Crypto's recent outperformance may boost investor confidence, potentially influencing future market dynamics and Ethereum's long-term valuation.

The post Crypto outperforms traditional assets over past three months: report appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Aerodrome's surge and upcoming merger with Velodrome could significantly expand its market influence and reshape decentralized exchange dynamics.

The post Aerodrome rallies 48% in four weeks, outpacing Bitcoin and Ether appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The low probability of Bitcoin reaching $200,000 by 2026 reflects tempered market expectations and a shift towards more conservative forecasts.

The post Prediction markets give Bitcoin a 2% shot at $200,000 in 2026, a record low appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The recent Bitcoin downturn highlights the volatility and risks in crypto markets, impacting investor confidence and broader financial stability.

The post Bitcoin slides toward $82.5K as over $2.4 billion in crypto liquidations hit longs appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The operation highlights growing regulatory scrutiny on self-custody wallets, potentially influencing crypto security practices and policies.

The post Brazilian police seize $1.7M in crypto from phishing ring’s wallets appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Life Insurer Meanwhile Raises $37.5M as Wealthy Families Look to Pass On Their BTC

Meanwhile, the first life insurer licensed to operate entirely in Bitcoin, has raised $37.5 million in new funding from its existing investors, the company announced.

Bain Capital Crypto led the round, with participation from Haun Ventures, Framework Ventures, Pantera Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures and Morgan Creek Digital. The raise brings Meanwhile’s total funding to more than $180 million. Sam Altman is also among its backers.

The company said the round follows a surge in demand for its Bitcoin life insurance policies outside the US, particularly in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, amid broader macroeconomic instability.

“Wealthy families around the world already hold Bitcoin. What they haven’t had is a regulated way to pass it on,” Zac Townsend, Meanwhile’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.  

“Brokers came to us because their clients kept asking. This round lets us keep up with them.”

In early 2026, Meanwhile launched BTC Life 1-Pay, a single-premium whole life policy aimed at high-net-worth clients outside the US. It is the company’s second product line, after BTC 10-Pay, which is designed for US taxpayers.

Under BTC Life 1-Pay, a client pays one premium in Bitcoin and receives a guaranteed death benefit in Bitcoin for life. The policy’s value grows in Bitcoin, and after the first year the owner can borrow up to 90% of it, with no repayment schedule and no margin calls.

Policies can be owned by individuals, trusts or companies, which the company says makes them suited to succession and estate planning.

Since launch, Meanwhile has signed 15 brokers serving wealthy families, including in Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and Switzerland. Partners include Lioner, an insurance, trust and family office group with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Zurich, and Apeiron Group, a marketplace for high-net-worth life insurance.

“We’re reaching a turning point where more high-net-worth clients are asking not just how to hold Bitcoin and digital assets, but how to plan around them and ultimately transfer that wealth to the next generation,” said Justin Man, CEO of Apeiron Group. Digital assets.

Meanwhile said its net long-term underwriting income has already passed last year’s total and is on track to more than double in 2026. The company did not disclose specific figures.

“Meanwhile owns every layer of a regulated life insurer and builds it like an AI-enabled startup,” said Stefan Cohen, partner at Bain Capital Crypto. “The growth this year proves the model, and we’re glad to back them again.” 

The company’s operating entity, Meanwhile Insurance Bitcoin (Bermuda) Limited, holds the first Class IILT license granted by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. It received the license in July 2024 after two years in the regulator’s sandbox.

The insurer’s balance sheet, reserves and audited financial statements are all denominated in Bitcoin. Policyholder Bitcoin is held with regulated institutional custodians.

This post Bitcoin Life Insurer Meanwhile Raises $37.5M as Wealthy Families Look to Pass On Their BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

‘We Know Where It Is’: Treasury Secretary Threatens To Freeze $1B of Iran’s Crypto

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the American authorities will soon seize $1 billion in crypto from Iran. 

Speaking on Newsmax’s NPolicy Summit in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Bessent added that economic sanctions on the Middle Eastern country were working. 

Iran has been using bitcoin — and other cryptocurrencies — to skirt around U.S. sanctions. The U.S. in April started targeting crypto wallets linked to the Iranian regime, Bessent said at the time. 

“What we have done has never been seen before,” Bessent said Thursday on Iranian sanctions. 

“We’re probably going to seize $1 billion of crypto this week,” he continued. “We know where it is. We are isolating them. We did have a maximum pressure campaign, now we have an absolute isolation campaign and it’s working.”

Bessent didn’t reveal what cryptocurrencies the U.S. will seize or how. 

It would be very hard — if not impossible — for the U.S. to freeze Iran’s bitcoin unless it keeps it on a centralized exchange. 

Bitcoin, being censorship resistant, cannot be frozen. But many other cryptocurrencies, including Tether’s USDT, can. Bessent previously said the feds had seized Iran’s crypto in the form of the popular stablecoin. 

Iran started a bitcoin-backed insurance service for its counties shipping companies earlier this year.

The Financial Times last month reported that the Middle Eastern country was using bitcoin to settle cross-border transactions through Iranian crypto exchanges after the central bank advised its countrymen to do anything necessary to help the economy.    

U.S. President Donald Trump revived his “maximum pressure” campaign weeks after returning to office. A national security memorandum signed in February 2025 put the Treasury on a sustained campaign against Iran’s shadow banking, money laundering and sanctions-evasion networks.

This post ‘We Know Where It Is’: Treasury Secretary Threatens To Freeze $1B of Iran’s Crypto first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Here’s How Not To Screw up Your Bitcoin Privacy

Just one transaction can compromise years of discreet Bitcoin activity, Cake Wallet’s chief operating officer has warned. 

Speaking on the Bitcoin Rails podcast this week, activist Seth for Privacy talked about different ways of protecting one’s privacy when using Bitcoin and said that focusing on privacy was a must for the West. 

Bitcoin privacy is a hot topic again ever since the developers of private coin mixer Samourai Wallet went on trial last year and were subsequently imprisoned. 

But just this week, the U.S. Department of Treasury scrapped two long-stalled crypto surveillance proposals, handing a major win to privacy advocates and the digital asset industry.

“If you ever spend your no-KYC coins with one of your KYC coins — which if you just let the wallet do its thing, it could do because it doesn’t know the difference — you immediately connect all of the non-KYC Bitcoin that you spend in that with your identity,” Seth said, referring to UTXO management, also called “coin control” by some wallets. 

Bitcoin wallets don’t hold a single balance but a collection of separate unspent transaction outputs — UTXOs — each one a discrete “coin” from a specific past transaction. 

When you send a payment larger than any one UTXO, the wallet picks several and combines them as inputs to the same transaction — an easy mistake to make, Seth highlighted. 

Seth added that unlike in the global South, where people have experienced more oppressive states, citizens in the West will need to “feel pain” in order to realize how important privacy is.

Still, he added that attitudes were changing and people were getting more serious about protecting their privacy. 

“It has been shifting, in the last five or six years a lot of people — even in the West — are starting to think [privacy] really matters, we really need to think about this seriously now,” he said. 

Cake Wallet is a privacy-oriented, self-custody, open-source wallet. The wallet earlier this year integrated Bitcoin’s Lightning Network into its platform. 

Using the second layer solution is not only faster and cheaper, it also offers more privacy than Bitcoin’s main chain. 

While Cake Wallet supports other cryptocurrencies, including privacy coin Monero, Seth for Privacy added that he’d love it if the digital coin didn’t exist. 

“If Bitcoin’s privacy got good enough that you could use it and have at least almost as good privacy as Monero without massive hoops to jump through, and Monero ceased to exist, that’s fine,” he said. 

“I would much rather the thing that more people use has better privacy than a more niche tool that has perfect privacy, and that’s something that less people are using because it’s less well known.”

This post Here’s How Not To Screw up Your Bitcoin Privacy first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin ETFs Shed $729M in Two Days as Investors Reverse Course

U.S. investors this week reversed course, cashing out $729 million from spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds — putting downward pressure on the leading cryptocurrency’s price. 

Funds managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, and ARK 21-Shares all experienced significant outflows on Wednesday and Thursday, according to data from Farside Investors. 

Investors had started the week by selling close to $90 million in shares but then bought nearly $119 million on Tuesday. 

The rest of the week has seen outflows following news that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates. Other negative news includes the price of Brent crude jumping following renewed attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. 

U.S. President Trump also hinted that talks with Iran weren’t bearing fruit — a sign war in the Middle East could continue. 

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at a little over $82,688, down more than 3% over a seven-day period. The leading cryptocurrency has rebounded slightly over the past day, jumping nearly 2% over 24 hours. 

Still, the coin was fast closing in on $90,000 last week. Investors are expecting decent returns as the month dubbed “Uptober” has historically delivered for bitcoin speculators. 

The price of bitcoin has been particularly sensitive to geopolitical headwinds this year — especially since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, leading to an oil price surge. 

Oil prices going up tend to lead investors to bet on the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. And with higher interest rates comes less liquidity for the price of bitcoin to do well. 

Still, that’s not always the case: the Fed last month talked tough on getting inflation down and raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point and bitcoin’s price rose in the following days. 

Bitcoin’s price is 34% below the all-time high of $126,080 it touched in October. It has spent most of 2026 in a bear market but analysts are now increasingly pointing to evidence of a bull market following a rally in August and September. 

This post Bitcoin ETFs Shed $729M in Two Days as Investors Reverse Course first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Ledger Warns Buyers Not to Set Up Wallets From Reseller After Users Report Losses

Hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has said that it is investigating loss of user funds after customers in South East Asia reported issues with devices bought from a reseller. 

The Paris-based company on Friday advised customers who’d bought from vendor CryptoBilis within the last 90 days to not set up their devices. 

Ledger did not reveal how much money users had lost but one blockchain investigator, Specter, wrote on X that he’d traced theft addresses following social media posts and that over $86 million had been lost. 

The issue comes following a number of data breaches this year in the crypto world and a huge hack of popular Coldcard hardware wallet devices in July. 

“Ledger is investigating reports of loss of funds from users in South East Asia who purchased products from a reseller named CryptoBilis,” Ledger said via its support X account. 

Ledger added that it had asked CryptoBilis to pause all sales and shipments of Ledger devices.

“If you have set up your Ledger device, consider moving assets to a new Ledger signer (with new seed). We will continue to inform customers of updates as the investigation progresses,” the company said. 

In a statement to Bitcoin Magazine, Ledger said that based on the information to date, the incident is isolated specifically to this reseller in this specific market. 

“No reports were made of products purchased directly from Ledger, and Ledger’s infrastructure, systems and services were not compromised,” the company added. 

CryptoBilis is a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based hardware wallet vendor, according to its website. The company did not immediately respond to questions from Bitcoin Magazine. 

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

The products, made by Canadian company Coinkite, had a firmware bug which led to faulty seed generation, allowing hackers to essentially guess investor seedphrases. 

Galaxy Research said in the months following the attack various attackers were able to exploit the bug independently. 

In a separate incident, hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor last month reported that close to 81,000 customers had their details leaked after its third-party fulfillment partner had data stolen. 

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

This post Ledger Warns Buyers Not to Set Up Wallets From Reseller After Users Report Losses first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

The Fed can stop raising rates before inflation reaches 2% if officials believe the economy's already heading there without another increase.

September's meeting left most unconvinced, with strong spending and persistent price increases outweighing the strain expensive borrowing was putting on parts of the economy.

The minutes released Oct. 7 explain the thinking behind that month's unanimous decision to raise its main interest rate to 3.75%-4%.

Most participants expected another hike by year-end, but their reasons differed: many saw higher rates as insurance against inflation sticking around, while others thought the economy would need higher rates anyway.

Those views can overlap, but they leave different amounts of room for persuasion. Evidence that temporary price increases are fading could reassure someone seeking insurance, while an official who thinks spending is too strong would also want to see people and businesses spending less freely.

That discussion helps explain what could stop another hike, although officials didn't agree on a set of conditions that would rule it out.

Cheaper gasoline won't do all the work

Higher rates make borrowing more expensive and saving more attractive, discouraging some spending and making it harder for businesses to charge more. The effects take time, and they don't reach everyone equally: homebuyers may pull back while companies with plenty of cash keep investing.

The Fed can't produce oil or remove an import tax, so raising borrowing costs won't fix the shortages behind some price increases. It can reduce spending enough to make those increases harder to pass along, lowering the risk that an initial jump in costs turns into persistent inflation across the economy.

In September, officials described higher energy costs alongside heavy spending on the equipment and data centers needed for artificial intelligence.

Some businesses appeared better able to pass their costs to customers, and several participants pointed to continued price increases in services other than housing. Cheaper fuel would help those businesses, but customers willing to keep spending could still let them raise other prices.

Repeated reports showing slower price increases across different purchases would give the Fed more reason to wait. Inflation falling just means prices are rising more slowly, so groceries can still feel expensive while the data improves. Officials would look for evidence that businesses are losing the ability or need to keep charging more.

They'd also need to separate economic improvement from revisions to how it's measured. The minutes noted that a planned revision to the inflation calculation would reduce how much software prices and investment-management fees added to the reported rate.

Better measurement can improve policy decisions, but a lower reading from a revised calculation doesn't mean businesses have simply reduced their price increases.

Officials thought people still expected inflation to settle around the 2% goal over time, although they worried that more years above target could lead workers to seek larger pay increases and businesses to plan bigger price increases.

Slower price increases across more of the economy, with people still expecting inflation to come down, would give officials less reason to raise rates as a precaution before the target is reached.

The jobs market doesn't have to collapse to count

The Fed's responsibility to support employment limits how far it should go in making borrowing more expensive.

In September, participants generally saw steady employment with relatively few people out of work, and most thought it had strengthened somewhat, giving the Fed room to act against inflation.

Some said pay was rising fast enough for inflation to return to 2%, or that the jobs market wasn't currently driving inflation. Several noted that hiring and layoffs were both unusually low, while people out of work had difficulty finding another job.

Low layoffs can make employment look healthy to someone who already has a job, while weak hiring makes it miserable for someone seeking one. If employers start cutting staff before hiring improves, people who lose their jobs have fewer places to go, potentially turning a stable unemployment rate into a much less reassuring picture.

Repeated unemployment increases alongside broader layoffs would make another hike harder to justify, even if inflation hadn't improved as much as officials wanted. One disappointing jobs report could reflect temporary conditions or be revised, so evidence across several reports would carry more weight than a single number.

Slower inflation with stable employment would give the Fed a better reason to stop. In September, officials generally saw roughly equal chances of employment doing better or worse than expected, while inflation seemed more at risk of being too high.

Continued weak hiring or more job losses would give them reason to reconsider without waiting for a recession.

Your mortgage rate can feel expensive while money still flows

Several officials thought interest rates were doing little to slow the economy, despite expensive mortgages and strain on lower-income households.

Many businesses could still borrow money, investment in AI was strong, and stock-market gains were supporting spending among wealthier households.

People struggling to buy a home and the companies financing new projects experienced the same economy very differently. The Fed has to judge whether their combined spending is slowing enough to bring inflation down, which is why painful housing borrowing costs don't automatically settle the decision.

Economists describe an interest rate that neither speeds up nor slows down the economy as neutral, but they have to estimate where it is. Two officials had raised their estimates of that rate, meaning they thought a higher interest rate was needed to slow the economy by the same amount.

Lenders becoming more cautious and spending slowing down would provide evidence that existing borrowing costs were doing more of the work.

Market rates can also rise without another Fed hike, although longer-term loan rates don't automatically move in step with the short-term rate the Fed controls. Officials would need to see those costs actually slowing borrowing and spending.

Lower inflation with employment holding up could give investors reason to expect cheaper borrowing while keeping them willing to own Bitcoin and other assets with large price swings. If job losses and difficulty getting loans instead persuaded the Fed to pause, investors could be selling those assets to keep more money in cash at the same time.

Holding rates steady wouldn't promise cuts or make financing cheap again. Officials meet next on Oct. 27–28, and these minutes just describe their September judgment.

Evidence that price increases are slowing without another rate hike would give them a reason to wait, while evidence that more people are losing jobs would make another increase harder to defend, with much less for Bitcoin investors to celebrate.

The post Inflation target of 2% may not stop the next Fed rate freeze appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky has agreed to a permanent ban from the securities, commodities, and crypto business under a New York settlement announced on Oct. 9.

The agreement also sets conditional state payment obligations of up to $35 million, without creating a new payout to Celsius creditors.

The deal resolves New York’s civil suit, filed in January 2023, and adds state obligations to a separate federal criminal case. Mashinsky is serving a 12-year prison sentence.

What the $35 million figure means

The first obligation is $25 million in damages to New York. Under paragraph 2 of the annexed consent order, that obligation is deemed satisfied by a qualifying $10 million payment to the US Department of Justice under paragraph 11 of his federal forfeiture order.

DOJ payments made after May 20, 2025, may count dollar for dollar toward that $10 million. If the specified payment is not made, New York's Attorney General is due the entire $ 25 million.

The second obligation is a separate $10 million monetary judgment payable to New York. Paragraph 3 says it is deemed satisfied by completion of Mashinsky’s imprisonment under the federal judgment entered May 12, 2025, subject to express exceptions.

Those exceptions cover a sentence overturned or reduced by a court, including through a Section 2255 challenge. The clause also lists compassionate release, good-time credits, earned-time credits, First Step Act early release, and home confinement through a Bureau of Prisons program.

Beyond the payment conditions, New York describes the industry ban as permanent. The agreed restrictions cover securities and commodities businesses, including crypto, and roles such as broker, investment adviser, manager, officer and consultant. They also prohibit investment advice distributed for compensation or economic benefit.

The terms retain an exception for Mashinsky’s own personal purchases or sales. The stipulation also records his admission that he misled investors about Celsius’s regulatory approval and his own sales of Celsius’s CEL token.

The court sentenced Mashinsky on May 8, 2025, and the stipulation records federal forfeiture ordered at $48.4 million.

The New York Attorney General says Celsius distributed more than $3.4 billion to creditors as of August 2026. Qualifying DOJ payments would establish compliance with one settlement condition, but wouldn't establish another creditor distribution.

The post Celsius founder faces lifetime ban, but can trade his own crypto appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Solana has doubled its targeted block-production frequency after activating 200-millisecond slots on mainnet, completing a months-long effort to accelerate the blockchain.

The Oct. 9 upgrade reduces Solana's original 400-millisecond slot target by half, allowing the network to create five block-production opportunities per second instead of 2.5. It also shortens the time required to complete a network epoch to approximately 24 hours from 48 hours.

Anza, the developer behind Solana's Agave validator client, confirmed the activation, declaring that the SIMD-0525 upgrade had been completed.

“Blocks land twice as often as they did at genesis. An epoch now takes about a day instead of two,” Anza stated.

Jacob Creech, the Solana Foundation's vice president of technology, also celebrated the milestone, saying the network continues to improve with successive software releases.

“Solana continues to improve release after release, proving to be the best place to build,” Creech said, before identifying Alpenglow as the network's next major upgrade.

Early performance data indicated that the change was already producing faster slots, although the network had yet to consistently reach its new target.

CryptoSlate's sampling of Solana's public mainnet RPC showed an average of approximately 222 milliseconds across 1,413 slots following activation, compared with roughly 268 milliseconds under the previous 250ms target.

The latest change completes a four-stage rollout that began in August, when Solana first reduced its slot target to 350 milliseconds. Subsequent reductions to 300ms and 250ms prepared validators for Friday's final adjustment.

Faster slots put Solana's next upgrade in focus

The shorter intervals could improve transaction responsiveness for applications operating on Solana, particularly decentralized trading platforms and market makers that depend on rapid updates to prices and orders.

Under the SIMD-0525 proposal, each validator's nominal four-slot block-production window has fallen to 800 milliseconds from the original 1.6 seconds, reducing how long individual validators can control transaction inclusion.

However, the upgrade does not automatically double Solana's transaction-processing capacity. Developers proportionally reduced the computational budget available within each slot, keeping the network's approximate execution capacity per second unchanged.

The faster cadence also introduces operational adjustments.

According to the Solana Foundation, transaction blockhashes now have an expiration window of approximately 30 seconds, compared with 60 seconds under the original configuration. That gives applications using offline signing or delayed transaction submission less time before transactions require refreshing.

Infrastructure providers must also accommodate more frequent blocks, while validators face tighter deadlines for producing and propagating them.

Those demands make sustained performance and skipped-slot rates important measures of the upgrade's success.

Meanwhile, community attention now shifts to Alpenglow, Solana's planned consensus overhaul targeting transaction finality of approximately 150 milliseconds, compared with roughly 12.8 seconds under the existing TowerBFT system.

Alpenglow has undergone deployment on Solana's testnet and devnet, but a mainnet activation date has not been announced.

The post Solana doubles block production speed to 200ms as network prepares for Alpenglow upgrade appeared first on CryptoSlate.

THORChain's TRON operations were interrupted on Oct. 9 after a USDT vault blocklist, according to reports by its co-founder Chad Barraford and researcher Khal. The researcher put the affected balance at about 1.45 million USDT.

Both accounts later reversed the restrictions, according to updates from both accounts. At 3:35 p.m. UTC, Barraford said the addresses appeared unfrozen, and trading would resume soon. At 3:58 p.m. UTC, Khal reported that TRON USDT swaps had resumed. The earlier payout queue describes the interruption before the reported resumption of swaps.

In his initial analysis, Khal reported that block 86958330 blocklisted four of THORChain's six TRON vaults. Those vaults held 93% of the protocol's TRON USDT, concentrating the disruption in the balances needed to process payments on that route.

He reported that TRON trading, transaction signing, and liquidity-provider actions halted about 27 minutes later, with roughly $363,000 in payouts queued during the freeze.

Barraford said the protocol received no communication before the action and didn't know why it happened. Khal argued that the vaults may have been caught in a broader blocklist that included roughly 30 other wallets.

The incident follows scrutiny of how the protocol handles illicit flows. On Oct. 8, THORChain's September trading surge coincided with Bitget-hack-linked activity, and the protocol refused to selectively block addresses.

Two layers of control

THORChain's vault documentation describes accounts managed by validator nodes that hold assets on external blockchains and handle incoming funds and outgoing transactions.

Distributing control of those accounts among validators determines who can authorize a payment, while the tokens inside them remain subject to their issuer's restrictions.

THORChain itself drew a related distinction in an Oct. 1 blog recap: node operators can pause a chain or the whole protocol for safety, but cannot selectively remove an individual swap.

Meanwhile, Tether says its wallet-freezing policy follows OFAC's sanctions list and extends to secondary-market wallets. Its power to restrict USDT transfers operates separately from the validator controls governing THORChain's vaults.

The operational dependency remains: distributing the authority to sign transactions does not remove Tether's ability to freeze USDT held in the accounts those transactions use.

The post Tether freezes $1.4M in TRON vaults and THORChain stalls appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum's transaction fees have burned enough ETH to offset just 2.07% of the new coins issued in 2026, according to an Oct. 9 supply ledger.

After fee burn, validator penalties, and other destruction, the network has added approximately 778,413 ETH, increasing supply by about 0.64% from the window's opening level.

A larger gas limit can spread the necessary fee spending across more activity, lowering the required fee per gas and creating a hurdle for holders that expect scalability to make ETH scarcer. Developers pursue a conditional 200 million maximum gas goal after the Glamsterdam upgrade.

Using one current finalized accounting sample, an illustration puts the execution base fee needed to offset gross issuance at about 13.85 gwei with today's 60 million gas limit, or 4.16 gwei with a hypothetical 200 million limit.

Both require roughly 2,992 ETH of daily burn under the model's assumptions.

What the 2026 ledger shows

The ethsupply.fyi retained ledger covers Jan. 1 at 00:00:11 UTC through Oct. 9 at 15:44:23 UTC. It reports 796,623.377 ETH of gross issuance against 16,524.553 ETH destroyed through execution and blob transaction fees.

A further 1,685.919 ETH was removed through consensus penalties, with 0.059 ETH in other execution destruction. Subtracting these components leaves 778,412.846 ETH in net additions.

Those categories explain why the fee-burn offset is 2.074%, while the offset from all destruction is 2.286%. The latter includes penalties that do not represent customers paying for Ethereum activity. Treating the larger figure as transaction-fee demand would overstate how much issuance users have offset.

The provider's methodology separates newly created validator rewards from execution base fees, blob fees, penalties, and rare destruction through SELFDESTRUCT. Transfers, staking deposits and withdrawals preserve supply while moving existing ETH between accounts or accounting layers.

Its same-cutoff supply snapshot reports approximately 122.116 million ETH. Subtracting the net additions implies about 121.338 million ETH at the window's opening, producing the roughly 0.64% increase.

The 2.074% offset covers the cumulative 2026 window, while a current daily burn rate would require a separate daily comparison.

Ethereum's EIP-1559 fee mechanism burns the execution base fee on gas actually consumed. Priority fees go to block producers. Blob base fees also destroy ETH, while MEV payments and application revenue do not automatically become protocol burn.

The base fee, quoted in gwei, determines the ETH burned for each unit consumed. With an elasticity multiplier of two, a 60 million gas maximum corresponds to a 30 million target. A hypothetical 200 million maximum would imply a 100 million target if that rule remains unchanged.

A finalized mainnet beacon block at slot 15,394,656 contains execution block 26,155,767, timestamped Oct. 9 at 15:31:35 UTC, with a 60 million maximum. The matching execution-block record shows a base fee of approximately 0.335 gwei.

The supply consequence depends on consumed gas multiplied by its base fee, plus blob burn and other destruction. An unused increase in capacity cannot burn ETH, nor does a larger transaction count by itself establish greater burn if the transactions require less gas or pay lower base fees.

CryptoSlate’s Oct. 1 coverage already concluded that Ethereum’s 200 million gas target is conditional, validator-dependent, and not an automatic new limit. A Sept. 23 fee comparison highlighted the missing matched-period issuance denominator.

The same burn budget at two limits

For a current illustration, ethsupply.fyi's finalized-epoch accounting snapshot for epoch 481082, as of Oct. 9 at 15:31:23 UTC, records 13.296472924 ETH of gross issuance over 32 slots. At 12 seconds per slot, that is a 384-second sample.

The calculation holds that issuance pace constant, assumes every slot produces a block and consumes gas at the target, and initially sets blob burn, penalties, and other destruction to zero. The resulting thresholds describe the execution base-fee burn needed to offset gross issuance under those assumptions.

The daily figure extends the single sample across 225 epochs, with the resulting daily burn budget applying to this hypothetical day. Daily issuance and burn would require a full day's observations, as the larger gas target lowers the required base fee because the same ETH budget is divided across more consumed gas.

The more complete zero-net-growth calculation credits the sample's 0.016575391 ETH of penalties and 0.000442673483 ETH of blob burn. Holding those amounts constant lowers the execution thresholds slightly, to about 13.83 gwei and 4.15 gwei. The corresponding total transaction-fee burn budget after penalties is approximately 2,988 ETH per modeled day.

If gas consumed stays unchanged when the maximum rises, the balancing fee does not fall. The half-target row illustrates the arithmetic sensitivity to consumed gas, but EIP-1559 reduces base fees over successive blocks when consumption remains below target.

The live provider snapshot reports approximately 43.754 million ETH in active effective stake across 853,325 active validators. Ethereum's supply explanation identifies staking participation as a determinant of issuance, so a future threshold needs a fresh issuance sample alongside gas and blob usage.

Glamsterdam is a capacity scenario

The Ethereum Foundation's May 11 protocol update described 200 million gas as a credible post-Glamsterdam target. The upgrade's proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists aim to support greater throughput, alongside changes to gas accounting.

The Foundation's testnet announcement on Sept. 28 scheduled Sepolia for Oct. 6 at 13:53:36 UTC while leaving Hoodi and mainnet activation dates undecided. The official roadmap leaves the mainnet date unconfirmed.

Changes to the gas charged for execution and state growth mean a gas unit may buy different work after the upgrade. The modeled limits cannot be translated directly into proportionally more identical transactions, users, or burned ETH.

For holders, the relevant signal is whether burned fees and other destruction approach or exceed issuance over a matched interval. More available gas creates room for activity, but the shrinking-supply case needs that activity to generate enough aggregate burned fees.

Layer-2 (L2) blockchain growth and staking balances distinguish from fresh ETH purchases and settlement spending. The same distinction applies here, since existing holders can stake, and applications can grow, without those measures alone establishing the required burn.

The October ledger shows supply increasing while developers work toward greater capacity. A sustained shift toward shrinking supply would appear in consumed gas, execution base fees, blob burn, and stake-dependent issuance together.

The post ETH fee burns cover just 2% of new coins printed in 2026 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The crypto market is finishing a rough week. Bitcoin sits at $82,768 after a 2.2% weekly dip, Ethereum is down 7.1% to $2,493, and Solana, XRP and BNB are all nursing losses between 2% and 8%. Twelve of the top 17 coins by market cap closed the week in the red.

That makes the exceptions stand out. NEAR Protocol and Cardano were the only two large caps to post a weekly gain, and Zcash is still the second-best performer of 2026 in the top 20, despite a pullback. When the whole market sells off and a handful of coins refuse to follow, that relative strength is often where the next leg up starts.

Here are the three coins to watch next week, with their current stats and the catalysts that could send them higher. Live prices for every coin in this article are on the CryptoTicker crypto prices page.

Stats as of Saturday, 10 October 2026.

Why Is NEAR Protocol the Top Coin to Watch Next Week?

$NEAR is the strongest coin in the top 20 right now, full stop. It gained 7.98% in the last 24 hours and 11.63% over the week while almost everything else bled, and it is up 245% year to date. At $5.22 it has climbed from under $2 in early September, one of the most explosive monthly moves in its history.

The difference between NEAR and most momentum plays is that this rally has a real spot buyer behind it. Bitwise launched the first spot NEAR ETF in the US (ticker NRR) at the start of October, and the fund pulled in roughly $58 million in its first week. ETF creations require actual NEAR purchases, so every inflow day tightens the float. Add the growth of NEAR Intents, the chain abstraction layer that routes cross-chain swaps, and the AI narrative that keeps dragging capital toward NEAR, and you have a story that institutions can actually buy.

The risk is obvious: NEAR Intents suffered a $3.8 million exploit on 8 October. The team pledged full reimbursement and the price shrugged it off within a day, which is itself a bullish tell. But a rally this fast is full of short-term holders sitting on triple-digit gains, and the 2022 bagholders between $6 and $10 will be looking for exits.

• Levels to watch: $5.60 to $6.20 is the resistance band that capped every bounce since 2022. A clean weekly close above $6.20 opens the door to $7.30 and $8.30 on the Fibonacci extensions. Support sits at $4.50; lose that and the move is probably over for now.
• Why it could explode: continued NRR inflows, a second ETF filing from another issuer, or a market-wide bounce would all land on a coin that is already outperforming in a down tape.

Can Cardano Finally Break Out Above $0.26?

$Cardano is the comeback story of the week. ADA broke out to a multi-month high near $0.28 on Monday, got slammed back to $0.23 by Thursday as Bitcoin slid and Treasury yields rose, and then roared back 6.73% in the last 24 hours to $0.2560. It is one of only two large caps in the green over seven days, up 5.21%, while remaining 23% down for the year. That combination of a deep YTD discount and fresh weekly strength is exactly what a bottoming chart looks like.

What makes this dip different from the summer lows is that the network is getting busier while the price was falling. Santiment data showed Cardano daily active addresses climbing to around 27,500 on 7 October even as ADA dropped 13%, a divergence that usually resolves upward. Whale wallets have been accumulating, the RealFi push launched on 1 October, the Mastercard tie-up is live, and a fee-cut proposal that would make the chain cheaper to use has moved to a vote.

The chart is also in better shape than the headlines suggest. ADA is trading above its 50-day, 100-day and 200-day exponential moving averages, and the 20-day average sits below the price, so the short-term trend still points up. Thursday's flush cleared out leveraged longs and reset funding, which is often the fuel for the next leg.

• Levels to watch: $0.258 to $0.263 is the resistance zone that has rejected ADA repeatedly. A daily close above $0.263 targets $0.27 first and the Monday high near $0.28 next. On the downside, $0.24 is the line that has to hold, with $0.23 as the last defence.
• Why it could explode: ADA is the most oversold of the three on a yearly basis, with the biggest short base to squeeze. A green week for Bitcoin would likely send ADA to the top of the leaderboard, as Friday's 6.7% bounce already showed.

Is the Zcash Dip a Buying Opportunity Before the NU7 Upgrade?

$Zcash is the contrarian pick. ZEC is down 6.86% on the week and dropped more than 10% on Friday alone, yet it is still up 133% year to date and sits at $1,225 with a $20.7 billion market cap, bigger than Dogecoin. The privacy-coin trade that defined 2026 has cooled, but the pipeline of catalysts for the coming weeks is the fullest of any coin on this list.

Start with the calendar. The NU7 network upgrade passed its testnet activation on 6 October and the mainnet activation height is confirmed for 20 October. NU7 brings a 300% speed boost to shielded transactions, lays the groundwork for Zcash Shielded Assets and introduces a sustainability mechanism that redirects 60% of fees into a long-term miner reserve. Traders tend to front-run upgrades of this size, and next week is the last full week before it goes live.

Then there is the institutional angle. Gemini's Winklevoss twins filed with the SEC on 6 October for a spot Zcash ETF that would trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WINK. THORChain switched on native ZEC swaps on 8 October, giving the coin direct cross-chain liquidity without a wrapped token. And the Zcash developers just set a January target for quantum-resistant payments, a narrative that is only getting louder.

The risk is that privacy coins remain a regulatory lightning rod, and the existing ZEC fund has posted a run of October outflows. A sharp rally like this one also leaves a lot of air below: ZEC was trading under $100 as recently as a year ago.

• Levels to watch: $1,180 to $1,200, Friday's low, is the support that has to hold. A reclaim of $1,350 puts the recent range high at $1,420 back in play, and above that the September highs around $1,560 open up. The 50-day EMA near $1,095 is the deeper support if the market keeps sliding.
• Why it could explode: an oversold bounce into a confirmed hard fork date, a live ETF filing and fresh DEX liquidity is a strong setup. If Bitcoin stabilises, ZEC has historically been one of the fastest coins to recover its losses.

What Should Traders Watch Next Week?

All three setups depend on the same thing: Bitcoin holding $80,000. BTC is at $82,768 and sitting just above that round number after a week of ETF outflows and rising Treasury yields. If it holds, the relative strength in NEAR and ADA and the oversold bounce in ZEC have room to run. If it breaks, even the strongest altcoins will get dragged lower before they can rally. Market-wide data such as total market cap, Bitcoin dominance and the Fear and Greed index is on the CryptoTicker charts page.

The quick checklist for the week ahead:

• NEAR: daily NRR ETF flow numbers and a weekly close above $6.20
• Cardano: a daily close above $0.263, the fee-cut vote result and the Santiment active-address trend
• Zcash: holding $1,180, positioning ahead of the 20 October NU7 activation and any SEC movement on the WINK ETF filing

Of the three, NEAR has the clearest momentum, Cardano has the most room to squeeze and Zcash has the biggest catalyst on the calendar.

On Saturday 17 October 2026 the Bored Ape Yacht Club celebrates its ApeFest, this time at the Beeple Studios in Charleston, South Carolina. The official site apefest.com gives the evening as 7pm to midnight local time, which is 1am to 6am on Sunday in Germany. Around the evening there are community side events from Thursday to Sunday, from ice skating to a poker tournament.

We are part of the Ape community ourselves. And we will say it openly: in our circle in Germany we know almost nobody making the trip to Charleston this year. That is not a verdict on a city or on the people who are flying over. It is feedback from the German community to Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and it runs: right now there are more disappointed holders than excited ones.

ApeFest 2026 in Charleston: date, venue and tickets

ApeFest 2026 takes place on 17 October at the Beeple Studios, the studio and event grounds of the digital artist Beeple in Charleston. Admission goes to holders of Bored Apes and Mutant Apes, with one ticket per NFT. According to reports by the community paper Bored Ape Gazette and by EGamers, holders put down a deposit of $99 for this, refunded once the ticket is scanned on site, while guests pay a fixed price. Last year in Las Vegas the deposit was still $169. The check on whether somebody really owns an Ape NFT has been handled this year by the service Glyph.

The programme includes a short question-and-answer session with James Hall, who runs the Otherside metaverse project at Yuga. Yuga has not signalled any major announcements in advance.

From spectacle to small stage: what became of ApeFest

ApeFest was once the big event of the NFT world. In 2022 in New York, Snoop Dogg and Eminem were on stage. In 2023 the festival moved to Hong Kong, with around 2,000 guests from 60 countries, and made headlines because visitors complained of eye pain after the evening. Yuga Labs later attributed that, according to Fortune and other media, to UV light in part of the hall. In 2024 ApeFest saw the launch of Yuga's own blockchain ApeChain; in 2025 it was held in Las Vegas. In 2026 it is one evening in an artist's studio.

Smaller does not have to mean worse. A party in an artist's studio actually suits the collection's origins better than an arena. But the shrinking mirrors what has happened across the ecosystem, and that is the part the German community is talking about.

Yuga Labs in 2026: a company being rebuilt, an ecosystem on a low flame

Yuga Labs has rebuilt a great deal over the past eighteen months. The ApeCoin DAO, through which APE holders used to vote on grants, was dissolved in 2025 and replaced by the company ApeCo, which Yuga controls. Yuga gave up the trademark rights to CryptoPunks and Moonbirds in 2025 in order to concentrate on the Apes and Otherside. Since 24 April 2026 Michael Figge has led the company, with co-founder Greg Solano becoming chairman.

Otherside, Yuga's metaverse, has been open to everyone since 12 November 2025, in the browser, with an email address or a wallet. On 9 September 2026 Yuga announced a resource economy with 74 raw materials on the blockchain; there is no date for it. Player numbers have not been published by Yuga as far as we know. On ApeChain, capital locked stood at around $3.1 million on 26 September according to DefiLlama, more than 80 percent below the high of late 2024. ApeCoin was recently trading around 99 percent below its all-time high. We put the figures together in detail three weeks ago in our piece on ApeCoin and ApeChain before ApeFest.

On top of this came a scare for many holders in September: attackers exploited old marketplace approvals connected with Limit Break's payment processor to drain NFTs and WETH, on ApeChain too. Yuga helped bring more than 23,000 NFTs to safety. Anyone who has not yet cleaned up their approvals should do so before trading again. Valuable NFTs sit most safely on your own hardware wallet, and our hardware wallet comparison gives an overview of the models.

Why the German Ape community is staying home

What we hear in our circle can be summed up in three sentences.

What is missing is the new. For months little has come from Yuga that surprises or excites. Announcements such as the resource economy in Otherside remain without a date. At a time when small teams build with AI in weeks what used to take years, that pace looks out of step with the age.

What is missing is what binds the community. A say over ApeCoin disappeared with the DAO. Joint projects that holders can contribute to have become rare. We no longer know anybody in Germany who plays Otherside regularly.

The journey is long and the value unclear. A flight to Charleston, a hotel and several days of time for one evening that nobody knows will amount to more than a party: for most holders in Europe that does not add up. There has never been an ApeFest in Europe.

What Yuga Labs could make of ApeFest

Disappointment is feedback, not a farewell. The Ape community is still one of the strongest communities in the crypto market, and many holders would join in again immediately if there were a reason. What would help, as we see it:

1. A clear roadmap for Otherside with dates and published player numbers, so that holders can see whether the project is growing.
2. A new form of participation after the end of the DAO, so that APE holders have a say again instead of only watching.
3. A gathering in Europe or official regional meetups, instead of staking everything on one evening in the United States.
4. Applications on ApeChain that people actually use, instead of new collectibles.

Whether Yuga delivers any of that on 17 October, we will see on Sunday morning. Anyone who does not want to sleep through the announcements will find them on the Bored Ape Yacht Club's X channel. If you want to buy or sell NFTs from the Ape world now, the marketplaces and their fees are in our NFT marketplace comparison. ApeCoin itself is best traded in Germany through a provider from our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

ApeFest 2026: our verdict from the German community

ApeFest 2026 is smaller, quieter and further from Europe than ever before. We wish everyone flying to Charleston a great evening. But Yuga Labs should read the empty seats from Germany for what they are: a request to build something again that brings the community together. The festival on 17 October is the chance to make a start.

Disclosure: Dennis Weidner, founder of Cryptoticker, is part of the Ape community and owns the ApeCar. This piece is a comment. (As of October 9, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Dogecoin trades at $0.086183 on Saturday morning, or €0.076928, 1.3 percent above the previous day's level. The number that will matter more to DOGE holders over the next two weeks than this daily gain, though, is a date: on Wednesday 14 October the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF will trade for the last time on the US exchange NYSE Arca under the ticker BWOW. After that the provider converts the holding into cash and pays out the remaining shareholders on 22 October. Barely eleven months after its launch, one of the first American Dogecoin funds is closing again.

This article answers three questions: what exactly happens on which day, why the wind-down can barely move the price by our calculation, and what changes for you if you are invested in DOGE from Germany. The shortest answer to the third question first: the fund that is closing was never available to you, the European route runs through a different product, and for tax purposes the two routes are not the same thing.

What happens to the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF (BWOW) on 14 October

Bitwise announced the wind-down on 10 September. In the notice the provider filed as an exhibit to a mandatory report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, it names four dates. The reasoning stays general: Bitwise is winding the fund down because the firm continuously adapts its product range to changing investor needs. Price performance, trading turnover and fund size are expressly not mentioned in the reasoning.

• 10 September 2026: announcement of the wind-down.
• 14 October 2026: last trading day on NYSE Arca; on the same day the Dogecoin held is exchanged for cash.
• 15 October 2026: before the open, no new shares are created.
• 22 October 2026: payout to the remaining shareholders, valued at the net asset value of 21 October.

A net asset value, often abbreviated to NAV, is the value of the fund's assets divided by the number of shares issued. It is the calculated price of a share and can differ from the exchange price for as long as the fund is still trading. That very divergence is why Bitwise leaves investors two routes open: sell on the exchange by the close on 14 October and you get the market price. Stay put and you get the 21 October NAV in cash on 22 October. Nobody has to act; the notice states in so many words that shareholders need take no action during the process. The original wording is in the notice filed with the SEC.

8.2 million DOGE into cash: 0.14 percent of a trading day

A fund closure sounds like selling pressure. With BWOW it is therefore worth doing the arithmetic before worrying. According to the holdings data on the fund page, the vehicle holds around 8.2 million DOGE. At today's price of $0.086183 that corresponds to a value of about $707,000. Against that stands trading turnover of $503.06 million over the past 24 hours.

The holding to be sold therefore amounts to around 0.14 percent of a single trading day. For comparison: the spread between the daily low and the daily high comes to 2.96 percent today. An order of that size disappears into the noise of an ordinary morning, even if it were executed at a single venue and without regard to price. In fact, liquidators work such positions off over the course of the day and generally use several venues for it.

Here is how the mechanism works in the background. A physically backed crypto fund holds the coins with a custodian. On a wind-down the provider instructs the custodian to sell the holding on a given date and place the proceeds in an escrow account. From there the money flows through the custodian banks to the shareholders. Price pressure arises only when the holding is large relative to daily turnover. With a bitcoin fund running into the billions that would be a serious question; at $707,000 it is not.

Dogecoin price today: $0.0862 between $0.0841 and $0.0866

The price is moving in a narrow range today. The daily low was $0.084082 and the daily high $0.086574. DOGE currently stands at $0.086183, only around 0.05 percent below the daily high and therefore at the upper edge of the day's range. Market capitalisation comes to $13.46 billion and turnover over the past 24 hours to $503.06 million.

Over a week the picture looks weaker: down 7.41 percent in seven days. Over 30 days there is a gain of 0.31 percent, so the month is effectively flat with a sharp slump in the past week. Lay the chart on those two timescales side by side and the pattern that has shaped DOGE since late summer becomes visible: weeks of sideways movement, interrupted by short, violent downward bursts.

Since 8 October: 2.6 percent recovered, the 200-day line not

On 8 October we wrote at this point about the unlimited issuance of 13.55 million new DOGE per day, at a price of around $0.087 at the time. A good deal has happened since. The price slid on 9 October to a daily level of $0.0840 and has recovered 2.6 percent since then. On 9 October, 94 percent of liquidations in the DOGE futures market also hit long positions, so the downward burst was in large part a clearing-out of leveraged buy positions rather than an exit by spot holders.

What has not changed: the 200-day line stands, by our calculation from the daily closing prices of the past 200 days, at $0.0877. That line was above the price two days ago, and it is still above it today, currently by 1.73 percent. The buying of the past 24 hours has brought the price up to that line, then, but not through it. For the regular reader that means the level we wrote about on 4 and 5 October is still unbroken and has acted as a lid twice this week.

From a launch at $0.1530: how an ETF shrinks to $722,000 in 318 days

BWOW launched on 26 November 2025, at a time when Dogecoin cost $0.1530. The price has lost 43.7 percent since. That explains part of the shrinkage, but only part: a fund that merely follows the price with an unchanged number of shares would today sit at just under 56 percent of its starting assets. According to reports, net assets stood at about $722,000 on 8 September. For that to add up, considerably more shares must have been redeemed than created in the months in between.

This second part is the real finding. An exchange-traded fund grows and shrinks not through the price but through subscriptions and redemptions. When a product sits at a fraction of a million dollars after 318 days, it has not found demand that covers its running costs. Custodian bank, custodian, auditor and exchange listing all cost money regardless of volume. Below a certain threshold the provider pays out of pocket for every day the product stays alive.

The German route is called an ETP: 21Shares, ISIN CH1431521033, 2.50 percent a year

Here lies the point that gets lost in international coverage. An ETF authorised in the United States is in practice not available to private investors in Germany, because it lacks the key information document required under EU law. German brokers therefore normally block such products for retail clients. The closure of BWOW is not taking away a product you held.

The European route runs through an ETP, an exchange-traded note backed by the coin. In legal terms an ETP is not a fund but a bearer debt security issued by the provider; the ring-fenced fund assets of a fund do not exist there, and instead the deposited cryptocurrency serves as collateral. Deutsche Börse admitted the 21Shares Dogecoin ETP to trading as of 10 April 2026, with ISIN CH1431521033, WKN A4A5WJ and product costs of 2.50 percent a year. That the product is physically backed is stated in Deutsche Börse's listing notice.

The size comparison is the most interesting part: the European ETP reports assets of around $10.06 million on the provider's page, while the US fund being wound down most recently came to around $0.72 million. The product listed in Europe is therefore roughly fourteen times the size of the American one now closing. Anyone inferring from the closure that demand for packaged Dogecoin has vanished everywhere is drawing the wrong conclusion. The 2.50 percent annual cost is no side issue in this: over a flat 30 days of the kind DOGE has just been through, the fee alone eats around 0.21 percent of the stake per month. Which other products exist in Germany, and what to watch on the spread, we have set out in our overview of crypto ETFs and ETPs in Germany.

Holding period and tax: a cash wind-down counts differently from DOGE in your own wallet

The difference between the two routes shows up at the tax office at the latest, and it is why the choice between buying directly and buying a wrapper is more than a question of convenience in Germany.

Hold Dogecoin directly in your own wallet or at an exchange and section 23 of the German Income Tax Act applies. A sale within one year of purchase is a private disposal; the gain is taxed at your personal rate but stays tax-free as long as all private disposals in a year together remain below the €1,000 exemption threshold. After a holding period of one year the gain is tax-free regardless of its size. An exemption threshold is something other than an allowance: exceed it by one euro and the entire gain becomes taxable.

With an ETP the treatment depends on the specific structure, in particular on whether the terms provide for a claim to delivery of the deposited coins. The classification is disputed in the specialist literature and has been the subject of proceedings more than once. A rule of thumb from a forum will not carry you here. Read the product terms and settle the matter with your tax adviser before you buy. Which tools take the documentation of holding periods off your hands is shown in our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

For the BWOW shareholders themselves, incidentally, this applies: a cash wind-down is a sale for tax purposes, even if the investor does nothing. The Bitwise notice says nothing about taxes, which is no surprise, because the treatment follows the investor's place of residence.

Our assessment: the closure is a demand signal, not a price signal

From the newsroom's point of view, 14 October says little about the Dogecoin price and a great deal about demand for packaged DOGE in the United States. The evidence sits above: $707,000 in holdings against $503 million of daily turnover, so 0.14 percent. Selling pressure that could be read off the chart does not come out of that. At the same time, a fund sitting below one million dollars after 318 days is a harsh verdict by the market on the format, not on the coin.

What argues against this reading should not be suppressed. The closure can draw institutional attention away from DOGE, and attention is a real price driver for a coin with no supply cap and no protocol yield. The remaining US products from Grayscale and 21Shares also operate at a scale that is more niche than breakthrough. Anyone who was betting on ETF inflows absorbing the daily new issuance has to set that assumption aside after this autumn.

Our assessment weighs up the situation and is not a buy or sell recommendation. With cryptocurrencies a total loss is possible.

200-day line at $0.0877, 50-day line at $0.0890: the price sits below both

For the coming days, two moving averages are the next levels that can be evidenced, both calculated from the daily closing prices of the past 200 and 50 days respectively. The 200-day line stands at $0.0877 and the 50-day line at $0.0890. The price sits 1.73 percent below the first and 3.23 percent below the second. For as long as both run above the price, the recovery of the past 24 hours counts technically as a countermove within a downtrend and not as a reversal.

On the downside the daily low of $0.084082 is the first marker, because it flags the zone where buyers stepped in yesterday. Below it begins the area where 9 October had its daily level. A moving average is not a forecast but an average of past prices; it describes where the asset last traded, and many market participants orient their orders by it. It carries no more weight than that, and no more should be given to it.

DOGE ETF wind-down: until 14 October only an exchange sale counts

Three concrete steps for the coming days:

1. Check the portfolio, but without haste. If BWOW is not in your portfolio, and that applies to practically every investor with a German broker, 14 October does not concern you. If you hold shares through a US broker, you choose between selling by the close on 14 October at the market price and a payout on 22 October at the 21 October net asset value. Where you can trade DOGE regularly in Germany is shown in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Weigh the fee against the holding period. Before buying an ETP, compare the 2.50 percent annual cost with the spread and the order fees on a direct purchase, and do it over the holding period you actually plan. Document the purchase date and purchase price from the outset; the tools for that are in our comparison of crypto tax tools.
3. Settle custody before the next burst arrives. If you want to use the one-year period under section 23, you need a holding you will not have to touch for a year and a place where it sits safely. Which devices are suitable for that is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

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

Solana has been targeting 200 milliseconds per slot since Friday afternoon. The rebuild that began in August at 400 milliseconds is now complete, and the network runs twice as fast as it did in the summer. The price barely reacted: Solana traded at $109.84 on Saturday morning, 0.8 percent below the previous day.

Reports on the rebuild leave out a number that matters more to investors than the 200: the compute budget per block falls in the same proportion. On balance, Solana can process exactly as much per second as before. What changes is the waiting time, and it bears on your money in precisely two places, in leveraged trading and in your validator's commission.

The final step of SIMD-0525: 200 milliseconds since epoch 1053

The switch took effect with the start of epoch 1053. Anza, the company behind the Agave validator client, confirmed it on 9 October at 14:42 UTC on X with the words "SIMD-0525 mission accomplished: 200ms slots are now live on mainnet-beta". Jacob Creech of the Solana Foundation wrote the same day "Just like that, we're now running 200ms slots on Solana" and added two words: "Next up, Alpenglow".

A slot on Solana is the window in which a selected validator may build a block. Shorten that window and more blocks appear per second, but each one has less time and less room to compute. That is the heart of SIMD-0525, the proposal that set out the reduction in four stages.

The stages were deliberately spaced far apart, because after each one the number of missed blocks was measured. According to the documentation on solana.com, this block skip rate was the criterion that decided on the next step. Only once it stayed stable did the next reduction follow.

Solana price at $109.84: the $117 level from the start of the week has broken

On Saturday morning Solana stood at $109.84. The daily high was $111.76 and the daily low $108.42, so the range came to a good three percent. Market capitalisation stood at $64.7 billion and turnover over the past 24 hours at $2.4 billion. The price sits around 63 percent below the all-time high of $293.31.

Anyone following our coverage this week will recognise the direction. In our analysis of 6 October on Alpenglow and the 20-day line, the $117 level was the point at which it was to be decided whether the slide would be halted. It did not hold. On 8 October Solana traded at $115.23 and on 9 October at $108.88, as we recorded in our review of active addresses. Against that mark the price is 0.9 percent higher today.

What is interesting is what did not happen. The $108 zone has held twice, on Friday at $108.88 and overnight into Saturday at $108.42. That is the tighter of the two levels that now matter. On the upside, the next hurdle is the intraday low of 8 October, which now acts as resistance.

Four stages since August: each one fell short of its own target

Here it is worth looking at numbers that hardly anyone has put together so far. The reduction ran in four stages, and for each of them measured averages are available, drawn by Solana Compass from the completed epochs. Not a single stage hit its target.

Against a target of 400 milliseconds, the measured averages came in between 415 and 423 milliseconds, 3.8 to 5.8 percent above it. For the 350 target they were 365 to 367 milliseconds, a premium of 4.3 to 4.9 percent. For the 300 target, 315 to 317 milliseconds, so 5.0 to 5.7 percent. And for the 250 target in force until now, 266 to 269 milliseconds, a premium of 6.4 to 7.6 percent. Epoch 1052, the last before the switch, came in at 268.5 milliseconds.

The premium has therefore grown with every stage, from just under four to a good seven percent. Extend that trend and Solana lands not at 200 but at roughly 213 to 215 milliseconds on average. This is our own extrapolation from the four measured stages, not a target figure from Anza and not a forecast from a research house. It only becomes solid once epoch 1054 is complete and delivers a measurement of its own.

Why five blocks per second do not add up to more computing power

Every Solana block carries a fixed budget of compute units. A compute unit is the unit in which the network measures how demanding a transaction is: a simple transfer costs a few thousand, a nested swap on a decentralised exchange a multiple of that. Once a block's budget is used up, the remaining transactions have to go into the next one.

That budget scales with slot length. At 250 milliseconds it stood, according to the available reports, at 37.5 million compute units per block; at 200 milliseconds it is 30 million. Solana Compass gives no absolute figure but describes the same coupling and records that a block today has half as much room as it did at 400 milliseconds.

Scale that up to the second and the finding becomes clear. At 250 milliseconds there were four blocks per second at 37.5 million compute units each, making 150 million per second. At 200 milliseconds there are five blocks at 30 million each, which also makes 150 million per second. The capacity of the network has stayed exactly the same.

What has changed is the waiting time. A transaction arriving at the least fortunate moment now waits at most 200 milliseconds for its block instead of 250. On average it is 100 instead of 125 milliseconds. Those 25 milliseconds are the entire gain for an ordinary user, and they are not noticeable when trading on an exchange. Hoping that Solana now carries more load and will therefore drop fewer transactions at peak times means waiting for something this step does not deliver.

Validators now vote five times per second: what that costs the small operators

Validators on Solana vote on every slot, and each of these vote transactions costs a fee. Shorten the slot from 250 to 200 milliseconds and the number of votes per day rises by a quarter. Four votes per second become five, and around 345,600 a day become 432,000.

For large operators this hardly registers. For small validators with little delegated capital it is a noticeable item, because vote costs are fixed while commission income depends on the delegated amount. If you delegate to a small operator today, keep an eye on the commission in the coming weeks: rising fixed costs are the classic reason to raise it.

How tight things are at the top end we showed on 9 October: with a staking ratio of 74.6 percent, 18 validators together hold a blocking minority. The new cadence shifts the cost calculation in favour of precisely these large operators. If you delegate to a small validator, note the commission today and look again in four weeks; if it has risen, a move to a provider from our comparison of staking platforms is worth considering.

Alpenglow still has no mainnet date, and Anza now names a condition

On 6 October we had to write at this point that Alpenglow has no date. Nothing has changed there, but the reasoning has become more concrete. On Anza's Alpenglow page the mainnet is still listed as pending, together with the statement that the migration will be announced once the observation phase confirms the previous runs.

Alpenglow is the rebuild of the consensus procedure, not just of the cadence. The stated goal is finality of 150 milliseconds, the time after which a transaction counts as final and can no longer be rolled back. The migration on testnet was completed on 24 September and the one on devnet on 25 September. With SIMD-0525, several weeks lay between a completed testnet run and the mainnet each time.

So the order is clear: the cadence is finished, finality is still outstanding. For the applications in which Solana measures itself against conventional payment systems, finality is the more important figure, because a merchant can only deliver once the payment is final.

Leverage on Solana: a fifth of a second now separates the oracle update from liquidation

This is where the cadence becomes noticeable in euros for the first time. Decentralised futures exchanges on Solana take their prices from oracles that write their values into blocks. A liquidation order becomes valid as soon as the new price stands in the block. Shorten the slot and this whole sequence shortens with it.

If you trade Solana with leverage, you therefore have less time from now on between the moment the price touches the liquidation threshold and the moment the position is closed. With a three percent range between the daily high and the daily low, as Solana showed on Saturday, twentyfold leverage is enough to end a position without a margin call. The new cadence does not make that more likely, only faster.

In concrete terms: look up the liquidation price of every open position and compare its distance from the current price with the daily range. If the liquidation price sits within the range of the past 24 hours, the buffer is too thin. Which futures venue applies which leverage and which margin rule differs widely; what counts is the rule of your own platform, not the market average.

Staking and tax in Germany: the €256 exemption threshold remains the sticking point

The technical rebuild changes nothing about the tax framework, but it draws attention to a calculation many stakers overlook. Under the German Federal Ministry of Finance's circular on the taxation of crypto-assets, ongoing staking income counts in the year it is received as other income under section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act. An exemption threshold of €256 a year applies to it.

An exemption threshold is not an allowance. Exceed it by one euro and the entire amount becomes taxable, not just the part above it. With a staking yield in the single-digit percent range and a price of $109.84, a holding in the mid four figures is enough to break that threshold over a year. The coin itself, when sold, continues to fall under section 23 of the Income Tax Act with its one-year holding period.

If the income is not recorded as it comes in, it is hard to reconstruct later, because every payout is valued at the price on the day it arrived. There are tools for that which value the inflows automatically at the daily rate and produce a statement at year end. The information here does not replace tax advice, and with larger holdings the case belongs in expert hands.

Our assessment: the latency has been delivered, the capacity has not

From the newsroom's point of view, the completion of SIMD-0525 is a cleanly executed engineering project and at the same time a weaker price argument than the headlines suggest. Three pieces of evidence from this article support that: capacity per second remains unchanged at 150 million compute units, the measured premium over each target has risen from under four to over seven percent, and the price barely moved on the day of the switch, down 0.8 percent.

Against that stands the fact that latency really is the bottleneck for a certain class of applications. That Securitize launched twelve tokenised US equities on Solana of all chains on 8 October, settling in USDC, as CoinDesk reported, fits that picture: in securities trading, time to finality counts. Only that finality arrives with Alpenglow, and Alpenglow has no date. Reading Friday's step as a price driver anticipates an effect that is technically still outstanding.

200-millisecond slots: the measurement from epoch 1054 decides

The next solid data point is not an announcement but a measurement. As soon as epoch 1054 is complete, the first average under the new target will be available. If it comes in at roughly 213 to 215 milliseconds, it confirms the series of the four previous stages. If it is well above that, the last step was too large.

1. Recalculate the leverage. Hold the liquidation price of every open position against the daily range of $108.42 to $111.76. If it sits inside, raise the buffer or cut the position. The margin rules are set out in our perp DEX comparison.
2. Record the income. Note every staking payout at the price on the day it arrived, so that the €256 threshold stays in view. Tools for that are listed in our crypto tax tool comparison.
3. Offset the fees. If you use the slide below $110 to buy more, compare the spread and the order fee first, because with small amounts both eat up the advantage of the entry. The terms are set out in our exchange comparison.

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

The XRP Ledger disclosed a bug on 9 October 2026 that had been sitting in the chain's payment engine for about eleven years. Anyone exploiting it could have created XRP far beyond the total supply in a single valid transaction. The flaw has been closed since 25 September with version xrpld 3.4.1, and RippleX writes in its report that there is no indication anyone used it on a public network.

So this is not a warning about an attack in progress. What is left to settle is your own setup: where your coins sit, who runs the server behind them, and which version is running there. This article places the disclosure report in context, explains the arithmetic error in plain terms, and translates it into the points an investor in Europe can check without outside help.

Payment engine overflow: what the 9 October report discloses

The disclosure report for xrpld 3.4.1 describes two separate findings. The more serious one concerns the payment engine, the part of the software that routes a payment through the offers in the chain's order book and works out how much the payer must give up and the recipient must receive.

The finding was submitted on 22 September 2026 through the XRP Ledger bug bounty programme, the channel where security researchers hand in vulnerabilities for a reward. The report names Cayden Liao and Veria AI as the finders. It was initially rated "Major". After RippleX reproduced it, the team raised the rating to critical.

The report sets out the scale in a single sentence: an attacker could have created spendable XRP far beyond the total supply, and in one confirmed transaction. The stake needed would have been small. It took a few hundred XRP as a reserve, the deposit the network requires for open offers and returns once they are cleared, plus the usual fees. Versions xrpld 3.4.0 and all older releases were affected.

How an unchecked addition could make more than 100 billion XRP

The arithmetic error in one sentence

The payment engine added up the amounts of several offers using a 64-bit integer, without checking whether the result fit into that width. An overflow is exactly that case: when a sum exceeds the largest value that can be represented, it does not raise an error but starts again at zero. A very large sum turns into a very small number.

In practice, according to the report, that meant the offer providers were paid in full while the buyer was charged only the tiny wrapped-around remainder. The difference came out of nowhere. It could be triggered with a few hundred deliberately mispriced offers in the order book, which a single payment then swept up together.

What the supply check missed

The XRP Ledger has its own safeguard against precisely this kind of case, the invariant. An invariant is a rule that must hold after every transaction, or the network rejects it. One of them says that no XRP may be created.

That check ran inside the same bug and used the same unchecked arithmetic. So it saw no increase where there was one. Two layers of protection gave way because both rested on the same assumption. The report traces the bug back to the implementation of the payment engine in 2015.

xrpld 3.4.1: a fix without an amendment, effective at start-up

Changes to the rules of the XRP Ledger normally go through an amendment. An amendment is a rule change that validators vote on and that applies across the network only after a period of support. Validators are the servers that confirm the order of transactions.

For this finding RippleX deliberately chose a different route. The overflow checks in the offer sum and in the combination of several payment paths take effect without a vote as soon as a server starts up on 3.4.1. The invariant has counted with a wider counter ever since. The report calls this a considered exception, justified by the severity of the finding.

For operators the consequence is a clear duty. The report states that all server operators must move to 3.4.1 or newer to stay in sync with the network. Anyone staying on an older version has been amendment-blocked since the activation on 9 October, which means they are stuck on a set of rules the rest of the network has already moved past.

Timeline from 22 September to 9 October

The report sets out the sequence, and the intervals in it are the real finding. One day passed between the submission and a finished fix.

On 22 September 2026 the overflow came in and was reproduced. On 23 September the fix was in the release branch for 3.4.1. On 24 September the team concluded that a pure disruption scenario along this route would not really work. On 25 September xrpld 3.4.1 was published, and at the same time a two-week support phase began for the second fix. On 9 October both rule changes went live on the main network, and the report appeared the same day.

Two weeks between shipping and disclosure are deliberate, not an omission. As long as a large share of servers is still running the old version, a precise description of the bug amounts to a set of instructions. It was published on the day the rule change stood in the network.

Five of the XRPL's eight disclosure reports date from 2026: our own count

Whether a single finding is an outlier only becomes clear from the series. So we counted every post on the XRPL blog and picked out the disclosure reports. Among 273 posts there are eight such reports, and five of them carry a 2026 date.

The five from this year cover the Batch amendment in February, the handling of transaction amounts in March, a flood of manifest messages reported on 30 July, sponsored fees and reserves under XLS-68 reported on 7 August, and the report on 3.4.1 from 9 October. The three older ones fall in November 2024, April 2025 and September 2025. cryptoticker.io compiled this count itself on 10 October 2026.

The number can be read in two directions, and only naming both is honest. More reports can mean that more is being found, because a bounty programme and a contest such as the Sherlock Attackathon round are looking for it on purpose. It is also conceivable that the chain gains more surface area with every new building block where something can jam. For placing the overflow in context, what counts above all is that it comes from the old core and not from one of the new features.

Batch amendment and Permission Delegation: what else went live on 9 October

The report's second finding concerns Batch, a feature under proposal XLS-56 that lets an account submit up to eight transactions as a single unit. The specification requires every inner transaction to sit in a designated field. The server did not check this, so other fields could serve as a wrapper too.

More seriously, the set of permissible wrappers differed between software versions. Two servers could therefore have judged the same operation differently, and that is precisely what threatens consensus in the network. Versions 3.3.0 and 3.4.0 with the not-yet-active BatchV1_1 amendment were affected. The report names Attackathon submission F48 as the finder, initially rated low. Denis Angell of the XRPL Foundation established on 18 September that the first fix was incomplete, and Mayukha Vadari of RippleX found the risk to consensus. According to the report there was no damage: no loss of balances, no exposed keys, no consensus failure.

Since 9 October the network rejects every Batch transaction with the wrong wrapper, secured by the rule change fixBatchV1_2, which went live the same day as BatchV1_1. Our article from 1 October described the window in which this round of rule changes could take effect at the earliest, and the open question then was why parts of it were delayed: the XRP Ledger and the date for Permission Delegation. The report supplies the answer. Behind the delay stood the withdrawal of votes, which prevented an activation with an incomplete fix.

63.13 of 99.99 billion XRP: the supply cap as the core of the promise

XRP was created once and has not been issued since. Of a total supply of 99.99 billion units, 63.13 billion are in circulation, with the rest locked up or held by the company. Market capitalisation, the circulating supply at the current price, stands at around $88.8 billion as of 10 October 2026. That places XRP fifth among the largest cryptocurrencies.

This firmness of supply is where the overflow hurts. A flaw that creates spendable units beyond the cap does not hit a side feature but the promise the price rests on. An executed attack would not merely have changed the supply on paper; it would have damaged the check with which the network notices supply changes at all.

The critical rating is therefore understandable even though no balance was lost. The yardstick for findings like this is the possible damage, not the damage that occurred. And here it sat on the number the whole model carries.

How to check where your XRP sit if it comes to the worst

The software version of a server is not something an investor can change from outside. What can be checked is the chain of responsibility: who holds the coins, who runs the technology underneath, and who would have to be contacted in an emergency.

Exchange, broker or self-custody

If the XRP sit on an exchange, that exchange runs the connection to the chain and is responsible for the version. The investor has a claim to withdrawal there, not direct access to the coins. Which trading venues in Europe operate under a licence, and what fees that involves, is set out in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

With self-custody the key sits with the holder, and the connection runs through a provider or an own server. Anyone using wallet software should update it after a report like this, because many programs use a bundled connection. With an own node the duty from the report applies directly: version 3.4.1 or newer, or the server drops out of consensus.

Three questions carry this check. First: does the holding sit with a provider domiciled and licensed in the EU, or on a platform without European supervision? Second: has the provider announced maintenance or an update after 25 September? Third: how would a withdrawal run if the network stood still for hours?

Custody under MiCA: a claim rather than possession

Since MiCA, the EU regulation for markets in crypto-assets, providers that hold or exchange crypto-assets for clients need authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. Their duties include keeping client holdings separate from their own and being liable for the loss of assets held in custody.

That shifts the question without resolving it. An authorised custodian can be contacted and carries liability, but it sits between the holder and the chain. Self-custody turns that around: no third party can freeze the holding, and nobody is liable for a lost key. Which form is right depends on the amount and on how often somebody trades.

With a protocol bug like this one, both help only so far. A flaw in the payment engine takes effect on the chain, not on the holder's device. What custody decides is how quickly somebody can react if a network has to be halted or rebuilt.

XRP price at $1.41: the market did not move on the news

XRP trades at $1.41 on 10 October 2026, up 1.1 percent on the previous day. The daily range runs from $1.37 to $1.41. Over a week it is down 5.6 percent, over thirty days up 0.8 percent.

The levels for the coming days follow from that range. On the downside sits the daily low at $1.37, on the upside the daily high caps it at $1.41. That the 9 October disclosure left no mark fits the content: what was reported was a closed flaw with no indication of exploitation, not an incident in progress.

Our assessment: a bug that sat for eleven years is not a one-off

From the newsroom's point of view, the handling of this finding is the counterpart to the bug itself. One day from submission to fix, two weeks to disclosure, a fix without a vote where voting would have taken too long: this is the conduct one would want from a network of this size, and it is documented in the report.

The other side sits in our own count. Five of eight disclosure reports within one year, plus a finding from the 2015 core that two layers of protection let through at the same time because they used the same arithmetic. Anyone concluding from this that the chain is now audited is reading too much into it. The origin of the finding argues against that reading: code that ran unremarkably for years, not a freshly built feature. For an assessment of XRP as an investment the episode changes nothing about the numbers; it changes something about the question of how much auditing the foundations still need.

XRPL patch: without version 3.4.1 a node drops out of consensus

1. Settle responsibility. Check where your own XRP sit and who runs the connection to the chain. With a provider, what counts is its authorisation and whether client holdings are kept separate. Which platforms operate under European supervision is shown in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Follow the state of the chain yourself. The activation of rule changes and the version of a server are publicly visible. Anyone tracking that regularly notices a changeover before the next report. Tools for it are listed in our overview of analytics platforms.
3. Document holdings and holding periods. After a protocol incident a clean record of your own inflows and outflows counts, for tax purposes too. In Germany the one-year holding period decides whether a gain is taxable. How to keep track of that is covered in our list of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

The episode can be read in the source itself: in the disclosure report for xrpld 3.4.1 and in the announcement of version 3.4.1 from 25 September.

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

Executives are war-gaming the political fallout of a major AI-driven cyberattack and preparing to brief Congress fast if and when necessary.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal wants Cantor Fitzgerald to open its records on Tether and on how much Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's family has earned from its business deal.

The crypto platform filed for designated contract market and futures commission merchant licenses, which would let it run its own regulated event-contract venue instead of relying on overseas partners.

Bitcoin bounced after dipping to around $80,000. Traders are placing increasingly high odds BTC slips further before October is over.

Starknet is "actively considering" becoming its own blockchain, a move it says would make it the first fully quantum-resistant network by 2027.

As once every four years in September, XRP price stalls inside a narrow range, threatening to repeat its notorious multi-year grind.

Shiba Inu added a substantial volume to exchange balances which raises a possibility of a rapid market reversal.

Crypto majors and large-cap altcoins are consolidating after sharp pullbacks, with traders watching key moving averages for the next directional move.

A dangerous iPhone exploit continues to threaten crypto holders, with hackers targeting popular wallets such as Coinbase, MetaMask and Trust Wallet to steal sensitive data and recovery phrases.

Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer has warned that AI could uncover critical vulnerabilities in the XRP Ledger.

TLDR

• Eli Lilly stock gains 0.62% as new Phase 3b findings highlight treatment gains.
• Combined therapy changes 482 proteins versus 140 with Taltz alone by Week 36.
• Gene activity shifts span 467 genes with both drugs, versus 16 on Taltz alone.
• Taltz and Zepbound deliver improved skin clearance and weight loss at Week 36.
• Researchers report consistent safety findings, but no new approved indication.

Eli Lilly and Company stock rose 0.62% to $1,176.80 on Friday, gaining $7.20 during the trading session. The company announced new Phase 3b findings showing broader biological responses from combined Taltz and Zepbound treatment. The results expand earlier evidence of improved psoriasis symptoms and weight reduction among adults living with psoriasis and obesity.

Eli Lilly and Company, LLY

Eli Lilly Reports Stronger Phase 3b Results for Taltz and Zepbound

Eli Lilly released new exploratory findings from its TOGETHER-PsO Phase 3b clinical trial examining two existing prescription medicines. Researchers compared the combined use of Taltz and Zepbound against Taltz alone in adults with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. The study also included participants with obesity or overweight alongside at least one additional weight-related medical condition.

The latest analysis identified broader changes in proteins and genes among participants receiving both medicines compared with Taltz alone. By Week 36, researchers identified changes involving 482 proteins in the combination group, compared with 140 in the other group. Similarly, gene expression changes affected 467 genes with combined treatment, against only 16 genes with Taltz alone.

These biological differences appeared as early as Week 12, according to the pharmaceutical company’s newly released findings. Researchers also identified stronger reductions in inflammatory immune activity among participants receiving both treatments over the study period. Eli Lilly presented the findings at the 2026 Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference in Las Vegas.

Combined Treatment Improves Skin Clearance and Weight Reduction

The latest findings build on earlier clinical results showing better treatment outcomes among participants receiving Taltz alongside Zepbound. At Week 36, the combination delivered superior skin clearance and meaningful weight reduction compared with Taltz alone. Furthermore, participants maintained or improved these clinical benefits through Week 52, according to Eli Lilly’s previously reported findings.

The analysis also examined neutrophils, which play an important role in the body’s inflammatory immune response. Researchers found that combined treatment produced greater changes in inflammatory pathways associated with these immune cells. Changes in certain neutrophil-related markers partly explained the additional improvement in psoriasis severity scores among combination-treatment participants.

The TOGETHER-PsO trial included 274 adults across multiple clinical research centers, with participants divided equally between two treatment groups. One group received Taltz alone, while the other received Taltz and Zepbound through injections under the skin. Both groups also received guidance on reducing calorie intake and increasing physical activity throughout the clinical study.

Eli Lilly Expands Research Into Psoriasis and Obesity

Eli Lilly designed the study to examine the relationship between metabolic health and inflammatory skin conditions. Approximately 61% of Americans with psoriasis also experience obesity or overweight alongside another weight-related medical condition, according to Lilly. The findings provide additional research into how treatments targeting different biological processes may influence both conditions.

Taltz works by blocking interleukin-17A, an immune signaling protein involved in inflammation and several related inflammatory conditions. Zepbound targets GIP and GLP-1 receptors, helping regulate appetite and support weight management in eligible adults. The two medicines therefore act through different biological pathways, providing the basis for investigating their combined clinical effects.

Eli Lilly reported that the combination’s safety findings matched the established safety profiles of the individual medicines. The exploratory results do not establish a new approved indication for using the medicines together. The company continues examining the relationship between immune and metabolic processes as researchers assess broader approaches to psoriasis management.

The post Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) Stock: Rises as Taltz and Zepbound Show Promising Results appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• ASTS stock plunges 12.01% as BlueBird satellite deployment remains a key focus.
• AST SpaceMobile targets 45 satellites by early 2027 to expand mobile coverage.
• The company needs 45 to 60 satellites for continuous service in key markets.
• AST SpaceMobile reports $3.7 billion in funding to support satellite expansion.
• Commercial satellite service could generate nearly $1 billion in annual revenue.

AST SpaceMobile, Inc. stock dropped 12.01% to $50.10 on Friday, losing $6.83 during the trading session. The decline comes as the company works to expand its BlueBird satellite network and prepare commercial broadband services. Its satellite deployment targets remain central to future revenue growth and the company’s long-term business plans.

AST SpaceMobile, Inc., ASTS

AST SpaceMobile currently operates 13 spacecraft in orbit, according to its second-quarter 2026 update. The company needs a substantially larger constellation to provide continuous mobile coverage across its target markets. Management expects to reach approximately 45 satellites by early 2027, supporting its planned commercial network expansion.

AST SpaceMobile Targets 45 BlueBird Satellites by Early 2027

AST SpaceMobile reported 13 spacecraft in orbit during its August 10, 2026, earnings call. The company estimates that continuous broadband coverage requires between 45 and 60 satellites across major international markets. These markets include the United States, Europe, and Japan, where the company plans to introduce satellite-based mobile connectivity.

The BlueBird network aims to provide broadband services directly to standard smartphones without requiring special equipment. AST SpaceMobile plans to extend mobile coverage into areas where traditional cellular infrastructure remains limited. Its technology could support telecommunications providers seeking broader network coverage without building additional ground infrastructure across remote regions.

The company has established partnerships with more than 60 mobile network operators across different international markets. These telecommunications partners serve more than 3 billion subscribers, creating a substantial potential customer base. Commercial availability depends on satellite deployment, network integration, regulatory approvals, and agreements with participating mobile operators.

AST SpaceMobile Revenue Targets Depend on Network Expansion

AST SpaceMobile generated $31.5 million in revenue during the second quarter of 2026, according to its financial results. Government contracts and infrastructure projects for commercial partners provided revenue during the reporting period. The company continues developing its satellite network before launching commercial mobile broadband services at a larger scale.

Over the previous twelve months, AST SpaceMobile recorded approximately $100 million in revenue from its existing operations. Management has outlined an ambitious target of nearly $1 billion during its first year of commercial service. Achieving that target requires substantial network capacity and successful service agreements with telecommunications companies across multiple geographic regions.

The company’s valuation also reflects expectations surrounding its future commercial operations and satellite deployment progress. AST SpaceMobile trades at approximately 147.7 times sales, compared with around 3.0 times sales for the S&P 500. Is approximately $600 million annual net loss highlights the financial demands of developing a global satellite communications network.

AST SpaceMobile Funding Supports BlueBird Satellite Deployment

AST SpaceMobile estimates that each satellite will cost approximately $21 million to $23 million, including launch expenses. The company intends to develop a constellation exceeding 90 satellites, extending beyond its initial continuous coverage requirements. Based on those estimates, 90 satellites would require approximately $1.89 billion to $2.07 billion in combined satellite and launch costs.

The company reported more than $3.7 billion in pro forma cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash following recent financing. This figure incorporates $1.15 billion in gross proceeds from convertible senior notes issued during July 2026. Management expects those financial resources to support additional satellite launches, manufacturing expansion, and the broader network development program.

AST SpaceMobile continues to face financial and operational challenges as it expands its satellite infrastructure. A shareholder class action alleges that the company misrepresented aspects of its capital resources and liquidity position. Satellite manufacturing schedules, launch execution, and commercial network activation remain important factors influencing its future financial performance.

The post AST SpaceMobile, Inc. (ASTS) Stock: BlueBird Launches Hold the Key to Future Gains appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Amazon (AMZN) stock surges 2.70% to $260.92 despite another round of job cuts
• Amazon reportedly cuts fewer than 1,000 jobs across the US, UK, and India
• Fresh layoffs affect customer service, marketplace support, and engineering teams
• Amazon’s earlier restructuring plans covered approximately 30,000 job cuts
• Amazon targets former employees for AI and cloud roles despite fresh layoffs

Amazon (AMZN) stock surged 2.70% to $260.92 during Friday’s intraday trading, gaining $6.86 despite reports of fresh workforce reductions. The company reportedly eliminated fewer than 1,000 positions across several business units in three countries. The latest layoffs extend Amazon’s restructuring efforts following approximately 30,000 previously announced job cuts.

Amazon.com, Inc., AMZN

Amazon Announces Fresh Layoffs Across Retail Operations

Amazon employees in the United States, India, and the United Kingdom reported receiving job termination notices this week. According to Business Insider, workers received emails Tuesday confirming the elimination of their positions. The reductions affected several departments, including customer service, marketplace support, and engineering teams within retail operations.

Employees shared information about the layoffs through an internal Slack channel containing nearly 37,000 members. Their messages identified affected departments and raised questions about the company’s ongoing restructuring process. Workers also sought clarification about severance packages, internal job opportunities, and the possibility of further reductions.

Amazon confirmed to Business Insider that it eliminated a limited number of positions, primarily within its Stores division. The company linked the changes to organizational restructuring and efforts to improve operational efficiency. Amazon also said it would provide support to affected employees during their employment transitions.

Amazon’s Previous Job Cuts Total Approximately 30,000

The latest reductions follow Amazon’s January announcement of approximately 16,000 job cuts across its global operations. Company leadership outlined plans to simplify management structures and reduce unnecessary administrative processes. The restructuring also aimed to increase employee ownership and improve decision-making across business divisions.

Amazon previously announced another 14,000 corporate job reductions in October 2025, expanding its workforce restructuring program. Together, those two announcements covered approximately 30,000 positions, representing nearly 1% of its reported 1.56 million employees. The reductions reached Amazon Web Services, retail operations, Prime Video, and corporate human resources functions.

The company also targeted its People Experience and Technology division during the broader workforce adjustments. These changes affected several major operations rather than concentrating reductions within one business segment. Amazon continued reorganizing departments while maintaining investments in technology and other priority business areas.

Amazon Expands AI Hiring Despite Workforce Reductions

Amazon has also pursued recruitment initiatives targeting specialists in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Last month, reports indicated that the company sought former employees, including workers affected by earlier layoffs. The recruitment effort focused on professionals with experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and related technologies.

AWS Vice President Swami Sivasubramanian leads the company’s artificial intelligence agent organization and its recruitment initiative. The program, called Swami’s Boomerang Reengagement Initiative, aims to reconnect Amazon with former technical employees. Its recruitment efforts operate alongside the company’s broader restructuring and workforce reduction measures.

Amazon’s latest layoffs and specialized recruitment efforts reflect separate changes across its business operations. The company continues adjusting staffing within retail while pursuing technical expertise for artificial intelligence development. Meanwhile, its recent workforce changes span multiple countries and several divisions across its global operations.

The post Amazon (AMZN) Stock: Surges as Company Announces Fresh Layoffs appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• IonQ shares fall 0.33% to $39.32 despite a major quantum networking breakthrough.
• Researchers achieve over 1,000 entanglement events per second using light links.
• The new quantum interconnect surpasses the earlier trapped-ion record fourfold.
• IonQ’s breakthrough supports DARPA research into faster quantum hardware links.
• New system sales in Maryland and South Korea highlight early commercial demand.

IonQ (IONQ) stock slipped 0.33% to $39.32 during Friday’s intraday session, losing $0.13 despite a new quantum computing breakthrough. The company achieved more than 1,000 entanglement events per second between two different quantum systems. The development advances IonQ’s efforts to connect quantum processors and build larger computing networks.

IonQ, Inc., IONQ

IonQ Achieves Major Quantum Interconnect Milestone

IonQ announced that its researchers achieved entanglement rates exceeding 1 kilohertz through a photonic connection. The experiment linked a trapped ion qubit with solid-state quantum memory using light to transfer quantum information. This connection allows separate quantum components to share information and operate within a larger computing system.

The company reported that its demonstration exceeded the previous trapped-ion interconnect record by more than four times. IonQ researchers worked with collaborators from Duke University, including research associated with company co-founder Chris Monroe. The results establish a new performance benchmark for connecting trapped ion systems with other quantum hardware.

IonQ Chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi identified quantum interconnects as essential infrastructure for larger computing networks. He compared future quantum systems with traditional data centers that connect processors, memory, and networking equipment. The company aims to use similar architecture to expand quantum computing capacity beyond individual processors.

IonQ Advances Quantum Memory and Networking Technology

IonQ conducted the experiment using an end-to-end connection between a trapped ion system and a silicon vacancy qubit. The setup incorporated its existing quantum memory technology and transmitted quantum information through a photonic interconnect. This approach combines the coherence advantages of trapped ions with efficient light connections from solid-state memory.

The achievement also supports IonQ’s participation in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s HARQ program. DARPA seeks to develop high-speed quantum connections that support different types of quantum computing hardware. IonQ expects its technology to support trapped ions, neutral atoms, and superconducting systems using suitable conversion devices.

Meanwhile, IonQ continues to expand commercial applications for its quantum memory and interconnect platform. The company announced its first commercial system sale to the University of Maryland in April. It followed that agreement with a second system sale to South Korean technology company SDT in September.

IonQ Stock Performance Meets Expanding Commercial Operations

The latest announcement adds to IonQ’s research activities as the company develops quantum networking products. Its technology targets connections between separate quantum devices rather than relying entirely on individual processors. Such connections form part of the infrastructure needed to distribute computing tasks across multiple quantum systems.

IonQ also develops hardware that supports different approaches to quantum computing through its interconnect architecture. The company expects this flexibility to create applications in modular computing and networked quantum sensing. However, commercial deployment depends on further engineering, system integration, and performance testing across supported hardware platforms.

The latest technical results strengthen IonQ’s quantum networking roadmap and add evidence from operational hardware testing. Its commercial agreements also demonstrate early demand for the company’s memory and interconnect systems. Friday’s stock decline occurred despite these developments, reflecting a weaker intraday performance following the announcement.

The post IonQ (IONQ) Stock: Quantum Breakthrough Hits 1,000 Entanglements Per Second appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Hinkal joins Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program to advance privacy-focused digital asset payment applications.
• Zero-knowledge proofs help verify transfers without publicly exposing transaction amounts, senders or recipients.
• Existing integrations include Polygon Wallet, Tether’s Wallet Development Kit, Turnkey and Avvio.
• Screening and viewing keys aim to balance transaction confidentiality with regulatory and audit requirements.

Hinkal has joined Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program, bringing blockchain privacy infrastructure into a global payments initiative focused on digital assets. The partnership connects Hinkal with Mastercard’s ecosystem as stablecoins expand into payments, settlements, and commercial transactions.

Hinkal provides infrastructure that allows platforms to process private stablecoin transfers without exposing transaction amounts or counterparty relationships publicly. Its technology uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify transfers while keeping sensitive transaction details confidential. 

The integration could help businesses explore onchain payments without making their financial activity visible to everyone on public blockchains.

Hinkal Brings Privacy to Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program

Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program connects blockchain companies with its payments teams and a broader network of industry participants. Members include stablecoin issuers, blockchain infrastructure providers, crypto card enablers and companies supporting digital asset transactions.

According to an announcement, the initiative supports practical digital asset applications through partner collaboration, industry connections and go-to-market opportunities. Selected members can also access financial institutions across Mastercard’s issuing and acquiring network, alongside regulatory and compliance support.

For Hinkal, joining the program creates an opportunity to bring confidential transaction infrastructure into payment products. Rather than requiring companies to build privacy systems independently, Hinkal allows wallets and platforms to integrate its technology through software development kits (SDKs) and APIs.

The infrastructure supports private settlements and payouts across fintech platforms, payment providers and wallets. Hinkal operates across Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, TRON and other major EVM-compatible networks.

Existing integrations demonstrate how the technology can fit into products already serving users. 

Polygon Wallet offers Private Send powered by Hinkal, while Tether’s Wallet Development Kit includes its private-send functionality. Turnkey wallets can also integrate privacy through Hinkal’s SDK, and Avvio operates private payments through its interface.

These integrations allow partner platforms to maintain their products while adding transaction confidentiality as a feature.

Why Does Stablecoin Payment Privacy Matter?

Stablecoins can transfer value around the clock, but public blockchain transactions can expose financial relationships and payment amounts. That transparency may create challenges for businesses handling payroll, supplier payments, treasury movements and other commercially sensitive transactions.

Hinkal addresses this issue through zero-knowledge proofs, which allow a network to verify transfers without publicly revealing their underlying details. Its system keeps transaction amounts, senders and recipients confidential from public observers.

However, privacy does not mean eliminating compliance oversight. Hinkal says funds undergo screening before entering its system, while viewing keys allow users and businesses to share transaction histories with authorized auditors or regulators.

This approach aims to balance confidentiality with the oversight required for regulated financial activity. It could prove useful as payment providers explore stablecoins for cross-border transfers, business transactions and settlement flows.

Mastercard’s program provides a framework for connecting these technical capabilities with established payment infrastructure. However, Hinkal’s membership does not itself confirm a direct Mastercard product integration or a commercial launch.

The post Mastercard Adds Hinkal as Stablecoin Privacy Takes Center Stage appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin’s price recovery from the Thursday collapse continues as the asset currently sits close to $83,000 after marking a multi-week low at under $80,500.

Most larger-cap alts have remained sluggish on a daily basis, with ETH struggling below $2,500 and XRP barely defending the $1.40 support. ADA and NEAR, though, have posted notable gains.

BTC Eyes $83K

The business week began on the right foot for the primary cryptocurrency, which surged by a few grand on Monday morning to touch $87,000 for the first time since the previous Friday. However, just as it happened at the end of the previous week, BTC was stopped and quickly dipped to $85,000.

The bulls initiated another leg up that resulted in challenging the same resistance, but the bears intervened even faster this time and brought a whole army. Instead of another bounce, bitcoin slumped hard to under $84,000 on Tuesday. It couldn’t really recover on Wednesday, and the bulls lost complete control of the market on Thursday.

At the time, BTC crashed by several grand and dipped to a multi-week low of $80,400. It finally rebounded after this near-$7,000 decline in just days and jumped to $83,400 yesterday. However, it was stopped there and now trades inches below $83,000.

Its market capitalization has pulled back to $1.660 trillion on CMC, but its dominance over the alts has skyrocketed to 59.5%.

ADA, NEAR Pump

Ethereum slipped to $2,400 during the market-wide crash and has recovered slightly to almost $2,500 as of now, but it’s still far away from its local top at $2,800. XRP dipped to $1.34 before it rebounded to $1.41 as of now. BNB is back at $750 after a slight daily increase, similar to DOGE and LINK.

In contrast, SOL, TRX, and HYPE are slightly in the red. Cardano’s ADA has rebounded by 7% and has reclaimed the $0.255 level. NEAR Protocol’s native token has risen the most among the larger-cap alts, rocketing by over 10% to $5.25. DOT, WLD, BTW, and WLF have also charted notable gains.

The total crypto market cap shed $200 billion from top to bottom but has rebounded slightly to $2.8 trillion on CMC now.

The post NEAR Rockets by 10% Daily, BTC Price Eyes $83K: Weekend Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Toobit is an award-winning international cryptocurrency exchange that recently announced that it has been named the Best Exchange for Trading Tokenized Equities at the CoinGape Global Onchain Awards 2026.

Toobit, among other nominees, was evaluated on tokenized equity listings, trading volume, and institutional trading capabilities. Winners were determined through quantitative research, expert jury review, and community participation. The Global Onchan Awards is intended to recognize institutions and innovators that advance the convergence of traditional and onchain finance across tokenization, digital assets, infrastructure, and compliance.

A Foray Into Traditional Finance

Recall that the exchange introduced Stock Futures in February 2026 with 10 major US equities, including Apple (APPL), Tesla (TSLA), and Nvidia (NVDA), available as USDT-settled perpetual contracts.

This move has since been expanded as part of the exchange’s overall TradFi lineup. It now covers over 240 pairs across equities, forex, precious metals, and indices.

Traders are able to access these markets using their existing Toobit account and USDT balance, which makes it very convenient, especially for those who also want to open long and short positions, participate in round-the-clock trading, and rely on up to 500x leverage on selected pairs.

Not the First Award for Toobit

Now, it’s important to note that this is far from being the first award that the exchange has received. In fact, it marks the fifth one in 2026.

Earlier this year, Toobit was named Best New Exchange at the Crypto Awards 2025, Digital Asset Derivatives Platform of the Year at the Hedgeweek Global Digital Assets Awards 2026, Best Crypto Exchange for Day Trading at the CoinGape Web3 Innovation Awards 2026, and Global Exchange of the Year at the FinanceFeeds Awards 2026.

The award also comes as tokenized equities continue to gain traction through the year. The onchain market cap of tokenized equities soared to almost $5 billion in early September, while the active market capitalization is up more than 300% since the start of the year.

Monthly trading volume is soaring, reaching almost $8 billion as opposed to just $240 million in January.

The post Toobit Wins Best Exchange for Trading Tokenized Equities Award appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The XRP-focused treasury company has officially completed its business combination with Armada Acquisition Corp. II, clearing the final major hurdle before its Nasdaq debut.

Evernorth will enter the public markets holding approximately 473 million Ripple tokens and around $300 million in gross cash proceeds.

473M XRP Heads to Nasdaq

The development will allow public-market investors to gain access to one of the largest corporate XRP treasury firms, which intends to do considerably more than passively hold the asset. The closing announced on Friday evening follows the shareholder vote previously reported by us, when roughly 20.5 million Armada shares voted in favor of the merger, compared with just 1.4 million against.

At the time, Evernorth disclosed more than $1 billion raised through the transaction and associated private placements. Previous investors in the company came from prominent names in the crypto and traditional finance space, including Ripple itself, SBI Group, Panter Capital, GSR, and Arrington Capital.

“Our conviction in XRP has always been rooted in the belief that the ecosystem would continue to mature, attracting serious builders and capital. Our support for Evernorth is a natural extension of that thesis. It brings scaled capital, active participation, and the standards of a public company, playing a critical role in the institutional development of this infrastructure,” said Michael Arrington, founder of Arrington Capital.

The final timeline has shifted slightly from earlier expectations, as Evernorth previously anticipated closing the deal on October 7 and beginning trading the following day. The completed transaction now, though, puts the official Nasdaq debut on Monday, October 12, while management expects to ring the closing bell on October 14, reads the announcement.

Not Just XRP Holding

Evernorth described itself as an actively managed XRP treasury. CEO Asheesh Birla said the company intends to deploy capital throughout the XRP economy while pursuing strategies designed to increase XRP per share over time.

The idea is to participate in institutional and DeFi yield strategies, ecosystem infrastructure, on-chain credit markets, and other capital-markets activities. Evernorth’s post noted that this approach distinguishes XRPN from a passive vehicle that simply tracks the price of the cross-border token.

The post XRP’s Nasdaq Moment Is Here: Evernorth Completes Merger appeared first on CryptoPotato.

On-chain researchers estimate that somewhere between $72 million and $86 million may have been stolen, as Ledger begins investigating reports of these major crypto losses from users who bought hardware wallets from an authorized Southeast Asian reseller.

The hardware wallet manufacturer said there is no indication that its own infrastructure, systems, or services were compromised. However, users are piling on X to complain about substantial losses.

How Much Was Stolen?

The official support channel of Ledger on X confirmed yesterday evening that it was investigating user reports from customers of CryptoBilis, which is listed as an authorized reseller in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Ledger asked CryptoBilis to pause all sales and shipments for the time being.

More importantly, the post urged anyone who purchased a device from the reseller in the past 90 days and has not completed installation not to begin setup now. Customers already using such devices were advised to consider transferring their assets to a new Ledger signer using a newly generated seed phrase.

On-chain sleuth tanuki42 traced more than $72 million to suspected theft addresses, while fellow investigator Specter estimated losses exceed $86 million, across BTC, ETH, and TRX. Ledger’s official account didn’t confirm either figure, and it remains unclear whether the two estimates include overlapping transactions.

MistTrack noted that the losses could be closer to $90 million, while Tether reportedly froze USDT held in addresses connected with the incident.

What Happened?

The details on what exactly transpired are still scarce, but Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao said the currently available information suggests a localized supply-chain attack involving one vendor, with a small number of customers potentially receiving counterfeit or physically tampered Ledger devices.

Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles added that he had already been examining modified Ledger devices containing a hidden hardware implant and asked CryptoBilis to open units from its inventory to see whether similar components were present.

He said an implant he examined could monitor internal communications used to display recovery words, potentially allowing an attacker to capture a seed phrase even though the genuine Ledger Secure Element itself remained intact.

Ledger claimed that the reports appear limited to products sold through CryptoBilis and that it has “no indication that Ledger’s security infrastructure, systems, or services have been compromised.”

Meanwhile, users such as Edward Winz have publicly admitted to being victims of the incident, with $1 million reportedly stolen.

The Ledger incident comes just a month after its biggest competitor, Trezor, experienced one of its own, with the personal information of over 80,000 US users compromised.

The post Ledger Investigates $86M Crypto Drain as Reseller Supply-Chain Fears Grow appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Only a few days ago, the native cryptocurrency of Ripple traded high, with analysts speculating about its chances of taking down the first major resistance level at $1.51-$1.53 before heading toward the next at over $1.60.

Instead, the bears reemerged, drove the entire market down, and XRP slumped below $1.35 before it found some support. EGRAG CRYPTO, though, remains undeterred, indicating that even another leg down wouldn’t halt the asset’s bull market progress.

$1.20 Is the Key Macro Level

The popular analyst who has been bullish on XRP even as the asset slipped below $1.00 in early August said the token can still retrace to $1.20 and maintain its bullish structure. His analysis focuses on the monthly chart and the relationship between the 33 EMA and 111 EMA. He added that it has historically helped define major cycle structures and pointed to the line of the sand: $1.20.

As long as the cross-border token holds above that area on a monthly closing basis, EGRAG believes the broader bullish thesis remains intact. However, a sustained breakdown below it would force him to reassess, as it would likely invalidate the pattern.

If XRP continues its recovery from the recent sub-$1.35 low, then EGRAG identified $1.65 as the first major level it has to reclaim. Then, he turned even more bullish, noting that the asset can skyrocket to somewhere between $4.00 and $8.00 if the structure develops further. His much more aggressive “Valhalla” scenario extends beyond $15, although that remains highly speculative and dependent on the macro setup holding up.

Similar Pattern In-Play?

Fellow bullish-on-XRP analyst Bird outlined a different structure on the asset’s four-hour chart, highlighting three descending resistance trendlines. He argued that the first two were followed by strong upside moves after the token found support, and the third may be developing now.

Bird identified a long-term ascending support line, a major demand zone at around $1.30-$1.34, and resistance between $1.52 and $1.56. As explained above, XRP has remained between the two for the past several weeks.

If the asset is finally able to break through to the upside and the previous pattern repeats, the analyst believes the move could open the door toward $2.00. Interestingly, Celal Kucuker supported Bird’s view, saying $2.00 is “within reach” by the end of the month after XRP bounced from a “solid support level.”

$XRP IS SETTING UP FOR SOMETHING VERY INTERESTING.

Look closely at this 4 hour chart.

Notice a pattern?

THREE descending resistance trendlines (orange).

The first two were followed by explosive moves upwards after XRP found support.

Now we’re seeing a THIRD potentially forming the exact same setup.

We’ve got a long-term ascending support trendline (white), a major demand zone around $1.30–$1.34, and resistance sitting at $1.52–$1.56.

If history rhymes, a breakout above that resistance could open the door towards $2.00.

Three similar structures. One very interesting possibility.

I’m watching this VERY closely.

— Bird (@Bird_XRPL) October 9, 2026

The post XRP May Plunge to $1.20 and Still Remain Bullish, Analyst Says appeared first on CryptoPotato.