Nvidia's validation of Nebius's AI cloud infrastructure could enhance trust and competitiveness in AI training services, influencing market dynamics.

The post Nvidia validates Nebius HGX B300 racks for AI cloud training appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Zcash's quantum-resistant upgrade could set a precedent for blockchain security, highlighting the urgency of adapting to emerging tech threats.

The post Zcash developers target January for quantum-resistant payments upgrade appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Barclays' revised target for Strategy Inc. highlights growing confidence in fintech potential, despite Bitcoin's volatile impact on earnings.

The post Barclays raises Strategy price target to $175, keeps buy rating appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The transfer of BTC linked to the 2016 hack may signal future market volatility and strategic shifts, impacting Bitcoin's price stability.

The post Wallet linked to 2016 Bitfinex hack transferred 12,267 BTC valued at $1.01 billion to new addresses appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The U.S. crypto asset seizure may hinder diplomatic progress, reducing chances for a U.S.-Iran deal and affecting regional stability.

The post US to seize $1B in crypto assets to pressure Iran amid ongoing conflict appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

AI Coding Agents Drive Surge in Bitcoin Integration Requests: Breez

Bitcoin software company Breez said demand for its developer tools has surged since AI coding agents went mainstream, with partnership inquiries rising roughly 14-fold as developers, and increasingly the agents they deploy, look to add bitcoin payments to their apps.

In a company blog post, it tied the jump directly to Anthropic’s Claude Code, which launched as a research preview in February 2025 and became generally available three months later.

Before 2025, Breez said, most prospective partners fell into three camps: committed bitcoin enthusiasts, crypto developers, and fintech firms that treat bitcoin as an asset class.

Since Claude Code arrived, the company said, it has heard from many developers with little or no bitcoin experience. Requests have come from fitness apps, messaging apps that want users to send each other money, an eSIM service for travelers, and the team behind a mushroom-identification app.

Breez said many of these developers pick bitcoin for speed. Setting up traditional payment acceptance, including a bank account and cross-border transfers, can take weeks or months, while the company says its SDK can be running within minutes.

Breez said a growing share of inquiries now come from software, not people. The company said it regularly fields requests from coding agents writing on behalf of the companies that deploy them.

The company argues agents favor bitcoin because it is permissionless. An agent can build an app and set up payments for users worldwide without opening a bank account, passing onboarding checks or signing forms.

“Bitcoin is agnostic about whether the code of its current owner and user is composed of DNA base pairs or weights in a neural net,” Breez wrote.

That same absence of gatekeeping has long drawn scrutiny from financial regulators, who require traditional payment providers to verify customers.

Breez said its newest SDK implementation, built on the Bitcoin scaling protocol Spark, handled the added volume without problems.

The company framed the shift as an update to investor Marc Andreessen’s 2011 essay arguing that software is eating the world, saying AI is now eating software. It compared Bitcoin’s role to background infrastructure like electrical sockets and subsea cables.

This post AI Coding Agents Drive Surge in Bitcoin Integration Requests: Breez first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

WhiteBIT Integrates Lightning Network for Fast and Cheap Bitcoin Transactions

The Lightning Network continues to find use cases. 

Crypto exchange WhiteBIT announced on Thursday that the platform has integrated the network to help users quickly and efficiently move funds. 

Powered by BTC infrastructure provider Voltage, the Swiss exchange said that bitcoin withdrawals and deposits can be made over the network. A number of major exchanges — including Coinbase and Kraken — have integrated the second-layer solution in recent years. 

“WhiteBIT’s mission is to make blockchain technology accessible and widely adopted by delivering practical, user-friendly solutions for digital assets,” WhiteBIT Founder and CEO Volodymyr Nosov said in a statement.  

“Adding Lightning support brings us closer to this goal as we are making Bitcoin faster and more useful for customers who want to top up accounts, send and receive funds, and use Bitcoin across more real-world flows.”

Zug-based WhiteBIT, the 17th biggest exchange by transaction volume, according to CoinGecko data, added that the launch supports a faster Bitcoin rail with use cases for “remittances, exchange funding, merchant-style QR payments, and interoperability with Lightning-enabled wallets and applications.”

Transaction volume on Lightning has surged this year. The reason, broadly, is that exchanges are using the network to move funds because it’s so cheap and fast. 

Launched in 2018, Lightning was previously pushed for smaller transactions like tipping or buying a cup of coffee.

The network also offers more privacy than Bitcoin’s main chain: because Lightning payments are settled off-chain rather than recorded on the public blockchain, individual payments are harder to trace.

This post WhiteBIT Integrates Lightning Network for Fast and Cheap Bitcoin Transactions first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Greece Plans Crypto Capital Gains Tax: Report

Greece is planning a law to tax crypto investors’ capital gains at a rate of 15%, according to reports.

According to Reuters and local media, the country’s Finance Ministry has drafted a bill with the proposal. Greece currently has no legal framework for taxing crypto.

Under the draft, the first €500 (about $580) of crypto gains each year would be exempt.

The bill would tax only the net gain when crypto is sold, after deducting trading fees. Swapping one cryptocurrency for another, such as bitcoin, would not trigger the tax. It would apply only when holdings are converted into euros or another fiat currency, or used to pay for goods and services. 

Investors could carry losses forward against future crypto gains for up to five tax years, and tokens earned through staking or lending would be taxed only when sold.

The rules would apply retroactively from January 1, 2025, meaning gains from last year onward would be declared on tax returns filed in 2027.

The bill is due to be submitted to parliament in November.

Greece follows the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. The Hellenic Capital Market Commission authorizes and supervises crypto service providers, and the Bank of Greece handles prudential oversight of stablecoin issuers. 

Licensing has been slow: no Greek providers appeared on the EU’s register until September, about two months after MiCA’s transitional period ended on July 1.

Since January 2026, the EU’s DAC8 directive has required crypto exchanges to collect detailed data on their users and transactions and report it to national tax authorities, much like banks already do for ordinary accounts. Greece wrote those rules into national law in May. 

Crypto tax treatment varies widely across the bloc. Rates range from 8% in Cyprus to 30% in France. Some countries are more lenient: Germany exempts crypto held for more than a year, and Portugal does the same after 365 days. 

This post Greece Plans Crypto Capital Gains Tax: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Falls Below $81,000 as Oil Spikes, Fed Talks Tough

Bitcoin’s price has dropped further, sliding with other assets as the oil price continued to climb and the Federal Reserve made a hawkish statement. 

The price of the leading asset recently stood at $81,203 after dropping as low as nearly $80,922 at one point on Thursday morning in New York. 

Over the past day, bitcoin’s price has shed nearly 3% of its value; over a seven-day period, it’s down by 4%. 

Just last week, the coin seemed to be closing in on the $90,000 mark after a phenomenal September rally and one of its best quarters in years. 

But so-called Uptober — the month of October typically gives bitcoin investors good returns — is starting slow on a surging oil price. 

This week, the price of Brent crude has jumped following renewed attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. President Trump also hinted that talks with Iran weren’t going the way he wanted. 

A surging oil price this year has — at least in the short-term — hurt the price of bitcoin and other “risk-on” assets because it increases the chances of the U.S. central bank raising interest rates. Bitcoin has in the past done well with low interest rates because of increased liquidity. 

In a speech Thursday, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller also said further interest-rate hikes will likely be needed to slow inflation. He did add that there was “flexibility” about ‌the pace of increases. 

Oil prices have jumped since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, which resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation by Iran. Higher oil prices have meant sticky and climbing prices around the world — including in the States. 

But bitcoin’s price in September appeared to shrug off comments by the new Federal Reserve Chair, Kevin Warsh, and jumped despite the central bank raising interest rates. 

Despite the bitcoin price dip, the coin, according to some analysts, has entered a bull market again. The biggest cryptocurrency spent most of 2026 in a bear market after reaching record highs in October 2025. It is currently more than 30% below its record of $126,080. 

This post Bitcoin Falls Below $81,000 as Oil Spikes, Fed Talks Tough first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

EDX Markets and VerifiedX Partner to Bring Verified Bitcoin (vBTC) to Institutional Markets

VerifiedX (verifiedx.io), a programmable layer for Bitcoin and other crypto assets, and EDX Markets (“EDX”), a Chicago-based digital asset technology firm that combines an institution-only trading venue with a central clearinghouse, announced a strategic partnership to bring Verified Bitcoin (vBTC), a tokenized form of Bitcoin, to EDX for institutional spot trading.

vBTC, VerifiedX’s flagship product, is designed to be a programmable, one-to-one backed Bitcoin asset, enabled by their layer-two protocol. As part of the partnership, EDX will join the VerifiedX network as a validator, providing EDX with direct participation in network validation and governance. The partnership will extend the relationship beyond asset trading into the underlying infrastructure supporting vBTC, while unlocking the asset for institutional traders and investors, according to a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine. 

“Bitcoin has become a globally recognized institutional asset, yet much of its financial utility remains fragmented across exchanges, custodians, wrappers, bridges and application-layer protocols,” they wrote. The press release explained how VerifiedX works to address that fragmentation by making the bitcoin backing vBTC verifiable on-chain at a more granular level, avoiding the pooling of funds and using more advanced Bitcoin technologies than other alternatives. In turn, this makes the asset easier to program for trading, payments, treasury management, lending, and other financial applications.

The partnership is expected to support a range of institutional strategies, including:

• Bitcoin trading and price discovery through institutional spot markets;
• Cross-market arbitrage and liquidity strategies between BTC and vBTC markets;
• Treasury and balance-sheet mobility, allowing Bitcoin capital to move between trading and programmable environments;
• Borrowing, lending and yield strategies built around Bitcoin-backed capital;
• On-chain liquidity and financial applications native to VerifiedX;
• EVM composability through vBTC.b, the canonical representation of vBTC for supported EVM environments, allowing Bitcoin capital to participate in broader decentralized financial markets while preserving a direct redemption path to underlying Bitcoin.

Through EDX, market participants will gain a new venue for trading vBTC within an institutional market structure designed around aggregated liquidity, central clearing and capital-efficient settlement.

“Bitcoin does not need another financial abstraction. It needs infrastructure that allows the asset itself to do more,” said Jay Pollak, Head of Strategy at the VerifiedX Foundation. “Bringing vBTC to EDX is important because it connects programmable Bitcoin capital with market infrastructure purpose-built for sophisticated institutions. An allocator should be able to trade Bitcoin, deploy it, move it across financial environments, and ultimately redeem back to Bitcoin without losing the fundamental ownership characteristics that made Bitcoin valuable in the first place.” 

“EDX joining as a validator makes this partnership even more meaningful. This is not simply about adding another trading pair. It connects institutional trading infrastructure directly with the network infrastructure underneath the asset,” Pollak added. As a validator, EDX gets maximum sovereignty over the signing and governance of the vBTC they are responsible for, while also becoming a node in Bitcoin and the VerifiedX layer. 

Aside from their home page at VerifiedX.io, the company has a dedicated block explorer as well as a Discord, X profile, and GitHub repo. They can also be contacted via email at info@verifiedx.io.

Bitcoin Magazine has a financial relationship with VerifiedX. This article was not commissioned or reviewed by VerifiedX and reflects the independent judgment of the author.

This post EDX Markets and VerifiedX Partner to Bring Verified Bitcoin (vBTC) to Institutional Markets first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

A hypothetical strategy of backing the favorite on prediction market Polymarket in every scored 2026 US primary would have lost 4%, even though those candidates won 87% of the time, according to blockchain data provider Bitquery’s scorecard dated Oct. 9. The result separates two questions for election bettors: who is most likely to win, and whether their contract is worth the price.

Bitquery found that the candidate with the highest study reference price won 238 of 273 Senate, House and governor primaries. But its hypothetical strategy of putting $1 on each favorite at the study’s reference price lost four cents per dollar.

The strongest favorites did much of the work behind the headline accuracy rate. Candidates priced at 90 cents or more won 177 of 182 races. Among favorites priced between 50 and 90 cents, however, 71% won despite an average price of 77 cents.

An outcome share pays $1 when it wins and nothing when it loses. Buying an expensive favorite therefore leaves little profit on a winning share, while a losing share wipes out its purchase cost. Enough losses can outweigh many correct calls.

Putting the same dollar amount into every race also buys different numbers of shares. A cheaper winner produces a larger payout for that stake than an expensive winner. Counting correct predictions treats every race equally; calculating returns must account for those different payouts.

Reference prices limit the betting conclusion

Bitquery averaged trades during the 24 hours before 12:00 UTC on voting day. When a candidate had no trade in that window, it used the last trade within the preceding 30 days. For races that went to a runoff, it used the runoff date.

Those averages, and potentially stale fallback trades, are reference prices rather than guaranteed buy quotes at the cutoff. The published methodology does not specify a full adjustment for spreads, slippage or fees. Polymarket’s current fee page lists a politics fee range of 0% to 1%, but does not establish the charges on the historical trades in this sample.

The study excluded nine markets because some settled before voting, some lacked usable prices and one lacked a settlement record. It covered primaries in the 50 states using Polygon trade data, leaving out Polymarket’s US app and other venues such as Kalshi.

For November’s prediction markets, the distinction between forecasting and pricing remains useful. The measured primary record itself may not carry over: Bitquery cautions that general elections attract more money and polling than small, local contests.

The post Backing Polymarket’s primary favorites would have lost 4%, new audit finds. appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Amazon's Bedrock AgentCore Payments, built with Coinbase and Stripe, lets AI agents discover paid services, authenticate, and pay with stablecoins and x402 under preset spending limits.

AI agents are getting wallets before merchants get a court, and shopping agents have started placing orders across the open internet.

The harder problem arrives once the payment clears, when a buyer's agent pays correctly, and the buyer wants the money back. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) put that gap on the record Oct. 6, and Edgars Nemse, CEO of the GenLayer Foundation, argued it caps what agents can buy.

Nemse told CryptoSlate that payment “is the easy part, because it's deterministic: the money moved, or it didn't,” while “the outcome isn't.” Defining if work was delivered as promised is a judgment call.

AI agents remove the friction disputes depend on

According to Nemse, every dispute system runs on a hidden assumption that disputing is tedious enough that most people skip it. AI is already eroding that friction, with people filing the complaints themselves for now.

Complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau doubled to 6.6 million in 2025, and the regulator warned that LLMs and autonomous software can flood complaint systems with duplicative submissions.

A Nature Human Behaviour study estimates that LLM use raises the probability of favorable relief at the CFPB by 6.9 percentage points.

These figures describe complaint systems, and the CFPB data covers mostly credit reporting.

Mastercard and Datos’s 2025 outlook projected 324 million chargebacks worldwide by 2028. Mastercard’s 2026 US merchant benchmark of $128 per chargeback covers internal costs and third-party fees, excluding the lost goods or services. Applying that US benchmark to the global volume as an illustrative assumption, a 5% increase would add 16.2 million chargebacks and about $2.1 billion in operational costs; a 15% increase would add 48.6 million and about $6.2 billion.

Nemse noted that every queue behind those cases is staffed by humans, “Amazon's included,” and they are “already bending.”

Regulators put merchant costs on the record

The RBA's Oct. 6 summary of its payments consultation drew on written submissions from 75 stakeholders. Merchants, payment service providers and issuers said chargeback rules leave liability unclear when an agent acts outside its authority.

They said agentic commerce could raise merchant costs and that networks may struggle to tell whether an agent followed its customer's instructions. One stakeholder referred to reports of an additional 4% charge for AI-assisted purchases.

Submissions described adoption as early and evidence of harm as limited, generally favoring industry standards and monitoring. The RBA plans to announce regulatory priorities by the end of 2026.

A consumer's agent can file a dispute at negligible cost, while a merchant responds with evidence, including logistics records and processor workflows. Nemse expects agents to “dispute far more often, because disputing costs them nothing.”

Platforms keep the judge

Amazon blocked Meta's Muse shopping agent, citing unauthorized access and its own policies, and Nemse reads the block as a fight over the interface.

He said Amazon “has no doubt Meta's agent can buy something,” and it wants to keep the interface because becoming an API that another company's agent consumes would hand over the customer relationship, data, and advertising real estate worth billions.

Google faces the same problem, and in his view “they'll block outside agents and ship their own.”

Small merchants sit in the opposite position, because “an agent searches for whoever solves the problem best, not whoever bought the ad.” Shopify has moved toward admitting browser-based AI shopping agents into checkout.

Nemse argued that discovery covers half the job, since platforms own “the interface and the judge.” Agents can take the first, and the second needs a credible, neutral dispute process. He added:

“Without it, your agent finds the small merchant, and you still go back to Amazon.”

A CI&T survey of 1,011 US consumers found 27% comfortable with full AI shopping. Nemse puts the ceiling on agentic commerce at “the loss they'll accept with no recourse.”

API calls cost cents, so agents pay for API calls. For work, insurance claims, or refunds, “nobody lets an agent commit” unless recourse exists and someone is clearly liable. Nemse noted that “better payment rails don't move that ceiling.”

Who judges the machines

Google's AP2, Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce focus on authorization, with signed mandates, tokenized credentials, spending controls and agent identity. A mandate proves what the buyer instructed and leaves the delivery judgment open.

Nemse's answer is validators running AI models that reach consensus on the outcome, with the decision enforced on-chain and open to appeal, a design his GenLayer Foundation is building.

GenLayer says common cases can finalize in roughly 30 minutes and fully escalated ones in about three hours.

Fees, bonds, or reputation penalties have to make frivolous disputes uneconomic when filing is free for an AI agent, and validators judge the evidence supplied, such as receipts, tracking, and task specifications.

Appeals protect against bad model outputs and add time and cost, and an on-chain verdict governs escrowed funds while an ordinary merchant's card refund sits outside its reach.

Where agentic commerce goes from here

If merchants and networks settle on standards, with verifiable mandates, merchant evidence records, and escrow that filters disputes before they become chargebacks, AI agents can move from API calls into services and unfamiliar counterparties. The long tail would gain the recourse that platforms enjoy today.

If disputes stay cheap to file and costly to resolve, merchants raise fees, restrict agent purchases, or send buyers back to trusted platforms.

The post AI agents can pay for your shopping. Who gets your money back? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Strategy's $1.45 billion preferred-share buyback program is supporting a substantial share of trading in one of its key Bitcoin financing instruments.

According to a Keyrock research report, Strategy's repurchases accounted for more than 20% of weekly trading volume in its variable-rate preferred stock, STRC, during almost every week of September.

The company's share reached about 28% the week of Sept. 8 before falling to just under 20% in early October.

The findings raise questions about how much of STRC's market liquidity comes from independent investors and how trading conditions might change if Strategy reduces its purchases.

That question is becoming increasingly relevant as the Michael Saylor-founded company approaches the limit of its repurchase authorization.

Strategy had spent approximately $1.45 billion of its $2 billion authorization as of Oct. 4, leaving $547.2 million available. The program has helped support STRC as its shares recovered from the mid-$70s in June to approximately $99.50, approaching the security's $100 reference price.

However, the repurchases are discretionary, and Strategy can modify, suspend, or terminate the program.

For a company seeking to establish preferred securities as a recurring funding channel for Bitcoin accumulation, the concern is whether those instruments can sustain investor demand without continued intervention from their issuer.

Strategy's buying accounts for a fifth of STRC trading

STRC is already among the most actively traded preferred securities in the market, averaging approximately $150 million in daily volume.

Keyrock found that the instrument can typically absorb about $28 million in trading before its price moves 10 basis points, or 0.1%.

That puts it well ahead of Strive's SATA and Strategy's fixed-rate preferred securities, each with less than $3 million in comparable market depth.

For institutional investors, that difference has practical consequences.

Using an illustrative execution rate equivalent to 20% of daily trading volume, Keyrock estimated that a $50 million STRC position could be liquidated in less than two trading days.

The same transaction would take approximately five days in SATA and six to eight weeks across Strategy's fixed-rate preferred instruments.

However, those estimates become less reassuring once Strategy's repurchases are considered.

Removing the company's buying activity reduces estimated trading capacity to approximately 80% of reported volume, implying that a $50 million exit could take longer than headline turnover suggests.

Keyrock cautioned that the calculation does not establish how much liquidity would disappear if Strategy stopped buying. Other market participants could also change their behavior in response.

A preferred-income manager interviewed for the report suggested that some trading around STRC's $100 reference price comes from arbitrage firms and high-frequency traders responding to the issuer's activity.

Such participants could reduce their involvement if Strategy withdraws, potentially leaving the market more dependent on longer-term investors and opportunistic buyers.

STRC liquidity weakens when prices fall below $100

The risk extends beyond the company's direct contribution to trading volume.

Keyrock found that STRC's market depth deteriorates sharply when the security moves away from its $100 reference price.

On the worst 10% of trading days, estimated depth within a 10-basis-point price move falls from about $28 million to $6.5 million.

The deterioration becomes more pronounced as the price discount widens.

STRC is approximately four times less liquid when trading 1% to 3% away from par and roughly eight times less liquid when the deviation exceeds 6%, according to the report.

That creates a potential problem for investors expecting to exit large positions without accepting significant price discounts.

The relationship between STRC's distance from par and market illiquidity had a correlation of 0.43, compared with 0.10 for the magnitude of Bitcoin's daily price movements.

The findings suggest that STRC's tradability is more closely tied to how far its price has moved from $100 than to Bitcoin's immediate direction.

Keyrock also found that a typical decline from par represented approximately seven months of dividend income, while STRC's June drop toward the mid-$70s amounted to roughly two years of coupon payments.

Those discounts illustrate how quickly capital losses can outweigh the income investors expect to collect from the security.

Still, the research does not establish that Strategy's repurchases caused the observed relationship. Keyrock found a similar pattern before the buyback program began, and STRC remains substantially more liquid than competing preferred securities.

The unresolved concern is whether that advantage can persist under stress without significant support from Strategy.

Strategy faces a new test as its buyback capacity shrinks

The findings come as Strategy increasingly allocates capital to maintain its preferred-stock market.

Between Sept. 28 and Oct. 4, the company repurchased approximately $176.3 million of STRC, including $102.6 million during the final three days of September and $73.7 million in early October.

During the same reporting period, Strategy acquired 334 Bitcoin for approximately $28.7 million.

Of the preferred repurchases, $154.1 million came from the company's cash reserves, compared with $13 million used for Bitcoin purchases.

That allocation highlights growing tension between supporting the securities that finance Strategy's operations and deploying capital directly into Bitcoin.

If the company maintained its recent weekly repurchase pace, its remaining $547.2 million authorization would last approximately three weeks.

However, that is an illustrative estimate rather than a fixed deadline. Strategy previously doubled the authorization in September and could adjust the program again.

The company is also pursuing a separate measure intended to strengthen demand for its preferred securities.

Shareholders are scheduled to vote on Oct. 28 on amendments that would introduce daily dividends across Strategy's US-listed preferred stocks.

If approved and implemented, STRC would begin making payments under the new schedule on Nov. 2.

Strategy argues that more frequent distributions could improve price stability, reduce trading disruptions around dividend dates, and broaden institutional interest without increasing total regular dividend obligations.

However, the experience of Strive's SATA, which already uses a near-continuous payment structure, suggests that dividend frequency alone may not guarantee deeper liquidity.

Keyrock identified family offices, private-bank discretionary accounts and specialist credit funds as the most promising sources of larger allocations.

Those investors can commit tens of millions of dollars without necessarily facing the restrictions that prevent some pension and insurance funds from purchasing unrated perpetual preferred securities with deferrable dividends.

Their participation could determine whether STRC develops enough independent demand to support larger institutional positions.

For Strategy, the next disclosures will provide an indication of whether that transition is occurring.

A sustained decline in the company's share of STRC trading, alongside stable market depth and prices near $100, would suggest that independent investors are absorbing more activity.

If issuer participation remains elevated as the authorization approaches its limit, Strategy would face another capital allocation decision: extend the repurchase program, tolerate a potentially wider discount or redirect resources toward preferred dividends, debt obligations and Bitcoin accumulation.

The Oct. 28 vote and subsequent weekly repurchase disclosures will offer the first evidence of whether changes to STRC's dividend structure can attract sufficient demand to reduce that dependence.

The post Strategy’s $150 million-a-day STRC market has a hidden dependency on its own buybacks appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Coinbase streamed an in-person trading competition from Singapore on Oct. 8, advertising $150,000 for the trader crowned Coinbase Champion and presenting the event as a spectator tournament.

The company's Token 2049 Champions Cup page billed the contest as an esports-style perpetual-futures tournament featuring 10 traders and one winner. Its standings tracked the traders' profit and loss in dollars, while the broadcast mixed trading updates with walkouts, jokes and an invitation for viewers to pick a contestant.

At 6:54 p.m. UTC, the event page listed Intern first with $4,263.37 in profit and loss. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong promoted the contest as it went live, saying that “in an hour” one trader would be crowned Coinbase Champion and win $150,000.

Coinbase's announcement described the in-person competition as live, streamed from Singapore.

Coinbase's coverage identified several contestants: Ansem (@blknoiz06), @izebel_eth and @intern among its walkout and introduction posts. It also posted updates naming @Goupenguin, @osf_rekt and @insomniacxbt, with @osf_rekt making what the company called a high-energy entrance.

Coinbase joked that @Goupenguin was trading while watching cats, then said @intern had decided to make memes instead and was backing Jez to win. Intern, who later topped the displayed standings, was also a running joke.

During the action, Coinbase said @osf_rekt had moved into first place at 1:32 p.m. UTC. Seven minutes earlier, its @insomniacxbt update said there were 35 minutes left to win the prize.

A separate prize drawing for Coinbase cup viewers

Coinbase invited viewers to the Champions tab in its app to vote for a trader, but only in certain geographies. Its official rules describe a free promotion: no purchase was necessary, and spending or trading would not improve a participant's chance of winning.

Only votes for the winning trader would qualify for a random prize drawing. If traders tied for the highest total profit and loss, votes for any tied trader would qualify.

The rules called for three voting rounds, with one trader selected per round and up to three votes overall. Entry was limited to eligible app users at least 18 and the age of majority, with jurisdiction and, in some markets, onboarding requirements.

The post Coinbase streams $150,000 Singapore trading cup and crowns its first champion appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Crypto firms authorized under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA) should resolve EU clients' remaining exposure to non-compliant stablecoins through their services within three months, according to a new opinion from the bloc's markets watchdog.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published the opinion Oct. 8. Where national regulators find legacy exposures, ESMA said they should require remediation as soon as possible and no later than three months after publication, or about Jan. 8, 2027.

National regulators may allow firms that do not yet comply to provide strictly limited services needed for an orderly wind-down and to avoid harm to clients. These can include liquidation, conversion, withdrawal, transfer or safekeeping of existing holdings.

Those exit services should be time-limited, clearly communicated to clients and closely supervised. They should not enable new acquisitions, promotion, active distribution or continued market availability.

National supervisors decide whether to allow them, so customers do not automatically get three months of continued service.

The opinion's legal route is Article 66(1) of MiCA, which requires providers to act in clients' best interests. In ESMA's view, providing any MiCA service involving a non-compliant stablecoin should give rise to a presumption that it is incompatible with that duty, whether or not the individual service constitutes an offer to the public or admission to trading.

ESMA argued that providers cannot adequately mitigate the risks created by missing issuer-level safeguards. Warnings, disclosures and client acknowledgments would not resolve those concerns.

ESMA's Jan. 17, 2025 statement left mere custody and transfers open while restricting trading and other services that constituted public offers. The new opinion complements that guidance, preserving the earlier offer-to-the-public interpretation while adding expectations under providers' existing duties.

In its Sept. 30 MiCA-review response, ESMA had sought legislation prohibiting all licensable services involving non-compliant stablecoins, without specifying an implementation date or wind-down path for that proposal.

The October opinion adds a timetable and supervised exit arrangements under current MiCA obligations to the legislative request from Oct. 3.

Access to stablecoins beyond trading

ESMA's opinion names no token or issuer. However, Tether's USDT is among the assets Coinbase's EEA retail guidance labels MiCA-non-compliant.

Kraken's guidance, updated April 13, lists USDT among stablecoins delisted for EEA trading while still permitting deposits and withdrawals, although it discourages deposits.

Removing USDT trading pairs alone may not satisfy ESMA's expectations where a MiCA-authorized provider continues servicing it as a non-compliant token. Remaining services would need to fit any narrowly permitted, supervised wind-down.

For existing holders, the practical question is which exit services their provider and national supervisor allow. The opinion concerns access through regulated EU firms, but it does not impose a worldwide ban on owning USDT.

The post EU regulators target non-compliant stablecoins with a 90-day deadline appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum price under $2,500: where the market stands

$Ethereum is changing hands below $2,500, a level that has acted as a pivot for most of this cycle. Every time ETH lost it, the market treated the move as a warning sign; every time it reclaimed it, buyers came back quickly. That is what makes the current zone interesting rather than dramatic.

The important detail is how the level was lost. A slow drift lower on thin volume says something different from a sharp liquidation candle. If you are weighing an entry, look at whether the daily closes are stabilising just under the mark or whether each bounce is being sold into.

What is pushing the Ethereum price lower

Three forces usually explain moves of this size. The first is macro: when liquidity tightens and risk assets wobble, Ethereum reacts harder than Bitcoin because its buyer base is more speculative. The second is flows. Spot ETF demand and treasury-style buying have become a visible part of the order book, and when those flows slow, the bid thins out fast.

The third is Ethereum's own supply picture. Lower network activity means fewer fees burned, and the supply stops shrinking. None of this breaks the investment case, but it does explain why rallies have struggled to hold.

Is Ethereum a good buy right now?

The honest answer depends on your time horizon. For a trader, buying into a level that is still being defended means a tight invalidation point and a clear plan to exit if it breaks. For an investor with a multi-year view, sub-$2,500 is a price that looked unthinkable at the top of the last cycle, and accumulating in tranches rather than in one order has historically been the less painful route.

What you should not do is treat a round number as a reason on its own. ETH is cheap compared with its own history; it is not cheap because the chart has a nice figure on it. If you want to compare fees and spreads before you act, our crypto exchange comparison lists the venues we track.

Ethereum price forecast for the months ahead

In the near term, most desks frame the range in the same way. A sustained reclaim of the $2,500 area opens the path back towards the $3,000 region, where the heaviest supply from previous trading sits. Failure to hold puts the next liquidity pockets near $2,200 and then $1,900 in play.

Analysts who are constructive lean on the ETF channel staying open and on staking yields keeping a share of supply off exchanges. Those who are cautious point at the weak fee revenue and at layer-2 networks capturing activity that once paid for block space on the main chain.

Long-term Ethereum forecast

Over a multi-year window the argument for Ethereum is structural rather than technical. It remains the settlement layer for the bulk of stablecoin volume, tokenised assets and decentralised finance, and each of those categories has grown through two bear markets. If tokenisation keeps moving from pilot projects to production, the demand for block space follows.

The bullish long-term targets you will see quoted tend to assume that Ethereum keeps its share of that activity while supply growth stays near zero. The bearish ones assume the opposite: that competing chains and layer-2s keep the value, while the main chain settles for being plumbing. You can read the detailed scenarios in our Ethereum price prediction.

The risks you are taking

Regulation remains the largest single unknown, particularly around staking products and how they are treated in the United States and Europe. Competition is the second: faster chains have taken real market share in payments and consumer applications. And there is the simple fact that drawdowns of 70 percent or more have happened in every Ethereum cycle so far.

Position size is the defence against all three. An allocation you can hold through a bad quarter is worth more than a perfectly timed entry you panic out of.

On Thursday, 8 October 2026, the Bundestag rejected the Greens' bill to abolish the crypto holding period. In a recorded vote, 445 members voted against and 132 in favour, with no abstentions. The existing rule therefore continues to apply: anyone holding Bitcoin, Ether or other crypto assets for more than a year sells them tax-free. The holding period is not saved by this vote, however. The measure that actually decides its future sits as a draft bill at the Federal Ministry of Finance and has yet to reach parliament.

On the same morning, the Bundestag also rejected a motion from the Left party that sought to tax crypto gains as investment income and to allow trading bans on certain coins at EU level. Late in the evening, parliament then passed a law under which German tax authorities exchange data on crypto transactions automatically with other states. What the speakers said, why the SPD position in particular matters for investors, and what you should do now follows below.

Vote on the crypto holding period: how the parliamentary groups voted

The vote concerned the “Bill to close a fairness gap in the taxation of crypto assets” (Drucksache 21/5752) at second reading. The Greens had called for a recorded vote, so it is documented for every parliamentary group who voted which way. A total of 577 voting cards were cast. Because the bill fell at second reading, the rules of procedure dispense with a third reading, and the procedure is thereby closed.

The result follows party lines: the conservatives, the SPD and the AfD against as a bloc, the Greens and the Left in favour as a bloc. The figures come from the voting result on bundestag.de and from the plenary minutes of the 99th sitting. Back in May, the finance committee had already recommended rejection with the same majorities.

What the Greens' bill 21/5752 proposed for the holding period

At the heart of the bill of 5 May 2026 was a single sentence in section 23 of the Income Tax Act: the one-year period for private disposals would no longer apply to crypto assets. Crypto gains would thereby have become taxable regardless of the holding period, and at the personal income tax rate rather than the flat-rate withholding tax. It was to apply to crypto assets bought after 31 December 2025. The Greens reckoned with additional revenue of “at least around 5 billion euros”.

For investors that would have been the strictest of the variants under discussion: at high incomes, gains could have been taxed at up to 45 percent plus the solidarity surcharge, while losses would have remained offsettable only against gains from private disposals. How the holding period works today with recurring purchases and the order of sales is explained in our piece on Bitcoin savings plans, the holding period and the exemption threshold.

Video from the Bundestag: Olav Gutting (CDU/CSU) on the crypto holding period

The debate began at 10:15 and ran as part of a larger tax package from the Greens that also covered inheritance tax, property transfer tax and real estate. Olav Gutting answered for the conservatives from 10:21; the holding period comes up in the second half of his speech.

Speech by Olav Gutting (CDU/CSU) on 8 October 2026, 99th sitting, agenda item 8. Source: German Bundestag. The full debate is available in the Bundestag media centre.

Gutting defended the holding period as a basic decision of tax law rather than a special arrangement for crypto. Private crypto assets, he argued, are treated like other private economic goods: whoever speculates short term pays tax on the gain, whoever holds long term can in principle sell tax-free once the period has elapsed. Anyone who finds that unfair would have to put the question “openly and systematically for comparable cases” and not only for an asset class that happens to be “more politically visible” at the moment. For greater transparency he pointed to the new reporting obligations for crypto exchanges under the EU directive DAC 8.

Key statements from the debate: SPD for the withholding tax, conservatives with an open flank

Parsa Marvi (SPD) delivered the sentence investors should note. The SPD, he said, “expressly shares the aim of bringing more tax fairness to crypto assets” and does not find it “fair that gains from cryptocurrencies are tax-free today after a holding period of one year”. He rejected the Greens' route all the same: the existing flat-rate withholding tax is efficient, so subjecting crypto gains to it is the right course. He expressly welcomed the Finance Ministry's draft bill and said the SPD was willing to bring the project to a conclusion with the coalition in the Bundestag.

Lukas Krieger and Fritz Güntzler (both CDU/CSU) warned that a special rule for crypto would create new inequalities against foreign currencies, precious metals and securities. Güntzler recalled that shares and futures contracts once counted as speculative transactions too and later moved to investment income. “Now we are discussing doing something similar for crypto assets. It is also being discussed within the coalition,” he said. That is not a clear commitment to the holding period.

Isabelle Vandre (Die Linke) likewise called for an end to the holding period, but by a different route: crypto assets should move into section 20 of the Income Tax Act so that the exchanges remit the tax directly, coupled with exit taxation. By her account, only 3 percent of crypto users declare their gains correctly in their tax return. Max Lucks (Greens) countered that section 23 is the right place, and that the only pointless element is the tax exemption once the speculative period has elapsed.

The Left's motion 21/5824 rejected: section 20, exit tax and trading bans

The motion “Regulate crypto assets strictly and tax them fairly” went considerably further than the Greens' bill. Among other things it called for crypto assets to be brought into section 20 from the promulgation of a law, for an examination of a wealth-growth tax on the Dutch model for decentralised transactions, for identity requirements for self-custodied wallets at regulated service providers, and for an EU supervisor with the power to impose trading bans on coins causing high environmental damage, for instance through proof of work. The Bundestag followed the finance committee's recommendation and rejected the motion by a show of hands, with the votes of CDU/CSU, AfD and SPD against the Greens and the Left.

CARF reporting framework adopted: which crypto data the tax office receives from abroad

A decision taken late in the evening has more effect for many investors. The Bundestag approved the law on the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on automatic exchange of information under the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (Drucksache 21/7195), the OECD framework on which the EU directive DAC 8 also builds. CDU/CSU, SPD, the Greens and the Left voted in favour, the AfD against. The contracting states collect tax-relevant data on crypto trading and exchange it: users' names, addresses, countries of residence, tax identification numbers and dates of birth, plus the type of crypto asset, gross amounts, quantities and the number of transactions. Anyone holding coins on an exchange outside the EU should therefore not assume the tax office will remain unaware of it.

What changes for investors after the vote: holding period and exemption threshold still apply

In the short term, nothing changes. Gains from the sale of crypto assets held privately are taxable under section 23 of the Income Tax Act if no more than one year lies between purchase and sale. After that, the gain is tax-free. Within the period, a gain stays tax-free as long as all private disposal gains in a calendar year together remain below the exemption threshold of 1,000 euros. Once it is exceeded, the entire amount is taxable, not only the part above it.

Thursday's vote takes only one of several variants off the table, namely the deletion of the period with taxation at the personal rate from 2026 purchases onwards. For holdings you own today, that was the riskiest variant, because it would have reached back into the current year.

The Finance Ministry's draft bill: the 31 December 2026 cut-off decides

The future of the holding period will be decided by the draft bill on reforming the taxation of certain privately held crypto assets of 30 September 2026. It moves so-called exchange crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ether into section 20 of the Income Tax Act, that is, to investment income, for which the separate tax rate of 25 percent plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax applies. That is to take effect for the first time from 1 January 2027, and only for crypto assets acquired after 31 December 2026. From 2028, platforms are to withhold the tax directly.

For existing holdings, the draft means this: whatever sits in a securities account or a wallet by the end of 2026 keeps the one-year holding period. The tricky part is the fallback rule for cases in which the platform does not know the purchase date and purchase price. It is then to assume a purchase after the cut-off and to base the tax withholding on 50 percent of the sale proceeds. What that means in euros is worked through in our piece on the substitute assessment in the crypto tax draft. The ministry estimates the additional revenue at 70 million euros for 2027 and, from 2029, at 350 million euros a year, a fraction of the 5 billion euros the Greens had reckoned with.

Next steps on crypto tax: petitions committee, cabinet, Bundesrat

On Monday 12 October, the Bundestag's petitions committee holds a public hearing from 12:00 on petition 201716, which calls for the holding period to be kept. The procedure and the livestream are set out in our piece on the petitions committee on 12 October. According to the timetable so far, the federal cabinet is to take up the draft bill on 14 October. If it adopts it, the draft becomes a government bill, on which the Bundesrat comments first. According to the draft, the law also needs the consent of the state chamber at the end. The Bundestag then debates it in three readings, and only with promulgation in the Federal Law Gazette does the legal position change. After Thursday's debate it is clear where the majority for it would have to come from: from the SPD, which openly supports the move to the withholding tax, and from a conservative group that, in Güntzler's words, is itself discussing it.

What you should do now: secure purchase records and sort holdings by purchase date

Whatever the law ends up looking like, one thing decides your tax bill in every variant: the evidence of when and at what price you bought. That helps you today with the holding period and tomorrow against a blanket substitute assessment.

• Export the complete transaction history of every exchange and every broker while the accounts still exist. Why that is urgent is set out in our piece on the tax records export at the exchanges.
• Sort your holdings by purchase date. Whatever you buy up to 31 December 2026 would keep the holding period under the draft; everything after that would not.
• Keep a complete record of transfers between wallets and exchanges, so purchase dates can still be documented after the coins have moved. A crypto tax tool does that automatically and calculates the periods per position.
• Do not sell in haste. The Bundestag tightened nothing on Thursday, and a sale inside the one-year period costs tax today that patience can avoid.

How to prepare the documents for the tax office in order is explained in our guide to the crypto tax return in seven steps. With larger holdings or gains, your own case belongs with a tax adviser.

Grayscale will have the TAO of its Bittensor trust held by two houses in future instead of one. The asset manager has added Coinbase Prime as a second custodian, with BitGo remaining primary custodian. The move is set out in an 8-K that the trust filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 5 October 2026. For holders of Bittensor, this is not price news but news about the question of who holds the keys.

The price itself has a weak week behind it. TAO trades at $275.96, which is 10.7 percent below the highest daily value of the past seven days, according to CoinGecko as of Friday, 9:00. Over seven days it shows a loss of 11.99 percent, over 30 days a gain of 6.39 percent. Taken together, the two describe a pullback inside a month that is still in positive territory on balance.

What Grayscale reported in the 8-K on the custody of TAO

An 8-K is the mandatory filing with which an issuer registered with the SEC discloses a material event between two quarterly reports. In it, the Grayscale Bittensor Trust reports two contracts signed and one contract terminated, all dated to the end of the month.

On 29 September 2026, the sponsor signed an amendment to the Coinbase Prime Broker Agreement of 3 October 2025 on behalf of the trust. Coinbase will thereby hold a portion of the trust's TAO. A day later, on 30 September, an amendment followed to the revised custody agreement with BitGo Bank & Trust of 5 June 2026, which brings the trust into that agreement. The older BitGo agreement of 12 March 2025 was terminated on the same day.

One figure the document expressly does not name: how much TAO moves to Coinbase has not yet been determined by the sponsor, by its own account. Anyone reading a split in percent over the coming weeks should check where it comes from, because it does not come from this filing. What is recorded, by contrast, is that the custodians' fees are borne by the sponsor and that fees and expenses are taken in TAO.

BitGo stays primary custodian, Coinbase Prime will hold a portion

The division of roles remains clear. BitGo is and remains the trust's primary custodian; Coinbase joins as a second address. In the language of institutional custody that means a portion of the holdings will sit in a second infrastructure, with its own keys, its own approval paths and its own operations team.

Prime broker is not a synonym for custodian here. A prime broker agreement bundles trading, settlement and custody with one provider so an institutional client can move large quantities without maintaining a separate relationship for every step. The fact that the trust extended precisely that agreement points to trading capability, not storage alone.

Why a second custodian shifts the operational risk of a trust

With a single custodian, everything hangs on one operation. If it fails, the fund stands still, regardless of how healthy the assets inside it are. Two custodians spread that operational outage across two mutually independent houses. The risk has not vanished as a result; it is divided.

Set against that is the second route of attack. Every additional infrastructure brings its own keys, its own staff and its own software, and any of those can become the point of entry. The hacks of 2026 repeatedly hit the software around the edges rather than the cryptography itself. Whether the split is a gain is therefore decided by the quality of the second house, not by the number two.

GTAO is an OTC-traded trust and not yet an ETF

The Grayscale Bittensor Trust runs under the ticker GTAO and trades over the counter, not on a regular US exchange. Grayscale has set out on the road to an exchange-traded fund: the S-1 registration statement reached the SEC on 30 December 2025, and a first amendment followed on 2 April 2026. No approval has come of it to date.

The difference is practical for you rather than academic. A trust traded over the counter can sit permanently above or below the value of its holdings, because the mechanism that continuously creates and redeems shares in an ETF is missing. Anyone who equates such structures with a spot ETF is buying something other than what they think. How the product types diverge in Germany is unpicked in the overview of crypto ETFs for investors in Germany.

Then there is the distribution route. A trust registered in the US is not offered to retail investors in Germany; for distribution to retail clients in the EU, the PRIIPs Regulation requires a key information document, which such products do not carry. The news from the 8-K changes none of that and remains information about the market for you, not a way to buy.

Price of the week: $275.96, 10.7 percent below the weekly high

The daily values of the week trace a clear arc: $292.09 on 3 October, then four days between $304 and $309 with the peak of $308.88 on 7 October, after that $291.29 on 8 October and $268.40 at the start of 9 October. Over the past 24 hours the low stood at $254.82 and the high at $287.30. All values according to CoinGecko, as of Friday, 9:00.

For context: market capitalisation stands at around $3.13 billion, trading turnover of the past 24 hours at around $308 million. TAO is 63.6 percent away from its all-time high of $757.60 from March 2024. The week's pullback therefore falls into a phase that already runs far below the old record.

Circulating supply: 11.34 of 21 million TAO have been issued

Bittensor is capped at 21 million units, as Bitcoin is. Of those, 11,339,646 TAO are in circulation, or 54.0 percent of the maximum. Issuance declines in steps over time, and the timing of the next step depends on the quantity issued rather than on a calendar date. There is no documented date for it at present, and a forecast would be guesswork.

Subnets: what the network pays out its issuance for in the first place

A subnet on Bittensor is a self-contained competition in which providers deliver a particular service, a language model or data preparation for instance, and are rewarded according to assessed quality. The network's issuance is distributed across these subnets, and anyone holding or delegating TAO is economically tied to that distribution.

For the custody question this matters more than it sounds. Delegating TAO rather than merely holding it puts it into a process that requires active use of keys. Between “sitting in a custodian's vault” and “working in the network” lies a noticeable difference in risk profile, and that holds whether a fund or a private individual holds the tokens.

Buying TAO in Germany: a MiCA exchange instead of a US trust

If you want exposure to TAO in Germany, the route runs through a trading platform licensed under MiCA, or through a certificate on the token authorised in the EU. The US structure from the 8-K is not open to you. Which platforms can show a MiCA licence is set out in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

After the purchase comes the same question Grayscale has just answered for itself: who holds the keys. Leave the tokens on the exchange and you carry its operational risk. Withdraw them and you carry it yourself, but the counterparty risk disappears. Which device suits that depends on how much you hold and how often you move the balance.

Two further points belong in the review. Leveraged products on a token that gives up double digits inside a week liquidate quickly; on a decline of 10.7 percent from the weekly high, a ten-times leveraged position is already finished on paper. And for tax, the one-year holding period for private disposals still applies in Germany, whose abolition is under discussion but has not been decided. Spreading several purchases across the year calls for a clean record of the acquisition dates.

Levels above and below: $308.88 and $254.82

Above, the next documented point of orientation lies at the weekly high of $308.88, below that the round level of $300. On the downside, the 24-hour low of $254.82 marks the last place where buyers appeared again, followed by the round 250. These are observation points from this week's price data and not price targets.

What the custody news means for the price cannot be quantified in good faith. An amendment to agreements on custodians is a structural event with no immediate effect on supply or demand. Selling it as a price driver overstretches it.

Bittensor custody: without ETF approval, GTAO stays over the counter

1. First establish whether you are looking for access at all: the US trust is not open to you, while buying directly through a licensed platform is. The licensing position of the providers is listed under regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Settle the key question deliberately before the first purchase runs, not after it. For withdrawing from the exchange, the hardware wallet comparison helps with choosing a device.
3. Set up the record for the holding period with the first purchase, or the acquisition dates will be missing later. Tools for that are in the comparison of crypto tax software.

(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.)

Primary sources: the 8-K of the Grayscale Bittensor Trust of 5 October 2026 and the amendment to the S-1 registration of 2 April 2026, both filed with the SEC.

Anyone holding ICX has until 19 October 2026 to sell the token on its largest remaining venue. At 15:00 Korean time, 8:00 in the morning in Germany, the South Korean exchange Upbit halts trading in the ICX against won pair and deletes every open order in the process. A balance held there can still be withdrawn until 18 November 2026. After that, Upbit ends all support for the token, including support for airdrops, wallet upgrades, migrations and hard forks.

Upbit is not a trading address for investors in Germany, as the exchange serves the Korean market and requires a Korean bank account. The date nonetheless helps determine the price at which a remaining European holding can still be sold at all. The won pair on Upbit is the last large market ICX has anywhere, and it disappears around ten weeks before the day the ICON blockchain is shut down for good.

What happens to ICX at Upbit on 19 October

A delisting is the removal of a crypto asset from an exchange's trading: the pair vanishes from the offering, and buy and sell orders are no longer possible afterwards. Upbit is carrying out this step for ICX in two stages, and only the first falls on 19 October.

At the close of trading that day, the exchange will cancel every order still sitting in the order book, uniformly and by its own announcement. A sell limit parked well above the market price therefore comes back rather than filling. Only in the second stage, four weeks later, does the withdrawal window close as well. That sequence is customary and carries the more important information for holders: between 19 October and 18 November a balance can no longer be sold, but it can still be moved out. The date was first reported by a Korean trade publication, in the report of 18 September.

Why Upbit is halting trading: replay attack and warning list

Upbit justifies the removal with security risks that remain unresolved in the exchange's view. The background is an incident on the ICON chain at the end of August. In a replay attack, a transaction that has already been validly signed is submitted again, so the same instruction is executed several times although it was authorised only once.

According to the available reports, two such signed withdrawal messages were reused 1,492 times on 27 August. That released 119.9 million ICX and 531,600 bnUSD, and the chain then stood still for around 25 hours. On 28 August, Upbit put the token on its warning list and, after further review, decided to end trading support. Upbit's own notice page is not freely accessible from outside Korea; the date and the reasoning therefore rest on reporting by Korean and international trade media, not on the exchange's page itself.

Only one market left: 18 of 865 Upbit pairs carry the warning flag

How seriously Upbit takes the case can be read from the exchange's own market list. Of 865 trading pairs, exactly 18 carry the warning flag on 9 October, and those 18 are practically identical with the current removal and review cohort: alongside ICX there are BLAST, EGLD, MANTRA, RVN, SOPH and ZIL.

Within that group, ICX is the only asset left with just a single pair at Upbit. Its earlier pairs against Bitcoin and against USDT no longer exist there. EGLD, MANTRA, RVN and BLAST each still have two or three pairs affected; for ICX, the won pair takes the entire venue with it. How the same mechanism runs for another token was described in early October in our piece on the Upbit delisting of Ravencoin.

Almost half of worldwide ICX turnover runs through Upbit

Liquidity describes a market's ability to absorb an order without a large price concession; the thinner it is, the more expensive a sale becomes. On ICX it is small, and it hangs on a single place.

The won pair at Upbit turned over around 501 million won on Thursday, at a price of 19.6 won and a volume of 25.8 million ICX. Converted, that is $348,000 to $373,000, depending on whether the official exchange rate or the token's world market price is applied. Worldwide daily turnover across all venues combined came to about $776,000 over the same period. Upbit alone therefore carries 45 to 48 percent of all ICX trading. The token's market value stands at around $14.9 million.

That order of magnitude is the real heart of the date. When close to half of turnover falls away on a single day, the remainder barely redistributes to the other venues; the remaining market becomes noticeably thinner as a result. Selling a larger position after that means moving the price with your own order. Which venues remain an option for a move, and what to weigh when choosing, is set out in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges with MiCA authorisation.

Around eight percent premium: ICX costs more in Korea than on the world market

A second effect comes into play, and it is easily missed when looking at a single price. On Upbit, one ICX cost 19.6 won on Thursday. At the official exchange rate that is about 1.46 US cents, while the token traded at around 1.35 US cents on the world market. The Korean market therefore pays a good eight percent more for the same token.

Premiums of this kind have been known in Korea for years and arise because capital moves between Korean and international venues less easily than the price difference suggests. For assessing the date, the consequence is this: the average price that price pages show for ICX today contains a share of Korean purchases at higher prices. If that market falls away, so does the part of demand that carried the premium.

Withdrawals until 18 November: the second Upbit deadline

Four weeks lie between the trading close and the withdrawal close at Upbit. Whoever still has ICX sitting in a Korean account can send the balance to their own address or to another exchange during that period, but can no longer sell it. After 18 November 2026, Upbit also explicitly stops handling airdrops, wallet upgrades, migrations and hard forks for the token.

That last point is no footnote in the case of ICX. The exchange of ICX into SODA, on which the entire remaining supply depends, is technically exactly such a migration process. An exchange that ends migration support thereby takes away holders' option of having the swap handled through the account.

The deadline calendar for ICX up to 31 December

The Upbit date does not stand alone. For a European ICX holder, several dated cut-offs line up before the end of the year, and most of them are already behind us or immediately ahead:

• 2 October 2026: Bitvavo closed deposits, trading and withdrawals for ICX. Whatever remained in the account after that is automatically converted into euros by the exchange on 12 October at the latest, according to its schedule. The details are in our report on the Bitvavo forced conversion.
• 30 September and 3 October 2026: At OKX, trading ended first in the euro pairs, then in the USDT pairs. The exchange accepts withdrawals until 23 December 2026, according to the details in our article on the OKX delisting.
• 19 October and 18 November 2026: trading close and withdrawal close at Upbit.
• 31 December 2026: The ICON blockchain is shut down, and at the same moment the option of swapping ICX into SODA ends.

Binance had already taken ICX out of spot trading earlier, in September. Anyone who suspects a balance is still there will find the sequence of the dates at the time in our article on the Binance delisting; the November withdrawal dates named there, however, come from a single secondary source and should be treated with corresponding caution. If in doubt, check the withdrawal window directly in the account.

A one-way street since 30 September: the road back to ICX is closed

The migration is the swap of the old token for the new one: ICX is withdrawn, SODA is issued. The ICON Foundation set the dates for it back in May and published them on its own project page. What the two cut-offs mean for holders was sorted out in August in our overview of the two deadlines before the ICON blockchain shuts down. Since 30 September the swap has run in one direction only; converting SODA back into ICX has been ruled out since then. On 31 December 2026 the chain will be halted permanently, with only an archive remaining reachable for looking up old transactions.

That leaves exactly two states for an ICX balance at year-end: swapped, or worthless on a shut-down chain. How large the unswapped portion is was established by cryptoticker.io in early September through its own count of both chains: at the time, 1.109 billion ICX still sat on the ICON chain, and there is no public progress indicator for the migration. No more recent reliable figure is available.

Exchange or your own wallet: who carries out the migration

Self-custody means the keys to the coins lie with the holder and not with an exchange. For the ICX migration, that difference determines who has to act.

If the balance sits on an exchange that carries out the migration itself, the house handles the swap and credits SODA. Several venues have already completed this and automatically converted customer balances in the process. If the balance sits in a private wallet, by contrast, it does not migrate on its own: there the holder has to start the swap through the project's official portal, and the 31 December deadline applies without leniency. What decides the timetable is not 31 December but the day your own exchange ends its support.

Copycat portals asking for keys tend to multiply around migrations like this one. Open the swap page only through the official project address and never enter a seed phrase; a genuine migration portal asks for a signature from the wallet, not a word list.

Holding period and tax: what separates a sale, a forced conversion and a migration

The holding period is the span after which a gain from a private sale of crypto assets stays tax-free in Germany; under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act it is one year. Within that year the gain is taxable, with a threshold applying to the sum of all private disposals in a year.

Three routes now run in parallel for ICX, and they are not treated alike for tax. Selling yourself on an exchange is a clear disposal with a date and proceeds. A forced conversion, in which the exchange turns the residual balance into euros without an order, is economically a sale as well, merely without your own decision on timing; it too triggers the event. The swap of ICX into SODA, by contrast, is legally contested: whether a swap in the course of a project migration counts as a disposal of the old token or as the continuation of the same investment has not been conclusively settled, and the answer determines whether the holding period starts afresh.

In practical terms: record for each of these events when it took place, how many tokens were involved and what value arose. On a holding that has been sitting since 2021 or longer, the question of a restarted holding period can decide more than the price does. With larger holdings or an unclear acquisition history, the case belongs with a tax adviser rather than a rule of thumb.

What argues against a quick sale, and what argues for it

Market mechanics argue for a prompt exit. With the won pair, close to half of trading disappears, and the Korean premium of a good eight percent disappears with it. Anyone who intends to sell anyway sells into a thinner market the longer they wait. Added to that, at a market value of just under $15 million even a medium-sized order leaves visible traces in the price.

Against a rushed sale stand the tax question and the size of the amounts. At 1.35 US cents per token, a holding of 10,000 ICX is worth around $135; trading and withdrawal fees can eat up a noticeable share of that. Whoever migrates instead of selling keeps a position in the successor project, but carries its risk. And that risk is real: a project that shuts down its own blockchain, and a token whose largest venue removes it over unresolved security questions, are both warning signs. A total loss is possible at a value of this size, and on both routes.

This text cannot give a recommendation, because the right answer depends on the purchase price, the holding period, the size of the position and your own assessment of the successor project. What it can give is the calendar: after 19 October, every one of these decisions becomes more expensive to carry out, and after 31 December one of them is no longer possible at all.

ICX: 19 October decides the four later deadlines

Three steps sort out the situation, and the first costs only a few minutes:

1. Establish the balance and its location. Look in every account and every wallet for where ICX is still sitting, and note the deadline that applies at each place. If the balance is at an exchange that has already removed it, the withdrawal deadline is the date that counts. Which venues are suitable for a move is shown in our comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Decide before 19 October, not after. Selling or migrating are the two routes; both are cheaper to carry out before the trading close than after it. Migrating out of self-custody requires access to the keys and a small reserve for network fees. Which device suits that is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document every event. The date, the number of tokens and the value of every sale, forced conversion and swap belong in your own records while the exchange still displays them. After an account closure, the evidence is laborious to obtain. The tools in our overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers help with the collecting.

(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.)

Shibburn lists 707,506,927 Shiba Inu tokens burned over 30 days as of Thursday morning, 1,945,872 of them in the past 24 hours. Measured against a circulating supply of 585.48 trillion SHIB, that comes to 0.000121 percent, and at a price of $0.0000054 it is worth roughly $3,820 for the whole month. A burn headline only becomes readable with those two reference points: the share of supply and the dollar value.

Shiba Inu and the 707,506,927 tokens burned over the past 30 days

A burn is a transfer of tokens to an address whose private key nobody holds. The tokens stay visible on the chain but can no longer be moved, and the circulating supply drops by that amount on paper. For Shiba Inu, Shibburn adds up these transfers and publishes them as daily, weekly and monthly totals.

The three figures from 9 October sit far apart. Over 24 hours they add up to 1,945,872 SHIB, over seven days to 401,302,586 and over 30 days to 707,506,927. The weekly figure therefore carries 56.7 percent of the monthly total, although a week accounts for barely a quarter of the period. A single large transfer shifts the statistic for weeks.

What 707.5 million SHIB amount to against 585.48 trillion in circulation

The ratio is the point at which most reports stop. 707,506,927 divided by 585,482,205,001,143 gives 0.00000120842, or 0.000121 percent. If the pace stayed the same for a year, roughly 8.49 billion SHIB would be burned, and it would take about 690 years for a single percent of today's supply to disappear. Reaching half the supply would take a good 34,000 years on paper.

That calculation is not a forecast but an extrapolation of the current pace. The only thing it reveals is the order of magnitude the mechanism works in. And 707 million sounds large only until you name the reference: there are 585 trillion of them.

Shibarium and ShibTorch: how transaction fees turn into burned tokens

Shibarium is the project's own network, a layer above Ethereum that bundles transactions and settles them more cheaply. The base fees of transactions there accumulate in the network currency BONE, are swapped into SHIB and sent to a burn address. The mechanism is called ShibTorch.

That has a consequence worth keeping in mind whenever you read a burn figure: the pace follows network load rather than a calendar. There is no fixed schedule under which a given amount disappears each month. When little is settled on Shibarium the burn falls, and on quiet days single-digit millions are left over, as the 1,945,872 tokens of the past 24 hours show.

The burn rate jumps by thousands of percent because the base is tiny

Early October brought reports of a burn rate rising by several thousand percent. Percentages like that appear when a quiet previous day serves as the comparison base. If the daily figure climbs from 1.9 million to 297 million, that works out at more than 15,000 percent, even though the absolute amount still sits in the hundred-thousandths of a percent of supply.

The current numbers show the same swing in the other direction. The daily average of the past week is around 57.3 million SHIB; the past 24 hours brought 1,945,872. That amounts to 3.4 percent of the weekly average, a drop of more than 96 percent, and this figure would work as a headline just as well without anything having changed about the mechanism. A rate without an absolute amount and without a reference point says little about Shiba Inu.

The burn address balance on chain: 410.437 trillion SHIB

The figure that cannot be spun is the balance of the burn address. The best-known one ends in 2069 and holds 410,437,103,366,901 SHIB on 9 October according to Ethplorer. That comes to around 41 percent of the original one quadrillion created in 2020, and it stems overwhelmingly from a single action in May 2021, when a large part of the supply was destroyed in one go.

Shibburn puts the total of all burns at 410,844,855,570,460 SHIB. The gap of roughly 407.75 billion tokens to the balance of the 2069 address comes from the counter adding up several burn addresses. Put both figures side by side and the scale of the running burn against the historical stock is immediately clear: the 707.5 million of a month are 0.00017 percent of what already sits at those addresses.

Four days, 323.5 million tokens: the jump in the 30-day balance

On 5 October, cryptoticker reported 384 million SHIB over 30 days in its burn balance for Shiba Inu. Four days later the same counter stands at 707,506,927. The increase of 323.5 million tokens amounts to a gain of 84.2 percent in the monthly balance, and it comes largely from a single large transfer in early October that also carries the weekly figure of 401.3 million.

That is precisely why a monthly figure should never be read as a trend. The value is a rolling window: once the large transfer drops out of the 30-day period in about four weeks, the figure halves again without anyone having done anything differently. The same mechanic then produces headlines about a supposed collapse in burn activity.

Daily turnover of $91.7 million against $3,820 a month

The dollar value makes the order of magnitude clearest fastest. At a price of $0.0000054 on Thursday morning, the 707,506,927 tokens of a month are worth around $3,820, or roughly 3,400 euros. The 1,945,872 tokens of the past 24 hours come to $10.51.

Against that stands trading turnover of $91.7 million in 24 hours, at a market capitalisation of $3.18 billion (data from CoinGecko, as of 9 October). A single trading day therefore moves about 24,000 times what a full month of burns takes out of circulation. The SHIB price forms on the demand side, and the supply side is barely touched by this mechanism over the course of a month.

Sources for the table: burn figures from Shibburn, price and supply from CoinGecko, both as of 9 October. The value of the total is a pure arithmetic figure at today's price, not an amount anyone ever paid.

Holding period, the 1,000-euro threshold and what a burn headline settles for tax

For investors in Germany, the holding period decides on a SHIB sale, not the burn statistic. Under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, a gain from a private disposal is tax-free if more than one year lies between purchase and sale. Below that period a threshold of 1,000 euros per calendar year applies to all private disposals taken together; once it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable and not only the excess.

A burn headline changes nothing in that calculation, because it triggers no inflow. Selling on the strength of a headline shortly before the one-year mark can mean paying tax on a gain that would have been tax-free a few weeks later. Which purchase and sale records the tax office wants to see, and which tools track holding periods per tranche, is set out in the overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

Spread, minimum order size and the eighth decimal place on SHIB

At a price of $0.0000054 the eighth decimal place decides what you pay. A move of a single place at this scale already amounts to around 0.18 percent, as the look at tick size on Shiba Inu from 4 October showed. The gap between bid and ask is a multiple of that on many venues.

Over 24 hours SHIB moved between $0.00000510 and $0.00000546, a range of 7.1 percent. An order placed in a hurry because of a headline hits that range at a random point. Before buying, it is worth looking at the actual fee structure and the spread of the venue in question, compiled in the comparison of crypto exchanges for investors in Germany.

On Thursday morning SHIB was up 0.5 percent, while Ethereum lost 2.4 percent, Dogecoin 2.1 percent and Solana 3.6 percent. Over seven days, by contrast, it shows a loss of 7.9 percent. A single green day inside a weak week is no signal, and it has nothing to do with the burn in any case.

The counter-test on a burn headline: share, dollar value and address balance

The counter-test needs two figures and a calculator. The first is the reported burn amount for a clearly named period, the second the current circulating supply. Dividing one by the other gives the share, and multiplying the burn amount by the price gives the dollar value.

Three things reliably expose an inflated report. A percentage without an absolute amount leaves out the base it refers to. A 24-hour figure without the weekly and monthly figures beside it hides whether a single transfer is carrying the statistic. And a burn figure without a price conversion leaves open whether the subject is millions or a two-digit dollar amount. With Shiba Inu it is currently the two-digit amount per day.

The balance of the burn address itself serves as the counter-test to the counter. It is openly visible at Ethplorer and can be compared from week to week. If it does not rise by the order of magnitude a report claims, the report is wrong.

Burn balance: 0.000121 percent a month is the whole effect

1. Convert every burn headline into two numbers before you trade: the share of supply and the value in euros. When the share sits at 0.000121 percent a month, as it does today, the headline is news about the mechanism and not about supply. Which venues are licensed under MiCA in Germany and what fees they charge is set out in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Look at the range before every order. SHIB swung 7.1 percent over 24 hours, and the spread comes on top of that. Which exchange runs which fee model, and where limit orders are available without a surcharge, is shown in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
3. Record the purchase dates per tranche. The one-year period under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act decides over considerably more money on SHIB than any burn statistic, and it runs separately for each purchase. Tools for that are listed in the overview of portfolio trackers with tax features.

(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.)

The package hits five crypto and payment platforms, two of which handled transactions with Russia’s A7 network, the UK government said.

Is this the beginning of a bigger selloff with the anniversary of 10/10 looming? Or just a leverage flush before the next leg up?

Raheim Hamilton forfeited some 1,230 BTC. His co-creator Thomas Pavey, who agreed to forfeit 1,584 BTC, is due to be sentenced this month.

Ajay Shinjin helped steal nearly $265,000 in crypto after criminals hijacked BT customers' phone numbers in November 2021.

Manus built a self-driving AI assistant before the hype, sold itself to Meta, then watched Beijing unwind the deal. Its first fresh money since: more than $500 million.

Permissionless smart contracts went live on the Midnight mainnet in major milestone for the network.

Liquidation volume is surging, with a possibility of reaching levels that might start off the bear market.

New XRPL upgrade changes wallet rules for big accounts to let them hide master keys offline.

Ethereum whales keep on betting on the market downfall, but the liquidity thresholds are getting thinner.

Binance is set to delist 22 cryptocurrencies and restrict access to eight services in Brazil starting Oct. 27.

TLDR

• The UK sanctioned three cryptocurrency exchanges and two payment platforms over suspected Russian financial links.
• The October 8 sanctions package includes 38 new designations targeting financial networks, oil companies and suppliers.
• British authorities linked two targeted businesses to transactions involving the Russia-backed A7 network.
• The A7 network claimed to have processed more than $90 billion during 2025, although independent verification remains limited.
• The UK also sanctioned 12 Russian-linked oil tankers and businesses involved in military supply chains.

The UK sanctioned three cryptocurrency exchanges and two payment platforms on October 8 over suspected Russian sanctions evasion. The 38 new measures also cover oil companies, vessels and military suppliers.

UK Names Crypto Firms and Payment Operators

The list names Xeltox Enterprises, a Canadian-registered firm behind Cryptomus, Heleket and Certa Payments, and Kyrgyzstan-based TokenSpot. It also includes Processing KG, operator of VexPay, and Tsunami Payments. Processing KG director Ulan Bukabaev also faces sanctions.

The UK suspects two targeted businesses of handling payments involving A7, a Russia-backed financial network. The United States sanctioned the A7 network earlier this month over suspected illegal financing. British officials provided no transaction totals for individual listed companies.

A7 Stablecoin Network Faces More Restrictions

The A7 network uses a ruble-backed digital token called A7A5. The UK says it helps move funds despite restrictions on Russian banks. A7 claimed to have processed over $90 billion during 2025, British officials said.

The $90 billion figure comes from A7 and remains unverified. Blockchain researchers have questioned whether reported A7A5 transfers reflect payments between independent users. Authorities have not said every newly sanctioned exchange handled the token.

Financial Sanctions Limit Crypto-Related Payments

UK sanctions freeze designated firms’ assets within British jurisdiction. Financial institutions cannot process prohibited payments involving those firms. Separately, Kyrgyzstan’s USDKG stablecoin shutdown followed earlier UK sanctions against its issuer.

The action follows earlier British sanctions against crypto services suspected of handling Russian funds. Officials previously targeted Grinex and Garantex. Other governments have restricted related platforms as they investigate suspected sanctions avoidance.

Wider Package Covers Oil and Supply Chains

Beyond cryptocurrency, the UK sanctioned Russian oil producers Zarubezhneft and INK Capital. Its latest list also covers 12 tankers linked to Russia’s shadow fleet. Officials say these ships help transport oil under arrangements designed to avoid restrictions.

The announcement names 17 people and businesses tied to supplies for Russian weapons production. Japan separately expanded sanctions on October 2, including restrictions on the Garantex exchange. These restrictions follow Japan’s Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act and related rules.

UK officials also named suppliers of machine tools, electronics and other goods used in missile and drone production. The government says the designations seek to restrict funds and equipment reaching Russia during its war in Ukraine. Those named face the applicable UK restrictions.

The post UK Targets Crypto Payment Networks as Russia Sanctions Expand appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• SpaceX (SPCX) stock gains 4.10% to $167.15 in Friday’s pre-market trading.
• Apollo and PIMCO emerge in talks over SpaceX’s proposed chip financing deal.
• SpaceX’s nationwide spectrum acquisition supports broader Starlink Mobile coverage.
• SpaceX seeks $40 billion to fund Nvidia chip purchases and expand AI capacity.
• AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon shares decline following SpaceX’s spectrum deal.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX) stock climbed 4.10% to $167.15 in Friday’s pre-market trading, gaining $6.58 after Thursday’s 4.19% decline. The recovery followed reports of a $40 billion Nvidia chip financing plan and a nationwide wireless spectrum acquisition. Both developments support SpaceX’s expansion into artificial intelligence infrastructure and mobile communications.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., SPCX

SpaceX Acquires Nationwide Spectrum for Starlink Mobile

SpaceX announced an agreement Thursday to acquire nationwide low-band wireless spectrum licenses from Grain Management. The acquisition covers up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum within the 800 MHz frequency band. Consequently, the company expects to improve Starlink Mobile coverage across the United States.

The new frequencies can penetrate buildings and other obstacles more effectively than higher-frequency wireless signals. SpaceX plans to combine satellite connectivity with terrestrial infrastructure to deliver broader mobile coverage. However, the company must obtain final Federal Communications Commission approval before completing the transaction.

The announcement also increased pressure on established American telecommunications companies during Thursday’s extended trading session. AT&T shares dropped 5.7%, while T-Mobile declined 5.9% and Verizon fell 5.3%. These declines followed SpaceX’s announcement of plans to compete more directly in domestic mobile services.

SpaceX Expansion Builds on Public Listing and Satellite Growth

SpaceX entered public markets in June 2026 through an initial public offering that raised approximately $86 billion. Since then, the company has continued expanding its financing activities and satellite communications operations. Its latest initiatives extend beyond traditional rocket launches and commercial space transportation.

Federal regulators approved plans for 15,000 next-generation Starlink Mobile satellites designed to support direct-to-device connections. The proposed network would complement the newly acquired spectrum and existing satellite infrastructure. Together, these assets could expand connectivity across rural areas and densely populated markets.

SpaceX also faces substantial funding requirements as its computing and telecommunications projects expand. The Nvidia financing remains under discussion, while the wireless spectrum transaction requires regulatory clearance. Both developments represent significant additions to the company’s infrastructure investment plans.

SpaceX Seeks $40 Billion for Nvidia Chip Purchases

SpaceX is negotiating with banks and asset managers to secure $40 billion for Nvidia artificial intelligence processors. Reuters reported that the company plans to combine approximately $10 billion in bank loans with $30 billion in investment-grade debt. The financing would support the company’s growing computing infrastructure requirements.

SpaceX has approached PIMCO regarding the financing arrangements. Apollo Global Management could lead the transaction and distribute the debt across financial institutions. However, the companies have not publicly confirmed the proposed financing structure.

The initiative follows Musk’s plans to expand computing capacity across his artificial intelligence operations. His xAI business aims to more than double Nvidia chip deployment at its Colossus 2 facility by December. Morgan Stanley estimates that artificial intelligence infrastructure will require $1.5 trillion in external financing by 2028.

The post SpaceX (SPCX) Stock: Climbs as Nvidia Deal and Spectrum Buy Advance appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• MARA Holdings transferred 996.105 BTC worth approximately $81.13 million to Galaxy Digital.
• Blockchain records have not confirmed whether Galaxy Digital sold the transferred Bitcoin.
• MARA sold 23,093 BTC for approximately $1.6 billion during the first half of 2026.
• The company’s Bitcoin holdings stood at 35,577 BTC on June 30, down from 53,822 BTC at the end of 2025.
• MARA is expanding into AI and high-performance computing while managing its Bitcoin treasury and debt obligations.

MARA Holdings transferred 996 Bitcoin, valued at $81.13 million, to a wallet linked to Galaxy Digital, according to blockchain tracker Lookonchain. The October 9 movement follows months of Bitcoin sales by the miner. However, available records do not establish whether Galaxy Digital sold the coins.

Transfer Raises Questions About Bitcoin Sale

Lookonchain identified the sending address as MARA Miner and the receiving address as Galaxy Digital. The transaction involved 996.105 BTC. Galaxy Digital offers trading and custody services, so a transfer to its wallets does not necessarily represent a sale.

Neither company had explained the purpose of this movement in the reports reviewed. The transfer represented about 2.8% of MARA’s 35,577 BTC holdings reported for June 30, although that balance may have changed since then.

MARA Holdings Reduces Bitcoin Treasury

MARA held 53,822 BTC at the end of 2025, compared with 35,577 BTC on June 30. Recent data on Bitcoin miner selling pressure showed fewer extreme outflows across the wider mining sector.

MARA Holdings sold 23,093 BTC during the first six months of 2026, raising approximately $1.6 billion. Its filing said these sales helped fund operations, manage cash needs and support future investments.

The company used $912.8 million to buy back about $1 billion in convertible debt. Its June holdings also included 4,742 BTC lent to third parties and 4,528 BTC pledged as loan collateral.

Bitcoin Market Faces Fresh Pressure

Bitcoin recovered above $82,000 on Friday after declining during the week. Separately, US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $484.9 million in withdrawals on October 7. Those figures describe broader market conditions, not the purpose of MARA’s transaction.

MARA Holdings stock gained about 2% before Friday’s opening bell, approaching $10. The share movement followed Bitcoin’s rebound, although the transfer has not been tied to any confirmed sale.

AI Expansion Remains a Corporate Priority

MARA Holdings is increasing its focus on artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Second-quarter revenue fell 27% to $174.9 million, while the company recorded a $611.3 million net loss.

The strategy comes amid expanding demand for AI data centers and computing infrastructure, with new construction and technical hiring accompanying industry investment. MARA has identified digital infrastructure as its primary growth focus.

For now, the latest wallet movement adds to its record of active Bitcoin management. The company has not disclosed whether these particular coins supported trading, custody, or financing activity.

The post MARA Holdings Sends $81M to Galaxy—What Next? appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• MSTR stock closed at $151.47 on October 8, nearly 11% below its October 2 intraday high.
• Bitcoin retreated from $87,000 toward $81,000, adding selling pressure to crypto-linked stocks.
• Strategy purchased 334 BTC for $28.7 million, raising its total holdings to 848,000 BTC.
• Strategy’s market-cap Bitcoin valuation ratio fell to 0.98, indicating a roughly 2% discount to its Bitcoin holdings.
• Investors are watching MSTR stock support near $147 and Bitcoin’s $80,000 price level.

Strategy Inc. (NASDAQ: MSTR) shares fell as Bitcoin retreated from recent highs, putting MSTR stock under renewed selling pressure. The stock closed October 8 at $151.47, down 1.24%, after a two-day decline. Strategy was formerly known as MicroStrategy.

Strategy Inc, MSTR

MSTR Stock Erases Earlier Gains

Strategy shares traded between $147.37 and $153.63 Thursday, with about 23.7 million shares changing hands. The closing price stood nearly 11% below the October 2 intraday high of $170.17. Shares also reached $168.73 on October 6.

The retreat followed Bitcoin’s failure to hold gains near $87,000. The cryptocurrency fell below $84,000 on October 7 and closed near $81,700 Thursday, according to market data. Bitcoin had reached roughly $87,200 on October 2.

Selling intensified as leveraged positions closed across crypto exchanges. Reported Bitcoin liquidations exceeded $166 million on October 7. Recent coverage tracked Bitcoin’s decline toward $81,000 following rejection near $86,500. Bitcoin briefly approached $80,400 early Friday before recovering.

Strategy Expands Bitcoin Holdings

Strategy reported buying 334 Bitcoin for $28.7 million between October 1 and October 4. Its October 5 filing showed an average purchase price of $85,838.80, including fees. The purchase came amid renewed buying during September.

The purchase raised total reserves to 848,000 Bitcoin. Strategy said its holdings cost $63.97 billion overall, averaging $75,440.70 per coin. That represents more than 4% of Bitcoin’s fixed supply. The company also estimated a $20.91 billion third-quarter digital asset gain.

To finance Strategy’s latest Bitcoin purchase, the company raised $15.7 million through share sales and used $13 million in cash. It also repurchased 740,634 preferred shares for $73.7 million.

Strategy Shares Lose Bitcoin Premium

MSTR stock also lost ground against the value of Strategy’s Bitcoin reserves. Its market-cap net asset value ratio reached 0.98 on October 8, according to BTCorMSTR, compared with roughly 1.2 during September’s rally.

The stock’s recent price swings have exceeded Bitcoin’s. Data through October 8 placed its 30-day Bitcoin correlation at 0.88 and its beta at 2.28, showing stronger daily movements.

Key Prices Investors Are Watching

For Bitcoin, traders are tracking $80,000 as nearby support and $86,500 to $87,200 as resistance. A separate Bitcoin support analysis identified lower levels if the cryptocurrency fails to recover.

For MSTR stock, $147.37 marks Thursday’s low, while $168 to $170 covers recent highs. Further Bitcoin price changes could influence both Strategy’s share price and the market value of its holdings.

The post Strategy (MSTR) Stock Faces Fresh Test After Bitcoin Price Selloff appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Humana reports 95% of Medicare Advantage members enrolled in four-star or higher plans for 2027.
• Humana stock climbs approximately 15% in premarket trading following improved Medicare Advantage Star Ratings.
• Six Medicare Advantage contracts receive 4.5 stars, while 12 contracts earn four-star ratings for 2027.
• Humana reports 534,000 additional preventive visits and improved screening numbers across several major health conditions.
• Medicare annual enrollment begins October 15, with newly selected coverage taking effect on January 1, 2027.

Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) reported better 2027 Medicare Advantage Star Ratings on Friday. The announcement drew attention to Humana stock as investors reviewed the improved scores.

Humana Inc., HUM

The company said 95% of its Medicare Advantage members belong to plans rated at least four stars. 4.5-star plans cover 42% of Humana members.

Humana Stock Rises Following Ratings Update

Humana stock rose about 15% in Friday’s premarket session, Reuters reported. Federal ratings determine which plans qualify for quality-based bonus payments.

The share of members in four-star or better plans rose to 20% for 2026. JPMorgan analysts had expected between 60% and 70%. Lower scores previously limited Humana’s eligibility for certain government payments tied to quality.

Separately, European healthcare stocks rose October 6 after clinical trial news. That market move involved different companies and had no connection to Humana’s ratings.

More Medicare Contracts Earn Higher Scores

Humana counted six Medicare Advantage contracts with 4.5 stars and 12 with four stars for 2027. The total exceeded last year by 11 contracts.

The insurer’s prescription drug contract also earned 4.5 stars. Medicare officials grade plans annually on care quality, customer service, and members’ experiences.

Separately, HeartBeam received FDA breakthrough device status for home heart attack detection. The designation does not constitute final approval or involve insurance ratings.

Preventive Care Measures Show Gains

Humana reported 663,000 more completed care opportunities than a year earlier. Another 534,000 members attended annual preventive visits after its outreach efforts.

Its outreach helped 28,000 people complete overdue mammograms. Those screenings identified 600 previously undetected breast cancers, Humana said.

Another 93,000 members completed overdue colorectal screenings, detecting 100 cancers or precancerous cases. Among people with diabetes, 73,000 received overdue eye exams, identifying 17,000 previously undetected diagnoses of related eye disease.

Enrollment Opens for 2027 Plans

Medicare Advantage and prescription drug plan enrollment runs from October 15 through December 7, 2026. Eligible people can compare ratings before choosing coverage. CMS reported 71% of Medicare Advantage drug plan enrollees would have contracts rated four stars or higher.

Separately, Haemonetics stock gained October 8 following plans for equipment rollout across U.S. plasma centers. The company makes medical devices, not Medicare plans.

Coverage selected during annual enrollment starts January 1, 2027. Humana’s new scores will appear alongside other information for people comparing available plans.

The post Humana (HUM) Stock Surges as Medicare Ratings Stage Comeback appeared first on Blockonomi.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson on October 9 rejected Vitalik Buterin’s warning that AI-accelerated math could weaken lattice-based cryptography.

At stake is whether Ethereum’s hash-only roadmap rests on better evidence than the lattice schemes it avoids, and Hoskinson argues that it does not.

Hoskinson Challenges Buterin’s Case Against Lattice Cryptography

In a lengthy post on X, Hoskinson challenged the mathematical reasoning behind Buterin’s earlier warning, arguing that the Ethereum co-founder has not identified a credible attack capable of breaking lattice-based cryptography.

“The case against lattices is the GNFS story, a.k.a. a hunch about ‘structure,’ and a multiplier pulled out of thin air,” the Cardano founder wrote.

Buterin’s argument draws on the history of integer factorization, where decades of research produced the General Number Field Sieve (GNFS), which made factoring large numbers far more efficient than initially expected. According to him, AI could discover comparable shortcuts for lattice problems, forcing developers to increase cryptographic parameters substantially.

Hoskinson rebutted by mentioning that lattices have already been attacked for decades now, including in the LLL attack in 1982 and further optimization of lattice sieving. He also pointed out that two post-quantum cryptographic systems, namely ML-KEM and ML-DSA, have taken into account these attacks.

He also challenged Buterin’s suggestion that hash-based cryptography is inherently safer because hashes lack exploitable mathematical structure. MD5 and SHA-1, Hoskinson noted, were both broken through attacks on their internal designs. He added that Poseidon and Poseidon2, hash functions used in Ethereum’s cryptographic research, are built from algebraic operations and have also attracted cryptanalysis research.

“SHA-256 has no theorem like that. Its security is that nobody has broken it yet,” Hoskinson argued, disputing the idea that hash-based systems deserve greater confidence simply because no successful attack is known.

The Cardano founder further rejected Buterin’s recommendation to multiply lattice-based key sizes by ten. In his view, parameter selection requires a specific attack-cost calculation, not a blanket multiplier based on a hypothetical breakthrough.

Ethereum’s Roadmap Faces a Cryptographic Trade-Off

As CryptoPotato reported yesterday, Buterin advised users against rushing to move funds from ECDSA-based wallets while warning that AI-assisted mathematical advances could threaten existing cryptographic assumptions sooner than expected.

Ethereum’s lean roadmap increasingly favors hash-based signatures, including WOTS and SPHINCS+, where applicable. However, Buterin has acknowledged that public-key encryption presents a harder problem because secure communications, websites, VPNs and privacy protocols require mechanisms that hashes alone cannot provide.

But in Hoskinson’s view, abandoning lattice-based systems before a concrete attack emerges could be counterproductive. He pointed to existing security research and standardization processes as the appropriate way to assess new threats, rather than abandoning a cryptographic family based on speculation.

The post Charles Hoskinson Disputes Vitalik Buterin’s Warning Against Lattice Cryptography appeared first on CryptoPotato.

It was just several days ago, on Monday morning, when bitcoin last challenged the $87,000 resistance, with analysts outlining the next major targets of up to $92,000 if it fell.

The reality was entirely different. BTC was rejected and plummeted by almost $7,000 in the following few days to bottom out (for now) at $80,400 on Thursday evening. Here’s why.

US Govt FUD

It all began on Wednesday morning with a sudden price drop of $2,000 within 20 minutes, and the most likely reason for this came from the US government. Popular on-chain resources reported that the authorities have started to move sizeable portions of their crypto holdings, including 834 BTC, to Coinbase Prime.

The transfers continued the following day or so. Ultimately, Lookonchain said that the government had deposited roughly $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and $62 million in WBTC into Coinbase Prime over a 72-hour period. As the analysts said as well, BTC’s price dived by nearly 7% within this time.

The U.S. government deposited 17,733 $BTC ($1.48B) and 750 $WBTC ($62M) into #CoinbasePrime over the past 3 days.

During this period, the price of $BTC dropped 6.9%.

https://t.co/esJntewKzz https://t.co/g69x1ziB1K

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) October 9, 2026

Different Selling Pressures

This one is rather obvious. If BTC’s price drops, someone has to be selling, right? Well, here’s who in particular. First, let’s start with the ETFs. The funds saw major net inflows since mid-August and September, but the tide turned this week. October 7 and 8 were particularly painful, with net outflows skyrocketing to $487 million and $244 million, respectively.

Secondly, some miners hoped on the selling bandwagon as well. Lookonchain noted that MARA Holdings had seemingly disposed of 996 BTC (worth over $81 million) on October 8.

And there was also profit-taking. According to data from Santiment, BTC recorded its “second-highest realized profit day of 2026” yesterday, with investors securing over $1 billion in profits. The yearly peak was slightly above this number at $1.04 billion.

“These spikes frequently appear around short- to mid-term market cooling periods. Heavy profit-taking adds sell-side pressure, while falling prices can trigger additional traders and leveraged positions to exit. It does not guarantee a major reversal, but $1.03B in realized profits is a clear sign that Bitcoin’s recent rally is being tested,” said the company.

Macro News

Although US President Donald Trump reassured late last night that his country won’t attack Iran ahead of the midterm elections on November 3, he had previously hinted that they were planning to do so. This major macro factor, along with secret meetings at Camp David with top security officials, led to a substantial uptick in tension. Similar news typically impacts BTC, and we can add it to the list.

Separately, US Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said yesterday that the central bank would require additional rate increases to reach its 2% inflation target. Although he added that there was “flexibility” on the pace of hikes, leaving room for a pause at the upcoming late October meeting, risk-on assets felt immediate pressure.

Regular Correction?

Dropping by $7,000 in just days sounds painful, because it is, but it’s far from the first similar instance in BTC’s long and volatile history. As such, CryptoQuant’s CEO, Ki Young Ju, tried to calm his over 500,000 followers by saying this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Moreover, he remains a believer that the bull market has commenced and people should not be afraid of similar “bull market corrections.”

Don’t confuse a bull market correction with a bear market. Bitcoin is still in the early bull phase. BTFD. https://t.co/vmCbDXog1O

— Ki Young Ju (@ki_young_ju) October 8, 2026

The post 6 Reasons Bitcoin Crashed by $7K in 3 Days: Bull Market Over or Regular Correction? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The Core Team has finally provided a clear explanation of how stablecoins could be integrated into the broader ecosystem following the major partnership with Open Standard announced last week.

Pi Network made one thing certain: it intends to keep PI as the main cryptocurrency.

PI and Stablecoins

In the new update published earlier this week, the team said stablecoins could support use cases where predictable pricing is particularly important, including commerce, payments, accounting, and settlement. However, their role would be deliberately narrower than that of the native token PI, which is expected to remain the primary digital asset across all network processes.

As we reported at the beginning of the month, Pi Network first announced it would dip its toes in the stablecoin market by exploring reward programs for Pioneers and broader OUSD utility through its new partnership with Open Standard. OS includes more than 200 participants across finance, payments, technology, and crypto.

Pi explained that stablecoins could bring more economic activity inside its ecosystem rather than forcing users to rely on external infrastructure. Nevertheless, the team added that they will approach implementation cautiously, as they are currently working on principles that should govern future integrations and are emphasizing compliance as an important consideration.

Unlike some of the speculations online, the Core Team has not confirmed that OUSD is already integrated on Pi Mainnet. There’s no rollout date confirmation or details of any Pioneer rewards program yet.

Pi Network is exploring how stablecoins can support additional utility across the Pi ecosystem while maintaining a distinct, complementary role to Pi.

Read the new blog in the Pi mining app to learn about:
– Pi’s approach to stablecoins
– How stablecoins may help expand participation within the ecosystem
– Why their implementation requires careful design

And how the OUSD partnership can fit into Pi’s broader stablecoin strategy.

— Pi Network (@PiCoreTeam) October 9, 2026

PI Slides

The broader market’s correction over the past few days didn’t spare Pi Network’s native token. The asset traded well above $0.09 until a week ago, but it crashed hard after it lost that support level on October 7. The bears drove it south to $0.078, which became a three-month low.

PI has managed to recover slightly alongside most other major crypto assets, and currently trades above $0.081. Nevertheless, its market cap has plummeted to $915 million, making it the 69th-largest cryptocurrency by that metric on CMC.

The post Pi Network Just Clarified Its Big Stablecoin Plans: Here’s What Pioneers Should Know appeared first on CryptoPotato.

After posting massive gains in September, Ethereum has returned to roughly its price level from a month ago. This comes amidst a broader market correction that has erased more than $110 billion from the total market capitalization of altcoins in the past three days alone. ETH has dropped 10% during this period, wiping more than $38 billion off its market capitalization.

Its reserves on Binance, however, fell to the lowest level in six months.

Shrinking Exchange Reserves

CryptoQuant found that some investors are continuing to move their ETH off trading platforms. The asset’s reserves on Binance fell from 3.57 million to 3.47 million ETH over the period. Back in August, the exchange held around 3.92 million ETH, which means that reserves have dropped nearly 11.5% since then.

Withdrawals have also surged. On October 6, Binance recorded more than 320,000 ETH withdrawal transactions in a single day, which is a record high. Such a trend essentially indicates that investors may be looking to hold their crypto asset in private wallets for longer rather than keeping it on an exchange. Some may also be putting their holdings to work while waiting for a better opportunity to sell.

Meanwhile, Michaël van de Poppe believes that Ethereum’s failed attempt to break higher could still present an “opportunity” for investors and serve as a potentially attractive “entry point.” BATMAN also said that the altcoin may be approaching a point where buyers step back in.

ETH appeared to be testing the lower trendline of a rising channel, while its RSI has fallen to around 23, a level considered to be deeply oversold. If the trendline holds, BATMAN said that there is a possible rebound towards $2,700, with $3,000 next on the radar.

Ted Pillows, on the other hand, flagged that the altcoin is sitting right at its 100-week exponential moving average (EMA), a major level to watch. He warned that a weekly close below this zone could put further pressure on ETH and send its price below $2,400.

Losing Streak Continues

US-listed spot Ethereum ETFs are going through a rough patch after a strong run, as outflows stretched into October. The funds have now recorded eight straight days of outflows. Nearly $580 million has been pulled out so far this month.

While the outflows don’t tell the whole story of the market, they show that appetite for these funds has cooled considerably in recent days.

The post Ethereum (ETH) Correction Deepens, But Binance Withdrawals Tell Another Story appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Licensed EU crypto firms have until early January 2027 to wind down services for stablecoins that fail MiCA, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) said on Thursday.

ESMA set that three-month deadline in an opinion addressed to national supervisors. The opinion covers asset-referenced tokens (ARTs) and e-money tokens (EMTs) that do not meet MiCA’s conditions for a lawful offer or trading in the EU. It names no individual token.

Supervisors are told to check whether a firm lets EU clients buy, trade, hold, or add to such tokens. That check spans every service type, from trading platforms and order execution to advice and portfolio management. Firms offering those services should block new purchases by EU clients with technical and contractual controls.

Custody Comes Into Scope

ESMA first addressed non-compliant stablecoins in a statement on January 17, 2025. That statement told trading platforms to stop offering them, with sell-only access allowed until the end of March 2025. It also said mere custody and transfer of those tokens could continue. Binance kept to that timeline and delisted nine non-MiCA stablecoins, including Tether’s USDT, for European users on March 31, 2025.

After that date, Binance users could only sell those stablecoins through its Convert tool.

Thursday’s opinion brings custody and transfers into scope. Both now sit on the list of services supervisors should review. The opinion also rejects investor warnings as a fix. The 2025 statement had asked firms to run awareness campaigns for EU investors. ESMA now says warnings, disclosures and client acknowledgments would not address its concerns.

ESMA’s 2025 guidance turned on whether a service amounted to a public offer of the token. Thursday’s opinion keeps that public offer analysis and adds a second basis. It cites the MiCA duty for licensed firms to act honestly, fairly and professionally in their clients’ best interests. Serving a non-compliant token should be presumed to breach that duty, ESMA said.

Wind-Down Runs to January

Unlicensed firms hit an earlier cutoff this year. On June 23, ESMA told those unlicensed providers to stop onboarding new EU clients ahead of the July 1 end of MiCA’s transition period. By July 21, fewer than 300 of the more than 3,000 firms serving EU crypto clients held a license, according to CASP Tracker.

Thursday’s opinion targets the firms that made the cut. Those not yet in line may keep limited exit services running to avoid harming clients. The services cover selling, conversion, withdrawal, transfer and safekeeping of existing holdings.

Those exit services should not support new purchases, promotion or trading. They should be time-limited, clearly communicated to clients and closely supervised. ESMA itself will monitor, with each national supervisor, how promptly the opinion is applied.

The post ESMA Sets 3-Month Exit for Non-MiCA Stablecoins, Pulls Custody Into Scope appeared first on CryptoPotato.