bitcoin would support.

Without a liquidation threshold, the risk of a margin call cannot be quantified either. For judging the proposal that is no shortcoming; for an investment decision it is.

The proposal does not stand alone in the forum

Aave's governance forum holds further proposals in the same week. On October 15 an ARFC arrived on onboarding USAT, the US dollar token from Tether America, into the V3 Core instance and the V4 Core hub on Ethereum. On October 14 a risk framework for tokenised equities on Aave V3 X Layer was put up for discussion, and on October 13 a CAPO SnapshotRatio adjustment via Aave V3.

The pattern is the same in every case: Aave is taking on collateral that has not sat in DeFi lending markets before. Native Bitcoin is the largest piece of that, because it concerns the largest amount of capital that has so far simply been sitting there.

Our assessment of the Babylon proposal

From this newsroom's point of view, the solid part of this proposal is the custody construction and the secondary part is the revenue split. The design speaks for it: the Bitcoin stays in the Taproot UTXO, the representation on Ethereum is non-transferable and equal in amount to the Bitcoin tied up, and a liquidation seizes a whole vault rather than a share. These three points are set out in the proposal and are not statements of intent.

Against it speaks the stage of the process. The loan-to-value ratio, liquidation threshold and supply cap are missing, as are the values for the sale discount and the Babylon interest fee. Until the Snapshot vote and the AIP that follows it, whether and with what limits this starts remains open. The income from the tiers weighs too little against $2.29 billion of market capitalisation to move a price. Buying AAVE for the buybacks means counting on single-digit percentage shares of revenue that does not yet exist. A total loss remains possible in any crypto investment.

The proposal is public and readable without an account

The proposal is public and readable without an account. It sits in Aave's governance forum, and Babylon describes its Trustless Bitcoin Vaults on its own site. For context, three points are worth a look: the list of fixed settings, the tiers of the revenue split and the section on next steps.

In practical terms the route is not yet usable for investors in Germany. As long as no AIP has passed, there is no market in which Bitcoin could be put up as collateral. Anyone holding Bitcoin and thinking about loans against it is dealing with the existing providers until then, and there the MiCA rules apply, including the authorisation requirement for the service provider.

One point often lost in loans against crypto: coins put up as collateral and then lost in a liquidation count as a sale for tax purposes. The one-year holding period for private disposals then decides whether the transaction stays tax-free. That applies today and regardless of how the proposal at Aave turns out.

Aave V4 and Bitcoin: without a Snapshot vote it stays a proposal

Three steps make sense now:

1. Read the proposal in the original, not the summary. The fixed settings and the revenue tiers are there in full; the risk parameters are absent there just as fully. How other platforms set their yields and terms is shown in the comparison of staking and yield platforms.
2. Keep your own custody separate from the lending idea. Bitcoin serving as collateral is tied up, even when it does not leave the blockchain. For holdings meant to sit still, self-custody remains the simpler route; the devices for it are in our hardware wallet comparison.
3. Track the holding period for every piece of collateral. A liquidation is a sale, and without an acquisition date the one-year period cannot be evidenced later. The tools for that are under crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 15, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Trading in Shiba Inu is currently taking place for the larger part not on the spot market but on the futures market. In the 24 hours to Thursday evening, around $257.4 million changed hands in SHIB futures contracts, against $77.5 million on the spot market. That puts the factor at 3.3. Anyone trying to understand how the SHIB price moves is looking in the wrong place by watching only purchases and sales of the tokens themselves.

These figures are our own counts from CoinGecko market data, taken on Thursday evening. SHIB cost $0.00000510 at that point, or €0.00000455. Over 24 hours the price moved by 0.05 percent, so it stood practically still. Within the day, however, the high and the low were 4.89 percent apart: $0.00000511 at the top, $0.00000486 at the bottom. That range is the most important number in this article, and further down it becomes clear why.

$257 million in futures trading, $78 million on the spot market

The market data covered 61 live SHIB futures contracts across 28 trading venues. Combined turnover in those contracts of $257.4 million over 24 hours stands against spot turnover of $77.5 million. Both figures measure the same thing, turnover in one day, and are therefore directly comparable.

Dogecoin, the other large meme token, helps place that. There, the same evening saw $4.50 billion in futures turnover against $1.55 billion on the spot market, a factor of 2.9. Both tokens hang on the futures market, SHIB somewhat more so than DOGE. The difference stands out but marks no break: the meme sector as a whole is currently traded through contracts rather than through tokens.

Open interest: the metric and its $169 million

Open interest is the sum of all futures positions still open at the end of a day, measured in dollar equivalent. Unlike turnover it counts no movement but a stock: it says how much money is currently tied up in bets on the price.

For SHIB that stock stood at $169.0 million on Thursday evening. Spot turnover for a whole day came to $77.5 million. More than twice what the spot market turns over in a day is therefore tied up in open contracts. At Dogecoin that ratio is 1.4, at SHIB 2.2.

Comparing stock with turnover mixes two quantities, and that should be said openly: a stock is not a daily figure. It is informative all the same, because it shows how thick the leverage layer lies over a comparatively thin spot market. If that layer is unwound by force, the counter-move has to run through exactly this thin spot market.

Which venues carry the open interest

Open interest is spread widely, with one clear peak. The count below names the ten largest positions on Thursday evening, in millions of dollars:

No single venue holds more than a sixth. The ten largest together carry around 74 percent. That spread across many jurisdictions is the reason why, for investors in Germany, the question of permitted leverage depends on the individual provider.

The spot market runs almost entirely through USDT

On the spot market the distribution looks different. Of SHIB spot turnover, 76.9 percent ran through pairs against the dollar stablecoin USDT, 9.3 percent against the Korean won, 5.4 percent against the Turkish lira and 3.0 percent against the US dollar. Euro pairs accounted for 2.1 percent, or $1.62 million in equivalent terms.

Euro liquidity comes for the larger part from houses with EU authorisation: Bitvavo supplied $0.74 million, Kraken $0.29 million, Bit2Me $0.28 million, with smaller amounts at WhiteBIT, Coinbase and Bitstamp. Buying SHIB in euros is therefore possible, but it means reckoning with a small sub-market.

Negative funding on 20 of 61 perpetuals

Most of these contracts are perpetuals, that is, futures contracts without an expiry date. To keep their price from drifting away from the spot price, the two sides pay each other a balancing fee at short intervals, the funding rate. When it is positive, buyers pay sellers; when it is negative, the reverse applies.

On Thursday evening the funding rate was negative on 20 of the 61 contracts, with the mean across all contracts at 0.002 percent per settlement. The picture is therefore close to balanced, with a slight overhang on the seller side. No directional statement about the price follows from that. What does follow is the cost side: a position left open for longer pays or receives this fee day after day, and with a token at this price level such incidental costs weigh heavily in proportion.

The ESMA statement of February 24, 2026

Perpetuals were long treated as something European supervisory rules did not cover. That has changed. On February 24, 2026 the European securities regulator ESMA published a statement under reference ESMA35-243228190-8024, titled Statement on identifying derivatives within the scope of the national product intervention measures on CFDs.

The core in one sentence: in ESMA's view, perpetual futures are likely to fall under the existing national product intervention measures on contracts for difference, provided they meet the definition of a CFD. What governs is the design of the product, not the name a provider gives it. ESMA expressly also names products that give leveraged exposure to crypto assets.

Where that classification applies, five things hold for retail clients: a leverage cap, a mandatory risk warning, forced closure when a margin threshold is breached, protection against a negative account balance, and a ban on bonuses and other incentives to trade. ESMA does not itself set the level of the leverage cap. That sits in the national measures, which for Germany means BaFin.

50 percent initial margin in BaFin's general administrative act

The relevant rule is BaFin's general administrative act on contracts for difference of July 23, 2019, in force since August 1, 2019. That act tiers the required initial margin by underlying. In the wording of the act, crypto carries 50 percent of the notional value of the CFD where the underlying is a cryptocurrency.

A 50 percent initial margin means leverage of at most 2:1. For comparison, the other tiers of the same act: 3.33 percent for pairs of two major currencies, 5 percent for large equity indices and for gold, 10 percent for other commodities, 20 percent for shares. Crypto therefore carries by far the strictest tier, and by a factor of 15 stricter than a currency pair.

In practice that means a provider authorised in Germany may grant a retail client at most 2:1 leverage on a crypto contract for difference. For regulated venues, there is an overview in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges. Providers without EU authorisation are not subject to this act, and the leverage offered in the market varies accordingly.

A worked example of liquidation at 2:1 and at 50:1

Now back to that daily range of 4.89 percent. Take a position with a notional value of €1,000.

At 2:1 you post €500. BaFin's act requires forced closure when your balance falls below half the required initial margin, here below €250. That would take a loss of €250, which is 25 percent of the notional value. The price would have to move a quarter against you.

At 50:1 you post €20. A loss of around €20, roughly 2 percent of the notional value, already eats up that margin. The range between the day's high and low on Thursday was 4.89 percent, and that on a day when the price moved 0.05 percent over 24 hours, so it barely budged.

A position at 50:1 would have been stopped out on this quiet day in the ordinary back and forth; a position at 2:1 would not have come close. That is the whole difference, and it is not a theoretical one: the range comes from the price data of this single day.

Margin close-out and negative balance protection

Alongside the leverage cap, the ESMA statement names two further protections that are more concrete than the percentage. The first is the margin close-out: the provider has to close the position before the balance is used up entirely. The second is protection against a negative account balance. It limits your loss to the money you hold in the trading account, which rules out any demand for more than that balance.

Added to that is the ban on bonuses and other incentives. An authorised provider may not promise you a bonus or a benefit in kind for opening such a position. Three points therefore count when looking at an offer: the level of leverage available, the commitment to negative balance protection, and the question of which supervisor the provider answers to.

Spot purchase and perpetual on holding period and custody

The difference between the two routes does not end at leverage. It carries on into tax and custody, and there the paths part clearly.

Buy SHIB on the spot market and you hold the token. It sits in an account at the exchange or in your own wallet, and you can withdraw it. For tax, the sale is a private disposal under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, to which the one-year period applies.

A perpetual, by contrast, is a forward transaction. You hold no token but a claim against the provider, you can withdraw nothing, and the one-year period does not apply here: income from forward transactions counts as investment income. Mixing the two therefore brings two different tax treatments into one portfolio. Which records you need for that depends on the provider; the documentation for a forward transaction looks different from that for a spot purchase.

Where SHIB stands after a year

The longer series belong to the overall picture. Over 14 days SHIB gave up 11.21 percent, but over 30 days only 0.36 percent: the decline of the last two weeks has therefore worked off a gain from the first half of October. Over a year it shows a loss of 51.04 percent, so the token has roughly halved in twelve months. From its high of $0.00008616 on October 27, 2021 it is 94.09 percent away. Market value on Thursday evening was $3.00 billion, rank 37 in the overall market, with 589.24 trillion tokens in circulation.

The most recent look at the same token dates from Wednesday: at that point SHIB daily turnover was 76 percent below the year-earlier figure, with the price at around $0.00000504. The price has gained a good half a percentage point since then, and the thin spot side of that day is exactly the side set against triple the futures turnover in this article. Wednesday's finding and today's are two sides of the same thing.

Our assessment of the pace in the SHIB market

From this newsroom's point of view, the futures market currently sets the pace in SHIB, not the spot market. The evidence stands above: $257.4 million of futures turnover against $77.5 million on the spot market, $169.0 million tied up in open contracts, and a daily range of 4.89 percent on a day with no net movement. Against that: Dogecoin shows a similar picture with a factor of 2.9, so SHIB is no special case here but a somewhat more pronounced version of the meme sector's norm. And the ratio of open interest to spot turnover compares a stock with a day's turnover, so it serves for orientation, not as a precise measure. No statement about the direction of the price follows from any of these figures, and the funding rates do not yield one either.

SHIB futures: $169 million open, 2:1 is the EU limit

Three steps follow from this:

1. With a leverage offer on SHIB, check first what leverage is available there and which supervisor the provider answers to. A provider authorised in Germany stops at 2:1. An overview of venues for perpetual contracts is in our perp DEX comparison.
2. Work out before the order what price move would eat up your margin, and hold it against the token's daily range. For SHIB on Thursday that was 4.89 percent. If you would rather hold the token itself, the venues are in our crypto exchange comparison.
3. Keep the records for spot purchases and forward transactions apart from the start, because the two are treated differently for tax. Tools for that are in our comparison of crypto tax tools.

All price and market figures in this article are our own counts of CoinGecko market data from Thursday evening. The legal references stand in the two ESMA and BaFin documents linked above.

(As of October 15, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Animoca Brands is not going public for now. The Hong Kong investment house behind the game The Sandbox, the MOCA token and more than 620 minority stakes suspended talks on its planned Nasdaq listing on September 22, 2026. The company has not named a date for a fresh attempt.

That removes the part of the story which had drawn most of the attention since November 2025. What remains is what stands in the company's own interim update of September 8: a portfolio book with a fair value of $411 million, a radically shrunken games business and a new blockchain for digital identity that has been running since September 29. These three parts decide what the Animoca name is worth today, and they tell a soberer story than any listing announcement.

What Animoca Brands is: an investment house with over 620 minority stakes

Animoca Brands started out in 2014 as a games developer and is today primarily a holding company. A holding company is a business whose activity consists mainly of holding and realising stakes in other firms rather than selling products itself. In its own interim update the company describes its position as minority stakes in over 620 portfolio companies across more than 20 sectors.

That figure is the core of the business model and at the same time its biggest valuation problem. Holding 620 small stakes, most of which have no market price, means working with estimates rather than quoted values. Animoca puts the fair value of those holdings at $411 million as at December 31, 2025. Alongside that the company reports $68 million in cash and stablecoins, digital assets of $177 million and off-balance-sheet token reserves of $306 million.

The best-known names in that book are The Sandbox, Open Campus, Anichess, GAMEE and TinyTap. How widely the house spreads beyond them shows in its own 2026 newsflow: a collaboration with Franklin Templeton on tokenised assets, a masternode validator on the XDC network, a majority takeover of GAMEE by Alpha Compute and a programme of up to $10 million for developers on the AI agent platform Minds. To place the breadth of this field, the four large Web3 gaming houses and their shutdowns are set out in our overview of Yuga, Animoca, Pudgy and Sky Mavis.

The reverse merger with Currenc Group: what the deal provided for

On November 3, 2025 Animoca announced its route to the Nasdaq through a reverse merger. In a reverse merger an already listed company buys an unlisted one, whose owners then hold the majority of the combined house. The listing is thus taken over rather than applied for afresh, and that is exactly what makes the route faster and cheaper than a conventional initial public offering.

The buyer on paper was Nasdaq-listed Currenc Group. On the figures given at the time, Animoca's shareholders would have held around 95 percent of the combined company. The third quarter of 2026 was the target date for completion. In May 2026 both sides extended the exclusivity period, that is, the window in which no negotiations with third parties are permitted. Valuations for the plan cited in press coverage ranged from around $1 billion up to $2.4 billion, and neither side ever confirmed any of them.

The merger has been on ice since September 22

In its announcement of September 22, 2026 Animoca speaks of a mutual suspension of the talks. Both sides give as the reason that the estimated time to completion does not fit their respective short- and medium-term strategic objectives. Co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu is quoted as saying: “While we hold our proposed merger with Currenc Group in high regard, our corporate agility must take precedence.”

Two formulations from the same announcement matter more for context than the cancellation itself. The talks could be resumed if and when circumstances permit, a back door without a deadline. And Animoca says it remains fully committed to the goal of being listed again on a major public exchange. The word “again” is no accident, and there is more on that below.

Why the audited accounts are the real bottleneck

The same announcement contains the sentence that describes the position best: Animoca filed its audited annual accounts for 2023 only on July 17, 2026 and is working on those for 2024. A company still finishing its 2024 accounts in October 2026 simply cannot list on a major exchange, no matter how attractive its portfolio book looks.

The mechanism behind that is straightforward and applies at every regulated venue. An admission to listing requires audited figures from an issuer for several past financial years, prepared to a recognised standard and confirmed by an auditor. For a house with 620 holdings that is particularly laborious: every stake needs a traceable valuation, every token reserve an allocation, and for many of these items there is no liquid market from which a price could simply be read off. Animoca itself expressly marks the figures in its interim update as unaudited and not prepared under IFRS.

One plain consequence follows from that sequence for anyone speculating on a listing: as long as the 2024 accounts are outstanding, any date for a listing is a statement of intent, not an appointment. A merger partner can be found in weeks; a multi-year audit opinion cannot.

The return to a major exchange is a relisting

Animoca has been listed before. On March 9, 2020 the Australian exchange ASX removed the company from its official list under Listing Rule 17.12. In its letter of December 18, 2019 the exchange had raised several points of corporate governance, along with the involvement in cryptocurrency activities and the extensive use of SAFEs, that is, convertible funding agreements issued by subsidiaries. Animoca replied on February 28, 2020 with a 39-page submission and was removed all the same.

That history explains today's choice of words. Speaking of a relisting means having behind you an exchange that once did not want you, and having to deliver more than a good story at the next attempt. The 2020 removal also explains why the company sought the route through an existing listing rather than through a regular admission procedure.

Bookings of $173 million: the 2025 financial year figures

The interim update for the 2025 financial year reports bookings of $173 million for the twelve months to December 31, 2025. Bookings is not an accounting revenue measure but a self-defined metric for the group's total sales and earnings activity. Operating costs stood at $175 million, $65 million below the previous year, with non-cash items such as share-based compensation stripped out.

The comparison over time is the most interesting part of these figures, and it appears in no press release. For 2023 the company reported bookings of $280 million, for 2024 the figure was $314 million. From 2024 to 2025 bookings therefore fell by around 45 percent. Costs came down by $65 million over the same period, and for 2026 management says it will continue and accelerate that course. These are the accounts of a house that is shrinking and cutting faster than it loses business, not those of a growing technology group. That costs and bookings were practically level in 2025 also shows how narrow the margin has become.

The Sandbox after the restructuring: from 240 to 92 roles

Nowhere is that restructuring clearer than at the best-known product. The Sandbox, the virtual world with the SAND token, had 240 roles according to the interim update and now stands at 92. Operating costs in the division fell by more than 75 percent against the previous year. The company describes the seventh Alpha Season as the last operational outing on the existing architecture before a rebuild with AI integration follows.

For holders of the token that cuts both ways. A product going from 240 to 92 roles delivers less content, and the existing technical base is being retired before its successor is in place. If you hold SAND, the price history and the figures behind it are in our SAND price prediction. That the wider field is faring no better shows in the marketplace count: several of the large NFT trading venues have closed within a year, as set out in our review of the NFT marketplaces in 2026, and with the shutdown of Blur on November 12 the next one goes.

Moca Chain since September 29: a layer-1 blockchain for digital identity

On September 29, 2026 the Moca Foundation and Moca Network launched the Moca Chain mainnet, which had been announced back in June 2025 with a target in the fourth quarter of 2025. Moca Chain is a standalone layer-1 blockchain with the EVM identifier 2288 and can be operated with the usual Ethereum tooling. Its purpose is digital identity: institutions issue credentials, such as a completed identity check or a membership, and users carry those credentials into other applications.

What is a verifiable credential?

A verifiable credential is a digitally signed attestation about an attribute of a person whose authenticity any third party can recompute without asking the issuer. Moca Chain combines that with zero-knowledge proofs. A zero-knowledge proof establishes that a statement is true without disclosing the data it rests on: you can prove that you are of age without showing your date of birth.

In this design the MOCA token is intended for staking and for fees that arise when credentials are issued, stored and verified, and in identity oracles. For the AIR product layer, which ties together identity, payment and loyalty programmes, the project names partners including SK Planet, Open Campus, OneFootball, Automobili Lamborghini and Nansen. On uptake there are two figures from two points in time: in its interim update Animoca reported more than 2.6 million MocaID users as at December 31, 2025, while at the mainnet launch the talk was of more than 3.3 million accounts connected through AIR. The 700 million reachable users also cited, by contrast, are an estimate across the entire portfolio, not a count of accounts on this blockchain.

What remains open is the question that decides the economic value: whether regulated companies may rely on a credential issued by another company in order to meet their own customer due diligence duties. The launch announcement does not answer that, and without such recognition the benefit stays confined to voluntary applications.

MOCA in the portfolio: 98 percent below the December 2024 record

MOCA is trading in mid-October 2026 at about $0.0085, or roughly €0.0076. Market capitalisation is around $36 million; data services quoted values between $32 million and $37 million for July and September, so the token has been moving in that order of magnitude for months. Circulating supply is around 4.23 billion tokens according to CoinGecko against a maximum supply of 8.89 billion, while other services put circulation at 3.6 billion to 4.0 billion. From the record price of $0.4774, set on December 25, 2024, it is around 98 percent short.

These figures matter more for context than they first sound. Animoca valued its own MOCA reserve at $131 million as at December 31, 2025. The token's entire market capitalisation today is a fraction of that. A reserve amounting to a multiple of the whole market value cannot be sold at that price, and that holds for any token holding that is large relative to its market. Buying MOCA therefore means buying a very small instrument with a large reserve in the background, and at this size a total loss is possible.

The name clash matters too: a token called Museum of Crypto Art also runs under the MOCA ticker, on Polygon, with a market capitalisation in the six figures. What counts when buying is the contract address, not the ticker.

MiCA and the ESMA register: how to check your exchange's licence yourself

For investors in Germany the trading question is the one that matters most in practice. CoinGecko lists around 33 trading pairs for MOCA. The largest of them sit at exchanges outside the European Union, among them Bybit, KuCoin, Bitget and Gate, alongside decentralised venues such as Uniswap on Ethereum and Aerodrome on Base. MOCA is not available at a German bank or a German broker.

A hard legal framework has applied since the start of the year. Under section 50 of the German Crypto Markets Supervision Act, the German transition period for crypto service providers ended with the close of December 31, 2025; across the EU the transition ran out on July 1, 2026 at the latest. Anyone offering crypto asset services to customers in Germany has since needed authorisation as a crypto asset service provider under MiCA, a CASP. Which providers hold that authorisation is recorded in the register of the European securities regulator ESMA, with German institutions additionally in BaFin's company database. Both registers are public, and a look inside takes two minutes. A selection of houses with EU authorisation is in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

Going through a decentralised venue removes the provider question but puts custody on you: lose access to your wallet and you lose the tokens, and there is no body that retrieves them. For tax, the one-year holding period under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act continues to apply to private sales. The cabinet date for the announced abolition passed in mid-October without a decision, so the December 31 cut-off stays as it is for now; the state of play is in our report on the cabinet date that passed.

Our assessment: the portfolio book holds, the listing story wobbles

From this newsroom's point of view the cancelled merger is the smaller story. The portfolio book stands at $411 million of fair value, $68 million in cash and stablecoins and $177 million in digital assets; Animoca can work off that substance for a long time, and costs cut by $65 million extend that room. Against it stand three documented points: bookings down from $314 million to $173 million in a year, a flagship product down from 240 to 92 roles, and 2024 accounts that are still unaudited in October 2026. As long as those are missing, a listing is an intention, not an appointment.

The most solid part of the story is therefore not the exchange but Moca Chain: a product that has been running since September 29, with named partners and a clear task. What will decide it is whether regulated companies recognise the credentials issued there. This assessment judges the situation and is not a recommendation to buy or sell; with a token at $36 million of market value, a total loss is possible.

Animoca Brands: without audited accounts the listing stays open

1. Separate the company from the token. As a retail investor you cannot currently take a stake in Animoca Brands, and the MOCA token is something other than a share in the holding company. If you want to buy it, find a venue with EU authorisation and compare the costs beforehand in our exchange comparison.
2. Look at the surroundings, not just the name. The Sandbox is rebuilding, and the NFT market is losing venues. Which marketplaces are still open and what they cost is in our marketplace comparison.
3. Document every purchase from the start. For the one-year holding period you need the purchase date, quantity and price for each acquisition. Tools that record this automatically are in our comparison of tax tools.

(As of October 15, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Google's Willow chip cut errors 40x on the scarce “magic states” quantum computers burn through, a step toward smaller, useful machines—and toward ones that could threaten today's encryption.

Russians have until July 1, 2027 to buy and sell crypto directly with each other. After that, every trade runs through a broker or exchange approved by the Bank of Russia.

In a note to investors, Matt Hougan used a “Choose Your Own Adventure” framework to argue that superabundance, an AI bust or a muddle-through economy all ultimately funnel to the same place: Bitcoin higher.

Speaking after BlackRock’s Q3 earnings, Fink said AI infrastructure spending has become so central to growth that a construction halt would be dangerous—calling the backlash “misinformation” as data centers become a midterm flashpoint.

Google DeepMind's first internal audit of AI-driven research finds no measurable speedup in AI progress.

Strategy executive chairman Michael Saylor has reacted to a new study examining AI models' monetary preferences with a bullish Bitcoin statement.

Three members of the Canadian Armed Forces are among seven suspects charged in connection with a shocking cryptocurrency-related kidnapping in Toronto.

Overnight liquidations hit $932 million as XRP, DOGE, and NEAR face deep corrections before a sudden market reversal.

Dogecoin whale activity may be rising as the ongoing market volatility pushes traders to dump their crypto holdings to hedge against further losses.

Bitcoin is missing from Google trends as global search interest collapses to multi-year lows.

TLDR

• Volvo Cars expands its Nvidia partnership to advance automated driving technology.
• Nvidia’s Hyperion and Alpamayo platforms will power future Volvo driving systems.
• The automaker plans to introduce Nvidia technology across future vehicle models.
• Nvidia’s Alpamayo software surpasses 650,000 developer downloads worldwide.
• Volvo Cars targets its next-generation automated driving system before 2030.

Volvo Cars announced an expanded Nvidia partnership on Thursday, October 15, to develop advanced automated driving technology for future vehicles. Separately listed AB Volvo (VOLV-B.ST) shares stood at SEK 319.70, gaining SEK 0.70, or 0.22%, according to supplied figures. The agreement combines Nvidia’s artificial intelligence platforms with Volvo Cars’ vehicle safety engineering to improve automated navigation.

Volvo Cars Expands Nvidia Partnership With Advanced AI Systems

Volvo Cars will integrate Nvidia’s Hyperion architecture, Alpamayo driving software, and Halos safety technology into its next-generation vehicles. Hyperion combines sensors and computing systems to help vehicles process surrounding traffic conditions and road information. Alpamayo provides artificial intelligence tools that support driving decisions across different road environments.

Nvidia developed Alpamayo as a collection of AI models, training datasets, simulation tools, and software development resources. The platform operates alongside conventional driving software that uses machine learning, cameras, and radar systems. This combined approach allows different technologies to process information simultaneously and support more reliable driving decisions.

Nvidia automotive division head Ali Kani explained that the company operates multiple software systems alongside different sensor technologies. The approach uses separate systems to assess road conditions and reduce dependence on individual software components. More than 650,000 developers have downloaded Nvidia’s open-source Alpamayo software, according to Kani.

Volvo Targets Automated Driving Across Future Vehicle Models

Volvo Cars plans to extend its automated driving technology beyond its existing battery-electric vehicle lineup. The company also intends to support plug-in hybrids and gasoline-powered vehicles through a broader software architecture. This expansion reflects its strategy of developing shared technology platforms across different vehicle categories.

Volvo Cars uses Nvidia’s Orin computing technology across its battery-electric vehicle range. These processors analyze information from cameras, radar, and other sensors to support driving assistance functions. The expanded partnership introduces additional computing capabilities and software components for more advanced automated driving features.

Volvo Cars software development head Alwin Bakkenes outlined the company’s shift toward developing integrated vehicle technology internally. The automaker previously relied on vehicle-specific development programs and multiple technology suppliers for different models. Now, its approach combines hardware, software, and safety engineering through a more unified development structure.

Nvidia Technology Supports Volvo Cars’ Long-Term Driving Strategy

Volvo Cars plans to introduce the upgraded Nvidia platform through a new vehicle before the decade ends. Management has not confirmed the model name, production schedule, or specific launch date. The company expects the initial deployment to support supervised automated driving, while drivers retain responsibility for vehicle operation.

The new system will use Nvidia’s Hyperion sensor and computing architecture to process information across different driving conditions. The Halos safety layer will support the evaluation of automated driving functions and system performance. These technologies will help the automaker develop software for increasingly complex road and traffic situations.

The partnership also supports Volvo Cars’ broader transition toward software-based vehicle development and shared technology platforms. Standardizing computing systems and sensors could simplify future integration across electric, hybrid, and conventional vehicles. The companies have not announced commercial revenue targets, implementation costs, or financial forecasts associated with the expanded agreement.

The post Volvo Cars (VOLCAR) Stock: Expands Nvidia Partnership to Advance Self-Driving Technology appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• LULU stock jumps 5.16% to $98.95 despite declining revenue and earnings.
• Quarterly net income falls to $329 million as operating margins continue to shrink.
• The retailer holds $1.39 billion in cash despite a challenging sales outlook.
• Free cash flow climbs to $225 million despite weaker quarterly sales performance.
• The company spends $1.16 billion on share buybacks as annual profits face pressure.

Lululemon Athletica (LULU) shares  climbed 5.16% to $98.95 on Thursday, gaining $4.86 despite continued weakness in its financial performance. The athletic apparel retailer reported lower quarterly revenue and earnings, while operating margins also narrowed. The company maintained substantial cash reserves and generated positive free cash flow despite weaker sales.

Lululemon Athletica Inc., LULU

The latest trading gain followed an extended period of poor share performance. Lululemon stock has declined 44.6% over the past year, while the S&P 500 gained 17.3%. This performance gap reflects pressure on the retailer as weaker revenue and profitability challenge its previous growth trajectory.

Management reduced its annual revenue forecast on September 3 after reporting softer business conditions. Revenue declined 4.3% year over year during the quarter ending August 2, 2026. The revised outlook reflects weaker sales expectations and increases attention on the company’s ability to protect operating earnings.

Lululemon Earnings Decline as Profit Margins Narrow

Lululemon reported quarterly net income of $329 million, compared with $371 million during the corresponding period last year. The decline exceeded the percentage drop in revenue, showing that costs consumed a larger share of sales. Weaker operating efficiency affected profitability even before accounting for unusual financial adjustments.

The retailer recorded an operating margin of 18.8%, compared with 20.7% one year earlier. One-time tariff refunds contributed 5.6 percentage points to the latest margin. Excluding that benefit, the operating margin reached approximately 13.2%, indicating substantially weaker underlying profitability.

If the latest quarter repeated four times, annual net income would reach approximately $1.32 billion. The quarter included roughly $97 million in after-tax tariff refunds, which increased reported profits. Excluding those refunds, the annualized earnings figure falls to approximately $930 million, below the trailing twelve-month total of $1.42 billion.

Lululemon Maintains Strong Cash Flow and Balance Sheet

Despite declining earnings, Lululemon maintained a relatively strong balance sheet during the latest reporting period. The company held $1.39 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of August 2, 2026. It reported no outstanding bank loans or bond borrowings, reducing its exposure to financing costs.

Lululemon carried approximately $2.14 billion in lease liabilities, representing its principal long-term financial obligations. The company generated $1.35 billion in free cash flow during the previous twelve months. That amount covered approximately 63% of its lease liabilities, providing financial flexibility despite slowing business growth.

Quarterly free cash flow also improved, reaching $225 million compared with $151 million during the previous year. This increase showed that the retailer continued generating cash despite lower revenue and shrinking profit margins. Its cash generation remained stronger than the latest earnings performance alone would suggest.

Lululemon spent approximately $1.16 billion repurchasing shares over the trailing twelve-month period. These purchases represented about 10.8% of its market capitalization, reflecting substantial capital returns to shareholders. Management also indicated in September that its 2026 repurchase spending would match the previous year’s level.

The company’s valuation presents a different picture after adjusting for the temporary tariff benefits. At the October 14 close, shares traded near 7.5 times trailing earnings, including those one-time refunds. Excluding the refunds and annualizing quarterly profits produces an earnings multiple of approximately 11.5 times.

The annualized calculation remains a mechanical comparison rather than a forecast of future financial results. Lululemon generates its highest quarterly sales during the reporting period ending in February, which creates seasonal differences. Its financial position therefore combines declining underlying earnings with substantial liquidity, positive cash generation, and continued share repurchases.

The post Lululemon Athletica (LULU) Stock: Earnings Slide as Revenue Declines appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• CleanSpark’s September Bitcoin production fell nearly 11% to 529 BTC from 593 BTC in August.
• CleanSpark sold 702 BTC and closed September with Bitcoin holdings of 13,530 BTC.
• CleanSpark discontinued monthly mining reports while advancing its $2.276 billion data center financing.
• BitFuFu’s cloud mining output fell to 69 BTC as an electricity dispute threatened its Ethiopia acquisition.
• Canaan mined 44 BTC, while its Nordic heating project supplied recovered heat to approximately 2,800 homes.

CleanSpark mined 529 Bitcoin in September, down from 593 in August, while rival BitFuFu also recorded lower production. Canaan held steady at 44 BTC. The three publicly traded miners reported different changes to their operations.

CleanSpark reduces production and ends monthly updates

CleanSpark finished September with 13,530 BTC, compared with 13,703 at August’s end. It sold two BTC on spot markets and another 700 through exercised call options. The company reported an average sale price of $72,928, including option premiums.

Its average daily production reached 17.64 BTC. CleanSpark reported 50 exahashes per second in operational computing power and nearly 200,000 deployed mining machines. The company will now report quarterly rather than release monthly mining updates.

Data center investment remains a priority

CleanSpark closed a $2.276 billion secured bond offering to fund construction at Sandersville, Georgia. It expects a data center lease there to generate approximately $6.6 billion during its initial term. A separate report on AI chip supplies examined potential problems for miners.

On October 13, Bitcoin Magazine shared an X discussion about Bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence computing. CleanSpark said the bond financing covers Sandersville through completion, while its mining business continues operating.

BitFuFu faces an Ethiopian power dispute

BitFuFu produced 167 BTC in September, versus 174 in August. Its own mining increased from 88 to 98 BTC, but customer cloud mining fell from 86 to 69 BTC. Total managed computing power dropped to 19.4 exahashes per second.

Its proposed Ethiopian mining acquisition remains unfinished because of a dispute involving the site’s electricity supplier. BitFuFu paid $4.1 million and deployed around 13,700 machines there. Separately, Binance announced plans to close its cloud mining service in November.

Canaan maintains output and expands heat recovery

Canaan ended September holding 1,875 BTC, up from 1,868 at August’s close. Its non-joint-venture computing capacity remained at 10 exahashes per second, while joint ventures operated at 4.18. September mining production matched the previous month.

Thursday’s trading also followed a wider fall in Bitcoin mining shares. CleanSpark traded at $8.76, BitFuFu at $1.27 and Canaan at $0.25. Several rival miners had fallen more than 12% during Wednesday’s stock market selloff.

Canaan said its eight-megawatt Nordic heating facility now supplies recovered mining heat to about 2,800 homes. The company is also preparing a similar heat-recovery project for Canadian greenhouses, pending final site inspections.

The post CleanSpark Mines 529 BTC, but Reporting Takes a Turn appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Ledger introduces tighter sales controls following the discovery of modified hardware wallets sold through resellers.
• Criminals installed hidden components that captured customers’ 24-word recovery phrases and transmitted them through mobile networks.
• Bitquery estimates $102 million was stolen from 324 wallets, exceeding Specter’s earlier $86 million estimate.
• Ledger says inspections found no tampering in the retail and warehouse samples its teams examined.
• Authorized dealers must keep devices off display shelves, while returned wallets remain barred from resale.

Ledger has introduced tougher rules for hardware wallet sellers after criminals altered genuine devices and stole cryptocurrency. In its October 15 statement, the company reaffirmed its ban on reselling returned wallets and ordered retailers to keep new devices away from display shelves.

Criminals altered devices before resale

Ledger said attackers purchased legitimate wallets, fitted hidden components, and returned them to reseller channels in Southeast Asia. The company said the group spent months preparing the operation and built systems to collect recovery phrases and move stolen funds.

The investigation began on October 9 after customers reported missing assets from devices sold by Malaysia-based CryptoBilis. An earlier Ledger wallet theft investigation connected the complaints to the reseller, which subsequently halted sales.

How the hidden implants worked

Ledger’s security team found an implant that copied the 24-word recovery phrase displayed during wallet setup. The component then sent those words through a mobile data connection using a built-in electronic SIM card.

The company said the device’s security chip and operating system remained intact. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao warned on X on October 9 that the evidence pointed to an attack through one seller, rather than a problem across all Ledger wallets.

Loss estimates rise as investigators trace funds

Blockchain researcher Specter initially estimated losses above $86 million. However, Bitquery’s October 15 update traced $102 million from 324 wallets across six networks. Earlier confirmation of device tampering established that investigators found an unauthorized component. Ledger has not confirmed total losses or the number of affected customers.

Bitquery said Tether froze $10 million in USDT linked to the theft. Its investigation also tracked stolen funds through swaps and privacy services. The researchers counted wallets, not individual customers, and noted that one owner could control several affected addresses.

Ledger changes distribution and customer guidance

Ledger said its teams examined devices from stores in Germany and stock held in warehouses. Those samples showed no tampering. In an October 14 X update, the company called for a pause in sales across seven markets, including Hong Kong. Resellers in Asia suspended wallet sales as the investigation continued.

Authorized dealers must now store wallets away from public shelves and hand them to buyers at purchase. Ledger advises CryptoBilis customers against setting up unused devices. Those who already used one should move assets to a new wallet with a fresh recovery phrase.

The post Ledger Reveals How Hidden Chips Exposed Crypto Wallets appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Trump Media stock recovered intraday Thursday after six consecutive losing sessions.
• Similarweb estimated Truth Social’s September audience at 260,000 daily users, below its June 2025 peak of 420,000.
• Trump Media reported an 89% quarterly revenue increase despite weaker Truth Social advertising sales.
• DJTB tokenized shares fell approximately 8% over 24 hours in the cited Thursday morning quote.
• Binance’s DJTB token offers economic exposure to Trump Media without direct share ownership or voting rights.

Trump Media stock recovered from an early Thursday decline while new estimates showed shrinking traffic on Truth Social. Shares traded at $7.34 around 12:40 p.m. Eastern, after an earlier quote near $7.10.

The rebound followed six consecutive losing sessions for Trump Media & Technology Group (NASDAQ: DJT). The Washington Post published the audience findings after Wednesday’s market close. Thursday’s session had not ended.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp., DJT

Trump Media Stock Rebounds After Six Losses

Trump Media stock closed Wednesday at $7.22, down 6.84% for the session. The stock had fallen from $8.65 on October 6, a drop of 16.5% across six sessions.

Wednesday’s losses came during a broader selloff after annual U.S. inflation reached 3.7% in September. The Nasdaq fell 1.88%, amid declines across several technology and financial stocks.

Truth Social Audience Estimates Fall

Similarweb estimated roughly 260,000 daily Truth Social users in September 2026, compared with about 420,000 at its June 2025 peak. That peak comparison spans approximately fifteen months.

The research firm also estimated a traffic decline exceeding 30% over the latest year. These are third-party estimates rather than daily user totals released by Trump Media. The figures measure users, not advertising sales or subscription income. The company has not yet reported its September advertising results.

Trump Media operates Truth Social, its Truth+ streaming platform, and financial products under Truth.Fi. Separately, Binance’s expansion into U.S. shares includes blockchain-based stock products linked to public companies.

Advertising Revenue and Tokenized Shares

Trump Media’s June-quarter filing recorded lower Truth Social advertising revenue from a year earlier. Total quarterly revenue nevertheless rose 89% to $1.67 million, helped by barter advertising, streaming subscriptions and fund management fees. Its second-quarter net loss reached $238.1 million, company filings show.

A Thursday morning quote placed DJTB, the token linked to DJT, near $7.17, down about 8% over 24 hours. Separately, Kraken recently detailed plans to offer tokenized shares in the UAE.

Binance listed DJTB on August 26. Its issuer, BTech Holdings Limited, holds underlying securities, but token buyers do not directly own DJT shares or gain voting rights. DJTB’s round-the-clock trading means its daily price change cannot be directly compared with Nasdaq’s regular session.

The post Trump Media Stock Rebounds, but Truth Social Faces a Test appeared first on Blockonomi.

According to Charles Edwards, CEO of Capriole Investments, Bitcoin’s price could rise 30% to 50% in a day if developers agree on a roadmap to protect the blockchain against quantum computers.

He also warned that delays in addressing the threat could weigh on the asset’s valuation.

Edwards Sees Quantum Security as a Potential Bitcoin Catalyst

Speaking to BMTV, Edwards described the quantum threat as tangible within a typical two- to three-year investment horizon. Bitcoin developers have yet to reach a consensus on a path forward, he noted, despite early-stage proposals intended to help prepare the network.

“If they kind of align and say, okay, this is the roadmap that we’re going to do, or this is the signature schemes that we’re going to probably implement in the next sort of 12 months or 18 months or what have you,” Edwards said, “I think that results in a significant repricing of Bitcoin up.”

He estimated that a concrete plan from Bitcoin Core developers could produce a 30% to 50% price move in one day as investors reassess the threat. The next six to 12 months could therefore be positive for BTC if development progresses. Failure to make headway would leave the network increasingly exposed as technology advances, prompting Edwards to reconsider Bitcoin’s fair value.

Coinbase has also outlined requirements for post-quantum security, arguing that any new signature design must account for transaction fees and the cost of validating transactions across the network. Its October 13 blog discussed possible technical approaches, including hybrid signatures during a transition.

Rates and Mining Data Complicate the Outlook

BTC was trading around $81,000 at the time of writing, down nearly 3% in the last 24 hours, with a daily range of $80,400 to $84,000. In the past week, it lost over 2%, although it is up more than 4% from a month ago, while sitting roughly 36% below its all-time high.

According to Edwards, interest rates are a short-term liquidity headwind, though the CEO doubts they will stay high for long because the inflation behind them comes mostly from oil prices tied to the US-Iran conflict.

Mining data provides another reason for cautious optimism. Bitcoin’s hash rate, a measure of computing power committed to secure the network, began recovering four to six weeks ago after a prolonged decline. Edwards views that recovery as evidence that the cycle bottom may be in, although miners shifting capacity toward AI makes future hash rate trends harder to interpret.

He also warned that AI could accelerate quantum development, even though he considers current fears about AI independently breaking Bitcoin’s encryption premature.

The post Bitcoin Could Jump 50% If Developers Agree on Quantum Plan: Capriole CEO appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Hotter-than-expected US inflation data, along with the KOSPI index’s crash in South Korea, weighed heavily on the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin (BTC) slipped below $80,000, while most altcoins followed suit, posting steeper declines.

Pi Network’s PI couldn’t escape the broader correction, plunging to around $0.077, or its lowest level since July. Many investors have likely grown weary of the token’s major downfall over the past several months, so we asked three of the most popular AI-powered chatbots for their outlook on the remainder of the year. Here’s what they had to say.

More Pain or a Rebound?

ChatGPT leaned bearish, expecting the price to sustain its current level or even plunge to a new all-time low of around $0.06 sometime in Q4. OpenAI’s platform claimed that the constant PI token unlocks are the main factor preventing a decisive comeback. It also cited KYC issues reported by some Pioneers and migration struggles as additional hurdles.

On the other hand, ChatGPT sees potential for a significant rebound in the coming months, but only if protocol 28 deploys successfully and prices sustain a recovery above $0.10. While the upgrade is scheduled for tomorrow (October 16), it won’t be a surprise if it gets delayed, since the Core Team has a habit of postponing important developments.

Perplexity also warned of an additional downside risk that could drive the price down to $0.05. The chatbot estimated that such a collapse has a 15% to 25% probability of happening sometime during the final quarter of 2026, while the base case for PI is to trade between $0.07 and $0.10.

Google’s Gemini seemed more favorable to a price increase, suggesting that a rise to $0.15 is mathematically and technically possible. It added an important disclaimer that such a pump would depend on several catalysts, including the protocol 28 upgrade, further ecosystem developments, and listings on major exchanges.

“A surprise spot listing on Binance or Coinbase during Q4 would unlock significant retail and institutional buying liquidity, typically sparking short-term price surges capable of pushing a micro-cap asset past key resistance barriers ($0.10, $0.12, and up to $0.15),” it explained.

Additional Forecast

X user Crypto With Gopal is among the few to address PI lately, and his analysis points to a cautious approach. He assumed that a breakout above $0.10-$0.105 could open the door toward $0.15, but that represents a solid 42% increase from current levels.

“Until then, $0.075-$0.08 is a key support zone to watch; losing it could signal further downside. Sentiment: cautiously watching for reversal. A confirmed neckline is needed to validate the double-bottom setup,” he concluded.

The post Pi Network (PI) Plunges Near Its ATL: 3 AIs Speculate Whether Q4 Will Bring More Pain appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The primary cryptocurrency posted substantial gains in September, fueling expectations that the uptrend would continue this month. In fact, BTC started October on the right foot and briefly surged to nearly $87,000 at one point.

However, the bulls couldn’t maintain momentum, and the asset headed south. The past 24 hours brought more pain for investors as Bitcoin dipped below $80,000 after US inflation came in hotter than expected, while South Korea’s KOSPI index crashed over 7% on the day. The latest red wave, though, might be just a temporary correction before a renewed rally, and here’s why.

The Bullish Signals

Let’s start with the fact that October has historically been one of the best months for BTC, earning it the nickname “Uptober.” The asset has finished the period in the red on only 3 of 13 occasions. We still have more than two weeks left to see whether bulls can regain control and secure another successful “Uptober.”

Next is whale activity. Not long ago, Ali Martinez revealed that large investors used the slump from $87K to $80K to stack an additional 16,010 coins (worth nearly $1.3 billion).

An analysis published by CryptoQuant also shows that whales have launched a buying spree. The team revealed that big wallets (excluding exchanges and mining pools) have increased their total holdings to 3.03 BTC, the highest combined balance since November last year.

This accumulation is generally seen as a bullish signal, as large investors are often considered smart money with a longer-term investment horizon. Their buying leaves fewer coins available on the open market, which, combined with steady demand, could trigger a price uptick. In addition, these efforts can encourage smaller players to join the ecosystem, bringing in fresh capital.

Last but not least, we will observe BTC’s price movement after the previous US CPI data. The asset saw major initial volatility after the last four announcements (similar to what we witnessed over the past 24 hours), but X user Crypto Rover noted that the bulls eventually gained control each time, and Bitcoin rallied hard. It remains to be seen whether this time will be the same.

The Latest Predictions

According to the X account Wealthmanager, BTC has “major bid zones” stacked between $75,000 and $80,000. That said, the price could sweep lower toward that range before resuming its next big move.

X user Aman claimed that Bitcoin might be developing a “head-and-shoulders” pattern. The analyst suggested that if this plays out, $76,000-$77,000 could become “the next area to watch.”

“Not saying it will happen for sure, but the setup is there. Better to prepare for the possibility now than panic if BTC actually breaks down,” they added.

Martinez also recently chipped in. He identified $84,000 as a key level marking the 50 SMA and potentially unlocking the next rally.

The post 3 Reasons Why Bitcoin (BTC) Could Bounce Back Quickly After the Latest Pullback appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP is approaching a key technical inflection point after weeks of declining price action erased much of its August recovery. Trading around $1.30, the asset is testing an important support zone on both the daily and 4-hour charts. The next move around this area could determine whether buyers manage another rebound or sellers push XRP toward lower support levels.

Ripple Price Analysis: The USDT Pair

The daily chart shows XRP maintaining a broader bearish structure after falling from its early-2026 highs above $2.30. The asset has formed a series of lower highs, while the descending orange trendline continues to reflect the prevailing downward pressure, as the price has once again dropped below it and failed to continue higher. Although XRP staged a sharp recovery from the $1.00 region in August, the subsequent rally toward $1.70 failed to establish a sustained bullish reversal.

The latest decline has brought the token back to the $1.30 support zone. This area is key because it previously consolidated before the June sell-off. Holding above it could help XRP stabilize and attempt another recovery, while a decisive daily close below it would raise the risk of a deeper correction.

If support breaks, the $1.15 zone represents the next major downside area visible on the chart. Below that, the $1.00 region remains an important floor, having preceded the sharp August rally.

On the upside, XRP would first need to reclaim the $1.50 region created by recent highs to show signs of improving short-term structure. Beyond that, the $1.70 resistance zone stands out as the major obstacle, and the main level buyers must break through to start a new long-term rally.

The 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart offers a clearer view of immediate selling pressure. Since reaching approximately $1.65 in late September, XRP has been trading within a descending channel, characterized by lower highs and lower lows. Both channel trendlines remain relevant, with the upper boundary acting as dynamic resistance and the lower boundary marking the area where buyers could attempt to defend the price.

XRP is now testing the $1.30 support zone, which overlaps with the lower boundary of the descending channel. This confluence makes the current area particularly important for the short-term outlook. The latest candles show the price pressing against this support, but the chart does not yet confirm a decisive breakdown or a valid bullish reversal.

If buyers defend the zone, the asset could attempt a relief rally toward the $1.40 region, where the upper channel boundary is located. A breakout above this resistance would weaken the immediate bearish structure and potentially bring the $1.60-$1.70 area back into focus.

However, a confirmed move below $1.30 would suggest that buyers are losing control of the current support area. In that scenario, XRP could face further downside pressure, with the daily $1.15 zone emerging as the next major support region.

The descending channel therefore remains the dominant short-term pattern. While its lower boundary could provide a foundation for a rebound, a bullish shift would require XRP to reclaim nearby resistance and eventually break above the channel’s upper trendline.

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Bitcoin is facing renewed selling pressure after failing to continue its recent advance through the $88K resistance area. With BTC now trading around $82K, the market is approaching a key support zone that could determine whether the latest pullback remains a correction within the broader recovery or develops into a deeper bearish move.

Meanwhile, the Bull-Bear Market Cycle Indicator points to a more complicated market backdrop, suggesting that the price rebound has not yet fully resolved the broader cycle uncertainty.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

Bitcoin continues to trade within a broad ascending channel, with the lower and upper boundaries defining the broader recovery structure. However, the latest rejection from the $88K region has weakened the short-term outlook, pushing BTC back toward a critical support area.

The immediate focus is on the $80K-$81K zone, which represents the recent bullish order block before the final rally toward resistance. Bitcoin is currently trading around $82K after dipping below $80K briefly earlier today, as bears are trying to push the price below the mentioned demand zone. Yet, if buyers manage to hold, the market would likely stabilize and attempt another move toward the $88K area.

Below the $80K support level, the more significant demand zone is located around $75K-$77K. If the $80K area fails to hold on a daily closing basis, this lower region could become the next downside target.

For now, the ascending channel remains intact, but the rejection from its upper region and the subsequent loss of short-term momentum suggest that buyers need to defend support quickly. A breakdown through the lower channel boundary would weaken the bullish case and increase the risk of a full bearish reversal in the upcoming months.

BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart shows a clear deterioration in market structure. After repeatedly failing to establish a sustained breakout above $87K, Bitcoin began forming lower highs before experiencing another sharp sell-off. The latest decline has brought BTC into the marked buyers’ decision zone between approximately $80K and $81K.

The immediate concern is that price has slipped below the short-term rising trendline, which had been supporting the recovery from the September lows. This breakdown suggests that the trendline is no longer providing reliable near-term support. Bitcoin is now testing whether horizontal demand around $80K can absorb the selling pressure.

A successful defense of the $80K region could produce a relief bounce toward $84K short-term highs. However, buyers would need to reclaim this area rapidly to improve the short-term outlook. Until that happens, rebounds could encounter selling pressure before reaching the more significant resistance zone.

On the contrary, if the $80K demand zone fails, the next downside level would likely be the $75K order block, which is the base of the significant rally initiated in September. In any case, the short-term structure favors caution. Bitcoin is testing support after losing its rising trendline, and the next move will likely depend on whether buyers can defend the $80K area or sellers can turn it into resistance.

On-Chain Analysis

The Bull-Bear Market Cycle Indicator on CryptoQuant provides a more nuanced view of Bitcoin’s position than price action alone. The indicator measures the distance between the P&L Index and its 365-day moving average, with positive readings associated with bull-cycle conditions and negative readings associated with bear-cycle conditions.

The chart shows that the indicator spent a prolonged period in bearish territory from late 2025 through much of 2026, including an extended and deep negative phase during the first half of 2026. This coincided with Bitcoin’s decline toward the $60K region before the subsequent recovery.

More recently, the indicator has moved back into positive territory, with the latest readings appearing in the orange bull zone. The 30-day moving average has also turned sharply higher, while the 365-day average has flattened after its extended decline. These developments suggest that the market’s underlying cycle momentum has improved considerably from its earlier bearish phase.

However, the recovery in the indicator should not automatically be interpreted as confirmation that a sustained bull market is underway. The 365-day moving average remains an important longer-term reference, and the indicator’s recent transition into positive territory still needs to be assessed alongside price behavior. The latest pullback toward $80K adds further uncertainty to that assessment.

Overall, the cycle indicator suggests that Bitcoin’s underlying momentum has recovered from the earlier bearish phase, but the price chart shows that sellers remain active near resistance. The divergence between improving cycle momentum and weakening short-term price action makes the $80K support zone especially important.

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