SharonAI's innovative financing strategy highlights the growing importance of leveraging tech assets to fuel AI infrastructure expansion.

The post SharonAI Holdings secures $356M GPU-backed debt facility appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Maintaining a 12% dividend rate may attract income-focused investors, but future adjustments could impact investor sentiment and market dynamics.

The post Strategy holds Stretch dividend rate at 12% for October 2026 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The pilot's success suggests stablecoins could revolutionize cross-border settlements, enhancing speed, liquidity, and financial interoperability.

The post UK’s largest retail bank Lloyds, Visa complete live stablecoin settlement pilot appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The incident highlights the vulnerability of staking infrastructures, emphasizing the need for robust security measures to protect user rewards.

The post MetaMask says no user funds were hit in validator security incident appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Microsoft's declining Cloud ROIC highlights the tension between rapid AI infrastructure investment and sustainable profit margins.

The post JPMorgan estimates Microsoft Cloud ROIC will fall to about 37% in FY26 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Privacy Breakthrough a Zcash Killer? | Misha Komorov, Alloc Innit

Researchers have proposed a way to make Bitcoin private without changing Bitcoin itself. Misha Komarov, co-founder of alloc/init, explains Shielded Bitcoin: zero-knowledge proofs that hide the sender, receiver, and amount of a Bitcoin transfer, with no soft fork, no custodians, and no bridges. He covers how Bitcoin PIPEs make it possible and what the proposal still needs. It is a research proposal, not a finished product.

Chapters:
0:00 Shielded Bitcoin: Private Bitcoin Transactions With Zero-Knowledge Proofs
0:38 How Bitcoin PIPEs Make Privacy Possible Without a Soft Fork
1:42 Do Indexers and ZK Rollups Require Trust?
3:16 Shielded Bitcoin vs. Monero and Zcash
4:21 What Privacy Shielded Bitcoin Protects
5:59 How Private Are Early Users? The Small Privacy Set Problem
7:37 Is Shielded Bitcoin an Altcoin Killer?
9:12 Fees, Block Space, and Larger Shielded Transactions
10:50 Who Needs Private Bitcoin? Wrench Attacks and Corporate Treasuries
12:20 Dark Pools, Governments, and the Next Wave of Bitcoin Buyers

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

This post Bitcoin Privacy Breakthrough a Zcash Killer? | Misha Komorov, Alloc Innit first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s Institutional Era Has Arrived | Robinhood VP of Crypto Institutions Nicola White

Robinhood is bringing crypto perpetual futures to US customers, with up to 10x leverage on Bitcoin and Ether. Nicola White, Robinhood’s vice president of institutional crypto, explains how the CFTC no-action letter, the Bitstamp exchange, and Robinhood Derivatives made it happen, and why the company wants markets to be always on.

Chapters:
0:00 Robinhood’s Hood Summit: 24/7 Stock Trading and US Crypto Perps
0:40 Why Robinhood Wants Markets That Never Close
1:32 Bitstamp Perps and the CFTC No-Action Letter
2:19 Tokenized Stocks, the Basis Trade, and the Path for US Perps
3:20 Bitstamp’s Volume and the Retail–Institutional Merger
4:54 What Institutions Want to Do With Bitcoin
6:00 Institutional Bitcoin Depth and Large Block Trades
6:49 AI Trading Agents and Robinhood’s Sub-Account Controls
8:29 Lessons From the 2022 Meltdown and US Leverage Limits
10:12 How Bitcoin Changes Finance in 10 Years and What’s Next for Tokenized Stocks

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

This post Bitcoin’s Institutional Era Has Arrived | Robinhood VP of Crypto Institutions Nicola White first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Mark Moss: The Bitcoin Endgame – BTC to $1 Million by 2030

The Fed just raised rates, yet Bitcoin keeps climbing. Mark Moss, host of the Market Disruptors podcast, explains why he thinks most people are misreading why long-term rates are rising, how a booming economy could be part of the answer, and why he says Bitcoin benefits from both the debasement trade and a bullish technological future.

Chapters:
0:00 Mark Moss on the Fed’s “Token Raise” and an October Pause
1:54 The Flat Yield Curve, Bank Lending, and the 5.1% 10-Year
2:56 Why Bitcoin Is Rising as Rates Rise: “Price Is Truth”
5:40 Bitcoin vs. Gold: The Debasement Trade and a Bullish Future
6:19 Can the US Grow Its Way Out of $40 Trillion in Debt?
10:30 The Monetary Reset Is a Process, Not an Event
13:33 Four Ways Out of the Debt Problem and What Happens in 2029–2030
16:27 Stablecoins, the Genius Act, and Why 6 Billion People Want Dollars
20:14 Institutions Are Buying Bitcoin While Retail Sells
24:29 Bitcoin’s S-Curve, Its CAGR, and a $1 Million Price Target

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

This post Mark Moss: The Bitcoin Endgame – BTC to $1 Million by 2030 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

UK Brings Crypto Under Full FCA Oversight for the First Time

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has opened applications for crypto firms to become authorized, bringing the sector under full regulation for the first time.

In a Wednesday announcement, the watchdog said companies can apply so that the crypto industry has “clarity and legitimacy.”

The UK is in the process of drafting a sweeping new crypto bill. The FCA finalized its regulatory framework for cryptoassets in June, and the regime is due to take effect in October 2027.  

“The UK’s new crypto regime will give consumers greater protections and firms a clear framework to operate in. Firms can now apply for authorisation and start preparing for regulation,” Dominic Cashman, director of authorisation at the FCA, said in a statement. 

The statement added that firms will have to demonstrate that they meet requirements covering consumer protection, customer-asset safeguarding, market integrity and financial resilience.

Britain is pushing ahead with digital asset legislation since last year recognizing bitcoin and other digital assets as property. The reform came from a 2023 recommendation by the Law Commission, which argued that digital assets did not fit neatly into existing legal categories.

Despite the FCA’s announcement, the UK currently is trailing behind Brussels and Washington with digital asset regulation. 

The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation has applied to service providers since 30 December 2024. 

And the U.S. under President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law in July 2025, establishing a federal framework for dollar-backed tokens.

Despite lawmakers blocking landmark legislation the Clarity Act last month, U.S. regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission have pushed ahead with rulemaking regardless. 

This post UK Brings Crypto Under Full FCA Oversight for the First Time first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Surges 40% in Its Best Quarter Since Late 2024

Bitcoin is having one of its best quarters ever — another indication that the biggest cryptocurrency is in a bull market. 

As noted by the The Kobeissi Letter this week, the price of bitcoin is now up close to 30% since August 19, when the U.S. Treasury announced it planned to more than double the size of its government debt repurchases.

Over the past quarter, the bitcoin price has surged by 40% — its best quarterly performance since Q4 2024. 

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at nearly $83,698, unmoved over a 24-hour period but up 6% over a 30-day period. 

The coin has benefited from news that the Treasury would try to lower bond yields — which have soared to highs not seen since the 2000s. 

Bitcoin has done well with lower long-term yields because it reduces the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold, and generally supports risk-on sentiment. 

But despite the Treasury stepping in to try and tame the bond market, yields have continued to stay high. 

Bitcoin investors don’t seem that bothered. The asset is still doing well as the dollar continues to slip. The so-called debasement trade — where investors throw money at an asset to hedge against a currency losing its value — is hot again after total U.S. debt topped $40 trillion for the first time in July.  

The price of Bitcoin had been battered since notching a new all-time high of $126,080 in October, dropping by over 50%. Still, it has experienced the shallowest bear market — so far — in its history. 

CryptoQuant said in a report last week that bitcoin was back in a bull market after crossing above its 365-day moving average — the “definitive technical signal” that has marked the start of Bitcoin’s bull markets in past cycles.

The coin has shrugged off the Federal Reserve raising interest rates and lawmakers blockage of landmark crypto legislation, the Clarity Act. 

This post Bitcoin Surges 40% in Its Best Quarter Since Late 2024 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Ethereum validators face a configuration choice next week that could determine how aggressively the network tests its next major scaling push.

The Glamsterdam upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6 at 13:53:36 UTC, bringing changes designed to increase Ethereum's execution capacity. Node operators must update both execution and consensus clients before the fork, while stakers must also upgrade their beacon node and validator software.

But simply installing compatible software will not necessarily move Sepolia toward the 200 million gas preference scheduled for the test.

Prysm 7.2.0 and Teku 26.9.1 both support Glamsterdam but will continue using a 60 million gas preference after activation unless validators explicitly change their settings, according to the Ethereum Foundation. Prysm operators must use version 2 proposer settings or the keymanager API, while Teku validators can override the default through their validator configuration.

The distinction turns Sepolia into a coordination test for Ethereum's effort to substantially expand Layer 1 capacity.

A higher block gas limit allows more aggregate computation to fit into each block, creating room for more transactions and high-demand applications such as decentralized exchanges and other DeFi protocols. Additional capacity can ease congestion and reduce pressure on transaction fees when demand rises, though it does not make Ethereum's underlying block times faster.

Ethereum has already been moving in that direction. Its block gas limit began rising from 30 million toward 36 million in February 2025, the first adjustment since the network moved to proof-of-stake. It subsequently climbed to 45 million before Fusaka client releases adopted 60 million as their default.

Ethereum's 200 million ambition meets a 60 million default

Glamsterdam would push that scaling experiment considerably further, but 200 million should not be interpreted as an automatic new gas limit.

EIP-8261 introduces an optional gas-limit schedule that lets consensus clients coordinate recommended preferences at specific epochs. The proposal does not alter Ethereum's consensus-validity rules, and blocks remain valid whether their gas limit sits above or below the scheduled value. Validators can also explicitly choose their own preference.

That means Sepolia's realized gas limit will move gradually as validators propose blocks rather than jumping immediately to 200 million when Glamsterdam activates.

The higher target is part of a broader effort to increase the amount of work Ethereum can process without making validation impractical.

Glamsterdam combines the Amsterdam execution upgrade with Gloas on the consensus layer and introduces enshrined proposer-builder separation alongside block-level access lists, which allow clients to parallelize state reads and transaction validation. The Foundation says the changes lay the groundwork for higher Layer 1 throughput.

Ethereum has also added safeguards as capacity rises. Fusaka introduced a 16.7 million gas cap for individual transactions, limiting how much of a block any single operation can consume even as the overall block budget increases. That means higher block limits primarily create room for more aggregate activity rather than allowing individual smart-contract transactions to expand without restraint.

Sepolia will provide the first scheduled test of Glamsterdam before Ethereum developers decide how to proceed elsewhere. Hoodi and mainnet activation dates remain undecided, leaving validator participation in the 200 million preference among the signals developers can observe before taking the upgrade closer to production.

The post Ethereum is preparing a 200 million gas push as its Layer 1 scaling strategy accelerates appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ripple's Brazilian foothold spans cross-border payments and securities records in a country Chainalysis ranked first for grassroots crypto adoption.

Ripple and CSD BR, a regulated financial market infrastructure operator, announced a first phase on Sept. 29 to mirror ownership records for BTG Pactual investment fund shares on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). CSD BR's systems will remain the official record for registration, deposit, and settlement.

The announcement follows a Sept. 28 interview in which RippleX executive Markus Infanger told Estadão's E-Investidor that about $2.7 billion of the $6.7 billion in tokenized real-world financial assets he counted on XRPL was in Brazil.

That puts roughly 40% of the reported asset value in one country, although the measure reflects assets rather than payment activity.

Together, the developments show how Ripple's years of expansion have connected it to several parts of Brazil's financial system. The opportunity spans institutions moving money, platforms distributing stablecoins, and firms managing investment assets, with different measures of success for each.

Ripple was building there before the ranking

Ripple opened its Brazilian office in 2019 and announced XRP-enabled payments with Travelex Bank in August 2022. Those relationships predate the new adoption ranking by years.

In October 2024, its Mercado Bitcoin payments partnership initially targeted internal treasury transfers between Brazil and Portugal. The release described corporate and retail international payments as future plans, rather than services already available to those customers.

By March 2026, Ripple was expanding its Brazilian institutional offering across payments, custody, prime brokerage and treasury management. It named Banco Genial, Braza Bank and Nomad among payments users, while Mercado Bitcoin, Foxbit and Ripio were among platforms listing or supporting its dollar stablecoin, RLUSD.

Alongside that expansion, Ripple announced plans to seek a Brazilian virtual asset service provider license.

The same companies can connect several parts of the strategy. Mercado Bitcoin, for example, announced plans in July 2025 to tokenize more than $200 million in permissioned real-world assets on XRPL. The planned issuance adds an asset relationship to its payments and stablecoin connections.

Chainalysis's 2026 adoption index puts Brazil first overall, second for cross-border flows, third for service flows and domestic peer-to-peer activity, and fourth for balances.

Its revised methodology rewards broad performance across those four measures. First place does not mean Brazil has the world's largest crypto market by raw dollar volume, and the methodological change limits comparisons with earlier rankings.

Chainalysis estimated $252.5 billion in Brazilian crypto activity between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026. Its Latin America report also found that Brazil's crypto economy contracted 1.6% during that period, so adoption leadership coexisted with a slowdown.

For Ripple, the more useful connection is what businesses do with crypto. The report describes Brazilian companies using stablecoins for liquidity management and cross-border transfers, purposes that overlap with its institutional offering.

Brazil's Oct. 1 restrictions will bar virtual assets from settling aggregated eFX flows between providers and foreign counterparties, while individual international virtual-asset transfers remain permitted.

From represented assets to financial infrastructure

Infanger's reported XRPL asset total gives the Brazilian footprint a reported scale. The $2.7 billion figure describes tokenized real-world asset value represented on XRPL.

In October 2025, Ripple said VERT's credit platform recorded lifecycle events, documentation and payments on XRPL and its EVM sidechain. Its pension-receivables fund then held more than R$200 million in net assets.

The CSD BR announcement extends that approach into securities infrastructure. Its first phase mirrors BTG Pactual fund-share ownership records using XRPL tokens and Ripple custody, with access restricted to authorized Brazilian corporate and banking participants subject to identity and anti-money-laundering checks.

Native issuance and trading are envisaged for later phases after mirroring is validated. For now, the project gives Ripple a place inside existing financial processes without making the public blockchain the authoritative securities register.

That makes Brazil a practical test of Ripple's wider institutional strategy. Its announcements show relationships across payments, stablecoins, custody and investment records, but provide no comparable aggregate Brazil-only payment volume, RLUSD circulation or active institutional usage.

Sustained transactions and broader use of the CSD BR system would show how far those connections develop beyond the reported asset values.

The post Ripple quietly made Brazil the center of its XRPL tokenization push appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Japanese payment provider PayPay added Binance Pay on Sept. 30, letting eligible overseas visitors pay from their crypto balances at participating offline stores in Japan. Merchants receive the proceeds in Japanese yen.

PayPay's launch announcement says the integration runs through HIVEX, a cross-border payment network. For visiting Binance users, funds held in their crypto accounts can cover a yen-denominated purchase, with conversion handled during payment.

Binance says the feature is exclusively for visitors who have completed its identity verification and is unavailable to Japan residents. Its launch blog sets out that restriction, while PayPay specifically excludes Binance Japan users residing in Japan.

This visitor-payment launch does not extend the checkout feature to the exchange’s domestic customers.

How visitors pay

The payment tools sit inside the Binance app. A visitor can show a PayPay payment code for the merchant to scan, or scan a participating merchant’s PayPay QR code.

Both modes use the customer’s Binance balance, so the new payment option works through QR checkouts rather than requiring the merchant to receive crypto.

Binance’s Japan visitor FAQ says users can review the exchange rate before confirming. It says it supports more than 100 cryptocurrencies, including USDT, USDC, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB.

The customer’s crypto is automatically converted to yen, and the store’s sales proceeds remain in Japanese currency.

Binance's FAQ says payments and refunds are distinct transactions, and the amount returned can differ because of rate fluctuations and applicable foreign-exchange spreads. It does not specify a numerical spread, so the fee statement does not establish a cost-free currency conversion.

Exclusions include online platforms, some taxis and vending machines, PayPay Money-only stores, certain barcode-payment merchants, and some stores that do not support cross-border payments. Binance’s FAQ also excludes merchants that require Japanese identity verification.

A PayPay sign alone does not guarantee that the Binance-funded route will work. Travelers need both an eligible account and a store that accepts the cross-border service, whether they show their own code or scan the merchant’s.

For eligible visitors, the immediate benefit is being able to fund an accepted yen purchase directly from a Binance crypto balance after reviewing the exchange rate.

The post Japan’s biggest payment network opens its doors for crypto via Binance Pay appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Base’s Cobalt upgrade, scheduled for mainnet Sept. 30 at 18:00 UTC, will let issuers of B20 tokens configure balance seizures separately from ordinary transfer restrictions. For a token that enables the feature, a holder could remain free to transfer while still being eligible for administrative reassignment.

B20 is Base’s native ERC-20-compatible token standard, offered in Asset and Stablecoin variants. It already gives administrators control over roles and policies governing balance movements, and now it will also govern the administrative powers over those balances.

Role assignments identify who can exercise a particular power, while policy settings determine which accounts an operation can affect. Changing a token’s rules and executing a balance operation involve distinct permission checks.

Separate seizure permissions

The new administrative operation, called seizeWithMemo, moves a specified amount from a holder to another address. It preserves total supply and skips ordinary transfer policies and holder allowances.

An issuer must configure which accounts lose their exemption before the function can take their tokens. The setting, SEIZE_EXEMPT_POLICY, exempts everyone when left unset. Configuring eligibility alone is insufficient: execution requires SEIZE_ROLE, an unpaused seizure function, a permitted recipient, and sufficient balance.

A separate recipient policy determines where the seized tokens can go, and leaving that policy unset allows any otherwise valid destination. The holder’s ability to make an ordinary transfer does not answer either seizure-policy question.

B20’s existing transfer policies check the sender and receiver, plus the executor for certain transfers on another account’s behalf. Administrators can update those policies. Approving a spender does not remove the checks on the eventual transfer, but those ordinary transfer permissions are distinct from Cobalt’s seizure rules.

B20 also already has burnBlocked, which lets an authorized caller destroy tokens held by an account denied by the transfer sender policy. Cobalt marks that function deprecated but keeps it callable with its existing behavior.

That leaves issuers with different ways to remove a holder’s balance. Reassignment keeps the tokens in circulation at another address, while destroying the seized supply requires a subsequent burn. Seizure and burning have separate administrative roles and pause controls.

Base’s status page lists the mainnet upgrade as scheduled, with maintenance from 18:00 to 20:00 UTC. The upgrade overview lists Sepolia as live since Sept. 23 and mainnet as shipping on Sept. 30.

The v1.4.2 release adds Cobalt mainnet support and instructs node operators to upgrade by Sept. 30 at 18:00 UTC.

The post Base’s Cobalt upgrade adds another rule to affect token balances appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Judge Rachel P. Kovner rejected claims by nine alleged fraud victims seeking to contest forfeiture of approximately 127,271 Bitcoin in a Sept. 25 order.

Their filings did not plausibly connect their lost funds to the specific seized wallets, leaving them with a different potential recovery route if the government wins the forfeiture case.

The Eastern District of New York judge struck the timely claims of Ath Leepinyo and Connie Wilson and denied seven other claimants permission to file late. All nine lacked Article III standing, the legal threshold for contesting the action.

The case began with a civil forfeiture complaint filed on Oct. 14, 2025. DOJ said then that the Bitcoin was in US custody and alleged links to fraud and money laundering involving Prince Holding Group, a Cambodian conglomerate, and its chairman, Chen Zhi.

The court treated these claimants’ plausible allegations as establishing, at most, the position of general unsecured creditors: people seeking compensation without a qualifying interest in the particular assets being forfeited.

A loss tied to an alleged fraud did not establish ownership of coins in these wallets.

The order recognized that a constructive trust could give a claimant an equitable ownership interest and standing. That remedy can recognize an interest in property derived from a person’s assets. However, here none of the claimants plausibly alleged the necessary connection between their funds and the seized Bitcoin.

Lawrence D. Van Dyn Hoven, for example, relied on an investigator’s belief that his stolen cryptocurrency was part of the seizure. Kovner found that his filings offered no supporting facts explaining that belief.

What remission could provide

Kovner pointed to victim remission if the government succeeds in forfeiting the Bitcoin. That process allows eligible victims to petition DOJ for recovery from forfeited property even when they lack a present ownership interest in it.

Under 28 CFR 9.8, petitioners must document a specific financial loss directly caused by the offense underlying forfeiture or a related offense, and satisfy other eligibility conditions. Other conditions include no knowing participation in or benefit from the offense, and no willful blindness.

Petitioners must also show they have not been compensated for the loss and lack reasonably available alternative assets for recovery.

When the forfeited property cannot cover petitions in full, recognized victims may receive proportionate shares. Remission is capped at a victim’s share of the associated net forfeiture proceeds, so the size of the Bitcoin seizure is no promise of full repayment.

The Sept. 25 order resolves these nine claimants’ standing. Their potential recovery depends on government success in the forfeiture action and a separate discretionary decision on a documented-loss petition.

The post US court blocks victims from 127,000 seized Bitcoin, and petition rules are blamed appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Dogecoin is trading at $0.0946 on Thursday morning, the equivalent of 0.0838 euros. That is 0.4 percent more than 24 hours earlier, and it is the third attempt within a week to end at the same spot: the day's high was $0.0979, just below the zone around $0.098. Anyone wanting to make a decision on Dogecoin today holds two hard figures in their hands, and neither of them is the price itself. One is a deadline: the US fund Bitwise Dogecoin ETF stops trading on October 14. The other is the buying route, because in Germany that is what decides whether your gain is tax free after a year or not.

This text places both: what the level at $0.098 means technically, what happens to the closing fund on which day, which Dogecoin products can be held in a German portfolio at all, and where the tax dividing line runs between a direct purchase and a security.

Dogecoin price today: $0.0946, and $0.098 is holding once again

As of October 1, Dogecoin stands at $0.094598 according to CoinGecko. The range over the past 24 hours runs from $0.093635 to $0.097941, and trading turnover comes to around $972 million. Market capitalisation is about $14.8 billion, putting DOGE at rank twelve among the largest crypto assets. Around 156.1 billion coins are in circulation.

The time series alongside it says more than the daily figure. Over seven days there is a loss of 0.2 percent, over 30 days a gain of 13.3 percent, and over twelve months a loss of 60.9 percent. The price is around 87 percent away from the record high of $0.731578 set on May 7, 2021. That is the frame in which every price level of this autumn sits: a recovery within a long downward move, not a break out of it.

Open interest is a term that becomes important further down. It denotes the total of all open futures contracts on an asset, that is, the volume that still has to be closed. If it rises, traders are building new positions instead of settling old ones.

The levels above and below: $0.0936, $0.098 and $0.10

On the upside the first hurdle sits at $0.098. That supply is waiting there is not a chart line but a holdings figure: at that level a large part of the coins in circulation today were last moved. Our own report of September 30, 2026 put this supply zone at around 28 billion DOGE based on the distribution. Behind it at $0.10 follows a round level that works psychologically, because buy and sell orders bunch up there.

On the downside the day's low of $0.093635 is the first point at which demand has shown up in recent sessions. If it does not hold, the area around $0.090 comes into view, which held several times in September and is at the same time a round number.

In practice that means: as long as the price swings between $0.0936 and $0.098, every buy or sell decision is a bet on the breakout and not on a trend. Anyone wanting to place an order can align it with exactly those three numbers instead of going by a daily picture that will look different tomorrow.

Bitwise is closing the Dogecoin ETF BWOW: what happens on October 14 and on October 22

On September 10, 2026, Bitwise Investment Advisers announced that it was winding up the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF. The mandatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission states that Bitwise announced "its decision to liquidate and close the Fund, effective September 10, 2026". Two dates are fixed in it: the last day of trading on NYSE Arca is Wednesday, October 14, 2026. On Thursday, October 22, 2026, the remaining shareholders receive the net asset value of their shares as of the reference date of October 21 as a cash payment.

Shareholders do not have to arrange anything for that; the payout runs automatically. Anyone still holding the fund in their portfolio who would rather decide on the selling moment themselves has until October 14; after that the reference price of October 21 determines the amount. The background to the closure is plain demand: the fund had launched in November 2025 and slipped below one million dollars in assets through outflows.

Why the US fund was never the buying route for investors in Germany anyway

The closure sounds like news that hits German portfolios. As a rule it does not. US spot crypto funds are not products authorised for distribution under European law, because they lack the key information documents required by the PRIIPs regulation. German brokers therefore mostly do not even display them for purchase. Anyone who wanted to hold Dogecoin in a securities portfolio in Germany has so far done so through European debt securities and not through BWOW.

For the state of the market the report nevertheless remains relevant, because it says something about the demand side. While a US provider discontinues its Dogecoin product, industry services report inflows into other DOGE funds for the same weeks: wallstreet-online reported around $2.9 million in net inflows for the week to September 25, and thus a weekly record. Measured against a market with a capitalisation of $14.8 billion, both figures are small. The honest reading is therefore neither "funds are buying DOGE" nor "funds are fleeing", but rather: the fund wrapper has so far played barely any role with Dogecoin.

Dogecoin ETPs on Xetra: 21Shares and Valour in an ordinary securities portfolio

An ETP, that is, an exchange traded product, is in crypto assets an exchange-traded debt security backed by deposited coins. Unlike a fund under UCITS law it is not a segregated asset pool. That is precisely why these products in Europe are called ETPs or ETNs and not ETFs. Anyone wanting to read up on how the various wrappers are built will find the differences in our overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.

For Dogecoin there are two listed routes in Germany. The 21Shares Dogecoin ETP carries the ISIN CH1431521033 and the German securities number A4A5WJ, trades under the ticker DOGE on Xetra and is physically backed; custody of the coins runs through Coinbase Custody. The total expense ratio is 2.50 percent a year according to the provider. The product was launched in April 2025 and has been reachable through German brokers since the Xetra listing in spring 2026; the product page of 21Shares carries the current terms at any time. Alongside it, Valour has listed a physically backed Dogecoin ETP with the securities number A4AK2K on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and at Lang und Schwarz.

Both routes sit in the familiar portfolio, need no wallet and no private key. That is the convenience. What it costs is set out in the following two sections, and it is more than most expect.

Holding period, exemption threshold, flat tax: where a direct purchase and an ETP diverge for tax

If you buy Dogecoin directly and hold the coins in your own stock, the sale falls under private disposal transactions pursuant to Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. Two things follow from that which hardly any other asset class offers. First, after a holding period of more than one year the gain is tax free, regardless of its size. Second, within the year an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros per calendar year applies to the total of all private disposal transactions.

The word threshold is to be taken literally here and is constantly confused with an allowance. With an allowance, the first 1,000 euros would remain tax free. With a threshold, by contrast, the entire gain is taxable as soon as it exceeds 1,000 euros by even one euro. At a gain of 999 euros you pay nothing; at 1,001 euros you pay tax on 1,001 euros at your personal rate.

An ETP, by contrast, is a security. For securities the flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent applies plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, and the saver's lump-sum allowance is 1,000 euros a year. A one-year holding period after which everything would be tax free does not exist in this regime. For physically backed crypto ETPs with a claim to delivery of the coins the classification is disputed; parts of the literature see a transaction under Section 23 in it, while others treat it as capital income. Do not rely here on a rule of thumb from a forum but on the issuer's base prospectus and, in case of doubt, on a tax adviser. A clean transaction history is in both cases the precondition for being able to calculate at all; which tools deliver that is shown by our comparison of crypto tax software.

2.50 percent in fees a year: what the ETP really costs over twelve months

The total expense ratio of 2.50 percent is not debited once a year but taken on an ongoing basis out of the deposited holding. In practice that means: the number of coins behind each share falls over time. On an investment of 2,000 euros that is around 50 euros a year, on 10,000 euros around 250 euros, and in each case before any price move has happened at all.

Against that, a direct purchase involves a one-off trading fee of between 0.1 and 1.5 percent of the order volume depending on the provider, plus the spread. After that no ongoing costs arise as long as you hold the coins yourself. Over a period of several years the ETP's convenience advantage therefore turns into a noticeable cost disadvantage. The current fee models of the trading venues are set out in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

The calculation shifts when a savings plan is involved, or when the securities portfolio remains the only option for other reasons, for instance because an employer forbids staff from buying crypto assets directly. Then the question is no longer ETP or direct purchase, but which of the two ETPs is cheaper and more liquid to trade.

Leverage and liquidation: what open interest says about the setback risk

The figures on open interest in Dogecoin futures diverge depending on the data service and the reference date. krypto-magazin.de names around $1.5 billion, while CoinGape puts it at around $1.66 billion for the moment after the brief recapture of $0.10, at a daily gain of 5.65 percent. Both values are estimates drawn from differing numbers of exchanges; the range is therefore the more honest figure than any single number.

The statement behind it does not hang on the second decimal place. Open interest of this order of magnitude at a spot turnover of $972 million a day means that a substantial part of the movement arises from leveraged positions. If the price falls below a cluster of liquidation thresholds, the exchange sells those positions by force, and the selling pressure amplifies precisely the move that triggered it. That is why the $0.0936 from the day's low is more than a chart level.

For you a sober consequence follows from that: anyone buying without leverage will not be liquidated and can sit out such a move. Anyone working with leverage should know their own liquidation threshold before the market finds it.

MiCA authorisation: how to recognise a permitted provider in Germany

Since December 30, 2024 the European regulation on markets in crypto assets, MiCA for short, has applied in full. Anyone trading or holding crypto assets for customers on a commercial basis in Germany needs an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider for it. BaFin is the competent authority, and it lists the authorised firms in a public register.

Two things follow from that. For one, you can check before the first euro whether a provider is listed there, instead of relying on its own marketing claim. For another, authorised providers have to make a whitepaper or comparable information available and may not present returns as certain. An offer promising a fixed return on Dogecoin breaches that and is a warning sign for that reason alone.

For custody the following applies regardless: if the coins sit with a provider, they form part of the insolvency estate in the event of insolvency unless a segregated custody account exists. Anyone holding larger amounts who does not want to trade them takes the coins off the trading venue. Which devices come into question for that is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

Dogecoin price: how to proceed now

1. Decide the buying route before the price. First determine whether you buy directly or take an ETP into your portfolio, because the holding period, the tax regime and the ongoing costs all depend on it. The terms of the trading venues are set out in the comparison of crypto exchanges, and the construction of the exchange-traded products in the overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.
2. Note down the three numbers. $0.0936 as the day's low, $0.098 as the supply zone and $0.10 as the round level. An order at those points is comprehensible; an order placed on a whim is not.
3. Set up the tax file before the first sale is due. Record the purchase date, quantity, price and fee for every purchase, so that the one-year deadline and the 1,000 euro exemption threshold can be demonstrated later. Which tools write that along automatically is shown by the comparison of crypto tax software.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Anyone holding Shiba Inu who wanted to do something with it inside the ecosystem has been stuck for months: validator staking on the project's own layer-2 chain Shibarium has been under maintenance since April 17, 2026, that is, for 167 days. That is the status the operators themselves report, and it has consequences that go beyond forgone BONE rewards. After the infrastructure switch, the chain's block explorer has read back only a little over half of all blocks, and for many German holders that explorer is precisely the source from which the proof for the tax office comes at the end of the year.

The price gives hardly any signal on this. SHIB is quoted on Thursday morning at around $0.00000582, a good one percent above the day's open. So the day's move explains nothing. What can be explained is the state of the technology underneath, and that is traceable in a few minutes with one RPC call and a look at the status page. This article says what is standing still, what is still running and what action follows from it for you.

Validator staking on Shibarium: under maintenance since April 17, 2026

Shibarium is the layer-2 chain of the Shiba Inu ecosystem. It works to the same basic pattern as other sidechains with their own validator set: whoever deposits BONE runs or supports a validator and receives a share of the fees and the issuance in return. Validator staking means depositing BONE with a validator, either as the operator of your own node or as a delegator who assigns their balance to someone else's node.

It is exactly this part of the ecosystem that is switched off. The SHIB ecosystem status page lists the validator staking entry as an incident beginning April 17, 2026 with the state maintenance. No date for its return is given there. Users are expressly asked not to attempt staking transactions during this period. That is not a throwaway line: a transaction running against a contract whose interface and settlement are in the middle of being moved can cost fees without the intended effect occurring.

This has to be placed in the context of the larger switch that has been under way since the spring. In September the chain's public access points were replaced, and the old RPC addresses no longer respond. How that affects wallet setup is something we described on September 29 in a separate piece on the Shibarium switch and your wallet. On September 15 a complete rotation of the node addresses for the Bor and Heimdall layers followed, and on September 19 developer Kaal Dhairya reported via a community member that the chain's reorganisation had been resolved. What remained open after that report was the move of the RPC provider into the new environment.

What the SHIB ecosystem status page reports today

On October 1 the status page lists three unresolved entries. The first is validator staking. The second concerns the rewards from the SSLP pools on ShibaSwap, the ecosystem's decentralised exchange; the distribution is delayed. The third concerns the Bury function, with which holders deposit SHIB, LEASH and BONE on ShibaSwap and receive interest-bearing tokens in return. There too the rewards are stalling.

All three entries share the same note: those affected should contact support with their wallet address so that claims are processed by hand. For you that means two things. First, on the operators' account, forgone rewards count as deferred and not as forfeited. Second, the burden of proof lies with you: anyone registering a claim in December needs the address, the time of the deposit and the amount. You should note down those three details now, not once the interface is running again.

A word on how solid this source is: the status page is the operators' own account of themselves. There is officially nothing better than that account, but an independent measurement still does not replace it. The next section therefore contains figures that can be gathered without going through the operators.

Shibariumscan at 54 percent: the explorer trails the network by 8.77 million blocks

The block explorer Shibariumscan runs on the Blockscout software and publishes its own index status through an open interface. On October 1 it reports that indexing is not complete and puts the share of blocks read in at 54 percent. In absolute numbers, the explorer has captured 10,466,121 blocks. At the same time the chain itself stood at block 19,237,206, queried directly through the chain's official access point with the identifier 109. The gap therefore comes to around 8.77 million blocks.

This figure becomes interesting in a time comparison. On September 20 the same value stood at 53 percent. So in eleven days the index has grown by one percentage point. If that pace holds, reading in the remaining 46 points will take well over a year. That is an extrapolation and not an announcement by the operators, and a single faster pass could dispose of it. As an order of magnitude it is still useful, and it tells you that for the time being you should not assume you will find your complete Shibarium history again in the explorer.

1,620 transactions a day: how empty Shibarium is running right now

The second figure that can be gathered independently is the load on the chain. The explorer reports 1,620 transactions for the current day and a network utilisation of 0.04 percent. As a cross-check we queried 20 consecutive blocks directly through the chain's access point: those 20 blocks contained exactly one transaction, at a mean block time of five seconds. Extrapolate that and you land in the same order of magnitude as the explorer's daily figure.

The gas price fits with it. It stands at 0.13 Gwei, that is, at the bottom stop. A chain that nobody is pushing on is cheap. For you as a holder that is mixed news: transfers on Shibarium currently cost next to nothing, but a chain with this level of utilisation also carries no fee income out of which staking rewards could be fed. The question of whether validator staking returns in its old form on an economic basis hangs on this figure at least as much as on the technology.

BONE, Bury and SSLP: which staking routes in the ecosystem are open

It is worth keeping the routes apart, because they are affected to different degrees and because in the debate everything often ends up in one pot.

The bottom row is the important one. Anyone simply holding SHIB on the Ethereum mainnet in their own wallet is not affected by any of this. There, SHIB is an ordinary token under the ERC-20 standard, and its balance hangs on none of the disrupted contracts. The disruptions hit the layers above, that is, Shibarium and ShibaSwap.

Anyone looking for yield on holdings, by contrast, currently has to look outside the Shiba ecosystem. Which supervised and which decentralised providers come into question for that, and on what terms, is set out in our comparison of staking providers. The pointer belongs here because otherwise the obvious reaction to a stalled staking interface is to take the next best interface, and that is rarely the cheapest.

The one-year holding period under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act and the gap in the Shibarium proof

This is where the index gap from the third section becomes concrete. In Germany, the one-year holding period under Section 23 (1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the Income Tax Act applies to crypto assets held as private assets. Anyone holding for longer than twelve months disposes of them tax free. Within the year, an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros applies to the total of all private disposal transactions. Rewards from staking or lending, on the other hand, as a rule count as other income under Section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act, where the exemption threshold is 256 euros a year.

What is decisive is the evidence side. The Federal Ministry of Finance's circular of March 6, 2025 on individual questions of the income tax treatment of certain crypto assets, file reference IV C 1 - S 2256/00042/064/043, contains for the first time a dedicated section on cooperation and record-keeping obligations. What it requires are comprehensible records of acquisition, disposal and receipt. Anyone who has moved holdings across a bridge onto a layer-2 chain has to be able to present those movements.

And that is exactly what becomes difficult as long as the chain's explorer has not yet read 46 percent of the blocks. So do not draw your evidence from the explorer but from the sources that are complete: the statements of the exchange you bought from, your wallet's export files, and the transaction identifiers you have saved yourself. A tax tool can take over the consolidation, but it cannot create the completeness of the input data; which providers read which chains is set out in the comparison of crypto tax software.

Custody of SHIB: the difference between the Ethereum mainnet and the Shibarium bridge

A bridge is a device that locks a token on one chain and issues an image of it on a second chain. The holding on the layer 2 is therefore always a claim against that device and not the token itself. As long as the bridge is working, nobody notices the difference. If the environment around it falls into a lengthy switch, as is currently the case, you notice it at once.

Nothing dramatic follows from that, but a sober order of priority does. Holdings you want to leave lying for longer belong on the Ethereum mainnet in a wallet whose keys you hold yourself. A hardware wallet separates the key from the computer and is the obvious solution for amounts whose loss would hurt; the device classes and their prices are set out in the comparison of hardware wallets. Amounts you actually do something with on Shibarium you leave there, but in a size whose standstill you can bear.

If you want to keep using the chain, the right access point matters. After the switch, the official address responds under the identifier 109; the old addresses no longer do. Anyone who has configured a wallet with an outdated address sees an empty balance there even though nothing is lost. That is the most common moment of fright in these weeks, and it has nothing to do with the staking.

Buying route under MiCA: where German investors trade SHIB with supervised providers

Since December 30, 2024 the European regulation on markets in crypto assets, MiCA for short, has applied in full; in Germany it is flanked by the Crypto Markets Supervision Act. Providers offering services around crypto assets here need an authorisation and are subject to supervision. For you as a buyer that is above all a question of enforcing your rights: with an authorised provider you have a point of contact and a supervisory route, with a decentralised interface you have neither.

That is not an argument against ShibaSwap; it merely places the current situation. The delayed rewards there are, according to the operators, settled through support, that is, as a matter of goodwill. Anyone who does not want that difference buys and holds through a supervised trading venue. Which providers hold an authorisation in Germany and what their fees and custody models look like is set out in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

SHIB in the order book on Thursday morning: $0.00000582

For context, the day's figures, deliberately at the end and not at the beginning. SHIB is quoted on Thursday morning at around $0.00000582, which in euros is about 0.00000514. The day's open was $0.00000575, a good one percent away. Over the past 24 hours the range lay between $0.00000569 and $0.00000599. The figures come from the order books of Kraken and Coinbase; depending on the venue the last digit differs, which at a price of this magnitude is normal.

The connection to the preceding sections is weaker than the usual narratives suggest. A stalled staking interface ties up no appreciable quantity of SHIB, and Shibarium's network load is too small to move supply and demand on the large trading venues. Anyone deriving a statement about the price from the disruption is overstretching the data. What can be derived from it is a statement about availability, verifiability and custody, and those are the three things that will genuinely rest on you over the coming months.

Shibarium staking: the key points for your decision

1. Secure your records before you move anything. For every deposit with Bury, in an SSLP pool or with a validator, note down the wallet address, the date and the amount, and export your transaction list from your wallet and from the exchange. The chain's explorer is currently not a reliable source for that. Which tool takes over the consolidation is set out in the comparison of crypto tax software.
2. Separate holding from using. What is meant to stay put belongs on the Ethereum mainnet in a wallet with your own key; a suitable device class is in the comparison of hardware wallets. On Shibarium you leave only what you genuinely need there.
3. Look for yield where it is actually being paid out. As long as validator staking and Bury are stalling, waiting earns nothing. The terms of the supervised and the decentralised alternatives are set out in the comparison of staking providers, together with the question of how the income is classified for tax.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Anyone who sells their coins and cannot prove the purchase price will in future have to pay tax on half the sale proceeds. This substitute assessment appears in the German Federal Ministry of Finance's draft bill on the "Act to reform the taxation of certain crypto assets held as private assets", and it is the point that has so far been lost in the debate about the one-year holding period. The cabinet is due to approve the draft on October 14, 2026. Associations and law firms may submit comments until October 6, 2026.

For you this means two things. Your current holdings stay protected if you bought them by December 31, 2026. And from 2027 your purchase receipts become a document whose loss carries a price you can put a figure on.

Substitute assessment: 50 percent of the sale proceeds as the tax base

A substitute tax base is a value that the law applies when the actual value cannot be established. That is exactly what the draft provides the 50 percent rule for: if the exchange does not know the date of acquisition and the acquisition cost, the taxable gain is assessed at 50 percent of the entire sale proceeds. That is how the analysis by the specialist portal Der Betrieb of September 14, 2026 describes it.

A worked example makes the spread visible. If you sell coins for 10,000 euros and bought them for 9,000 euros, your real gain is 1,000 euros. Without proof, the substitute assessment assumes a gain of 5,000 euros. At a tax rate of 25 percent, around 1,000 euros separate those two cases.

The comparison with equities puts the severity in context. For securities, a substitute assessment of 30 percent of the proceeds has applied for years when the bank does not know the acquisition data. At 50 percent, the crypto draft sits above that. The tax advisory firm GTKP expressly highlighted this difference on September 15, 2026.

The reach of the rule matters: the substitute assessment is not a final verdict on your tax burden. It determines what the exchange withholds. You can claim the real acquisition cost in your tax return and recover tax paid in excess. But you then have to be able to prove it, and the burden of proof lies with you. Which documents the tax office may demand in an audit is something the tax administration has set out in its cooperation obligations; missing records count against you.

Exchange crypto asset: which coins the draft covers

The draft works with a new term. Under the definition, which follows the EU regulation MiCAR, an "exchange crypto asset" is a crypto asset that is accepted as a means of exchange and that no central bank has issued or guaranteed. What is meant first and foremost is Bitcoin and Ether.

This delimitation is more than terminological housekeeping. It decides which positions in your portfolio fall under the new regime and which continue to be treated under the old rules. For tokens that clearly qualify as securities or as payment tokens with a central bank link, the draft does not apply. Where exactly the line runs for smaller altcoins, stablecoins and tokenised products is something the draft does not yet work out sharply, in the assessment of both specialist sources.

From Section 23 to Section 20 of the Income Tax Act: 25 percent flat tax instead of your income tax rate

Today, gains from the sale of crypto assets are private disposal transactions under Section 23 (1) no. 2 of the German Income Tax Act. From that follows the familiar one-year deadline: after twelve months of holding, the gain is tax free. Below that, it is charged at your personal income tax rate, which can reach up to 45 percent.

The draft moves these gains to Section 20 (2) sentence 1 no. 9 of the Income Tax Act, that is, into income from capital assets. There the flat-rate withholding tax of 25 percent applies, plus the solidarity surcharge, and church tax on top where you are liable for it. The holding period no longer plays any part. In the wording of Der Betrieb, a gain would be taxable even after five, ten or twenty years.

Whether that works out cheaper or more expensive for you depends on two figures: your marginal tax rate and your actual holding period. An investor on a high income who trades within a year will pay less in future. A long-term holder who could sell tax free until now loses an advantage that hardly any other EU country offers in this form.

Grandfathering: the cut-off date of December 31, 2026 separates two tax worlds

The draft only applies going forward. Crypto assets that you acquire by December 31, 2026 remain under the old law with the one-year holding period. For everything you acquire from January 1, 2027, the new regime applies. GTKP summarises the mechanism as meaning that grandfathering preserves the old one-year deadline rather than replacing it: your legacy holdings keep their tax exemption after twelve months permanently, even if you do not sell them until 2030.

That creates a dividing line in every portfolio. Two Bitcoin positions bought a day apart can be subject to different tax rules. Which position you sell therefore becomes a question with tax consequences, and the order of disposal cannot simply be asserted at will. This is where a clean transaction history pays off; the tools in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers carry exactly this allocation and document it in an auditable way.

Airdrops and gifts: acquisition cost of zero euros

For crypto assets acquired free of charge, the draft sets the acquisition cost at zero euros. Both specialist sources name this point. The consequence is arithmetically plain and economically substantial: if you later sell an airdrop for 2,000 euros, the entire amount is a taxable gain, because there is no acquisition value to set against it. A holding period that would defuse the transaction does not exist in the new regime.

It is not only airdrops in the narrow sense that are affected. Tokens from reward programmes, forks and allocations without consideration also fall into this logic, insofar as they are exchange crypto assets. Anyone taking part in distributions regularly is therefore building a position that becomes fully taxable on sale.

Wallet deposits: where the gap in the proof arises

The substitute assessment does not hit the majority of cases. If you buy on an exchange, leave the coins there and sell them there, the exchange knows the date and the price. In cases of doubt the draft also allows the platform to rely on your own information, as long as it has no contradictory data.

It gets tight in a transaction that is everyday business in this industry: a deposit from your own wallet or from another exchange. The receiving platform then sees an incoming transfer with no history. It does not know when the coins came into being or what they cost. It is precisely in this gap that the 50 percent rule bites, and GTKP names the wallet deposit as the typical application.

In practice that means the more often your coins have moved between wallets and platforms, the more important a continuous chain of records becomes. Anyone switching exchanges in the process should secure the old provider's transaction exports before access ends. After an account closure, that export is usually no longer retrievable.

Staking and lending: Section 20 (1) no. 12 of the Income Tax Act and the new holding

The draft assigns income from lending and passive staking to capital income under Section 20 (1) no. 12 of the Income Tax Act. Lending describes the interest-bearing loan of coins, passive staking the participation in securing the network without running a validator of your own. Both are therefore treated like interest income.

On top of that comes a consequence that is easily overlooked. Rewards received after December 31, 2026 count as a newly acquired holding. They do not inherit the grandfathering of the coins they arose from. So anyone who keeps staking a protected legacy position is continuously building new, unprotected positions alongside it. GTKP points out that the draft does not yet regulate the timing of such rewards on legacy holdings precisely.

Two loss worlds without a bridge: old and new holdings kept apart

Losses from legacy holdings remain losses under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. They can only be offset against gains from private disposal transactions. Losses from new holdings move into the world of Section 20 and can be offset there against other capital income. According to Der Betrieb's account, the draft contains no transitional provision connecting the two pots. The loss carry-back is dropped.

For practical purposes this is an unresolved point. Anyone who has built up loss carry-forwards under Section 23 over years and from 2027 only realises gains under the new regime might no longer be able to use those carry-forwards. Whether the legislature will improve on this is open; it is one of the points the associations' submissions are likely to target.

The timetable: comment deadline October 6, cabinet October 14

The Federal Ministry of Finance has sent the draft bill to the associations. Comments are possible until October 6, 2026. The cabinet decision is scheduled for October 14, 2026. After that comes the parliamentary procedure with the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.

A draft bill is a ministry's working version and not yet a law. Between a cabinet decision and promulgation, drafts change regularly, and individual parameters such as the level of the substitute assessment or the treatment of the loss pots are typical places where that happens. Today you can treat only the direction as settled, not every figure.

Tax withheld by the exchange only from 2028: the year 2027 you declare yourself

The substantive rules are due to take effect on January 1, 2027. Under the draft, automatic tax withholding by the platforms only begins on January 1, 2028. In between lies a year in which the new rules apply but the withholding is not yet running: gains from 2027 belong in your tax return.

This transitional year is the period with the greatest scope for error. The tax liability exists regardless of the holding period, no automatic payment over takes place, and you have to keep track of the allocation between protected legacy holdings and new holdings yourself. Running in parallel is the reporting obligation under DAC8, through which German platforms pass their users' data to the tax administration anyway. Your data set and the tax office's should match up in that year.

Crypto tax reform: how to proceed now

1. Pull your records together and secure them. From every exchange and broker you use or have used, download the complete transaction export and secure it outside the platform. For keeping track of the acquisition date and acquisition cost on an ongoing basis, the applications from our comparison of crypto tax software are suitable, because they link incoming deposits from outside with their history.
2. Go through your wallet deposits. Work through the incoming transfers that landed on an exchange without a purchase history. Those are the positions where the 50 percent substitute assessment would bite. If a record is missing there, now is the moment to reconstruct it from old account or mail archives; which providers deliver solid transaction reports is shown by our overview of crypto exchanges.
3. Keep the cut-off date in view. Whatever you acquire by December 31, 2026 keeps the old one-year deadline. Whether you bring purchases forward because of it is a decision about your investment and not about tax alone; how a regular purchase is documented for tax purposes is shown by our savings plan comparison.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Sources on the draft bill: Der Betrieb on the tax reform for exchange crypto assets and the assessment by the tax advisory firm GTKP.

From the coming network upgrade onwards, NEAR will burn every single gas fee. Until now, 30 percent of the fees that accrue when a smart contract is called flowed back to the owner of that contract; the remaining 70 percent left circulation. With version 2.14 of the network software nearcore, that rebate drops to zero. After that, the full amount is burned. Reports put the date at around October 5, 2026, but that is not a firmly committed deadline.

For you as a holder this means two things: the supply of NEAR will shrink faster whenever a lot is happening on the network, and part of the revenue that applications on NEAR could count on until now falls away. The market priced the decision in long ago, but the technical execution is still ahead.

100 percent instead of 70 percent: what nearcore 2.14 changes in the gas model

Gas on NEAR is the computing fee for every transaction. Whoever calls a smart contract pays for it in NEAR. Until now that amount was split: the protocol burned 70 percent, and 30 percent went as a reward to the account that owns the contract being called. Inside the protocol this share sits in a single parameter named burnt_gas_reward, set at three tenths until now. The upgrade sets it to zero.

Technically this is a small intervention, economically a large one. After the change, a function call pays nothing back to the contract account. Every fee a user settles leaves circulation completely and for good. Burned tokens cannot be restored, and there is no office that could reverse the entry.

Implementation hangs on the rollout of the client software. The release notes for nearcore 2.14 list the change as part of the package. Validators have to install the version, and the new rule only takes hold in live operation once enough of them have switched over. Anyone writing a deadline into the calendar is therefore better off writing a week than a day.

HSP-027: how the decision came about in the House of Stake

The decision is not new, only its execution is. The governance body House of Stake adopted proposal HSP-027 on July 8, 2026. The result was unambiguous: 46 votes, which together carried 4.66 million veNEAR, were in favour, while two votes with 1,819 veNEAR between them were against. veNEAR is the voting weight that arises from locked NEAR; whoever locks for longer weighs more heavily.

The reasoning comes from NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin. The rebate was once meant to reward developers for building reusable components. On his account, the mechanism no longer reflects how applications on NEAR earn their money today: projects mostly cover their users' gas costs themselves and bring in revenue through spreads, subscriptions or advertising. Polosukhin called the vote a good test of governance ahead of further proposals, and he said he was pleased to be steering NEAR's economics explicitly through governance from now on. The protocol gains in simplicity, and some contract operators lose a source of income.

That a body votes on a protocol parameter and the result lands in a client version four weeks later is the actual process behind the headline. What matters in it for you is that a vote of locked tokens stands behind the rule, not a company decision. By the same route it can be changed back.

Deflation by usage: the burn hangs on network load

A higher burn share does not lower supply automatically. It lowers it only to the extent that the network is used. What gets burned is what accrues in fees, and fees accrue when transactions run. If activity stays low, the additional effect stays small as well. If it rises, the loss of the rebate works like an amplifier: out of every euro in fees, 100 percent instead of 70 percent will disappear in future.

Around 1.308 billion NEAR are currently in circulation, and there is no fixed upper limit. That is what sets it apart from Bitcoin: with NEAR, scarcity arises from the running ratio between issuance and burning, without a fixed wall in the code. It is exactly this ratio that the upgrade shifts, without touching issuance.

How you can read the effect

The figure that counts is the total of fees per day, not the price. A network with many small transactions burns more than one with a few large ones. At NEAR the main driver is held to be the Intents system for swaps across chains, whose volume has risen from under one billion to more than 32 billion dollars within twelve months according to industry reports. How this area works and where its catches lie is something we took apart in our piece on NEAR Intents.

NEAR price at $5.46: 11 percent in a day, 175 percent in 30 days

On Thursday morning NEAR is trading at $5.46, the equivalent of 4.83 euros. According to CoinGecko data that is 11.3 percent more than 24 hours earlier. On a weekly view the gain sits between 22 and 27 percent depending on the point of measurement, and over 30 days at around 175 percent. Market capitalisation therefore comes to about $7.14 billion, rank 21 among all crypto assets, on trading volume of around $1.59 billion in 24 hours.

This run puts the news in its place. NEAR is still around 73 percent away from its all-time high of $20.44 from January 2022. But a threefold gain within a month also means that a large share of the most recent buyers are sitting on profits and can sell at any moment. Whoever gets in now is not buying into a quiet situation.

Part of the push comes from outside. Since September 29, 2026, a Bitwise spot ETF on NEAR has traded on NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR. Figures for the first trading day diverge: an inflow of $35.5 million and a trading volume of $15.1 million are reported. In both cases it is a double-digit million sum on day one. What this instrument means for a portfolio in Germany, and why you cannot simply buy it here, is set out in our text on the NEAR ETF NRR.

Buying route in Germany: MiCA authorisation before the fee comparison

For access to NEAR itself, a clear order has applied in Germany since the MiCA regulation. What counts first is whether the provider holds an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider in the EU and is supervised by BaFin or another European authority. Only after that is it worth looking at spreads, order fees and withdrawal costs. A platform without European authorisation can close access for German users tomorrow, and a cheap tariff will not help you then. Which trading venues clear this hurdle is shown by our overview of crypto exchanges compared.

Staking and validators: the loss of the rebate does not hit delegators

This is where the most common mix-up arises, so one step at a time. The rebate of 30 percent went to the owners of smart contracts, that is, to the operators of applications. It did not go to validators, and not to users who delegate their NEAR to a validator. The reward for staking comes out of the protocol's issuance and is a different pot. The upgrade does not touch that pot.

In practice that means your staking income does not fall because of the change. Anyone running an application on NEAR that has covered part of its costs through the gas rebate until now, by contrast, has to recalculate. For holders the second group is only of indirect interest, namely when a heavily used application changes its prices or leaves the network as a result.

Staking through an exchange or directly with a validator

When you stake through a trading platform, the platform keeps the keys and often part of the reward. When you delegate directly to a validator, control stays with you, but you carry the risk of picking a validator with poor availability. In both cases an unbonding period applies, during which the tokens are not available. How the terms look at various providers is something we have set side by side in our overview of staking platforms.

Holding period: one year decides whether your NEAR gains are tax free

In Germany, gains from the sale of crypto assets count as private disposal transactions. If you sell within a year of buying, the gain is taxable at your personal income tax rate; below an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros per year it stays tax free. After a holding period of more than one year the gain is tax free regardless of its size.

With a coin that has almost tripled within 30 days, that is no side issue. A sale in October 2026 falls fully into the tax net if the purchase dates from September 2026. Anyone who wants to use the deadline needs proof of the purchase date and purchase price for every single tranche. Staking rewards follow their own rules here and count as other income in the year they are received.

The gas model upgrade itself does not trigger any taxable event for you. What gets burned is fees inside the protocol, not tokens out of your wallet. So there is no inflow you would have to declare, and no acquisition that starts a new deadline.

Leverage and liquidation: perp positions are especially exposed ahead of the upgrade

After a rise of this magnitude, leveraged positions are the most sensitive spot in the market. A perpetual future on NEAR costs funding on an ongoing basis, and at a leverage of ten a countermove of ten percent is enough to use up the margin. NEAR gained more than 11 percent on Thursday alone; a move of that size in the other direction is just as much within the realm of the possible.

Around an upgrade a second point comes into play. Dates that are imprecisely set produce positions that bet on a date. If the rollout shifts by days, those bets come to nothing, and the unwinding moves the price more than the technical change itself.

Custody: hardware wallet, exchange account and control over the keys

Anyone who wants to hold NEAR for months in order to reach the holding period has a custody problem to solve. On an exchange account the tokens sit within the platform's reach. That is convenient for staking and for quick sales, but it exposes you to the risk that the platform fails or halts withdrawals. On a hardware wallet the keys sit with you, but you have to keep the recovery words safe and separate.

An intermediate solution that has proven itself is splitting things up: the portion you trade or stake with on the platform, the holding earmarked for the deadline in self-custody. What matters is that every movement between the two worlds is documented, because the tax office will want to see the acquisition when you later sell.

What the burn does not deliver

A complete fee burn is not a promise about the price. It shifts one quantity in the supply, and whether that shows up in the price depends on demand and on network load. Projects with deflationary mechanisms have both risen and fallen in the past. Anyone taking the change as an argument to buy should measure it against the total of fees, not against the headline.

Just as little does the decision settle the open question of issuance. As long as new NEAR come into being and no upper limit exists, the net effect remains a calculation with two entries. The upgrade only improves one of them.

NEAR gas fees: the key points for your decision

1. Check access before you think about fees. Take a trading venue with European authorisation, so that your access does not hang on a supervisory decision. The candidates are listed in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Assess staking separately from the change. Your rewards come out of issuance and remain untouched by the loss of the gas rebate; compare unbonding periods and deductions instead, in the overview of staking platforms.
3. Record the purchase date and purchase price for each tranche. Without that proof the one-year deadline cannot be demonstrated later; a tracker handles it on an ongoing basis, see tax tools and portfolio trackers.

The date itself is best treated as a window rather than a cut-off day. The decision is confirmed and the delivery is scheduled; only the rollout among the validators turns both into the new rule. Whoever builds positions beforehand builds them on an expectation, and whoever waits for the change misses no mechanism, at most a move.

How the proposal was argued in detail and how the vote turned out is documented at The Cryptonomist.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Anyone searching for “buy Ethereum with PayPal” usually expects a button in the PayPal app. In Germany there is none. PayPal does not trade crypto-assets here, and nothing about that changed at the start of October 2026 either. What does work is a detour: you top up a crypto exchange with euros from your PayPal account and buy Ethereum there. That detour costs you two things an ordinary bank transfer does not: a fee you do not know before you click, and three days during which your ETH may not leave the exchange.

This article works through both. It shows what actually arrives in ether out of 100 euros along the three routes SEPA, debit card and PayPal, why the lock-up period weighs more heavily for Ethereum than the difference in fees, and what can go wrong when you move the coins on to a wallet of your own. We have already answered the same question for Bitcoin: buying Bitcoin with PayPal. With Ethereum two points come on top that do not arise in that form with Bitcoin, namely the choice of network and the question of what staking does to the holding period.

PayPal does not sell crypto-assets in Germany

The distinction matters, because many guides blur it: PayPal as a dealer in crypto-assets and PayPal as a payment route are two different things. The first exists in the United States, the second in Germany.

That can be established from PayPal's own presence. The product page for buying and selling cryptocurrencies exists on PayPal's US site. On the German site the corresponding address leads nowhere. More telling still is a look at the terms of use: in the German version, last updated on September 7, 2026 and a good 150,000 characters long, the word cryptocurrency does not appear at a single point. A service a provider does not mention in its own contractual documents is a service it does not offer.

For you that means: every page promising you can buy ether “directly at PayPal” either describes the US market, or it describes the detour via an exchange and names it imprecisely. There is no third case.

The only route runs through a euro deposit at a crypto exchange

The actual process has four steps, and PayPal is involved in only one of them. You open an account at a crypto exchange and verify your identity. You deposit euros and choose PayPal as the payment route. You buy ether with the euro balance. And if you want to hold the coins yourself, you then transfer them to a wallet of your own.

Crypto exchange here means a trading venue that swaps crypto-assets for euros and holds the balance for you. In this process PayPal is neither dealer nor custodian, only the till at the door. That division of roles explains most of the peculiarities that follow: the exchange determines what the purchase costs and when you may move your coins, not PayPal.

PayPal appears as a deposit route at several providers. The position is only verifiable, though, where the provider publishes its fees and deadlines in full. Kraken does so with a table anyone can inspect and which was last updated on August 17, 2026. That is why this article works with those figures. At other houses, contradictory statements circulate on comparison portals, from “free since July 2025” to “2 percent”; anyone wanting to deposit there should check the terms with the provider before buying. Which trading venues come into question in Germany at all is shown in our comparison of providers with PayPal deposits.

The 72-hour lock is the real price of the PayPal deposit

The point missing from most guides is stated expressly in Kraken's fee table: after a deposit by PayPal, a withdrawal lock of 72 hours sits on the account. The lock applies not only to euros but to all withdrawals, crypto-assets included. For three days your freshly bought ETH therefore stay on the exchange, whether you like it or not.

The reason for that is not harassment but chargeback risk. A PayPal payment can be disputed after the fact. If the coins bought could be withdrawn immediately, the exchange would be left without any counter-value in a dispute. The same logic applies to card payments, but not to the SEPA transfer: there the table shows no lock.

Withdrawal lock does not mean your balance is frozen. You can trade straight away, you simply cannot get out of the building. For an investor who leaves their ETH on the exchange anyway, that has no consequences. For anyone holding by the principle of “not your keys, not your coins”, it is three days of counterparty risk they would not have had with a transfer. The year 2026 has served as a reminder, through several exchange incidents, that those three days are not a theoretical risk.

At Kraken the PayPal fee appears only on the final confirmation page

For every other type of deposit the table names a figure. SEPA from the European Economic Area: free, minimum amount 1 euro, credited within zero to three banking days or instantly. Debit card: minimum amount 10 euros, 0.25 euros plus 3.75 percent, credited almost instantly. A transfer over the international SWIFT network: 3 euros, one to five banking days.

For PayPal, the word “processing fees” stands in place of the figure, together with a footnote: the fees depend on the region and are displayed on the final confirmation page. Minimum amount 1 euro, credited almost instantly, lock 72 hours.

That is the most remarkable finding of this research, and it is no reproach to a single provider but a property of the payment route: of all the deposit types, PayPal is the only one whose price cannot be looked up beforehand. You learn it at the moment when all that is left is to confirm. Anyone wanting to compare has to run the process through to the final page and break off there.

100 euros in ETH via SEPA, debit card and PayPal: the cost calculation

Let us work the purchase through once, with the published figures and an ether price of around 2,367 euros, as it stands on October 1. On top of the deposit fee comes the trading fee in every case: Kraken charges 1 percent on instant purchases and recurring purchases, and 1.5 percent on orders you place yourself.

Via SEPA, a full 100 euros out of 100 euros arrive in the exchange account, because the transfer costs nothing. The purchase takes off 1 percent, so 1.00 euro. What goes into ether is 99.00 euros, around 0.0418 ETH.

Via the debit card, the deposit costs 0.25 euros plus 3.75 percent, 4.00 euros together. That leaves 96.00 euros, from which 1 percent trading fee comes off, so 0.96 euros. What goes into ether is 95.04 euros, or around 0.0402 ETH. Against the transfer, 3.96 euros are missing, which converts to around 0.0017 ETH.

Via PayPal, this line cannot be filled in. The deposit fee is not known beforehand. If it is zero, the result matches the SEPA route; if it is at card level, around four euros are missing. Nothing more can seriously be said, and that is exactly the point: on a purchase of 100 euros it is a single-digit euro amount, on a purchase of 5,000 euros a three-digit sum that you see only on the final page.

The spread sits in the purchase price and appears in no fee line

The calculation above is deliberately incomplete, because it captures only the stated fees. For instant purchases, Kraken expressly points out that a spread is additionally contained in the price displayed.

The spread is the distance between the price at which the exchange buys and the one at which it sells. It never appears on a statement as an item of its own, because it already sits in the price you confirm. To you it works like a fee, but it turns up in no fee overview.

In practice that means two things. First, any comparison that merely sets the stated percentages side by side is calculated too favourably, and that holds for every provider. Second, it pays to look at the difference between the convenient instant purchase and an order you place yourself in the trading area: the trading fee is stated higher there at 1.5 percent, but the spread falls away because you set the price yourself. With larger amounts the relationship therefore often reverses. There is no generally valid threshold, because the spread fluctuates with market conditions.

The network fee for the ETH transfer runs to fractions of a cent

Many newcomers put off the transfer to their own wallet because they fear expensive network fees. That worry comes from the years when a simple Ethereum transfer could cost double-digit euro amounts. Nothing of that is left at present.

At the start of October, the base fee in the Ethereum network sits at about 0.12 gwei. Gwei is the usual unit of account for network fees, a billionth of an ETH. A simple transfer of ether consumes 21,000 gas units. That produces around 0.0000025 ETH, less than a cent at today's price.

The catch: what the exchange charges you for a withdrawal is not that network fee but a rate of its own, which it sets itself and which appears on the confirmation page. It can lie considerably above. The network fee is therefore good as a lower bound, not as an expectation. What remains is the all-clear: the network is no longer the reason to leave coins on the exchange.

ERC-20 or layer 2: the wrong network costs you your ETH

Here lies the difference from Bitcoin, and it is the most expensive mistake in this whole process. On a withdrawal the exchange asks which network it should send over. Alongside the Ethereum mainnet, several layer-2 networks are on offer, that is, side chains which bundle transactions and settle them more cheaply, such as Arbitrum or Base.

The address looks the same in all of these networks. Every one of these addresses begins with 0x and has 42 characters. Precisely there lies the trap: if you choose a different network when sending from the one your wallet expects, the transfer is carried out all the same. The money lands at the same address on another chain. In the favourable case you get it back by setting up that network in your wallet. In the unfavourable case, for instance with an address belonging to an exchange that does not support the chain in question, the amount is lost.

The rule against that is plain: the network chosen when sending has to be the same one set at the top of your wallet. If in doubt, send a small amount first and wait for it to be credited before the rest follows. By the calculation above, the cost of that test lies in the range of fractions of a cent, the benefit in the range of the entire purchase amount. Which devices and programs are suitable for custody is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

PayPal buyer protection does not cover financial products and investments

A widespread misunderstanding holds that the detour via PayPal brings additional protection with it. The opposite is true. The terms of PayPal buyer protection in the version of April 15, 2025 contain a list of transactions the protection does not cover. Alongside payments for gold and cash equivalents such as gift cards, that list expressly includes financial products and investments.

Buying ether through an exchange falls into that group. If the price falls, if the exchange goes down or if you mistype the address, there is no reimbursement on that basis. Buyer protection is intended for purchases of goods, not for capital investments.

Conversely, the chargeback route very much does apply, and that is exactly why the 72-hour lock exists. Anyone disputing a legitimate deposit in order to end up with both coins and money risks having the exchange account blocked, and civil consequences. The lock is the exchange's answer to that risk, and it hits all customers equally.

Holding period and threshold: what Section 23 EStG prescribes for your ETH

For tax purposes, buying ether counts among private disposals. Section 23 of the Income Tax Act regulates them in subsection 1 number 2: a disposal is taxable in the case of assets where not more than one year lies between acquisition and sale. If you sell your ETH later than one year after buying, the gain is free of income tax, whatever its size.

Within the year a threshold applies. Under subsection 3 sentence 5, gains remain tax-free where the total gain from all private disposals in the calendar year comes to less than 1,000 euros. Threshold here means: if the amount is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable, not only the excess part. At a gain of 999 euros you pay nothing; at 1,001 euros you pay tax on the full 1,001 euros at your personal rate.

For the PayPal question only one detail matters, and it is regularly misunderstood: the one-year period begins with the acquisition, meaning on the day of purchase, not at the end of the 72-hour lock and not on the day of the transfer to your own wallet. The lock shifts the start of the period by not a single day. Anyone buying several times needs the individual date for each part-purchase; tools for that are in the comparison of tax and portfolio programs.

Staking does not extend the holding period to ten years

With Ethereum a question arises that does not come up with Bitcoin: what happens to the holding period if you stake your ETH? The reason for the worry sits in the same section. Under subsection 1 number 2 sentence 4, the period extends to ten years where income is earned in at least one calendar year from the use of an asset as a source of income.

Staking means depositing your ETH in the network to help secure transactions, and receiving ongoing returns for it. That sounds like a source of income. The tax administration does not, however, apply the ten-year period to crypto-assets. The Federal Ministry of Finance confirmed this in its circular of March 6, 2025 on the income tax treatment of certain crypto-assets, file reference IV C 1 – S 2256/00042/064/043. The holding period accordingly stays at one year even after staking or lending.

The treatment of the returns themselves is unaffected by that: ongoing staking rewards are taxable in the year they are received, separately from the later gain on sale. Anyone dealing with such returns for the first time should settle the classification with a tax adviser; this article is no substitute for advice in the individual case.

MiCA authorisation: how to recognise an authorised provider

Since the European crypto regulation MiCA, trading venues need authorisation as crypto-asset service providers in order to serve retail clients in the EU. For you that is not a sticker on the wall but an entry in a register, and it can be looked up in two minutes.

Two directories help further: BaFin's company database for providers with German authorisation, and the register of the European securities supervisor ESMA for authorised service providers from all member states. A route via another EU country is normal in this and no warning sign: an authorisation from Ireland or Malta is valid across Europe.

What matters is matching the exact company name. Exchanges frequently run their European business through a company of their own whose name differs from the brand. If you find the operator in neither of the two registers, do not pay money in there, however convenient the PayPal button looks. Vetted trading venues are in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

Buying Ethereum with PayPal: Your next three steps

1. Establish whether you really need the convenience. On the terms examined here, a SEPA transfer is free, has no lock-up period and is in many cases credited instantly as well. PayPal pays off above all where your money is sitting there anyway. An overview of the trading venues is in the exchange comparison.
2. Run the deposit process through to the final page before you confirm. That is the only place the PayPal processing fee appears. Add it to the trading fee of 1 percent and compare the result with the 100 euros that arrive in full via a transfer.
3. Allow for the 72 hours before you take custody of the ETH yourself. Once the lock has elapsed, transfer a small amount first and make sure the network you choose matches your wallet. Suitable devices are shown by the hardware wallet comparison.

The sources for this article: the fees, minimum amounts and lock-up periods come from Kraken's public overview of deposit options.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The wallet says it has found no immediate threat to user wallets, but the ETH it is pulling out of Lido could take 45 days to return.

Regulators are probing how the exchange keeps serving EU customers from Abu Dhabi, months after it lost its MiCA registrations.

Gemini 4 Argon tops 12 of 18 benchmarks in Google's own table, writes a million tokens per reply and resists hijacking best. Cyber defenders get it first, with the guardrails off.

The team behind the MyDoge wallet opened a public test of DogeOS, a layer that lets developers build lending platforms and games on top of the meme coin network.

An internal memo warned FBI staff that ShinyHunters, the group claiming it hacked the bureau's jobs site, may hold their private details.

Ripple unlocks 1 billion XRP with the latest Escrow numbers revealed.

Shiba Inu has just recorded its highest monthly return of 2026 after its price witnessed multiple rallies during the last month.

XRP Ledger prints a substantial increase in transactions volume.

The immediate question is now whether EU regulators will allow the exchange to continue operating with its regulatory exemption.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan breaks down the strong launch of the first spot NEAR ETF after crossing a major $52.8 million AUM milestone on Day 2.

Key Highlights

• AI infrastructure firm Nebius has purchased Israeli startup Inferize in a transaction valued between $100-150 million, with specific financial details remaining undisclosed.
• The acquired company developed specialized technology to eliminate GPU downtime when launching AI models and managing traffic surges.
• At acquisition, Inferize was merely 10 months into operations with a compact team of 17 staff members.
• Co-founders Guy Bortnikov and Lior Gorbonos previously collaborated at Granulate, which Intel purchased in 2022.
• The acquisition follows Nebius’s earlier $275 million purchase of Tavily in 2025.

AI cloud infrastructure provider Nebius has finalized a purchase of Inferize, an emerging Israeli artificial intelligence startup, in a transaction estimated between $100 million and $150 million. The company operates on the Nasdaq exchange under ticker symbol NBIS, with leadership from Arkady Volozh.

Nebius Group N.V., NBIS

Guy Bortnikov and Lior Gorbonos established Inferize in January 2026. The duo previously collaborated at infrastructure optimization firm Granulate, which became part of Intel’s portfolio in 2022.

Operating primarily in stealth mode throughout its brief existence, the company maintained a lean operation with only 17 team members based in Tel Aviv when the acquisition completed.

The startup’s primary innovation tackles a critical infrastructure challenge in artificial intelligence. AI models require their weights to be loaded before processing requests—a phase known as cold start.

During this initialization period, costly GPU resources remain idle as new instances spin up. Similar inefficiencies occur when model weights refresh during operations such as reinforcement learning cycles.

Addressing GPU Utilization Challenges

Organizations operating AI infrastructure at scale encounter a persistent dilemma. Maintaining excess GPU capacity ensures readiness for traffic surges, but results in paying for underutilized computing power.

Alternatively, running lean operations risks inadequate response times when workload demands spike unexpectedly. Inferize’s solution enables capacity to adjust dynamically with actual usage patterns.

This approach improves GPU efficiency metrics while reducing per-request operational costs. The team delivered a functional prototype merely three months after the company’s inception.

“Maintaining idle GPUs represents the cost of preparedness for fluctuating demand,” explained Bortnikov, the company’s CEO. He emphasized that eliminating this inefficiency was Inferize’s fundamental mission.

Nebius has chosen not to reveal precise acquisition terms. Market observers estimate the deal’s value falls within the $100 million to $150 million range.

Strategic Acquisition Strategy

This represents Nebius’s second Israeli acquisition within months. In February, the company committed to purchasing Tavily for $275 million upfront, with potential total compensation reaching $400 million contingent on milestone achievements.

Tavily developed specialized search infrastructure for AI agents that Nebius intends to integrate into its cloud ecosystem. Earlier this year, Nebius also explored acquiring AI21 through preliminary discussions.

The AI21 negotiations ultimately concluded without a transaction. Instead, the organizations established a commercial collaboration, while AI21 subsequently reduced headcount by over 60% to concentrate on its Maestro offering.

Beyond acquisitions, Nebius is strengthening its physical presence in Israel. The firm has secured data center capacity agreements and won a contract to construct a national AI supercomputer.

Infrastructure projects include planned locations in Modi’in, Masmiyya, and Beit Shemesh. Shahar Tzafrir, managing partner at TLV Partners—which participated in Inferize’s seed funding—offered perspective on the transaction.

“Our relationship with the team predated this venture through our Granulate investment,” Tzafrir noted. He described discovering a team with such sophisticated technical capabilities as “extraordinarily uncommon.”

Inferize will be integrated into Nebius Token Factory, the company’s managed inference offering. The acquisition adds to existing technologies already incorporated into that platform, including Eigen AI and select personnel from Clarifai’s engineering organization.

The post Nebius (NBIS) Acquires Israeli AI Firm Inferize for Up to $150M to Boost GPU Efficiency appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• CNBC’s Jim Cramer issued a buy recommendation for Apple stock, citing the foldable iPhone Duo rather than the company’s forthcoming smart home product.
• The foldable iPhone Duo starts at $1,999, with pre-orders launching October 16 and retail availability beginning October 23.
• Apple shares gained 1% in standard trading and climbed further after hours to reach $334.25.
• Industry analysts at Counterpoint Research project approximately 6 million iPhone Duo units could be sold in 2026.
• A separate Apple event scheduled for October 13 will introduce a new smart home hub featuring an integrated display.

Jim Cramer has issued a buy recommendation for Apple stock. However, his reasoning might surprise market watchers.

The prominent CNBC personality took to X on Wednesday, urging followers to purchase Apple shares due to the iPhone Duo. He praised the foldable smartphone as “amazing.” Cramer emphasized that his bullish stance is unrelated to the tech giant’s other major product scheduled for release later this month.

Apple shares finished Wednesday’s regular session with a 1% increase. The stock continued its upward momentum during extended trading, climbing to $334.25, representing a 0.37% rise per data from Benzinga Pro.

Apple Inc., AAPL

The foldable iPhone Duo comes with a $1,999 base price tag. Customers can begin placing pre-orders on October 16, with physical availability in American stores starting October 23.

Cramer’s statement came on the heels of reporting by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Gurman revealed that Apple intends to introduce an entirely different product on October 13. This upcoming gadget is a smart home control center featuring an embedded screen.

Details Emerging About the Smart Home Product

According to reports, the hub carries the internal designation J490. The device is anticipated to sport approximately a 6-inch square screen.

The system will allegedly identify users through voice analysis. This capability would enable it to provide customized answers depending on which household member is speaking.

Additionally, Apple is preparing enhancements for both the HomePod mini and Apple TV. These products will receive an upgraded Siri virtual assistant as part of the broader update.

The refreshed HomePod mini will allegedly arrive in additional color options, such as green and pink. Cramer made it clear that his investment advice centers exclusively on the Duo, not the smart home initiative.

For years, Apple has trailed behind Amazon.com and Alphabet’s Google in the smart home marketplace. The October 13 presentation represents an opportunity for the company to prove its competitive capabilities.

The event also allows Apple to showcase advancements in artificial intelligence. The corporation has postponed its enhanced Siri assistant on several occasions previously.

Market Response Indicators for New Releases

Research firm Counterpoint estimates that Apple may move approximately 6 million iPhone Duo units during 2026. This represents substantial demand for a device with a price point approaching $2,000.

Additional positive indicators have emerged from other markets. Opening week sales of the iPhone 18 Pro in China increased 12% compared to the previous year.

Apple secured 33% of Chinese smartphone sales during this tracking window. Market watchers interpret this as evidence that consumers are prepared to invest in premium-tier devices.

The company’s most recent quarterly earnings per share reached $2.02. This exceeded analyst consensus projections of $1.89.

Quarterly revenue totaled $109.42 billion, marking a 16.4% increase over the comparable period from the prior year. The corporation also announced a $0.27 per share quarterly dividend, distributed in August.

Apple has faced certain challenges recently. The company addressed a zero-day security flaw allegedly exploited in cyberattacks aimed at iPhone cryptocurrency wallets.

A class-action lawsuit in the United Kingdom concerning App Store monopoly allegations was permitted to move forward. Apple has not issued any statement regarding Cramer’s investment recommendation.

The post Jim Cramer Urges Apple (AAPL) Buy on $1,999 Foldable iPhone Duo Strength appeared first on Blockonomi.

• Bank of America has identified five semiconductor stocks as premier investment opportunities for Q4: Nvidia, Intel, Marvell, Micron, and Lam Research.
• The firm elevated its AI data center market projection to $2.2 trillion by 2030, a significant increase from the previous $1.8 trillion estimate.
• In a distinct analysis, BofA strategists identified eroding AI confidence—rather than increasing bond yields—as the primary threat facing U.S. equities.
• The top 20 S&P 500 performers have accumulated approximately $1.7 trillion in market value since late August, while the remaining 480 companies collectively shed roughly $1.9 trillion.
• According to BofA, today’s market dynamics mirror the traditional “Fed put” concept, except AI optimism now serves as the cushion supporting equity valuations.

Bank of America published research on Thursday identifying its preferred semiconductor investments for the upcoming fourth quarter. The quintet of recommended stocks includes Nvidia, Intel, Marvell, Micron, and Lam Research.

The firm’s analysts highlighted historical performance patterns, noting that Q4 and Q1 have consistently represented the most robust seasonal windows for chip manufacturers dating back to 2010. Throughout this timeframe, semiconductor stocks have typically outperformed the S&P 500 by 300 to 500 basis points on average.

Each recommendation comes with specific near-term catalysts. Nvidia stands to benefit from forthcoming GTC conference events and enhanced share repurchase activity. Intel is experiencing momentum in agentic CPU sales and may capture additional foundry contracts.

Micron is poised to launch a fresh buyback initiative on December 9. Marvell has scheduled an Analyst Day for October 6 while experiencing acceleration in custom silicon orders. Lam Research appears positioned to capture additional market share in both memory and logic semiconductor segments.

Micron Technology, Inc., MU

BofA Elevates AI Infrastructure Spending Projections

The financial institution has upgraded its outlook for the AI data center sector. The revised forecast anticipates the market expanding to $2.2 trillion by decade’s end, representing a substantial upgrade from the prior $1.8 trillion projection. This translates to approximately 40% compound annual growth.

According to BofA, sustained high spending levels will be driven by demand for AI agents, intensifying competition among AI research labs, and constrained chip availability. The firm further suggested that any deceleration in AI advancement, or implementation of new regulatory frameworks for AI systems, would more likely amplify computing requirements than diminish them.

Aggregate capital expenditure from leading American and Chinese cloud infrastructure providers is projected to approach $1 trillion during the current year. BofA anticipates this figure climbing to $1.4 trillion by 2027, potentially reaching a range of $2 trillion to $3 trillion by 2030.

The bank emphasized that chip stock valuations remain attractive on a relative basis. The SOX semiconductor index currently trades at 21 times forward earnings—approximately 12% beneath its median valuation level since ChatGPT’s debut in late 2022.

The “AI Put” Phenomenon and Market Vulnerability

In separate research, BofA Global Research strategists identified a distinct concern. They contend the most significant threat confronting U.S. equities currently isn’t ascending bond yields. Rather, it’s the potential for investors to lose faith in artificial intelligence’s prospects.

This concept has been labeled the “AI put.” The terminology draws from the established “Fed put” framework, wherein market participants expected Federal Reserve intervention to stabilize markets during periods of stress. BofA maintains that AI-related optimism currently fulfills this same market-supporting function.

The strategists referenced recent market performance data. From August 31 forward, the top 20 S&P 500 stocks by performance have generated approximately $1.7 trillion in additional market capitalization. Conversely, the remaining 480 index constituents have collectively erased roughly $1.9 trillion in value.

Smaller-capitalization equities have encountered headwinds as bond yields climbed to multi-decade peaks. Financial services and utility sectors have similarly faced pressure. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, carrying lighter AI company exposure compared to the S&P 500 or Nasdaq, has notably underperformed.

BofA identified a crucial distinction between the AI put and its predecessor. The Fed put relies on policy decisions from a single central authority. The AI put hinges on sentiment among millions of diverse investors, making it significantly more unpredictable and challenging to quantify.

An unresolved question centers on where returns from AI capital deployment will ultimately materialize. Estimates from Goldman Sachs and comparable institutions suggest over $1 trillion has flowed into data center infrastructure since late 2022.

Technology sector analysts project substantial cash flow expansion by 2028. However, analysts covering the end-user industries expected to purchase AI services maintain considerably more conservative projections regarding this timeline.

BofA acknowledged that a threshold exists where elevated bond yields would begin damaging equity valuations. Nevertheless, the institution believes this critical level likely exceeds current market expectations. Should AI confidence deteriorate while yields continue ascending simultaneously, BofA warned this dual development could amplify market declines across asset classes.

The post Bank of America Reveals 5 Must-Own AI Semiconductor Stocks for Q4 2024 appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Jefferies reduced Levi Strauss (LEVI) price target from $27 to $25 while maintaining its Buy rating.
• Stifel trimmed its price target from $28 to $27, also retaining a Buy rating despite revenue headwinds.
• Shares currently trade at $19.70, reflecting a 0.25% decline.
• The company reports earnings in six days, with UBS projecting $0.36 per share for Q3.
• A recent cybersecurity breach involved unauthorized access to internal files but no consumer data compromise.

Shares of Levi Strauss & Co. (LEVI) are trading at $19.70, slipping 0.25% as two prominent Wall Street firms have adjusted their expectations downward just days before the denim maker’s quarterly earnings release.

Levi Strauss & Co., LEVI

Jefferies reduced its price objective to $25, down from a previous $27 estimate. The firm continues to recommend the stock as a Buy.

Stifel followed suit with its own revision, lowering the target to $27 from $28. Despite this adjustment, the firm’s Buy recommendation remains unchanged.

With earnings scheduled to arrive in six days, both firms are recalibrating their models in anticipation of the financial results.

Jefferies anticipates the company will deliver a respectable third quarter performance. The firm highlights the robust gross profit margin of 61.72% as a fundamental strength.

According to Jefferies, full-year earnings guidance may see a slight upward adjustment. However, the revenue forecast is anticipated to remain relatively flat due to persistent inflationary headwinds affecting consumer spending.

Reasons Behind the Downward Revisions

Jefferies cited challenges in the European marketplace alongside potential weakness among budget-conscious American consumers. The firm’s proprietary alternative data tracking U.S. sales activity showed inconsistent patterns.

Stifel’s rationale focuses on separate considerations. The firm recalibrated its revenue and profit forecasts based on channel feedback and anticipated cotton price impacts that won’t materialize until 2027.

Despite the reduction, Stifel’s earnings projections remain above Wall Street consensus estimates for both 2026 and 2027. The firm’s margin assumptions incorporate tariff mitigation strategies and enhanced direct-to-consumer profitability.

Stifel views the ongoing denim renaissance, particularly wide leg silhouettes, as still being in mid-cycle. The firm believes Levi Strauss maintains a competitive advantage within this product category.

Feedback from retail partners has been encouraging, according to Stifel. However, alternative sales data suggests softer performance, which the firm attributes to macroeconomic pressures and heightened competition for discretionary spending.

Valuation Metrics and Earnings Outlook

Levi Strauss shares are currently valued at 12.5 times fiscal 2026 earnings estimates. This represents a discount compared to the lifestyle apparel sector median of 14.3 times calendar 2026 projections.

Stifel’s revised $27 price target implies a multiple of 15.5 times its fiscal 2027 EPS forecast of $1.74. This compares favorably to the Street consensus of $1.71 for the corresponding timeframe.

UBS has maintained its more optimistic stance, preserving both its Buy rating and $34 price objective. The firm anticipates third quarter earnings of $0.36 per share, matching consensus expectations.

UBS projects a more favorable revenue trajectory that could enable the company to raise its full fiscal 2026 earnings guidance. This represents a notably more constructive view than the assessments from Jefferies and Stifel.

Jefferies also acknowledged the company’s recent appointment of a new chief financial officer. The firm interprets this leadership addition as evidence of sustained commitment to international expansion.

The firm identifies the fourth quarter as a critical proving ground for operating margin performance. Jefferies is targeting mid-single digit revenue growth or better as the company enters 2027.

In other developments, Levi Strauss disclosed a cybersecurity incident earlier this month. The company revealed that unauthorized individuals gained access to internal documents through social engineering methods.

According to Levi Strauss, customer information was not compromised in the security breach. External cybersecurity specialists have been engaged to conduct a comprehensive investigation.

The company’s board of directors also experienced a recent change. Robert Eckert stepped down upon reaching the mandatory retirement threshold, a departure unrelated to any policy disputes or operational concerns.

The post Levi Strauss (LEVI) Stock: Wall Street Analysts Lower Targets Before Earnings Report appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• The Department of Justice has granted antitrust clearance for Transocean’s $5.8 billion all-stock purchase of Valaris.
• Initially revealed on February 9, 2026, the transaction offers 15.235 Transocean shares for each Valaris share.
• Completion of the Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust evaluation marks a significant regulatory milestone.
• Only Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense remains to approve the transaction.
• The merger is still projected to finalize during the fourth quarter of 2026.

Transocean (RIG) and Valaris (VAL) have advanced another crucial step toward combining operations. The offshore drilling company revealed through an 8-K filing on Wednesday that the Department of Justice has approved its proposed acquisition of Valaris.

Transocean Ltd., RIG

Following the announcement, Valaris shares experienced modest gains, climbing approximately 0.09% during the trading session. This movement suggests market participants view the deal as progressing smoothly toward completion.

The DOJ’s antitrust division granted approval as part of the standard Hart-Scott-Rodino examination process. That regulatory evaluation period has now concluded.

The initial merger agreement was announced on February 9, 2026. The structure calls for Transocean to exchange 15.235 of its shares for each outstanding Valaris share.

The transaction is structured entirely as a stock swap, with an estimated value of $5.8 billion. The deal involves no cash consideration.

Remaining Steps Before Completion

Having obtained U.S. regulatory approval, a single significant obstacle remains. Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense must still provide its authorization.

CADE initiated its official examination of the transaction on August 7. Its consent represents the final regulatory requirement before the deal can proceed.

Transocean and Valaris maintain their expectation that the merger will conclude during the fourth quarter of 2026. This projected timeframe remains unchanged following the DOJ approval.

Market observers had anticipated this development. CTFN indicated last Monday that DOJ clearance was likely imminent.

Market Context

This transaction unites two industry leaders in offshore contract drilling operations. Valaris maintains a portfolio of mobile offshore drilling platforms serving oil and gas companies globally.

Transocean operates in the identical sector, making this a consolidation of two direct competitors. The resulting combined fleet would constitute a substantial portion of the global offshore drilling capacity.

Wall Street analysts tracking Valaris shares have assigned a Hold consensus rating. The current average price objective stands at $80.00.

Valaris maintains a market capitalization of approximately $5.45 billion. Daily trading volume typically averages around 1,087,317 shares.

A technical sentiment indicator for VAL currently shows a Buy signal. However, other underlying metrics present a more nuanced picture.

The company has demonstrated robust profitability metrics and solid return on equity figures in recent reporting periods. Its valuation multiple has also appeared favorable compared to industry competitors.

Conversely, free cash flow generation has been negative over the trailing twelve-month period. Several technical indicators, including the MACD, have also displayed bearish signals lately.

Valaris shares have recently traded beneath several important moving average levels. This pattern has contributed to divided opinions among market observers monitoring the stock.

Currently, the merger timeline continues advancing toward a fourth-quarter completion. The critical remaining event is CADE’s regulatory determination from Brazil.

The post Transocean (RIG) Secures DOJ Approval for $5.8B Valaris Merger appeared first on Blockonomi.

MetaMask is investigating an undisclosed security incident affecting part of its infrastructure, but it says it has found no immediate threat to user wallets.

The crypto wallet provider said it is working with external security advisers and partners to contain and fix the issue.

MetaMask Exits Affected Validators

As a precaution, MetaMask is exiting affected validators linked to its non-custodial staking operations. The company asserted that it does not control withdrawal keys for client stakes. This means customer assets remain under the control of the respective clients.

Lido separately confirmed the infrastructure compromise and revealed that precautionary steps were taken to protect client assets related to its operated Ethereum validators.

“These steps include exiting its Ethereum (ETH) validators in the Lido protocol, and will likely incur foregone rewards as well as possible downtime penalties should validators be taken offline in the near future to reduce risks related to potential network penalties. Relevant validators have begun the exit process, with the final validators expected to be exited (but not fully withdrawn) by the end of October 7th, 2026.”

The incident comes as a large amount of ETH was moved from a wallet linked to Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin. Blockchain tracker Lookonchain reported that the wallet transferred 133,298 ETH, worth over $356 million, to a new wallet. The transfer took place around the same time as MetaMask’s security announcement. However, there is no information showing that the ETH movement is connected to the MetaMask incident.

Potential Risks

There’s already some back-and-forth over how serious the incident really is. For instance, Andy Cavanaugh of The Rollup suggested the situation could be “far worse than people are expecting,” including the possibility of ETH being stuck through a liquid staking provider.

Security researcher Taylor Monahan wasn’t buying it. She called the claim a “crackhead set of assumptions” while arguing that MetaMask’s response looks more like a normal security precaution.

The disruption comes just weeks after Consensys announced a major split that will turn MetaMask into a separate company focused on consumer finance. The restructuring is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, ending more than a decade of MetaMask operating under the Consensys umbrella.

The post MetaMask Confirms Security Incident and Begins Validator Exits to Protect Client Assets appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – Singapore, Singapore, October 1st, 2026]

With around 16% of AVA’s circulating supply already locked, the AVA Smart Program introduces new lock levels as part of a wider overhaul of AVA’s tokenomics.

The AVA Foundation and Travala today announced new standard lock levels for the AVA Smart Program, alongside a long-term goal of 30% of AVA’s circulating supply locked.

The AVA Smart Program—Travala’s crypto loyalty program—has more than 170,000 members, up 110% year on year as of August. Approximately 12.1 million AVA is now locked across the program and AVA+ Rewards, representing around 16% of the token’s circulating supply.

Travala, a crypto-native travel platform, has more than 1.87 million monthly active users and generated over $113 million in gross revenue in 2025. It sees more than 17,000 room nights, flights, car rentals, and activities booked every month.

From no earlier than 1 November 2026, new Smart memberships will require double the current AVA lock for every tier. Existing members keep their current requirements while their membership remains active, and can choose to move to the new levels after implementation to increase the AVA eligible for the AVA Smart Bonus. AVA Smart Bonus amounts remain 15% per year for Steel to Platinum and 20% for Diamond, subject to the program rules.

If existing members move to the new levels, locked AVA would reach approximately 20 million, around 27% of circulating supply. Continued growth in AVA+ Rewards adoption would take that toward the long-term goal of 30%.

Steve Hipwell, AVA Foundation Lead Contributor, said: “Having 16% of AVA’s circulating supply locked within a travel loyalty program demonstrates genuine real-world utility. The new lock levels reward our existing members for being early, and give the whole community a clear long-term goal of 30% of circulating supply locked.”

Juan Otero, Travala CEO, said: “More than 170,000 travellers are now part of the AVA Smart Program, and those who lock AVA get more from every trip they book with us. This update rewards everyone who has already made that commitment and gives our most loyal members the option to go further.”

The update follows last week’s launch of the AVA Permanent Strategic Reserve, under which Travala matches the AVA Foundation’s monthly open-market buybacks, doubling buyback volume. Travala’s matched tokens are held in a multisig reserve it has committed never to sell or transfer. In September, the two buybacks together repurchased 739,762 AVA, and more than 4.8 million AVA has been repurchased through the Foundation’s program to date.

See this article for full details, including tier requirements, grandfathering rules, and FAQs.

About AVA Foundation

The AVA Foundation oversees the AVA token ecosystem, including the AVA Smart Program, AVA token and Travel Tiger NFTs. The AVA token functions as the key to accessing the AVA Smart Program, which provides travel perks and other benefits to Travala customers, such as AVA payment discounts, AVA loyalty rewards and other benefits. AVA tokenises the concept of loyalty reward programs using blockchain technology, bringing web3 to traditional loyalty models. For more information, users can visit www.avafoundation.org.

About Travala

Founded in 2017 and now backed by industry giant Binance, Travala is the leading crypto-native travel booking service, offering 2,200,000+ properties across 230 countries, 600+ airlines, 50,000+ car rental locations and 400,000+ activities globally. Travala is a champion of cryptocurrency adoption, accepting over 100 leading cryptocurrencies alongside traditional payment methods. For more information, users can visit www.travala.com.

Important Information

This announcement describes planned changes to the AVA Smart Program, which may be adjusted. It is not financial or investment advice, and not an offer, solicitation or inducement to acquire, hold or lock AVA. AVA Smart Bonus amounts are subject to the program rules and may change; nothing here guarantees any token price or return. Locked AVA remains the member’s property and is not a deposit, investment product or interest-bearing account. Not directed at persons in the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates or any jurisdiction where distribution would be unlawful.

The post Travala’s Crypto Loyalty Program Passes 170,000 Members, Sets Long-Term Goal of 30% of AVA Supply Locked appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The primary cryptocurrency has been in a clear uptrend since July, rising 42% over the past three months. Many analysts have flipped bullish, believing the bear market is over and projecting a pump toward a new all-time high during the next cycle.

However, the US midterms in November may divert BTC from its potential bullish path and trigger a substantial correction. Here’s why.

BTC Dump?

The 2026 US midterm elections will take place on November 3, halfway through the president’s term, when voters elect all House members and about one-third of the Senate. This matters because they can change which party controls Congress, affecting Donald Trump’s ability to pass laws and shape national policy.

According to popular analyst Ali Martinez, the voting may negatively impact BTC, citing historical data. He noted that after the 2010, 2014, 2018, and 2022 elections, the cryptocurrency’s price fell 72%, 65%, 52%, and 27%, respectively.

“That does not prove elections caused the declines, but the pattern is worth watching ahead of November 3, 2026,” he said.

Martinez said the fourth-quarter data tells a similar story. He reminded that BTC pumped almost 400% in Q4 2010, but posted losses of 16.7% in Q4 2014, 42.16% in Q4 2018, and 14.75% in Q2022.

“As Q4 begins, seasonality suggests investors should be prepared for volatility,” the analyst warned.

Last but not least, Martinez paid special attention to Bitcoin’s short-term holder cost basis near $73,000, which could become the key support zone if the upcoming post-midterm pattern repeats.

Just a Speed Bump on the Road Higher?

Several X users who commented on the post asked Martinez whether this is a bearish signal, asking whether they should sell their positions. The analyst advised them to take some profits in late October, expecting the price to jump to $100K then, and then potentially buy again at $73,000 after the midterm elections.

Martinez is hardly the only one anticipating next month to be green. Historically, October has been among the most positive months for BTC, earning it the nickname “Uptober.” The asset has ended in the green in 10 of the past 13 Octobers, and it remains to be seen whether that trend will continue this year.

The post Historical Trap Ahead? This Early November Event Could Derail Bitcoin’s Rally appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin experienced some wild price moves after the release of the US PCE data yesterday, surging to $85,600, where it was rejected and driven south by $2,500.

Meanwhile, BTW continues to produce massive fluctuations, surging by 35% today. NIGHT and STX have seen double-digit increases as well.

BTC Calms After Wild Ride

Bitcoin exploded last Monday to over $87,000, which became its highest price tag since late January. It was stopped there twice in the span of 36 hours, but the second rejection was quite vigorous. BTC dumped to under $83,000 in a day after it topped $87,000 for the last time in September.

The following several days were a lot less eventful. Bitcoin established a well-defined trading range between $83,000 and $85,000, while the lower boundary was tested a few times more than the upper one. BTC even dipped below it on a few occasions, but managed to hold.

A few more fluctuations between the two lines followed before the markets turned their attention to the PCE numbers on September 30. As the final results beat expectations, the cryptocurrency skyrocketed from $83,000 to $85,600 within minutes. However, its subsequent move was just as rapid but in the opposite direction. As such, BTC has returned to $83,600 as of press time after failing to capitalize on the positive PCE news.

It enters its greenest month with a market cap of $1.680 trillion, while its dominance over the alts remains flat at 58.6% on CMC.

NIGHT, BTW, STX on the Rise

Ethereum continues its fight with the $2,700 resistance, but it’s still on the wrong side of it. BNB is above $765, while XRP has dipped slightly below $1.50. SOL, TRX, LINK, RAIN, XLM, and BCH have posted insignificant losses over the past day.

In contrast, HYPE has neared $90 once again after a 3% increase. QNT is above $290 following a similar daily jump. BTW has stolen the show once again, rocketing by 35% to $1.41. NIGHT has surged by 26% and trades well above $0.04, while STX is close to $0.4 after a 22% daily rise.

The total crypto market cap is up by just over 1% since this time yesterday, at $2.890 trillion on CMC.

The post NIGHT Explodes 26% While BTC Cools After Wild PCE Swing: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Although BTC is still in the red on a YTD basis, the past three months showed a significant improvement in its overall state, with September closing well in the green as well.

The focus has now shifted to October, which has been BTC’s greenest month since data has been tracked on CoinGlass. The question is: will history repeat, or will last year’s edition reign again?

3 In a Row

The primary cryptocurrency bottomed on July 1 at under $58,000 and rebounded in the following month to close with a 7.36% increase. Although the first half of August was quite sluggish, the second was spectacular as BTC exploded above $75,000 and ended the month with a 25% surge – the most since October 2023.

It entered September at around $77,000 before it quickly skyrocketed to $82,000. The bears were quick to reemerge at this point and didn’t allow it to continue further. Just the opposite; BTC slipped by several grand and slumped to $75,000 in the middle of the month as the CLARITY Act failed in the US Senate and the Fed hiked interest rates.

To the surprise of many, given the aforementioned negative developments, the cryptocurrency bounced off immediately and reclaimed the $80,000 line by the end of that particular week. It hasn’t traded below that level ever since. Moreover, it flew to $87,000 on September 22 and 23, but it was stopped. Despite losing some ground by the end of September, it still closed with a 6.33% pump, making it the third consecutive green month and fifth for the year.

Uptober or Redtober Next?

Ever since CoinGlass started tracking BTC’s performance in 2013, October has been the asset’s greenest month. 10 out of the past 13 editions have brought gains, and only three were in the red. When we add the three-month streak bitcoin has been on since July, the expectations for the next 30 days have increased considerably.

Moreover, many analysts have determined that BTC has reclaimed key resistance levels, which now means that the bull market is on, even though CryptoQuant warned yesterday that it might have slowed down.

Speaking to CryptoPotato, Lacie Zhang, Research Analyst at Bitget Wallet, said yesterday that “October has a strong historical track record for bitcoin,” but “seasonality alone is not an investment thesis.” After all, recall that BTC reached its latest ATH precisely last October before it crumbled in the notorious massacre that left over $19 billion in liquidations in 24 hours and went on a months-long red streak.

“Bitcoin’s median October return has historically been around 11%–14%. ETF inflows, declining exchange balances and corporate buying support the bullish case, while high interest rates, oil prices and renewed inflation pressure remain the main headwinds,” Zhang added.

The researcher outlined the base-case range for the month of $78,000-$95,000, but noted that if BTC holds the key $82,000 support and flips $87,500 into one, then $95,000 should be the next major target. On the other hand, a decisive break below $80,000 would “invalidate the seasonal bullish setup.”

The post Bitcoin Enters Its Most Bullish Month After Massive Q3: Uptober or Redtober Next? appeared first on CryptoPotato.