A US import ban on Micron chips could disrupt AI hardware supply chains, benefiting rivals like Samsung and SK Hynix amid high demand.

The post Netlist files complaint seeking US import ban on Micron chips appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

AI's dual role in cybersecurity highlights urgent need for updated regulations and resource equity to protect financial systems effectively.

The post Federal Reserve’s Bowman warns banks on AI cybersecurity risks and benefits appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Renaming AI to "Super Intelligence" could influence public perception and policy direction, impacting innovation and international discourse.

The post Trump plans to rename AI to ‘Super Intelligence’ in federal agencies appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitwise launched the first US spot NEAR ETF on NYSE Arca, offering direct NEAR exposure alongside staking rewards through the NRR fund.

The post Bitwise brings first spot NEAR ETF to US investors appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The incident underscores the tension between decentralization principles and regulatory pressures, potentially reshaping DeFi accountability norms.

The post Bitget CEO criticizes THORChain for inconsistent response to hacks appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

André Dragosch: Why Bitcoin’s Fair Value is $197,000

The 10-year Treasury yield is spiking, and Bitwise’s André Dragosch has a rule of thumb for when that becomes dangerous: 80 basis points in 20 trading days. He explains why the speed of the move matters more than the level, how a stock market correction could force a Fed pivot, and why that pivot could be the last domino before a genuine Bitcoin bull market.

Chapters:
0:00 Operation Choke Point 2.0 and Crypto’s Shift to Republicans
0:37 Will Democrats Stop Fighting Bitcoin and Crypto?
1:53 Hunter Biden on Elizabeth Warren’s Crypto Stance
2:44 Blockchain in the Age of AI and Bitcoin Going to Zero
3:34 Why Hunter Biden Launched a Meme Token
4:57 Bitcoin for the Unbanked and Cross-Border Payments
5:52 Hunter Biden on Michael Saylor and Strategy
7:50 Crypto Payments for His Art and the Blockchain Art Economy
9:02 Global Bitcoin Adoption and the Meme Economy
11:20 Is Fiat a Sham? Banks, Argentina, and Wall Street

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 André Dragosch: Why Bitcoin’s Fair Value is $197,000 first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Solari Capital Founder Scaramucci: Betting on Bitcoin & Exponential Technology

Solari Capital just came out of stealth with $350 million deployed across AI, biotech, and Bitcoin. Founder AJ Scaramucci explains his “programmable reality” thesis: exponential computing power is turning biology, matter, intelligence, and finance into programmable systems. He also covers why Bitcoin is a core bet against monetary debasement.

Chapters:
0:00 AJ Scaramucci and Solari Capital’s Programmable Reality Thesis
1:22 Programmable Matter: Robotics, Alchemy, and Embodied AI
2:56 Physical Superintelligence and the Next Paradigm in Physics
4:16 How Close Are Humanoid Robots? Lessons From Waymo
5:27 Bitcoin and Monetary Debasement in Solari’s Framework
6:56 Scarcity vs. Abundance: Gold and Bitcoin vs. the Mag 7
8:23 Frontier AI Labs, Open Source, and the Application Layer
9:12 Treasure Trove and Collectibles as a Cultural Store of Value
11:39 The Dinosaur Fossil Market: T-Rex as an Asset Class
13:26 Fission Labs, Tokenized Private Shares, and the Future of IPOs

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 Solari Capital Founder Scaramucci: Betting on Bitcoin & Exponential Technology first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Hunter Biden on Bitcoin, Operation Chokepoint 2.0, and $LAPTOP

Hunter Biden’s $LAPTOP token dropped more than 98% within minutes of launch, and now he’s explaining what happened. In this interview, he walks through the plan to list on a centralized exchange, the switch to a decentralized exchange, and the market maker liquidity miss he blames for the crash. He also shares his 2028 Bitcoin price prediction.

Chapters:
0:00 Why Hunter Biden Named His Token $LAPTOP
1:36 What Went Wrong With the $LAPTOP Launch
7:07 $LAPTOP vs. the Trump Token: Tokenomics and Transparency
10:46 Operation Choke Point 2.0 and Lobbying His Father
13:30 Will Democrats Ever Get Behind Bitcoin and Crypto?
19:24 Hunter Biden on Michael Saylor and Strategy
21:22 Bitcoin Payments for Art and Global Bitcoin Adoption
24:52 Is Fiat a Sham? Banks, Wall Street, and Bitcoin
28:32 Silk Road, Bad Actors, and Crypto’s Partisan Shift
31:34 Hunter Biden’s 2028 Bitcoin Price Prediction

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 Hunter Biden on Bitcoin, Operation Chokepoint 2.0, and $LAPTOP first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Gary Cardone: Wall Street Is Taking Over Bitcoin — For Good

The Clarity Act cloture vote failed, and Bitcoin rallied anyway. Gary Cardone, co-founder of Chargebacks911, explains why bad news has been bullish, why he thinks $75K will hold, and why he still has bids set at $66K and $68K. He also shares why he’d welcome one more retest of the low $70s.

Chapters:
0:00 Gary Cardone on Bitcoin’s Rally After the Clarity Act Vote Failed
1:38 Capital Rotation to AI and Bitcoin’s Weak Push to $126K
2:23 Why Gary Cardone Parked His Money in STRC
3:13 Collecting 10–12 Bitcoin From STRC Dividends
3:55 Why You Don’t Need to Chase Bitcoin — His $66K and $68K Bids
4:51 STRC vs. Other Preferreds: Liquidity, Yield, and Tax Treatment
6:21 Why $1M–$5M Bitcoin Price Targets Are a Bad Pitch
8:05 Bitcoin’s Real Supply and a Realistic Market Cap Target
10:05 Wall Street, the New Guard, and Bitcoin–Fiat Arbitrage
11:05 What Real Bitcoin Mass Adoption Looks Like

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 Gary Cardone: Wall Street Is Taking Over Bitcoin — For Good first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Dr. Pippa Malmgren: Investing in Bitcoin in the Age of Abundance

The US–Greenland security deal isn’t really about ice or minerals. Dr. Pippa Malmgren says it’s about the space race. The former White House economic advisor and founder of the Geopolitica Institute explains why missile tracking and satellite ground stations make the Arctic critical, and why Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands are next. She then connects geopolitics to markets, from US debt to China’s Treasury selling to the future of Bitcoin.

Chapters:
0:00 Dr. Pippa Malmgren on Greenland, the Arctic, and the Space Race
2:04 Diego Garcia, the Chagos Islands, and America’s Strategic Bases
2:51 100% Debt-to-GDP: The Administration’s Plan to Grow Out of Debt
4:18 Why China Is Selling US Treasuries
6:31 Frontier AI Labs, Nationalization, and AI Safety
8:01 From Fiat to Digital Money: Why Money Is Becoming Intelligent
9:51 Bitcoin, Dollars, and Stablecoins: “DeFi to Refi”
10:52 Austin as the New Shenzhen and the Genesis Mission
12:39 AI Agents, Abundance, and Whether We Still Need Inflation
14:39 Stablecoins or Bitcoin for AI Agents — and the Trillion-Dollar Political Risk

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 Dr. Pippa Malmgren: Investing in Bitcoin in the Age of Abundance first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds drew just $31 million in inflows on Sept. 28 as institutional demand weakened while BTC stalled below a major supply barrier.

According to SoSoValue data, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led the session with $54.84 million in inflows, adding about 657 Bitcoin and lifting its holdings back above 800,000 BTC for the first time since May 26.

Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC) added another $10.32 million, while Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) recorded $10.90 million in outflows and Grayscale’s GBTC lost $23.19 million. The remaining products registered no net flows during the session.

The $31.07 million intake extended the positive streak for US spot Bitcoin ETFs to eight trading sessions, but it also marked the weakest day of that run.

The trend has deteriorated steadily since Sept. 21, when daily inflows approached $1 billion. Flows declined through the remainder of last week before falling to just $31 million Monday, leaving the latest total about 97% below that peak.

That slowdown contrasts with the strength of the broader weekly figures. The funds attracted $2.4 billion last week, their strongest weekly inflow of 2026 and the largest since October 2025.

The surge was enough to flip year-to-date flows back into positive territory after the funds had been roughly $5.8 billion in the red as recently as July. Moreover, the latest inflow has lifted the products' month-to-date flows to $2.73 billion and 2026 net inflows to about $1.01 billion, according to SoSoValue.

Bitcoin stalls at heavy supply zone

The slowdown in ETF demand is becoming more consequential as Bitcoin struggles to extend its recovery.

Bitcoin traded around $84,000 after retreating from last week’s move above $87,000, bringing it back toward a price zone where Glassnode says long-term-holder supply is heavily concentrated.

According to the analytics firm, more long-term-holder coins sit between $84,000 and $85,000 than at any other level on its cost-basis distribution. That concentration could increase selling pressure as holders return to breakeven or move back into profit.

Glassnode said Bitcoin needs to break through the zone and hold above it for the rally to continue.

ETF demand has helped absorb that supply during the September advance. Glassnode said inflows supported last week’s roughly 4% gain even as perpetual-futures traders and profit-takers sold into the move.

The shrinking size of those inflows therefore leaves less institutional demand available as Bitcoin tests the supply cluster.

At roughly $84,000 per Bitcoin, Monday’s $31 million net inflow was equivalent in value to fewer than 400 BTC. By comparison, the nearly $1 billion entering the funds at the start of last week was equivalent to more than 11,000 BTC at similar prices.

ETF flows do not translate directly into an identical amount of same-day spot buying, but the comparison shows how sharply the marginal institutional bid has declined.

That puts the next several sessions in focus. A renewed pickup in ETF buying could help Bitcoin absorb supply around $84,000 to $85,000 and reopen the path higher. If inflows keep shrinking or turn negative, the cryptocurrency may struggle to clear the zone that has already stalled its latest advance.

The post Bitcoin’s $84,000 wall gets harder to break as ETF inflows sink to $31 million appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Zano’s team says it will draw on the blockchain network’s developer fund, team members’ personal funds and committed contributors to finance recovery from an emergency rollback. The rollback removed roughly a month of previously confirmed transactions from the recovered Zano chain. The team update gives no funding amount or timetable for payments.

The team says the network is stable and it is working with partners to verify affected activity. ZANO supply and emission will remain unchanged, it said. The named sources are a funding plan, not a published guarantee that every loss will be covered. Eligibility rules and a claims process have yet to be released.

Zano’s emergency release, published Sept. 27, restarted the chain from block 3,833,000, which the release dates to Aug. 26 at 15:50 UTC. Transactions recorded on the previous chain after that point are absent from the recovered chain.

The core team said a Gateway Address vulnerability had allowed unauthorized ZANO and Freedom Dollar, or fUSD, to enter circulation. It reported no compromise of wallet spend keys or ordinary transaction privacy, while a full post-mortem remains pending. The team also said the rollback cannot undo payments already settled in USDT, DAI or other assets on separate networks. That distinction matters for a swap or trade with a Zano transaction on one side and an external payment on the other.

What affected users can do

Zano says affected users need take no claims action yet; it will publish instructions after working with partners and counterparties. Zano’s verified forum account said no claims process was live in its recent reply and advised users to save transaction IDs plus trade and exchange records. It said users can open a support ticket to put a case on record, but nobody can preapprove a claim before the rules are published.

The core team has told users to update their wallets and check a payment’s final status on the recovered chain before resending it. It is supporting exchanges, wallets and payment services as they move over, but each operator must make its own update and announce when ready. Users should confirm a service has adopted the recovered chain before sending funds to or from it.

Zano has promised a further update on wallets, services and exchanges and a post-mortem of the Gateway Address flaw. Affected users still need the separate claims instructions to know what records will count and whether the stated funding can cover their losses.

The post Zano rolls back a month of transactions as team plans to use personal funds for recovery appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Solana's faster clock has not, so far, brought a network-wide jump in skipped slots. But a Solana Foundation study published Sept. 28 found a less even result underneath that stable headline: vote latency rose as the network moved through shorter slot targets, and validators with less stake lost a larger share of vote credits than the stake-weighted network average at 250 milliseconds.

That difference matters because vote credits feed into staking rewards. The Foundation reported group credit-loss fractions, not individual SOL payouts. Its findings make the proposed move to 200ms an economic question as well as a speed question, without showing that the 250ms change itself caused the disparity.

The Foundation's analysis says skip rates stayed low and broadly stable as target slot times fell to 250ms. On that measure, the network continued to produce blocks without evidence in the study of a broad consensus problem. The 250ms feature gate was listed as active on Mainnet in the Foundation's September changelog.

Voting told a more uneven story. As the slot target shortened, the study found that votes took more slots to land, with the largest increase among nodes in Asia and South America. Solana's network-average vote latency nevertheless remained well below two slots, and the Foundation said it saw no evidence of consensus instability. Higher latency for some validators therefore sits alongside healthy aggregate consensus performance.

The geographic data have a further limit. The Foundation counted only seven Asia-to-Oceania and 35 Europe-to-Oceania leader handoffs while the 250ms target was in place. It said those small samples were insufficient to rule out a statistical fluke in the apparent regional skip patterns. They do not establish a general skip-rate penalty for validators in those regions, even as the separate vote-latency observation warrants attention.

The reward question sits in vote credits

At the 250ms target, validators counted equally lost 1.6360% of vote credits in the Foundation's table. When the same measure was weighted by stake, the lost fraction was 0.0874%. The lower stake-weighted figure means that larger-staked validators, as a group, lost proportionally fewer credits than the population of validators considered one by one.

This is the divide that an aggregate uptime figure cannot describe. A stake-weighted average gives greater influence to operators with more delegated SOL. It can remain very low even when some smaller operators lose a greater fraction of credits. The table does not identify a SOL payout loss for any particular operator.

Solana's staking documentation explains the mechanism connecting votes to money: vote credits weighted by stake help determine inflationary rewards issued each epoch to validators and delegators, and validator commissions affect the amount delegators receive. That makes credit performance economically relevant. It does not make 1.6360% or 0.0874% a reward-loss percentage. Actual payouts also depend on the stake delegated, the epoch's reward pool and commissions, so neither table entry can be converted into an operator's lost SOL without account-level reward data.

Nor does the gap alone identify its cause. Stake size, geography and voting performance may be related in the observed sample, but the published group comparison does not isolate the effect of shorter slots from other validator conditions. The result is an observed distributional gap, with its cause and payout size still unresolved.

The Foundation's September study treats 200ms as a possible next target, while the staged slot-time proposal describes it as a separate feature-gated step. The cited Foundation updates report 250ms on Mainnet and discuss 200ms as a possible next target. Any forecast of validator rewards at that faster target is therefore conditional.

There is also a protocol boundary to the comparison. Under today's system, votes are transactions that must land on-chain. The Foundation says the planned Alpenglow design would instead send votes directly between validators and collect proof of voting within eight slots. If that change arrives, the present vote-latency mechanism would not carry over unchanged. The study therefore supports caution about extending today's pattern to a future 200ms network, especially one operating under a different voting design.

For a 200ms decision, the test is broader than whether blocks keep arriving. The Foundation's figures show a functioning network and uneven credit losses across stake sizes. They support scrutiny of reward distribution at the next speed step, without establishing a quantified SOL loss for any validator.

The post Solana’s 250ms data shows lower-stake validators lost a larger share of reward-linked vote credits appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum treasury company BitMine Immersion Technologies said on Sept. 28 that it held 6,001,302 ETH, leaving it 103,698 tokens short of its goal of owning 5% of Ethereum's supply, based on the company's latest supply estimate.

Buying that remainder at BitMine's Sept. 27 reference price would cost about $279.8 million. The company reported $672 million in cash and marketable securities on the same date.

The estimated purchase cost is roughly 42% of that reported pool. Completing the goal looks affordable on paper, though ETH's price and supply can change and BitMine has not earmarked the money for that purpose.

The closer the company gets to its target, the more consequential its next choice becomes: keep adding ETH, preserve liquidity, buy back shares, or build income from the tokens it already owns.

BitMine said it acquired 17,362 ETH in the latest week, about 37% fewer than the 27,562 ETH it reported for the week before. It says it has bought ETH every week since starting the strategy in June 2025.

In July, the company repurchased about 5.5 million BMNR shares at an average price of $15.6156, roughly $85.9 million in total, while buying 7,430 ETH that week. Chairman Tom Lee said the reduced ETH buying pace reflected the share repurchase.

That precedent shows management has weighed its stock against more ETH, though the July decision does not determine its next one.

A Sept. 24 DWF Labs study found that only four of the 20 largest digital asset treasury companies by assets under management in its sample traded above one times the value of their crypto holdings, a ratio called mNAV.

Issuing shares at a premium can finance token buying without the same dilution pressure. DWF expects management and capital structure to matter more as such premiums fade.

The finding shows why the market price of a treasury company's stock is key to any plan to keep acquiring crypto after a stated target is reached.

Although BitMine is not facing an apparent cash shortage at its reported reference price, the issue is whether its next use of capital does more for shareholders than another ETH purchase.

What the existing Ethereum position can earn

BitMine said it had 5,067,309 ETH staked as of Sept. 27, about 84% of its holdings. The company projects $358 million in annualized staking revenue at that balance and $424 million in annualized rewards if it fully stakes its ETH, using a 2.62% yield measured over seven days.

BitMine also says its MAVAN staking platform has expanded to serve institutions, custodians and partners. For now, the quantified alternative to the accumulation tally is the company's projected yield from staking its own reserve.

Lee had already signaled a gradual approach to the 5% threshold and more spending on staking, infrastructure and Ethereum-related investments in July. Crossing 5% would bring more attention to whether ETH per share, staking returns, cash retained, or BMNR repurchases will best explain the value of its next allocation.

Lee is scheduled to speak at Korea Blockchain Week on Sept. 30, and his keynote is titled “Ethereum's Wall Street Moment.”

That is when investors may get a clearer answer. For now, BitMine has shown it can afford to finish the 5% goal at its price assumptions, while its plan for the capital that follows remains less defined.

The post BitMine nears 5% Ethereum threshold, yet stock valuation rules dictate its next move appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Altcoin spot volume has climbed to nearly four times Bitcoin's, the highest ratio since September 2025, according to Glassnode.

Wintermute says retail clients on its OTC desk sold BTC last week to fund that rotation, while US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in nearly $2.4 billion over the same five sessions. Each day's ETF inflow came in below the previous day's, dropping from $999 million on Sept. 21 to $134.5 million on Sept. 25.

Bitcoin is the funding asset

Wintermute's Sept. 28 OTC report described net BTC selling on its desk, driven mainly by retail clients taking profits and moving into altcoins.

Glassnode's data shows how wide the move outward has become, with 72.5% of the altcoins it tracks outperforming Bitcoin through Sept. 23, up from 39% during August's squeeze.

Altcoin perpetual open interest barely expanded over the prior 30 days, and fewer than half of tracked markets added positions, leading Glassnode to describe that stage of the rally as mostly spot-driven.

Glassnode added that similar bursts of aggressive risk-taking have often coincided with local Bitcoin tops, and it treats the ratio as a historical warning condition.

Wintermute noted that breadth has stretched to a level where the weeks that came next were flat to negative in more than 80% of comparable cases, with early-cycle periods as the exception. Wintermute wants Bitcoin to push higher to recycle fresh wealth into the alt cycle.

Bitcoin gains create that wealth, traders realize some of it and move outward, and the process can coexist with a higher BTC price as long as another buyer absorbs the coins being sold.

Who is absorbing the selling

Farside Investors’ data shows US spot Bitcoin ETFs taking in $999 million on Sept. 21, $714.7 million on Sept. 22, $346.9 million on Sept. 23, $190.7 million on Sept. 24, and $134.5 million on Sept. 25.

The five sessions total roughly $2.4 billion, averaging about $477 million a day, and the Sept. 25 figure is 86.5% below the Sept. 21 figure. Glassnode measures its rolling weekly reading near $2.7 billion and calls it the largest inflow in almost a year.

Beneath those inflows, Glassnode's Sept. 28 report shows Bitcoin spot cumulative volume delta down 86.5% to just $17.3 million, perpetual futures delta at negative $261.5 million, and futures open interest holding at $38.9 billion.

The share of supply in profit rose to 74% from 69.3% a week earlier, and the realized profit-to-loss ratio jumped 79.6% to 1.4. Profit-takers and perpetual sellers were active in the market while ETF buyers took the other side.

Ethereum ETFs drew $602.8 million over the same five sessions, so Bitcoin products captured roughly 80% of combined BTC and ETH ETF inflows.

Regulated money is buying across crypto and concentrating at the top of the risk curve, while some retail clients move farther out.

Four times Bitcoin's trading measures turnover

CryptoQuant contributor Darkfost found that the altcoin market excluding Bitcoin has added about $371 billion, or 45%, since June.

He also found that 87% of Binance-listed altcoins were trading above their 200-day averages, up from roughly 20% in August. Altcoin deposits to exchanges, which measure inventory positioned to trade or sell, have reached their highest level since October 2025.

Weekly averages sit above 22,700 deposit transactions on Binance, 8,300 on Coinbase and 32,000 across other venues. Those readings sit below early-stage levels from the previous bull cycle.

DefiLlama puts stablecoin market capitalization near $306.4 billion, up 0.89% over 30 days. The windows differ from the 45% altcoin repricing since June, and the pairing fits a repricing driven by rotation among existing holders, with fresh stablecoin liquidity playing a smaller part.

Rates raise the value of a replacement bid

The Federal Reserve raised its policy rate range to 3.75% to 4.00% on Sept. 16. The 10-year Treasury yield touched roughly 5.23% on Sept. 25, its highest since 2007, and Brent crude moved above $107 on Sept. 28.

Wintermute names oil, rates and the chance of another Fed hike as the main external threats to the current regime. Altcoin speculation is accelerating while long-term yields sit at their highest since 2007, which leaves crypto leaning on outside demand for Bitcoin.

Wintermute identifies $82,500 as the level that capped Bitcoin's previous range. If Bitcoin holds the zone between $82,500 and its recent high near $87,000, and ETF flows stay positive even below last week's $477 million daily average, traders can keep moving BTC gains outward. The asset that funds the rotation stays intact.

A clean break above $87,000 would create a fresh pool of profits, and Wintermute says Bitcoin dominance may need to rise alongside another push higher. Glassnode places the next major resistance at $95,000 to $97,000.

If Bitcoin loses $82,500 while ETF inflows fade toward zero, the buyer replacing BTC sellers weakens just as speculative capital sits farthest out on the risk curve. Higher-beta altcoins with thinner liquidity would react most, and exchange deposits would show whether that inventory turns into selling.

A break below Glassnode's $77,000 True Market Mean would put the whole recovery structure in question.

Volume, breadth, and desk flows have confirmed the rotation into altcoins. The funding chain behind it remains untested, and the next few ETF sessions will show whether fresh buyers keep replacing the Bitcoin being sold to pay for it.

The post Altcoin spot volume nears 4x Bitcoin’s as ETF inflows shrink across five sessions appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Ethereum is getting a fork called Hegotá next year, and after that an era ends. That is the core claim of a post co-founder Vitalik Buterin published on September 27, 2026, under the title “The cryptographic world computer”: Hegotá is likely to be the network's last “normal” fork, with properties and technology that someone from 2015 would still recognise. Everything after it concerns recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, heavily optimised consensus procedures and the task of making the whole thing quantum-safe.

For you as a holder there is nothing to do about it for now. There is no deadline, no swap, no address that becomes invalid tomorrow. What matters is the direction: the way Ethereum authorises a transaction, the way a block is verified and the way your wallet talks to the network are all due to change over the coming years. Anyone deciding on custody today is also deciding how much work that changeover will cause them later. Ethereum traded between $2,711 and $2,722 on Tuesday midday, depending on the data source; Buterin's post did not move the price, and that is the accurate finding: this is technology on a horizon of years, not a trading impulse.

What Vitalik Buterin Wrote on September 27

Buterin's starting point is a critique of the word “blockchain”. He works through the original Bitcoin white paper section by section and sets each method from 2010 against the way Ethereum is meant to solve the same task in 2030. His conclusion: in almost every section the method has changed or will change. The question of whether a transaction was authorised was answered in 2010 by a signature; in 2030 it is meant to be sometimes a quantum-safe signature, sometimes several of them, sometimes a zero-knowledge proof. The question of how a node verifies a block was answered in 2010 by downloading and re-executing everything; in future it will be enough to check a SNARK plus data availability via PeerDAS.

Zero-knowledge proof is the name for a cryptographic method with which one party demonstrates that a statement is true without revealing the underlying data. SNARK and STARK are two constructions of such proofs; STARKs dispense with a pre-generated secret and are, on current understanding, considered resistant to quantum computers. PeerDAS is the method by which nodes check on a sampling basis whether block data is genuinely available, without loading all of it.

From this Buterin draws a conclusion that goes beyond technology: a modern cryptographic network such as Ethereum after the Lean upgrade is still called a “blockchain” mainly for historical reasons. In substance it is a hybrid of Satoshi Nakamoto's core ideas and cryptographic tools that emerged from fifty years of academic work and either did not exist in 2009 or were not mature.

Hegotá: The Last Fork a User From 2015 Would Recognise

Hegotá is the name of the Ethereum upgrade that, according to Buterin, is planned for next year. He is referring to the “strawmap”, the roughly sketched roadmap of the developer community. The sentence at issue appears verbatim in his post: Hegotá is probably Ethereum's last normal fork. After it begins a phase in which it is not individual parameters that change but the construction itself.

The word “normal” carries the actual information here. A normal fork shifts fee rules, introduces a new transaction type or improves a process that already exists. A user from 2015 would have understood all of that. What Buterin expects afterwards would be alien to that user: proofs instead of re-execution, signature schemes resting on different mathematics, and block production involving several parties rather than a single producer.

By way of context: a roadmap is not a commitment. Buterin himself writes of a horizon of the next three years and of the fact that much of it is still research or early implementation. Every component has to take the usual route through the core developers, and dates in Ethereum development shift regularly. Anyone deriving a date from this post is reading in more than it contains.

Recursive STARKs: How Ethereum Will Prove Blocks Instead of Re-Executing Them

Today the rule is: anyone who wants certainty that a block is valid re-executes it. A full node loads the transactions and runs them again. That is why running your own node costs storage space and computing time. The roadmap reverses this relationship: the block brings its proof with it, and the node checks the proof. Recursive here means that a proof in turn aggregates proofs, so that in the end a single compact proof stands for a long chain of operations.

In practice that means two things. First, the barrier to checking for yourself falls. Buterin explicitly names this as a side effect for privacy: anyone running their own node does not have to tell anybody which addresses interest them, and a node becomes easier to run once the computational load disappears. Second, the role of light clients changes. So far they can follow the consensus but have to trust an honest majority for validity. In future they should be able to establish both themselves, data availability and computation.

Quantum-Safe Signatures and the Authorisation of a Transaction

The point that affects holders most directly sits in the first row of Buterin's table. Today a signature demonstrates that you authorised a transaction. That signature rests on elliptic curves, a method that a sufficiently large quantum computer could break on the current understanding of cryptography. For 2030 Buterin describes a different state: sometimes a quantum-safe signature, sometimes several of them, sometimes a zero-knowledge proof.

The Ethereum Foundation also lists quantum resistance as a field of work in its public roadmap, in the section on network security. There too no changeover date appears, only a description of the goal. What follows from that for you depends less on the protocol than on the software you use to access your balance: your wallet has to support a new signature type, and on a device that means new firmware. How it looks in everyday use therefore depends on your custody route and not on the protocol; at European level the question now occupies supervisors and custodians as well.

One qualification belongs with this, because it is often lost: it does not follow from “Hegotá is the last normal fork” that Ethereum would be quantum-safe afterwards. It follows that the work on it moves to the foreground after Hegotá. Between a statement of intent and a rolled-out signature changeover lie several years and many intermediate steps for a network with this volume of wallets, applications and contracts.

Proof of Stake After Hegotá: Few-Slot Finality and What Stakers Will Notice

On consensus, Buterin describes the path from proof of work through today's proof of stake to a “heavily optimised” form. Specifically he names few-slot finality, meaning finality within a few slots instead of today's wait of around a quarter of an hour, and an “available chain”, a chain whose data is demonstrably available. Added to that is block production involving several parties, among other things through the FOCIL mechanism, which does not leave the inclusion of transactions to a single builder.

If you stake ETH through a provider or run your own validator, this affects you in two places. Faster finality shortens the time after which an operation counts as complete, which can speed up deposits and withdrawals at exchanges and staking services. And a change to the consensus always means a client update by a set date for validators. Anyone who misses the date earns no rewards in that period and risks penalties. This is not a new insight but the reason why serious staking requires maintenance.

In his post Buterin also names how a transaction's path into the network is meant to change. Today it goes from the user into the mempool and from there to the producer of the block. In future the mempool itself should bring privacy properties with it, and signatures as well as proofs should be separated out early and bundled by mempool nodes. That sounds technical but has one visible consequence: it becomes harder to read out of the mempool who is planning what, and that is precisely where many front-running attacks originate today.

PeerDAS and Light Clients: The Small Node Gains Weight

PeerDAS is the component of the roadmap that, on Buterin's account, has already begun the transition. Instead of loading all the data, nodes take samples and thereby establish whether the data really was published. The same logic applies to storing history: rather than every node keeping everything, each is meant to hold only a small part, distributed across the network.

For you this is above all a statement about independence. The less an own node costs, the more realistic it becomes not merely to believe what your wallet software reports but to check it against the network. Today that is not an option for most private holders, which is why every wallet asks a service provider. Anyone wanting to know how differently providers handle this dependency will find the differences in the software wallet comparison.

Hardware Wallet and Software Wallet: What Holders Should Look for in the Signature Standard

The changeover of a signature scheme does not reach you through the blockchain but through a software update. That raises questions you can already answer today about your custody route, without waiting for Hegotá.

• Does your device still get firmware? A hardware wallet is only fit for the future as long as the manufacturer keeps delivering new schemes. Older models eventually drop out of support, and then precisely the signature type the network expects is missing.
• Do you know your recovery route? Anyone who has their recovery words safe can change devices. Anyone who does not is tied to one manufacturer's support.
• Does your provider know whose keys these are? If your ETH sits at an exchange, it takes on this work entirely. That is convenient and shifts the risk onto its solvency and its supervision.
• Do you use smart contract accounts? Accounts controlled by a contract can be adapted to new schemes more flexibly than a classic account tied to a single key. That is exactly what the term account abstraction in the roadmap is aimed at.

Holding ETH Through an ETP: Who Hands Over the Key Question

Some German investors do not hold Ethereum themselves at all but through an exchange-traded product in their securities account. For this group the signature question is a matter for the issuer and its custodian. You acquire a debt instrument or a share, not a private key, and with that the topic shifts from your firmware to issuer risk. Which routes exist for this in Germany, and how to recognise costs and structure, is set out in our overview of crypto ETFs and ETPs for German securities accounts.

That is not an argument for or against either route. It is a division of tasks: self-custody gives you control and the duty of maintenance. A product in a securities account takes the maintenance off you and gives you a counterparty whose creditworthiness you cannot influence.

Holding Period and Tax: What a Protocol Upgrade Changes About the Acquisition Date

One question comes up with every major upgrade: does it change anything about the tax holding period? On the current understanding in Germany, the one-year period for private disposals applies to crypto assets held privately, and a protocol upgrade is not an acquisition: your ETH remains the same asset, it is neither swapped nor newly acquired. The case is different if a fork produces two chains with two tokens, or if you sell and rebuy your holdings in the course of a changeover.

With Hegotá, nothing on the record so far points to a split of the chain; it is described as a planned upgrade that the developer community follows together. What gives you certainty, though, is only the documentation of your own transactions: purchase date, quantity, price and equivalent value at every movement. Anyone keeping that continuously never has to reconstruct backwards at an upgrade. A binding answer for your case comes from tax advice, not from a trade article.

What Remains Open: Dates, Intermediate Steps and the State of Research

Three points remain expressly open after Buterin's post, and they belong in any assessment. The timing of Hegotá is roughly named as “next year”; the post gives no date. The order of the components after Hegotá is not settled; Buterin describes a bundle of directions, not a sequence. And the maturity varies: PeerDAS is already getting under way, while real-time proofs for entire blocks and quantum-safe signature schemes are, on his own account, in part still research or early implementation.

What is solid, then, is the direction, not the calendar. Anyone deriving a price forecast from it overstretches the source: a roadmap spanning several years does not move a daily price, and the post contains no statement about valuations. Anyone deriving from it that custody requires maintenance, however, is right, and that needs no date.

Ethereum After Hegotá: What to Take Away

1. Find out how long your custody route is supported. Look at whether your device still receives firmware and whether your recovery words are within reach. The hardware wallet comparison shows which manufacturers keep delivering and for how long.
2. With staking, settle who updates the client. With your own validator that is you, with a service it is the provider. Which models exist and what they cost is set out in the overview of staking platforms.
3. Choose deliberately between key and securities account. If you do not want to take on the maintenance, a product in a securities account is the more honest route than a self-custody arrangement you do not keep up; the routes for that are in the overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.

(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. The primary source is Vitalik Buterin's post “The cryptographic world computer” of September 27, 2026.)

Demand for Dogecoin through exchange-traded products climbed to a record last week, and it has never been distributed so unevenly. The American spot funds tracking Dogecoin took in a net $2.89 million in the week to September 25. That is the highest weekly figure since this product class launched. At the same time, most of that money now sits in a single fund: the Grayscale Dogecoin Trust holds roughly $13.87 million, about 81 percent of the combined assets of all American DOGE funds.

For the price question this matters more than the small sums first suggest. Anyone in Germany weighing whether Dogecoin belongs in their portfolio is at the same time deciding on the access route, on the running costs and on the tax due on a later gain. This piece puts the numbers in context, sets the supply side against them and shows which levels frame the fourth quarter.

Dogecoin Price at $0.096: The Numbers Going Into Quarter End

Dogecoin traded at $0.09609 on Tuesday midday, the equivalent of about €0.0847. That is a gain of 2.28 percent against the previous day. Over seven days it stands at a loss of 1.83 percent, over thirty days at a gain of 13.12 percent. The daily range ran from $0.091786 to $0.095939, so the current price sits slightly above the 24-hour high. The figures come from the market data service CoinGecko, as of September 29.

Market capitalisation stands at roughly $14.99 billion, with 156.12 billion DOGE in circulation. Over twelve months the coin is down 58.38 percent. From the record high of $0.731578, set on May 7, 2021, the price is around 87 percent away. This framing belongs at the start of any Dogecoin price prediction because it sets the yardstick: even a tripling from today's level would still leave a long road to the old high.

$2.89 Million in One Week: The Record Inflow Into the DOGE Funds

An exchange-traded fund on a crypto asset, a spot ETF in industry parlance, holds the coin itself and tracks its price one to one. Investors buy shares through a securities account rather than through a crypto exchange. For Dogecoin this wrapper has existed in the United States since the start of the year.

Last week's $2.89 million replaces the previous high of roughly $2.59 million, set in the week to January 2. On Friday alone $806,060 came in, and that amount went entirely to the Grayscale fund. Since rival Bitwise announced it would close its own Dogecoin fund, cumulative inflows at Grayscale have risen from $11.7 million to $15.46 million.

Context rather than celebration: $2.89 million is a very small amount for a crypto asset with a market capitalisation of almost $15 billion. The record says more about the short history of these products than about a broad institutional wave. Anyone deriving a price forecast from it should keep the order of magnitude in view.

Grayscale Holds $13.87 Million, Bitwise Winds Down BWOW

The concentration is the real story. On September 10, Bitwise announced it would dissolve its Dogecoin fund, which trades under the ticker BWOW, less than twelve months after launch. Net assets stood at roughly $688,000 on September 9. A fund of that size does not cover its own costs, and that is the usual reason for a wind-down. cryptoticker.io has already set out the background in a separate report on the closure of the Bitwise fund.

What happens next is the part that now becomes relevant. The last trading day on NYSE Arca is Wednesday, October 14. On that day the fund converts its Dogecoin holdings into cash. On Thursday, October 22, the remaining shareholders are paid the net asset value of their shares as of October 21, in cash. The filings are held by the American securities regulator, the SEC, whose servers block automated requests; the dates have been independently confirmed by several trade publications.

October 14 Rarely Affects German Brokerage Accounts

A clarification is worth making here, because the news is running widely through the crypto press. BWOW is an American fund traded on NYSE Arca. It is not usually offered to retail investors in Germany at all, because it lacks the key information document that the European PRIIPs Regulation requires for distribution to retail clients. Most German brokers block American fund shares for exactly that reason.

In practical terms: anyone in Germany who wanted exposure to Dogecoin through an ordinary securities account has in all likelihood never held BWOW. Even so, a look at the account is worthwhile if the investment was made through a foreign broker or an account at a US bank. If a holding with the ticker BWOW appears there, a good two weeks remain until October 14 to sell it directly rather than wait for the cash settlement.

14.4 Million New DOGE a Day: The Supply Side of the Forecast

Set against demand is a supply that, unlike Bitcoin's, does not tighten. Dogecoin pays miners a fixed reward of 10,000 DOGE per block. With a block time of around one minute, that produces roughly 1,440 blocks a day and therefore around 14.4 million new DOGE, or about 5 billion a year.

Converted at the current price of $0.09609, that works out to new supply worth roughly $1.38 million a day. A whole week of record inflows into every American Dogecoin fund thus corresponds to about two days of new issuance. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on September 29, 2026, on the basis of the public block parameters of the Dogecoin protocol and the market data retrieved.

This is precisely where a proposal from the developer community comes in: a request in the Dogecoin project on GitHub suggests cutting the block reward from 10,000 to 1,000 DOGE, pushing annual issuance down from around 5 billion to around 500 million. The proposal has been closed on GitHub and therefore not adopted. Anyone factoring it into a price forecast is counting on something that does not yet exist.

21Shares Dogecoin ETP on Xetra: The Route Through a Brokerage Account

The German exchange-based route is not called an ETF but an ETP or ETN. An exchange traded note is legally a debt instrument issued by the provider, not a ring-fenced fund. With physically backed products the issuer deposits the coins with a custodian, so that each share is actually matched by a holding.

For Dogecoin, 21Shares offers such a product. It carries the ISIN CH1431521033 and the German securities number A4A5WJ, trades on Deutsche Börse in euros and is, according to the provider, 100 percent physically backed; custody is handled by BitGo Europe GmbH. It was launched on April 8, 2025. The annual management fee is 2.50 percent. Assets under management stand at roughly $10.7 million, the same order of magnitude as the American market leader. The details are on the issuer's product page.

The advantage is obvious: no wallet, no key, no separate registration with a crypto exchange, and settlement through the familiar securities account. The price for that is equally fixed, and it is 2.50 percent a year.

2.50 Percent Fee Against the Holding Period Under Section 23 EStG

Weigh the fee against price performance before you settle on a route. Against the 13.12 percent price gain of the past thirty days, an annual fee of 2.50 percent barely registers. In a sideways phase lasting two or three years it eats a noticeable share of the stake, regardless of where the price goes.

The second difference often weighs more heavily in Germany than the fee does. Anyone who buys Dogecoin directly and holds it themselves falls under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act: the gain from a private disposal is tax free after a holding period of more than one year. Within that year an exemption limit of €1,000 applies to all private disposals combined; once it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable at the personal income tax rate.

With a certificate or a debt instrument on a crypto asset, the prevailing view is that this one-year rule does not apply. Such securities are regularly treated as capital investments, subject to withholding tax of 25 percent plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, but with the €1,000 saver's allowance. The tax treatment of individual crypto ETNs is not undisputed in the specialist literature and depends on the specific structure. Small portfolios often do well with the allowance, while larger positions held for more than a year argue for buying directly. This paragraph is no substitute for a conversation with a tax adviser; our overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers shows which tools make the documentation easier.

Buying Directly Under MiCA: Licensing, Custody and Fees

The second route runs through a crypto exchange. Since the European Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short, became fully applicable, trading venues addressing retail clients in the European Union need authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. The authorised firms are listed in a public register kept by the European securities regulator ESMA; in Germany, BaFin is the competent authority. Check before your first deposit whether your provider is listed there, and compare trading fees before you transfer a small amount. Which firms are licensed for German clients and what they charge per order is set out in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

After the purchase comes the custody question. Anyone intending to hold for more than a year should not leave the balance sitting on the exchange indefinitely. A hardware wallet keeps the private key offline; the hardware wallet comparison shows which devices are worthwhile for small holdings. Note down the purchase date and purchase price of every tranche as well, because without that record the one-year period cannot later be demonstrated to the tax office.

Levels for the Fourth Quarter: $0.0918 Below, $0.10 Above

On the downside the nearest solid level is $0.091786, the 24-hour low. If the price falls below it and closes there, the advance of recent days has been given back for now; the next stop would be the area around $0.085, where the price spent a longer stretch before the monthly climb.

On the upside the round $0.10 mark stands in the way, roughly 4 percent above the current price. Round numbers are not a physical quantity; they work through the order books, where sell orders cluster at even figures. A daily close clearly above $0.10 would be the first solid signal that the gain of the past thirty days is more than a counter-move within the downtrend of the year.

What these levels cannot deliver is a statement about where Dogecoin stands in a year. The supply calculation above remains the weightier argument. As long as coins worth roughly $1.38 million are created daily and demand from regulated wrappers runs at a few million dollars a week, the rest of the demand has to come from the spot market. With Dogecoin, experience shows that part hangs on sentiment, and sentiment cannot be forecast.

The Bull Case and the Bear Case Side by Side

The constructive reading is supported by the concentration itself: a provider holding 81 percent of the assets has the cost base to run the product for the long term. A fragmented market of five tiny funds would have helped none of them. Should the issuance cut from the developer proposal arrive after all, the largest structural headwind would fall away too.

The sceptical reading is supported by the order of magnitude. The combined assets of all American Dogecoin funds amount to about $17 million, roughly one thousandth of the market capitalisation. A fund wrapper alone does not move a price; it makes access more convenient. The issuance proposal is closed and not adopted, and a price loss of 58 percent over twelve months describes an intact downtrend in which thirty good days are not yet a turn.

Dogecoin in the Fourth Quarter: Your Next Three Steps

1. Check the account. If you are invested through a foreign broker, look at whether a holding with the ticker BWOW sits in your portfolio. You can sell it yourself until October 14. For a new position, compare the fees of the licensed firms in the overview of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Settle on a route and do the maths. Set the 2.50 percent annual fee of the exchange-traded product against the one-year period that applies when buying directly. Use your actual investment horizon, not the best case. The right documentation tools are listed under crypto tax software.
3. Sort out custody and records. When buying directly, the holding belongs on your own wallet after the purchase; the devices are in the hardware wallet comparison. Note the purchase date and purchase price of every tranche so that the holding period can be demonstrated later.

(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.)

ether.fi has taken restaking out of its liquid staking token weETH and is dissolving the last technical ties to EigenLayer by the end of the year. For you as a holder that means weETH has since been an ordinary liquid staking token. It earns the rewards of the Ethereum network but no restaking premium any more, and in return it carries no slashing risk from outside services.

The occasion is a CoinDesk report of September 28, 2026, in which chief executive Mike Silagadze sets out his reasoning at length for the first time. The ether.fi documentation supplies the timetable. Together they describe a retreat from a business that two years ago counted as the big bet of the Ethereum ecosystem.

How large that retreat is takes one figure to show: weETH was the largest liquid restaking token of all. When that product of all products throws off restaking, it is not a detail of product maintenance. Ethereum traded at around $2,716 on the morning of September 29; anyone holding ether through such a certificate feels the change in the make-up of their yield, hardly at all in the price.

Restaking out of weETH: the August 2026 rebuild

Restaking means that already staked ether is pledged a second time as collateral, this time for outside services that attach themselves to the security of the Ethereum network. EigenLayer invented the procedure and made it big. Liquid restaking tokens such as weETH bundled both into one tradeable instrument: the normal staking reward and the additional premium from restaking.

In August 2026 ether.fi cleared that second layer away. Since then weETH represents ordinary Ethereum staking alone. The provider's documentation puts it soberly: rewards come from Ethereum's consensus and execution layers, they are variable and not guaranteed, and they contain neither restaking income nor slashing exposure to EigenLayer services.

Silagadze commented on the rebuild in four words: "End of an era. Sad." To CoinDesk he was more specific. There had been no yield worth mentioning in restaking, and stakers had perceived a certain risk, so an exit had seemed sensible. Users had been notified several times and had consented to the change.

What separates weETH from eETH

Both tokens stand for the same staked ether; they only book the proceeds differently. eETH is a rebasing token: your number of units grows as rewards accrue. weETH is the wrapped, non-rebasing variant. The number of units stays the same, while the value of one weETH measured in eETH rises. The distinction is no quibble, because it later decides how a gain becomes visible for tax at all.

EigenPod withdrawal credentials: the timetable to the fourth quarter

The exit runs in stages, and ether.fi puts numbers on them in its own documentation. In August 2026, it says, less than one percent of protocol funds were still in restaking. That remainder was to disappear by the end of the third quarter of 2026, that is by September 30. The withdrawal credentials of the EigenPods, the technical bracket between ether.fi's validators and EigenLayer, are to follow by the fourth quarter of 2026.

By the end of the year, then, nothing is left of the connection that could still bite in an emergency. For you the second date is the interesting one. As long as the withdrawal credentials exist, part of the path by which your ether leaves the network again still runs over outside code. After that it does not.

$10 billion secured, $99,977 in fees: why restaking no longer pays

The chief executive's reasoning can be checked against the numbers, and they are merciless. CoinDesk sets two values side by side for the week to September 8. The restaking sector as a whole secured $10.02 billion at that point and took $99,977 in fees for it. That is the turnover of a mid-sized trade business, spread across assets in the tens of billions.

Provider profits follow the same curve. The five largest liquid restaking protocols, namely Renzo, Kelp, Swell, Puffer and Bedrock, together earned $953,350 in gross profit in the second quarter of 2026. Three quarters earlier the figure had been $2.18 million. Taken individually the picture gets starker still: $21,590 fell to Puffer, $22,370 to Swell.

EigenLayer itself has felt the collapse most sharply. The protocol's secured assets stood at $22.06 billion in August 2025 and stand at $5.10 billion today. The peak is put at between $19.7 billion and $22.1 billion depending on the count; the direction is the same either way. The project now trades as EigenCloud and puts verifiable computation to the fore, with deposited capital serving only as the underlay.

Liquid staking versus restaking: 53 times the revenue per dollar

The comparison that matters is in the same CoinDesk analysis. Ordinary liquid staking secured $51.87 billion in the week to September 8 and earned $27.35 million in fees on it. Per dollar secured, plain staking therefore earns roughly 53 times what restaking brings in.

That explains why the exit was commercially unavoidable. A provider that carries an additional default risk for the second security layer while receiving practically nothing for it is subsidising somebody else's business model with its customers' capital. Anyone letting their ether work through a service provider should therefore check regularly which sources of income their provider still taps at all and how much of it arrives with them; our overview of staking providers shows how far the terms diverge.

A side effect concerns commissions. When a source of income falls away, the share the provider retains of the remaining proceeds does not change arithmetically. But it weighs more heavily, because the base has become smaller.

weETHs on Symbiotic: what the second token means for holders

ether.fi has not abolished restaking but outsourced it. Anyone who still wants a restaking premium can switch into weETHs, a separate token built on Symbiotic instead of EigenLayer. Restaking is thus no longer an extra that every weETH holder carries automatically, but a decision you have to take actively.

For most holders that is precisely the good news. The risks are separated again and can be named one by one. Those who do not want them need do nothing; those who do know what they are taking on.

Symbiotic in one sentence

Symbiotic is a competing restaking platform that lends deposited capital to outside networks and says it has more than fifty of them connected. The procedure solves the same problem as EigenLayer but with a different risk architecture, and it faces the same thin market for fees.

Yield, risk, slashing: the three quantities behind the weETH return

Slashing is the penalty a validator pays for breaking the rules of the network: part of the deposited ether is confiscated. With ordinary staking there is exactly one source for that penalty, namely the Ethereum network itself. With restaking a further one is added for every connected service, with its own rules and its own points of failure.

The yield you get for it remains variable. ether.fi expressly does not guarantee it, because it depends on how busy the network is and on the fees users happen to be paying. What the rebuild changed is the composition: the fluctuating but manageable network yield stays, the additional premium falls away, and with it a bundle of risks few people could take in fully.

How much the provider's commission eats into that yield was shown by our analysis of fourteen staking providers on September 13, 2026. The finding holds unchanged after the rebuild; it simply weighs more heavily now.

Buying and custody: weETH through MiCA-regulated providers in Europe

This is the biggest hurdle for European investors, and it has nothing to do with the rebuild. weETH is a DeFi token. A regulated European exchange will not as a rule put it in your account. You buy ether from a provider with MiCA authorisation, pull it into a wallet of your own and deposit it there yourself.

That shifts responsibility entirely to you. There is no deposit guarantee, no provider to restore lost access, and no European supervisor to step in over a flaw in the contract code. Anyone taking this route needs a hardware wallet, a securely stored recovery phrase and the patience to test both once before the first larger amount.

Holding period and accrual: how the tax office treats staking income from weETH

This is where the technical distinction made above comes back. With a rebasing token such as eETH the number of units grows, and every credit can be read as an accrual taxable in the year it accrues. With weETH the number of units stays constant, the gain sits in the exchange ratio and only becomes visible on sale, which argues rather for treatment as a disposal gain.

The question is not conclusively settled, and it is why in our piece on restaking, liquid staking and tax of July 22, 2026 we counselled caution: new products meet old rules that were never written for them. The disappearance of the restaking premium at least simplifies matters, because one type of income, and with it one question of demarcation, falls away.

In practice that means documenting every inflow and outflow with date, quantity and price, from day one. Anyone who has to reconstruct that afterwards ends up paying for gaps that two clicks could have closed at the moment of booking. Only a tax adviser can give a dependable statement about your own liability in any case.

Unstaking at ether.fi: queue, liquidity and the way back into ETH

The way back runs through a redemption in the provider's interface. There is no fixed deadline for it. In its documentation ether.fi names three quantities on which the duration depends: the liquidity available in the protocol, the withdrawal queue of the Ethereum validators and general network load.

Anyone wanting to sell towards a fixed date should allow for that uncertainty and not assume the exit will succeed on the same day. The second route runs through the market: weETH can be traded, and in quiet phases the market price sits close to the calculated value. In hectic phases it does not, and that is exactly when many want out at once.

ETHFI, ETH and the neobank rebuild: the second-quarter numbers

The exit from restaking is also the consequence of a rebuild inside the company. ether.fi's gross profit fell from $18.71 million in the third quarter of 2025 to $9.99 million in the second quarter of 2026, a drop of 47 percent. At the same time the card business has grown: its share of monthly revenue rose from 17 percent in January to 46 percent in July.

Silagadze describes that as a successful swap. Income from the banking business had entirely replaced the loss of restaking revenue and the lower ether price; the annual run rate of total revenue would rise by about 38 percent, while income from staking and restaking had fallen by 70 percent. These figures come from the company itself and are not supported by audited accounts.

For you as a holder that is no footnote. A provider drawing half its revenue from a card business is a different company from a pure staking service, with different dependencies and different supervisory questions.

weETH and restaking: how to proceed now

1. Check what you actually hold. Look in your wallet to see whether weETH, eETH or weETHs is sitting there. Only weETHs still carries restaking risk after the rebuild. Which returns are available from other providers and on what terms is shown by our comparison of staking platforms.
2. Bring your records up to date. Record the date, quantity and price of every movement, including a switch between the token variants. A tax and portfolio tracker takes the reconstruction off your hands, as long as you set it up early enough.
3. Choose your exit route deliberately. Redemption with the provider and a sale on the market lead to different waiting times and different prices. Anyone selling through an exchange anyway should compare the fees first; which houses are authorised under MiCA is in our exchange comparison.

(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.)

The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk.

Crypto paper trading means trading at real prices with money that does not exist. Every order is booked and every profit and loss is calculated, but nothing ever reaches an exchange. It is the cheapest way to watch a strategy fail, which is exactly the point. What paper trading cannot do matters just as much: it simulates the market, not you. This guide explains how paper trading works for crypto, how to start without an account, and the three places where the simulation is kinder than reality.

Crypto Paper Trading: Key Points at a Glance

• Paper trading is trading at real prices with simulated execution. No money moves, so you cannot win any either.
• Free and without signing up, you can practise in the CryptoTicker trading simulator: $10,000 in play money, 50 coins, unlimited trades, as of September 28, 2026.
• Fees belong in the simulation. At 0.05% per execution, 20 round trips a day at full position size cost 2% of the account in a single day.
• Losses weigh double: in Tversky and Kahneman's 1992 study, a loss weighed about 2.25 times as much as an equal gain. Paper trading barely trains that part.
• Risking 1% per trade on $10,000 means losing no more than $100 before your stop.
• Move to real money only after four weeks without breaking a rule, and then with less money than you practised with.

What is paper trading?

The term dates from before trading software: anyone who wanted to test an idea wrote the purchase, price and quantity on paper and later worked out what would have happened. Today software does the job. It reads real prices, fills your orders against them and turns that into an account balance, open positions and a result.

A paper trade is a single simulated trade: entry, stop, target and exit, booked at market prices without an order ever reaching the order book.

Paper trading and a demo account mean almost the same thing in practice. The difference is the provider: a demo account is usually a broker's practice account, designed to lead you into a funded one. Paper trading is the method, and it works without a broker. What to look for in a demo account is covered in our guide to the trading demo account without signing up. If you want to trade for real afterwards, you need a regulated exchange; our exchange comparison sets out fees and licences.

How does crypto paper trading work?

Every paper trading platform does three things at its core:

1. Read prices. It pulls prices continuously from an exchange or data provider. The closer they are to real time, the more honest the result.
2. Simulate orders. Market, limit, stop loss and take profit orders are checked against the current price and filled once the condition is met.
3. Keep the books. Balance, position size, fees, liquidation for leveraged positions, and the result in dollars and percent.

The sentence that matters: the prices are real, the execution is not. Your simulated order moves no price, always finds a counterparty and never waits in a queue. Why that matters is explained below under the three gaps.

Crypto paper trading for free, without signing up

Crypto differs from stocks in three ways: the market never closes, leverage of up to 100x is common on perpetual futures, and daily moves of ten percent are no exception for smaller coins. A crypto simulator should therefore run around the clock, allow long and short positions and calculate liquidation.

The trading simulator in the CryptoTicker Trading Hub works like this, as of September 28, 2026:

• No signup, no credit card. You open the page and trade. Your progress is saved in the browser; you only need an account to continue on a second device.
• $10,000 in play money, unlimited trades. Nothing is ranked, and you can reset at any time.
• 50 coins at real prices. You can trade the 50 largest coins with more than $50 million in daily volume.
• Long, short and leverage. Choose between leverage of up to 10x or up to 100x and watch how quickly liquidation approaches.
• Three levels. Beginner, Standard and Pro; the beginner mode keeps leverage and short selling out of the way at first.

Other ways to paper trade crypto:

A charting platform is strong if you already do your analysis there. A broker's demo account makes sense once you have chosen that broker. A simulator without an account is the shortest route to your first paper trade.

The three gaps between paper trading and real trading

Gap 1: execution

A simulated market order is filled at the displayed price. A real one hits the order book, and with large orders or thin markets the price moves before everything is filled. That difference is called slippage. For bitcoin and ether at retail position sizes it is usually small; for small coins in hectic minutes it is not. That is why the CryptoTicker simulator only lists coins with high daily volume.

Gap 2: costs

A paper account without fees makes every strategy look better than it is. A worked example using the fee the CryptoTicker simulator charges, 0.05% per execution:

The calculation is deliberately simple and ignores compounding, but it shows the mechanism: if you trade a lot, you have to earn the fees first. On perpetual futures the funding rate comes on top, settled between longs and shorts several times a day depending on the exchange. How perpetuals work is explained in our comparison of the best perp DEXs.

Gap 3: you

The biggest gap is psychological. In 1992, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman measured that people weigh a loss about 2.25 times as heavily as an equal gain. With play money the effect is weak: a 20% drawdown is a number on a screen. With your own money it is the moment people move their stop lower instead of letting it trigger.

Paper trading trains your rules, not your nerves. That is not a reason to skip it but a reason to do it properly: with fixed rules that you write down in advance and actually follow in the simulation.

How to paper trade properly: four weeks with rules

1. Week 1: write your rules. Risk no more than 1% per trade, which is $100 on $10,000. Set the stop before you enter. No more than three losing trades a day, then stop.
2. Week 2: size your positions. Position size equals risk divided by stop distance. With a stop 5% below entry, the position may be $100 ÷ 0.05 = $2,000. At 10x leverage that ties up $200 of margin, but the risk is still $100.
3. Week 3: keep a journal. For every trade, note the reason, entry, stop, target and result. After 20 trades you will see which setups work and which only generate fees.
4. Week 4: count rule breaks. Every moved stop and every exceeded limit is a rule break. The goal is zero, not a high balance.

Order types, charts and risk basics are explained in our crypto trading guide for beginners.

From paper trading to real money

The switch only makes sense once three things hold for several weeks: no rule breaks, a known maximum drawdown that you sat through, and a result after fees. Then one simple rule applies: your first real stake is smaller than your play money, not larger. If you practised with $10,000 and deposit $1,000, recalculate every position with the same formula rather than simply scaling down.

Real money also means tax. In many countries, selling or swapping crypto is a taxable event. Our guide on how to file crypto tax covers the basics; for your own situation, ask a tax adviser.

Where to go after your first paper trade, from order types and position sizing to a four-week practice plan, is set out in our guide to learning to trade online for free. If you then want to start with real money, our exchange comparison lists fees, licences and deposit methods.

Sources

• Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman: Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 5 (1992), pp. 297 to 323.
• TradingView Help Center: Paper Trading, functionality and initial capital, as of 28.09.2026.
• CryptoTicker Trading Hub, trading simulator, as of 28.09.2026.

Anyone moving funds onto Base for the first time notices quickly that the network is very fast in one direction and very slow in the other. The trip from an exchange to Base takes minutes and costs fractions of a cent. The official way back to Ethereum takes seven days. That is neither a fault nor congestion; it is built into the design of the network. This piece explains both directions, shows what a transfer really costs, and walks through Basescan, the block explorer you use to see what happened to your money.

Base is the Ethereum extension built by the American exchange Coinbase. According to DefiLlama data, the decentralised exchanges on this network handled swap volume of around $1.2 billion in a single day at the end of September. Even so, it remains largely unfamiliar ground for European users: search for the explorer or the bridge in your own language and you will find almost nothing but the providers' own English guides.

What Base is: an optimistic rollup from Coinbase on the OP Stack

Base is a layer 2. The term means a blockchain of its own that draws its security from a larger network instead of producing it itself. Base bundles its users' transactions, processes them cheaply on its own chain and then writes the result to Ethereum. The data on which a dispute would be settled therefore sits on Ethereum, while the computing work happens on Base.

Technically Base belongs to the family of optimistic rollups. Optimistic here means that the network first assumes the results reported to Ethereum are correct and gives everyone a window in which to challenge a false entry. The verification procedure behind it is called a fault proof. The independent monitor L2Beat lists Base as an optimistic rollup at maturity "Stage 1", the middle of three stages, at which some of the emergency powers still sit with a security council.

Base is built on the OP Stack, an open construction kit for layer-2 networks. That is why every tool you know from Ethereum works on Base without modification: the same wallet formats, the same addresses, the same kind of smart contracts. Convenient, and at the same time the most common source of error, because the same address exists on both networks while funds still land on only one of them.

Base network details: chain ID 8453, ETH for gas and no token of its own

Three pieces of information are enough to enter Base into any wallet. The chain ID is 8453, the number by which wallets and applications tell networks apart. The standard endpoint is mainnet.base.org. And the currency for fees is Ether, the same ETH you know from Ethereum. All three values appear exactly like that in the network overview in the Base documentation.

From that follows the most important sentence for anyone starting out: Base has no network token of its own. You need ETH on Base to be able to send a transaction at all. Anyone who moves only stablecoins onto the network without a cent of ETH is left with a visible balance that cannot be moved. What trades under the name Base are projects running on the network, not the network itself; we have written up the look at the Coinbase chain's ecosystem separately.

Setting up a wallet: Base App, MetaMask and the manual entry

Coinbase now runs its own wallet under the name Base App. The network is already configured there, so there is nothing for you to enter. If you use a wallet from another provider, you will in most cases find Base in a list of prepared networks and simply select it.

If only the manual route is left, you enter the three values from the previous section: chain ID, endpoint and ETH as the currency. After that the wallet shows Base as a network of its own alongside Ethereum, and your balance appears differently depending on which network is selected. Which type of wallet suits which amount is broken down in our software wallet comparison; the general procedure for any network is in our overview of adding networks, bridges and explorers.

One note that saves a lot of trouble: a wallet address is valid on Base and on Ethereum alike. You do not have two addresses but one address on two networks. That is exactly why copying the right address is not enough — you also have to select the right network.

Base fees: what a transfer really costs at the end of September

A fee on Base is made up of two parts. The first pays for the computing work on Base itself. The second pays for the space on Ethereum where the data is later stored. Together they make up the amount your wallet displays, and both are settled in ETH.

At the end of September we recalculated several real transactions from a live Base block. The result: a simple transfer cost around 0.13 cents, an elaborate interaction with a smart contract around 3.6 cents. The share accounted for by the space on Ethereum came to a few hundredths of a cent in each case and barely registered against the computing work.

For comparison: the same transfer directly on Ethereum costs a multiple of that, depending on load. That gap is precisely why Base exists. It comes at a price, though, and the price only becomes visible when you want your money back.

The way in: an exchange withdrawal straight onto Base instead of a detour via Ethereum

There are two routes onto the network, and the cheaper one is the one most people overlook. At many trading venues you can send your funds straight onto the Base network when you withdraw. You simply pick Base rather than Ethereum as the destination network. The exchange handles the transfer internally and you pay only its withdrawal fee, often a matter of a few cents or nothing at all.

The second route runs over the official bridge from Ethereum to Base. You send ETH from your own wallet to a contract on Ethereum, and a few minutes later the same amount appears on Base. This route costs you a full Ethereum transaction, so considerably more than the exchange withdrawal. It is worth taking above all when your money already sits in your own wallet on Ethereum.

A third factor often decides the cost question more than the transfer itself: what you paid when you bought on the exchange. How those fees are put together we worked through, using Coinbase as the example, in our breakdown of Coinbase's fees.

One caveat belongs here: maintenance windows and network upgrades halt deposits and withdrawals for a time. For the hard fork at the end of September several trading venues suspended Base transfers for a few hours, as we described in our piece on the Cobalt switch on September 30. If you are transferring on a day like that, it is better to plan in some slack.

The way back takes seven days: fault proofs and the challenge period

The official route from Base back to Ethereum runs in three steps, and the Base documentation describes them expressly. First you send the withdrawal on Base. Then a proof is submitted on Ethereum that this withdrawal actually took place on Base. Only after that does the real waiting time begin.

That waiting time is called the challenge period, and at Base it lasts seven days. The official documentation on bridging and withdrawals puts it unambiguously: standard withdrawals to Ethereum must wait seven days before they can be completed. Only once that period has elapsed can the withdrawal be finalised on Ethereum.

The reason lies in the word "optimistic". Because the network initially accepts its results unverified, it needs a window in which someone can challenge a false entry. Seven days is that window. It protects you personally from an error rather less than it protects the entire balance held on Base from a falsified report to Ethereum.

In practice that means anyone who needs their money at short notice should not treat the official way back as an emergency exit. And once the seven days are running, the process cannot be sped up — the period expires regardless of how urgent the matter is.

Intent bridges: a faster way back over liquidity providers, with a risk of its own

There are providers at which a withdrawal from Base arrives in minutes rather than days. What matters is understanding what actually happens, and the Base documentation is clear on the point: these services do not shorten the challenge period at any stage; instead they front you the money.

The mechanism is called an intent bridge. You declare which amount you want on which network. A liquidity provider pays you that amount on the destination network immediately and takes your funds on Base in return. It then sits through the seven days itself. Your waiting time has been taken over by somebody else, and they charge a discount for it.

From that follows a risk the official bridge does not carry: for the duration of the process you are trusting a contract and an operator, not only the network. Bridges have for years been among the most frequently attacked components in crypto. For small amounts and a quick switch that is often acceptable; for the bulk of a portfolio, rather less so.

Reading Basescan: status, token transfers and granted approvals

The block explorer for Base is called Basescan and sits at basescan.org. A block explorer is a window into the blockchain: you enter an address or the identifier of a transaction and see what actually happened, regardless of what your wallet displays.

Four items matter day to day. The status tells you whether the transaction went through or was aborted with an error; an aborted transaction still costs a fee. Under token transfers you see which tokens actually changed hands in the operation, which in swaps often differs from the display in the wallet. The transaction fee field shows the fee really paid, in ETH. And the token approvals tab lists every approval your address has ever granted.

That last tab is the most valuable and the least used. Anyone who swaps regularly on a network accumulates a long list of open permissions there over time. Tools that pull such overviews together across several networks are in our comparison of analytics platforms.

Typical mishaps: wrong network, missing gas, counterfeit tokens

Three mistakes catch out nearly every newcomer, and all three can be headed off in advance.

The withdrawal to the wrong network. You withdraw from an exchange, pick Ethereum instead of Base by accident, and the funds end up at the right address on the wrong network. That is not a total loss, because the address belongs to you on both networks. But you have to move the money over a bridge and pay Ethereum fees for it. The same applies in reverse. So check the destination network in the withdrawal dialogue before you confirm.

The missing fee token. You hold stablecoins on Base but no ETH. Every transaction fails, including sending on the stablecoins themselves. The remedy is a small amount of ETH placed on the network in advance; the equivalent of a few euros covers a great many transactions.

The token that sits in the wallet but is worthless. On open networks anyone can create a token with any name they like and send it to other people's addresses. A familiar name appearing in your wallet means nothing. What counts is the contract address alone, and you check that in the explorer against the project's own figure. An unsolicited token that invites you to swap it on an unfamiliar site is the entry point to an attempted fraud.

Revoking approvals and spotting phishing on Base

An approval is the permission you grant a smart contract to move a particular token from your address. Without it no swap on a decentralised exchange works. The problem is its duration: many applications ask by default for an unlimited approval, and it stays in place until you actively withdraw it.

Revoking is a simple operation. You call up the list of your approvals, select the entries you no longer need and send a transaction that sets them to zero. On Base, thanks to the low fees, that costs fractions of a cent. Such a sweep makes sense whenever you have not used an application for a longer stretch.

With phishing, things run on Base as on any other network. The most dangerous thing is rarely the fake input mask for a recovery phrase. The heavier risk is the signature you give for something you have not read. Before every confirmation your wallet shows you which contract receives which permission. Anyone holding larger amounts is better off keeping them separate from the wallet they use day to day.

Tax in Germany: what bridging and swapping trigger

For investors in Germany the principle in section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies: selling or swapping a cryptocurrency is a private disposal transaction. If the purchase is more than a year in the past, a gain remains tax-free. Below that it counts as taxable income as soon as the sum of all private disposal transactions in a year exceeds the exemption threshold.

On Base two operations have to be kept apart. When you move ETH over the official bridge between Ethereum and Base, it stays the same asset under your own control; the holding period keeps running. When you swap one token for another on Base, by contrast, that is a disposal transaction like any on an exchange, with everything that entails. With an intent bridge you should look closely at what was actually booked, because in some cases a swap happens there rather than a transfer.

Because many small transactions pile up on Base, the documentation quickly becomes hard to follow. It is best kept as you go rather than reconstructed in the spring. This information does not replace tax advice; assessing a specific case belongs in expert hands.

Market depth on Base: one provider carries half the swap volume

Daily volume on the decentralised exchanges on Base stood at around $1.2 billion at the end of September, according to DefiLlama figures, and roughly half of that fell to a single provider, the Base-native exchange Aerodrome. That is a high concentration and worth knowing about: a large part of the market depth hangs on one project.

For small and medium amounts, Base is therefore one of the cheapest ways to move and swap funds. For large holdings the calculation shifts. There the one-off Ethereum fee barely registers, while the seven days to final withdrawal and the risk of fast bridges weigh more heavily. The honest answer is therefore that Base suits what you move well, and what you leave sitting rather less well.

Base in daily use: your next three steps

1. Set the network up properly and put gas aside. Enter Base with chain ID 8453 into your wallet or pick it from the list, and send yourself a small amount of ETH on the network before you transfer anything else. Which wallet suits which amount is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.
2. Try the way in with a small amount. Withdraw a two-figure euro amount from your trading venue straight onto the Base network and then look the operation up in the explorer. That way you learn how the network behaves on a sum whose loss would not hurt. Which trading venues are authorised in the EU and what their withdrawals cost is shown in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Document every movement from the outset. Note the date, the amount and the equivalent value on every swap, so that the holding period can be traced later. Which programs record that automatically is shown in our comparison of tax and portfolio tools.

(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.)

Analysts point to crude prices capping non-yielding assets, while spot ETFs have taken money in for eight sessions running.

Plus, crypto majors rebound as oil and yields fall and Saylor’s Strategy returns to buying Bitcoin.

The judge has told Pleterski he will raise objections on his behalf, to keep inadmissible evidence away from the jury.

Coinbase Clearing will take USDC as collateral and settle around the clock, though margined products stay with partners.

OpenAI says its agents keep landing on government websites because they treat them as reliable sources, but it's pausing training while it adds safeguards.

Bitcoin’s derivatives market is undergoing one of its sharpest leverage resets in a year.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) faces a potentially important technical juncture with likely 26% move on the cards.

Bitcoin faces a critical $82,500 test that Wintermute says will dictate the next trajectory for XRP and altcoins.

Bitwise has bought Solana for the seventh consecutive day of trading amid growing institutional demand for the asset, pushing its Solana ETF product closer to hitting a key milestone of $1.5 billion.

Solana's spot ETFs pulled in $12.70 million on September 28, more than triple the $3.96 million that XRP funds attracted the same day.

Key Takeaways

• Shares of AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) jumped approximately 5% to $63.85 following the board’s approval of a change-of-control severance arrangement for senior management.
• The regulatory filing does not mention any ongoing acquisition discussions or identify potential acquirers, yet retail investors interpret it as a potential takeover indicator.
• Following a $1.15 billion convertible notes issuance in July, the satellite company maintains pro forma liquidity exceeding $3.7 billion.
• Wall Street analysts maintain a Hold rating with a consensus price target of $86.58, despite the company’s recent quarterly performance falling short of expectations.
• The launch timeline for the next three BlueBird satellites remains unannounced, while an ongoing securities class action lawsuit presents additional uncertainty.

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) shares advanced 5% to reach $63.85 during Tuesday’s trading session. The rally came after the satellite communications company filed a change-of-control severance agreement covering its executive leadership team.

AST SpaceMobile, Inc., ASTS

Shares had finished Monday’s session at $61.00. The stock pushed higher at the open, touching $65.10 before moderating to around $61.43 as the day progressed.

Many retail investors interpreted the severance arrangement as evidence of potential acquisition activity. However, the filing contains no reference to a specific acquirer or any active sale process.

The board’s compensation committee greenlit the arrangement in a filing submitted Monday. Coverage extends to the chief executive, president, and additional senior management personnel.

Dual Trigger Requirements

Compensation under the plan requires two simultaneous triggers. An executive must either be terminated without cause or resign following a material change in responsibilities, and this action must occur within a specified period surrounding a change of control event.

Under the terms, CEO Abel Avellan would be entitled to double his base salary plus target bonus compensation. Other qualifying executives would receive 1.5 times their respective amounts.

Critics note that corporate boards routinely implement such arrangements. The document provides no evidence that acquisition negotiations are currently underway.

AST SpaceMobile has remained silent regarding its upcoming launch schedule in recent weeks. This communication gap, combined with the severance filing, amplified speculation about a possible transaction.

According to company statements, the first of three planned BlueBird satellites has completed assembly. The remaining two are nearing completion, though neither a shipping date nor launch window has been announced.

The company has shifted its timeline for deploying approximately 45 satellites to early 2027. Currently, 13 BlueBird spacecraft are operational in orbit.

AST SpaceMobile reports pro forma liquidity surpassing $3.7 billion. A significant portion of this cash position derives from the $1.15 billion convertible notes issuance finalized in July.

Analyst Sentiment Remains Divided

Among Wall Street analysts covering ASTS, six maintain Buy ratings, five recommend Hold, and two advise Sell. The overall consensus stands at Hold, with a mean price target of $86.58.

The company’s latest quarterly results disappointed investors. AST SpaceMobile reported an adjusted loss of $0.77 per share, significantly worse than the consensus estimate of a $0.32 loss, while revenue of $31.52 million fell short of the $34.53 million projection.

Recent insider transactions show selling activity among top executives. CTO Huiwen Yao divested shares valued at approximately $2.36 million at an average price of $58.93, while COO Shanti Gupta sold holdings worth roughly $706,680 at about $58.89 per share.

Multiple law firms are currently recruiting investors for a securities class action lawsuit involving the company. The litigation covers share purchases between March 4, 2025 and July 15, 2026, with a November 13, 2026 deadline for lead plaintiff applications.

Other space sector stocks posted modest gains alongside AST SpaceMobile on Tuesday. SpaceX shares increased 0.9% to $146.75, while Rocket Lab stock advanced 1% to $73.05.

The Procure Space ETF, which holds AST SpaceMobile stock representing approximately 3.5% of its total net assets, climbed 0.7%. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust registered a smaller 0.2% increase, suggesting company-specific catalysts drove the share price movement.

With a beta coefficient of 2.73, AST SpaceMobile stock demonstrates significantly higher volatility than the overall market. The company reports a contracted revenue backlog of approximately $1.3 billion as it prepares for future launch opportunities.

The post AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) Stock Jumps 5% as Executive Severance Plan Ignites Acquisition Speculation appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Oppenheimer’s Colin Rusch launched coverage on FuelCell Energy with an Outperform rating and $24 price target.
• The price objective suggests a 49% gain from Monday’s $16.14 closing level.
• Shares jumped up to 8% in Tuesday’s session, reaching $17.40.
• The analyst forecasts annual manufacturing capacity hitting 500 megawatts by fiscal year 2029, over tenfold the fiscal 2026 level.
• FuelCell maintains a $3.3 billion order backlog, 10-gigawatt pipeline of projects, and approximately $737 million in available cash.

Shares of FuelCell Energy rallied up to 8% during Tuesday trading, reaching an intraday peak of $17.40. The upward momentum came after a favorable assessment from a prominent Wall Street firm.

FuelCell Energy, Inc., FCEL

Colin Rusch, an analyst with Oppenheimer, launched coverage on the power solutions provider with an Outperform recommendation. His $24 price objective represents potential upside of 49% from the previous session’s closing price of $16.14.

The stock has delivered impressive returns throughout the current year. Year-to-date gains have reached 121%, fueled primarily by growing enthusiasm around AI-driven data center infrastructure.

FuelCell specializes in modular, on-location power generation systems. These solutions are gaining traction among data center operators requiring dependable electricity sources with rapid deployment capabilities.

The Bull Case from Oppenheimer

Rusch characterized FuelCell as a distinctive supplier of reliable, on-premises power solutions tailored for data center applications. His outlook anticipates continued demand growth outstripping available supply as the firm expands operations.

The analyst’s projections show FuelCell expanding annual manufacturing capacity to 500 megawatts by the end of fiscal 2029. This represents more than a tenfold increase compared to anticipated fiscal 2026 production levels.

According to Rusch, this manufacturing expansion should enhance project profitability metrics. He anticipates the scaling effort will generate meaningful operational leverage throughout the coming years.

Order Book and Financial Resources

FuelCell’s commercial opportunity pipeline reinforces the optimistic outlook. The company reports a $3.3 billion backlog alongside a project pipeline exceeding 10 gigawatts.

Additionally, the firm has secured capacity agreements totaling over 450 megawatts. These commitments provide visibility into customer demand for its expanded production capabilities.

From a financial standpoint, FuelCell closed its third fiscal quarter with approximately $737 million in cash reserves. This capital provides financial flexibility during the production scaling phase.

Company leadership has indicated existing cash resources should be sufficient throughout the manufacturing ramp-up period. The objective is achieving positive cash generation without requiring additional capital raises.

The stock’s trajectory hasn’t been entirely smooth throughout 2026. FuelCell shares remain 55% below the year’s closing peak of $36.01, established on June 30.

That decline followed an aggressive rally during the year’s first half. Tuesday’s positive analyst coverage helped the stock recover a portion of those recent losses.

Several early market reports indicated premarket gains approaching 9% before regular trading commenced. The stock maintained approximately 7.8% gains shortly after the opening bell.

FuelCell operates under the FCEL ticker symbol. As of Tuesday morning, the company had not released any official statement regarding Oppenheimer’s newly initiated coverage.

The post FuelCell Energy (FCEL) Stock Gets $24 Price Target from Oppenheimer Amid AI Power Demand appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• On September 29, 2026, Netlist submitted a fresh complaint to the US International Trade Commission, specifically targeting Micron’s memory chip technology.
• The filing alleges that Micron’s memory products, alongside devices manufactured by Google, Nvidia, and Broadcom, violate two Netlist patents related to high bandwidth memory innovations.
• Netlist is requesting the commission to halt imports of Micron DRAM components and associated AI hardware including GPUs and servers.
• In 2024, Netlist secured a $445 million judgment against Micron in Texas federal court.
• The memory technology firm also reached a settlement with Samsung in August 2026 following previous courtroom victories totaling $421 million.

Netlist has launched fresh legal proceedings against Micron Technology this week. The memory technology specialist submitted its complaint to the US International Trade Commission.

The legal filing zeros in on memory components manufactured by Micron. These components power artificial intelligence computing systems distributed by Google, Nvidia, and Broadcom.

Initially filed under confidential seal on Friday, September 25, Netlist’s complaint became publicly accessible on Tuesday, September 29.

The Core Allegations

According to Netlist, Micron’s memory chips violate two proprietary patents. These intellectual property rights pertain to high bandwidth memory innovations.

This specialized memory technology accelerates data transfer rates for computer processors. Major technology corporations rely heavily on it for their AI computing infrastructure.

Netlist has petitioned the trade commission to prohibit imports of Micron’s DRAM components. DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, represents a fundamental category of computer memory technology.

Beyond the memory chips themselves, the company seeks an import prohibition covering graphics processors, server systems, and additional hardware. These items, produced by Google, Nvidia, and Broadcom, allegedly incorporate the contested Micron technology.

Representatives from Micron, Google, Nvidia, and Broadcom have not issued statements regarding the complaint as of Tuesday.

In an official statement, Netlist CEO C.K. Hong addressed the new filing. Hong emphasized that Netlist has invested decades in creating memory innovations that currently power modern AI infrastructure.

The CEO further explained that this legal strategy demonstrates the company’s commitment to defending its intellectual property against unlicensed implementation.

Ongoing Intellectual Property Battles

The relationship between Netlist and Micron has been marked by previous courtroom confrontations. A federal jury in Marshall, Texas awarded Netlist $445 million in 2024 for patent violations by Micron.

Two months ago, in August 2026, Netlist submitted an additional complaint to the trade commission targeting Micron. That particular case involved memory technology integrated into hardware from Super Micro Computer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Lenovo.

Samsung has also faced legal challenges from Netlist over memory patents. The two corporations reached an agreement in August 2026 to resolve their intellectual property disagreement.

This settlement followed jury awards totaling $421 million in Netlist’s favor against Samsung, also delivered in the Marshall, Texas federal courthouse.

This latest complaint represents another development in Netlist’s sustained intellectual property enforcement strategy. The filing intensifies scrutiny on Micron, which provides memory components to prominent players in the AI computing sector.

The International Trade Commission will now evaluate the case. Officials have not disclosed a projected timeframe for reaching a determination.

The post Netlist Pursues Import Block on Micron Memory Chips Powering AI Giants appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Shares of Bloom Energy soared roughly 13% on Tuesday, recovering from an almost 9% decline the previous day.
• Oracle confirmed its 2.4 GW Project Jupiter commitment remains intact, despite a natural gas pipeline delay extending into early 2027.
• RBC Capital maintained its Outperform rating with a $335 price objective, highlighting significant manufacturing facility expansion in Fremont, California.
• Jefferies upgraded its price objective to $264 from $229 while maintaining a Hold stance.
• Related AI infrastructure stocks including Vertiv and Micron gained ground as concerns from OpenAI safety issues dissipated.

Bloom Energy (BE) shares surged up to 13% during Tuesday’s trading session, approaching the $300 level. This represents a significant rebound from Monday’s nearly 9% pullback.

Bloom Energy Corporation, BE

The fuel cell specialist emerged as one of the top gainers in the S&P 500 index during the session. The upward movement came after a challenging period influenced by widespread concerns about AI safety protocols.

On Tuesday, RBC Capital reaffirmed its Outperform stance on the company’s shares. The financial institution maintained its $335 price objective.

RBC highlighted Bloom’s strategic move to secure an additional 158,000 square feet of leased space at its Fremont, California manufacturing site. This expansion roughly doubles the company’s current operational footprint.

Market analysts interpret this expansion as evidence that customer orders are exceeding previous projections. Morgan Stanley analyst David Arcaro characterized it as an indication of robust ongoing demand.

Project Jupiter Partnership Remains Solid

Bloom’s stock price received additional support from clarifications regarding its partnership with Oracle (ORCL). The company verified that Oracle has reconfirmed its 2.4 GW fuel cell commitment associated with Project Jupiter.

The initiative continues according to Oracle’s established schedule. However, a critical natural gas pipeline connected to the agreement has experienced permitting-related delays, pushing its completion to early 2027.

Jefferies increased its price objective for Bloom to $264, up from $229. The firm maintained its Hold rating, noting that the behind-the-meter investment case remains valid despite some schedule adjustments.

Ameren Corp (AEE) contributed to the favorable environment. The utility provider proposed incorporating 500 megawatts of natural gas fuel cell capacity through 2030 across Missouri operations.

Arcaro suggested this proposal could represent a near-term revenue opportunity for Bloom. The plan fits within the utility’s core infrastructure strategy.

AI Infrastructure Stocks Rally Together

Bloom wasn’t the only beneficiary of Tuesday’s positive momentum. Vertiv Holdings (VRT) climbed approximately 3%, while Micron (MU) gained nearly 2%.

These advances occurred despite OpenAI’s decision to cancel the release of a new model due to safety considerations. The artificial intelligence company had also suspended training activities on its most recent AI models the day before.

Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, explained that the GPT-6.1 Astra model failed to meet the required standards for remaining within acceptable parameters. She indicated the company has additional new models in development that satisfy these requirements.

The overall market showed minimal movement throughout the trading day. The S&P 500 decreased 0.04%, the Dow dropped 0.2%, while the Nasdaq Composite edged up approximately 0.2%.

This positioned Bloom’s surge as driven by company-specific factors rather than general market trends. Intraday trading reached $291.72, positioned within the stock’s 52-week trading band of $70.89 to $351.28.

Market participants are now focused on OpenAI’s developer conference scheduled for later Tuesday. CEO Sam Altman is expected to present a keynote address at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

The post Bloom Energy (BE) Stock Rallies 13% as Oracle Confirms Project Jupiter Partnership appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Carnival (CCL) shares surged 13% on Tuesday, marking its strongest daily performance since April.
• Third-quarter adjusted earnings per share reached $1.43, surpassing the $1.35 consensus estimate.
• The company posted record quarterly revenue of $8.44 billion, exceeding analyst forecasts of $8.39 billion.
• Management increased full-year adjusted net income projections by over $150 million.
• Forward bookings for 2027 are already reaching unprecedented levels in both volume and pricing.

Shares of Carnival Corporation (CCL) rallied 13% on Tuesday, reaching approximately $24.96 per share following the cruise line operator’s impressive third-quarter results. This surge represented the stock’s most substantial one-day advance in roughly six months.

Carnival Corporation & plc, CCL

For the fiscal quarter that concluded on August 31, the Miami-based cruise operator delivered adjusted earnings of $1.43 per share. This figure exceeded the Street’s consensus projection of $1.35 per share.

Quarterly revenue reached an all-time high of $8.44 billion, outpacing analyst expectations of $8.39 billion.

Management also elevated its full-year adjusted net income forecast. The upward revision exceeded previous June guidance by more than $150 million.

This guidance upgrade was achieved even as the company absorbed an additional $150 million in fuel expenses throughout the year. Effective cost management strategies successfully counterbalanced the fuel headwind.

Pricing Power and Demand Momentum

Net yields measured in constant currency climbed 2% compared to the prior year period, establishing a new company benchmark. The performance exceeded the company’s June projections by over a full percentage point.

Adjusted cruise costs per available lower berth day, excluding fuel expenses, increased 2% on a constant currency basis. This metric similarly outperformed earlier guidance by approximately one point.

Chief Executive Officer Josh Weinstein characterized the quarter as delivering “top and bottom line records,” highlighting both strengthening consumer demand and improved operational efficiency.

Total customer deposits hit a third-quarter record of $7.6 billion. This represents a 7% year-over-year increase, notably achieved without any expansion in fleet capacity.

Carnival disclosed that both occupancy rates and pricing for the complete 2027 calendar year have already established new highs.

Financial Position and Forward Outlook

Chief Financial Officer David Bernstein noted that the company utilized available cash reserves to retire $500 million worth of bonds that carried a 7% interest rate.

During the quarter, S&P upgraded Carnival’s credit rating. This advancement marked the second major ratings agency to restore the cruise operator to investment-grade standing.

For the upcoming fourth quarter, management anticipates net yields in constant currency will increase approximately 2% versus the comparable 2025 period.

Looking toward fiscal 2026, the company forecasts adjusted earnings per share near $2.24. Management projects adjusted EBITDA will approach $7.14 billion for the full year.

Other cruise line operators experienced positive momentum on Tuesday as well. Royal Caribbean (RCL) advanced 7%, Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH) climbed 5%, while Viking Holdings (VIK) traded relatively flat.

Notwithstanding Tuesday’s strong performance, Carnival shares remain down 21% year-to-date through Monday’s closing price.

The post Carnival (CCL) Stock Soars 13% on Strong Q3 Results and Record-Breaking Bookings appeared first on Blockonomi.

The leading cryptocurrency has been quite unstable over the past several days, slipping from its local top above $87,000 witnessed earlier in September.

Some popular analysts believe the asset may soon offer a buying opportunity before resuming its rally toward $90,000 and even $100,000, while key factors support the overall bullish outlook.

Down and Then Massive Pump?

Earlier this month, Ali Martinez outlined several reasons why BTC might be on its way to hit the $100K psychological level. Among them is growing institutional appetite, with the analyst noting that spot Bitcoin ETFs have accumulated more than $1.6 billion worth of the cryptocurrency in about 72 hours.

The interest remained solid and, in fact, last week was the strongest since October 2025, with net inflows reaching almost $2.4 billion. SoSoValue’s data shows these ETFs posted eight green days in a row, last seen in August. This suggests pension funds, hedge funds, and other conservative investors continue to increase their exposure to the asset, potentially paving the way for further price gains in the near future.

Recently, Martinez updated his prediction with additional insights. He claimed that BTC appears to have broken out of a double bottom pattern and is now moving back toward the $82,000 neckline.

“If this level holds as support, the retest could offer a buying opportunity before the rally resumes toward the pattern’s $100,000 target,” he stated.

Gerla and Crypto with Haris ₿ also shared similar views. The former said that Bitcoin’s MVRV has returned to around 1.35 and the cohort is firmly back in profit. To him, this looks more like a healthy retest than the start of a major downfall.

The latter assumed that BTC “is giving small fake pumps to trap more buyers.” He believes the asset has entered the final bull trap and may plummet to roughly $62,000 before potentially rising above $90,000.

Still in a Bull Market?

Doctor Profit is also optimistic about BTC’s broader trend, but he anticipates some turbulence ahead. As CryptoPotato reported, he set a downside target of $79,000, around the 50-week moving average.

“Important: I mention first, this does not mean that there is a second target lower, but 79k, and then I can tell based on BTC reaction, but for now it’s 79k and continue to a new high and continuing the bull. Let me make this extremely clear: I consider Bitcoin to be in a BULL MARKET, but I expect a correction WITHIN that bull market,” he added.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) May Offer a Buying Opportunity Before the Next Big Pump: Analysts appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin is trading around $84K after a strong recovery from the $60K area over the past couple of months. The charts show that BTC has moved back above its major moving averages, while the shorter-term structure remains constructive but capped by a clear supply zone. Meanwhile, adjusted SOPR has recovered above 1, suggesting that realized profitability is improving.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

The daily chart shows a significant structural recovery from the $60K demand area. BTC subsequently reclaimed the $67K resistance zone and broke sharply higher in August, moving above both the 100-day and 200-day moving averages with force.

The 200-day moving average is currently around $71K, and the 100-day moving average is converging from below near $70K. Both are below the current market price, have begun turning higher, and are on the verge of a potential bullish crossover, which keeps the broader structure constructive. The previous resistance around $67K has therefore shifted into an important structural support area.

After the August breakout, BTC established another consolidation zone around $75K-$80K before pushing toward the $88K region. That $75K-$80K area remains the nearest major daily support zone, while the $67K region represents a deeper structural support.

The main obstacle is overhead supply. The first major resistance zone is roughly at $88K-$90K, followed by the higher supply area around $95K. BTC would need to reclaim these zones to extend the current recovery beyond the $100K mark and potentially toward new all-time highs.

BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart provides a more immediate view of the current consolidation. BTC made a sharp move from the $75K region through the $82K area and subsequently accelerated toward the $86K resistance level.

Since reaching that area, price has been rejected and is now consolidating near $83K. The bullish order block near the $80-$82K zone is the key near-term demand area, and it has already acted as a base following the breakout.

On the upside, the $86K-$90K region is the immediate supply zone. The price has already tested this area and failed to establish a sustained breakout, leaving it as the main hurdle for continuation.

Still, the 4-hour RSI is around 50 after recovering from lower levels. This suggests that short-term momentum has stabilized rather than becoming excessively stretched, but is yet to show a bullish shift.

A strong move above $86K would put the upper part of the supply zone in focus, while a breakdown below $80K would weaken the current short-term structure and increase the possibility of a deeper retracement toward the $75K area.

On-Chain Analysis

The adjusted SOPR chart shows a notable improvement in Bitcoin’s on-chain profitability conditions. Adjusted SOPR measures whether coins being spent are, in aggregate, being moved at a profit or loss, with a value above 1 indicating that profitable spending is dominating.

The metric has recently climbed back above the 1.0 level, and its 30-day exponential moving average is currently around 1.01 after spending much of 2026 below 1.

This recovery coincides with BTC’s move from roughly $60K toward the current $84K level. The improving aSOPR therefore supports the idea that the recent price recovery is accompanied by improving realized profitability rather than occurring while the metric continues to deteriorate.

However, the current reading remains only modestly above 1. The metric has not reached the significantly higher levels seen during previous strong advances. Therefore, the on-chain data currently suggests improving conditions, but does not by itself confirm another major expansion in the trend. Still, this points to the fact that the market participants are once again realizing profits, which reduces the immediate fears of panic selling flooding the market with excess supply and leading to further capitulations and crashes.

The post Bitcoin Price Analysis: BTC Reclaims Major Moving Averages as Bulls Target $90K Resistance appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – NEWPORT BEACH, California, September 29th, 2026]

Proposed acquisition would bring a gold-backed decentralized financial ecosystem, including decentralized financial infrastructure targeting retail, institutional, and blockchain markets.

• A retail and institutional platform designed for the rapidly growing stablecoin industry, delivering compliance-focused infrastructure for payments, yield, lending and open-ecosystem, industry-wide decentralized financial applications.
• Institutional gold-based infrastructure spanning gold as a currency, gold-collateralized USD products and gold-backed financial products, anchored to an Ethereum-based Layer 2 network designed as a stable foundation for the next generation of industry products.
• Proprietary yield engines designed to power institutional products targeting competitive returns by bridging traditional and decentralized markets.

Amaze Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: AMZE) (“Amaze” or the “Company”) today announced it has entered into a binding Letter of Intent (“LOI”) to acquire the assets of BullionFX, including its core platform Alchemy (collectively, the “BullionFX Assets”), for stock valued at approximately $155 million.

The BullionFX Assets comprise the technology, infrastructure and intellectual property behind a blockchain financial ecosystem built around auditable physical gold. If completed, the acquisition would mark a strategic expansion for Amaze beyond creator commerce and into gold-backed digital-asset infrastructure. The transaction comes amid a broad resurgence in cryptocurrency markets, rapid growth in volume within the stablecoin industry, renewed institutional engagement with digital assets, and continued strength in gold as a long-established store of value. Adjusted stablecoin transaction volume hit $1.79 trillion in June 2026, up 125% year on year, according to Visa Onchain Analytics (Allium).

“Crypto’s renewed momentum and gold’s enduring role as a store of value have opened a rare window for infrastructure built on both,” said Joel Krutz, Interim Chief Executive Officer of Amaze. “Alchemy is a full-stack, gold-backed financial ecosystem, and we believe bringing it into the public markets can create meaningful long-term value for our stockholders.”

The acquisition gives Amaze the technology, infrastructure and intellectual property behind a comprehensive decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem in which every unit of digital value is tied to physical gold held by independent custodians. The platform’s architecture supports lending and borrowing protocols, yield products, cross-chain interoperability, and an Ethereum-based Layer 2 network that links traditional and decentralized finance while offering the rapidly growing market of gold- and USD-backed stablecoins users’ broad functionality, including access to yield opportunities.

Following closing, Amaze intends to prioritize activation of the self-custody retail wallet and yield engines and, as an initial institutional application, to pursue a listed Stable Asset Treasury (“SAT”) vehicle for gold and USD, subject to applicable regulatory approvals.

“We have seen traditional financial markets adopt blockchain, and more recently stablecoins, as a direct result of retail users seeking more control, custody, and transferability of their own assets. We believe traditional finance will increasingly bridge with decentralized finance to extract the ideal attributes of both industries. Alchemy is well-positioned to compete in bringing to market a range of bridged traditional and decentralized financial products to introduce innovative financial offerings on a retail and institutional level while seeking to mitigate certain risks associated with traditional stablecoin models,” said Stephen Moss, Founder, BullionFX. “Joining a publicly listed company gives Alchemy the access and institutional credibility to accelerate our mission. That mission is a stable, transparent financial ecosystem for retail users that bridges traditional and decentralized finance.”

INSIDE THE ALCHEMY PLATFORM

$GOLD, Backed by Physical Gold. Alchemy’s core $GOLD token is designed to be backed one-to-one by vaulted, independently custodied and audited physical gold, with reserves intended to be subject to real-time attestation through third-party, institutional-grade audit mechanisms. $GOLD is designed to serve as the network’s settlement asset, combining the stability of a hard asset with the speed and transparency of blockchain settlement.

Built for the Stablecoin Industry. Alchemy is a retail and institutional platform designed for the rapidly growing stablecoin industry. Its compliance-focused architecture is built to support gold-linked payments, yield, lending and borrowing, cross-chain interoperability and open-ecosystem DeFi applications that third-party developers can build on.

Institutional Gold Infrastructure on Ethereum Layer 2. For institutions, Alchemy provides gold-based infrastructure spanning gold as a currency, gold-collateralized USD products and gold-backed financial products. Running on an Ethereum-based Layer 2 network, it is designed to bring gold’s stability on-chain as a foundation for future industry products.

Proprietary Yield Engines. Alchemy’s proprietary yield engines for gold and USD are designed to power institutional products targeting competitive returns by bridging traditional and decentralized markets.

Self-Custody for Retail. A planned self-custody retail wallet is designed to give users direct access to gold-linked payments, yield and DeFi applications while keeping control of their own assets.

“Stablecoins have proven the demand for digital money. The next question is what that money is anchored to,” said Simon Rahme, Co-Founder and CTO, BullionFX | Alchemy. “We engineered Alchemy’s Layer 2 so that gold sits inside the settlement layer itself rather than on top of it. That gives developers and institutions a base for payments, lending and yield products, with reserves designed to be verifiable on-chain.”

Transaction Terms

Under the LOI, which contains certain binding provisions, the parties will work toward definitive agreements. The transaction, if consummated, will result in significant issuance of Amaze common stock to BullionFX. Final terms are subject to due diligence, regulatory review, approval by each party’s board of directors and other customary closing conditions.

About Amaze Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: AMZE)

Amaze Holdings, Inc. is an end-to-end, creator-powered commerce platform offering tools for brand development, product creation, advanced e-commerce, audience growth and scalable managed services. By helping people turn what they know, create and share into sustainable income, Amaze enables creators to build deeper audience relationships and more flexible paths to a better life. Discover more at www.amaze.co.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the proposed acquisition of the BullionFX Assets; the anticipated benefits, capabilities and potential of those assets; the parties’ ability to negotiate and enter into definitive agreements; the ability to successfully integrate the BullionFX Assets and realize anticipated synergies and value creation; the ability to generate anticipated yields or returns from proprietary yield engines or other platform features; the timing and success of planned product launches, including the self-custody retail wallet and Stable Asset Treasury vehicle; and expectations regarding the adoption and growth of decentralized finance, stablecoins, and gold-backed digital assets. Forward-looking statements often contain words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “may,” “designed to,” or “targeted.” These statements are based on management’s current views and assumptions and are not guarantees of future performance. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, without limitation: the ability of the parties to negotiate and execute definitive agreements; the completion of due diligence; the receipt of required regulatory, stockholder and board approvals and the satisfaction of other closing conditions; the occurrence of any event that could give rise to termination; the significant dilution to Amaze stockholders in connection with the transaction; the continued availability of capital and financing; the ability to commercialize and operationalize the BullionFX Assets; Amaze’s lack of operating history in digital asset infrastructure and decentralized finance; the performance and security of blockchain-based technology and digital assets; risks related to smart contract vulnerabilities, software bugs, cyberattacks, hacking incidents, and operational failures affecting blockchain-based systems; evolving federal and state laws, regulations and guidance applicable to digital assets, stablecoins, decentralized finance platforms and related custodial arrangements, including potential classification of tokens as securities; the creditworthiness, performance and regulatory status of third-party custodians holding physical gold reserves; the ability to maintain one-to-one gold backing and real-time attestation as described, and the risk that reserves may not be verified as anticipated; competition from established and emerging participants in the digital asset, stablecoin and decentralized finance industries; the ability to protect and enforce intellectual property rights in the acquired technology; the volatility of cryptocurrency and gold markets; prevailing market, regulatory and business conditions; and other risks and uncertainties described in Amaze’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. Amaze undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required by law.

The post Amaze Holdings Executes Binding LOI to Acquire BullionFX | Alchemy, a Decentralized Gold-Backed Financial Ecosystem for Valued at $155 Million appeared first on CryptoPotato.

[PRESS RELEASE – GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, September 29th, 2026]

Network fees from personal data reads now fund staking rewards, buybacks and ecosystem development under a fixed protocol split; public dashboard launches at token.vana.org

The Vana Foundation today announced that expanded staking as part of the Vega upgrade to the Vana network is complete and published the paper “VANA: The Asset Behind an Open Data Economy”, which sets out the VANA token economics. A public dashboard at token.vana.org reports network reads, fee income, buybacks, burns and token supply, with the on-chain record behind each figure.

Vana is a network for moving personal data under the permission of the person it belongs to. Under the network’s fee model, an application that reads a person’s data with a granted permission pays one cent per scope read. Fees are allocated by protocol rule: 60 per cent to stakers through staking pools, 20 per cent to the purchase and burn of VANA, and 20 per cent to ecosystem development. Each buyback and burn is published with its transaction hash.

With expanded staking, staking runs through three staking pools, each with a 5 per cent operator commission. Staking rewards are paid from network fees, accrue to the staked position and may be claimed as they accrue. Existing staked positions may be moved into one of the three pools in a single transaction at stake.vana.org by midnight UTC on 31 October 2026. Principal can be withdrawn at any time, with no deadline. After 31 October, a position that has not moved no longer earns rewards.

“Every read of a person’s data on the network is a paid transaction, and the fees pay the node operators and stakers who make that movement possible,” said Art Abal, Managing Director of the Vana Foundation. “The split is written into the protocol, and every figure is published on chain.”

Applications on the network have produced 2,937,447 verified reads to date, as of 28 September 2026.

Total VANA supply and release schedules remain unchanged.

The paper “VANA: The Asset Behind an Open Data Economy” and the whitepaper addendum “The Vega Upgrade: Data Portability and Transformations” are available at token.vana.org.

About Vana

Vana is an open network for personal data portability. Its standard, the Personal Data Portability Protocol, was contributed to Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust as a Community Specification. vana.org

About the Vana Foundation

The Vana Foundation is a non-profit foundation that supports the development and adoption of the Vana network and is a member of Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust.

About OpenDataLabs

OpenDataLabs builds and operates the products that governments and industry run on the Vana network. www.opendatalabs.com

This release is for information only and does not constitute an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any token or security.

The post Vana Completes Expanded Staking as Part of the Vega Upgrade, Publishes Expanded VANA Token Economics appeared first on CryptoPotato.

QNT has suddenly become one of the biggest stories in the altcoin market after a major partnership with The Clearing House. Its price climbed nearly 400% from $74 to $357 in less than a week.

While it has since pulled back to $241, there seems to be more to the story as opposed to the move being simply a news-driven event.

Traders Pile In

According to data shared by Santiment, around 645 QNT whale transactions worth at least $100,000 were recorded on September 28th. This was the highest level ever seen on its chart. The analytics firm explained that while continued whale activity is encouraging, “cooling prices and consolidation would create a healthier setup than another straight-line surge.”

The rally followed The Clearing House’s September 24 announcement that it had selected Quant to power its On-Chain Money Initiative. The project is being developed to help financial institutions clear and settle transactions involving tokenized deposits.

The Clearing House operates payment networks that process more than $2 trillion in transactions each day. Quant’s role gives QNT a clear “institutional-use” narrative, which appears to have attracted traders looking for exposure to blockchain infrastructure tied to traditional finance. The network is expected to become available to participating institutions in the first half of 2027.

Still, the announcement was enough to move the market. But that’s not the most interesting part.

The biggest rush in on-chain activity did not happen immediately. Santiment found that QNT recorded just 351 new addresses on the day of the announcement. By September 27, that number had jumped to 7,516. Active addresses followed the same pattern, rising from 2,064 to 14,458 over the same period. That is a huge jump in just a few days.

Open interest also exploded. Dollar-denominated open interest increased almost nine times between September 23 and 27. Measured in QNT, open interest rose about 2.2 times. Much of the dollar increase therefore came from its rapidly rising price. There was also no obvious new announcement on September 26 or 27 to explain the sudden wave of activity. The market simply appeared to catch up with the news a few days later, Santiment added.

Short-Term Risks

One trader, however, decided to lock in his gains. Doctor Profit said the rally has been impressive, but he is not comfortable holding the token at these levels, and highlighted the high funding rate, which suggests many traders are betting on further upside.

Doctor Profit said he would rather be open about taking profits, even if QNT continues to climb after his exit.

The token’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) also shows how overheated the move has become. The indicator briefly climbed close to 100 before falling back to around 74. It remains in overbought territory, which means that QNT could face some short-term pressure after its steep climb.

The post Understanding Why This Cryptocurrency Jumped 400%: Quant (QNT) Defies Market Slowdown appeared first on CryptoPotato.