The expanded partnership could accelerate AI chip advancements, impacting data processing speed and energy efficiency in tech industries.

The post Applied Materials and Besi expand partnership to push AI chip packaging forward appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

SpaceX's AI compute leasing could significantly diversify its revenue streams, potentially rivaling its core businesses like Starlink.

The post SpaceX discussed leasing AI computing capacity to Microsoft appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The integration enhances trading efficiency and accessibility, potentially reshaping user engagement and market dynamics in tokenized equities.

The post Robinhood Wallet taps Arcus to route swaps for more than 190 stock tokens appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The SEC's exemption could accelerate the adoption of tokenized securities, potentially reshaping traditional stock trading dynamics.

The post Backpack Exchange’s BP token hits new all-time high of $1.65 after SEC exemption appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The sale highlights the evolving dynamics of NFT markets, emphasizing the role of liquidity protocols and the risks of volatile asset loans.

The post Zombie CryptoPunk #3609 sells for $875,000 on GONDI 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.

A coffee bought with a qualifying dollar stablecoin would avoid gain-or-loss recognition under the ADAPT Act that Sen. Steve Daines released Sept. 30. The same coffee bought with Bitcoin would still trigger the cost-basis calculation and capital gain or loss reporting that attach to spending digital assets.

Bloomberg Law reported Sept. 25 that Daines had circulated a draft and expected to introduce it the next week. The 56-page text released Sept. 30 carries the title Aligning Digital Assets with Principles of Taxation Act and lists Sens. Cynthia Lummis, Bernie Moreno and Tim Scott of South Carolina as cosponsors.

Under current IRS guidance, paying for goods or services with digital assets in any amount is a disposition. Holders of personal or investment assets must calculate and report capital gain or loss, which depends on the asset's value and cost basis.

A payment can produce a gain, a loss, or a break-even result, and the IRS uses a cup of coffee as its own example. A $5 Bitcoin purchase with an allocated basis of $3 produces a $2 capital gain that belongs on the return.

What qualifies as a covered stablecoin

New section 1034 of the tax code would treat the disposition of covered payment stablecoins to buy products or services as a nonrecognition event. The relief covers gain or loss on the token itself, and sales taxes and other purchase obligations stay in place.

The token must be a qualified US dollar stablecoin, meaning one issued by a permitted payment stablecoin issuer under the GENIUS Act.

A foreign issuer qualifies through OCC registration or a Treasury finding that its home regime is comparable. It must appear in Treasury's most recent report before the payment, and the taxpayer must have acquired it at a price within 3% of $1.00.

Treasury would publish that report at least every three months, listing each qualified stablecoin actively traded within 3% of $1.00 during the 12 months ending the prior month. Users and payment companies would check the latest list when making a purchase.

Traders, brokers, and dealers in qualified dollar stablecoins are excluded, along with taxpayers using a functional currency other than the dollar, and Treasury could extend the trade-or-business exclusion to similar businesses.

Taxpayers must keep records that distinguish eligible payments from other transactions. Covered payments would be exempt from broker information returns under section 6045(i)(1), and brokers could rely on customer certifications and skip verifying the 3% acquisition test for tokens bought elsewhere. The stablecoin provision applies to transactions entered into starting Jan. 1, 2027.

Bitcoin keeps its paperwork, with one fee carve-out

Section 1034 covers stablecoins, so a Bitcoin payment at checkout remains a taxable disposition, while Section 11 adds a narrower rule for fees.

Under new section 1044, coins disposed of to pay digital asset transaction costs would escape gain-or-loss recognition when the aggregate value of the assets used for those costs is $10 or less. Base, gas, and priority fees count as costs, and related transactions are aggregated.

Exclusions apply to traders, brokers and dealers, businesses that batch transactions or help validate them for others, and assets under mark-to-market accounting. Anyone who initiated more than 5,000 digital asset transactions in the prior taxable year is also excluded.

The fee exception takes effect for dispositions starting Jan. 1, 2027, the same date as the stablecoin relief. On a Bitcoin coffee, the sliver of BTC paid as a network fee could qualify, and the coins sent to the merchant remain a taxable disposition.

The bill also exempts qualified dollar stablecoins from the wash-sale and constructive-sale rules it extends to other digital assets.

Earlier bills used dollar thresholds

Earlier proposals sought to reduce tax friction for qualifying personal crypto transactions through monetary thresholds.

Sen. Ted Budd's S.4171, introduced March 24, would require both transaction value and otherwise recognized gain or loss to be $200 or less. Related transactions would be aggregated, with exclusions including business-property and cash-equivalent exchanges.

Lummis's S.2207, unveiled in July 2025, sets a $300 ceiling on both transaction value and recognized loss and ends further exclusions once qualifying annual gains exceed $5,000.

The House PARITY Act proposed a $200 threshold for stablecoin transactions. Lummis now cosponsors a text that ties relief to eligible stablecoins at any purchase size.

The House has a separate proposal. H.R.10357 was introduced Sept. 14, and Ways and Means announced committee approval by 38-5 on Sept. 16. Its stablecoin redemption-value accounting and qualifying $10 fee relief are distinct mechanisms, and committee approval is a step before any House vote.

What happens next for stablecoin and Bitcoin

These remain proposals, and current IRS treatment stays in force. The text leaves Treasury to set the mechanics, including the quarterly list, recordkeeping, and broker reporting rules. It borrows its issuer definitions from the GENIUS Act, so which tokens qualify will follow issuer approvals under that law.

For everyday users, the Daines text draws its line around the asset a customer pays with, at any purchase size. A $5 coffee on a qualifying stablecoin would fall outside gain-or-loss recognition, and the same coffee on Bitcoin would stay in the capital-gains system.

The post Senate tax bill frees stablecoin spending while Bitcoin stays on IRS forms appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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.

Setting up a TON wallet takes two minutes. The trouble usually starts afterwards: the transfer is visible on the network, the explorer marks it as successful, and nothing has arrived in the exchange account. In almost every case a single line is missing, the one TON calls the “comment” and other networks list as a memo or a tag. This article explains how to set up a transfer on The Open Network so that it actually lands, how to read in Tonviewer what really happened, and what the rename from Toncoin to Gram changes in practice.

The network itself is no longer a niche project. According to the figures the project publishes on its own home page, 325 validators currently secure the chain, more than 182 million contracts run on it, and around four million transfers are settled every twenty-four hours. Gram trades at about €1.38 and ranks 31st by market value. Anyone moving money here is moving it through a busy network with rules of its own, and those rules are precisely why guides written for the Ethereum world do not apply.

Your Gram arrived on the network but the exchange balance stays empty

The most common cry for help about TON always sounds the same. Someone sends Gram or USDT from their own wallet to an exchange, sees the transfer in the explorer, and nothing happens in the customer account. No error, no reversal, no notice. The money has not disappeared; it is simply sitting somewhere that belongs to nobody in particular.

The reason is a practice many large trading venues use: instead of giving every customer an address of their own, they operate a single pooled address for everyone. Which amount belongs to which customer is then decided not by the address but by a short piece of extra text sent along with the transfer. On XRP that text is called a destination tag, on Cosmos a memo, on TON simply a comment. Without it, the payment lands on the pooled address and no booking picks it up.

The comment is not an accessory here; it is part of the protocol. The project’s technical documentation states explicitly that the message body of an internal transfer can carry a plain-text or an encrypted comment. Every transfer on TON is a message, and that message has a field for text. Leaving it empty is like sending a letter to an open-plan office without a name on it.

Before you even think about the comment, you need a wallet that offers you one. Not every wallet puts it in the same place, and in some it hides behind an inconspicuous toggle.

Setting up a TON wallet: Tonkeeper, MyTonWallet and the wallet inside the messenger

TON is not an EVM network. That is the single most important sentence for anyone arriving from Ethereum, Polygon or the BNB Chain. There is no chain ID to enter anywhere, no RPC node to register by hand, and MetaMask cannot simply add the network. You need a wallet that speaks TON natively.

In practice three routes converge. Tonkeeper is the most widely used standalone app and works on the phone as well as on the desktop. MyTonWallet additionally offers a browser extension, which helps anyone working at a computer. And since the end of August a self-custody wallet has run directly inside the messenger, which we covered in detail in our piece on the rename from Toncoin to Gram. All three are wallets in which you hold the key yourself, and all three hand you a sequence of recovery words when you set them up.

Those words are the actual ownership. The app is interchangeable, the key is not. Anyone who photographs it and stores it in the cloud has effectively given it away. Anyone holding larger amounts keeps it on a device that never touches the network; which models qualify, and how a genuine unit differs from a tampered one, is covered in our hardware wallet comparison.

One quirk shows up on first launch: some wallets ask for a version. TON knows several generations of wallet contracts, and the same recovery words produce different addresses depending on the version. Someone who loads their words into another app and sees an empty account has usually not lost their money, only picked the wrong version. The settings allow you to switch between them, and as a rule the balance then reappears.

The comment field in the TON protocol is what other networks call a memo or tag

When you send, every TON wallet shows an additional line below the amount field. Sometimes it is labelled comment, sometimes message, sometimes memo. What belongs in that line is exactly what the exchange shows you on its deposit page: usually a string of digits and letters, occasionally just a number.

Three rules apply, and every one of them has already cost somebody money.

First: typing it out is the worst method. The comment is built so that a single transposed character makes it worthless. Copy and paste, then compare the last four characters once.

Second: capitalisation counts. Many trading venues issue comments in mixed case, and the matching is letter-exact.

Third: the comment belongs only on the way to the exchange. When you withdraw from the exchange to your own wallet, you do not need one. Your own address belongs to you alone, so there is nothing to allocate. A superfluous comment does no harm, but it muddies the record when you read back through it later.

And if it has already gone wrong? Then the money is not gone, merely unsorted. Trading venues have a procedure for exactly this case, usually a form in the help section into which you enter the transaction identifier. It takes days, sometimes weeks, and some of them charge a processing fee for it. What you need for it is the identifier from the explorer, which brings us to the next tool.

Tonviewer and Tonscan: how to read a TON transaction

A block explorer is a website that makes the bookings of a blockchain readable for people. TON has two widely used ones: Tonviewer and Tonscan. Both show the same data and differ only in presentation. You need no account and have nothing to connect; it is enough to drop an address or the identifier of a transfer into the search box.

Four fields are the ones that matter.

The status tells you whether the transfer went through. TON works with messages that can trigger further steps, so what you see here is sometimes not just a tick but a small chain of stages. What matters is that none of them is marked as aborted.

The comment appears as its own line on the transfer. This is where you check, in a dispute, whether you really sent it along. If the line is empty, you know what went wrong.

The counterparty address is where most people trip up. More on that shortly, because with tokens the explorer does not show the address you expect.

The fee appears as a separate item and is the amount the network withheld for processing. On TON it comes out so small that at first glance the figure looks like a display error.

TON fees: what a transfer really costs today

We did not take this on trust; we measured it. Across a sample of seventeen transfers that users initiated themselves on Monday morning, the fees withheld by the network ranged between 0.00031 and 0.00195 Gram. At a price of €1.38 that is between four hundredths of a cent and a good quarter of a cent, with the middle of the sample at around seven hundredths of a cent.

For context: in our network series we ran the same calculation for other chains. A USDT transfer on Tron cost just under €2 measured the same way, while on Arbitrum and Ethereum the amount depends heavily on how busy the network is. TON sits at the bottom end of what is possible at all today.

Payment is always in Gram, even when you are sending USDT. This is the point where newcomers run aground: anyone who has USDT sent to a fresh TON wallet and nothing else cannot move it on, because there is no Gram there for the fee. A small float of one or two Gram in the wallet solves that problem permanently.

A second peculiarity separates TON from almost every other network: there is a storage fee. On TON every wallet is a small contract of its own, and the network continually deducts tiny amounts for the space it occupies. On active wallets this goes unnoticed, because the sums run to fractions of a cent a year. But anyone who leaves a wallet untouched for years with nothing but dust in it may eventually find it empty.

Bounceable and non-bounceable: how to recognise a TON address

TON addresses come in two notations. The short, user-friendly form starts with two letters and is the one your wallet displays. The long raw form starts with a number, a colon and a long run of digits and letters.

That leading number is not decoration; it names the part of the network the address sits in. A 0 stands for the base chain, on which practically everything you care about runs: wallets, tokens, applications. A minus 1 stands for the masterchain, which administers the network and coordinates the validators. In our sample, the operations that corresponded to no user action carried this minus 1 throughout.

The shorter form comes in two variants, and the difference between them decides what happens to your money if something fails. With one variant an amount comes back when the receiving side cannot accept it. With the other it stays at the destination address even if no wallet has been set up there yet. Modern wallets get this right in the background, which is why you need not worry about it day to day. It becomes relevant when somebody hands you an address in raw form, or when an older application asks you which variant it should use. The rule of thumb: for a payment to a wallet that already exists, the variant that bounces back is the safe one.

Jetton instead of token: why USDT on TON has its own wallet address

Tokens on TON are called jettons, and they work differently from ERC20 on Ethereum. There, a single contract keeps one large list of all balances. On TON every holder gets a small contract of their own for every token, a so-called jetton wallet.

That sounds academic, but it has a very practical consequence, which we checked on an arbitrary active address: the same holder ran a different address there for USDT, for an in-game currency token and for a third token, and none of them was his main address. So the address an explorer shows you as sender or recipient on a token transfer belongs to the contract, not to the person behind it.

Two things follow. First: never confuse the jetton wallet with a deposit address. Anyone who takes the address they see in the explorer line of a USDT transfer and enters it somewhere as the recipient is sending money to a contract that is not expecting it. Second: a balance you can see in your wallet while its main address looks empty in the explorer is not a fault. You have to switch to the token tab in the explorer to find it.

Incidentally, the Tether contract for USDT on TON is by far the largest block on the network, and it is the reason many users are here at all: moving dollar balances for fractions of a cent is this cheap on few networks.

A Gram float: why an empty wallet cannot move tokens

One question comes up so often that it deserves a section of its own. Someone has USDT sent to a freshly created TON wallet, sees the balance, wants to pass it on and finds that nothing works. The wallet is not broken, it is simply penniless.

Every transfer on TON costs Gram, even when what you are sending is something else. With a token there is the added fact that the transfer sets two contracts in motion, yours and the recipient’s, and that for a recipient who has never held this token a contract has to be created in the first place. That creation step is why the first transfer to a new recipient costs a little more than every one after it.

The sums stay tiny all the same. Even at the upper end of our sample a transfer came to a good quarter of a cent. Leaving one or two Gram sitting in the wallet buys you years of peace, and the amount simultaneously covers the running storage fee.

One exception is worth knowing: some exchanges pay out tokens on TON without sending any Gram along. That is not a fault on their side; it is the normal case. It is up to you to make sure beforehand that something is there for the fee. Anyone who neglects it ends up with a balance they can see but not touch, until somebody sends them a few Gram.

What TON does differently from Ethereum and the rollups

TON is not one chain but a system of chains. A masterchain coordinates, and below it works the base chain on which practically everything that concerns you runs. The design is meant to form further sections as load rises, rather than letting fees climb. Whether that promise holds under sustained load is an open question; what is demonstrable so far is that fees have stayed in the hundredths-of-a-cent range at several million operations a day.

The second big difference is the way it works. On Ethereum one contract calls another directly and everything happens in a single pass. On TON contracts send each other messages, and every message is processed on its own. That is why in the explorer you often see several entries in sequence for one single operation. For you this mainly means: on a token transfer, do not wait only for the first tick but look at whether the chain of steps ran all the way through.

What TON is not: a rollup. There is no seven-day waiting period here as on the optimistic networks on Ethereum, because there is no superordinate chain on which anything would have to be secured. A TON transfer is done within a few seconds, and done for good.

Without the old bridge: how Gram reaches Ethereum or an exchange today

For years the project’s official bridge was the way to get Gram over to Ethereum or the BNB Chain. That route is closed. The bridge’s old address today merely redirects to the project’s home page; no application sits there any more. Anyone still holding wrapped balances on other chains will find the situation before and after the cut-off date in our piece on the shutdown of the TON bridge.

For everyday use that means the most reliable route from TON into other networks today runs through a trading venue. You deposit Gram at your exchange, swap there into whatever you need, and withdraw again on the target network. That costs two fees instead of one, but it is traceable and can be documented in a dispute. Which houses in Europe operate under supervision and what they charge for deposits and withdrawals is set side by side in our exchange comparison.

The second option is the so-called intent bridges, where a provider fronts you the money on the target network and collects your Gram in return. That is fast, but it shifts the risk onto that provider. Anyone taking this route should start with a small amount and only raise it to the sum that actually matters on the second attempt. How the routes differ in principle is summarised in our overview of networks, bridges and explorers.

The three most common mistakes in a TON transfer

The missing comment is by far the most frequent. It affects only deposits at trading venues that work with pooled addresses, and it is entirely avoidable: on the deposit page the comment always sits directly below the address, often in a box picked out in colour.

The wrong network is the most expensive. USDT exists on TON, on Tron, on Ethereum and on a dozen further chains, and each time it is a different token with a different address format. Anyone who sends USDT on TON to an address beginning with 0x is sending it into the void. The protection against this is simple: TON addresses look unlike anything else, and your wallet will as a rule not even accept a foreign address.

The empty fee pot is the most irritating, because it looks so harmless. The wallet shows a balance, the send button is greyed out, and there is no comprehensible explanation for it. Almost always a few tenths of a Gram are missing for the fee.

Self-custody, recovery words and phishing inside the messenger

TON has grown together with a messenger, and that is a strength and a weakness at once. The strength: a wallet is there in seconds, and payments to other users feel like sending a message. The weakness: fraudsters know this and work exactly there.

The pattern is always the same. A message from a supposed support desk, an allegedly lost login, a prize that only needs confirming. At the end stands a page asking for the recovery words. There is not one legitimate reason to enter those words anywhere except when restoring your own wallet in an app you installed yourself. No support desk in the world needs them.

The second trap is approvals. When you connect an application to your wallet, it receives certain rights. These connections persist until you break them, and the settings of every serious TON wallet contain a list for the purpose. Going through it once a quarter and disconnecting everything you no longer use is the cheapest insurance there is. Why this is no theoretical risk is shown in our piece on how to revoke token approvals.

And a third point with a flavour of its own on TON: counterfeit jettons can be created in minutes and then carry the same name as the original. The only reliable marker is the contract address. Anyone seeing a token for the first time checks it against the project’s own statement before buying.

Holding period and tax: what the tax office sees in a Gram transfer

A transfer from your own wallet to your own second wallet is not a taxable event in Germany. You have disposed of nothing, the holding remains yours, and the one-year holding period under the income tax act runs on unbroken.

In practice it can still cause trouble, namely with the documentation. Tax tools do not recognise a transfer between your own addresses by themselves. What the software sees is an outgoing here and an incoming there, and in case of doubt that becomes a sale and a purchase. Anyone who does not correct it produces gains that never existed, or throws away a holding period that had almost run its course.

The remedy is unspectacular: label the addresses in the tax tool as your own, so that the matching runs automatically. Which providers map German rules cleanly is set out in our overview of tax tools.

Two operations, by contrast, very much are relevant for tax. Anyone swapping Gram for USDT has disposed of it, even if nothing has flowed to a bank account. And anyone pledging Gram as collateral or lending it out should have the individual case looked at; the treatment depends on the exact arrangement. With larger amounts there is no way around professional tax advice.

What the rename from Toncoin to Gram means in practice

Since June 15, 2026 the token has carried its original name again. The price services have completed the switch, and at one of the large data providers the entry now reads “Gram” with the note that this is the former Toncoin. The project’s technical documentation also speaks of Gram again when it describes transfers.

For you nothing changes about your holding. There was no swap, no new ticker in the wallet, no deadline. What does change is the search: guides from past years speak of Toncoin, current pages of Gram, and some exchanges carry both spellings side by side. Anyone looking for instructions should try both terms and check the date on every guide.

The second point concerns the name of the network. The network is still called The Open Network, TON for short. The token is called Gram. When an exchange shows you a selection field for the network, it says TON there, regardless of how it labels the token.

Gram on TON: the key points for your decision

TON is one of the cheapest networks you can use for transfers today, and at the same time one with the most quirks. Anyone who understands the comment, who has grasped the business with jetton addresses once, and who always leaves a little Gram sitting for the fee has the three stumbling blocks behind them that catch almost everybody out.

1. Set up a wallet of your own and secure the recovery words offline. For amounts that would hurt to lose, the key belongs on a device with no network connection; the models for that are listed in our hardware wallet comparison.
2. Send a test amount with a comment before your first large deposit. A few cents in fees are cheaper than a form in the help section. Which houses handle deposits smoothly in Europe is shown by the exchange comparison.
3. Enter your addresses in your tax tool once as your own. After that the holding period keeps counting correctly by itself; you will find the suitable providers in our overview of tax tools.

The sources for this article are in the project’s technical documentation, and the network figures on the site of The Open Network.

(As of September 29, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

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.)

Plus, a major MetaMask security event has crypto natives on edge as details trickle out.

The bank has revised its 12-month target for BTC up from $82K, though it remains about 10% below Bitcoin's October 2025 record.

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.

Shiba Inu's upcoming struggle on the market might be the result of the active profit-taking among whales.

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.

Key Highlights

• Nvidia shares advanced 0.8% in premarket activity to reach $230.19, remaining just shy of the record closing price of $235.74.
• The stock has delivered a 22% return year-to-date, with third-quarter gains of 17%.
• Wall Street anticipates Nvidia’s quarterly earnings release in mid-to-late November.
• The potential November IPO of Anthropic may provide insight into AI infrastructure spending patterns benefiting Nvidia.
• A massive $150 billion buyback authorization was announced September 28, pushing total repurchase capacity to approximately $235 billion.

Nvidia stock advanced 0.8% during Thursday’s premarket session, reaching $230.19. This uptick positions the semiconductor giant tantalizingly close to its record closing level of $235.74, which was established on May 14.

NVIDIA Corporation, NVDA

The performance throughout 2026 has been impressive. Shares have appreciated 22% since January, with the third quarter contributing a robust 17% gain, based on data from Dow Jones Market Data.

Market participants are now focused on two significant events that could shape the stock’s trajectory through year-end. The immediate trigger is Nvidia’s quarterly financial disclosure, anticipated to arrive during the mid-to-late November timeframe.

During its previous quarterly announcement, the company projected approximately 70% revenue expansion for fiscal 2028. This aggressive growth forecast has set high expectations, and market observers will scrutinize whether Nvidia can maintain this momentum.

The second potential market mover carries implications beyond Nvidia itself. Reports from The Wall Street Journal indicate that Anthropic, the artificial intelligence firm developing the Claude assistant, is preparing for a November public offering.

Nvidia maintains a substantial financial commitment to Anthropic. The chip manufacturer committed to an investment reaching $10 billion last year, participating in a funding round that assigned Anthropic a valuation near $350 billion, as reported by CNBC.

Current expectations suggest Anthropic will target a valuation approaching $2 trillion for its public debut. A successful market entry could alleviate concerns regarding the sustainability of AI infrastructure investments and provide transparency into demand for Nvidia’s semiconductor products.

Historical Performance Patterns Support Bullish Outlook

Historical data presents an encouraging backdrop. Analysis dating to 1999 reveals the fourth quarter as Nvidia’s strongest period, averaging 22% gains.

Examining the most recent five-year window, fourth-quarter returns have averaged 17%. Whether this seasonal strength materializes again this year is yet to be determined.

Nvidia earned recognition as a Barron’s recommended stock in May, when shares traded near $226 with a forward price-to-earnings multiple around 24 times. The valuation metric has since compressed to approximately 17 times, per FactSet data.

Capital Allocation and Trading Activity

From a corporate governance perspective, Nvidia’s board greenlit an additional $150 billion stock repurchase program on September 28. This authorization elevates the company’s total buyback capacity to roughly $235 billion extending through fiscal 2028, representing approximately 2.8% of shares currently outstanding.

Substantial buyback programs typically reflect management confidence that shares are trading below intrinsic value. Wall Street analysts echo this optimism, maintaining a consensus “buy” recommendation with an average price objective of $324.14.

Concurrent insider transactions merit attention. Board member Mark Stevens divested 622,239 shares in early September at an average execution price of $231.62, while Executive Vice President Timothy Teter sold 30,460 shares later that month at $222.80 per share.

During the trailing 90-day period, company insiders have collectively sold $399.5 million in stock, predominantly through structured trading arrangements. Institutional ownership remains dominant, with these investors controlling approximately 65% of outstanding equity.

Nvidia’s August 26 earnings release exceeded Wall Street projections. The company delivered earnings per share of $2.22, surpassing the $2.09 consensus estimate, while revenue reached $96.22 billion against forecasts of $92.27 billion—representing 106% year-over-year growth.

The company maintains a quarterly dividend distribution of $0.25 per share, most recently paid October 1 to shareholders registered as of September 10. This equates to an annual dividend of $1.00 and a current yield of 0.4%.

The post Nvidia (NVDA) Stock Approaches Record Territory With Major Events Looming appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• HOLO shares surge 6.76% following MicroCloud Hologram’s purchase of 140,268 MicroStrategy shares.

• The MSTR position held an approximate value of $15.76 million upon settlement.

• Shares were obtained through the maturity of a structured note investment instrument.

• MicroCloud Hologram strengthens its Bitcoin exposure via this strategic MSTR equity stake.

• The firm continues to explore Bitcoin-related investment opportunities amid favorable market dynamics.

Shares of MicroCloud Hologram (HOLO) advanced 6.76% to reach $1.8902 following the company’s announcement of a substantial MicroStrategy share purchase. The rally pushed HOLO away from session lows around $1.77 and bolstered near-term bullish sentiment. The strategic purchase amplifies MicroCloud Hologram’s indirect Bitcoin exposure through equity ownership in MSTR.

MicroCloud Hologram Inc., HOLO

MicroCloud Hologram Secures Significant MicroStrategy Stake

MicroCloud Hologram finalized its purchase of 140,268 shares in Strategy, the company previously recognized as MicroStrategy. These shares were delivered upon the maturity and final settlement of a structured note product. According to prior market closing figures, this equity position represented approximately $15.76 million in value.

The settlement process resulted in direct ownership transfer of MSTR shares to MicroCloud Hologram’s accounts. Subsequently, these securities will be classified and managed as strategic investment holdings within the firm’s financial structure. This transaction further diversifies the company’s portfolio with additional Bitcoin-correlated investment vehicles.

Strategy stands among the most prominent publicly listed entities maintaining substantial Bitcoin treasury reserves. Accordingly, MSTR stock performance frequently correlates with Bitcoin price action and cryptocurrency market dynamics. Through this acquisition, MicroCloud Hologram establishes secondary exposure to digital asset volatility via its MSTR shareholding.

HOLO Shares Climb After MicroStrategy Investment Disclosure

HOLO stock posted a 6.76% gain to $1.8902 immediately after the investment announcement, demonstrating robust buying interest. The shares had previously touched intraday lows near $1.77 before reversing course amid heightened trading volume. This recovery positioned HOLO well above earlier session troughs as market participants digested the news.

Market participants reacted positively to MicroCloud Hologram’s enhanced Bitcoin-linked asset exposure. Since MSTR shares function as a proxy for Bitcoin due to Strategy’s extensive cryptocurrency holdings, fluctuations in digital currency markets may impact investment values. Consequently, cryptocurrency price movements could directly influence the valuation of MicroCloud Hologram’s newly acquired stake.

This MSTR holding introduces additional volatility considerations to HOLO’s asset composition. Rapid price swings often occur when Bitcoin sentiment shifts, liquidity conditions change, or technology sector dynamics evolve. MicroCloud Hologram confirmed its commitment to monitoring this investment alongside its comprehensive financial management approach.

Company Advances Digital Currency Investment Approach

This MSTR purchase aligns with MicroCloud Hologram’s ongoing initiative to establish meaningful Bitcoin-related investment positions. Management intends to persistently assess digital asset opportunities as market conditions and regulatory frameworks permit. The firm also aims to harmonize these initiatives with its overall capital structure and risk management protocols.

MicroCloud Hologram functions primarily as a technology solutions enterprise while simultaneously building digital asset market participation. Its recent transaction establishes a substantial publicly traded equity stake with embedded Bitcoin correlation. Therefore, valuation fluctuations in MSTR could materially impact the recorded worth of HOLO’s investment holdings.

Additionally, the company acknowledges standard risks inherent in maintaining publicly traded securities. Equity valuations can experience swift movements that influence the carrying value of MSTR shares. Nevertheless, this acquisition represents a meaningful advancement in MicroCloud Hologram’s portfolio diversification through Bitcoin-related investments.

The post MicroCloud Hologram (HOLO) Stock Surges on $15.76M MicroStrategy Share Purchase appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Dow futures declined while Nasdaq 100 contracts advanced 0.4-0.5% as market participants assessed Federal Reserve monetary policy trajectory
• The 10-year Treasury yield surged to 5.33%, marking the highest reading since April 2002
• Micron Technology delivered better-than-anticipated quarterly results, providing momentum for technology sector as October begins
• Brent crude oil broke through the $100 per barrel threshold following diplomatic setbacks in US-Iran negotiations
• Nike prepares to release quarterly results this evening with shares hovering near decade-low valuations

Stock futures displayed divergent performance as October trading commenced, with market participants evaluating the likelihood of additional Federal Reserve interest rate actions at the central bank’s next policy gathering.

Contracts tied to the Nasdaq 100 index surged between 0.4% and 0.5% during early session activity. S&P 500 futures posted modest advances of approximately 0.1% to 0.2%. Meanwhile, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures retreated by roughly 124 points, representing a 0.2% decline.

September concluded with the three benchmark indexes moving in separate trajectories. The Nasdaq recorded meaningful monthly appreciation while the S&P 500 and Dow faced challenges maintaining momentum.

Bond Market Dynamics Push Yields to Multi-Decade Peaks

The benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield climbed four basis points to reach 5.33% during Thursday’s early hours, establishing its loftiest position since April 2002.

Ascending bond yields have remained a continual source of anxiety for equity market participants throughout this calendar year. Elevated financing costs typically exert downward pressure on equity valuations, particularly impacting growth-oriented enterprises.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari issued cautionary remarks regarding persistent inflationary pressures. His observations intensified apprehensions that the monetary authority might maintain restrictive policies for an extended duration beyond market expectations.

Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid observed that international economic expansion and company profitability remained robust during September. However, that very resilience provided central banking institutions additional justification to sustain hawkish rate positioning.

Inflation indicators delivered contradictory signals this week. The personal consumption expenditures index, the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation metric, registered below analyst projections on Wednesday.

Energy commodity prices, conversely, advanced in the opposing direction. Brent international crude oil futures exceeded the $100 per barrel threshold during Thursday morning trading.

Diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Tehran failed to yield meaningful advancement, creating frustration across energy markets. This geopolitical uncertainty propelled crude oil valuations upward throughout the session.

Technology Sector Gains Momentum Following Micron’s Performance

Micron Technology shares demonstrated minimal movement following the semiconductor manufacturer’s fourth quarter disclosure. The memory chip producer exceeded Wall Street profit forecasts and elevated its first quarter guidance.

The earnings announcement contributed to enhanced optimism throughout the technology sector as the new month commenced. Nasdaq-100 futures appreciated 0.5% in response to the news.

Artificial intelligence-focused technology companies have generated substantial market momentum in recent periods. Nvidia shares appreciated 5% during September, while AMD registered impressive 30% gains across the identical timeframe.

Broader market segments have encountered difficulties under the burden of elevated Treasury yields and climbing energy costs. The Dow recorded negative performance for both September and the complete third quarter period.

Multiple employment market reports await release this week preceding Friday’s comprehensive monthly jobs data. A Challenger, Gray & Christmas analysis of corporate workforce reduction intentions was scheduled for Thursday morning publication.

Market participants will additionally receive updated manufacturing sector activity measurements this week. These economic indicators are anticipated to influence expectations approaching the Federal Reserve’s subsequent policy meeting.

Nike is scheduled to announce quarterly results following Thursday’s closing bell. The disclosure will provide insight into the athletic apparel giant’s corporate restructuring initiatives and operational progress.

Nike’s equity valuation has declined to price levels last observed in 2014. Investment professionals will scrutinize the report for evidence of revenue improvement or forward-looking guidance enhancements.

Financial markets enter October with technology stocks demonstrating relative strength while bond yields and petroleum prices generate resistance across other sectors. Thursday’s employment statistics and Nike’s financial results represent the immediate catalysts commanding trader attention.

The post Wall Street Opens Mixed: Fed Hawkishness and Soaring Treasury Yields Dominate October’s First Session appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• The company’s third-quarter fiscal revenue increased 17% to $2.02 billion, surpassing the Street’s $1.98 billion projection.
• Adjusted EPS reached 86 cents, exceeding analyst expectations of 76 cents per share.
• Reported net income decreased to $97.6 million from $225.5 million in the prior-year period.
• Stock price jumped approximately 4% during premarket hours after the earnings announcement.
• The company maintained its fiscal year adjusted EPS outlook of $3.05 to $3.13 per share.

Shares of McCormick (MKC) advanced on Thursday morning after the flavor and spice manufacturer delivered impressive quarterly results. The stock gained roughly 4% before the market opened.

McCormick & Company, Incorporated, MKC

Revenue for the company’s third fiscal quarter increased 17% year-over-year to $2.02 billion. This figure exceeded Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $1.98 billion.

On an adjusted basis, the company reported earnings of 86 cents per share. This handily beat analyst forecasts calling for 76 cents per share.

However, reported net income painted a contrasting picture. It fell to $97.6 million, or 36 cents per share, compared to $225.5 million, or 84 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.

The decline in reported earnings reflected special charges related to the company’s planned acquisition of Unilever’s food division. When these one-time costs are excluded, the underlying business demonstrated solid expansion.

Business Unit Results

The consumer division posted a 25% sales increase. The bulk of this growth stemmed from the McCormick de Mexico transaction rather than core business expansion.

When stripping out acquisitions, organic consumer sales advanced only 1%, as pricing gains compensated for lower unit volumes. Meanwhile, the flavor solutions division expanded 8%, representing 3% organic growth.

The company’s gross margin improved by 190 basis points to 39.3%. Management attributed this expansion to contributions from the Mexico acquisition, revenue growth, and continuing efficiency initiatives.

These gains came despite headwinds from elevated commodity prices and transportation expenses. The company noted that productivity improvements helped counterbalance these inflationary pressures.

CEO Brendan Foley highlighted the company’s flavor-centric strategy as key to the quarter’s performance. He emphasized that results demonstrated robust revenue expansion, including organic momentum throughout the international flavor product line.

Integration Plans for Unilever Acquisition

McCormick continues advancing toward finalizing its combination with Unilever’s food operations. Foley noted the company has achieved substantial progress on merger integration preparations.

This encompasses establishing a post-transaction leadership structure and operational framework. Multiple cross-functional integration teams have been deployed, and the organization has developed comprehensive business continuity strategies for when the transaction is finalized.

For the full fiscal year, McCormick reiterated its previous outlook. The company continues to project adjusted earnings in the range of $3.05 to $3.13 per share for the fiscal year concluding November 30.

Total net sales are anticipated to increase between 13% and 17% for the full year. Approximately 13 percentage points of this expansion is expected to result from the McCormick de Mexico transaction.

Wall Street analysts are currently modeling adjusted earnings of $3.09 per share for the complete fiscal year. This projection corresponds with revenue of $7.91 billion, representing approximately 16% growth versus the prior year.

The post McCormick (MKC) Stock Surges 4% as Quarterly Results Exceed Expectations appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• SharonAI Holdings (SHAZ) closes a $356 million senior secured debt facility backed by GPU assets.
• The financing agreement features a 9.95% fixed interest rate, not including transaction fees.
• Goldman Sachs and multiple private credit investors participated in the financing round.
• Total capital raised by the firm exceeds $2.6 billion across debt and equity over the last 10 months.
• Capital will finance deployment of over 68,000 Nvidia GPUs scheduled for completion by mid-2027.

Shares of SharonAI Holdings Inc. (SHAZ) climbed 0.79% following the company’s disclosure of a significant new financing arrangement. The Australia-based cloud infrastructure provider has completed a $356 million senior secured facility backed by its GPU hardware.

SharonAI Holdings, Inc. Class A Common Stock, SHAZ

The financing carries a 9.95% fixed interest rate, with additional fees not disclosed in the base rate. The arrangement utilizes a special purpose vehicle framework, with security provided by the company’s GPU inventory and associated revenue streams.

Jarden Australia served as the exclusive financial adviser and lead arranger for the transaction. The investor syndicate features Goldman Sachs alongside various private credit funds from Australia, Asia, and international markets.

Deployment Plans for New Capital

According to SharonAI, the capital raised will finance compute infrastructure deployment tied to secured customer agreements. The firm has outlined plans to install more than 68,000 Nvidia GPUs before the end of the second quarter of 2027.

The company characterizes this financing as the inaugural transaction in a planned sequence of GPU-backed funding arrangements designed to support its expansion timeline. The infrastructure deployment covers territories including Australia, New Zealand, and additional Asia-Pacific markets.

SharonAI positions itself as a Neocloud infrastructure provider. The company develops AI computing platforms designed for hyperscale cloud providers, AI-focused companies, government agencies, corporate clients, and academic research institutions.

Following this transaction’s completion, SharonAI reports total institutional capital raises exceeding $2.6 billion through combined debt and equity instruments. This fundraising activity has occurred within approximately the past 10 months.

James Manning, who serves as co-founder and chief executive officer of SharonAI, provided remarks on the financing. He emphasized that the deal demonstrates the company’s strategic approach to leveraging debt capital markets for GPU infrastructure funding.

Revenue Pipeline and Financial Strategy

Manning highlighted the firm’s customer commitment portfolio, which he stated has reached a total contract value exceeding $8.8 billion. He noted the financing structure aims to enhance return on equity metrics over the long term.

The approach is engineered to maximize shareholder value creation, Manning explained. He emphasized that the company maintains a robust balance sheet supported by an expanding portfolio of contracted computing capacity.

Manning characterized the capital allocation methodology as carefully managed. In his view, this strategic positioning enables SharonAI to sustain its AI platform expansion throughout the Asia-Pacific geography.

The facility represents one component of a comprehensive capital markets initiative. This initiative has remained active throughout the previous 10-month period as SharonAI has pursued financing to support its infrastructure objectives.

SharonAI’s value proposition emphasizes sovereign and secure AI computing infrastructure. The company asserts that demand for trusted computing resources is exceeding available supply, especially across Australia, New Zealand, and neighboring Asia-Pacific territories.

The GPU-backed financing mechanism creates a direct connection between the debt obligation and the physical hardware assets, along with the contracted revenue those assets produce. This financing model has gained traction among organizations developing large-scale AI computing capabilities.

SharonAI’s infrastructure offering, branded as its AI Factory platform, aims to accommodate diverse workloads ranging from model training to inference operations and agentic AI applications. The company maintains a global customer footprint.

With this announcement, SharonAI has successfully completed its inaugural GPU-backed financing facility, with additional facilities anticipated. The company projects ongoing financing rounds as it progresses toward its objective of deploying 68,000 GPUs by mid-2027.

The post SharonAI (SHAZ) Secures $356M GPU-Backed Financing to Power Asia-Pacific Expansion appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin analyst Frank Cappelleri says the OG cryptocurrency’s chart resembles the setup that preceded a 400% rally last cycle.

According to the CappThesis founder, the same technical base could support another leg higher.

Chart Mirrors the 2022 to 2023 Recovery

Speaking on CNBC, Cappelleri compared Bitcoin’s current structure with the period spanning 2022 and 2023, when BTC suffered a decline of about 70%.

He pointed to a chart of Bitcoin’s roughly 54% decline this cycle and set it beside the 70% drop mentioned above. “This also looks like a bullish pattern to me,” he said. That earlier slide ended in a large breakout, and he argued that BTC can move up hard once momentum takes hold.

“Bitcoin can really rally,” the analyst said. “It’s a 400% gain.”

However, he was careful not to project the same return this time. “Not calling for that,” Cappelleri stated, adding that he was instead looking for “a very similar foundation” that could eventually take Bitcoin back to new highs.

Cappelleri also pointed to BTC’s historical response to technical signals, saying, “Bitcoin really does well with technicals,” and arguing that its past price behavior makes those signals difficult to ignore.

BTC was valued at about $84,000 at the time of writing. The cryptocurrency experienced an increase of just over 1% in the last 24 hours and has remained more or less stable during the week. In addition, it has appreciated by about 10% in 14 days and 7% in 30 days but is 27% lower than where it was around the same time last year. Meanwhile, the asset’s third-quarter gain came to about 42%, its best Q3 since 2017.

Other Market Signals Point to a Contested Setup

As CryptoPotato reported yesterday, larger Bitcoin holders have been adding to their balances while smaller wallets have remained relatively unchanged. According to Santiment, wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC added 41,025 BTC over 10 days, taking their combined balance to 13.64 million BTC, with such scenarios in the past often leading to stronger market conditions.

BIT Research has also argued that the bear market ended after Bitcoin held above $62,900 in late July. Its analysis puts the True Market Mean, an estimate of the average holder cost, at around $76,900, thus taking away another source of selling pressure. The firm outlined a bullish scenario of $185,000 to $215,000, while acknowledging that the timing and path remain uncertain.

But other analysis is less straightforward, such as from Ali Martinez, who noted that BTC had fallen after each of the four previous US midterm elections, with declines ranging from 27% to 72%, adding another source of uncertainty as November approaches.

The post Bitcoin Chart Echoes Cycle That Delivered 400% Gains: Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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.