World Liberty Financial's expansion into Web2 payments could revolutionize traditional financial systems, enhancing efficiency and reducing costs.

The post World Liberty Financial plans payments tech rollout for Web2 firms appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The shift from Ethereum to Bitcoin ETFs indicates a strategic reallocation of crypto investments, impacting market dynamics and investor sentiment.

The post BlackRock ETF clients pull $202M from Ethereum as outflow streak hits six days appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Intel's continued involvement in Terafab highlights its strategic positioning in the competitive AI chip market, impacting future tech landscapes.

The post Intel stays on board with Elon Musk’s Terafab chip venture appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The proposed levy could reshape EU corporate taxation, potentially straining US-EU trade relations and impacting multinational business strategies.

The post European Commission weighs broad levy on large corporations to sidestep US tariff threats appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Temasek's caution highlights the need for resilient investment strategies amid AI-driven inflation risks, impacting global market stability.

The post Temasek warns AI and inflation are the biggest market risks for next year appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Crypto Card Payments Hit Record $12.5 Billion as Stablecoin Adoption Surges

Payment volume processed on crypto cards has climbed to a record $12.5 billion, up 140% year-to-date, according to data from paymentscan.xyz, first shared by The Kobeissi Letter.

The figure is also 247% higher than levels recorded in October 2025.

The surge is being driven by growing use of stablecoins as a payment rail and a broader push for cheaper, faster cross-border transactions, The Kobeissi Letter said.

QR-code payments are another bright spot: demand for QR-based spending helped push activated cards on Jupiter Spend, one of the largest on-chain card providers, up 55% quarter-over-quarter.

“Crypto cards are the next phase of crypto adoption,” The Kobeissi Letter said.

The figures come as major players move into the space of crypto cards. Fold Holdings (NASDAQ: FLD) announced earlier this year that it had started issuing its Fold Bitcoin Credit Card to select waitlist members, with wider access rolling out in batches over the coming weeks and months. 

The card runs on the Visa network, is powered by Stripe Issuing and is accepted at 175 million merchants. It offers a base rate of 1.5% back in bitcoin, rising to as much as 4% through behavior-based boosts and partner offers. Cardholders who pay their bill in bitcoin earn an extra 0.5% back.

Aven has taken a different approach. Its Aven Bitcoin Visa Card, unveiled at the Bitcoin Conference 2026 in Las Vegas, lets holders borrow up to $1 million against their bitcoin without selling it, with rates starting at 7.99% APR and repayment terms of up to 10 years. 

Collateral is held by BitGo, while Coastal Community Bank issues the card.

This post Crypto Card Payments Hit Record $12.5 Billion as Stablecoin Adoption Surges first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

$350M St Cloud CEO: The First Credit Union to Put Bitcoin on Core Ledger | Jed Meyer

A credit union founded by postal workers in 1930 is now custodying real Bitcoin for its members. St. Cloud Financial Credit Union CEO Jed Meyer explains how its patent-pending hybrid custody model gives each member individual Bitcoin ownership in a multisig vault. He also covers how the credit union has grown to more than 20 BTC under custody without even trying.

Chapters:
00:00 St. Cloud Financial Credit Union’s Path to Bitcoin
01:08 Stablecoins, Dollars, and Bitcoin as New Money Networks
02:26 Bitcoin ETF vs. Credit Union Custody: The Hybrid Custody Model
03:18 Bringing Main Street Into Bitcoin With Direct Buy and Sell
04:45 Minnesota Custody Law, NCUA Exams, and the CLARITY Act
07:32 20+ Bitcoin in Member Vaults and Lightning Plans
09:38 What It Takes for a Credit Union to Own Bitcoin
10:57 The Cloud Dollar Stablecoin and the Cooperative Ownership Model
12:59 How Credit Unions Decide Which Digital Assets to Offer
14:10 Educating Skeptics and Why Credit Unions Must Own Their Rails

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

This post $350M St Cloud CEO: The First Credit Union to Put Bitcoin on Core Ledger | Jed Meyer first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Housingwire’s Logan Mohtashami: Real Estate vs Bitcoin & Bond Market Outlook

Mortgage rates just hit their highest level in nearly three years, and homebuyers are already pulling back. HousingWire Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami explains why the 10-year Treasury yield keeps climbing since talks with Iran broke down, and why the Federal Reserve has turned hawkish. He also explains how mortgage spreads are keeping 30-year rates from climbing above 8%.

Chapters:
00:00 30-Year Mortgage Rates Hit 7.28%, Highest in Nearly Three Years
00:52 Iran Talks, the Fed, and Why the 10-Year Yield Keeps Rising
01:58 Mortgage Spreads Explained: Why Rates Aren’t Above 8.6%
03:28 What It Would Take to Get Meaningful Home Price Cuts
04:43 Homebuilders, Profit Margins, and Mortgage Rate Buydowns
06:17 Why Today’s Housing Market Isn’t 2008
08:13 Bitcoin vs. Real Estate: Competing for Monetary Premium?
09:52 Borrowing Against Bitcoin for a Home Down Payment
10:52 Grant Cardone’s Bitcoin and Real Estate Model
13:15 2027 Outlook for Mortgage Rates, Home Prices, and Affordability

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

This post Housingwire’s Logan Mohtashami: Real Estate vs Bitcoin & Bond Market Outlook first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Leon Wankum: BTC Taking on Real Estate’s $300T Monetary Premium

For generations, property has been the default place to store wealth, but Leon Wankum says that run is over. The author of Digital Real Estate, published by Bitcoin Magazine Books, explains how fiat debasement since 1971 inflated a monetary premium in real estate. He argues Bitcoin, as absolutely scarce money, is now pulling that premium away. He also explains why both residential and commercial real estate will feel the shift.

“Digital Real Estate is required reading for anyone who owns property and hasn’t yet considered how Bitcoin is set to disrupt the real estate market.”

Buy Leon Wankum’s ‘Digital Real Estate’ now in the Bitcoin Magazine bookstore
https://store.bitcoinmagazine.com/collections/books/products/digital-real-estate

Chapters:
00:00 Leon Wankum’s “Digital Real Estate” Thesis
00:35 Why Real Estate’s Run Since 1971 Is Over
01:39 The Monetary Premium in Residential and Commercial Real Estate
03:58 Saving in Bitcoin vs. Spending It on a Home
05:57 Bitcoin as Collateral: Borrowing vs. Renting and Stacking
08:19 Why the Housing Crisis Is a Crisis of Ownership
09:56 Pricing Real Estate in Bitcoin
10:57 Homeowners, Banks, and Bitcoin-Backed Mortgages
14:14 Bitcoin Mining and Treasury Strategies for Real Estate Developers
16:04 Why Grant Cardone’s Bitcoin Real Estate Funds Could Lead

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

This post Leon Wankum: BTC Taking on Real Estate’s $300T Monetary Premium first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

StoneX’s Mark Palmer: $435 MSTR Price Target Explained – DAT Consolidation Outlook

Strategy just spent six times more buying back Stretch than buying Bitcoin. Is that the right move for MSTR shareholders? StoneX Senior Equity Research Analyst Mark Palmer explains why STRC is foundational to Strategy’s fundraising, and how the $4.9B USD Reserve is pushing the preferred stock back toward par. He also explains why Strategy won’t simply raise the dividend rate.

Chapters:
00:00 StoneX Analyst Mark Palmer on Strategy (MSTR)
00:12 Stretch Buybacks vs. Buying Bitcoin: $176M vs. $29M
01:00 The $4.9B USD Reserve and Stretch’s Path Back to Par
01:56 Why Strategy Won’t Raise the Stretch Dividend Rate
04:17 Daily Dividends and Ex-Dividend Date Volatility
06:53 June’s Stretch Sell-Off and Institutional Investors
07:21 Where Bitcoin Treasury Balance Sheet Stress Shows Up First
09:21 Perpetual Preferreds vs. Convertible Notes: Strive’s Approach
11:54 USD Cash, Convert Paydowns, and Metaplanet’s U.S. Push
13:09 Why StoneX Cut Its MSTR Price Target to $435

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

This post StoneX’s Mark Palmer: $435 MSTR Price Target Explained – DAT Consolidation Outlook first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

The published design of Solana’s new institutional settlement program requires the full cash and asset legs of a trade to be available before it can execute the trade.

Its atomic transaction can prevent a buyer from paying without receiving the asset, but the program supplies neither the cash nor the financing needed to reach that point.

The Solana Foundation announced Solana DvP on Oct. 6 as an open-source standard for delivery-versus-payment settlement. The published design puts each side’s tokens into a separate escrow, then moves both agreed amounts together. It also explicitly excludes netting, the process of offsetting obligations before paying the remaining balance.

Institutions may benefit from a shorter wait for proceeds, while still needing to source the full amount for every trade they submit.

The announcement provides no measured capital-saving result or total-cost comparison.

Full funding and faster reuse

Under the published program limits, one trade record covers one exchange between two parties. Both legs must be token accounts on Solana, and partial fills are not allowed. A bank-account payment made on another rail falls outside this atomic exchange.

The settlement code at the documented source commit checks that each escrow balance is at least the amount agreed for that leg before transferring either agreed amount.

An underfunded side causes settlement to fail, and excess tokens are returned to the named party rather than increasing what the counterparty receives.

The economic responsibility remains with the participants and whoever finances them. A buyer must arrange the cash token, a seller must arrange the asset token, and a lender could finance either position through a separate arrangement, but that would leave the financing relationship outside the DvP program.

Funding itself uses an ordinary checked token transfer, according to the funding instructions. A custody or treasury system can supply the tokens without a special funding call.

Both balances must meet the agreed amounts at settlement, and the settlement authority must sign to exchange them.

That authority, a third address named in the trade, must sign the settlement instruction. The destinations are fixed when the record is created.

If a required transfer cannot complete, the settlement transaction reverses, and the earlier funding transfers are separate transactions.

Gross funding asks how much must be available for a trade, while funding duration asks how long it remains unavailable for other uses. Solana DvP’s bilateral design requires the full amounts at settlement but does not require institutions to keep those balances idle permanently.

A participant that receives usable cash or assets sooner may be able to put them into a subsequent trade sooner. That could reduce how long it needs external financing or how much liquidity it holds against a sequence of obligations.

The benefit depends on when funding is required and when the proceeds can actually be used.

Offsetting obligations can reduce the amount that needs to move in the first place. Solana DvP does not perform that calculation across trades. Institutions that need netting or credit must arrange those functions elsewhere before deciding how much to send to their escrows.

The Bank for International Settlements and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures describe this tradeoff in their October 2024 tokenization report, on pages 12 and 13. Immediate gross settlement can require more liquidity than netting arrangements.

The report also identifies the countervailing benefit: quicker access to money and assets can reduce the opportunity cost of liquidity tied up during settlement.

For Solana DvP, the resulting total cost depends on the funding arrangement and the timing of usable proceeds.

A CryptoSlate analysis of tokenized deposits examined the same distinction between moving cash faster and reducing the amount needed. Its Oct. 2 Roughrider coverage described a bank-payment arrangement on Solana in which token transfers and burning sit alongside daily netting of bank-account movements.

That service combines token movement with a separate process for offsetting obligations.

What the atomic exchange protects

The protection is principal delivery risk within the token exchange: neither side hands over its agreed leg without the other leg also moving. The source repository describes that exchange, but the broader financial relationship still depends on the instruments being exchanged.

A cash token carries its issuer’s credit and redemption risks, and a regulated asset token can also retain controls that affect transfers. Freeze, pause, and permanent-delegate powers remain relevant while tokens sit in escrow.

The unwind instructions let either party reclaim its own leg while leaving the trade open, or reject the trade and refund both legs. The settlement authority can cancel it, and a separate recovery instruction handles deposits arriving after closure, subject to the token’s transfer rules.

These powers do not override an issuer that freezes an escrow or blocks transfers. A fully funded trade can still fail to complete, and refunds can depend on issuer cooperation. The authorized settlement signer must also be available.

Under the trade-creation terms, refunds and reclaims return to the named party’s token account even when a custodian supplied the deposit. Agreed settlement destinations can receive proceeds, but the refund route may differ from the funding route.

The documentation tells operators to recognize settlement when the transaction reaches Solana’s finalized commitment. Whether that also constitutes legally final settlement depends on the parties’ agreements and applicable regimes.

Deployment, audits and institutional use

The Foundation’s documentation lists an upgradeable program on mainnet-beta and devnet using observations dated Oct. 2. The mainnet table identifies an upgrade authority, an address with the power to change the deployed program. Institutions depend on its governance and settlement rules.

The client documentation points to a specific public source revision, with the latest revision dated Sept. 30 in the public version history.

Security reviewer Cantina’s May 21-28 audit covers an earlier repository and specific fixes. Its four medium findings are marked fixed, while three low-risk and six informational findings are acknowledged.

The Foundation says the program is ready for real funds, while inviting design partners and early participants ahead of production release.

JPMorgan’s role is limited too. The bank supplied securities-settlement-practice input, and the announcement expressly disclaims any role in the program's design, development, operation, approval, endorsement, or guarantee.

For institutions, the useful next evidence would connect actual settlement use with the amount and duration of funding, the financing cost, and whether proceeds become spendable sooner.

Solana DvP offers a defined atomic exchange, and turning that exchange into a capital-saving service still depends on the cash, assets, and financing surrounding it.

The post Solana DvP settlement requires 100% upfront cash for every trade appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Hester Peirce’s Oct. 2 resignation has left Paul Atkins and Mark Uyeda as the SEC’s two listed commissioners. A new rule permits one eligible member to constitute a quorum when every other sitting member is disqualified from a particular matter.

Under the current roster, that combination puts future Commission decisions on crypto policy in fewer hands.

The one-member exception says it depends on disqualification from the specific matter, and it can allow either remaining commissioner to act as the Commission’s quorum in that situation.

Peirce’s resignation letter, dated Sept. 21, made her departure effective Oct. 2. The current commissioner roster, updated Oct. 3, lists Chairman Atkins and Commissioner Uyeda. The SEC’s historical service table also records Peirce’s tenure ending Oct. 2.

Custody reform and a new offering regime remain proposals, while tokenized-stock trading relief is already an issued conditional order. With the roster reduced to two members, further Commission-level decisions rest with a smaller body, subject to the rules and legal limits governing each action.

The quorum amendment, dated Sept. 30 and effective Oct. 2, changes 17 CFR 200.41, the rule defining how many commissioners must be eligible to conduct Commission business.

The existing vacancy exception already allowed the number of commissioners in office to constitute a quorum when fewer than three were serving. Two filled seats did not prevent the SEC from operating, and that exception already covered even a Commission with only one sitting member.

Previously, the separate provision for disqualifications accommodated two eligible commissioners after others were disqualified. The amendment extends that provision to one eligible commissioner, for the matter concerned, when every other member in office is disqualified.

Under the current roster, if Atkins were disqualified from a particular matter, Uyeda could constitute its quorum, and the same would apply in reverse.

The distinction keeps vacancies, nonattendance and recusal from becoming interchangeable. An eligible commissioner’s disagreement with a proposal does not meet the new provision’s disqualification condition.

In the published rule, the SEC explains that disqualifications arise and that the agency needs to continue conducting business. It describes the amendment as promoting flexibility and finality, and finds that it concerns internal management and organization rather than substantive regulation.

That administrative rationale accompanies a change with practical consequences for who can make Commission decisions. Meanwhile, Peirce’s letter expressed confidence that Atkins, Uyeda and SEC staff will continue to balance individual choice with sensible regulatory protections.

Crypto measures still require different kinds of action

One pending rulemaking is the Oct. 1 custody proposal. It addresses how regulated investment companies may custody crypto securities and similar investments, how registered advisers may custody client crypto funds and securities, and related modernization and reporting requirements.

In his October statement, Atkins placed custody reform alongside the offering proposal, Commission interpretations, and staff tokenization work. That inventory spans several kinds of regulatory action, with different roles for commissioners and staff.

The SEC’s page still classifies the release as proposed and now lists Dec. 7 for public comments. The existence of a smaller Commission, or a new quorum exception, does not turn a proposed custody framework into operative permission.

The action also supplies a concrete example of how the agenda moved before Peirce left. The October voting record shows Atkins, Peirce, and Uyeda all approving release IA-7023 on Oct. 1.

Those were approvals to propose the custody rules, before her resignation and the quorum amendment took effect.

A second pending measure is Regulation Crypto Assets, issued Aug. 18 and published Aug. 21. It would create offering exemptions for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets, alongside disclosure requirements and continuing antifraud and antimanipulation obligations. It also proposes a conditional safe harbor concerning investment-contract status.

Tokenized-stock access is at a different stage. The Sept. 17 Innovation Exemption is a temporary conditional exemptive order that covers specified tokenized National Market System (NMS) stock trading venues and certain liquidity providers.

The order’s fact sheet describes five-year conditional relief, with limits on stock symbols and volume, equivalent shareholder rights, public auditable smart contracts, and operating disclosures. For stock tokenized by an unaffiliated third party, it also requires issuer notice and an opportunity to object.

Those conditions remain part of the pathway available to qualifying participants. A future Commission decision on that relief would occur under the applicable quorum arrangements, but the new quorum rule itself neither broadens the exemption nor removes its safeguards.

A quorum does not replace voting or legal authority

For decisions circulated among commissioners, the SEC’s seriatim rule says a matter is not final until each member reports a vote or intended nonparticipation to the secretary.

Any commissioner can request that a circulated matter be withdrawn and scheduled for joint deliberation.

Under 17 CFR 200.60, commissioners should carefully weigh qualification in matters involving interests and relationships, and an individual member’s qualification rests with that member. The amended quorum clause also covers members otherwise disqualified.

Staff no-action and tokenized-securities statements are a separate part of the policy inventory described by Atkins.

The statutory delegation provision allows delegation through published orders or rules, while excluding general rulemaking from that authorization. It preserves Commission review and permits one member to bring a delegated action before the Commission for review.

The smaller body also remains constrained by applicable law. The Administrative Procedure Act provides notice-and-comment requirements for covered rulemaking, with specified exceptions. The SEC’s finding that its organizational quorum amendment did not require notice and comment is not a general exemption for future crypto rules.

Under judicial-review law, reviewing courts can set aside agency action found unlawful, beyond statutory authority or taken without required procedure. Reducing the number of eligible commissioners does not supply additional substantive authority or insulate a decision from review.

The SEC’s currently posted October tally contains the three-member custody vote, with no later one-member crypto decision listed. The agency says it generally posts votes only when the matter is final, so that tally supports a limited observation rather than an exhaustive claim about every action.

For crypto businesses, the next concrete milestones are the Oct. 20 offering-rule comment deadline, the Dec. 7 custody deadline, and any subsequent Commission decisions on those proposals or conditional trading relief.

Their legal status, recorded approvals, and participating members will show how the reduced Commission operates.

The new exception preserves an ability to act through disqualifications. Its effect on crypto policy will depend on which specific matters arise, who remains eligible to consider them, and the decisions they make.

The post SEC drops to 2 members, and 1 hidden rule shifts crypto power appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Open USD had $666.3 million outstanding on Oct. 5, but most of that supply remained in launch and custody wallets, according to Crystal Intelligence’s wallet study published Oct. 6.

The findings show substantial launch inventory, with little evidence of wider circulation yet.

Open Standard created the token OUSD, which launched Sept. 30 on Base, Ethereum, Solana and Tempo. Bridge describes Open Standard as an independent company founded by Coinbase, Mastercard, Shopify, Stripe and Visa, with more than 200 partners.

The launch distribution plans made recurring payment and treasury demand the next adoption test. Crystal’s study tracks the subsequent wallet allocation and activity, with balances measured at 04:00 UTC on Oct. 5.

Crystal identified $396 million in eight Tempo wallets funded directly by Bridge that had not moved those funds by the snapshot. In a separate allocation, it traced $200 million sent to Coinbase on Oct. 1 across the four chains and said that money remained within Coinbase custody.

Those classifications describe where tokens sit, without revealing all the beneficial owners behind custody accounts. The study leaves off-chain usage and activity inside those accounts unknown. Funding a launch wallet also does not establish that its balance has been spent on goods, services, or settlement.

Ten wallets held 74% of OUSD supply in Crystal’s snapshot, and Tempo accounted for 71% of the total. That makes the largest balances important to any assessment of subsequent circulation.

Open USD transfer counts and trading measure different activity

Crystal recorded about $4.1 million in trading on decentralized exchanges from Sept. 30 through Oct. 5. Solana accounted for $3.4 million, Base for $700,000, and Tempo for roughly $17,000, despite hosting most of the supply.

Trading turnover is also a different measure from the liquidity available to execute a trade or the value of customer payments.

Bridge says it will charge no minting or redemption fees and impose no liquidity restrictions delaying those transactions. Qualifying businesses joining Open Standard can also earn rewards on OUSD balances held at Bridge.

Tempo’s transfer count needs a further adjustment because OUSD fee payments are recorded as transfers. Of 11,544 OUSD transfers, Crystal classified 8,377 (73%) as network-fee payments worth just $3.33 in total.

These fee transfers help explain why a busy transaction count can coexist with little measured trading.

These first-week measurements also cannot establish that the launch has failed. Crystal’s next signals to watch include mints beyond founder or partner placements, transfers out of staged wallets, redemptions and Tempo exchange activity.

Sustained wider circulation would add evidence that the launch allocations alone cannot provide.

The post Open USD supply hits $666 million as 10 wallets trap most tokens appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Strategy estimated a $4.1 billion income-tax benefit after Bitcoin's fair value rose above cost as of Sept. 30, according to its Oct. 5 filing. The benefit comes from a lower estimated tax expense through an accounting adjustment.

The filing shows what can change when Bitcoin crosses a large holder’s cost basis. The next consequence depends on the position being measured: a company’s Bitcoin holdings, an ETF’s underlying assets and an investor’s ETF shares each have their own purchase history.

Strategy said it reversed a deferred tax asset related to its Bitcoin and released the associated valuation allowance. These management-prepared financial figures had neither been audited nor reviewed by KPMG.

The estimated benefit concerns the company’s own tax accounts and its September valuation-allowance adjustment.

The company disclosed 848,000 BTC at an average purchase price of $75,440.70, including fees and expenses, as of Oct. 4 at 4 p.m. Eastern time. That later acquisition figure has a separate cutoff from the Sept. 30 accounting comparison.

Fund cost and shareholder break-even are separate

An ETF acquisition estimate measures the fund’s underlying holdings. Maketo estimated the average cost of Bitcoin remaining in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) at $81,188 per BTC as of Oct. 2. Its model reconstructs underlying Bitcoin costs from daily money flows and prices.

An IBIT shareholder buys shares at a market price, so investors entering on different dates can have different break-even prices, even though their shares represent interests in the same pool of Bitcoin. The fund’s estimated acquisition cost measures a different position from each shareholder’s investment.

BlackRock’s Oct. 5 holdings file listed about 806,038 BTC, and its fund page reported nearly $69 billion in net assets and a Bitcoin benchmark level of $85,694.41 that day.

Its June 30 quarterly filing recorded 734,261 BTC with an investment cost of about $61 billion and a fair value of about $43.4 billion. That historical comparison places the same holdings below cost at the same cutoff.

IBIT calculates realized gains and losses on Bitcoin disposals using average cost, and the June filing records substantial activity in both directions. During the six months ended June 30, the Trust acquired 157,501 BTC and disposed of 192,970 BTC for share redemptions. Those categories include in-kind transfers.

Testing whether redemptions accelerated below cost requires daily flows, prices and cost estimates aligned to the same dates. The first-half totals leave the timing of trades relative to cost crossings, and investors’ motives, unresolved.

How a shareholder exit reaches Bitcoin

An investor can sell ETF shares in the secondary market. Redemption with IBIT is a separate transaction: only authorized participants can create or redeem baskets directly with the Trust.

IBIT’s prospectus distinguishes cash redemptions from redemptions in Bitcoin. With a cash redemption, the Trust converts underlying Bitcoin into cash, while an in-kind redemption delivers Bitcoin.

Share trading, cash redemptions and Bitcoin transfers describe different steps. The fund’s acquisition cost alone leaves those steps and the recipient’s subsequent decisions unmeasured.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net outflows of $89.8 million on Oct. 5, while Farside Investors’ data show that BlackRock’s fund recorded inflows in that same session.

That split captures a day of different flow directions across funds. Establishing whether cost-basis crossings influence those decisions requires comparing flows before and after the crossings over a longer period.

Crossing cost changes the gain-or-loss comparison on the underlying position, and Strategy’s filing demonstrates a material tax-accounting consequence.

Actual creations, redemptions, and the handling of redeemed Bitcoin are the next signals to watch for market impact. A shared price level, on its own, leaves the identity and motivation of the next buyer or seller unresolved.

The post Bitcoin rally delivers $4.1 billion tax windfall for Strategy appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The US services prices gauge reached a four-year high in September even as growth slowed, a combination that could keep leveraged Bitcoin positions exposed to restrictive financing conditions. The October 5 survey pairs softer activity with more widespread reports of rising input costs.

The Institute for Supply Management's services report, issued on its October 5 release date, put the prices index at 74.0, up from 72.6 in August. That was its highest reading since July 2022, when it reached 74.5.

The headline services PMI eased to 54.9 from 55.4, while business activity dropped to 56.5 from 61.7. Both remained above the 50 expansion threshold. Employment moved the other way, rising from 47.8 to 50.1 and returning to slight expansion after two months of contraction.

Growth therefore lost momentum while reported input-cost increases became more widespread. ISM's prices gauge is a diffusion index describing the direction and breadth of monthly input-cost changes across survey respondents. Its 74.0 reading provides no estimate of the size of price increases and cannot be read as a consumer-inflation rate.

Why the rates risk persists for Bitcoin

Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said on October 1 that inflation risks tilted upward. He also described September's quarter-point increase in the federal funds target range to 3.75%-4.00% and said future adjustments should depend on the data, outlook and balance of risks.

His remarks preceded the services release. The survey adds cost-pressure evidence to a policy debate already underway. Slower expansion gives investors one part of the picture; rising input-cost pressure keeps the prospect of rate relief uncertain.

For leveraged Bitcoin exposure, the concern is how that uncertainty affects financing and willingness to take risk. If persistent costs make rate relief less likely and investors become more cautious, financing-sensitive positions could face pressure. Leverage would magnify a trader's losses from an adverse price move: the CFTC explains that margined virtual-currency futures traders can be forced to replenish collateral or close positions when markets move against them.

The Fed's policy rate and perpetual-futures funding operate differently. Coinbase's documentation describes funding as payments between long and short positions that help align perpetual prices with spot prices. Bitcoin perpetual funding needs its own market observation; it cannot be inferred from the federal funds target.

Historical evidence also cautions against treating the price connection as automatic. A February 2023 New York Fed study using intraday data found Bitcoin largely disconnected from monetary and macroeconomic news in its sample.

Bitcoin traded near $85,580 on CryptoSlate's October 6 page, down 0.04% over 24 hours. That rolling change cannot identify a reaction to the ISM release.

The funding-risk case would strengthen if adverse policy or yield repricing coincided with weaker leveraged demand. Easing cost pressure, stable rate expectations or stronger buying without leverage would weaken it. Slower services expansion alone offers little assurance of relief for leveraged Bitcoin positions; the effect on their financing still needs evidence from markets.

The post US services price gauge hits a four-year high, clouding Bitcoin’s rate-relief outlook appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A finfluencer is someone who talks about investing on social media and recommends individual products while doing so. Whether a crypto tip of that kind has been paid for shows up in three places: in the disclosure as advertising or a paid promotion, in affiliate links and discount codes that lead to one particular exchange, and in the pattern of the pitch, which works on urgency and peer pressure. How often that lands in Germany is something the financial regulator BaFin has had in hard numbers since October 1.

Of the 1,000 crypto investors assessed, roughly half pay attention to recommendations from finfluencers. Thirty percent have acted on them when investing. And around 40 percent were not aware that finfluencers are often paid for their recommendations. That is the core of the finding: the recommendation itself is not the problem, the invisible consideration behind it is.

The BaFin survey in numbers: 4,340 respondents, 1,000 crypto investors assessed

A market research institute surveyed 4,340 people aged 18 to 59 on behalf of BaFin. The fieldwork ran online in late March and early April 2026. The answers assessed were those of the 1,000 respondents who held crypto-assets at the time or had held them in the years before. The results appear in the regulator's specialist article, “Soziale Medien treiben Kryptoinvestments”.

What gets held is mostly the obvious. Seventy-nine percent of this group had bought Bitcoin at some point, 39 percent Ether. The assets were used predominantly as an investment. On motives, 39 percent said they had wanted to “try something new”, while 30 percent each cited the prospect of high returns and the wish for a small allocation in their portfolio.

That mix matters for understanding the rest. Someone who gets in out of curiosity, with no firm expectation of the product, tends to choose on the basis of whatever crosses their path. That is exactly where recommendations do their work.

How to spot a paid crypto tip: disclosure, affiliate link, discount code

A paid recommendation online usually takes one of two forms. Either the sender receives a fixed fee for a post, in which case that post has to be labelled as advertising or a paid promotion under German media law. Or they receive a share of the revenue when you open an account through their link and trade. This second form is called an affiliate or partner link: a link with an identifier attached, by which the exchange recognises who sent you.

Four features can be checked without any prior knowledge. First, a note such as “advertising”, “ad” or “paid partnership”, often small at the start or right at the end of a post. Second, a link with an identifier after the question mark, frequently carrying abbreviations such as “ref” or “partner”. Third, a discount or voucher code that runs under the sender's name. Fourth, a bonus promise tied to a minimum deposit.

None of these features makes a recommendation wrong by itself. Advertising is allowed to advertise, but it does tell you that the sender has a commercial interest of their own in your decision, and that belongs in your assessment. If you are looking for a trading venue anyway, the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges is the more sober route there than a code from a video.

35 percent bought because the finfluencer called the right moment

BaFin also asked what made the recommendation convincing. Among those who acted on a finfluencer recommendation, 35 percent invested because the claim was that now was the right moment. That is the most frequent reason in the entire survey.

The sentence “now is the right moment” has a property that makes it so usable for advertising: it cannot be verified at the moment it is made. Whether an entry point was good only becomes visible later, and whoever calls it carries no risk if they are wrong. A verifiable statement would look different and would name a quantity you can recalculate, such as a trading volume, a flow of funds or a date in the protocol.

From that follows a simple counter-move: take the claim and find the number for it yourself. Trading volume, inflows and outflows at exchanges or the distribution of holdings are available in freely accessible data tools; which of them does what is set out in the comparison of analytics platforms. If you find no number for the claim, you already have your answer.

FOMO as a sales argument: 29 percent followed the reference to the majority

The second most frequent reason was the reference to everyone else. Twenty-nine percent of this group bought because, according to the finfluencer, many others were doing so at the time. BaFin uses the English term for this in its assessment: fear of missing out, or FOMO for short.

FOMO says nothing about the crypto-asset itself. The claim describes the behaviour of other people; it can be accurate and still leave open whether the price is worth the risk. On top of that, the claim that a lot of people are buying right now is hard to verify for small tokens, because a few large addresses can generate a trading volume that looks like broad demand.

Both findings together describe the same mechanism from two directions: urgency and crowd. Anyone who hears either one in a recommendation has a reason to let a day pass before acting.

Memecoins and gambling: what BaFin's consumer protection staff say word for word

Nineteen percent of the crypto investors surveyed have bought memecoins at some point. Among the motives they named were “fun” and “having a punt”. A memecoin is a token with no use of its own and no promise of yield, whose price results purely from demand.

The regulator's assessment is blunt. “Investing in memecoins is in fact comparable to placing a bet in a game of chance,” says BaFin consumer protection expert Dr Markus Nielsen; memecoins are therefore particularly risky. Consumer protection officer Christian Bock places the whole market in context: “Consumer interest in crypto-assets is rising,” he says, “yet most of these assets are highly speculative.” Price movements, he adds, are tied neither to a particular currency nor to a tangible asset, and with memecoins there is also no cap on supply.

For a German supervisory authority to compare an asset class with gambling is notable, and it links the finding explicitly to the subject of this article: with memecoins in particular, the danger is especially great that finfluencers move the price by talking an asset up excessively or talking it down. The leverage here is greater than with large assets, because little capital is enough to shift the price.

Concentration risk in the portfolio: 27 percent hold more than a fifth of their wealth in crypto-assets

One figure from the survey can be applied directly to your own portfolio. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they had invested more than 20 percent of their wealth in digital assets. For 5 percent it was more than half.

The technical term for this is concentration risk: a single building block in a portfolio is so large that its performance determines the overall result. In an asset class that swings by double digits within a few days, that share decides whether a setback is merely annoying or existential. The regulator names no upper limit for it, and there is no official one either. The figure still works as a yardstick: if your own share sits well above what you could stomach losing, that is a finding in its own right, independent of any recommendation.

The connection to the rest of the survey is plain. Anyone who settles their position size in the moment of enthusiasm settles it according to that enthusiasm. Anyone who settles it beforehand already has an answer ready for the next tip.

Five features to check before acting on any crypto tip from social media

The findings of the survey boil down to a short routine that runs before a purchase and takes a few minutes.

1. Look for the disclosure. Does it say “advertising”, “ad” or “paid partnership” anywhere? Look in the description under the video and in the first comment as well, because that is where it tends to be parked.
2. Take the link apart. Does the recommendation run through an identifier or a code? Then money flows to the sender when you open your account.
3. Look into the provider. Does the platform named hold a licence for this business in Germany? BaFin maintains a public company database for exactly this, and it publishes warnings about unauthorised providers on an ongoing basis.
4. Find a second source. Does the central claim also appear somewhere that gains nothing from your buying? If nothing turns up, it remains a single opinion.
5. Set the position size beforehand. Decide the amount before you finish listening to the recommendation, and stick to it. This is the only point on the list that nobody but you can influence.

This routine is no substitute for your own view of a crypto-asset; it only separates the question of whether something is a good investment from the question of who earns money when you buy it, and the second question was not on the radar at all for 40 percent of respondents.

Holding period and tax: what an impulse purchase after a finfluencer tip triggers with the tax office

One point does not come up in the survey and yet belongs to every spontaneous purchase. In Germany, transactions in crypto-assets held as private assets count as private disposal transactions under Section 23(1) sentence 1 number 2 of the Income Tax Act (Einkommensteuergesetz). If you sell at a profit within one year of buying, that profit is taxable; after a holding period of one year it is not. A threshold of 1,000 euros applies to the total of all private disposal transactions in a year. Threshold means that once it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable, and not only the part above it.

Two things follow from this for a purchase made after a tip. First, the one-year period for this specific position begins on this specific day, regardless of how long you have already held the same cryptocurrency. Second, a quick resale, which the same dynamic of urgency and peer pressure frequently leads to, is the least favourable case for tax purposes. Someone who buys and sells three weeks later in disappointment has a taxable event if there is a gain and documentation work if there is a loss.

In practice that means recording the purchase date, quantity and price, and doing so on the day of the purchase. It costs a minute and saves back-calculating across several exchanges if there is ever any doubt. Individual tax questions belong in the hands of a tax adviser; this section is no substitute for advice.

MiCA, BaFin and advertising: which rules apply to finfluencers today and which ones ESMA wants

Since the European crypto regulation MiCA came into force, providers of crypto services in the EU need a licence, and their marketing communications have to be identifiable as such, fair and not misleading. These duties are addressed to the providers. An independent sender on social media who is not a service provider does not automatically fall under them, and that is exactly where the gap sits that the BaFin figures describe. Which obligations the regulation sets out in detail is covered in our overview of the MiCA licensing requirements for crypto companies.

The European securities regulator ESMA wants to change that. In its opinion on the review of MiCA, which reached the EU Commission at the end of September, it explicitly calls for “stricter rules for the marketing of crypto-assets, particularly when they are promoted by influencers and third parties”. Which six changes the authority proposes in total we have broken down in our article on the ESMA opinion on MiCA.

Between a demand and applicable law lies a legislative procedure that runs for months. Until then the labelling requirement from media law remains the most important lever, and its enforcement depends on someone noticing the missing disclosure. That is what makes the survey finding so uncomfortable: a protection that rests on recognition by the audience comes to nothing for 40 percent of that audience.

Two authorities have thus marked the same spot within two days, one with a demand from Paris, the other with figures from Germany.

Finfluencer tips: the key points for your decision

The survey describes the normal case: around half of the crypto investors surveyed pay attention to recommendations from social media, and two in five do not know the business model behind them. Three steps turn that into something manageable.

1. Separate the recommendation from the trading venue. Decide first whether a crypto-asset convinces you, and choose the platform separately afterwards. A look at the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows which providers hold a licence in the EU.
2. Get the number behind the claim. Every statement about timing or demand can be cross-checked. Which analytics platforms disclose volume, inflows and the distribution of holdings is set out in the comparison.
3. Document on the day of purchase. Record the date, quantity and price so the holding period can be proven later. Tools for this are in the comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 7, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Anyone in Germany who wants to buy Monero will no longer find the coin at the large trading venues. On October 5, 2026 we went through the publicly available trading pair lists of eight exchanges. At Bitpanda, Bitvavo, Coinbase, Bitstamp, Gate.io and OKX there is not a single XMR pair. At Kraken five XMR pairs are listed, among them XMR/EUR, but they have been blocked for customers in the European Economic Area since the end of 2024. That leaves KuCoin with four pairs, and there both a euro market and authorisation for the German market are missing.

The coin itself is untouched by this. XMR costs around €499 and reaches a market capitalisation of about €9.4 billion, up 2.8 percent on Monday. Holding and custody are permitted in Germany. What falls away is the convenient route via an authorised exchange, and there are two concrete legal bases for that, with two different dates.

Eight exchanges checked: where XMR was still in the trading list on October 5, 2026

For the count we pulled the market lists that each exchange publishes, and searched them for the ticker XMR. The list says what an exchange carries in principle. Whether a market is open to German customers is a second question that goes beyond it.

Two notes on how to read this. First, a ticker appears at OKX that resembles Monero's, belongs to an entirely different project and is therefore not counted here. Second, Binance could not be queried from our network because access was refused on location grounds; the exchange had, however, already discontinued XMR trading worldwide in February 2024.

The Kraken case shows how a delisting works in practice

Kraken has documented the process for the European Economic Area in its own help section. On October 31, 2024 at 15:00 UTC, trading and deposits were stopped for all XMR markets held by customers registered in the EEA. Those affected could withdraw their holdings until December 31, 2024. For anyone who let the deadline pass, the exchange converted their XMR into Bitcoin at the prevailing market price and credited it in early January 2025. As justification, Kraken cites regulatory changes without naming a single provision.

For investors, that contains the most important practical lesson of this article: a delisting does not only take away your ability to buy, it also sets you a deadline for what is already there. Anyone whose coins are still sitting on the exchange after that deadline gets a forced conversion at a price they do not decide. This mechanism is no isolated case; we described it on September 19, 2026 using Monero as the example once before.

MiCA Article 76(3) excludes coins with an inbuilt anonymisation function

The Regulation on Markets in Crypto-Assets, MiCA for short, has governed the operation of trading platforms in the EU since the end of 2024. Its Article 76(3) reads: “The operating rules of the trading platform for crypto-assets shall prevent the admission to trading of crypto-assets that have an inbuilt anonymisation function unless the crypto-asset service providers operating a trading platform for crypto-assets can identify the holders of those crypto-assets and their transaction history.”

It is precisely that exception which comes to nothing with Monero. The protocol conceals the sender, the recipient and the amount of every transfer through methods that are built in: ring signatures for the sender, one-time receiving addresses for the recipient, and a procedure that hides the amount. An exchange therefore cannot trace the transaction history of an XMR holding, even if it wanted to. The exclusion applies, and the pair has to leave trading.

Important for context: the provision addresses the platform, not you. What is excluded is solely the admission to trading at an authorised provider. Holding and custody in your own wallet are untouched by it. What other duties a licence brings with it is set out in our overview of the MiCA obligations for crypto companies.

From July 10, 2027 the tougher ban from the anti-money-laundering regulation arrives

The second legal basis has drawn little attention so far and bites harder. The EU anti-money-laundering regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, provides in Article 79(1) that credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers may not keep anonymous crypto-asset accounts or any other accounts that allow the holder or transactions to be anonymised or heavily obscured, “including through anonymity-enhancing coins”.

Under Article 90 of the same regulation, it applies from July 10, 2027. The difference from the MiCA rule is considerable. MiCA excludes admission to trading; the anti-money-laundering regulation forbids the provider from keeping an account holding such assets at all. From July 2027, therefore, even the mere custody of XMR at an authorised European service provider would be ruled out, not only trading.

What that means for holdings on a platform

Anyone whose XMR still sits with a provider authorised in the EU should plan for July 2027 as the outer limit. Experience from the Kraken case shows what the sequence typically looks like: first a halt to trading and deposits, then a withdrawal window of a few weeks, then the forced conversion into another coin. How long that window is, the provider decides.

Which routes to XMR are left, and what is risky about them

Three routes remain that work technically. All three have drawbacks that an authorised trading venue would not have.

Exchanges without EU authorisation. Platforms outside the EU continue to carry XMR, KuCoin among them in our count. A provider without a licence may not, however, actively approach customers in Germany. For you that means: no deposit protection, no supervisor you can call, and in a dispute a place of jurisdiction that is a long way off. On top of that, a euro deposit is usually not possible at all, so you have to buy Bitcoin or a stablecoin elsewhere first anyway. How to recognise a provider authorised in the EU is set out in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Atomic swaps. Here two parties exchange Bitcoin for Monero directly, secured by the two blockchains themselves, without anyone holding the coins in between. That works, but it is markedly more error-prone than buying on an exchange: you need suitable software, you have to operate both wallets correctly, and the rates often sit noticeably away from the market price because liquidity is thin. An aborted swap can leave funds temporarily locked.

Decentralised exchanges without custody. Here users trade among themselves and the software merely brokers. There is no central body keeping accounts, and therefore nobody to make good a mistake. Pricing hangs on individual counterparties, and protection against fraud is limited to whatever collateral the software holds.

What is in no case a solution: a provider who promises you a purchase without any identity check and demands payment up front. For years, operators of fraudulent sites have exploited precisely the gap a delisting leaves behind, and BaFin publishes consumer notices on this on a rolling basis. Before every transfer, check whether the provider appears in a public register.

For tax, swapping into XMR is a sale of your Bitcoin

Anyone who gets to Monero via an atomic swap or a foreign exchange generally triggers a taxable event first. Swapping Bitcoin into Monero counts as a disposal of the Bitcoin. If less than twelve months lie between their acquisition and the swap, the gain is taxable under the rules for private disposals; it remains tax-free if the total gain from such transactions in the calendar year is below €1,000.

A holding period of its own, of one year, then begins for the XMR received. The documentation is harder than usual here, because outside authorised platforms no statement is produced that the tax office knows. Record the date, the amount and the euro equivalent of every swap yourself, and keep the counterparty's receipts. There are tax tools and portfolio trackers for this that can also read in wallet addresses.

Custody: why your own wallet matters more with XMR than with Bitcoin

With most coins, self-custody is a question of caution. With Monero a second reason is added, which follows from the two provisions above: every authorised custodian in the EU will sooner or later have to give up XMR. A holding in your own wallet is unaffected, because no service provider keeps an account there.

Technically, Monero is more wilful than Bitcoin. The official wallet has to reconcile the blockchain with a node of its own or connect to someone else's node; in the second case the operator of that node sees when you synchronise. There is also the so-called view key, which allows incoming payments to be inspected without money being movable with it. Anyone who passes it on, to a tax adviser for instance, grants a view of incoming payments without giving up control. Which classes of device are candidates for custody and how they differ is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

The network side carries on independently of the exchanges

The fact that trading in Europe is falling away does not mean the project is standing still. On October 5, 2026 a fork went live on the test network to trial a new cryptographic procedure, which we placed in context the day before. For the question of where you can buy XMR that changes nothing; for judging the project, it does.

What happens if you do nothing at all

For holdings on a European platform, waiting is the most expensive option. You leave the timing of the conversion, and with it the price at which it is settled, to the provider. A forced conversion into Bitcoin also triggers the same thing for tax as a voluntary swap, namely a disposal of your XMR, with all the consequences for the holding period, and you only find out afterwards.

For holdings in your own wallet, by contrast, there is no pressure to act from the two provisions. There only what applies anyway applies: backing up the recovery words, a tested recovery route and documentation of the purchase data for tax.

Buying Monero: Your next three steps

1. Check where your XMR sits today. Everything held with a provider authorised in the EU has an expiry date that bites by July 2027 at the latest. Which providers hold a licence at all is shown by the exchange comparison.
2. Set up custody before you buy. Without a working wallet and a recovery route you have tested once, every route to buying is the wrong one. The differences between the classes of device are set out in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document every swap on the same day. Date, amount, euro equivalent and the counterparty. Outside authorised platforms no statement is created that does this for you; tax tools and portfolio trackers help with it.

(As of October 5, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

On Monday, October 12, 2026, the petitions committee of the German Bundestag will debate the tax holding period for crypto assets in public from 12 noon. The sitting is not a closed deliberation: anyone who wants to attend can register until Friday, October 9, at 12 noon, and anyone who misses that can follow the date via livestream. Nothing is decided on that Monday. What happens there is nonetheless the last dated point at which something can move in public before the cabinet takes up the matter on October 14.

This article sorts out three things: what exactly is on the agenda on October 12, what petition 201716 demands, and what the planned cutoff date of December 31, 2026 means for holdings that already sit in a portfolio or in a self-custodied wallet today.

The petitions committee debates the crypto holding period on October 12 from 12 to 2 pm

The German Bundestag has set the date and published it itself. The petitions committee will deliberate two petitions in succession in a public committee sitting. At 12 noon the item in question is the one the agenda words as “income tax – preservation of the tax holding period for private disposals of crypto assets”. At 1 pm a second, substantively unrelated item on animal testing follows. The slot runs from 12 to 2 pm, which leaves around an hour for the crypto item.

The venue is committee room 3.101 in the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus in Berlin. In the sitting, the petitioners have the opportunity to present their case briefly and to explain it in response to questions from committee members. The most important sentence of the announcement for investors is a different one: representatives of the federal government will be available to answer questions from members of parliament. The government therefore has to speak publicly and on the record about the holding period two days before its own cabinet session. All the details are set out in the petitions committee's announcement on bundestag.de.

Petition 201716: what 44,439 co-signatories demand of the Bundestag

The petition carries the number 201716 and calls for the one-year holding period for private disposals of crypto assets to be preserved. It is therefore aimed directly at the plan to tax gains on crypto assets in future regardless of how long they were held.

A public petition to the Bundestag needs a quorum, meaning a minimum number of co-signatures within the signing period, for the committee to deliberate it in a public sitting. That threshold stands at 30,000 signatures. According to BTC-ECHO, the quorum was reached a good day after public signing opened; the final count was 44,439 co-signatures. The petition text itself and the course of the discussion are hosted by the Bundestag on its portal for public petitions under number 201716.

The signing period closed on September 15. What would come next we left open in our article on the end of the signing period, because at the time the committee had not yet set a date. The Bundestag's announcement now closes that gap.

Holding period under Section 23 EStG: the classification in one sentence

The holding period is the span between acquisition and sale after which a gain on privately held assets remains tax-free. For crypto assets held privately it is one year under current law, governed by Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act on private disposals. Anyone who holds Bitcoin or another crypto asset for more than twelve months and then sells pays no income tax on the gain. Anyone who sells earlier pays tax on the gain at their personal income tax rate, once the threshold for private disposals is exceeded.

It is precisely this mechanism that is up for disposal. If the period falls, the moment of sale no longer counts for tax purposes: a gain would then be taxable regardless of whether the position was held for two weeks or six years. For holders with a long-term horizon that is the real cut, not the level of the tax rate.

Registration by October 9 at 12 noon: how to get into the committee room

Interested members of the public and media representatives can register with the secretariat of the petitions committee by October 9, 2026, 12:00, giving their name and date of birth. Registration runs via the address vorzimmer.peta@bundestag.de.

Two points of the announcement are easily skimmed over. First: if capacity is exceeded, places are allocated solely on the basis of when the registration arrived. Anyone who wants to be there has to be early, not merely on time. Second: a valid identity card is required for admission, and the police at the German Bundestag carry out a reliability check on registered guests. The data submitted for this – surname, first name and date of birth – is deleted or destroyed after the visit.

Media representatives additionally require accreditation to enter the Bundestag buildings. Unauthorised photography and recording, for instance with a mobile phone, is not permitted; mobile phones are to be switched off in the committee room.

Livestream and parliamentary television: where to watch the sitting

Anyone who lets the registration deadline pass, or does not want to travel to Berlin, misses nothing of substance. The sitting will be broadcast live online at bundestag.de and on the German Bundestag's parliamentary television channel. The recording will then be made permanently available on the Bundestag's pages.

In practice that means: the livestream is enough for everyone who only wants to know what the federal government's representatives answer to specific questions. The permanent recording is the underrated part. Anyone unable to follow the sitting on Monday lunchtime will find the statements verifiable later in the same place, in their exact wording rather than in a summary.

What the finance ministry's draft bill says

A draft bill is a piece of draft legislation from the working level of a ministry. It first goes to associations and interest groups for comment, then the cabinet takes it up, and only a resolution by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat turns it into applicable law. At this stage, therefore, nothing is binding.

In substance, the finance ministry's draft provides for crypto assets held privately to be assigned in future to income from capital assets under Section 20 of the German Income Tax Act. With that shift the one-year holding period falls away, because Section 23 with its speculation period no longer applies. Gains would instead be charged the flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent, plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. The consultation of associations rested on a tight timetable: comments were only possible until October 6. The draft's path to the cabinet is set out in our analysis of the cabinet date.

For placing October 12 in context, it matters that the petition and the draft bill are two separate routes. The committee deliberates a request to the Bundestag. The ministry runs a legislative procedure in parallel. The two only meet in parliament, and parliament is not yet up at the time of the sitting.

Grandfathering and the December 31, 2026 cutoff date

The point on which most hangs for existing portfolios is grandfathering. Under the draft bill, the new taxation is to apply to crypto assets acquired or received after December 31, 2026. For holdings acquired earlier, the provision is that the previous legal position continues to apply, so the one-year holding period is retained for them.

From that follows an inconspicuous but consequential shift: the decisive date is no longer the sale but the acquisition. Anyone who, in case of doubt, cannot show when a holding was acquired will struggle to invoke grandfathering. For purchases via an exchange the date is on the statement; with transfers between wallets, with swaps and with inflows from staking or airdrops, the documentation quickly becomes unwieldy. A portfolio tracker with a tax function brings these moments together while the data can still be retrieved from the exchanges. Why the draft puts the cutoff at the turn of the year in the first place is something we took apart in our analysis of grandfathering.

The sequence remains important: this grandfathering has not been adopted. It stands in a draft that still has to pass the cabinet and parliament, and cutoff dates have been moved before in the legislative process.

Petition procedure: what effect a committee vote has

The right of petition is set out in Article 17 of the Basic Law: everyone may address requests and complaints to the competent authorities and to the legislature. The petitions committee examines such submissions and closes a procedure with a recommendation for a decision by the Bundestag, on which the plenary then rules.

Realistically, that means for October 12: no change to the draft bill follows from the sitting, and a committee vote does not bind the federal government. Anyone counting on the petition to save the holding period overestimates the instrument. What the public deliberation does deliver can be named: the public sitting forces government representatives to answer questions from members of parliament on camera, and it makes those answers permanently verifiable. For judging how firm the ministry's timetable is, that is worth more than any speculation about majorities.

Why the hearing falls two days before the cabinet meets on October 14

The order of the dates produces a dense picture. The starting point was the cabinet decision of July 6, 2026 on the 2027 budget bill, which contained the tax reordering of crypto assets. The petition followed, with signing closing on September 15. In parallel the draft bill went to the associations, whose comment period ran out on October 6. On October 12 the petitions committee deliberates in public; on October 14 the cabinet is to adopt the draft.

Those two days of distance are why the date is more than a parliamentary routine item for investors. After October 14 a cabinet decision exists, and from then on the discussion shifts from the question of whether the holding period falls to the question of what the transitional rules look like. Before October 14, the 12th is the only public occasion on which the government answers for this project.

What investors in Germany can check before December 31

The honest starting position is this: there is no adopted law, and nobody can seriously say in which version the rule will finally appear in the federal law gazette. Something can nonetheless be prepared, and it is precisely what will be needed in every conceivable version.

The first point is the evidence. Under the draft, the moment of acquisition decides whether a holding falls under grandfathering. Anyone whose purchases are spread over several years and several platforms should export the statements and transaction histories now, while the accounts still exist and the data can be retrieved. Exchanges shut down old accounts, switch report formats or drop trading pairs; a history that takes two clicks to pull today can cost a support request in a year's time. Which platforms supply complete tax reports and which only a raw data list is shown in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

The second point is self-custody. Anyone holding assets in a self-custodied wallet has no provider to issue confirmation of acquisition in case of doubt. Here your own documentation carries everything: the purchase receipt from the original exchange, the date and transaction ID of the transfer, the address of the destination wallet. That chain should be complete before it is needed.

The third point is restraint with reallocations driven only by tax. A swap from one crypto asset into another is, for tax purposes, a disposal and a fresh acquisition. Anyone reallocating shortly before a possible cutoff date can destroy precisely the moment of acquisition that matters later. For an individual situation the tax adviser is responsible, not an article; this text is no substitute for tax advice.

Crypto holding period: What to take away

October 12 brings no decision, but the last public exchange before the cabinet. Three steps follow from it:

1. Gather your acquisition dates. Collect all purchases, swaps and inflows with their dates in one place, because the moment of acquisition decides on the planned grandfathering. A tax tool or portfolio tracker takes over the consolidation across several platforms.
2. Pull the evidence from the exchanges. Export your transaction history and tax report and save them locally before accounts or report formats change. Which providers put out usable reports is set out in the exchange comparison.
3. Document self-custodied holdings. For coins in your own wallet there is no provider receipt, so the purchase receipt, transfer date and destination address belong on file together. Which device is suitable for that is shown in our hardware wallet comparison.

And on the Monday itself, the livestream at bundestag.de is enough once the registration deadline has passed on October 9.

(As of October 6, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Shiba Inu price today: $0.00000578 and €0.00000514

The Shiba Inu price is trading between $0.00000576 and $0.00000578 on the evening of Tuesday, October 6, 2026. In euros that is €0.00000511 to €0.00000514. The range exists because two queries to the same data source sit a few minutes apart, and the market kept moving in between. It is deliberately not smoothed here: with a price that carries six zeros after the decimal point, the last digit decides whole percentage points.

Against the previous day the price is down 2.0 percent in dollars and 2.35 percent in euros. Market capitalisation stands at $3.39 billion, or €3.01 billion, ranking 35th in the overall market. There are 589.24 trillion SHIB in circulation. All market figures in this article come from CoinGecko, as of October 6, 2026.

What stands out on this day is not the move itself, which at two percent stays within the normal range. What stands out is that the same move looks different depending on the currency — right down to the sign in front of it.

Euro to dollar exchange rate: the weekly balance flips the sign

Over seven days the Shiba Inu price is down 0.63 percent in dollars. Over the same period it is up 0.10 percent in euros. The week therefore closes either in the red or in the black, depending on your account currency. The gap of 0.73 percentage points does not come from the crypto market but from the currency market: the euro has weakened against the dollar this week, and every asset quoted in dollars gains in euro terms as a result.

That sounds like a technicality, but it has a concrete consequence. Almost every headline on the SHIB price, every percentage figure in a charting tool and almost every international analysis works in dollars. Your portfolio statement at a German or European provider works in euros. If you read that the price fell over the week while your portfolio shows a small gain, nobody has miscalculated.

Which figure is the right one

Both are correct; they simply measure different things. The dollar figure measures what the market pays for one SHIB. The euro figure measures what your holdings are worth in the currency you use to pay rent, taxes and the weekly shop. For an investment decision in Germany the second figure counts; for a comparison with other crypto assets, the first.

In practice: decide which currency you keep your books in, and stick to it. Anyone who takes whichever figure looks friendlier is measuring success against a moving yardstick and will at some point no longer know whether a position is working. Which currency your provider uses as a reference, and whether it offers a euro pair at all, is set out in its trading terms; a comparison of the terms at the large crypto exchanges shows where SHIB trades directly against the euro and where the route runs via the dollar.

Thirty days, two figures: 6.07 percent in dollars, 9.41 percent in euros

Over thirty days the difference is larger. In dollars the gain is 6.07 percent, in euros 9.41 percent. The gap of 3.34 percentage points is entirely down to the exchange rate. Anyone who bought €1,000 worth on September 6 is up by roughly €94 today; measured in dollars the gain is just under $61. Over a full year the relationship flips: there the dollar figure is down 55.67 percent and the euro figure down 53.88 percent, because the euro moved differently over twelve months than it did over one.

The starting value thirty days ago was therefore around $0.00000545, or €0.00000470. That value is calculated back from today's price and the reported change; nothing about it is estimated. Both numbers matter for the sections that follow, because they mark the point at which the monthly gain would be used up.

Levels on the downside: $0.00000545 and the monthly mark

The first level on the downside is the start of the month at $0.00000545. If the price falls below it, the entire gain of the past thirty days has gone — though in euro terms only at around €0.00000470. The level carries no chart-technical blessing; it is simply the point at which a good month turns into a neutral one.

Below that sits the level that the balance held at trading venues presses on. Our own analysis of October 5, 2026 on Shiba Inu exchange balances put around 88 trillion SHIB on trading venues, a good 15 percent of the circulating supply that can be sold at any time. That is not a sell signal; it is a measure of supply. The more inventory lies within reach, the faster a wave of selling meets fresh supply rather than scarcity.

Levels on the upside: $0.00000582 and the round number at $0.00000600

On the upside the first hurdle is the start of the week at around $0.00000582. As long as the price stays below it, the seven-day balance in dollars remains negative, however friendly the euro figure looks. Only above it do both signs agree again, and that matters more for market perception than it sounds, because most reporting works in dollars.

The next level is $0.00000600. Its weight is psychological: limit orders and alerts cluster at the next round number. From today's level that is about 3.8 percent away. The same holds on the downside for $0.00000550, some 4.8 percent away and close to the monthly mark from the previous section.

Round numbers carry extra weight with SHIB

With a price that carries six zeros after the decimal point there are only a few round numbers, and they lie far apart. Between $0.0000055 and $0.0000060 there is almost nine percent of price movement. With Bitcoin the distance between two round levels would be far smaller. Which means: when the SHIB price takes a round number, the move to get there has almost always been a noticeable percentage jump already.

One cent per SHIB: $5,892 billion in market capitalisation

Price targets for Shiba Inu circulate at remarkable heights, and they can be checked for plausibility in a matter of seconds. The calculation is always the same: circulating supply times target price gives the market capitalisation the market would have to put up.

With 589.24 trillion SHIB in circulation, a target price of $0.00001 produces a market capitalisation of $5.89 billion. That would be a rise of 74 percent and sits within reach. A target price of $0.0001 would produce $58.9 billion, roughly the order of magnitude Solana currently occupies. And the much-quoted one cent would produce $5,892 billion, which is 3.4 times Bitcoin's entire market capitalisation on this day.

Even the old all-time high of $0.00008616 from October 27, 2021 requires around $50.8 billion in market capitalisation at today's supply, and a fifteenfold jump in the price. The price currently sits 93.3 percent below that high, or 93.1 percent in euros. If you read a price target, the best thing to do is run the numbers yourself before adopting it as an expectation.

Trading volume at 2.0 percent of market capitalisation

Over twenty-four hours, SHIB worth $67.85 million changed hands, the equivalent of €60.26 million. Measured against market capitalisation of $3.39 billion that is 2.0 percent. The figure tells you how easily a position changes owner.

For you as a private investor with four- or five-figure amounts, that ratio is uncritical. It becomes relevant in two places: at the euro order book, which at many providers is thinner than the dollar order book, and with market orders outside the main trading hours. A limit order costs nothing extra and fixes the price at which you are willing to trade. With a price whose next decimal place already accounts for one percent, that is no detail.

Contract address on Ethereum: only one token carries the name

SHIB is an ERC-20 token, which means a token on the Ethereum blockchain. An ERC-20 token does not form a network of its own; it is an entry in a contract that runs on Ethereum. CoinGecko's database lists exactly one platform and exactly one contract address for Shiba Inu, namely 0x95ad61b0a150d79219dcf64e1e6cc01f0b64c4ce on Ethereum.

That is why the contract address belongs to the mandatory checks as soon as you buy SHIB outside a large exchange. On decentralised trading venues anyone can create a token and call it Shiba Inu. On other chains there are also bridged variants, economically tied to SHIB but technically a different instrument, carrying an additional bridge risk. Buying at a regulated exchange with a euro pair sidesteps the question; using a wallet means matching the address character by character.

To place the network side: our analysis of October 6, 2026 on the indexing status of Shibarium shows that the project's layer-2 chain is still not fully indexed. For the price of the ERC-20 token that has no immediate consequence; for judging the project, it does.

Holding period under Section 23 EStG: one year and the €1,000 threshold

For investors in Germany there is always a tax question attached to the price, and with a monthly gain it is particularly concrete. Profits from selling crypto assets held privately are private disposals under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If more than one year passes between acquisition and sale, the gain is tax-free. Below that it counts as taxable income and is charged at your personal rate.

On top of that comes the €1,000 threshold per calendar year for the sum of all private disposals. A threshold is not an allowance: if you come in at €1,001, the entire amount is taxable, not just the single euro. With a token where €1,000 buys around 194.6 million units, a position often spreads across many part-purchases, and each part-purchase has its own acquisition date.

That is exactly where most hand-built records fail. Which units count as sold follows a fixed order per wallet, and with hundreds of millions of units across several tranches it is barely traceable without a tool. A tax tool with a portfolio tracker reads in the exchange's transactions and tracks the deadlines tranche by tranche. The tax return stays your job; the bookkeeping does not have to be.

Custody of SHIB: gas fees on every transfer

Because SHIB sits on Ethereum, every transfer from an exchange into your own wallet costs gas fees in ether, not in SHIB. That is the overlooked item with small positions: buy €200 of SHIB and withdraw it, and you pay a fee out of all proportion to the position, one that moves with network load.

No advice to leave holdings on the exchange follows from that. What follows is a sequence: first bring the position to a size at which a transfer is economic, then withdraw, and place the transfer in a quiet phase of the network. If you intend to hold for longer and have the one-year deadline in view anyway, you are better off with your own custody, because the holdings then do not hang on a provider's default risk.

Shiba Inu price: Your next three steps

1. Fix your accounting currency. Decide whether you value your SHIB position in euros or in dollars, and keep to it. The weekly balance today reads minus 0.63 percent in dollars and plus 0.10 percent in euros; switching currency to suit the situation means you are no longer valuing yourself honestly.
2. Enter the levels rather than watching them. Set alerts at $0.00000582 on the upside, where the weekly balance turns in dollars too, and at $0.00000545 on the downside, where the monthly gain would be used up. Both values come from calculating back the reported changes, not from a chart reading.
3. Secure your acquisition dates. Export your exchange's transaction list before you sell anything, and note the acquisition date for each tranche. If you are planning your own custody, choose the wallet by its Ethereum support; the hardware wallet comparison shows which devices display ERC-20 tokens properly.

(As of October 6, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The US derivatives regulator CFTC did not issue any new rules for leveraged crypto trading on October 5, 2026. It asked questions. The paper that made the rounds on Monday is a consultation: 109 pages, 60 days for comments, not a single binding sentence in it. Many reports read differently on Tuesday, talking about a registration requirement and about a duty to prove reserves. Neither of those appears in the document in that form.

For you as an investor in Germany, that is the more important half of the news. What governs your portfolio, your leverage and your tax return is called MiCA and the BaFin general administrative act, and nothing about that changed on October 5. It is still worth reading the paper, because it shows quite precisely which questions a regulator asks before it allows leveraged crypto trading for retail clients. You can measure your own platform against that list, wherever it is based.

Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: what the CFTC set in motion on October 5

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC for short, is the US supervisor of futures and derivatives markets. On October 5, 2026 it published press release number 9307-26 together with a document under file reference RIN 3038-AF80, which prepares amendments to parts 1, 38 and 39 of title 17 of the US Code of Federal Regulations.

The decisive line is the one missing from most reports. Under “ACTION” the original reads: Advanced notice of proposed rulemaking. An Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, ANPRM for short, is the earliest stage of a US rulemaking procedure: the agency announces that it intends to develop rules and asks for feedback beforehand. Only after that comes the actual draft rule, the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and only after a second comment round the final rule. Between Monday's paper and an applicable regulation there are therefore at least two further procedural steps.

CFTC chairman Michael S. Selig is quoted in the release as follows: “The American people deserve clarity, reliability and consumer protection in the markets for crypto assets, and the agency is determined to deliver that by bringing transactions in crypto assets into its uniform national regulatory framework.” Elsewhere he calls the project a step meant to prevent rather than to prosecute after the fact, pointing to the collapse of FTX.

What the document expressly does not do, it states itself: it does not set any final rules and it does not create any specific obligations. Without an act of Congress it also does not force anyone to trade crypto assets on a venue registered with the CFTC.

Section 2(c)(2)(D) and the 28-day rule: why leveraged spot trading counts as a future

The legal core is older than any crypto exchange. Section 2(c)(2)(D) of the Commodity Exchange Act covers transactions with retail clients that are offered on a leveraged basis, on margin or with other financing, and it does so expressly even where the offer is not accepted. Such transactions count in principle as futures contracts and therefore have to run on an authorised exchange.

There are exceptions, and one of them matters most to crypto exchanges. A purchase contract drops out if it leads to actual delivery within 28 days. Actual delivery means in this context that the buyer receives the asset in reality and can dispose of it freely, and that control over it does not remain with the dealer. Whether a leveraged crypto platform falls under futures market law has hung on exactly that question for years.

The document describes these exceptions as the only exits from the exchange requirement. It also makes clear how the agency views a case that occurs constantly in practice: if a retail client declines a leverage offer and buys fully paid, the agency's jurisdiction does not automatically fall away on this reading. The transaction remains subject to the law until one of the statutory exceptions applies.

Regulation CTX and Regulation CAM: the two building blocks of the draft

The paper carries two working titles that you will read more often in the coming months. Regulation CTX stands for Crypto Asset Transactions and concerns the transactions themselves, meaning the interpretation of terms such as “offer” and “actual delivery”. Regulation CAM stands for Crypto Asset Market and describes a new cut of trading venue: a sub-category of the Designated Contract Market, the classic US futures exchange.

For this new cut the document lists six blocks of topics on which the agency requests feedback. They concern listing standards for individual crypto assets and their susceptibility to manipulation, position limits, the reporting and retention of trading data, the execution of transactions, operational risks including system security, and finally the custody of client assets.

Those six blocks are the real news. They show what a regulator measures a trading venue against when retail clients are to trade there with leverage. Anyone choosing an exchange today can use the same six points as a grid, even without any agency prescribing them. Which platforms in Germany hold a licence at all is shown in the overview of the best crypto brokers.

Proof of reserves appears in the document as a question, not as a duty

Several reports wrote of a duty to prove reserves. In the document the section sits under the heading “Proof of Reserves”, and it consists of two requests for comment.

The agency first describes current practice: crypto exchanges hold client assets in pooled accounts, so-called omnibus accounts, maintained for the benefit of clients. On this it asks for comments on all risks arising from that custody practice. It then notes that individual market participants have already introduced safeguards for segregated client assets, under which the custodian has an external auditor confirm that the reserves cover all liabilities towards clients. In everyday language that is called proof of reserves. On this too the agency expressly invites proposals on which practices it should take into account.

Between “we request proposals” and “we prescribe” lies about a year and two comment rounds in a US rulemaking procedure. For you that means a published reserve attestation remains a voluntary promise by the exchange for the time being, in the United States as in Europe. MiCA requires authorised crypto service providers to hold client funds and crypto assets separately from their own assets. A published reserve audit by a third party, of the kind the CFTC puts up for discussion, is not required by the European regulation.

No leverage cap in the paper: the margin regime stays open

The most striking blank space concerns the figure everyone looks for first. The document names an upper limit for leverage nowhere.

Instead it describes a model: the new trading venue is to allow retail clients to obtain financing from a suitable provider, an eligible leverage provider. The terms of that financing are to be set out in the venue's rulebook, following the principle that a futures exchange must inform accurately about its terms. The document lists what would have to be governed there: purchase price, margin requirements, collateral, fees and financing costs, procedures for forced liquidation and disclosures to clients.

How high the margin requirements turn out, the agency leaves open. It places two paths side by side: the existing mechanism in which the clearing house sets the rates, or a stricter approach in which the agency sets requirements itself. It asks whether the determination should be delegated to the self-regulatory National Futures Association, as already happens with foreign exchange dealers, and how quickly rates could be adjusted in periods of stress.

One point deserves particular attention because it makes the difference in liquidations. The agency asks whether certain crypto assets should be excluded as collateral, and names as a possible criterion a minimum market capitalisation and a minimum trading volume, so that the asset survives a sale under stress. Anyone who posts a thinly traded position as collateral today already carries exactly that risk, only without a rule. How forced liquidations run on derivatives platforms is explained in the overview of the best perp DEX.

A 60-day comment period: when the clock starts running

At the place where the deadline will be stated, the document still carries a placeholder line: comments must be received within 60 days of publication in the Federal Register, the official gazette of the US federal agencies. The press release of October 5 therefore does not start the period yet.

Submissions go through the Regulations.gov portal, or alternatively by post to the agency in Washington. Comments must be written in English or include an English translation, and they are published unreviewed, including any personal details someone writes into them. The procedure is open to everyone, including filers from Europe.

In practical terms for the timetable: the deadline will not expire before December 2026, after which comes the evaluation, then the actual draft rule with a further comment round. Anyone who reads in reports that a new framework for leveraged trading now applies in the United States is reading something that can be true in 2028 at the earliest.

What the US framework changes for investors in Germany

Today, nothing. A Crypto Asset Market would be a US trading venue under US supervision, and retail clients from Germany generally cannot open an account there anyway. The market reaction also failed to appear: bitcoin traded at $85,698 at around 6:50 pm German time on October 6, 2026, roughly half a percent above the previous day, according to CoinGecko price data. How the levels have developed since then is covered in the bitcoin price prediction.

Indirectly the matter is relevant all the same. Large trading venues do not build their rulebooks country by country but once, and then adapt them. If a US regulator enforces listing standards for crypto assets, position limits and external reserve attestations, that reaches platforms serving European clients too. The reverse route has been more common in recent years: European requirements from MiCA became the benchmark because nobody wanted to maintain two products in parallel.

MiCA, the BaFin general administrative act and the limits for retail clients in Germany

Anyone betting on crypto assets with leverage in Germany moves within two separate sets of rules, and many people confuse them. Trading in crypto assets itself falls under the European MiCA regulation, which makes crypto service providers subject to authorisation and obliges them, among other things, to segregate client assets. Which duties that brings for providers is broken down in the overview of the MiCA licence.

Leveraged trading via contracts for difference, by contrast, falls under securities law. Here the BaFin general administrative act of July 23, 2019 applies. It prohibits the marketing, distribution and sale of contracts for difference to retail clients in Germany unless four conditions are met: a guaranteed initial margin protection, which the regulator itself describes as a leverage limit, a mandatory margin close-out protection, a mandatory negative balance protection, called a ban on additional payment obligations by BaFin, and a ban on bonus incentives. The negative balance protection is the part that saves your assets in an emergency: with a supervised provider you cannot lose more than the capital you put in.

The leverage limit is tiered by underlying asset class, and crypto assets sit in the strictest tier. An assessment of October 2, 2026 on cryptoticker.io on the classification of perpetual futures puts that tier at leverage of 2:1 and explains why perpetual futures contracts run in the same direction. Between that 2:1 and what platforms without a European licence offer lies the real difference, and you should know about it before opening any position.

Spot or derivative: the holding period under section 23 EStG splits the tax paths

The difference between a directly held coin and a leveraged derivative on it is above all a tax matter in Germany, and it turns out considerably larger than most people expect.

If you buy a coin and hold it in custody, the sale is a private disposal under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. After one year of holding the gain stays tax-free, below that your personal tax rate applies, and there is an exemption limit. If you instead trade a derivative on the same coin, such as a contract for difference or a perpetual futures contract, the result lands in investment income under section 20 of the German Income Tax Act. There is no holding period there and no tax exemption after a year, but there is the separate tax rate and its own rules for offsetting losses.

This split has an unpleasant side effect. Anyone who hedges a spot position via a derivative shortly before the one-year deadline expires may destroy that deadline, depending on how the hedge is structured. This is no edge case but the most frequent error in mixed portfolios. A tool that keeps both pots cleanly apart is half the battle; the comparison of crypto tax tools gives an overview. For the assessment of an individual case there is no way around tax advice.

Offshore platforms remain the real gap

The CFTC paper describes a trading venue that places itself under federal supervision voluntarily. It obliges nobody to do so as long as Congress passes no law. That is exactly where the problem sits which neither Washington nor Brussels has solved so far.

A platform without a licence in the European Union and without registration in the United States is subject to neither set of rules. There is no negative balance protection there, no leverage limit, no duty to segregate client assets and no supervisor you can turn to. Double-digit to triple-digit leverage is everyday business there. BaFin maintains the list of authorised providers itself, and it can be read through in a few minutes; that look costs less time than any attempt to unwind a trade.

That the CFTC puts listing standards, susceptibility to manipulation and reserve attestations at the front of its paper is in that sense an indication of which three questions a regulator considers the riskiest. You can put them to your platform before an agency does.

Leveraged trading: How to proceed now

1. Clarify the licence. Check whether your provider holds a MiCA authorisation or an investment services licence for contracts for difference in the European Union. Without either, neither negative balance protection nor a leverage limit applies to you. The comparison of the best crypto brokers offers an entry point to the provider landscape.
2. Work through the liquidation logic. Have your platform's rulebook show you at which price a position is closed, which collateral is recognised and which financing costs accrue per day. Those are exactly the points the CFTC puts up for discussion in its paper. How this looks on derivatives platforms is shown in the overview of the best perp DEX.
3. Separate the tax pots. Keep spot holdings and derivatives separate so that the one-year deadline under section 23 EStG stays documentable. Which programmes manage that without manual work is covered in the comparison of crypto tax tools.

The key points in brief

The CFTC opened a consultation on October 5, 2026, it did not issue a rule. The document runs to 109 pages and the comment period is 60 days from publication in the Federal Register. It names no upper leverage limit, and the reserve attestation appears in it as a question. For investors in Germany, MiCA and the BaFin general administrative act of July 23, 2019 remain decisive, and for tax purposes section 23 EStG still separates the directly held coin from the derivative.

(As of October 6, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Sources: CFTC, press release 9307-26 of October 5, 2026 and BaFin, general administrative act on contracts for difference of July 23, 2019.

Google's new image model, Nano Banana 2.1, is live. It costs about half as much as its predecessor, but the performance claims come from Google's own tests.

Nothing in Circle's posts announces a sponsorship, but replies dug up Khaled's 2018 SEC settlement over a crypto fraud he promoted. The internet never forgets.

A developer posted metadata for about 5.6 billion public TikTok videos, scraped through the app's private API in a way TikTok's terms prohibit. The free dataset also doubles as a storefront.

Abstract will shut down Dec. 15, saying a chain focused solely on consumer crypto proved unsustainable, and is urging users to bridge their assets off before then.

The payments firm alleges Tether froze its treasury wallet on its own initiative over a Brazilian investigation it has no connection to—and has profited from the reserves while refusing to release the funds for more than a year.

Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes believes the eventual collapse of the AI investment boom could become a major bullish catalyst for Bitcoin.

NEAR has emerged as one of the crypto market's strongest-performing major altcoins, climbing from around $1.80 in early September to above $5 as ETF demand and AI-related developments strengthen the bullish narrative.

The Winklevoss twins have filed to launch a spot Zcash ETF.

Ripple has joined Circle, Qube Research & Technologies and Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures in backing crypto exchange OKX at a $25 billion valuation.

XRP Ledger beats Ethereum in commodity tokenization growth, capturing $2.2B in year-to-date inflows.

TLDR:

• Cardano market cap is up 42% since September 16, with ADA moving from about $0.19 to $0.27. 
• Whale transactions above $100K reached 413 in a single day, the highest count since June 4. 
• ADA open interest rose about 25% to $304M in two days, its highest daily close since at least April.
• Giannis Andreou says reclaiming $0.32 to $0.40 would strengthen ADA’s recovery case, with $0.426 next. 

The ADA rally has drawn large holders back to Cardano, with market capitalization up 42% since September 16. On-chain data shows 413 transactions worth at least $100,000 on a single day.

That is the highest count since June 4. Social dominance for the token also reached 1.16%, its highest level of 2026.

Price moved from roughly $0.19 to $0.27 during the period. Meanwhile, new project launches and upcoming integrations have kept the network in focus.

Whale Activity and Social Interest Climb

Santiment Intelligence reported the figures in a post on X. The firm said the 42% run has whales moving again. It added that whale transactions of $100,000 or more reached 413 in one day. Activity at that level had not appeared since June 4.

Retail interest also grew during the ADA rally. Social dominance for ADA reached 1.16%, the highest reading of 2026. The crowd arrived suddenly, according to Santiment. The firm tied the attention to the price move from about $0.19 to $0.27.

Project news added to the discussion. RealFi launched on Cardano mainnet on October 1. In addition, anticipation around Leios, Fireblocks support, and new institutional integrations drove the biggest discussion spike of the year. Santiment listed these items as the likely drivers behind the surge in attention.

Open Interest Data Challenges the Short Squeeze Claim

Some coverage described the ADA rally as a short squeeze, citing falling open interest. Santiment published a second post to test that claim. Its daily closing data shows the opposite.

ADA rose about 10% from October 3 to October 5. Over the same two days, open interest climbed about 25% to $304 million.

That figure is the highest daily close since at least early April. Measured in coins, open interest still rose about 13%. This points to new positioning rather than a higher price alone.

Whale transactions on October 5 ran about 2.2 times the weekday average from September 7 to October 2. Social volume stood near 1.1 times that same baseline.

Funding data adds more detail. It reached its most negative reading of the past month on October 2, then turned positive. Santiment said short covering likely helped the move.

However, covering shrinks open interest instead of growing it. Therefore, the firm treated the ADA rally as fresh leverage entering the market.

Analyst Maps Key Price Levels for ADA

Analyst Giannis Andreou shared a technical view of the ADA rally on X. ADA traded at $0.2644 at the time of his snapshot. Andreou said the price is back where previous cycles found their floor.

He described the token as testing the historical $0.20 to $0.28 band after a bounce from a potential local base.

Andreou noted that the weekly structure still shows lower highs. A reclaim of $0.32 to $0.40, followed by a held retest, would strengthen the recovery case.

The next levels to watch are $0.426 and the $0.55 to $0.65 supply zone. From the snapshot, $0.40 represents roughly 51% upside.

On the downside, a weekly close below $0.20 would bring $0.14 to $0.18 back into focus. A move below $0.14 would invalidate the local base.

Andreou ended his post by asking whether ADA is building a floor. He also asked if the token is preparing for another resistance rejection.

The post Cardano Whale Activity Surges as ADA Market Cap Jumps 42% appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Abstract will shut down on December 15, 2026, and funds not bridged by then will become inaccessible.
• Igloo said it lost tens of millions of dollars over two years while seeking profitability for the chain.
• Users can bridge assets through the Migration Hub or the native bridge, which has a three-hour delay. 
• Igloo will refocus its resources on Pudgy Penguins, Pudgy NFTs and PENGU after the Abstract shutdown.

Abstract shutdown is scheduled for December 15, 2026, according to the chain’s parent company, Igloo. The team cited high operating costs, limited liquidity, a restricted DeFi ecosystem, and weaker market demand.

Igloo said it lost tens of millions of dollars over two years while searching for product-market fit and profitability. Users must bridge their assets off the chain before the deadline. Funds left on the network after that date will become inaccessible.

Why Abstract Is Winding Down

The Abstract team announced the decision in a post on X. “After almost three years, we are saddened to share that Abstract is winding down,” the team wrote. The team said its Portal became an industry benchmark for onchain discovery and distribution.

Abstract said operating a chain focused exclusively on consumer crypto “has ultimately proven to be unsustainable as a standalone model.”

Growth began to stagnate because of a restricted DeFi ecosystem and thin liquidity. Minimal institutional crossover and a limited budget compared to competitors also played a role.

Abstract said it explored several options over the last 12 months. The goal was to find product-market fit and help the chain scale. However, the team said the chain landscape had changed radically, and it faced serious headwinds.

The Abstract shutdown followed a choice between two options. The team could keep spending resources on an unsustainable chain, or it could shut the network down. After extensive deliberation, the team agreed that “the best path forward was to wind down the chain.”

Migration Steps and Igloo’s Next Focus

Users can move funds through the Migration Hub at migrate.abs.xyz. They can also use the native bridge at native-bridge.abs.xyz.

The native bridge carries an expected delay of three hours. The Abstract shutdown gives users a fixed window to move funds.

All users have until December 15, 2026, to migrate their assets. The team stated that users who miss the date “will lose access to their funds.”

Abstract also urged users to “beware of impersonation, fake migration sites, and DMs claiming to represent Abstract.” It advised using only the official link and cross-checking it with Discord and other official channels.

Abstract’s engineering and ecosystem team will help Abstract-based projects migrate to other chains. The network had more than 144 unique apps deployed on it.

Abstract Global Wallet also became the most adopted smart contract wallet in crypto, according to the team. The team thanked its partners, builders, and community for their support since the mainnet launch.

Igloo raised over $11 million in a Founders Fund-led round in July 2024. The funding helped establish Cube Labs and support Abstract’s development.

Igloo will now refocus its resources on Pudgy Penguins, Pudgy NFTs, and PENGU. The Abstract shutdown follows two years of losses for the parent company.

The post Abstract Shutdown Set for Dec. 15 as Igloo Reports Tens of Millions in Losses appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• RCL rises 4.81% as Silversea unveils 103 voyages across 56 countries.
• Silversea adds 29 new ports across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
• Caribbean deployment includes 38 voyages across 34 destinations.
• Silver Nova will operate a 75-night Grand South America journey.
• Asia expansion adds eight new ports and new turnaround points.

Royal Caribbean Group (RCL) traded at $288.25, up 4.81%, as Silversea unveiled a major global voyage expansion. The luxury cruise brand announced 103 voyages covering 219 destinations across 56 countries for its 2028-2029 collection. The program also adds 29 new ports and expands Royal Caribbean’s reach across several major cruise regions.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., RCL

Silversea Expands 2028-2029 Global Voyage Collection

Silversea will operate the new program from September 2028 through May 2029 across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The collection includes Mediterranean, Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and Asian itineraries. General sales open October 8, following an earlier preview for Venetian Society members.

The Mediterranean schedule includes 17 voyages aboard Silver Nova and Silver Dawn between October 2028 and March 2029. Those sailings will reach 53 destinations across 12 countries, including new calls at Brindisi and Imperia. Several itineraries will also include overnight stays in Venice, Istanbul, Naples, Genoa, Valletta, and other major destinations.

Silversea is also expanding its S.A.L.T. Culinary Voyages with programs focused on regional food and seasonal travel. Three Wine and Truffle voyages will cross Italy and Spain, while four Asian Markets sailings connect Singapore and Hong Kong. These itineraries include local markets, vineyard visits, food experiences, and chef-led destination programs.

Caribbean and South America Sailings Broaden Royal Caribbean Reach

Silversea will deploy four ships across the Caribbean and Central America between November 2028 and March 2029. Silver Ray, Silver Nova, Silver Spirit, and Silver Shadow will operate 38 voyages across 34 destinations in 21 countries. The season also introduces La Romana in the Dominican Republic as a new port.

Round-trip Caribbean departures will operate from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and San Juan, adding flexibility across several major embarkation markets. Silversea will also introduce a destination experience at Canouan in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The program combines a local Carnival-style welcome, live music, food, drinks, and a private beach event.

Silver Nova will also operate a 75-night Grand South America voyage beginning January 13, 2029, from Fort Lauderdale. The itinerary includes the Panama Canal, Antarctic Peninsula scenic cruising, and overnight calls across several major South American cities. The ship will return to Fort Lauderdale on March 29 after completing the continental journey.

Asia and Australia Add New Ports and Seasonal Events

Silversea will expand its Australia and New Zealand schedule with 10 voyages aboard Silver Moon. Those voyages will cover 42 destinations across three countries between October 2028 and March 2029. New stops include Batemans Bay and Phillip Island, while Sydney will host an overnight New Year’s Eve call.

Silver Moon and Silver Muse will also operate 26 Asian voyages between September 2028 and May 2029. The schedule covers 62 destinations across 11 countries and adds eight new ports to Silversea’s regional network. New turnaround points at Kobe and Bali will also expand the available itinerary combinations for guests.

The wider rollout supports Royal Caribbean Group’s broader strategy across cruise brands, destinations, and land-based vacation experiences. Royal Caribbean operates 71 ships through Royal Caribbean, Celebrity Cruises, Silversea, and its TUI Cruises joint venture. The group is also expanding private destinations and plans to enter river cruising with Celebrity River Cruises in 2027.

The post Royal Caribbean Group (RCL) Stock: Surge as Silversea Launches Major Global Voyage Expansion appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Ondo Finance introduced Ondo Private Markets, enabling tokenized exposure to pre-IPO companies
• The debut offering tracks an undisclosed artificial intelligence firm preparing for public markets
• These digital notes provide value exposure but exclude equity ownership, voting privileges, or dividend payments
• A British Virgin Islands-based special purpose vehicle issues the securities, separate from the underlying company
• Access is restricted to qualified non-US individuals under SEC Regulation S requirements

Ondo Finance has introduced a new service named Ondo Private Markets. The platform provides pathways for investors to participate in the value growth of private enterprises before they transition to public exchanges.

The inaugural offering consists of a blockchain-based note. Its value tracks an artificial intelligence business whose identity remains undisclosed.

These instruments differ fundamentally from traditional equity. Their performance correlates with the potential valuation of the underlying company’s shares during a future liquidity event rather than granting direct ownership.

Token holders receive no corporate ownership stake. Voting rights and dividend distributions are also absent from this structure.

Structure and Mechanics of the Token Notes

Returns materialize through a “qualifying liquidity event.” Such events include initial public offerings or corporate acquisitions.

Participants maintain custody of the digital tokens in their personal wallets. Secondary market trading operates continuously around the clock without traditional market hour restrictions.

According to Ondo, the initial notes should commence trading within the current week. Additional offerings referencing companies in robotics, cybersecurity, biotechnology, and infrastructure development will follow in subsequent launches.

Ondo Global Markets (BVI) Limited serves as the issuing authority for these financial instruments. This entity operates as a distinct legal structure established in the British Virgin Islands.

This arrangement is significant because purchasers depend on this intermediary entity for payment fulfillment rather than maintaining direct claims against the private company’s actual shares.

Ondo’s pre-existing offering, Ondo Stocks, operates through a different mechanism. That service provides blockchain versions of publicly traded equities and exchange-traded funds supported by authentic securities.

Ondo Stocks currently manages over one billion dollars in total value locked. The platform features access to more than 450 tokenized equities and investment funds.

Eligibility Requirements for Token Purchases

The recently launched private market notes are distributed through SEC Regulation S frameworks. This regulatory pathway limits availability exclusively to qualified individuals residing outside United States borders.

American retail investors face restrictions preventing them from purchasing, maintaining custody of, or redeeming these digital tokens under existing regulations.

Ian De Bode, currently serving as acting leader of Ondo Finance, observed that retail investors predominantly access investment opportunities in publicly traded corporations. He noted that 87 percent of American companies generating over 100 million dollars in annual revenue operate as private entities.

Ondo contends this regulatory landscape excludes numerous technology-focused enterprises developing innovative solutions before pursuing stock exchange listings.

Several other financial institutions have pursued comparable strategies for private company exposure this year. A venture investment vehicle associated with Robinhood allocated 75 million dollars toward OpenAI common stock earlier in the year.

That transaction provided retail investors with indirect participation through a publicly traded investment vehicle.

Citi received media coverage earlier this year regarding development of a blockchain-based marketplace designed for private company equity transactions.

Existing platforms including Hiive and EquityZen currently facilitate private share transactions for accredited investors. Hiive achieved a valuation of 650 million dollars in late 2025. EquityZen operates under Morgan Stanley ownership.

Both platforms encounter operational delays stemming from regulations granting companies rights of first refusal before external share sales proceed.

Ondo asserts its note structure circumvents these constraints through unrestricted transferability on blockchain infrastructures.

The comprehensive market for tokenized real-world assets currently stands near 39 billion dollars in valuation, based on data compiled by tracking platform rwa.xyz.

Ondo intends to broaden its private market note offerings across additional industry sectors throughout upcoming months, beginning with the singular AI-referenced product launching this week.

The post Ondo Finance Opens Platform for Blockchain-Based Private Company Investment Access appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq notched fresh all-time highs this week even as the 10-year Treasury yield holds above 5%.
• Corporate earnings are projected to grow more than 30% compared to the prior year, providing support despite elevated borrowing costs.
• Nvidia’s valuation is approaching the $6 trillion mark, propelled by continued investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
• Tuesday’s trading session saw gains across every S&P 500 sector, indicating the advance extends well beyond mega-cap technology stocks.
• Market strategists remain divided, with projections ranging from the S&P 500 climbing to 10,000 by 2030 to potentially retreating to 5,000 by 2027.

Financial markets hit new milestones this week despite government bond yields hovering near their highest levels in more than two decades. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both registered record closes on Tuesday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average also advanced.

Meanwhile, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield continues trading above the 5% threshold, recently climbing to levels last witnessed in 2002.

Under typical market conditions, elevated bond yields create headwinds for equity valuations. When Treasury securities offer attractive risk-free returns, investors have less incentive to allocate capital toward volatile stocks. Growth-oriented technology companies generally feel this pressure most acutely.

Yet the current environment is proving different.

Robust Profit Growth Provides Market Support

The primary factor sustaining the equity rally is corporate earnings momentum. Wall Street analysts are forecasting that S&P 500 constituent companies will deliver profit growth exceeding 30% on a year-over-year basis.

Artificial intelligence companies are leading this expansion. Nvidia’s stock price climbed again during Tuesday’s session, bringing the semiconductor giant’s total market capitalization within striking distance of $6 trillion.

Additional chipmakers also posted gains as market participants continue anticipating sustained investment in data center capacity and AI computing resources.

The market’s strength extends well beyond a handful of technology titans. Every one of the S&P 500’s 11 sectors posted advances on Tuesday. Utilities and real estate names performed particularly well as Treasury yields pulled back modestly from recent peaks.

The Significance of Rising Treasury Yields

The 10-year Treasury yield recently climbed to approximately 5.34%, marking its highest reading in roughly 24 years. This increase reflects market concerns about persistent inflation, expanding government debt levels and economic resilience.

Elevated yields present a challenge for equity markets. When investors can secure returns above 5% from government-backed securities, the relative attractiveness of stocks diminishes.

Rising rates also increase financing costs across the economy for corporations, households and government entities. This dynamic particularly affects growth stocks, whose valuations rely heavily on profit projections extending years into the future.

As interest rates climb, the present value of those anticipated future earnings decreases. Until now, powerful earnings growth has been sufficient to offset this valuation pressure.

Some market observers are now questioning whether 6% yields, rather than the current 5% level, might represent the true tipping point where equities face meaningful headwinds.

Expert opinions about the market’s trajectory diverge dramatically. With the S&P 500 trading near 8,000, certain strategists project the index could climb to 10,000 before the decade ends.

Conversely, other analysts paint a more cautious picture. Panmure Liberum recently published research suggesting the S&P 500 might retreat to approximately 5,000 by late 2027 if inflation remains sticky and interest rates stay elevated.

This divergence in professional forecasts underscores the delicate balance characterizing current market conditions.

Market participants will closely monitor upcoming third-quarter earnings releases, Federal Reserve policy signals, inflation readings and Treasury market movements in coming weeks. Continued strong earnings combined with moderating yields could propel the S&P 500 well beyond 8,000.

The greater risk scenario involves disappointing corporate results coinciding with further yield increases.

For the moment, record equity valuations signal that investors maintain confidence that corporate profit growth will continue outpacing the burden of higher financing costs.

The post S&P 500 Defies 5% Treasury Yields With AI-Fueled Rally to New Records appeared first on Blockonomi.

Although BTC was halted at $87,000 once again at the start of the business week, it still managed to hold relatively stable at over $85,600 before the bears took complete control for less than half an hour earlier this morning and drove it south by $2,000.

Naturally, such a violent move spiked the liquidations, as the total value of wrecked positions rocketed to over $550 million on a daily scale. $430 million came in the past 4 hours alone, and almost all were from longs.

Interestingly, ETH longs are responsible for the lion’s share as the altcoin’s price tumbled by roughly 4%, going below $2,600. Other alts, such as XRP, HYPE, DOGE, and ADA, were hit even harder, with losses of up to 6% on a 24-hour scale.

More than 100,000 traders were wiped-out in the past day, with the single-largest liquidation order taking place on Binance. It was worth a whopping $26 million and involved the ETH/USDC pair, according to CoinGlass.

A couple of reasons pop up in the past several hours that could have resulted in this major leg down. At first, Lookonchain reported that the US government has moved a portion of the crypto it holds. In total, they transferred 834 BTC ($71.56 million) to Coinbase Prime, while moving another 40,285 BNB.

As we have explained before, even if the authorities have sold that amount, it doesn’t translate necessarily into breaking Trump’s promise to never sell any BTC.

The second possible reason could be linked to insiders, as Lookonchain updated. 4 newly created wallets deposited $1 million USDC into hyperliquid just minutes before the crash and opened 40x shorts on nearly 150 BTC ($12.5 million).

Bitcoin has dropped below $84,000.

Just before the market dropped, 4 newly created wallets deposited 1M $USDC into #Hyperliquid and opened 40x shorts on 148.49 $BTC ($12.5M).

Insiders?

https://t.co/EzPGCixA9c
https://t.co/idcl5q2vtM
https://t.co/6cNec0Rc3Y
https://t.co/jFDTRz3l9X

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) October 7, 2026

The post Why Did Bitcoin’s Price Slump by $2K in 20 Minutes? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP transfers to Binance have increased sharply, raising questions about possible selling pressure in the short term. According to CryptoQuant’s latest findings, around 1.6 billion tokens flowed into the exchange over the past 30 days.

This is the highest 30-day inflow recorded since March.

Inflows Rise, as Futures Stay Strong

Large amounts of XRP moving to an exchange can be a warning sign. Traders often send tokens to exchanges when they plan to sell. However, the inflow alone does not confirm that selling has taken place, CryptoQuant explained in its post.

It does not provide a clear bearish signal yet. For now, the data suggests a “cautious short-term” outlook. If Binance continues to receive large amounts of XRP, while its reserves increase and the price weakens, selling pressure could become stronger. On the other hand, if Binance reserves remain stable and XRP holds its price, the market could be absorbing the additional supply.

Meanwhile, XRP futures trading stayed busy in September as volumes remained close to their highest levels of the past six months. Data revealed that trading activity picked up from August.

Binance handled the biggest share of the activity. The exchange recorded around $32.36 billion in XRP futures trading volume during September. Next up was Bybit with about $12.5 billion, while OKX recorded roughly $11.32 billion. The rest of the volume was spread across other exchanges. The increase points to more money and trading activity moving through the futures market.

Volumes have cooled from earlier record highs, but they are still at fairly high levels. Higher futures volumes usually mean more traders are taking positions and moving money through the market. It can also mean stronger liquidity, making it easier to open and close trades.

Bulls Target $1.62

Ali Martinez is taking a more positive view of XRP’s chart. In a recent post, the analyst said the crypto asset appears to have broken above the descending resistance line of a triangle pattern on the four-hour chart. The move could be a sign that buyers are starting to gain some ground.

Martinez is now watching the $1.50 level closely. If XRP can hold that area as support, he sees room for the price to move toward $1.62.

The post 1.6 Billion XRP Moves to Binance: Should Investors Be Worried? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The new federal framework was proposed by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission for crypto exchanges that offer leveraged trading to retail customers. The move could give US crypto platforms a clearer route to federal oversight at a time when the country still lacks a broad crypto market law.

CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig announced the proposals on October 5 during remarks at the Fordham Law Blockchain Regulatory Symposium in New York. The agency is seeking public input on proposals covering Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions (CTX) and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets (CAM).

New Federal Path for Leveraged Trading

The framework would be a federal option for crypto exchanges. Platforms would not automatically be forced into the CFTC system. They could continue operating under state licenses if their business model allows it. Exchanges offering certain types of leveraged crypto trading, however, already fall under CFTC registration requirements under existing law.

The CFTC described the crypto market through a three-level structure. Ordinary spot exchanges would remain largely under state money transmission rules, while the CFTC would continue to have anti-fraud and anti-manipulation powers. Exchanges offering retail margin, leveraged, or financed crypto trading would fall into the second category. Platforms offering derivatives such as perpetual contracts would sit in the third category. The new proposals mainly target that second group.

Under the plan, exchanges that only want to offer leveraged crypto transactions could register as a new type of derivatives exchange called a crypto asset market (CAM). Existing CFTC-registered derivatives exchanges could also offer these products under the proposed rules.

The framework would bring several customer protections into the picture. CAMs could face requirements covering market surveillance, financial safeguards, as well as customer funds. The CFTC is also considering proof-of-reserves rules for exchanges holding customer assets in omnibus accounts.

Another major piece involves futures commission merchants (FCMs). These firms would handle customer accounts and funds and would have to follow existing customer protection requirements. Their involvement would also bring anti-money laundering and customer identification rules into the process. The CFTC is looking at how the rules could work with self-custody as well. Under the proposal, crypto assets sent to a customer’s external wallet within 28 days could generally meet the agency’s interpretation of “actual delivery.”

“The framework I have outlined is an important step towards bringing crypto asset markets within the protections of the CEA. It will establish clear rules of the road for firms that want to serve American customers, strengthen the integrity of these markets, and provide a path for responsible innovation to take place here in America.”

On Onchain Finance

Selig also pointed to the agency’s wider interest in onchain finance. He said developers who simply publish software and do not control trades or hold customer assets should not automatically be treated like traditional intermediaries.

The proposal does not create a full federal crypto regime on its own. Congress would still have to decide whether all exchanges should be required to register federally.

The post CFTC Wants Clearer Rules for Leveraged Crypto Trading in Major US Regulatory Push appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin treasury companies can give investors greater exposure to the cryptocurrency’s gains, but the amplification works in both directions, according to The Smarter Web Company CEO Andrew Webley.

In a recent interview with BTC advocate Stephen Livera, Webley also warned that unlike Bitcoin itself, these companies depend on management teams whose capital allocation decisions can materially affect shareholder returns.

Bitcoin Exposure Comes With Added Volatility

Webley identified two risks investors need to understand, the first being volatility. Bitcoin is less volatile than it used to be, the CEO conceded, but it still swings more than many assets investors hold, and a treasury company “amplifies that volatility,” and investors cheer that on the way up and mostly dislike it on the way down.

“People don’t like it when I say it, but you can’t have it both ways,” Webley remarked. “You can’t have performance and no volatility.”

The second risk is management execution, which decides whether these companies work or not. According to Webley, executives have numerous decisions to make, particularly around capital structure, and choices that might allow a firm to grow faster could come at the expense of shareholders.

“Bitcoin has no management,” he stated. “A Bitcoin treasury company, the management could really, really mess it up.”

That leaves treasury-stock investors with a choice that Bitcoin holders do not face in the same form: accepting Bitcoin’s volatility while also trusting a management team to make the right financing and accumulation decisions.

Strategy and Strive Show the Trade-Off

The scale of the current treasury operations helps explain why those decisions matter. As CryptoPotato reported yesterday, Strategy bought another 334 BTC for $28.7 million, taking its holdings to 848,000 BTC. The company has spent almost $64 billion accumulating Bitcoin at an average price of $75,441.

On the same day, Strive bought 2,000 BTC for $169 million at an average price of $84,422, bringing its holdings to 29,462 BTC. The company’s CEO Matt Cole argued that his firm can generate greater returns than their bigger rival through a higher amplification ratio, with Strive’s ratio at 51.4%, compared with roughly 25% for Strategy. Cole also projected that Bitcoin could reach $400,000 to $500,000 by late 2029.

At the time of writing, the OG cryptocurrency’s price was still some way from that target. It was rejected at $87,000 on Monday morning after a weak US jobs report had pushed it above that level on Friday for the first time in ten days, but it fell below $84,000 within hours, leaving nearly $600 million in liquidations.

The latest CoinGecko reading has it within touching distance of $86,000, down half a percent in 24 hours but up nearly 7% across 30 days. However, it is still about 32% below its $126,000 all-time high.

The post This Is Why Bitcoin Treasury Companies Can Be Riskier Than BTC appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Analyst Dennis Liu, who posts on X as VirtualBacon, says altcoin season has not started, because the average altcoin is only about 10% ahead of BTC since the primary cryptocurrency’s bottom.

According to him, a handful of strong coins are making the market feel hotter than the data supports.

Most Altcoins Still Trail Bitcoin

Liu’s argument rests on relative performance rather than a few eye-catching rallies. He pointed to the Total 2-to-Bitcoin ratio, which compares the market value of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin with BTC, and described the chart as “very flat.”

Since Bitcoin’s bottom, the average altcoin has gained 10% more than BTC, he noted. That is far removed from the kind of broad outperformance associated with previous alt seasons.

The coins that are ahead make a short list. Zcash has done well since the start of the year, while Venice and Quant have also outperformed more recently. The privacy coin is up more than 726% over a year, and Quant jumped 530% within days, from $59 to $370, before settling near $255, but Liu stressed that these are isolated examples.

Not even XRP has outperformed Bitcoin, while Ethereum, Solana and BNB are barely ahead.

“That’s why I say altcoins are actually still very cheap. And we are not confirming a full-on alt season type of scenario yet. We are just barely getting started,” Liu explained.

Asked how far off it was, the analyst answered “nowhere close.”

Bitcoin itself has been stuck. It was rejected at $87,000 on Monday, bounced off $85,000 and has moved sideways between that level and $86,000 since, with a market cap of $1.72 trillion and a nearly 58% share of the total crypto market.

Larger altcoins have been sluggish over 24 hours. ETH holds above $2,700 and XRP sits at $1.50. BNB, Solana, Dogecoin and Chainlink are slightly lower, and RAIN was one of the biggest losers in 24 hours, dropping over 7%, while FIL and ZRO gained 8% and 10%, respectively.

Why Isolated Rallies Can Be Misleading

Liu also warned traders against waiting for Bitcoin to reach a new all-time high before looking at altcoins. He noted that this pattern worked in 2017 and late 2020, but failed in 2024 when Bitcoin broke its previous record while many altcoins continued to lose ground against it. His approach is therefore to trade individual altcoin rallies rather than wait for a broad signal.

In a separate video, the market watcher called $83,000 Bitcoin’s daily pivot, with a break below that possibly sending it toward bull market support at $78,000, while holding above leaves room to move past $87,000.

The post Altcoins Are Rallying, But Analyst Says Alt Season Has Yet to Begin appeared first on CryptoPotato.