The surge in Ethereum unstaking highlights potential vulnerabilities in staking infrastructure and could influence future staking strategies.

The post Ethereum unstaking queue surges 392% since October start appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The incident underscores the ethical complexities and control challenges in AI research, highlighting tensions between innovation and moral considerations.

The post GitHub reinstates controversial ‘AI torture chamber’ repository after backlash appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The competitive Senate race in New Hampshire could influence party strategies and voter engagement, impacting broader political dynamics.

The post Sununu gains ground in competitive New Hampshire Senate race against Pappas appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

AWS's transparency shift may influence regulatory debates and public perception, impacting future data center policies and environmental scrutiny.

The post AWS ends NDAs with government agencies amid data center transparency push appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Kolibri's release could enhance AI innovation in Europe, emphasizing compliance and potentially reshaping sectors like defense and public administration.

The post Aleph Alpha releases Kolibri, a 78B-parameter open-weight AI model built in Europe appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

IMF Praises El Salvador — But Still Tries To Scale Back Its Bitcoin Project

The International Monetary Fund has praised El Salvador for improving its economy — but scolded it at the same time for its ongoing Bitcoin experiment. 

In a statement Friday, the IMF said that it had  approved a $139 million disbursement to the Central American nation while also trying to “reduce the state’s involvement in Bitcoin-related activities.”

El Salvador in 2021 made Bitcoin legal tender, much to the ire of the IMF and other major institutions. The Latin American country was at the time negotiating a development loan with the agency. 

The IMF in September said that El Salvador wasn’t buying bitcoin; the country’s Bitcoin Office has repeatedly said that it does buy the cryptocurrency. 

“Economic activity has exceeded expectations, supported by sustained improvements in security and investor confidence, as macroeconomic imbalances continue to be addressed,” the IMF said. 

It continued: “However, certain performance criteria were not met, including on the Bitcoin accumulation front, for which waivers were granted based on strong corrective measures and renewed commitments.”

The IMF further said that the Salvadoran state’s involvement in Bitcoin-related activities is being unwound and that “no further bitcoin accumulation is envisaged beyond the documented donations.”

Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele in 2022 said the country would buy one bitcoin per day but it was never clear where the money was coming from — or if he was actually buying at all.  

The IMF said in September that El Salvador was — at least for some time —not using public funds to accumulate bitcoin but rather had received bitcoin from private donations. 

El Salvador and the IMF entered a $1.4 billion loan agreement at the end of December but the fund asked for the country to scale back certain aspects of its Bitcoin strategy.  

The Salvadoran state gifted its citizens bitcoin in 2021 and debuted a wallet with the hope of getting more citizens using the cryptocurrency in the dollarized country. 

President Bukele in 2024 admitted that Salvadorans weren’t using the cryptocurrency to buy things as expected, but always boasted that the government was still stacking sats.  

This post IMF Praises El Salvador — But Still Tries To Scale Back Its Bitcoin Project first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

When the Banks Don’t Work, Bitcoin Does: Cornell University’s Adoption Index

A lot of people know little about Bitcoin and how it works. 

But despite knowledge being shallow, for those holding the leading cryptocurrency, it appears to be solving a problem: getting around failing banking rails or inflation. 

That’s according to new findings from the U.S. Ivy League research university Cornell, which spoke to nearly 26,000 around the globe about Bitcoin. 

In its new Bitcoin Adoption Index report, the top college found that El Salvador, Venezuela and Nigeria were the countries that had the highest number of people who had ever owned bitcoin. 

“Ranked by the share of all respondents who have ever owned bitcoin, the leaders are not wealthy financial centers — they are economies where the national currency has been unstable and everyday access to dollars or reliable banking is hard,” the report read.  

“In each, bitcoin functions less as a speculative bet and more as a practical workaround.”

Bitcoin Advocacy Associate at Strategy and Junior Fellow at Cornell University’s Brooks School Tech Policy Institute, Ella Hough, added: “Bitcoin works the same everywhere, but people’s need for it does not. 

“Across 25 countries, we found that people are more likely to see Bitcoin as a tool for financial freedom where currencies are less stable, banking access is limited, or monetary controls are tighter.”

Still, Cornell found that actually being able to explain the fundamentals of the protocol was difficult for most — including how many bitcoins would ever be minted in existence. In fact, 58% of those surveyed said they didn’t know the supply was capped at 21 million coins. 

Technicalities aside, the cryptocurrency has still proved helpful to people wanting to use it, the report found. 

One Venezuelan — who wasn’t named — told interviewers that Bitcoin was “faster, cleaner, and much less risky” than other methods of getting dollars in the country. 

While another Salvadoran was quoted saying: “When nobody controls [bitcoin], it means we all have control of it.”

A Nigerian interviewee reportedly told Cornell researchers: “I’ve been to six African countries and whenever I go there, I don’t fear it because I know I can spend my bitcoin.”

Bitcoin adoption started growing in Venezuela ahead of other countries years ago, when hyperinflation crippled the economy and strict government currency controls meant getting dollars became difficult. 

El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender — along with the dollar — in 2021. The country’s leader admitted that getting its citizens to use the cryptocurrency was difficult but the Central American nation still says it buys the asset for its government coffers. 

In Nigeria, which has had some of the highest transaction volumes in the world, saving in bitcoin has been used by some to get around the collapse of the naira.

Cornell University’s research was fielded by Morning Consult in partnership with the Tech Policy Institute in Cornell University’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, the Cornell Bitcoin Club, the Human Rights Foundation and the Reynolds Foundation.

Researchers interviewed 25,880 people in 25 countries between December 16, 2024 to March 10, 2025, asking 125 individual questions. 

This post When the Banks Don’t Work, Bitcoin Does: Cornell University’s Adoption Index first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

South Africa’s Absa Becomes First Bank on the Continent to Custody Bitcoin: Report

South African bank Absa has become the first African lender to custody bitcoin, according to reports. 

As reported first by Bloomberg on Friday, the Johannesburg-based lender will serve institutional clients, mostly by custodying bitcoin — but other digital assets will also be a part of the service. 

Banks worldwide are integrating or offering bitcoin-related products and services. A number of U.S. and European banks have started offering crypto-related services by custodying assets for institutions.

Rob Downes, head of digital assets at Absa’s corporate and investment banking unit, was quoted saying that while bitcoin was the biggest asset the bank would custody, others would follow. 

Absa did not immediately respond to questions from Bitcoin Magazine. 

The African continent has a large crypto-native base, with data firms frequently highlighting the high adoption — particularly in countries where currencies have been significantly debased. 

In Chainalysis’s 2025 report, South Africa’s $36.0 billion in on-chain value made it second in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria alone received $92.1 billion, nearly three times the total of second-place South Africa. 

On the global index, South Africa ranked 30th for crypto adoption. 

The character of its market is different from Nigeria‘s: it’s more institutional, with regulatory clarity resulting in hundreds of licenses being issued to VASPs and attracting professional investors and traditional finance. 

BNY Mellon in 2022 became the first major U.S. bank to offer digital asset custody services. And this month, German multinational Deutsche Bank said it would debut a bitcoin custody service for European corporate and institutional clients later in 2026.  

This post South Africa’s Absa Becomes First Bank on the Continent to Custody Bitcoin: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Surges Above $87,000 on Softer-Than-Expected Jobs Data

The price of bitcoin surged above $87,000 on Friday morning in New York, buoyed by constant exchange-traded fund flows and a jobs report showing that unemployment in the U.S. had ticked up. 

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at $85,990 after a 2% jump over a 24-hour period. Over the past week, it has also risen by more than 2%. 

Nonfarm payrolls increased 29,000 last month after a downward revision to the prior two months, Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed Friday. 

Weaker-than-expected jobs data can give a lift to riskier assets like bitcoin and stocks, whose prices tend to swing more sharply. 

A softer labor market typically means less consumer spending, which eases pressure on prices. That could make the Federal Reserve less inclined to keep raising interest rates to fight inflation.

Many economists and politicians have said the U.S. is in the midst of an affordability crisis, and the topic is a hot one ahead of the November midterm elections. 

The Federal Reserve’s new chair, Kevin Warsh, has said that prices in the world’s biggest economy are too high and that the central bank is fully focused on making life more affordable again. 

Bitcoin investors shrugged off the central bank’s interest rate hike in September, climbing on the news. 

The largest cryptocurrency started rallying in August on news that the U.S. Treasury Department said it would more than double the size of its government debt repurchases. The coin had its best run in three years and third best August ever.  

The coin’s price has benefited from the so-called debasement trade: when investors buy certain assets to hedge against currency being devalued. The dollar slid in value in August. 

It continued to have a good September, rising nearly 6% over a 30-day period. 

October has historically delivered good returns for bitcoin investors, with traders dubbing the phenomenon “Uptober.” 

This post Bitcoin Price Surges Above $87,000 on Softer-Than-Expected Jobs Data first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Impacts of Daily Dividends on Digital Credit

In May 2026, Strive rebranded itself as “The Daily Dividend Company,” then moved SATA to daily cash dividends beginning June 16. Strategy has now pushed the same idea into its own digital credit engine. On September 24, its board proposed moving STRC, STRF, STRK and STRD to daily dividends, subject to shareholder approval at an October 28 special meeting. The proposal keeps the annual dividend economics unchanged and changes the cadence of cash payments.

STRC spent much of the summer below its $100 stated amount even as Strategy raised its dividend rate to 12% and deployed more than $1 billion buying back STRC. The move to daily dividends by Strategy could be seen as the latest attempt to make the security more attractive and help it trade near par.

Now that the overton window has fully shifted in favor of digital credit paying daily dividends, we should take a look at the actual impacts of daily dividends. 

Daily Dividends Fit Onchain Finance

Digital credit is increasingly becoming an input for other financial products—so called “digital money” or “digital yield” products. Strategy estimated in mid-May that more than $440 million of STRC exposure had moved into DeFi through stablecoins, tokenized securities, yield products and other structures.

However, there is a cash flow mismatch. Crypto products commonly accrue and distribute yield at high frequency. A security that pays monthly or twice monthly forces the product sitting on top of it to bridge the period between economic accrual and actual cash receipt.

Daily dividends compress that gap to one day. The protocol, fund or issuer receives cash from the underlying asset at almost the same cadence that users expect to receive yield. That simplifies liquidity management and reduces the cash needed between dividend dates. This is much more impactful to a financial product funding daily distributions or redemptions than to a long term investor focused on total return. The crypto-heavy setting of the “Layer 3” products on top of digital credit raises the attractiveness of daily dividends. 

Daily Dividends Are Primarily a Retail Feature

For investors focused strictly on total return, dividend payment frequency makes little difference in underlying economic value. The asset’s price accrues between distribution dates and adjusts post-payment, meaning annual, quarterly, monthly, and daily payouts produce comparable long-term results.

The true advantage of daily dividends lies in product psychology and user experience. Cash arriving every day provides immediate visibility and an engaging feedback loop. Investors can spend, withdraw, or automatically reinvest the payout while leaving their principal position intact, turning an abstract yield metric into tangible recurring cash flow.

This dynamic mirrors the strategy of Realty Income, which built a massive retail follower base by branding itself as “The Monthly Dividend Company.” As a member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats Index, Realty Income has paid and raised dividends for 31 consecutive years. 

Daily dividends on digital credit extends this product concept even further: SATA pairs frequent daily payouts with a target price near $100 and a double-digit yield.

While institutional investors prioritize yield spreads, liquidity, tax structure, and balance sheet coverage, daily payments offer their strongest appeal to retail buyers. If the overarching objective is to raise capital to purchase Bitcoin, optimizing security design for retail investor preferences is the most effective approach.

Options Get Cleaner Too

Daily dividends also change options mechanics. STRC currently pays $0.50 twice monthly. SATA pays roughly five cents each business day. Larger dividend events create larger discrete adjustments in the underlying price, which affects option pricing and early exercise decisions. Daily payments spread the same annual cash flow across much smaller adjustments.

The total value of dividends over an option’s life is a key economic input. The more interesting effect comes from the price stability created by daily dividends. If daily dividends, variable rates and active par management keep SATA and STRC trading in narrower ranges, realized volatility should fall. Implied volatility can follow as the market gains confidence in that behavior.

The Biggest Test

The real test is whether daily dividends increase demand enough to eventually lower the required yield.

If investors consistently support SATA near the top of its target range, Strive can theoretically reduce the dividend rate while attempting to keep SATA near par. Success would show that a Bitcoin company can issue permanent preferred capital, manage it around a stable price, and adjust its yield with market demand. The benefit of the variable rate preferreds was, from inception, the eventual opportunity to lower the rate and reduce the cost of capital without upsetting price stability. In comparison, fixed rate credit locks in fixed rate forever. 

Conclusion 

Strategy adopting daily dividends would move the feature from a SATA differentiator toward a digital credit category standard. The annual economics barely change but the retail appeal and crypto composability become meaningful improvements. 

This post Impacts of Daily Dividends on Digital Credit first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Allard Peng.

The Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC in federal court in Washington on Oct. 2, two weeks after the agency approved Agora National Trust Bank, Catena Trust Bank and Bastion Platforms.

American Banker reported that the complaint asked the court to vacate the OCC's national trust bank rule and Interpretive Letter 1176. It argued the agency exceeded its authority by widening limited-purpose trust charters for fintech and crypto firms.

ICBA says the OCC has approved or conditionally approved 21 trust banks, 13 of them tied to crypto.

Banks lost the applicant-by-applicant fight against crypto firms

Banking groups objected company by company, and the OCC kept approving. Five crypto-linked national trust applications, including BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets, First National Digital Currency Bank, Paxos and Ripple-linked applicants, won decisions in December 2025.

Bridge, National Digital Trust and Foris DAX, the parent of Crypto.com, followed in February, Coinbase in April and Laser Digital in May. Agora, Catena and Bastion arrived Sept. 18, and several of these approvals are conditional or preliminary.

The OCC finalized its national trust bank rule in February, effective April 1. It replaced the phrase “fiduciary activities” with the statute's broader wording, “the operations of a trust company and activities related thereto.”

The OCC says the language leaves its chartering authority intact and that national trust banks have long performed some nonfiduciary work, including custody. It points to 12 U.S.C. 24(Seventh) as authority for nonfiduciary custody and related activities.

ICBA's complaint reads the same rule as stretching a limited-purpose trust charter to cover non-depository, non-fiduciary crypto businesses under a lighter framework than insured banks face.

An objection to Coinbase or Ripple asks the agency to deny one applicant. A suit over the rule asks a judge to decide the scope of authority behind every charter that relies on it.

The OCC said a court would decide

In the February rule, the OCC cited the Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision. It said that when a party with standing disputes whether the National Bank Act authorizes a national trust bank charter, courts must exercise independent judgment on the statutory question.

That is the review ICBA now requests. The OCC spent 2026 approving crypto trust charters while on record that a court would settle their legal basis.

Exposure varies with business plan, with plain fiduciary custody furthest from the dispute and nonfiduciary custody, stablecoin issuance and reserves, payments, settlement, conversion, and execution nearest to it.

Coinbase's approved plan covers digital asset custody as a fiduciary plus transactional services tied to custodied assets, and the OCC defended it as trust-company operations or related activities under fiduciary authority and 24(Seventh).

Agora plans dollar-backed stablecoin issuance, reserve maintenance, nonfiduciary custody, and payment and settlement services. Catena combines custody, investment management, and trust services with conversion, clearing, and execution, and Bastion offers white-label stablecoin issuance, custodial wallets, conversion, and issuer services.

Foris DAX's plan couples custody with trade settlement and staking, and Bridge's initial approval covers custody, stablecoin issuance and orchestration, and reserve management.

ICBA seeks vacatur plus declaratory and injunctive relief. What happens to existing charters depends on the order a judge writes, including how it treats final approvals, conditional approvals and activities with independent statutory support.

The OCC said in August that it had received 40 de novo charter applications over about 18 months, and Comptroller Jonathan Gould said 23 of them involved digital assets.

The agency's digital-asset licensing page lists pending applicants, including zerohash, Dakota National Trust Bank, Payward (Kraken), Lorum National Trust Bank, EDX Trust and PAYO Digital Bank.

Whether the OCC keeps processing those applications on the same terms while the court weighs the rule is the open question for each of them.

Where the court crypto test leads

If the court sides with the OCC, the national trust bank becomes a firmer federal route for crypto custody and stablecoin infrastructure.

JPMorgan sees $500 billion by 2028, Coinbase's model centers on $1.2 trillion by the end of 2028, and Standard Chartered expects $2 trillion by then. Citi's 2030 cases run from $1.9 trillion in its base scenario to $4 trillion in its most optimistic one.

FDIC-insured banks held about $20.7 trillion in deposits in the second quarter, so $500 billion to $2 trillion equals roughly 2.4% to 9.7% of that base. For Bitcoin, a win would deepen bank-supervised custody and settlement-linked services for institutions.

If the court vacates or narrows the rule or the letter, the effect lands hardest on plans built around stablecoin issuance, reserves, nonfiduciary custody, conversion, payments and settlement.

Those firms might restructure activities into affiliates, state trust companies or partner-bank arrangements, and pending charters could face tougher review. Bitcoin custody itself could stay available, with the federal wrapper less flexible around adjacent services such as conversion, execution, settlement, staking-like services and collateral movement.

The San Francisco Fed estimates stablecoin issuers' Treasury demand could roughly double to about $400 billion by 2030, which gives the answer weight beyond crypto.

How much nonfiduciary market infrastructure can sit inside a national trust bank is now a question for a federal judge, which is where the OCC said it would land.

The post Bankers sue to overturn OCC trust-bank rule used by crypto firms appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Companies can own a mountain of US government debt without betting that bond prices will rise. Hedge funds buy Treasury securities and sell futures against them to collect a small pricing gap, borrowing most of the purchase money to make the return worthwhile.

The government gets another buyer, whose interest lasts as long as the trade pays.

The catch is that the loan can expire tomorrow while the trade needs longer to pay off. The government's ability to repay its debt doesn't solve the fund's need to repay its lender.

This is the Treasury cash-futures basis trade, and the sums involved are large enough to reach well beyond the bond desk. Morgan Stanley estimated positions had fallen 20% this year to about $1.2 trillion, according to Sept. 24 reports.

The bank hadn't found evidence of broad basis-related market stress at that point, so a smaller trade wasn't automatically a trade that would blow up.

Hedge funds love small profits when it's someone else's money

You can buy a Treasury security outright, or trade a futures contract that sets terms now for a transaction completed later. The contract specifies which securities can be delivered against it, linking their prices without making them identical.

When futures are expensive enough relative to an eligible bond, the fund buys the bond and sells the futures. Investors wanting bond-market exposure through contracts supply the other side, leaving the fund to hold the actual securities.

Selling the futures is the hedge: if bond prices fall, that short position can earn money that offsets much of the loss on the bond. The fund aims to collect the pricing gap as the contract approaches delivery, while limiting its exposure to the market's overall direction.

To pay for the bond, it uses repo, short for repurchase agreement. The fund sells the security for cash and agrees to buy it back later at a slightly higher price, which, economically speaking, looks like a loan secured by the bond.

Overnight repo means the fund must renew or replace the financing to keep the position.

Consider an illustrative $100 million position earning 0.2% annually from the strategy, net of assumed financing and trading costs. That's $200,000, which becomes a 4% return if the fund has committed only $5 million of its own capital.

But if borrowing costs on the other $95 million increase by 0.2% for the year, the extra bill is $190,000. Almost the entire expected profit has gone to the lender, without the government defaulting on anything.

The Office of Financial Research includes the cost of futures margin and the seller's options over which eligible bond to deliver and when. Calculating the return means valuing those delivery rights and accounting for financing and margin costs.

If that calculation stops looking attractive, a fund can simply stop replacing positions as they expire. Professional investors don't need a crisis to find something better to do with their money.

Being right doesn't pay today's bill

The hedge may work, but the fund can't afford the payments needed to keep it open.

Suppose the bond gains value and the short futures position loses a similar amount. The futures account can require a cash payment against that loss, known as variation margin, while the bond's gain is still tied up in a security.

The fund has to get dollars out of that asset or find them elsewhere before the payment is due.

Crypto traders with gains on one exchange and a liquidation approaching on another will recognize the problem: money in the wrong account won't meet the payment, and explaining the hedge won't extend the deadline.

The repo lender can also require more money. If it lends $98 against $100 of bonds, the fund supplies the other $2, a 2% haircut. If that haircut becomes 4%, the fund must supply twice as much of its own money against the same collateral, even before considering futures margin.

If many funds have to close positions at the same time, they sell bonds to repay loans and buy futures to close their shorts. Those trades can push bond prices down relative to futures, hurting funds still holding the same positions and making their own exits more expensive.

That forced selling is different from letting trades expire without replacing them, although both reduce outstanding positions. The reported contraction alone won't tell you which is happening.

Federal Reserve researchers estimated $830 billion of basis positions for September 2025, in research published this June. That and Morgan Stanley's newer estimate use different approaches, so treating them as consecutive readings would manufacture a comparison the data doesn't support.

Total hedge-fund Treasury holdings also include other strategies, as do their short futures positions.

Someone still has to own the Treasury bonds

Fewer trades dependent on tomorrow's loan can make the market less fragile, provided the next owners bring financing they can keep through a difficult week. Investors buying with committed capital don't face the same daily negotiation with a repo lender.

Those buyers may want a better price because they're buying the bond for its income. Cheaper bonds offer higher yields, attracting replacement demand while potentially making new government borrowing more expensive.

Dealers can hold bonds while they find buyers, but their capacity also costs money and has limits. An orderly transfer can therefore leave Washington paying more without the market breaking down.

Higher repo rates or larger haircuts become more troubling if funds must sell into a market with few willing buyers. Those financing terms and the prices sellers can obtain say more about stress than a position total alone.

The same restraint applies to Bitcoin, as hedge funds' broader balance sheets show why one strategy can't stand in for everything those firms do.

Connecting Treasury trouble to crypto requires evidence that the institutions involved are selling crypto or withdrawing financing, rather than assuming every cash need ends with a Bitcoin sale.

Borrowed money makes these funds willing to own bonds for a return that would otherwise be too small to bother with.

When that calculation stops working, replacing them can reduce the market's dependence on overnight loans, but the next owner may want a higher yield to take the debt off their hands.

The post Hedge funds built a $1.2 trillion Treasury trade on money they have to keep borrowing appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The European Securities and Markets Authority wants to extend Europe’s restrictions on non-compliant stablecoins beyond trading to the services that let customers keep and move them. If adopted as proposed, the change would remove the option of leaving such tokens with a licensed custodian after their trading pairs disappear.

In its September 30, 2026 response to a review of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA), ESMA asks the European Commission to prohibit every licensable crypto-asset service involving stablecoins that fail the regulation’s applicable requirements. Custody and transfers fall within that service list. The consequence would reach existing holders who have stopped trading, as well as customers seeking to buy.

That is a further step from the regulator’s January 2025 approach, which said mere custody and transfer should remain possible. It could give compliant tokens a wider advantage in European distribution, but neither a forced conversion timetable nor a global demand shift follows from the proposal.

The permission left after delisting

ESMA’s January 17, 2025 statement distinguished services that offered non-compliant stablecoins to the public or admitted them to trading from simply holding or transferring them. Platforms were expected to stop making the tokens available for trading, and other services had to cease where they constituted an offer to the public.

Under that earlier transition, acquisition restrictions were expected by the end of January 2025, with temporary sell-only services through the end of the quarter.

For an investor, the custody distinction mattered. Losing access to a trading pair did not necessarily mean losing the service that safeguarded an existing balance or enabled its withdrawal. ESMA acknowledged that investors retaining those holdings could face worse execution conditions, even while custody and transfer remained possible.

A historical example shows the distinction. In its March 3, 2025 reporting, CryptoSlate said Binance planned to remove nine tokens’ trading pairs for European Economic Area users by March 31 while keeping deposits, withdrawals, conversions and custody available. This was the exchange’s announced approach in March 2025.

The September response would replace the activity-by-activity distinction with a broader asset-compliance test. ESMA argues that the lack of a clear prohibition creates disparities between compliant and non-compliant issuers and facilitates regulatory arbitrage.

The reach comes from MiCA’s Article 3 definitions. Custody includes safekeeping or controlling clients’ crypto-assets or their means of access, including private keys. Transfers cover moving assets on a client’s behalf from one ledger address or account to another. Both are expressly listed services, with Article 82 setting client-agreement requirements for transfers.

Provider permissions are also separate from token compliance. Article 59 requires authorization as a crypto-asset service provider, or qualifying permissions for specified financial entities, and says authorizations must identify the services permitted. A license for a provider does not by itself settle whether a particular stablecoin can be serviced.

An existing holder would therefore not avoid the proposed restriction by deciding never to trade again. If the wording became law without an exception, the custodian’s continued safekeeping would itself be covered.

ESMA’s response is a policy submission, not an enacted amendment. The Commission’s consultation had a September 30 deadline, and its page says the resulting review report may, if warranted, be accompanied by a legislative proposal.

Section 3.2 of ESMA’s submission gives no implementation date, withdrawal exception or wind-down mechanism. That omission matters because ending custody requires a way to return assets that a provider already controls, while the proposed prohibition also reaches transfer services.

Current custody rules provide a relevant starting point. Article 75 requires procedures to return clients’ crypto-assets or their means of access as soon as possible. Client assets must also be segregated from the provider’s own holdings.

An answer from the European Commission via ESMA, dated February 18, 2026, further says the assets returned must be the same type held when the client requests withdrawal. A provider may offer conversion into fiat or another crypto-asset, but the client must request it at withdrawal and the provider must have permission for the additional service.

That existing interpretation does not settle how a future blanket service restriction would handle exits. It does explain why delisting, termination of custody and compulsory conversion cannot be treated as interchangeable outcomes. Legislators would need to resolve how any new prohibition fits the obligation to return assets.

The stablecoin proposal targets those professional services. It does not itself ban personal ownership, order tokens frozen or prescribe compulsory conversion. A holder’s ability to retain an asset and a licensed business’s ability to hold or move it for that customer are different questions.

Trading shares do not measure custody exposure

The earlier delistings show how trading can change at European-facing venues without a comparable shift across a wider market.

In a July 2026 paper, Nicola Borri and Kirill Shakhnov examine trading in the dollar-linked tokens USDT and USDC across 14 exchanges selected from CoinMarketCap’s top 30 centralized venues. Their daily pair-volume data from CryptoCompare run from January 1, 2024, through December 7, 2025.

The authors classify Bitstamp, Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken as “regulated-facing” because their Similarweb EU audience shares exceed 10%; all four also have US audience shares above 10%. The other 10 venues are classified as globally oriented, including Binance despite its EEA delistings. The audience proxy identifies neither individual EU-resident trades nor a clean division of legal exposure.

Around the study’s April 1, 2025 event date, the authors estimate that USDC’s share of combined USDT and USDC trading rose by about six percentage points on regulated-facing exchanges relative to global exchanges. The estimate covers a 30-day window and uses smoothed, detrended data; it measures a relative trading shift across venue groups.

The authors estimate USDT trading volume fell about 20% on regulated-facing exchanges relative to global venues, while the USDC-volume estimate was not statistically significant. USDC gained share primarily because USDT trading contracted in that comparison, not because the study established a corresponding expansion in USDC trading.

Aggregate USDC-to-USDT trading-volume ratios across the sample stayed nearly flat around the event. That describes sampled exchange turnover, not worldwide demand or EU custodial balances. The legal documents and study provide no total for the holdings that a future custody restriction could affect.

If the proposal became law in its present form, compliant tokens could retain access to regulated custody and transfer channels that non-compliant tokens would lose. For customers who want a provider to safeguard and move a dollar-linked balance, compliance could affect the usefulness of that asset beyond the availability of a trading pair.

The next consequential text would be a legislative amendment, particularly its scope, application date and treatment of existing balances. How it reconciles an end to custody with the return of clients’ assets would determine whether and how existing holders must leave regulated services.

The post ESMA proposes ending EU custody and transfer services for non-compliant stablecoins appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Six US banks have failed in 2026 so far, which is one more than in 2023 and enough to make another banking-crisis headline practically write itself.

But before we start reliving Silicon Valley Bank, it's worth looking at what those six banks actually held: about $1.43 billion in combined assets, compared with roughly $552.54 billion at the banks that failed in 2023, according to historical numbers from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Counting each bank as one gives you a perfectly accurate number and a pretty lousy sense of scale. This year's total includes a lender with $3.73 million in assets, which gets the same vote in the tally as a bank the size of SVB.

Meanwhile, FDIC's latest industry assessment shows stronger profits and fewer banks on its problem list. That doesn't mean the six failures were harmless, or that every surviving bank is doing well, but anyone selling a 2023 rerun has some explaining to do.

Nano Banc's Sept. 25 closure brought the count to six and supplied the largest failure of the year so far. The Irvine, California, lender reported $736 million in assets, and the FDIC estimated a $114 million cost to its Deposit Insurance Fund.

Someone will bear that loss, but a bill attached to one failed bank doesn't mean the rest of banking is about to follow.

Six is bigger than five (until you look inside)

The FDIC's annual totals record four failures in 2020, none in 2021 or 2022, five in 2023, and two apiece in 2024 and 2025. Through Sept. 25, this year had beaten every annual count in the 2020s, which sounds much, much worse than it actually is.

Consider Kentland Federal Savings and Loan Association, which the FDIC described as the country's smallest standalone bank when it closed. Its $3.73 million in assets counts for exactly as much as Silicon Valley Bank in a chart of bank failures, because that chart counts only institutions.

Asking it to measure financial trouble gives a very small bank a very large role.

Sources: FDIC failure announcements and annual summary. The unrounded sum is $1,429.83 million, using numbers from different reporting dates cited around the closures, rather than a single-date balance sheet or an estimate of losses.

The $552.54 billion number for 2023 and this year's $1.43 billion come from balance sheets with different reporting dates, so we can't turn them into an exact ratio. Luckily, we don't need one to see that the amounts belong in very different conversations, even if six is technically more than five.

The FDIC's problem-bank list adds another issue because it counts banks that are still operating, using their condition measured at a particular date. Banks get onto it when examiners assign one of the two weakest overall ratings for financial, operational, or managerial weaknesses, which is a more specific diagnosis than having an ugly week in the stock market.

The second-quarter assessment put 47 banks on that list as of June 30, down from 54 in March and 60 at the end of 2025. They made up about 1.1% of insured institutions, within the FDIC's normal 1% to 2% range outside a crisis.

That doesn't give the industry a certificate of perfect health, because a bank can leave the list by failing just as it can leave by recovering or merging. The failure count adds up closures over the year, while the problem list takes a snapshot of institutions still open, so it's not mysterious for one to get longer while the other gets shorter.

The dates also prevent us from doing some tempting mental math. Four of this year's six failures came in July through September, beyond the June snapshot, but subtracting four from 47 won't tell us how many troubled banks are left.

We don't know every bank that entered or left the list in between, and the published totals don't identify them.

Some banks were broken long before the headline

The records behind these closures describe institutions that had been struggling for quite a while. Illinois regulators said Metropolitan Capital had impaired capital and unsafe conditions, while Kansas officials described years of financial trouble at Small Business Bank.

At the Kansas lender, continuing operating losses ate through its capital until it became critically undercapitalized. Capital is the cushion that absorbs losses before creditors have to bear them, and a bank that keeps losing money can burn through that cushion while the rest of the industry has an excellent quarter.

Someone else's profits don't refill your bank's capital, and Kentland reached a similar endpoint, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finding that unsafe practices had depleted its assets and earnings and that there was no reasonable prospect of restoring adequate capital.

Tioga-Franklin had its own FDIC consent order from earlier, covering weaknesses in management and capital planning, as well as liquidity and credit administration. It consented without admitting or denying the charges, so that record tells us supervisors had identified problems, without settling exactly what caused its August failure.

We know less about the full diagnosis at Community Bank and Trust – West Georgia. The state's closure notice explains the authority to take possession without supplying a detailed financial account, and the FDIC inspector general has a material loss review underway.

Giving it the same cause as the other failures would make the narrative tidier than the evidence allows.

Nano also had a lengthy regulatory history. California Business and Consumer Services Secretary Rohit Chopra described repeated violations and earlier action against mismanagement, while pointing to its large level of uninsured deposits.

Customers with money above the insurance limit have more to lose if a bank fails, which gives them a stronger reason to leave when they doubt it can pay them back.

You can take all of that seriously without treating the six banks as a chain of falling dominoes. The records describe unresolved weaknesses at individual lenders, but don't establish a common funding shock or show one closure bringing down the next.

Putting them in the same table doesn't create a financial connection.

The broader numbers don't support the small-bank-doom argument either. In the FDIC's second-quarter results, community banks earned 8.2% more than in the preceding quarter, while industry-wide profit reached $90.1 billion.

The regulator described capital and liquidity as strong, leaving plenty of room for a few badly damaged banks in an industry making more money.

The losses are real even when the apocalypse isn't

None of this makes a failed bank a non-event for the people caught in it.

Nano's estimated $114 million insurance-fund cost is a real financial consequence, even though Sunwest Bank agreed to take over substantially all its deposits and buy about $476 million of its assets.

The FDIC retained the rest for disposal and said customers could keep using checks and cards through the closure weekend.

Those customers could keep paying their bills while the receivership faced a loss, because access to deposits and the final cost of resolving a bank aren't the same thing.

The FDIC's estimate can move as it sells retained assets, and the six banks' combined $1.43 billion in assets shouldn't be treated as money that vanished. Loans can still be repaid, and securities can still be sold when their former owner has failed.

Tioga-Franklin's buyer assumed all deposits, while the West Georgia transaction transferred substantially all insured deposits, excluding certain brokered accounts.

Georgia officials said customers above the insurance limit would receive notices explaining their rights as uninsured depositors, which is a pretty different experience from being told your account now has another bank's name on it.

CryptoSlate's coverage of the year's first bank failure examined broader banking risks, but the road from a failed lender to crypto still needs spelling out. Whose money was at the bank, and what could they no longer do when it closed?

In 2023, Circle had $3.3 billion of USDC reserves at Silicon Valley Bank, giving stablecoin holders a direct reason to worry about access to part of their tokens' backing. The Federal Reserve's analysis of that failure follows that connection from bank distress into stablecoins.

This year's tally doesn't provide an equivalent connection on its own. Disclosed crypto deposits at a failed lender, or the loss of banking services needed to process customer payments, would give us something concrete to examine.

Another tick in the failure column can't tell us whose reserves are trapped or whose business has lost access to cash.

There are good reasons to keep watching the banks, including whether withdrawals spread across institutions and whether lenders have more trouble obtaining funding. The assets on the problem-bank list deserve attention too, because a shorter list can still contain more money at risk.

None of those possibilities gets answered by comparing six with five.

The case for another 2023 has to explain how trouble is spreading through the banks that are still open. Until the evidence shows that, six failed lenders tell us that six lenders couldn't keep going, and turning that into a verdict on the whole system asks a headcount to do a balance sheet's job.

The post Six US banks have failed in 2026 but the numbers look nothing like 2023 appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Leveraged funds’ reported Bitcoin futures shorts fell by about 5,300 BTC-equivalent in the week to Sept. 29, narrowing their net short even as their aggregate long exposure shrank.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s latest futures-only figures, released in the Oct. 2 reporting cycle, cover CME standard and micro Bitcoin futures plus Coinbase Derivatives’ nano Bitcoin and nano perpetual-style futures. The totals convert different contract sizes into BTC-equivalent exposure; they describe futures positions, not transfers of physical bitcoin.

Compared with Sept. 22 positions, the funds’ reported shorts fell 5,299.69 BTC-equivalent and longs fell 908.99 BTC-equivalent. Their net short consequently narrowed by 4,390.70 BTC-equivalent, from 40,110.83 to 35,720.13. Their combined short exposure still exceeded their longs. These long and short columns exclude separately recorded, offsetting spread positions.

A better net figure can result from shrinking positions on both sides when shorts fall faster. In this snapshot, aggregate futures long exposure did not expand.

The individual products did not move uniformly. Standard CME futures accounted for 4,310 BTC-equivalent of the reduction in reported shorts, while their leveraged-fund longs increased 1,175 BTC-equivalent. Longs fell in CME micro futures and both Coinbase products, more than offsetting that increase.

The standard-CME move reversed the widening of net shorts in the Sept. 22 snapshot. That earlier report covered standard CME alone; the latest totals include all four products.

Asset managers’ net long across the four products increased 2,137.90 BTC-equivalent to 18,069.10. Their longs rose 573.10 BTC-equivalent, while shorts fell 1,564.80 BTC-equivalent. Most of their stronger net position therefore also came from fewer reported shorts.

Combined open interest, the outstanding futures exposure across these markets, fell 13.31% to 103,343.14 BTC-equivalent from 119,208.26. The improvement in net positioning occurred alongside a contraction in the overall futures market measured here.

Smaller shorts do not establish spot demand

The separately recorded spreading positions represent offsetting positions. Leveraged funds’ spreading column also fell, by 11,231.11 BTC-equivalent. The 5,300 BTC-equivalent reduction covers the reported short column, excluding those spread legs.

The monthly CME micro expiry rule places September’s expiry on Sept. 25, between the two observations. That provides calendar context without proving that expiry or rolls caused the contraction. Classification changes can also affect category totals.

The CFTC groups traders by predominant business activity. Its Tuesday position reports do not reveal individual transactions or paired spot and ETF holdings. A futures short may be part of a hedge, so fewer shorts do not establish fresh spot buying or reduced bearish conviction.

The next release is scheduled for Oct. 9. It can show whether the category shift persists.

The post Leveraged funds’ Bitcoin futures shorts fall by 5,300 BTC-equivalent as longs shrink appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Why the announcement is drawing attention now

The Bank of England stablecoin mandate has become a talking point over the past few days because it appears to mark a new role for the UK central bank. According to the official HM Treasury announcement, the Bank of England is to be given a secondary objective: promoting innovation in payment systems and in new digital forms of money. The important word here is “secondary”, which means subordinate. Financial stability remains the Bank’s primary remit, the government says, and the innovation objective is purely additional. For readers in Europe the move matters because UK crypto regulation follows its own legal framework and because London carries considerable weight in digital financial markets. One point should be clear from the outset: the announcement does not mean that new stablecoin licences have been granted, or that every payment project automatically falls under Bank of England supervision.

A mandate sets priorities, it does not create permission

A mandate is the scope of duties set in law or politics for a public institution. An additional innovation objective can influence how the Bank designs regulation, assesses consultations and works with other authorities, but for now it does no more than that. The difference can be set out in three steps:

• Mandate: describes the objective and the institutional priority.
• Rulebook: sets out concrete obligations, for instance on reserves, redemption, reporting and risk management.
• Permission, or supervision of a company: covers the assessment of a single provider against the requirements that apply to it.

The new objective is to be implemented through amendments to the Financial Services and Markets Bill. On its own it is therefore neither a finished stablecoin regime nor an immediate authorisation.

Why digital tokens are treated as payment infrastructure

Stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to tie their value to a currency or to other assets. What counts is not a blanket “stable” price but the quality of the reserves and reliable redemption. Payment infrastructure, in this context, means the technical, legal and organisational systems through which money is transferred, settled and secured. Two examples show why that matters: faster cross-border corporate payments and programmable payment steps in digital trading are seen as possible benefits of stablecoins in payment innovation. The Bank of England’s own assessment also names the risks, however: a loss of confidence in the value, insufficient reserves, delayed redemption at par, cyber or operational failures, and possible contagion effects once use becomes widespread in digital financial markets.

Supervision is already split across several bodies

A common misunderstanding is that the Bank of England will now become the single stablecoin authority. In practice, responsibilities differ according to the type of offering and its potential systemic importance. Under the joint approach taken by the Bank of England and the FCA, the FCA regulates UK-issued qualifying stablecoins as a matter of principle. Where HM Treasury recognises an issuer or a system as systemically important, joint supervisory arrangements between the FCA and the Bank of England apply on top, with the Bank looking in particular at prudential questions and financial stability, meaning a provider’s sound financial resources, risk management and resilience. The Bank has already published a policy statement on sterling-denominated systemic stablecoins. The accompanying code of practice is to be finalised only after consultation, by the end of 2026, and nothing in that allows the conclusion that particular issuers are already recognised or authorised.

Which questions remain open before any practical effect

Despite the rules already in place, central questions of implementation remain open:

• Which offerings count in an individual case as qualifying and which as systemically important stablecoins?
• When, and against which criteria, does HM Treasury grant recognition?
• Which requirements apply in concrete terms to reserves, custody, redemption and customer information?
• How will the FCA, the Bank of England and the Treasury align reviews, reporting and crisis measures?
• Which transitional periods apply before the broader regime becomes applicable in practice?

Custody here means the safe administration or safeguarding of reserve assets or client assets, while redemption means the right to exchange a stablecoin back for its reference value under defined conditions. On timing, the Cryptoassets Regulations 2026 create the legal basis for a broader regime; in them, issuing qualifying stablecoins is framed as a regulated activity requiring FCA permission. According to the explanatory memorandum, the regime is to enter into force on 25 October 2027.

What UK providers and European companies should watch

For issuers, meaning companies or institutions that put a stablecoin into circulation and carry responsibility for taking it back, and equally for banks, payment service providers and fintechs, greater institutional attention may create long-term clarity for payment applications, yet it also raises the planning and compliance burden, meaning adherence to legal, regulatory and internal requirements. In concrete terms it is worth looking at the final Bank of England rules for systemic cases, at the FCA requirements already published on backing assets and redemption, at the legislative implementation of the innovation objective, and at the timetable running to 2027. EU rules are not automatically authoritative for the United Kingdom; comparisons should always rest on the law that actually applies, rather than on a blanket equivalence.

Conclusion on the Bank of England stablecoin mandate: an important signal, not an immediate opening of the market

The Bank of England stablecoin mandate underlines that the United Kingdom treats digital means of payment as part of a modern financial and payment infrastructure. The innovation objective is not a licence in its own right, though, nor a commitment to individual providers, and it is no substitute for the rule-making and supervisory processes already under way. The real effect on UK crypto regulation will be measured by how the Treasury, the FCA and the Bank of England actually bring responsibilities, safety requirements and implementation deadlines together.

Bitcoin costs $84,828 on Saturday evening. The same quantity appears on a German account as €75,348, and that second figure tells a different year from the first. Counted in dollars, Bitcoin is down 4.4 percent since the turn of the year. Counted in euros it is 0.5 percent. The gap of around four percentage points comes from the currency market rather than the crypto market.

For you in Germany that is no quibble. You pay in euros, you have payouts made in euros, and the tax office calculates in euros. The dollar price that every price page shows first describes the world market. What your portfolio is worth, what the exchange deducts from you and what appears in the Anlage SO annex of your tax return at year end all hang on the euro figure. This piece places the two side by side, measures how far apart they have run in 2026 and draws from that the checks you can carry out yourself this weekend.

Bitcoin price on Saturday evening: $84,828 and €75,348

Market data from CoinGecko puts Bitcoin at $84,828 on Saturday evening. Over the preceding 24 hours the range lay between $83,898 and $85,238, with a daily balance of minus 0.24 percent. That is a quiet day on which little moved in the coin itself.

In euros the same bitcoin stands at €75,348, with a daily range of €74,530 to €75,720 and a balance of minus 0.40 percent. The euro balance therefore comes out slightly weaker than the dollar balance, although the same coin at the same hour is at issue. The reason sits between the two figures: the exchange rate.

Five rows, and in every single one the left side makes a different statement from the right. Anyone reading only the left column has the year of an American investor in front of them.

Why the same bitcoin has two different prices

Bitcoin has no single uniform price in dollars and none in euros. What is traded is always a pair, and the price belongs to that pair. On the large exchanges the volume sits almost entirely in dollars and in dollar-pegged stablecoins. The euro pair is a derived pair: its price follows in essence from the dollar price and the current exchange rate between euro and dollar.

From this follows a rule that becomes more visible on a quiet market day than on a wild one. If the dollar rises against the euro, the bitcoin price in euros rises, even if the dollar price has not moved a cent. If the dollar falls, the euro figure sinks, although everything in New York has stayed as it was.

The ECB reference rate and what it does

The reference rate of the European Central Bank usually serves in Germany as the yardstick for this exchange rate. It is a rate established once a day at around 2:15 pm Central European Time, which the central bank then publishes. It is no trading rate at which you could buy. Its usefulness lies elsewhere: it is a published value, unambiguous for each day, that anyone can look up. Precisely that makes it usable for records.

The ECB reference rate for the US dollar stood at $1.1225 per euro on October 2, 2026. On January 2, 2026, the first trading day of the year, it was $1.1721 per euro. The dollar has therefore appreciated 4.42 percent against the euro over these nine months. Anyone subtracting the two percentages from the table above arrives at practically the same value. The difference between bitcoin's dollar year and its euro year is the dollar.

4.4 percent in dollars, 0.5 in euros: how much of the yearly result the currency makes

On January 2, 2026 bitcoin was quoted at $88,764 and €75,698. For the first nine months of the year that produces a decline of 4.43 percent in dollars and of 0.46 percent in euros. An American investor has lost noticeably in 2026 so far. A German investor stands almost exactly where they started in January.

What that means in an example with €10,000

Anyone who bought for €10,000 on January 2, 2026 received around 0.1321 bitcoin at the euro price of the time. The same quantity is worth €9,954 on Saturday evening. The result before fees comes to minus €46. Had the exchange rate stood still and only the dollar price developed as it did, around €9,557 would stand in the same place, and with it a loss of €443.

In this example the currency therefore accounted for just under €400, on a stake of €10,000 and without the investor doing anything at all. In a year with a vigorous price move this effect disappears into the noise. In a sideways year such as 2026 it is the result.

The record is further away in dollars than in euros

Bitcoin's all-time high stands at $126,080. From the current level, 32.7 percent are missing to get there. Counted in euros the record lies at €107,662, and from €75,348 the gap is 30.0 percent. The same distance, two different figures.

That is more than a curiosity. Anyone setting a finishing line, say the old high as the point for a partial sale, sets it in one currency. Fix it in dollars and your euro portfolio can reach the old high without your level triggering. Fix it in euros and it can trigger while the headlines are still writing about the missing record. Both are defensible as long as you know which of the two figures your level means.

The past 30 days: the euro price gained 12.9 percent, the dollar price 9.7

On September 3, 2026 bitcoin stood at $77,297 and €66,721. Since then the dollar price has gained 9.74 percent and the euro price 12.93 percent. This time the euro figure therefore comes out higher than the dollar figure, and for the same reason as in the yearly comparison: at the beginning of September the dollar was weaker than today, with a reference rate of 1.1615.

That the currency effect worked in your favour in the monthly window and in the yearly window as well is no law of nature. It works in both directions. A euro that climbs back towards $1.17 takes away from a German portfolio exactly what the dollar's strength added this year, without anything changing in bitcoin itself.

Spread and conversion fee: what the exchange adds to the world market price

The price from the market data is an average across many trading venues. What your exchange charges you lies above it. Three items come together, and all three can be looked up before the purchase.

The first is the spread, meaning the distance between the best bid and the best offer in the order book. On a euro pair with thin volume this distance is wider than on the dollar pair of the same exchange. The second is the trading fee, which arises according to order type and volume tier. The third is a currency conversion that some providers charge when you deposit in euros while the trade runs through a dollar pair.

Euro pair or dollar pair, the difference in the settlement

Trade the euro pair directly and you pay the spread there and see a euro amount straight away. Trade the dollar pair and you generally get the tighter spread, but the conversion is added as a separate item, often as a mark-up on the interbank rate. Which route is cheaper depends on the provider and on your order size. You get a reliable answer only by running the same amount through both variants up to the order confirmation and comparing the two final amounts. The fee models of the larger trading venues stand side by side in the comparison of crypto exchanges.

A note on magnitude: on an order of €1,000, a spread wider by 0.2 percentage points amounts to €2. This year's currency effect came to around four percent. The fee question is still worth it, because it arises again with every single order, while the exchange rate takes effect only once.

For the tax office the euro value of every transaction counts

Gains from the sale of bitcoin fall in Germany under private disposal transactions pursuant to Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. The taxable gain is the difference between the disposal price and the acquisition cost, and both quantities are euro amounts. If you traded through a dollar pair or against a dollar-pegged stablecoin, you have to convert each side of the trade into euros at the rate of the respective day.

Precisely here the ECB reference rate becomes practical. It is published, unambiguous per day and verifiable at any time. Anyone using it consistently and documenting the source has a conversion that can still be followed years later. Consistency is what decides: a jumble of exchange prices, portal data and estimates produces differences you can no longer explain after the fact. Portfolio trackers take this conversion off your hands and record it per transaction; an overview sits with the tax tools and portfolio trackers.

Holding period and exemption limit, the two figures from Section 23

Two quantities decide whether a gain turns into tax at all. The first is the holding period of one year: if more than a year lies between acquisition and disposal, the gain stays tax free. The second is the exemption limit of €1,000 in the calendar year, which has applied since 2024. If the sum of all private disposal gains of a year stays below it, no tax arises. Once the limit is reached, the entire amount is taxable and not only the excess portion. That is the difference between an exemption limit and an allowance.

And because the limit is a euro amount, the exchange rate can help decide which side of it you land on. A gain that sits clearly below the threshold counted in dollars can lie above it in euros. This can be checked only against the euro calculation, not against the display in the app, which frequently runs in dollars.

Levels up and down: €75,698 as the line from January

On the upside the first line sits at €75,720, the daily high of the past 24 hours, and immediately next to it at €75,698. That second figure does not come from chart analysis. It is the euro price of January 2, and it therefore decides the sign of your euro year: above it, 2026 is in positive territory for a German portfolio, below it in negative. At €75,348, 0.5 percent are missing to get there.

On the downside the next line sits at €74,530, the daily low. Below that a range without prominent daily levels opens up, reaching into the area of the September low. In dollars these lines correspond to 85,238 and 83,898. That the two currencies do not mark exactly the same moments here is because the dollar price and the exchange rate move independently of each other within a day.

More important than any of these lines is a sober assessment: with a daily balance of 0.24 percent in dollars, the market is delivering no signal right now. Anyone taking a decision in such a position takes it for reasons of their own, such as holding period, liquidity needs or portfolio allocation.

Buying route on a holiday weekend: what a transfer can still manage now

October 3 is a public holiday in Germany, and in 2026 it falls on a Saturday. For the crypto market that changes nothing, it runs around the clock. For the route your money takes to the exchange it changes a good deal. An ordinary SEPA transfer is not executed on public holidays and at weekends; it lands in the target account on Monday at the earliest.

Matters stand differently with the instant transfer. Since October 9, 2025, payment service providers in the euro area have had to be able to send instant transfers as well, after receiving them already became mandatory in January 2025. Such a transfer arrives in seconds, around the clock, including on a holiday Saturday. If you want to buy at a particular euro price today, that is the difference between today and Monday, and between €75,348 and a price nobody knows today.

At the provider itself, the European regulation on markets in crypto assets has applied in full since December 30, 2024. Anyone offering crypto asset services in the EU needs a licence for it; in Germany BaFin grants and supervises it. Before a deposit it is worth looking at which licence your trading venue works under and where custody sits. A licensed custodian is a statement about supervision, not a guarantee against price losses.

Bitcoin in dollars and euros: The key points for your decision

1. Recalculate your year in euros. Take your entry price in euros and compare it with €75,348. The dollar figure from the headlines describes a different result from yours; this year the two lie around four percentage points apart. Where you can get in and out in euros and what that costs is set out in the overview on buying bitcoin.
2. Before your next order, test both routes up to the order confirmation. Once through the euro pair, once through the dollar pair with conversion, and compare the final amounts instead of the percentages. The fee models stand side by side in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
3. Secure the euro value of the day for every transaction. A consistent, published conversion rate and a closed gap in your history are what count if a question arises. Tools that record this per transaction can be found with the tax tools and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 3, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The yield on ten-year US Treasury notes stood at 5.28 percent on October 2, 2026. That is the highest closing level since May 15, 2002. At the same time Bitcoin is holding at around $84,900 and moving as independently of the US stock market as it has in years. Together the two describe the position German investors find themselves in this weekend: the safe rate of return is back, and the crypto market no longer reacts the way it did for years.

This piece places the figures in context, names the documented reasons and shows what follows from them for buying route, holding period, leverage and custody.

Ten-year US Treasury notes at 5.28 percent: the highest level since May 2002

The US Treasury publishes a yield curve for government securities for every trading day. For October 2, 2026 it reports 5.28 percent for the ten-year maturity, after 5.24 percent on October 1. The highest reading of the current year dates from September 30, at 5.29 percent.

To gauge how rare this level is, cryptoticker.io evaluated the official daily series of the US Treasury in full, from January 3, 2000 to October 2, 2026: 6,692 trading days carrying a value for the ten-year maturity. In that series, the last day before 2026 with 5.28 percent or more was May 15, 2002. In the roughly 24 years since, the yield has not been that high on a single trading day. In 2026 itself there are so far exactly two days: September 30 and October 2. cryptoticker.io compiled this evaluation itself on October 3, 2026.

A yield curve shows what bonds of the same issuer return across different maturities. This curve is the price tag against which every other investment has to measure itself, because a government bond of the largest economy counts as the lowest-risk alternative available.

What is happening at the long end of the yield curve: 20 years above 30 years

A look at the individual maturities of October 2 shows where the pressure sits. Two years yielded 4.83 percent, five years 5.06 percent, seven years 5.17 percent, ten years 5.28 percent, twenty years 5.67 percent and thirty years 5.63 percent.

The end of the series stands out. The twenty-year bond yields more than the thirty-year one, a pattern regularly explained at the long end by the lower tradability of the twenty-year note. More important for the crypto market, though, is the steepness overall: between two and thirty years there are 0.80 percentage points. The market demands a noticeable premium for long maturities, and precisely this premium at the long end weighs on everything whose value lies far in the future.

The thirty-year maturity is historically remarkable as well. In the same self-compiled daily series since January 3, 2000, it last stood at 5.63 percent or above before 2026 on July 13, 2001, at 5.64 percent back then.

German Bunds at 3.66 percent: the yield gap to the dollar area

For German investors the cross-check in their own currency area is what counts. In its daily yield curve for listed Federal securities with ten years of residual maturity, the Deutsche Bundesbank reports a value of 3.66 percent for October 1, 2026, after 3.64 percent on September 30 and 3.68 percent on September 29.

That produces a gap of roughly 1.6 percentage points between the ten-year US note and the ten-year Bund. Anyone investing in euros who does not want to hold dollars therefore receives considerably less than the 5.28 percent from the headline. This puts the competition with the crypto market into perspective for a German portfolio without removing it: 3.66 percent without price risk is a benchmark against which every investment decision has to measure itself.

Correlation between bitcoin and US equities: lowest level since 2015

Alongside rates, the relationship between bitcoin and US equities has shifted. André Dragosch, head of research for Europe at the asset manager Bitwise, told the specialist outlet BTC-Echo on September 30, 2026: “The trend decoupling between the S&P 500 and bitcoin is the strongest in eleven years.” The correlation between the two, he said, is at its lowest level since 2015.

Correlation describes how closely two prices move in step. A high reading means bitcoin is effectively traded like a technology stock. When the reading falls, bitcoin again carries a risk factor of its own in a portfolio instead of merely an amplified version of equity risk. For the diversification of a portfolio, that is the genuinely interesting news of this week.

Why the dollar is driving the bitcoin price harder than the stock market right now

Dragosch attributes the move, by his own account, above all to the dollar: bitcoin is currently being influenced more by the dollar than by the stock market, “at least according to our analysis”. A second observation from the same conversation fits with this, namely that the correlation between bitcoin and gold has reached a six-year high. Investors, Dragosch said, “are simply buying both, bitcoin and gold”.

That is an analyst's assessment and no measured fact about the future. What is documented is the connection it describes: when the dollar rather than the stock market is the dominant driver, the bitcoin price hangs more on rate decisions and inflation data than on quarterly figures from technology groups. For your own planning that means the central banks' calendar dates matter more than the earnings season.

Real rates and opportunity cost: 5.28 percent risk free against an asset without a coupon

Bitcoin pays no interest and no dividend. The entire return has to come from the price. The higher the yield on a safe government bond, the higher the opportunity cost, meaning the amount an investor forgoes by holding something uninterest-bearing instead of the bond.

In arithmetic the difference is tangible. Anyone putting €10,000 for one year into a ten-year Bund at 3.66 percent receives around €366 in interest before tax. With the ten-year US note at 5.28 percent it would be around $528, though with the addition of the euro-dollar currency risk, which can work in both directions. Bitcoin first has to earn that amount through its price before any excess return arises at all.

This calculation is no argument against crypto. It is rather the benchmark that a high interest rate pulls into every investment decision, and it explains why phases of high real rates have historically been difficult for investments without a yield.

Bitcoin price between $83,898 and $86,796: 32.7 percent below the record

As of this article, bitcoin trades at around $84,900 and therefore at about €75,400. Over the past 24 hours the price moved between $83,898 and $86,796, and the decline over that period amounts to a good 2 percent. Over seven days there is a small gain of around 1 percent, over thirty days a gain of just under 8 percent. Market capitalisation stands at around $1.71 trillion.

The price sits 32.7 percent away from the record high of $126,080 reached on October 6, 2025. The anniversary of that record is a few days off, and it coincides with a level of interest rates not seen for more than two decades.

Buying routes in Germany: MiCA licence, spot purchase and ETN in the brokerage account

Two fundamentally different routes are open to German investors for buying. The first is the direct purchase of the coins through a trading platform. Since the European regulation on markets in crypto assets, MiCA for short, providers need a licence in the EU for this. Which platforms hold that licence and what fees they charge is set out in the overview of the best crypto exchanges.

The second route runs through the ordinary brokerage account. In Europe there are no spot ETFs on individual crypto assets, because a fund has to be diversified under EU law. Exchange-traded notes are traded instead, usually labelled ETN or ETP. Such paper tracks the price but is legally a claim against the issuer and therefore carries issuer risk. Which products are tradable in Germany and how they differ is broken down in the overview of crypto ETFs for German investors.

Holding period under Section 23 EStG: one year and the rate path to October 28

For private individuals in Germany, Section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies for tax purposes. Gains from the sale of crypto assets are tax free after a holding period of more than one year. Within the year the personal income tax rate applies, with an exemption limit covering the sum of all private disposal transactions.

This deadline ties the tax to the interest rate calendar. Anyone holding positions from late autumn 2025 is approaching the one-year mark, and a sale shortly before it may cost considerably more than a sale a few days later. Conversely, the deadline ties up capital across a phase in which rates could stay high. Anyone wanting to track which position leaves the deadline and when will find tools for it in the overview of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

Leverage, funding rate and liquidation price when money gets expensive

High rates make borrowed money more expensive, and that feeds through to leveraged crypto positions. With open-ended futures contracts, the so-called perpetual futures, the funding rate ensures the contract price stays oriented to the spot price. This rate is a payment that flows at regular intervals between the buying and selling side, and it tends to rise with the general level of interest rates.

The liquidation price is the price at which the posted collateral no longer suffices and the position is closed by force. With a 24-hour range of just under $2,900 between high and low, that point comes within reach faster than the calm weekly balance suggests. For retail clients in the EU, leverage caps additionally apply to leveraged products and narrow the room for manoeuvre further.

Custody and staking yield in an environment of high government bond rates

With custody, two models stand side by side. Under custody by a service provider the keys sit with the provider, which needs a permit for this in the EU. Under self-custody they sit with the investor, typically on a hardware device, and with them the full responsibility for the recovery words.

High rates also act on the yield offers in the crypto market. If a government bond returns 5.28 percent, a provider promising a yield on coins has to offer considerably more to stay attractive. Higher offers rarely arise out of nothing, though; they usually rest on coins being lent out or deployed in protocols. Comparing such a yield with a government bond is therefore misleading as long as the default risk is left out of the thought.

Bull case and bear case: the Bitwise model and the pressure from rates

Expectations diverge widely, and both sides deserve a fair hearing.

On the optimistic side stands the valuation model of Bitwise. Dragosch named a fair value of around $197,000 to BTC-Echo and said a lot of bad news had “already been priced in”. If that reading holds, the current level is more of a discount for macro worries than a new equilibrium.

On the cautious side stands the interest rate series itself. A level not seen since 2002 keeps the risk-free benchmark permanently high and draws capital away from investments without a running return. As long as the yield at the long end does not give way, this headwind remains in place, regardless of how a model calculates fair value. A price target is in both cases the opinion of whoever names it.

Portfolio and order book: what you check before the rate decision

The next big date is fixed. The US Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee meets on October 27 and 28, 2026, and the decision is announced on October 28. Until then the calendar stays largely empty, and until then three things can be looked up at leisure: whether open leveraged positions have a liquidation price within the most recent daily range, when the first holdings run out of the one-year deadline, and whether an interest-bearing alternative in your own currency area actually fits the intended investment horizon better.

US Treasuries and bitcoin: What to take away

1. The benchmark has shifted. 5.28 percent in dollars and 3.66 percent in euros are the figures every uninterest-bearing investment competes against. Anyone wanting to enter afresh checks the buying route and the fees in advance in the overview of the best crypto exchanges.
2. The decoupling changes the role in a portfolio. When bitcoin no longer runs in step with the stock market, its function in diversification changes. Anyone seeking access through the brokerage account instead of a trading platform will find the terms in the overview of the best crypto brokers.
3. October 28 is the next metronome. Until the rate decision it pays to look at liquidation prices and at the one-year deadline under Section 23 EStG, because both quantities change with time and not with the headline.

(As of October 3, 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 Shiba Inu the way they buy a share, through an ordinary brokerage account at a bank or broker, still has no workable product to choose from. The only exchange-traded certificate on Shiba Inu in Europe is listed in Stockholm and settles in Swedish kronor, the US fund that would be allowed to hold SHIB currently holds other assets, and the Japanese approval applies to Japanese customers. The route that remains open in Germany is a direct purchase on an exchange with a MiCA licence, followed by custody of your own. That is no side issue, because the entire tax framework hangs on that one decision.

SHIB traded at $0.00000572 on Saturday afternoon, as of October 3, worth roughly €0.00000509, after shedding 2.8 percent within 24 hours. The daily range ran from $0.00000553 to $0.00000589, market capitalisation stood at $3.37 billion for rank 35, with 589.24 trillion tokens in circulation. The record of October 27, 2021 at $0.00008616 is 93.4 percent away. The figures come from CoinGecko.

Shiba Inu today: three regulated access points, and only one sits in Europe

The occasion for this article is a stocktake rather than a price move, a stocktake of what has changed around the project over the past few weeks. Mazrael, a long-standing member of the Shiba Inu community, summed up the position in early September in three points: a tradable ETP in Europe, an approved fund in the United States that is allowed to hold SHIB, and regulated access to the spot market in Japan. His own reading of it ran: “No ETF yet. But well on track.” That is the view of a participant and carries no claim to neutral analysis, yet the three underlying facts can each be verified and are worth a closer look.

An ETP is an exchange-traded product, usually a bearer debt security, that tracks the value of an underlying asset and is bought through a brokerage account. The investor holds a claim against the issuer rather than a token, collateralised by deposited holdings. The distinction sounds technical and later decides custody, liability and taxation.

Valour Shiba Inu SEK: Europe’s only SHIB certificate settles in Swedish kronor

The European product is called Valour Shiba Inu SEK and has been listed on the Spotlight Stock Market in Stockholm since August 27, 2025. It tracks SHIB, is according to the issuer fully backed by the respective digital asset and is kept in cold storage with licensed custodians such as Copper. Net asset value per unit was last at 5.53 Swedish kronor, assets under management at around $89,847. The figures appear on Valour’s product page.

That figure for assets under management is the genuinely remarkable one. Just under $90,000 is a very small size for an exchange-traded product, smaller than some single orders on a crypto exchange. Nothing follows from this about the standing of the issuer, but something does follow about tradability: where little capital sits, turnover is thin, and thin turnover means wider spreads between bid and ask. Anyone considering such a product should compare the spread in the order book with the spread on a regulated crypto exchange before settling on the brokerage route.

ISIN CH1108681524 and ticker 1VBS: where the certificate is listed and where it is not

The product carries the ISIN CH1108681524 and trades under the ticker 1VBS. It is tradable through Nordic brokers; Valour names Avanza, Nordnet, Montrose and SAVR for this, and so addresses investors in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. The issuer runs more than 85 ETPs in total on European trading venues, among them the Spotlight Stock Market, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, SIX Swiss Exchange and Euronext in Paris and Amsterdam. For the SHIB product itself, though, the issuer lists Stockholm as its only venue.

In practical terms: the ISIN exists, the trading venue lies outside the standard offering of most German custodian banks, and settlement happens in a foreign currency. Anyone who still wants in needs a broker with access to Spotlight, has to reckon with foreign currency charges and additionally carries the krona’s exchange rate risk against the euro. Which institutions offer that access at all is answered by a look at your own account’s venue list, not by the issuer’s product page. An overview of providers with broad exchange access is in the broker comparison.

1.9 percent management fee a year: the cost side of a crypto certificate

Valour states a management fee of 1.9 percent a year for the product range launched in August 2025. This fee is never debited separately; it is taken continuously from the deposited holdings, so the unit tracks the underlying asset net of those costs. For a product without income, that works directly against performance: if SHIB stays unchanged for twelve months, the certificate ends up around 1.9 percent lower.

For a sense of scale: the rate quoted for the Dogecoin ETP in Europe is 2.5 percent a year, while large bitcoin products typically sit between 0.2 and 1.5 percent. The smaller and more exotic the underlying, the more expensive the wrapper. Against that stands a one-off trading fee on a direct purchase and, with custody of your own, no running charge afterwards. Anyone calculating costs over several years comes out cheaper with a direct holding almost every time, and pays for it with the effort of key management.

Is a SHIB ETF coming in the United States?

There is still no dedicated spot ETF on Shiba Inu in the United States. What does exist is an approved fund that would be allowed to hold SHIB. T. Rowe Price received approval from the US securities regulator for its TKNZ product on NYSE Arca in June 2026. The fund is actively managed and holds between five and fifteen assets.

T. Rowe Price TKNZ on NYSE Arca: 18 eligible names, eight of them held

The prospectus from July lists 18 crypto assets the fund is permitted to hold, and Shiba Inu is one of them. Eight others are currently held: Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, Solana, XRP, Chainlink, Dogecoin and Cardano. The trade publication U.Today reported this breakdown on September 6, 2026, citing the prospectus.

Between “may hold” and “does hold” lies the whole difference. A mention in the prospectus creates no demand; it merely creates the option for a fund manager to step in later without having to amend the prospectus. Lucie, a team member of the Shiba Inu project, had publicly called the addition to the list big news. That assessment comes from the project’s own circle and should be weighted accordingly. So far only the approval is measurable, while the inflow is not.

For investors in Germany the point is in any case of indirect interest at best. US funds with crypto exposure are regularly not approved for public distribution here, and many German custodian banks block purchases of US fund units because the key information documents required under European law are missing. Which products with crypto exposure can actually land in a German account is something we have gathered in our overview of crypto ETFs and ETNs in Germany.

Laser Digital Japan under the Payment Services Act: SHIB among six approved assets

The third building block sits in Japan. Laser Digital Japan completed its registration as a crypto service provider under Japan’s Payment Services Act in August 2026 and lists SHIB among six tradable assets. The Payment Services Act is the Japanese law that makes operating a crypto exchange subject to licensing and obliges operators to keep client holdings segregated.

A regulated futures market arrived in the same period: Coinbase has started crypto futures trading in Canada, 23 contracts in all, and SHIB is one of them. Neither of the two affects German investors directly. Both do shift how a meme token is treated in the regulatory landscape, and that is precisely what issuers look to when they decide on new products for Europe.

Two routes to SHIB: tokens in your own wallet vs. a unit in your brokerage account

On a direct purchase an investor acquires the token itself and can move it to a wallet of their own. They then carry the custody risk alone, meaning loss of the seed phrase, phishing or a compromised computer. In return there is no issuer that could default, and no running fee.

With the certificate the token sits with the issuer’s custodian and the investor holds a claim. Custody risk moves to the issuer, and the issuer’s credit risk comes on top. In exchange, key management falls away, the position appears on the familiar account statement, and losses can be offset within the securities loss pot. Which route fits depends less on return than on whom somebody trusts with custody.

MiCA licence and custody: what is practically available in Germany

Since the European regulation on markets in crypto assets has applied in full in Germany, only licensed providers may offer trading and custody of crypto assets commercially. For buying SHIB that means: an exchange with a MiCA licence or a venue permitted by BaFin executes the order, and the investor then decides whether the holding stays there or moves to a wallet of their own.

Two things are concretely verifiable here without anybody needing a view on the price. First, the provider’s licence, which is recorded in the public registers of the national supervisor. Second, the question of whether the provider permits withdrawal of the token to an external address at all, because some houses offer SHIB only as a derivative or without any withdrawal. Where withdrawal is unavailable, the supposed direct purchase sits economically closer to the certificate than to the token.

Holding period under Section 23 EStG and the December 31, 2026 cut-off

Here lies the point at which the choice of route costs or saves money in Germany. A directly held crypto asset falls under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act and counts as a private disposal transaction. Anyone who holds for longer than a year pays no tax on the gain. Within the year the personal income tax rate applies, and an exemption limit of €1,000 per calendar year covers all private disposal transactions taken together. Exemption limit means: one euro above it makes the entire gain taxable, and not merely the excess portion.

A certificate in a brokerage account is treated differently. Gains from it generally count as investment income, are subject to the 25 percent withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, and they know no holding period after which anything becomes tax free. The €1,000 saver’s allowance is set against them. For physically backed bearer debt securities with a delivery claim, the Federal Fiscal Court decided otherwise in the Xetra-Gold case and treated them like direct ownership. Whether that case law can be transferred to crypto certificates depends on the specific design of the product and is not conclusively settled. That question belongs with a tax adviser before the purchase, and never in a forum.

Documentation before year-end: which records the cut-off demands

On top of that comes a date that affects every holding regardless of the purchase route. According to our analysis of the German draft law of October 2, 2026, the December 31, 2026 cut-off separates old holdings from new ones, with consequences for how acquisition costs are allocated. Anyone holding SHIB should have the acquisition date and acquisition cost of each entry fully documented by then, because missing records cannot be reconstructed later.

This applies in particular to holdings spread across several exchanges or that have moved to a wallet of their own in the meantime. A transfer between your own addresses does not count as a sale, so it leaves the holding period intact, but it does tear the documentation chain when the exchange records the event only as an outgoing transfer. Which documents are needed and which tools export them cleanly is set out in the comparison of tax and portfolio tools.

Shibarium underneath: validator staking switched off for 169 days

And the project’s technical underpinning? Shibarium, its own layer 2 chain, keeps running, while validator staking has been switched off since April 17, 2026. We measured the count at 167 days on October 1, and this Saturday it stands at 169 days. The details are in our report on the switched-off Shibarium staking. Anyone who had delegated BONE receives no rewards during this time, and anyone who counted on running staking income has been counting on zero for half a year.

For placing the three approval announcements, that matters. Regulated access improves how reachable a token is; it says nothing about the state of the network behind it. Looking at the two separately spares the disappointment when a product announcement fizzles out without a price reaction. The reverse holds just as much: a staking module at a standstill does not turn an approval into bad news, it only turns it into one that will not carry the price for now.

SHIB in your brokerage account: Your next three steps

1. Look at the trading venues before you go hunting for the ISIN. Open your account’s venue list and see whether the Spotlight Stock Market is on it. If the venue is missing, the ISIN CH1108681524 is not tradable for you, and the brokerage route settles itself without further research. An institution with broad exchange access is in the broker comparison.
2. On a direct purchase, test the withdrawal and not only the price. Before your first larger order, see whether your provider pays SHIB out to an external address, and send a small amount as a test. Licensed providers with a working withdrawal are in the exchange comparison.
3. Secure your acquisition data before the turn of the year. Export the date, quantity and acquisition cost for every SHIB entry and store the export outside the exchange. That is the basis for the holding period and for the cut-off on December 31. Tools for it are in the comparison of crypto tax tools.

(As of October 3, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Anyone putting money into Bitcoin today decides first on the form: a single amount all at once, a fixed monthly instalment or an exchange-traded security in a securities account. In October 2026 this decision about investing in Bitcoin has an additional reason to be looked at closely. The German finance ministry’s draft bill on crypto taxation provides that the one-year holding period continues to apply only to holdings acquired by December 31, 2026. Whatever is bought after that is to fall under the flat-rate withholding tax. The cabinet is due to adopt the draft on October 14.

This article recalculates the three routes against the prices of the past ten years, explains the German tax position for each of them and names what can go wrong on each route. It gives no buy recommendation and names no price target. You will find the current level and the analyst views on Bitcoin on our prediction page.

Investing in Bitcoin: These Three Routes Are Open in Germany

All three routes lead to a stake in the price performance of Bitcoin, but they differ in what you own at the end and in how the tax authorities treat it.

The direct purchase means that you acquire real Bitcoin and either leave it with the trading platform or transfer it to a wallet of your own. A wallet is not a purse but the management of a cryptographic key pair with which you can dispose of a blockchain address. Whether you deploy the whole amount at once or a monthly instalment is, on this route, purely a question of timing.

The savings plan is a standing order for a direct purchase: a provider buys Bitcoin at a fixed rhythm for a fixed euro amount, regardless of the price. The technical term for this is dollar-cost averaging. It describes the fact that a fixed instalment buys more Bitcoin at low prices than at high ones, and that the average price therefore lies below the mean of the prices. How this effect behaves in a slump is something we worked through in June 2026 under dollar-cost averaging in a crypto crash.

The security is the third route. In the EU there is no Bitcoin fund under UCITS rules, because a fund of that kind may not put its entire assets into a single asset. What is offered in Germany as a Bitcoin ETF is therefore almost always an ETN or ETP, that is, an exchange-traded debt security collateralised with Bitcoin. Which products these are and what you have to watch out for with them is collected in our overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.

The December 31, 2026 Cut-Off and the One-Year Holding Period

Today, Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act applies to privately held Bitcoin: anyone who holds for longer than a year sells tax-free, regardless of the size of the gain. Anyone who sells earlier pays their personal income tax rate on the gain as soon as the total of all private disposal gains in the calendar year reaches 1,000 euros. Those 1,000 euros are an exemption limit and not an allowance: from one euro above it, the entire gain is taxable, not just the excess part.

The draft bill, which according to the Bitcoin portal Blocktrainer the cabinet is due to take up on October 14, would end this system for new purchases. Crypto assets acquired after December 31, 2026 are to be subject to the flat-rate withholding tax, that is, a fixed rate regardless of the holding period. For everything that was in the portfolio before that, grandfathering is provided for: there the one-year period would be preserved.

For your decision that is the decisive difference between the two direct-purchase variants. A lump sum paid in October or November falls entirely under the old law. A savings plan that starts in October and is meant to run for two years is spread across the cut-off: the instalments from 2026 would be protected, those from 2027 onwards would not. In tax terms, two groups of holdings thus arise within the same savings plan, and they have to be treated separately.

One thing remains important: the draft is a draft. Until promulgation in the Federal Law Gazette the cut-off date can shift, and the consultation period for the industry associations ended, according to the same report, as early as October 6, six days after it was sent out. What ends up in the law is decided by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.

Exemption Limit, Record-Keeping Duty and the Reports From Trading Venues

Quite apart from the draft, the enforcement side shifted in 2026. Since January 1, 2026 the reporting obligations from the EU directive DAC8 have applied, implemented in Germany through the Crypto Tax Transparency Act. Providers domiciled or authorised in the EU report their customers’ accounts and transactions to the tax administration. For you that means: the assumption that a sale within the one-year period goes unnoticed no longer holds.

From that follows a practical duty which weighs more heavily with a savings plan than with a one-off purchase. Every single instalment is its own acquisition event with its own date and its own price. With a monthly instalment and a five-year term that is sixty events which you have to allocate on sale under the first-in-first-out method, that is, in the order in which they were bought. Anyone who does not have these records has an additional problem under the draft bill: without proof of the acquisition cost, a flat 50 percent of the sale proceeds is to count as the tax base. What this substitute assessment means in detail is something we wrote up on October 1, 2026 under crypto acquisition costs and substitute assessment.

A further point in the draft concerns the years from 2028 onwards: trading venues are then to pay over the tax directly, the way banks do with shares. The details and what the deduction means for your liquidity are in our article on withholding tax at crypto exchanges of October 1, 2026.

Lump Sum Against Savings Plan: The Calculation Over Ten, Five and One Year

The question of which of the two direct routes would have made more out of the same money can be recalculated against the actual prices. We evaluated the weekly prices of the Bitcoin against euro pair on the Kraken trading platform going back to 2013 and took the opening price for the start of each month. Two variants with identical contributions are compared: once 100 euros per month over the whole period, once the entire sum on the first day. Both are valued at the October 2026 opening price of 73,775 euros.

The picture is not uniform, and that is precisely where the message lies. Over ten years the lump sum beats the savings plan by more than elevenfold, because the 12,000 euros at 550 euros per Bitcoin bought a quantity that no later instalment could reach. Over five years from October 2021 the relationship reverses: there the starting price of 47,800 euros was close to the high of the time, the savings plan bought into the subsequent slump and ends up 1,845 euros ahead of the lump sum. Over the past year the gap is clearest. Anyone who deployed 1,200 euros at once in October 2025 at 101,066 euros holds Bitcoin worth 876 euros today, 27 percent less. The same sum in twelve monthly instalments produced 1,331 euros, a gain of just under 11 percent.

Why the Lump Sum Came Out Ahead in 88 of 98 Five-Year Windows

A single period can be luckily or unluckily chosen. We therefore ran the same calculation over every possible five-year window the price series allows: 98 windows, each 60 monthly instalments against a single payment of 6,000 euros, valued at the end of the respective window. In 88 of these 98 cases the lump sum came out ahead, in 10 the savings plan.

The reason lies in the direction of the market, not in a property of the savings plan. Bitcoin has risen across the entire price series so far. In a rising market, money that is invested earlier is invested for longer, and quantities bought early never become cheaper again at any point. The savings plan by definition holds back part of the capital and buys it in later at subsequent, on average higher, prices.

The ten windows in which the savings plan won share one property: their starting month lay shortly before one of the big slumps in each case. That is the real reading of this figure. The lump sum wins more often, but it also loses more clearly when the entry point is badly placed, and it demands a decision that nobody can secure in advance with data. The savings plan, by contrast, buys the uncertainty along with it and takes the question of the right day out of your hands. Which of the two kinds of risk you are more willing to bear is a question for you and not for the price series.

Two limits of this survey belong with it. The calculation is made without fees and without the spread, that is, without the gap between the buy and sell price, and without taxes. Both weigh more heavily on the savings plan, because it consists of many small purchases. And it values only today’s level. Any other valuation day delivers different figures.

Instalment, Interval and Fees: What a Bitcoin Savings Plan Depends On

If the decision falls on the savings plan, three levers determine how much of the money paid in actually ends up in Bitcoin. The minimum instalment at the providers available in Germany lies, according to the surveys by the comparison portals, between one cent and ten euros, and at most of the large houses at one euro. The interval ranges from weekly to quarterly, with a shorter interval strengthening the averaging effect and at the same time producing more individual events for the tax return.

What is decisive is the cost side, and it consists of two parts that have to be stated separately: the order fee and the spread. A fixed order fee of one euro is a side issue on an instalment of 500 euros; on an instalment of 25 euros it is four percent of the purchase amount, missing immediately. The spread comes on top and is not always described as a fee. Anyone who wants to invest a small instalment should therefore calculate the total costs as a percentage of their own instalment and not compare the advertised fee figure. The current terms of the providers are in our comparison of Bitcoin savings plans.

Since the EU regulation MiCA took effect at the end of December 2024, choosing the provider itself involves a hard checkpoint: a trading venue serving retail clients in the EU needs authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. The authorisation says nothing about price performance, but it governs own funds, custody and complaint channels. Which houses hold it we list under regulated crypto exchanges. Fee structures change frequently, so it is worth looking at the provider’s price list on the day you sign up.

Crypto ETNs in a Securities Account: The Delivery Claim Decides the Tax Rule

The third route does not run through a crypto platform but through the securities account at a bank or broker. What is traded are ETNs, that is, collateralised debt securities on the Bitcoin price. In practice that has advantages: no key of your own, no additional account, purchase and savings plan through the familiar securities account screen, and the settlement lands automatically in the annual tax statement.

In tax terms this route is the most complicated, and the distinction hangs on a single feature: the delivery claim. If the product gives you the securitised right to demand delivery of the deposited Bitcoin, there is much to be said for treating it like direct ownership, that is, with the one-year period under Section 23. If that right is missing, what exists is a pure claim, and the income counts as investment income with flat-rate withholding tax, the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, without any holding period. There is no conclusive determination by the tax administration binding for all products, and the classification will in the end depend on the specific prospectus. With larger sums that is the point at which a trip to a tax adviser pays for itself.

On top of that comes a risk the direct purchase does not have: issuer risk. You hold a claim against the issuing company. If the collateral is held separately in trust, that risk is small, but it is not zero, and it belongs in the trade-off against the risk of losing a key of your own.

Custody After the Purchase: Whoever Holds the Key Holds the Bitcoin

With a direct purchase the purchase is not the last step. If you leave the Bitcoin in the trading account, you hold a credit against the provider, and that provider’s solvency and security architecture are part of your risk. If you transfer it to a wallet of your own, you no longer carry that risk, but you do carry full responsibility for the key. There is no body that replaces a lost recovery phrase.

The size of the amount helps with the decision. On an instalment of 25 euros a month, a hardware device costs more in the first year than the holding it protects; there an account with an authorised provider is a defensible interim solution, as long as you do not run the two-factor protection over SMS. As soon as the holding grows into the four-figure range, the relationship shifts. A hardware device keeps the key permanently separated from the internet and releases payments only after confirmation on the device. In tax terms the transfer to your own wallet is not a sale and triggers no tax, as long as you remain the owner.

Position Size and Total Loss: The Risk Side of the Decision

Over its history Bitcoin has repeatedly lost more than 70 percent from its high and recovered afterwards. That this will happen again is not a forecast but the description of a property: this market knows slumps of that order. A total loss is possible, and it is covered neither by deposit insurance nor by a compensation fund. A bank’s 100,000 euros of deposit insurance applies to balances in euros, not to crypto assets.

From that follows no advice on the amount, but a test calculation you can carry out yourself: take the amount you want to invest and subtract 80 percent of it. If the difference remains an amount that does not touch your rent, your emergency reserve or a foreseeable expense, the position size is sustainable. If it does touch them, it is too large, regardless of which of the three routes you decide on. Anyone working on credit or with leverage leaves this calculation entirely, because there even a setback can lead to forced liquidation, long before a price recovers.

A final point on timing. The December 31, 2026 cut-off is a tax advantage for purchases that take place by then, but it is no reason to bring forward a decision you have not yet made on the merits. A holding that turns out too large under time pressure costs more in the next slump than the holding period ever brings in.

Investing in Bitcoin: Your Next Three Steps

1. Settle the route and the amount before you open an account. Decide first whether you want to deploy a sum at once or a monthly instalment, and check the figure with the test calculation from the previous section. Only after that does the provider question become concrete: terms and minimum instalments are in the comparison of Bitcoin savings plans.
2. Collect records from the very first transaction. File the date, quantity, price and fee for every purchase, ideally automatically. Anyone who only catches up on this at the point of sale pays tax, under the draft, on half the proceeds in case of doubt. Which programmes take over the allocation is shown by our overview of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
3. Let the custody grow with the holding. Set a threshold above which you transfer the holding from the trading account to a wallet of your own, and stick to it. The devices and their differences are in the hardware wallet comparison.

(As of October 3, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

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TLDR:

• Bitcoin trades near $84,668, down 1.6% after failing to hold gains near $87,220 on October 3. 
• Analyst Crypto with Haris sees resistance at 86,000-87,000 and a possible drop toward $62,000.
• BlackRock’s IBIT bought $195.6 million in one day, while Fidelity ETF clients added $29.28 million. 
• September payrolls rose only 29,000 versus 90,000 expected, and unemployment climbed to 4.2%.

Bitcoin price hovered near $84,788 on October 3, down 1.6% after failing to hold gains near $87,220. The session low reached $83,888, according to chart data.

Source: CoinGecko

Traders are watching major trendline support, with $83,000 as the next key level if it breaks. Bears expect further downside, while bulls point to steady institutional buying.

Meanwhile, rising liquidations and sideways trading continue to define the market. The asset remains stuck inside a tight range between $83,000 and $87,000.

Bitcoin Price Stays Capped Below $87,000

Bitcoin price action has remained inside a narrow band between $83,000 and $87,000. Buyers pushed the asset to $87,220 earlier, but the rally faded.

Sellers then returned, and the price slipped to a session low of $83,888, just above the $83,000 level. The market has therefore turned choppy.

Analyst Crypto with Haris takes a bearish view. The analyst points to stubborn resistance between $86,000 and $87,000. A rejection from that zone could send BTC down to $62,000. That target lies about $22,700 below the current Bitcoin price.

Meanwhile, charts show a major trendline acting as support. If that line breaks, $83,000 becomes the next key level. Traders are therefore watching the trendline closely. As a result, opinions remain split on the next direction.

Rising liquidations have also accompanied the sideways chop. Even so, bulls have not abandoned their upside case. That case rests on steady institutional buying. Overall, Bitcoin remains in a holding pattern between key support and resistance.

Institutional Inflows and Jobs Data Shape Sentiment

Institutional flows remain a key point for bulls. BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $195.6 million of buying in one day. Separately, Fidelity ETF clients contributed $29.28 million.

Together, these purchases have fueled hope for a breakout higher. The inflows came amid sideways trading and rising liquidations.

Macro data also shaped a volatile week for Bitcoin. U.S. inflation, growth, and labor data reshaped expectations for Federal Reserve policy.

Early in the week, BTC fell to around $82,600 before rebounding sharply. U.S. PCE inflation came in below expectations, while JOLTS data showed weakening labor demand.

The September jobs report drew the biggest reaction. It followed the PCE and JOLTS readings released earlier in the week.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by only 29,000, well below the 90,000 consensus. Unemployment increased to 4.2%, and wage growth slowed, easing pressure on the Fed to raise rates again.

After the report, BTC surged to around $87,100. The rally faded quickly, and the price returned to $84,500. Weaker rate-hike expectations alone may not sustain a rally.

Treasury yields, the U.S. dollar, oil prices, and inflation risks remain key factors. These factors continue to influence the Bitcoin price. The next move may follow a chain: inflation, the Fed, Treasury yields, the dollar, and Bitcoin.

The post Bitcoin Price Stuck in 83K–87K Range as Jobs Data Fails to Spark Lasting Rally appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Bitchat has been removed from the India App Store following a MeitY blocking demand under Section 69A. Dorsey shared the notice on October 3.
• Apple also restricts internal and external TestFlight testing in India. The notice leaves distribution available in other selected territories.
• July takedown notices relied on intermediary liability provisions and drew objections from digital rights groups over the blocking procedure.
• The app uses Bluetooth mesh for local communication and Nostr for internet messaging. The notice does not say existing installations were disabled.

Apple removed Bitchat from the India App Store following a government demand under Section 69A of the IT Act. Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey disclosed the action on October 3, 2026, through an Apple App Review notice.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued the direction, according to the notice shared on X. Apple cited content considered illegal in India but did not identify the material.

The restriction extends to TestFlight testing and public beta links for Indian users. The app remains available in other selected markets. July takedown notices reportedly failed to secure its removal from either app store. 

Bitchat Removal Follows MeitY Order Under Section 69A

Apple linked the Bitchat removal to its legal compliance requirements for apps distributed across different territories. Its App Review Guidelines require developers to follow local laws wherever they offer their software. 

The company directed Dorsey to contact MeitY for further information about the decision. Its notice covers both internal and external TestFlight testing, closing another distribution route for Indian users. 

Section 69A allows the central government to block public access to digital information on specified grounds. These include national sovereignty, state security and public order. The provision requires written reasons and operates alongside procedures established under the 2009 Blocking Rules.

The latest action follows a separate attempt by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, which operates under the Home Ministry. On July 23, 2026, the agency demanded that GitHub disable access to three Bitchat repositories within three hours.

That notice invoked Section 79(3)(b) and Rule 3(1)(d), threatening the platform with losing intermediary protections. Section 79 concerns platform liability for information supplied by third parties. 

The Internet Freedom Foundation challenged the July order, arguing that authorities had bypassed the dedicated blocking framework. It demanded withdrawal of the notice and publication of takedown directions issued through the disputed legal route. 

MediaNama reported that related notices also targeted Google and Apple over several offline messaging applications. Officials reportedly told companies on July 24 that compliance was unnecessary, leaving the applications available. 

Offline Messaging Faces Fresh Scrutiny After Protest Use

Dorsey released Bitchat as open-source software in July 2025, initially describing it as an experimental weekend project. The application supports local Bluetooth mesh communication and internet messaging through the Nostr protocol.

Nearby phones discover one another and relay messages across participating devices without requiring a mobile network. Users do not need accounts or phone numbers. Private Bluetooth messages use end-to-end encryption through the Noise Protocol. Offline messaging depends on nearby participating devices, while Nostr channels require internet connectivity and use distributed relays. 

Student demonstrations at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi formed the backdrop to the July notices. Authorities alleged that the software could help criminal groups and other actors evade detection during network restrictions. 

Digital rights advocates disputed that reasoning, saying anticipated misuse did not justify blocking a communications tool. Restricting India App Store downloads could make it harder for new users to join local messaging networks during shutdowns.

The Bitchat notice describes distribution restrictions without stating that copies already installed on phones have been disabled. Its Bluetooth architecture does not rely on a central messaging server. 

India previously used Section 69A against messaging applications in May 2023, following an I4C request involving Jammu and Kashmir. The request covered 14 applications allegedly used by terrorists and their supporters for communication. MediaNama reported that Briar was among the services blocked through that earlier process. 

China previously required Apple to remove Bitchat from its local store in April 2026. The Cyberspace Administration of China cited security assessment rules governing applications capable of influencing public opinion or mobilizing users.

The post Apple Removes Bitchat From India App Store After MeitY Order appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• XRP Asia launches in Singapore as Ripple prepares to route more customer payment volume onto XRPL in 2027.
• Ripple’s 1 billion XRP developer commitment supports Asia expansion, including Japan and Korea funding.
• Ripple plans to expand an XRPL DEX payments pilot while linking payment customers with lending infrastructure.
• XLS-66 would enable fixed-term uncollateralized XRPL loans, but validator approval is still required.

XRP Asia has launched as a Singapore-based regional organization while Ripple prepares a broader 2027 push to move more customer activity onto the XRP Ledger. The October 3 debut links regional ecosystem development with a company-wide payments strategy centered on routing more transaction volume, liquidity, and credit activity through XRPL.

The XRP Ledger Foundation said the group will support builders, startups, and regional communities. Jointly founded by Ripple and the foundation, it is led by Sabrina Tachdjian.

XRP Asia Launch Supports Ripple’s 2027 XRPL Payments Push

The organization plans to build from established communities in Korea and Japan while extending its programs into additional technology hubs across the region. Its developer programs will include learning resources, system-integrator training, hackathons, office hours, and ship-it clinics designed to help teams move projects toward deployment.

Startup support will extend beyond engineering through go-to-market assistance, partner introductions, incubation, grant connections, joint events, and introductions to relevant investors. That approach follows earlier ecosystem investment.

Ripple created an XRPL Japan and Korea Fund under its 1 billion XRP developer-support commitment. Tens of millions of dollars were targeted toward opportunities in those markets. The company also expanded university blockchain research across South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and Australia.

XRP Asia debuted alongside XRP Seoul 2026, where sessions covered payments, tokenized deposits, and on-chain finance involving banks and securities firms. The agenda also featured Tachdjian and Ripple executive Tatsuya Kohrogi discussing what comes next for the XRP ecosystem across the region.

Ripple Connects 2027 Payments Plans With XRPL Credit

At the Seoul event, Ripple President Monica Long said the company is discussing a 2027 objective to route more customer transaction volume directly onto XRPL. The strategy includes infrastructure already built for payments and an expanded pilot using the ledger’s decentralized exchange within the company’s payments operations.

Beyond transaction routing, the company plans to deepen its credit business by connecting payment customers with XRPL lending infrastructure. Long said XRP deposited into lending pools could provide funding for payment customers, linking pooled liquidity with credit used within the payments business.

One component is XLS-66, an XRPL-native proposal for fixed-term, uncollateralized loans funded through pooled assets held in Single Asset Vaults. Under the specification, credit assessment and risk management remain off-chain.

The ledger would handle loan creation, repayments, and defaults. However, XLS-66 remains a draft amendment and requires validator approval before mainnet activation, meaning the proposed lending structure is not yet live.

That makes regional ecosystem expansion relevant to the same ledger infrastructure targeted for payments and lending. Together, the regional builder network and 2027 payments plan connect developer growth with potential institutional transaction, liquidity, and credit activity on XRPL.

The post XRP Asia Launches as Ripple Targets Major XRPL Payments Push in 2027 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Stellar DeFi reached record TVL near $273 million on October 2. The total rose from approximately $265 million one week earlier. 
• Stablecoin market capitalization stood at $934.54 million. Active real-world assets under management reached approximately $2.82 billion. 
• Daily active addresses reached 94,972, leaving 5,028 to reach 100,000. Decentralized exchanges recorded $3.38 million in daily trading volume. 
• XLM supports transaction fees, account reserves, and smart contract rent. These functions connect the native token with Stellar applications.

The Stellar DeFi ecosystem reached a record total value locked of nearly $273 million on October 2, according to DeFiLlama. The milestone followed a reading near $265 million one week earlier, extending growth across applications on the payments-focused blockchain. Stablecoin holdings and tokenized assets also highlighted the network’s expanding financial footprint.

Stellar recorded $934.54 million in stablecoin market capitalization and approximately $2.82 billion in active real-world assets under management. Daily decentralized exchange volume reached $3.38 million, while active addresses totaled 94,972. Those figures place Stellar close to 100,000 daily active addresses, covering payments and financial applications within the XLM ecosystem. 

Stellar DeFi Sets TVL Record as Stablecoin Holdings Expand

The increase from about $265 million to nearly $273 million amounts to roughly $8 million, or around 3%. This comparison measures the change in dollar-valued assets across tracked protocols.

DeFiLlama defines total value locked as assets held within protocol contracts. The measure captures funds supporting services such as lending, trading, and liquidity provision. 

Stellar DeFi applications operate alongside the network’s established asset issuance and payment tools. Soroban provides the smart contract capabilities developers use to build programmable financial applications.

These applications can connect lending markets, liquidity pools, and automated trading functions. DeFiLlama tracks individual protocols, allowing users to examine how the network total is distributed. 

Dollar-based TVL changes with deposits, withdrawals, and asset prices. DeFiLlama therefore tracks inflows separately, helping analysts identify movements of funds alongside changes in valuation. 

The stablecoin figure measures the value of stablecoins circulating on Stellar. These assets support transfers, settlement, and trading pairs across applications within the XLM ecosystem.

Earlier in 2026, MoneyGram launched MGUSD, a digital dollar issued on Stellar. The foundation’s second-quarter review placed stablecoin transfer volume at $11.4 billion, up 72% from the previous quarter. The quarterly figure covers transfers, while decentralized exchange volume measures trades. 

Stellar DeFi growth sits within a broader tokenization effort. The Stellar Development Foundation reported a separate real-world asset milestone above $3 billion in June. DeFiLlama’s live data shows the current TVL at $263.89 million, below the reported October 2 record. Stablecoin market capitalization stood at $934.61 million when checked, while activity figures remained consistent. 

Active Addresses Near 100,000 as Trading and Asset Use Rise

The reported 94,972 active addresses left Stellar 5,028 addresses below the 100,000 threshold. This count describes activity during a daily measurement period. 

Address activity offers another way to assess Stellar DeFi alongside the value held in applications. However, wallet counts measure addresses, and one participant can operate several accounts.

The $3.38 million in daily decentralized exchange volume measures traded value across tracked venues. Trading volume and TVL describe different aspects of activity: executed trades and assets held in protocols. 

Stellar DeFi operates alongside payment tools and tokenized real-world assets. The foundation reported tokenized Treasury products, sovereign bond funds, credit and gold among assets issued on the network. These products extend asset coverage across several financial markets. 

Blend is listed among Stellar’s lending protocols, while Aquarius and Soroswap provide decentralized trading applications. The services span borrowing, liquidity provision and asset swaps on the network. 

Stellar’s analytics directory links to DeFiLlama for protocol TVL and historical network totals. The foundation’s Blend dashboard tracks total lending deposits, borrowing, pool utilization and transaction volume. 

XLM supports network activity through transaction fees, account reserves and smart contract storage rent. These functions connect the native token to payments and applications operating across Stellar.

Stellar DeFi transactions use fee rules that account for both inclusion and consumed computing resources. Smart contract data also incurs storage rent based on its size and duration.

Network accounts must maintain minimum balances calculated from Stellar’s base reserve. Additional entries, including trustlines and offers, increase reserve requirements, while sponsorship lets another account cover eligible reserves.

The post Stellar DeFi Hits New TVL Record as Active Wallets Near 100,000 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• The Bitget hack is linked to North Korean hackers. Chainalysis says the theft lifts their 2026 crypto total above $1 billion.
• Investigators traced stolen XRP through a cross-chain protocol into Bitcoin. The swaps bypassed an exchange but still left blockchain records.
• Drift and KelpDAO lost a combined $577 million in April. TRM said those attacks represented 76% of crypto hack losses through that month.
• Chainalysis estimates automation cut over 20 hours of bridge reconciliation to under 10 minutes. Investigators defined logic and reviewed results.

The Bitget hack involved North Korean hackers, Chainalysis said, attributing the $387 million theft to DPRK-linked actors. The firm said the September 24 breach pushed crypto stolen by North Korea-linked groups above $1 billion in 2026. Investigators followed stolen XRP through a cross-chain protocol into Bitcoin addresses controlled by the attackers.

The October 1 report details how the funds moved between blockchains without passing through an exchange. Bitget separately confirmed losses of approximately $387.5 million after revising its initial estimate. The updated attribution follows earlier suspicions raised by CEO Gracy Chen and provides further evidence for the ongoing security investigation.

Bitget Hack Expands North Korean Theft Total Beyond $1 Billion

Bitget joins Drift Protocol and KelpDAO, among major platforms hit by attacks linked to North Korea this year. The Bitget hack follows two April incidents that together cost approximately $577 million.

On April 1, attackers drained $285 million from Drift Protocol. TRM described months of social engineering, including meetings with staff, before attackers compromised the approval process. Attackers obtained approvals before executing the unauthorized withdrawals.

KelpDAO suffered a separate $292 million bridge exploit on April 18. LayerZero linked that operation to TraderTraitor, a North Korean threat group associated with Lazarus. 

TRM said those two attacks represented 76% of crypto hack losses through April. That figure covers an earlier reporting period, rather than the latest annual total following the Bitget hack. 

Chainalysis estimated that North Korean hackers stole more than $2 billion during 2025. The latest attribution places another major exchange breach within that continuing pattern. 

Chen had pointed to North Korea shortly after the theft. She cited suspicious IP addresses connected to VPN services previously used by a DPRK-linked hacking group. 

September losses also rose sharply across the industry. PeckShield recorded $766.49 million across 55 major hacks, approximately 462% above August, with Bitget the largest incident.

Bitget said its higher loss estimate included previously uncounted Zcash and Tron transfers. The exchange said the revision reflected fuller accounting rather than another wave of unauthorized withdrawals.

Bitget said investigators had identified and fixed the underlying vulnerability. The exchange published attacker addresses to help other platforms monitor affected assets. 

How Stolen XRP Became Bitcoin Through a Cross-chain Protocol

Chainalysis identified 23 outbound transfers during the first three hours after the Bitget hack. It grouped their destinations into Ethereum, XRP Ledger, Zcash, and Tron.

Ethereum accounted for 49.7% of the outflows, followed by XRP Ledger at 40.8%. Zcash received 7.6%, while Tron represented 1.8% of the traced transfers.

The attackers moved XRP into a cross-chain liquidity protocol and received Bitcoin on another network. This route bypassed a centralized exchange account while leaving transaction records for investigators to examine.

Chainalysis matched deposits with corresponding payouts and followed tens of millions of dollars over roughly 36 hours. Its investigators tracked subsequent transfers until the trail reached attacker-controlled Bitcoin addresses.

Independent analysis from Bitquery identified THORChain as a route used to convert stolen XRP. Its September 29 accounting found that 90.5% of the stolen XRP had become Bitcoin.

That analysis adds detail to the Bitget hack money trail. Swap records named destination assets and recipient addresses, helping connect payments across otherwise separate networks. 

The Bitget hack investigation includes cybersecurity firms Mandiant and SlowMist. Bitget said industry coordination had already frozen some affected assets. Its recovery program offers eligible contributors bounties worth 5% of successfully frozen funds and 5% of recovered funds.

Chainalysis said its team used in-house AI to build custom tracing tools. It estimated that over 20 hours of manual bridge reconciliation took under 10 minutes with automation.

Investigators continued to define the tracing logic and review the results. Chainalysis is monitoring linked Bitcoin addresses and sharing intelligence with exchanges, issuers, and law enforcement partners.

The post Bitget Hack Tied to North Korea as Stolen XRP Flows Into Bitcoin appeared first on Blockonomi.

The Independent Community Bankers of America has sued the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency over rules allowing crypto-focused firms, such as Circle, Ripple, BitGo, and Paxos, to obtain national trust bank charters.

This comes just as a few of those companies secured final approval for their own federally supervised trust bank charters and could have broader implications for the growing number of digital asset entities pursuing similar licenses.

Side Door

The press release shared by the ICBA says that the center of the dispute is the final rule published by the OCC in March 2026 clarifying that national banks limited to trust-company operations can also conduct related non-fiduciary activities. The regulator noted at the time that the rule neither expanded nor contracted its existing chartering authority.

President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey said her organization strongly disagrees and argued that Congress never intended the national trust charter to become a “side door” through which crypto companies could receive the credibility of a federal bank charter while also avoiding requirements such as FDIC insurance, Community Reinvestment Act obligations, and the capital and liquidity framework applicable to insured depository institutions.

The lawsuit asks the US District Court for the District of Columbia to declare both the OCC’s final rule and the related Interpretive Letter N1176 unlawful.

Crypto Companies Go Deeper Into Banking

The lawsuit comes just months after several major developments for the crypto industry. As reported recently, Circle received the OCC’s final authorization to establish First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., which will operate as Circle National Trust. The development allowed the USDC issuer to provide fiduciary crypto custody to itself and affiliates and could eventually bring parts of its stablecoin reserve management under direct OCC supervision.

However, the escalating situation now is not isolated to Circle. Ripple previously secured approval to establish Ripple National Trust Bank. Other crypto-focused firms, including BitGo and Paxos, have also been involved in the OCC’s recent trust-bank approval process.

ICBA’s lawsuit argues that the OCC may be creating a pathway for digital asset firms to gain the credibility and benefits of federal banking supervision without being regulated the same way, not just that one crypto company received the green light.

The post US Banking Group Sues OCC After Wave of Crypto Trust Bank Approvals appeared first on CryptoPotato.

XRP is consolidating after a sharp recovery from the $1.00 area, with price now holding well above the major support zones visible on the daily chart. The broader structure has improved, although the 4-hour chart shows that XRP is still trading beneath a descending trendline and remains capped by the $1.60-$1.70 resistance region.

XRP Price Analysis: The USDT Pair

On the daily timeframe, XRP has established a significant rebound from the $1.00 support zone. The subsequent rally pushed the price back above the 100-day and 200-day moving averages, which have started to flatten and turn higher around $1.30. This represents a notable structural improvement compared with the prolonged downtrend seen through the first half of the year.

XRP is currently trading around $1.49, with the nearest support located around $1.30. This zone is particularly important because it aligns with the recent breakout area and the daily moving averages. As long as XRP remains above this region, the broader recovery structure remains intact.

On the upside, the main resistance is the $1.60-$1.70 zone, which has already capped the recent advance. A sustained move through this area would put the next major resistance around $1.80-$2.00, followed by the more critical $2.40 supply zone visible on the chart.

The daily RSI has also cooled considerably from its recent overbought reading and is now around the middle of its range. This suggests that momentum has normalized rather than showing an obvious overbought condition. A renewed move higher while RSI expands could therefore provide additional confirmation of bullish momentum.

The 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart shows a more cautious picture. XRP rallied toward the $1.60-$1.70 resistance level in late September but subsequently formed a series of lower highs beneath a descending trendline. The asset is currently around $1.49, leaving the trendline as an important short-term obstacle.

The immediate support sits around $1.45, marked by the green horizontal zone. XRP has repeatedly consolidated around this area, making it an important level for the short-term structure. A decisive loss of this support could expose the broader $1.20-$1.30 demand zone.

On the other hand, a breakout above the descending trendline would likely break the current corrective structure. XRP would then need to reclaim the $1.60-$1.70 resistance zone to establish a clearer continuation of the recent recovery.

Overall, the charts show a recovery structure that remains constructive above $1.20-$1.30, but XRP still needs to overcome $1.60-$1.70 to confirm a stronger bullish continuation. A break below $1.45 would instead increase the risk of another move toward the lower support zone.

The post Ripple Price Analysis: XRP’s Tightening Consolidation Puts $2 Breakout in Focus appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin is trading around $84.7K after a strong recovery from the $60K area over the past couple of months. The charts show improving market structure, but BTC is now approaching a significant resistance cluster at $88K.

Meanwhile, futures taker flow has turned predominantly buyer-driven again, providing a constructive momentum signal, although the price still needs to clear resistance before the broader upside structure can extend.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

The daily chart shows a notable structural improvement over the summer. BTC established a base around the $60K area before spending several weeks consolidating and eventually breaking sharply higher from the $66K region. The move through the $75K area shifted the market into a sequence of higher highs and higher lows.

BTC is currently trading near $84.7K, with the immediate resistance zone extending from roughly $86K to $88K. This area has already capped recent attempts higher and therefore represents the main hurdle for the current recovery. As a result, a daily breakout above $88K would strengthen the bullish structure and expose the next major resistance area around $96K.

On the downside, the first meaningful support sits around $74K-$78K. This zone previously acted as a consolidation area before the latest impulsive move and could become an important bullish order block if the current resistance rejection develops into a deeper correction. Below it, another notable support region is visible around $66K.

The 100-day and 200-day moving averages are also becoming more constructive. The 100-day average has turned upward aggressively, converging toward the 200-day average around $72K. As long as BTC remains above these averages, the broader recovery structure remains intact. Additionally, a bullish crossover could be the key sentiment driver to push the price back above $90K in the coming weeks.

BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart provides a more precise view of the current consolidation. After surging from the $75K support area, BTC moved rapidly toward $86K and has since been trading sideways.

The most visible short-term structure is a slightly descending range, with the upper boundary around $86K and the lower boundary around $82K. BTC recently tested the upper boundary and was rejected, returning toward $84.7K.

This makes the lower boundary around $82K the first short-term level to monitor. A breakdown below that area could expose the broader $74K-$78K support zone, particularly if selling momentum accelerates. Conversely, a clean 4-hour breakout above $86K would signal that buyers are attempting to resolve the consolidation to the upside.

The RSI on the 4-hour chart, however, has returned toward the 50 area after briefly pushing higher, indicating relatively balanced short-term momentum. This is consistent with the sideways price action rather than a strong trend in either direction.

The broader setup therefore remains one of consolidation following a strong impulse higher. The key technical question is whether the range resolves above $86K or whether BTC loses the $82K floor first.

On-Chain Analysis

The provided chart is specifically a 90-day Bitcoin Futures Taker CVD, which measures the cumulative difference between aggressive futures buyers and sellers. Green periods indicate taker-buy dominance, while red periods indicate taker-sell dominance.

The latest reading has shifted back into green after a period of predominantly neutral-to-bearish futures flow during the decline from the highs. This is notable because the recent recovery toward $85K has been accompanied by renewed aggressive buying in the futures market.

The recent green readings suggest that takers are once again predominantly lifting offers rather than aggressively selling into bids. Historically within the chart, sustained green periods have frequently appeared alongside strong upward price movements, although the indicator itself does not guarantee continuation.

The key issue is that futures buying has been occurring directly beneath the $86K resistance zone. If aggressive buying persists while BTC breaks above that area, it would provide confirmation that the current consolidation is being resolved with stronger demand. If CVD remains green but price repeatedly fails around $86K-$88K, it could instead indicate that aggressive futures buyers are being absorbed by sellers at resistance.

Overall, the charts show an improving structure with BTC holding well above the summer base and futures taker flow turning buyer-dominant again. For the next directional move, $86K on the upside and $82K on the downside are the immediate levels to watch.

The post BTC Price Analysis: Is Bitcoin Gearing Up for $96K or a Retest of $82K? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Citi has had a change of heart in terms of price prediction for BTC and Strategy following the broader market’s recovery that began in mid-August.

The banking giant now sees BTC exploding past $113,000 over the next year and has almost doubled its price target for the largest corporate holder of the leading cryptocurrency.

BTC Above $113K

It was just months ago that the Wall Street behemoth slashed its bitcoin price target for the next year to under $82,000. This came in July, when the overall market sentiment had deteriorated, and BTC had just plummeted to its lowest level since late 2024 at under $58,000.

However, bitcoin rebounded swiftly and has soared by roughly 50% since then, currently sitting at around $86,000. As such, Citi has lifted its 12-month forecast by approximately 40% to $113,400, reversing much of the caution it displayed in July. In its latest update on the matter, the bank’s analysts cited stronger cryptocurrency activity, a more supportive macroeconomic environment, and the evident return of ETF inflows as key reasons behind the new target.

Citi expects around $5 billion in crypto inflows over the next year, with financial advisers and brokerages gradually increasing BTC allocations. It also acknowledged the recent failure of the CLARITY Act in the Senate but argued that the subsequent announcements from the SEC and the CFTC helped soften the negative impact on sentiment.

CITI RAISES BITCOIN TARGET TO $113,000

Citi has raised its 12-month Bitcoin target to $113,000 from $82,000, implying roughly 35% upside from current levels near $83,900.

The bank points to renewed currency-debasement fears, greater regulatory clarity and continued adoption of…

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) October 1, 2026

Strategy Sees Major Uptick

The change in the bank’s outlook for bitcoin has had an even more dramatic effect on its Strategy valuation. During its July call, Citi highlighted a MSTR price target of $136. At the time, the company’s main shares struggled below $100 as its other stock, STRC, had plunged far below its par level. Now, though, MSTR trades at $160, posting a 60%+ increase since the summer lows.

Citi has increased the target to $240 now and has maintained a “buy” rating on MSTR. Roughly 34% of the projected upside contribution comes from further BTC appreciation, said the bank, with another 16% tied to an expansion in the company’s market-to-net-asset-value premium.

That relationship highlights just how sensitive Wall Street valuations of Strategy remain to BTC itself. Citi has previously described MSTR as a leveraged and considerably more volatile way of gaining exposure to the cryptocurrency. Consequently, the numbers can change significantly in months if market conditions deteriorate (or improve) a lot.

The post Citi Turns More Bullish on Bitcoin and Strategy: Here Are the New Targets appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Driven by the positive macro developments on the US economic scene during the business week, bitcoin experienced an impressive rally on Friday to over $87,000 for the first time in about ten days.

However, its run was stopped just as fast, and the asset plummeted by several grand within hours. It slumped below $84,000 on Friday evening, leaving nearly $600 million worth of liquidations across the entire market. Popular analyst Ali Martinez believes this rally was doomed from the start.

Whales Sold

Martinez said bitcoin’s move to $87,200 was “compromised before it even got going” as whales sold more than 30,000 BTC as the move progressed. In addition, the $87,000 zone coincides with the upper boundary of a channel that has rejected the cryptocurrency repeatedly for more than two weeks.

After the latest such development, the analyst said he is watching the lower end of the same channel at around $82,500 as the immediate downside target. BTC came inches above that level yesterday when it crashed to $83,500. For now, though, it remains about $2,000 higher.

Further data from Glassnode, though, explained that whales are not the only market participants disposing of their holdings now. The analytics resource noted that investors who accumulated 1-2 years ago at prices of around $97,000 and those who bought in the past 6-12 months at $89,000 have been selling large quantities of their BTC stash.

$BTC investors that bought the top are currently selling.

Two cohorts sit underwater: buyers from 1–2 years ago at $97k, and from 6–12 months ago at $89k.

Those who bought the 2025 rally are selling the most coins per day this year. Those who bought the decline are not. pic.twitter.com/cHAQoaqreT

— glassnode (@glassnode) October 3, 2026

Consequently, Martinez concluded that if these sell-offs continue, it could provide the confirmation he is looking for to buy the dip at around $82,500 and aim for another rebound toward $87,000.

Late Longs Already Washed Out

Before the US jobs report went live on Friday, Daan Crypto Trades warned about another vulnerability, noting that the BTC open interest had climbed to more than $1.3 billion in just a couple of days. Much of it came from longs added as the asset ascended.

He identified the $85,500-$86,000 region as particularly important because many of those positions appeared there. His warning was pretty straightforward: if the cryptocurrency fell below that zone, these longs could be squeezed out. Given bitcoin’s major correction on Friday and almost $600 million worth of liquidations, most of it from longs, it’s safe to conclude that this is exactly what happened.

As such, Daan said earlier today that most of these positions have now been flushed from the market.

The post Bitcoin’s $87K Rally Was a Trap: Could $82.5K Be the Real Buying Opportunity? appeared first on CryptoPotato.