The extensive AI security breaches highlight the urgent need for robust safety protocols and collaborative oversight to mitigate future risks.

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Ethereum's ambitious roadmap could redefine its scalability and security, potentially boosting long-term market confidence and value.

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Micron's rapid growth and strategic positioning in AI memory could reshape tech sector dynamics, challenging established market leaders.

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DeFi must significantly outperform traditional finance to attract institutional capital, potentially reshaping financial systems and access.

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Increased regulatory scrutiny on AI firms may delay OpenAI's IPO and affect investor confidence, highlighting AI's critical infrastructure role.

The post Australian Senate summons OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs over AI security breach appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Samourai Letter #7: Notes From The Inside

Dear Reader,

It has been many months since I last wrote you. Part of the reason for that is because I spent most of June and part of July in transit from FPC Morgantown to FCI McKean – a four hour drive away. For most of that time I had no access to pen, paper, stamps, or the rudimentary email system that I use to send these letters out. 

The other part of the reason why I haven’t written in so long is that once I did finally arrive I was so shell shocked from the entire ordeal that I needed time to decompress and process that month long trauma that is BOP transit. 

Six days after arriving at FCI McKean I finally put pen to paper to document the journey but the result was less of a letter and more of a trauma dump to help me process the absolute worst 30 days of my life. I decided to take a step back and give it some time before I sent out this letter. I have been slowly adapting to life here at McKean, and in good time I will tell you all about this place, but for this letter I want to go back to early June. 

I want to tackle the entire transit process and explain how what should have been a quick four hour drive turned into 30 days, two trans-continental flights, three multi-hour bus rides, a cell mate doing time for murder, and a cell mate who couldn’t stop shitting (I preferred the murderer). This letter will likely be published in two parts due to the length. Thank you for your continued reading and support. 

“I finally put pen to paper to document […] the absolute worst 30 days of my life.”

On June 5th I was told I would be transferred from FPC Morgantown for a drug and alcohol treatment program. Successfully completing the program (which takes about 9-10 months) rewards you with a year off your sentence, so it is seemingly well worth the hassle of moving to take it. 

For security reasons they do not tell you when you will be leaving or where you will be going. While being transferred in BOP custody you almost always are put on an airplane being piloted and operated by the US Marshalls to be taken to BOP transit hub in Oklahoma City. After a few days in Oklahoma you are put back on a plane and taken to your destination. From speaking with others I was told to expect 1-2 weeks of transit. 

I also heard that it costs around $10,000 per prisoner to be transited through Oklahoma. I figured that since I am classified as minimum security, spent close to two years on pre-trial release, self surrendered, and had no incident reports since being incarcerated I would be a good candidate for what is called a transfer furlough – where I would be responsible for transporting myself to my new institution at my own expense. 

I put in my official request for a transfer furlough on June 5th. On June 8th my request was denied without explanation, I would be going through transit, no way around it. 

On June 10th I was called to Receiving and Discharge (R&D) at 6:00 AM. Though I did not know it at the time I was about to embark on a month long fever dream through two different holding facilities, share cells with murderers, be locked down behind iron barred cells for 23 hours a day, and much more. 

Leaving through R&D is much the same as when I arrived. I was stripped, searched, issued a pair for ill fitting clothes (khaki elastic band trousers, a brown cotton shirt, threadbare boxers, socks that didn’t match, and a pair of slip on blue canvas shoes). 

I was put into a holding cell while the other inmates being transferred went through the same process. There were six of us transiting from Morgantown on that day. We were each lined up and called forward so that the officer could fasten shackles to our ankles and cuffs to our wrists. 

Once cuffed and shackled the officer wrapped a chain around our waist and attacked the handcuffs to them. The end result being that you could not lift your arms or hands much higher than your waist, and you could walk only in painful short shuffling steps. We were handed a brown paper bag with ‘breakfast’ in it (bread, peanut butter, bologna) and escorted to the waiting bus. 

“We were each lined up and called forward so that the officer could fasten shackles to our ankles and cuffs to our wrists.”

The bus was a cross between yellow school bus and a coach (think Greyhound or National Express) and already filled with inmates from other prisons in the area. There were guys from all security levels on the bus. Some guys serving 20 years coming from the “pen” (The US Penitentiary), some guys like me serving short sentences and going to a camp. 

The atmosphere was generally friendly on the bus, most of the USP guys were interested in what the camp was like and how much contraband like vapes and phones cost. At the front of the bus behind a metal grate were the driver and three heavily armed officers. They all wore stab vests and carried handguns and long guns. 

As we departed Morgantown I was excited to watch the scenery go by. This was the first taste of the outside world I had in 6 months. I took in all the sights. The trailer park, the run down gas station, the XXX store, it all was captivating. After about an hour of driving the bus suddenly exited the highway and stopped on the side of a small road. After 20 minutes idling I noticed one of the officers walking back to the bus with a bag of biscuits from Tudor’s Biscuit World – a West Virginia institution. 

We remained on the side of the road as each officer one by one went and bought breakfast, an endeavor that took over an hour. I decided Breakfast sounded good but my bread fell out of bag onto the floor. Breakfast would have to wait. As quickly as we got back on the road we suddenly pulled off again. This time each officer went one by one into a gas station to buy cigarettes and energy drinks. 

The metal of the shackles were starting to dig into my ankles, my wrists were cramping, my eardrums were shot beyond comprehension. Many others have said it before, but the one thing you really remember about the prison bus is how unbelievably loud it is. Every bump in the road is followed by a symphony of crashing metal. Inmates at the front of the bus maintain full conversations at full volume with their friends all the way in the back. The volume is at maximum for the entire journey. 

After about 5 hours we arrived at the Greenbriar Valley Regional Airport. There were several other prison busses parked off to the side of the runway. For the next hour or so a parade of officers from other busses would climb up and yell out a series of names. We were playing a grand game of musical chairs and for a brief moment I prayed that I would be called to another bus and spirited off to my camp bypassing the free plane ride to Oklahoma. 

Eventually musical chairs was over and we were instructed to get off the bus and directed to line of waiting US Marshalls standing in front of a plain white airplane adorned only with a small American flag on the tail fin. 

The Marshall patted me down, checked my mouth and feet and directed me to line up and wait by the front of the plane under the cockpit. They packed us in tight on the runway 10 rows of inmates at least 10 men deep. We watched inmates disembark the plane and enter the busses we just left. 

The whole thing must be a logistical nightmare for the folks at BOP and I was surprised how smoothly it all was moving. It was by no means quick, but it could have been far worse. Finally I was ordered to wobble up the stairs to board the plane. I felt like Joe Biden before falling up the stairs. 

How embarrassing it would be to eat it in front of all the convicts. I made it up without embarrassing myself. On board Air Operations Marshalls replaced flight attendants, though one really couldn’t tell any difference in demeanor between a Delta air steward herding a bunch of fat slobs in sweat suits and a US Marshall herding a bunch of prisoners. We filled each row from back to front at the direction of the Marshalls. 

I was sat in the window seat. The guy next to me sported a nifty full face tattoo and informed me he had been down 15 years and was kicked out of the USP for fighting. I informed him I was on my way to a camp and had been down for 6 months. He had nothing else to say to me after that. 

“This was the first taste of the outside world I had in 6 months.“

The plane itself had certainly seen better days, it looked to have been dated from The Cold War. The stickers commonly found plastered across the surfaces of airplanes telling you not to smoke or where to find the life vest in case of emergency – how exactly to apply said life vest while shackled and bound was not explained – were all in German and Russian. Where the hell did they get this thing from. 

The plane was filled 2/3 of the way with inmates. The final third at the front of the plane were all US Marshalls, at least 30 of them. With that, the plane took off and we were on our way to Oklahoma City. After about an hour an Air Marshall doing their best surly Delta stewardess impression threw a bag of lunch at us. It was the second – but not last – sack lunch containing 4 slices of bread, a pouch of peanut butter, two slices of turkey, and a small pack of cookies (“Cream 4 Fun” a BOP staple that even in my dire circumstances solicited a juvenile chuckle out of me). 

Sick to death at this point of the oily BOP peanut butter I happily pawned it off on the face tattoo next to me. I got started trying to fix myself a turkey sandwich – a task made difficult due to the cuffs and limited mobility. The bread was ice cold and the turkey was frozen solid. After brushing off the top layer of ice from the sliced meat and placing it between the now soggy and still freezing bread I took a bite and decided I wasn’t a great fan of turkey popsicle sandwich. The Cream 4 Fun would have to suffice for lunch. 

I was thankful for the small bottle of water that was handed out, but was not thrilled when I spilled most of it down my front contorting myself to try and twist the cap off. Shortly after lunch the Marshall went row by row to ask if we needed to use the toilet. Most people did, so the rest of the flight consisted of much jostling and shuffling to the bathroom and back. I refused, preferring to hold it, but the gentleman across the aisle let the entire plane know that he needed to take a shit, a declaration that caused much consternation and debate. 

As we approached Oklahoma City the pilot got on the intercom to let us all know it was a beautiful sunny day in Oklahoma City, a balmy 88 degrees. He failed to mention that none of us would see that sun for our entire stay in FTC Oklahoma City. 

We landed at OKC airport, went past the main terminal building towards a squat brown concrete building about 6 stories high. After what felt like an eternity we were disembarked row by row through the jet bridge directly into the airport prison. 

We shuffled single file through an assembly line of Marshalls who thankfully removed the cuffs and shackles, searched our mouths and feet again, and directed us into a dark concrete holding cell where we were packed in tight like a tin of sardines. In the corner of the room was a single stainless steel combination toilet, sink, water fountain. 

Almost immediately several inmates somehow fashioned a lighter and proceeded to get extremely high on K2 – known also as Deuce. In prisons Deuce is commonly just roach spray or rat poison drenched on a small piece of paper. 

When you light the paper and inhale the fumes you often freeze where you are standing lean over and are lost to the world around you for several minutes. I was most curious as to where the hell they were hiding these things to make it past no fewer than 3 probing searches. 

All I could think of was getting out of this claustrophobic concrete box into a housing unit with other minimum security “campers”. Everyone had warned me that security classifications would be mixed until you were assigned a housing unit. I just had to tough out the intake process. 

“You quietly wonder if Dante got it all wrong and all the circles of hell happen to be within the BOP’s Oklahoma City airport transfer facility.“

For being the official transit hub of the BOP, handling thousands of inmates every week, the staff at FTC Oklahoma City were breathtaking in their incompetence. Every last officer was less than useless, all of them wearing an expression of bewilderment as to how they happened to stumble into this predicament of dealing with a plane load of convicts, as if normally they were payroll accountants or copy clerks. 

It was as if it was everyone’s first day on the job. After jam packing us ass to elbow in the small concrete room for 4 hours – presumably they were having some sort of crisis meeting trying to determine what exactly they were supposed to do with us – a morbidly overweight officer whose stab-vest appeared to be groaning in protest at the enormity of the task of protecting such an enormous man unlocked the door and shouted that he needed five of us at a time. 

Instantly well over 100 men all desperate to be out of this hellish room push and shove their way towards the door. The only ones in no hurry are the deuce heads who have no idea where they are – and if they are indeed aware their limbs are in no mood to take any direction regarding movement – and myself who has no interest in playing grab ass with murderers and rapists. 

I wait patiently towards the back of the room and entertain myself by taking covert glances at the inmates around me to try and guess which ones are the ‘chomos’ (child molesters). You may at this point wish to chide me and extoll the virtues of not judging a book by its cover, but these books had covers that all but said “Hey Look! I’m a chomo!”. They have a look about them. 

After 45 minutes of 5 men trickling out at a time the room emptied and the deuce heads stumbled back into reality – what a horrible reality to return to from what must be a thrilling escape – and we shuffle out into the convict assembly line. 

We are commanded to undress, lift, squeeze, cough under the careful supervision of an officer no doubt cursing the recruiter at the Buttplug County job fair who never said anything about staring at genitals all day. 

Once the second strip search of the day concludes you are thrown a bundle of damp clothing with odd stains on them and hurry you further along the conveyor belt towards a long queue to go through a body scanner machine, the kind of thing you would find at an airport designed to find bombs and weapons. 

The officer manning the machine sits behind a lead curtain to shield themselves from radiation that leaks out of this whirring machine. The warning sticker helpfully informs you to keep back behind the blue line for your safety, but it turns out this warning is not for you, you are instructed to jam yourself as close as possible to the machine so they make sure to dose you with the radiation of the 6 guys ahead of you. 

Once you have been sufficiently irradiated you get pushed along where the medical officer menacingly asks if you have anything medically wrong with you, almost daring you to say anything but “no”. 

There is a whirlwind of papers being stamped, collated, duplicated, and filed and before you know it the assembly line ends. You breath a sigh of relief, surely some friendly officer is going to check your papers and notice you are a minimum security ‘camper’ and whisk you away. Instead yet another morbidly obese officer points at a room and makes some sort of grunting noise. You do not speak primate but gather he wants you to wait in the room. 

You quickly realize this room is a carbon copy of the first holding room and you quietly wonder if Dante got it all wrong and all the circles of hell happen to be within the BOP’s Oklahoma City airport transfer facility. 

“All I could think of was getting out of this claustrophobic concrete box.”

Another couple of hours pass – or years, who can tell at this point – in the second holding room and the Deuce heads are the only ones having a great time. The Deuce dealers have defeated yet another strip search and now a body scanner. Eventually an officer of indeterminate gender unlocks the door and yells out 5 to 10 names and you are escorted to your “range” (prison speak for the floor you live on). 

The officer leads us towards the elevator, 10 of us cram in and I get a good look at the men with me. Seven of them have full face tattoos that extend across their shaved heads. Rams horns, Celtic knots, Thor’s hammer, that sort of thing. 

At this point I am fully aware that a “camper” only range is a fantasy. I am going into the general population with murderers, rapists, kidnappers, gang members, and career criminals – many of whom have spent more time behind bars than they have in society. I take a deep breath, this is no time to be anxious or afraid. If the sharks smell fear they will strike. 

The guard walks us to the heavy metal door that seperates our range from the hallway. He turns the key but the door won’t open. He tries another key with the same result. One of the face tattoos mocks him “what is it your first day or something?” he heckles. The officer now very aware that this is taking way too long fumbles the keys and drops them on the floor. The scene is objectively funny and now several more of the inmates are heckling the clumsy officer. 

Finally the door opens from the inside. The range officer must have taken pity and opened it for him. The guys watching on the security cameras must have been pissing themselves. He will probably never hear the end of it in the breakroom. 

I am on Range 4D. The room is vaguely triangular in shape as if the architect started drawing a triangle but gave up halfway through. The room is large and painted in a palette of institutional grey and the same sort of pink they paint high schools. 

Cells with big metal doors line three of the walls. Two large staircases flank both sides of the room and take you up to an internal balcony where cells line the walls as well. If I remember correctly there are 30 two-man cells on each floor, so each range holds a total of 120 men. As soon as you cross the threshold between hallway and range you are immediately struck by the sheer number of strung out junkies hunched over seemingly frozen in place. 

Before you even have a chance to breathe several face tattoos are in your face asking if you want to buy drugs from them. These enterprising fellows apparently are running a fully stocked pharmacy. They offer me deuce, ice, meth, snizzlefizz, and junglerush. 

Okay, I made the last two up, but they offered me stuff I have never heard of before. I decline the offer and they move on quickly to a more lucrative mark. The range officer leaves his office and steps over a frozen drug addict and informs us that he is new here and to just give him a minute to get us situated. 

I politely wait while the officer – looking more and more flustered by the minute – assigns the guys ahead of me their cells, hands them a roll of toilet paper, and a thin mattress before sending them on their way into the jungle. When it is my turn the officer lets me know that he has run out of toilet paper and but if I give him a minute he will find me some. He gives me my cell number and scurries away back into his office. I follow him and remind him I need a mattress to which he explains he has run out of those as well, but if I just give him a minute he will try and locate one. 

From that point forward he was “Officer Just-A-Minute”. I climb over three junkies strung out on the staircase and make my way to the cell I have been assigned. 

“This isn’t fucking Guantanamo!” 

The cell is small, only a bunk bed, a toilet, a sink, a desk, and a fluorescent light. Inside is a large American Indian. If you asked someone to draw the most racist caricature of an American Indian he would have drawn this guy. 

He looks at me and says in a deep voice with a flat affect “I am Shadow”. The strange face tattoos gave him the air of some sort of tribal witch doctor. I said “You sure are” and quickly introduced myself lest he take offense to my glib remark and place a hex on me. 

I liked Shadow immediately. I learned that he was on his way to a USP doing 20 years for murder. Before I had a chance to explain that I was on my way to a camp for the fake crime of not having a license I didn’t even need in the first place Officer Just-A-Minute was in the doorway of the cell holding half of a foam mattress. 

Decidedly at the end of my tether I looked to him, to the mattress in his hands, back to him and asked incredulously “what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”. “It is all we have” he responded slightly annoyed. “It is half gone. How the hell am I supposed to sleep on that? My ass and legs will be on bare metal!” I protested. “Welcome to prison” he responded curtly. 

I was seriously fed up at this point, plus I had Shadow the murdering witchdoctor to back me up so I pressed further “I understand this is prison. I am well aware of that fact! You still have an obligation to provide us basic amenities like bedding. This isn’t fucking Guantanamo!” 

I pushed. He simply shrugged and dropped the mat onto the floor and walked off. “Fuck that guy” said Shadow. I agreed. 

A few minutes later Officer Just-A-Minute walked by and locked the cell door. We were locked in for the night. It would be the first time I had been truly locked in a cell. I was mildly surprised there wasn’t some sort of central locking mechanism. The officer needed to walk by 60 cells and manually lock them all. A while after locking us in another officer showed up to perform the 10:00 PM count. 

Count concluded I climbed onto my half mattress and waited for the bright fluorescent light to be turned off. By 11:00 PM I asked Shadow what time they usually turned the lights off. “They don’t” he responded. 

I sighed and covered my head with the sheet they gave me – it smelled vaguely like motor oil and sawdust – and silently sobbed. Everyone told me that transit was bad, that Oklahoma was terrible. They were not overstating it. 

I laid there, ass on bare metal, harsh light shining through the threadbare sheet and asked myself if all this was worth the year off. I regretted ever leaving Morgantown, and I desperately wanted to call my wife Lauren.

The transit story will continue in Part 2. Thank you for reading.

This is a guest post by Keonne Rodriguez. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

This post Samourai Letter #7: Notes From The Inside first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Keonne Rodriguez.

Bitcoin Magazine

An Austrian Economist Explains Why AI Will Make Everyone an Entrepreneur w/ Per Bylund

AI is changing how we work, but can it replace the human entrepreneur? Austrian economist Per Bylund, Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute, joins Spencer Nichols to explain why AI is a statistical engine that improves efficiency but can’t imagine the future. He argues we’re moving from an employment economy to an entrepreneurship economy, and explains what that means for jobs, innovation, and value creation.

Chapters:
00:00 Austrian Economics on AI, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
02:34 Can AI Replace the Entrepreneur?
05:48 Invention vs Innovation: What Bitcoin Teaches About AI
06:29 From an Employment Economy to an Entrepreneurship Economy
09:52 Can Regulators Keep Up With the Speed of AI?
13:06 Remote Work, Capital Controls, and the Future of Money
18:23 Why Every Voluntary Trade Has Two Winners
26:28 The Individual vs the State in US-China Competition
31:17 Steel Stockpiles, Sugar Subsidies, and the Lobbying Behind Protectionism
33:36 OpenAI, Anthropic, and Regulatory Capture in AI

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 An Austrian Economist Explains Why AI Will Make Everyone an Entrepreneur w/ Per Bylund first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: BTC to Cross Key Price Level Against Gold

The 90-day correlation between Bitcoin and gold just hit a six-year high, and Bitcoin is now just 3% away from flipping positive against gold for 2026. In today’s Chart of the Day, Sean breaks down the Bitcoin-to-gold chart, the string of higher lows since February, and the new high above 17.9 ounces.

Chapters:
0:00 Bitcoin-Gold 90-Day Correlation Hits a Six-Year High
0:35 Why Measure Bitcoin in Gold? Stripping Out Dollar Debasement
1:20 Higher Lows and Higher Highs on the BTC/Gold Chart
2:27 From 12.1 oz to 17.9 oz: The Bullish Bitcoin Setup
2:53 The 20.3 oz 2026 Yearly Open and the Levels That Matter
3:21 Next Bitcoin Resistance: 21.5 oz of Gold (~$92K)

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 TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: BTC to Cross Key Price Level Against Gold first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Katie Stockton: $93K BTC is the Key Price Level for the Bull Market

Is the Bitcoin bear market officially over? Katie Stockton, founder of Fairlead Strategies, breaks down the technical signals behind Bitcoin’s rally of more than 50% off its recent lows, including the break above the 200-day moving average and the 83K–84K resistance zone. She explains why the cloud model points to $93,000 as the level where a new Bitcoin bull cycle becomes official. She also covers the flag pattern breakout, the monthly stochastic oscillator, and what could turn her defensive heading into Q4.

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 Katie Stockton: $93K BTC is the Key Price Level for the Bull Market first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Grant Cardone: Real Estate “Armageddon” Is Here – Why BITCOIN is the Hedge

Commercial real estate is facing a historic reset, and Grant Cardone is using it to stack Bitcoin. The Cardone Capital founder explains how high interest rates are pushing properties below replacement cost and how he fills that gap with Bitcoin on the balance sheet. He breaks down his goal of 25,000 apartments and 25,000 BTC, and why he calls real estate his “Trojan horse” for Bitcoin.

Chapters:
00:00 Grant Cardone on the Commercial Real Estate Reset and 6.4% Rates
00:51 How Cardone Capital’s Bitcoin Real Estate Deals Work
02:23 Why REITs Can Never Own Bitcoin: Cardone’s Competitive Moat
04:26 From 3,000 to 25,000 BTC: Real Estate as the Trojan Horse
06:50 Michael Saylor’s “P Word” and the $335M Boca Raton Deal
09:01 Will Cardone Capital Go Public?
10:12 Why Commercial Real Estate Faces a Historic Crash
11:02 Why Single-Family Home Prices Won’t Correct
12:31 Why Bitcoin and Real Estate Are the Perfect Hybrid Asset
14:32 Why Other Real Estate Investors Can’t Copy This Strategy

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 Grant Cardone: Real Estate “Armageddon” Is Here – Why BITCOIN is the Hedge first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin's BIP138 wallet-backup proposal was merged into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals repository on Sept. 21, but the specification remains Draft. It aims to preserve information that a seed phrase may not restore in a complex wallet. The tradeoff is that a third party could read that information if it already holds an eligible extended public key, or xpub, and obtains a copy of the encrypted backup.

A multisignature wallet requires more than one signer. Its descriptor records the public keys and spending rules that tell wallet software how to reconstruct the account and find its coins. A seed phrase can regenerate one signer's private keys, but losing the descriptor can still leave a multisig or miniscript script impossible to reconstruct from that seed alone.

The proposal describes another failure: a wallet designed to survive the loss of one seed may also lose that signer's public key. The remaining signers can then lack a piece of the script needed to recover the coins. These are risks for wallets whose spending setup depends on information beyond a seed, not a claim that every Bitcoin wallet needs this backup.

BIP138's answer is an encrypted file holding descriptors, wallet policies or other non-seed metadata. Private key material must be removed before encryption. A holder of an eligible xpub from the backed-up wallet can decrypt a copy without the wallet's seed. That reveals public keys and script structure needed for recovery, while the xpub alone does not give the holder the private keys required to sign.

The draft sets limits on who can decrypt. Public keys that appear directly in a script, and xpub roots that could be exposed by spending, are excluded as recovery keys. If a cosigner's key is excluded, that person cannot use it to open the file. Those limits keep an on-chain public key from becoming a key to the off-chain backup.

The privacy warning concerns an xpub disclosed before the multisig wallet was made. If a wallet-service server already knows an account xpub and that same xpub is reused as an eligible multisig key, the server could decrypt the backup if it gets a copy. It could learn the wallet metadata inside, though this would not itself give it spending authority. The BIP describes a conditional exposure, not a reported breach.

A public Rust implementation with command-line build instructions exists. The BIP says Liana, a Bitcoin wallet, uses an earlier backup format that is incompatible with the current BIP138 file. The proposal's merge therefore establishes a published draft, not a Bitcoin network change or a guarantee that today's wallets can create and restore this format.

The post New Bitcoin proposal rescues locked multisig wallets – At a hidden cost appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Visa’s September 18 data refresh lowered its adjusted stablecoin volume measure, while its adjusted transaction count fell by less than 2%. The divergence reflects a change in how recorded activity is classified, leaving payment trends unanswered.

The Visa Onchain Analytics changelog attributes the reset to a fuller set of address labels and revised filters. Its underlying Allium identity set grew from about 15 million labeled addresses to roughly 600 million. Visa says the definition of adjusted volume stayed the same: it aims to exclude labeled exchanges, contracts, bots, bridges, other infrastructure, and minting and burning. With more addresses identified, more transfers now fall outside the adjusted measure. The refresh also added heuristics for short-term routing and changed how organic and payment activity is identified.

The live transaction methodology still describes “over 3 million” labeled addresses, a figure that does not match the dated changelog’s roughly 600 million in the new full identity set. Visa’s public text does not say whether the older wording refers to a different subset or has yet to be updated. The 3 million figure therefore cannot serve as the previous baseline for this reset.

The classification changed while the underlying recorded transfers remained on-chain; the release offers no direct measure of how real-world activity changed. Visa does not publish comparable pre- and post-refresh adjusted stablecoin volume totals in its changelog, so the size of the value revision cannot be calculated from that disclosure. The published pages also do not provide matched-window, same-definition chain results that would show how much of the revision fell on Ethereum, Tron, Solana or any other network.

Why adjusted stablecoin volume can shift while counts barely move

A transfer count gives each included event one unit, whether it moves a small sum or a large one. Dollar volume weights those events by value. Removing a limited number of high-value transfers can therefore have a much bigger effect on the volume series than on the count. Visa’s figures establish the direction of each change, although they do not break out how much each new label or heuristic contributed.

Visa offers a concrete example: one automated program on Solana cycled the same stablecoins through thousands of throwaway wallets. The company says that pass-through pattern moved very large amounts in relatively few transactions and is now excluded from adjusted volume across multiple chains. The example illustrates the mechanism; it does not establish that the same program operated on every chain, or quantify the revision for Solana or the broader market.

This distinction is especially important when comparing networks. An apparent lead in raw transfer value could reflect routing, exchange activity or contract interactions as well as end-user transfers. The revised adjusted series could sharpen comparisons, but the reviewed material does not quantify a change in chain rankings under matched dates and filters. Allium’s stablecoin documentation describes chain-aware daily volume tables, including organic adjusted volume where available. The documentation is a description of data fields, not a published before-and-after table for this Visa reset, and it does not promise adjusted coverage for every chain.

A September Bank for International Settlements study makes a related measurement point: the same stablecoin can serve different purposes on different blockchains. Its analysis associates Ethereum use more closely with smart-contract interactions and Tron use more commonly with holdings outside contracts, consistent with transactional and store-of-value motives. Those findings give context for why like-for-like use-case comparisons matter; they are not a measurement of Visa’s September revision.

A surviving transfer is not necessarily a payment

Visa’s transaction methodology separates payments from DeFi, centralized-exchange flows, investment and trading, store of value, minting and burning, short-term routing, infrastructure and other categories. A transfer can be included in adjusted activity without being classified as a payment; the two labels are not interchangeable. Its “retail sized” bucket covers adjusted transfers below $250, but a small transfer is not automatically a purchase, a merchant settlement or a distinct user.

The difference between blockchain records and economic actions also appears inside individual transactions. A separate BIS study of 2025 Ethereum activity involving USDT, USDC and PYUSD found that nearly 60% of transfer events occurred within complex transactions. Its point is that one transaction can involve multiple token movements and financial operations; counting each transfer event as a standalone payment can misstate the activity. That nearly 60% result applies to the study’s Ethereum sample, not to every chain or to the share of Visa’s adjusted volume that is payment-related.

Even the size of the stablecoin market is a different measurement. CryptoSlate listed USDT market capitalization at about $183.79 billion on September 26. That is the value of tokens outstanding at a moment in time, whereas Visa’s volume measures value transferred over a period. CryptoSlate’s 24-hour trading-volume figure on the same page is another distinct measure; neither can fill the gap in Visa’s before-and-after adjusted series.

For now, the defensible reading is narrower than either a collapse or a boom in stablecoin payments. Visa says its revised classification removes more high-value pass-through activity from adjusted stablecoin volume while leaving the adjusted transfer count nearly intact. Establishing whether payment use itself changed, or whether one chain gained ground on another, would require comparable, dated payment-category and adjusted-volume data under the same definitions.

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When a payment app tells you a transfer is complete, you start making decisions. You hand over whatever you've sold, spend the money you've received, or close the app and get on with your day. That little confirmation you get is enough for you to stop thinking about whether the transaction worked.

Crypto companies want to offer that reassurance almost instantly, even when the blockchain underneath still needs time to finish settling the payment. One way to do it is to have an operator promise the result early and put money behind that promise.

Puffer, a company building transaction infrastructure for Ethereum, is working on a system like this. On Sept. 22, it announced that Google Cloud would operate a gateway, receiving transactions and guaranteeing their results before settlement. Puffer's UniFi network would be the first to use it.

Both UniFi and Puffer Preconf, the service issuing these guarantees, were still running in a testing environment as of Sept. 23, CEO Amir Forouzani told CryptoSlate. Their performance with customers putting real money through them still has to be established.

But the idea gets at something familiar to anyone who uses a financial app. When the screen tells you the money is ready, you expect to be able to use it. Making that happen sooner means deciding who can be trusted to give the go-ahead and who takes responsibility if they're wrong.

What do Ethereum preconfirmations actually promise?

The Ethereum network relies on many computers agreeing on a shared record of transactions. Its base layer has 12-second slots for proposing blocks, the batches in which transactions are recorded. Getting into one of those blocks is a step toward completion, while the stronger confirmation known as finality usually takes minutes. Reversing a finalized record would require a severe breakdown of the network's security, with enormous financial penalties.

That gives apps a decision to make about how long to wait. Many run on additional networks called rollups, which process transactions separately and send information to Ethereum for settlement. These networks can give users early confirmations from the operator arranging their transactions, allowing the app to respond while Ethereum's settlement process continues.

Puffer wants to put explicit financial backing behind an early promise about the transaction's result. To see the appeal, imagine selling some crypto because the amount offered is enough to pay a bill. You want to know how much you'll receive and when you can use it, especially if the price is moving while you wait.

Forouzani described the service using a hypothetical exchange of 1 ETH for 2,600 USDC. The gateway would promise the execution result, including the amount received. Promising to include a transaction in the record is a narrower commitment, because inclusion alone doesn't guarantee the exchange result you wanted.

These promises are called preconfirmations. If an application accepts one and understands its conditions, it could act on the expected result before the longer settlement process finishes. That could allow a sale and a subsequent purchase to feel like connected steps, instead of leaving the customer waiting between them.

Forouzani said Puffer's transaction times were configured at 50 milliseconds, or one-twentieth of a second. But that's a setting in the company's system, and it hasn't been independently established as the speed paying customers would experience. Ethereum would still take its own time to reach finality.

The benefit is easy enough to see without caring about the technology underneath it. People could spend less time wondering whether their sale went through or whether they can use the proceeds. The app, meanwhile, would need a good reason to let them move on, because it's accepting a promise about something that hasn't finished settling.

The cost of being wrong

Puffer's answer is to back those promises with collateral, meaning assets committed to the service that can be taken away if an operator breaks the rules. That penalty is called slashing. According to Forouzani, a failed preconfirmation would cost the gateway 1 ETH, giving it a very good reason to deliver the result it promised.

With a penalty like that, keeping a commitment becomes part of the operator's business calculation. Breaking it costs money, so the operator has an incentive to run the service properly and avoid promising more than it can deliver. Customers also need to know whether any of that money would reach them if a transaction went wrong.

Suppose an app accepts an early payment promise and releases $100 in stablecoins. If the payment doesn't come through, the seller needs to know whether they'll receive the missing $100, who will pay it, and how long they'll have to wait. Penalizing the operator could help fund that repayment, but someone still has to establish which losses qualify and get the money to the person who lost it.

Puffer's announcement says slashing protects affected parties. Its answers to CryptoSlate, however, didn't explain who receives the penalized ETH or how compensation would be calculated and paid.

The amount available also needs to make sense for the transactions it supports. If an Ethereum operator backs many promises with the same pool of collateral, several failures could draw on that pool at once. Applications would need to compare the money available with the losses they're taking on by accepting those promises. They'd also have to account for the value of ETH moving against the dollar, since a penalty of 1 ETH doesn't always buy the same amount.

These are still terms of a proposed system. Puffer's July 2025 technical outline put slashing in a later phase, and the latest answers don't establish when the stated penalty would become enforceable. Forouzani said there had been no failures under the current design, but didn't provide a transaction count or observation period. With both products still in testing, there's more to learn about how the arrangement would work when customers depend on it.

Someone decides when you can move on

Google Cloud would be one of the companies making those early promises. According to Forouzani, another gateway would pick up transactions if Google's went offline, giving the service a way to keep operating through an interruption. How that handover performs with real customers is part of what the system still has to demonstrate.

Forouzani also said the first phase would launch without delegation from Ethereum's base-layer validators, the operators that help the underlying network agree on its record. The early assurance would come from the gateways, while Ethereum handles the later settlement. Anyone building an app around the service needs to understand which operator is responsible at each stage.

Most customers will never get that far into the details, and there's little reason they should have to. The app's developers will decide when a balance becomes available and when a purchase can proceed. Customers will see the result of those decisions every time the screen tells them a transaction has succeeded.

This gives developers room to make different choices. Someone selling an inexpensive digital item might accept an early promise, while a service handling a much larger transfer might wait for stronger confirmation. The right amount of waiting depends on what happens next and how much a failure could cost.

But once an app tells people they can spend, it needs terms that explain who absorbs a failure and what customers can expect. Asking every shopper to inspect a gateway's collateral would make an ordinary purchase absurdly complicated. The service presenting the confirmation has to do that work.

Ethereum also has proposals to shorten the wait for its own blocks, which could reduce some of these delays. But applications would still need to choose how much assurance is enough before letting a customer take the next step.

Puffer's experiment could give them another option, with an operator putting money behind its permission to proceed. If that works, the technology could become something customers rarely have to think about.

When an app says the money is available, they should be able to believe it, use it, and close the app without discovering later that “done” meant something different to the company.

The post Ethereum is not instant, but collateral could make it feel that way appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Sydney Sweeney is helping sell sports predictions, which is a pretty good indication that prediction markets have moved beyond the people who enjoy arguing about probability on the internet.

Novig's Sept. 9 campaign announcement introduced the actress as a partner and equity holder in its sports-focused exchange. The campaign, called “Just Sports,” runs across digital, social, video, and outdoor advertising through football season. It's designed to get people to notice an app, recognize the brand, and give it a try, which is exactly what hiring someone as famous and popular as Sweeney is supposed to do.

Without giving in to the controversy that surrounded the campaign, the next most interesting thing is what actually happens when users open the Novig app.

Prediction markets offer a place to turn something you already enjoy, whether that's football, politics, or arguing about who'll win an award, into something you can trade. Your attention becomes a potential edge, and your opinion gets a price.

That's a powerful pitch in a culture where everyone already spends hours keeping up with things. Maybe, just maybe, all that watching, scrolling, and arguing could finally pay?

The industry also sells a much bigger idea: bringing together people willing to risk money can produce better forecasts. That promise and the business of keeping people entertained can coexist, but they reward different behavior. Understanding that difference tells you more about prediction markets than any celebrity ad does.

Finally, a price on your group chat

The basic product is easy to understand. You buy a contract tied to an outcome, and in a standard yes-or-no market the winning contract pays $1. Pay 60 cents and hold it until the result, and you either make 40 cents or lose your 60 cents, before fees. CryptoSlate's guide to prediction markets and sports betting walks through the way they work.

The cultural appeal is just as simple. Most of us already have opinions we'd like some credit for having. We knew that team was overrated, that candidate couldn't win, that film would do well. Prediction markets essentially let you buy a small financial receipt for your judgment before the result is known.

They can also give ordinary leisure a second purpose. Watching a match becomes research, knowing the players becomes expertise, and checking an app becomes keeping up with your positions. That kind of vocabulary is flattering because it recognizes something fans already believe about themselves: they know more than the casual observer.

Sometimes they do. Someone who follows a sport closely can know things a casual viewer has missed. But knowing a lot about the subject and making money at the available price are separate skills.

Imagine buying ten contracts at 90 cents each. Eight win and pay $1 apiece. You've been right eight times out of ten, a result that would make you insufferable in a group chat, and you've still turned $9 into $8 before fees.

That difference is easy to lose when the product is introduced through familiar faces and familiar entertainment. The endorsement can make a platform feel approachable; it can't tell you whether the trade you're considering is worth its price.

The distribution now reaches well beyond individual celebrities. Kalshi's partnership with the NHL includes official data, league branding, and visibility during national broadcasts. Its CNN agreement brings market data into news programming and gives newsroom teams access to political and cultural probabilities.

Taken together, these arrangements place prediction markets on both sides of the viewing experience. They can be something you're invited to participate in during a game and something you're shown as evidence while watching the news.

The crowd has to come from somewhere

There's a serious intellectual case for prediction markets. Economists Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz have studied how markets combine dispersed information into forecasts. Someone who thinks a contract is mispriced has a reason to put money behind that view, and the resulting trades can make the price much more telling.

But “the crowd” is a convenient phrase for a group of people who found a particular platform, could access it, had money to spare, and chose to trade a particular event. It's worth thinking about how that group gets assembled.

Celebrity marketing recruits people because they recognize or like them, and sports partnerships recruit people where they're already emotionally invested. However, neither is a test of forecasting ability. Those customers can bring knowledge, entertainment spending, or a mixture of both, and the outcome depends on how they trade and who trades against them.

Having more participants can help. Someone with good information needs another person willing to take the other side, and a busier market can make entering or leaving a position easier. Casual money can create opportunities that draw informed traders in.

Still, popularity alone can't establish accuracy. Ten thousand people repeating the same view don't necessarily bring ten thousand independent pieces of information. Nor does attracting money to a championship final automatically tell us more about a less popular economic or political event.

The distinction becomes especially relevant when a price leaves the trading app and appears in a news segment. Viewers see a percentage that looks precise, without necessarily seeing the amount available to trade, the concentration of money behind it, or the contract's exact settlement terms.

There are ways to judge whether those percentages deserve confidence. Over enough comparable events, outcomes priced around 70% should happen roughly seven times in ten if the forecasts are well calibrated. You can also compare them with other forecasts made at the same point. That kind of assessment takes patience and includes the dull misses alongside the spectacular wins.

It measures something different from how many people downloaded an app because they liked the ad.

The prediction market always wants another trade

The business incentives are easier to see in the less glamorous parts of a platform's website. Kalshi's explanation of its fees says it earns money through transaction charges. The exact cost varies by market and order, but the basic commercial relationship is straightforward: trading activity produces revenue.

Novig's optional points program turns participation into a progression system. Executed trades earn points toward monthly tiers, from Starter to Obsidian, with rewards including trading credits and access to a monthly cash pool.

This is familiar consumer-app design. You earn status, move toward a reward, and get another reason to come back. Applied to a trading product, it creates an extra consideration alongside whether an individual position is worth taking: the trade may help you reach a tier.

Someone can enjoy those features and understand exactly what they're doing. Entertainment is a legitimate reason to spend money. The difficult part is keeping track of the full cost when the activity also offers the satisfaction of feeling informed and financially capable.

Here the platform's interests and the customer's can pull apart without anyone breaking a rule. Someone trying to make accurate forecasts might be best served by watching, waiting, or deciding they have no edge. Someone selling transactions benefits when more of those opinions become trades. Sweeney's equity stake is the perfect example of that difference: owning part of the company means participating in the platform's fortunes, a different proposition from buying contracts inside it.

CryptoSlate has already examined the blurred boundary between speculation and gambling. The cultural question goes beyond which label wins. Prediction markets give daily attention a financial outlet, making the things people follow for pleasure feel like opportunities they might be wasting by staying on the sidelines.

That invitation can become exhausting. There'll always be another game, announcement, or award, and being interested in something doesn't create an obligation to put money on it. Nor does reading a market's forecast require becoming its customer.

The most valuable thing prediction markets produce is a probability anyone can look at for free. The most profitable thing for the company is getting that person to place another trade. Keeping those two uses separate leaves more room to enjoy the match.

The post Prediction markets promised better information and hired Hollywood appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Buying a tokenized stock sounds as though it should be simple. You pick a company you know, buy a token representing its shares, and hold it in a digital wallet. The appeal is familiar stock investing with some of the convenience of crypto, potentially including trading beyond the hours of a traditional exchange.

Then you encounter a rule saying trading might have to stop for three months, and the idea of always-available stocks needs a little more explanation.

The pause is part of the SEC's Sept. 17 framework for experimental Tokenized Securities Venues, or TSVs. Repeat breaches of a stock's trading volume limit trigger it. It applies to that stock on the exchange and its affiliates, rather than to every version of that tokenized stock everywhere.

That distinction is a good place to start understanding the whole product. Owning a token, owning the rights attached to a share, and having somewhere to sell it are three related things that an app can make look like one.

Same company, different ways to own it

Stocks are already largely digital. Buying a share through a broker usually gives you an electronic record of ownership through a chain of financial institutions. Tokenization introduces a blockchain into how that ownership (or a claim related to it) is recorded and transferred.

The word “tokenized” describes the format, so you still need to know what the token represents. The SEC's January explanation of tokenized securities separates several models. In one, a company or its agent uses blockchain records as part of its ownership system. In another, a third party holds shares and issues tokens representing an interest in them.

There's also synthetic exposure, where the token gives you a financial return linked to a stock without giving you ownership of that company's shares. Buying something that follows a company's price doesn't automatically give you shareholder rights.

CryptoSlate has covered stock tokens that don't make their buyers shareholders. The lesson there is to look past the familiar ticker and find out who owes you what. If a separate company issues the token, its finances and obligations can become part of your investment risk alongside the business whose name attracted you.

The new SEC experiment takes a more specific approach. As CryptoSlate's account of the framework explains, qualifying tokenized stocks must preserve the economic and governance rights of their traditional equivalents, including dividends and voting, and synthetic exposure just doesn't qualify. Access to the exchange is permissioned, meaning participants or their wallets must meet verification standards.

Within those boundaries, the regulator is allowing a five-year test of trading through automated market makers. That sounds technical, but the basic idea is pretty simple: instead of matching your order with another person's order, software lets you trade against a pool of assets supplied by other participants.

In a simple pool containing stock tokens and a payment asset, buying stock takes tokens out and adds payment assets. The pool's formula adjusts the price as its inventory moves. Uniswap's explanation of liquidity pools describes this general design, although different exchanges can use different formulas and arrangements.

The attraction is a trading system that can operate automatically and connect with other compatible financial software. But software still needs assets available to trade, legal rights behind the tokens, and, most importantly, people willing to supply capital.

How the three-month clock starts

The experiment has limits on both the number of stocks an exchange can offer and how much it can trade in each. The volume allowance is measured against activity in the traditional stock market, using average daily share volume.

The two categories have different limits, summarized in CryptoSlate's coverage of the exemption. Tier 1 includes S&P 500 and Russell 1000 stocks and certain exchange-traded products; Tier 2 covers the other eligible securities.

The SEC order's volume-limit section compares average daily tokenized trading with average daily traditional trading, and combines affiliated exchanges' activity. This is an average-volume test, so a single busy session isn't automatically a breach.

Suppose the traditional stock averaged 10 million shares a day in the previous month. The Tier 1 allowance would correspond to 25,000 shares in average daily tokenized volume. That's the comparison to keep in mind, rather than a fixed dollar amount or a limit on how much one customer can own.

The consequences escalate:

1. The first volume breach for a particular stock gets a grace allowance, with the exchange required to ensure future compliance.
2. Each later breach in that stock requires an immediate three-month trading pause, including at affiliated TSVs. The clock runs from the breach date. Other stocks can keep trading.
3. Exchanges can pause earlier to avoid breaching the threshold. They must notify participants immediately of either kind of volume-related pause and update their public notice within five business days.

The SEC's stated reason for keeping activity small is to limit risks to the wider stock market while it observes the experiment, including the possibility that pool prices diverge from traditional share prices.

You can see how that could happen in a simplified example. Suppose a pool has limited inventory and several customers want to buy at once. Its formula can push the token's price upward even when the wider market's view of the company hasn't moved by the same amount. Traders may be able to profit by bringing the prices back together, but doing so depends on available capital and workable routes between markets.

The regulator is putting a boundary around how large that experiment can become. Crossing it repeatedly carries a substantial operational cost, which gives exchanges a reason to control activity before they reach the limit.

Owning tokenized stocks and selling them are different jobs

The buyer's biggest practical concern is how to get out. Consider someone who buys a tokenized share intending to sell if they need the money for a repair: the trading pause could disrupt that plan even while they continue to own the asset.

Moving a token to another wallet wouldn't, by itself, solve the problem. They'd need an eligible place to trade that exact instrument or a workable redemption process under its terms. Whether either exists depends on the product, the institutions supporting it, and the permissions involved.

The three-month provision shouldn't be seen as a promise that another broker will accept the token, or as a universal prohibition on every possible transfer. Those are separate product-level issues, and buyers need actual answers rather than assumptions based on how easily ordinary tokenized stocks can sometimes move between apps.

This is also why the promise of longer trading hours deserves a second look. Being able to open an app at midnight says nothing about the price at which you can sell a meaningful position. SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda addressed that trade-off at the agency's 24-hour trading roundtable, noting that additional hours have an almost equal chance of distributing liquidity more evenly and spreading it too thin.

Before buying, the most revealing information would be a worked example from the provider: what happens to this token if this exchange stops trading it? That answer should explain custody, ongoing shareholder rights, permitted transfers, any redemption route, and the costs involved. It should also distinguish what the provider offers now from what it hopes to support later.

There's plenty to like about making shares easier to transfer and connecting ownership records with trading software. Those improvements could remove delays and make financial services more convenient. The SEC's initial five-year opening gives firms room to test that proposition.

The three-month pause brings the buyer back to an ordinary investing consideration: an asset needs a dependable route to sale. Until you understand that route, seeing a stock in your wallet tells you only part of what you need to know.

The post Why your tokenized stock could stop trading for three months appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A USDT transfer on Tron costs you money, and it costs it in TRX, not in USDT. Send 100 USDT over TRC20 today and you pay roughly 6.4 or roughly 13 TRX, depending on the recipient. Why the spread is that wide, how to tell whether you have sent on the right network, and how to cut the fee to a fraction of that is what this guide sets out. Every figure in it we measured ourselves on chain on September 27, 2026.

Tron is the chain over which the largest share of all Tether transfers worldwide runs. Anyone moving cryptocurrencies between exchanges or to acquaintances therefore ends up at TRC20 almost inevitably, often without knowing the rules behind it. That is exactly where the typical mishaps come from: the transfer that eats far more TRX than expected, the balance stuck on the wrong network, and the approval still open years later. The network token's price is on our Tron price prediction; here we deal with the practice.

What TRC20 means and why a USDT transfer costs TRX

TRC20 is the token standard of the Tron blockchain. A standard is nothing more than a set of rules a smart contract has to follow so that every wallet and every exchange recognises the token automatically. USDT on Tron is therefore not money in its own right but a contract on this blockchain that keeps a ledger of balances.

From that follows the answer to the most common question: you do not pay the fee in USDT, because the USDT contract is merely an application on the chain. What gets paid is the chain itself, and its own currency is called TRX. Anyone holding nothing but Tether in the wallet therefore cannot send a single transfer. That is by far the most common reason a transfer fails before it even starts.

The genuine Tether USD contract on Tron carries the address TR7NHqjeKQxGTCi8q8ZY4pL8otSzgjLj6t. That string is the only reliable proof that you are dealing with real Tether and not an imitation. Every wallet and every explorer displays it, and you should always check it against a new token.

TRC20, ERC20 or BEP20: how to identify the right network at withdrawal

When you withdraw USDT from an exchange, the app asks you for the network. Same designation, same balance, three entirely different chains: TRC20 stands for Tron, ERC20 for Ethereum, BEP20 for the BNB Chain. The amount is identical in all three cases, the address looks similar, and yet the money is gone if you get it wrong.

Fortunately Tron addresses can be told apart with the naked eye. A TRC20 address always begins with a capital T and is 34 characters long. Addresses for Ethereum and the BNB Chain, by contrast, begin with 0x and are 42 characters long. That one rule prevents most mis-sends.

The second rule: the receiving side decides the network, not you. What governs is always the address the destination gives you. Copy it where you want the balance to end up, and at withdrawal choose exactly the network that address belongs to. Anyone instead hunting for the cheapest option and then trying to make the address fit has the sequence back to front.

And the third: a mis-send between two EVM chains can sometimes still be recovered, because the same address on Ethereum and on the BNB Chain belongs to the same key. Between Tron and an EVM chain that does not work, because the address formats differ. An overview of how to add a new network to your wallet in the first place is in our September 26, 2026 guide on adding a network, bridges and explorers.

USDT TRC20 or another chain: where else Tether sits

The token's full name is Tether USD and, measured by market capitalisation, it is the third largest crypto asset of all: around 183.8 billion dollars or 160.9 billion euros on September 27, 2026 (CoinGecko). That volume is spread across more than a dozen blockchains, and on each of them it is the same name but a different contract.

Besides Tron, Tether issues the token on Ethereum, on Solana, on TON and on Avalanche, among others. Which chain is right for you hangs on two questions: which networks does your exchange offer you at withdrawal, and which does the other side support? Anyone moving a balance between two platforms that both carry TRC20 generally does well with Tron on cost and speed. Anyone who then wants to use decentralised applications on Ethereum saves an extra swap by using ERC20.

One route does not exist: you cannot simply transfer Tether from chain to chain. Between two blockchains you need either an exchange that takes it in on one side and pays it out on the other, or a bridge. Going through an exchange in a few steps is the simpler route for most readers, because it needs no additional contracts. Anyone starting out with fiat money, that is with euros from a bank account, ends up at a trading venue first anyway and only chooses the network at withdrawal.

Bandwidth and energy: Tron's fee model in plain terms

Tron accounts for costs differently from most blockchains. Instead of a single fee there are two resources, and each covers a different part of the cost.

Bandwidth is the allowance for the sheer size of a transaction, measured in bytes. Every account is given 600 units of it free each day. Anyone needing more pays 1,000 sun per byte, and one sun is a millionth of a TRX.

Energy is the allowance for computation, that is for everything a smart contract has to do. A simple TRX transfer needs zero energy; a token transfer needs a great deal. The price for it is fixed as a chain parameter: 100 sun per unit of energy, measured on September 27, 2026 directly against Tron's public chain parameters. How Tron describes this resource model itself is set out in the project's technical documentation.

The decisive point for your arithmetic: energy is something you can obtain rather than pay for. If you have some, it is consumed and costs you not a single TRX. If you have none, the network automatically burns the equivalent out of your TRX balance. Both lead to the same transfer, only at very different cost.

What sending USDT TRC20 really costs today

Rather than take over estimates, on September 27, 2026 we pulled fourteen consecutive real USDT transfers out of the Tether contract and read off their consumption individually. The result is surprisingly clear-cut.

Two values, nothing else

Eleven of the fourteen transactions consumed exactly 64,285 energy. The remaining three consumed exactly 130,285 energy, slightly more than double. Nothing sat in between. The difference has a single cause: if the receiving address already holds USDT, the contract only has to change an existing number. If it holds none yet, it has to create a new storage slot, and that is precisely what costs the additional energy.

Converted into euros

At 100 sun per unit that comes to 6.4285 TRX for the normal case and 13.0285 TRX for a first receipt. At a TRX price of 0.3344 dollars, or 0.2927 euros (CoinGecko, September 27, 2026, 12:45 UTC), that is around 1.88 euros against around 3.81 euros. The amount you send makes no difference to it: ten USDT costs you exactly as much in fees as ten thousand.

The quiet extra item

On five of the fourteen transactions, 345,000 sun was added as a bandwidth fee, that is 0.345 TRX or a good ten cents. The reason: a TRC20 transfer is around 345 bytes in size, but the daily free allowance is only 600 bytes. The first transfer of the day is therefore free on the bandwidth side, the second is not. Anyone sending regularly should know about this item, even if it stays small next to the energy.

And the most expensive case

One of the fourteen transactions showed a zero in the field for energy consumed and 6,428,500 sun in the field for the energy fee. That account had neither frozen TRX nor rented energy and burned the full equivalent of 6.4285 TRX. That is precisely the standard case for anyone who has never looked into the subject.

Rent energy or freeze TRX: how to bring the fee down

There are two ways to come by energy without burning it afresh on every transfer.

The first is called Stake 2.0. You freeze your own TRX and are credited with energy daily, the amount depending on your share of the overall network. The TRX remain your property; they are merely non-transferable for the duration of the lock. Anyone sending continuously recoups the cost within a few weeks. Anyone sending something twice a year is tying up capital for no reason.

The second route is renting. On open marketplaces, holders lend out their energy by the hour, and the price sits noticeably below what burning costs. For occasional transfers that is the pragmatic route. Check beforehand that the provider delegates the energy directly to your address and demands no access to your wallet. A service asking for your private key or your recovery phrase is an attempted fraud in every case, however reputable the site looks.

A third point often gets lost: if you send TRX to an address that has never appeared on chain before, a one-off activation fee applies. That fee is 0.1 TRX on a direct transfer and 1 TRX where activation runs through a smart contract. Both values are fixed as chain parameters, and we read them off directly on September 27, 2026 as well.

Which wallet works for Tron: TronLink, MetaMask and the key question

Tron is not an EVM chain in the narrower sense, so not every wallet app works automatically. Three groups come into practical consideration.

Specialised wallets

TronLink is the wallet the ecosystem produced itself, as a browser extension and as an app for iOS and Android, and it shows bandwidth and energy as separate readouts, which is not a given with any general wallet. Anyone spending a lot of time on Tron sees at a glance whether the next transfer will cost anything.

General software wallets

Since January 2026 MetaMask has carried Tron as a network of its own, as our network overview of September 26, 2026 records. That lets you manage Tron, Ethereum, Solana and further chains in the same app. The advantage is an overview of the whole portfolio; the drawback is that a single compromised app then affects everything. Which software wallets have proved themselves and how to spot an insecure one is set out in our software wallet comparison.

Hardware wallets

For amounts you do not move weekly, the same applies on Tron as everywhere: the private key belongs on a device that is never online. The common hardware wallets support Tron, with operation then running through one of the apps above as the interface.

Whatever the choice, one rule holds without exception: the recovery phrase never leaves your device. No support desk, no marketplace and no app ever needs it. How quickly a single careless click can cost a Tron balance we described on September 13, 2026 in our piece on the Chainflip incident on Tron.

Reading Tronscan: checking status, token transfers and approvals

A block explorer is a search engine for the blockchain. On Tron it is called Tronscan, and it answers three questions nobody else will answer for you.

Has my transfer gone through? Enter the transaction hash or your address. If a success marker and a block number are shown, the matter is settled, whatever the other side's app claims. Tron confirms blocks by the second, so a wait of more than a few minutes rarely points to congestion. As a rule, nothing was sent at all.

What exactly moved? The token transfers tab shows which contract booked which amount from whom to whom. Check the contract address here, not the displayed name. Anyone can assign a name; an address cannot be assigned.

What have I approved? Every interaction with a decentralised application often leaves an approval behind, and Tronscan lists them under your address's permissions. More on that shortly.

A last note on troubleshooting: if a failed transaction carries a marker about an exceeded limit, the network has not failed. In that case the upper limit for the fee set in the send dialogue was too low for the contract call. The transaction is still settled, so the money has been spent for nothing.

Address poisoning and fake tokens: the two most common traps on Tron

Because transfers on Tron are cheap, attacks pay off there that would be too expensive elsewhere. Two patterns are worth knowing.

Address poisoning exploits the fact that almost nobody compares a 34-character string in full. The attacker generates an address whose first and last characters match an address you recently sent to, and sends you a transfer of a tiny amount. It thereby appears in your history. If next time you copy from the history rather than from the source, the money goes to the attacker.

The protection is unspectacular and effective: always copy a destination address from the place where it originated, that is from the exchange's withdrawal page or from the recipient's message. Then compare not only the beginning and the end but also four to six characters from the middle. And for larger amounts, send a small test amount first.

Fake tokens are the second trap. Anyone can create a TRC20 contract bearing the name of a well-known token and distribute it to arbitrary addresses. In the wallet it looks like an unexpected windfall. Try to swap that token and the route leads to a page requesting your approval over your genuine balance. The principle: a token you did not buy yourself does not get touched. When in doubt, check the contract address against the project's official statement.

Revoking approvals: why old permissions remain an open door

An approval is the permission you give a smart contract to move tokens out of your wallet. Without it, no swap on a decentralised exchange such as SunSwap works. The insidious part: such a permission applies indefinitely and often over an unlimited quantity, and it does not lapse if you never visit the site again.

If the contract is later taken over, or somebody finds a hole in it, the old permission is enough to clear out your balance. You no longer have to click on anything for that. That is precisely how wallets have been drained in the past whose owners had done nothing for months.

The countermeasure takes five minutes. Open your address's permissions overview on Tronscan, look through the list of approvals granted and revoke every one you do not actively need. Expect a small fee per revocation, because that too is a contract call and consumes energy. Two dates a year for this run are entirely sufficient.

USDT in Europe under MiCAR: what applies to your balance

One point affects European readers more than others. Since the European crypto regulation MiCAR took full effect, crypto service providers, crypto-asset service providers in the regulation's own language, need an authorisation, and e-money tokens need one of their own. Which duties follow from that for providers with German customers, and how the supervisor checks them, is described by BaFin on its page for crypto institutions. Tether says it has not applied for such an authorisation for USDT and has publicly criticised the regulation's reserve requirements.

For you that means three things. First: holding USDT in your own wallet is untouched by this; your tokens remain your tokens. Second: on trading venues authorised in Germany you will as a rule no longer find USDT as a trading pair today. Anyone trading there works with euro-backed or other authorised stablecoins. Third: that explains why so many German USDT holdings sit on platforms outside the European Economic Area and move back and forth over Tron. Which trading venues can show an authorisation is set out in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Tax: why swapping USDT into TRX is a disposal

The step almost everybody takes in order to be able to send at all has a tax consequence in Germany: swapping USDT into TRX disposes of one asset and acquires another. Under section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the Income Tax Act, that is a private disposal transaction where less than a year lies between acquisition and swap.

With a stablecoin the gain from it is usually tiny, because the price barely moves. That does not make the transaction disappear, though, and with many small swaps the record-keeping duty quickly becomes a nuisance. So keep clean records from the outset with date, amount and equivalent value. Which tools pull that automatically from your address's transactions we set out in our comparison of crypto tax tools. For a binding assessment of your individual case, a tax adviser remains the right address.

Tron in practice: what to take away

1. Always keep some TRX on hand. Ten to twenty TRX on the address prevents your USDT getting stuck. Anyone sending regularly freezes TRX via Stake 2.0 or rents energy. Where to find the right wallet for it is in the software wallet comparison.
2. Check network and address at the source. A T at the start and 34 characters means Tron; 0x and 42 characters means Ethereum or BNB Chain. Never copy from the history, and test larger amounts with a small one first. Which trading venues you can withdraw from is shown in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Clear out your approvals twice a year. Open permissions are the biggest silent risk on Tron. While you are at it, document your swaps for the tax office, most easily with a tool from the comparison of crypto tax tools.

(As of September 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Ethereum price prediction: where ETH actually stands this Sunday

The short answer first: Ethereum trades at 2,714.60 dollars on September 27, 2026 at 12:43 UTC, up 1.1 percent on the previous day (source: CoinGecko, retrieved September 27, 2026, 12:43 UTC). Market capitalisation stands at around 331 billion dollars. That leaves the price roughly 45 percent below the all-time high of 4,946.05 dollars. What decides the coming days is not a forecast but a single zone: 2,750 to 2,820 dollars. Above it, the path to 3,000 dollars opens up; below it, ETH stays in the sideways range that has carried it through September.

Worth keeping in mind: a price forecast is not a promise but a scenario with a condition attached. A price target without the condition under which it holds is worthless to you. That is why every figure in this article comes with who is quoting it and what it depends on. And it is why the second half deals with something you can actually control: holding periods, the timing of staking reward inflows, reporting duties and custody. The price does what it wants. Your acquisition date is fixed.

The levels on the upside: 2,750, 2,820 and then 3,000 dollars

The technical picture is better than it was in early September, but it remains undecided. ETH has left the 2,530 to 2,540 dollar zone to the upside and subsequently reclaimed the 2,700 handle. What has not worked for two weeks is a convincing daily close above 2,800 dollars. The analysis by usethebitcoin dated September 27, 2026 describes the most recent attempt: the price ran to around 2,804 dollars and then slipped back into the upper half of the 2,600s.

That leaves two resistance levels worth distinguishing. The first sits at 2,750 dollars and is more a friction zone than a wall; the price has been turning there regularly since mid-September without that amounting to a break in structure. The second sits at 2,820 dollars, and that is the relevant one. Only a daily close above it turns the recovery into a breakout. If it comes, the same analysis names the 3,000 to 3,050 dollar range as the next target.

What a daily close is: the closing price of a daily candle on a major exchange, usually at 00:00 UTC. A spike above a level in the middle of the day that is sold off again by the evening is not a breakout. That is precisely where the attempts of the past two weeks failed.

The levels on the downside: why 2,530 dollars is the real breaking point

On the downside the picture is clearer than on the upside. The zone between 2,530 and 2,540 dollars was the resistance on which September's breakout was decided. Zones like that swap roles: what was a ceiling becomes a floor once it is broken. A pullback to it is therefore not yet a break but the test of whether the September breakout holds.

Should ETH fall below that zone as well, the 2,438 dollar mark becomes relevant, which 99bitcoins names as the next catching point in its Ethereum forecast. Below that, the structure that has held since the start of September ends, and the summer range comes back into view. In practical terms: if you work with a stop level, it sensibly sits below 2,530 and not at 2,690, where ordinary noise would trigger it almost daily.

A second point belongs here because it is almost always missing from forecast pieces: these levels are quoted in dollars. Your portfolio is counted in euros. If the euro-dollar rate moves, your euro result shifts without ETH having moved at all. Anyone setting levels in dollars and counting gains in euros is measuring two different things.

Analyst targets for year-end: from 2,240 to 4,200 dollars

The year-end targets repay a closer look, because the range is unusually wide. Citi names 2,240 dollars in its base case, which puts it below today's price. Standard Chartered sticks with 4,000 dollars. The analyst consensus compiled by Kagels-Trading spans 2,800 to 4,200 dollars. For the current month, CoinDCX names 2,800 dollars as its target, explicitly on the condition that buyers hold above 2,500 dollars.

These figures are not contradictions waiting to be resolved but an expression of the same uncertainty. A range of 2,240 to 4,200 dollars means that almost a factor of two separates the pessimistic from the optimistic case. Anyone averaging them and passing the result off as a forecast is inventing a precision nobody has. Use the range instead as a frame for two questions to yourself: could you stomach 2,240 dollars without panic selling? And at 4,200 dollars, would you actually take profits, or would you then hold out for 5,000?

The bull case and the bear case stand side by side deliberately. The bull case rests on the break above 2,530 dollars and the inflow weeks of late summer. The bear case rests on the failed daily closes above 2,800 dollars and last week's outflows. That both can be observed at once is the normal state of an undecided market, not a measurement error.

ETF flows as the pacesetter: why the weekly balance says more than the daily price

The US spot ETFs on Ether have become the block of demand that sets the pace over the medium term in 2026. And the direction turned in September. At the start of the month the products still ran twelve trading days in a row with inflows; on September 1 a net 10.95 million dollars came in. On September 8 a net outflow of 24.29 million dollars appeared on the books for the first time in a while, after the strongest week in the products' history with 824.41 million dollars of inflows at the end of August. In the week to September 18, 2026 the US funds then lost a net 140 million dollars or so. It was the first week of outflows since mid-August, and it ended four consecutive weeks of inflows.

Two things there are of practical use to you. First: look at weekly totals, not daily figures. A single day of outflows says next to nothing, four consecutive weeks of inflows say a great deal. Second: the numbers are public and can be checked free of charge, for instance through the ETF flow overviews at CoinGlass. A forecast you hang on a verifiable number beats a forecast you hang on a mood.

One detail calls for caution: within the product group the flows diverge. While BlackRock and Fidelity took in money in September, Grayscale's older ETHE product continued to record outflows and has a historic net outflow of 5.354 billion dollars. A net figure for the group as a whole can therefore conceal reallocations between providers that say nothing about new demand.

Holding period and acquisition date: the check that counts now

Here the article leaves the field of conjecture. For ETH held privately in Germany, section 23 of the Income Tax Act still applies: hold a cryptocurrency for more than a year and the gain on sale is tax free. This one-year period applies unchanged for the 2026 tax year, and staking does not extend it to ten years. What governs is the acquisition date of the individual tranche, not the calendar year and not the moment you happen to think of it.

The actual check takes ten minutes. Pull the list of your ETH inflows with date and quantity from your exchange or your wallet. Mark every tranche whose acquisition date is more than twelve months back: those positions can be sold tax free. Mark separately the tranches added between October 2025 and today, because those are still inside the period. Anyone who bought in October or November 2025 is crossing the one-year line right about now, and that is why this check belongs before the turn of the quarter rather than in December.

Two traps turn up regularly. The first is the order of disposal: in Germany crypto assets are usually accounted for on a FIFO basis, so the oldest tranche counts as sold first. Ignore that and you are working with the wrong acquisition date. The second is the swap. Moving from ETH into a stablecoin or another cryptocurrency is a disposal for tax purposes and starts a fresh period for what you receive. The money never has to touch euros for that to be the case.

Staking rewards: the 256 euro exemption threshold and the timing of inflows

Anyone staking ETH has a second construction site, and it has rules of its own. Passive staking rewards count as other income under section 22 no. 3 of the German Income Tax Act. They are taxed at your personal income tax rate and not at the 25 percent flat rate on investment income. What governs is the euro value of the reward at the tax-relevant moment, that is, on inflow into the wallet or on claiming.

The 256 euro line is exactly what its German name says: an exemption threshold, not an allowance. If your other income for the calendar year stays below it, it goes untaxed. Reach 256 euros precisely, or exceed it, and the entire amount becomes taxable, not merely the portion above the line. The step at that edge is therefore larger than the last reward that triggered it.

In practice: if you draw rewards on a staking platform, add up the euro values of all inflows since January 1, 2026 now. If you are close to 256 euros, you know where you stand for the rest of the year and can time any further claims deliberately. If you are well above it, you need the euro valuation per inflow for your tax return anyway, and it is better gathered as you go than reconstructed in May. The governing administrative view is set out in the German finance ministry's letter of March 6, 2025; for valuing the individual inflows, a tax tool does work that is barely feasible by hand.

DAC8 and the German crypto tax transparency act: what your exchange reports in 2027

The German Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act, KStTG for short, has been in force since January 1, 2026 and transposes the EU's DAC8 directive into German law. It covers trading platforms, wallet providers, brokers and other intermediaries. The first reporting period is the current calendar year 2026, with transmission to the Federal Central Tax Office due by July 31, 2027. A provider reporting late, incompletely or incorrectly risks up to 50,000 euros per case under section 18 KStTG. The context is set out in KPMG's analysis of the new transparency duties.

For you as an investor that brings no new tax, but a new factual position. Your 2026 transactions are being recorded in structured form and will later reach the tax office. A return that diverges from that data will stand out more readily in future. That is no cause for nerves, but it is the best occasion to put your own documentation in order now, while the year is still running and the records are still to hand.

Concretely: for every platform you used in 2026, download the full transaction export and file it. Platforms close, change their export formats or lock old accounts. An export you pull today costs you five minutes; the same export in spring 2028 costs you a support request and sometimes the answer that data older than 24 months is no longer available.

Purchase route and custody under MiCA: what to watch with ETH

Since MiCA took full effect, providers of crypto services in the EU need authorisation as a CASP. For you that is not a formality but the answer to the question of whom you entrust your ETH to. It can be checked in three places: the authorisation itself, the segregation of customer and proprietary holdings, and whether the provider lends out your coins. The providers in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges differ considerably on exactly those points, and the difference only becomes visible in a crisis, which is to say once the check comes too late.

On custody, an uncomfortable calculation that ties directly to the forecast: if you are betting on 3,000 or 4,000 dollars, you are planning a holding period of months. That is precisely when coins are worst placed on an exchange, because you carry counterparty risk for the whole period and get nothing for it. Those who want to hold long, self-custody. Those who want to trade short term need the exchange and accept the risk deliberately for that period.

And the fee side belongs in the same calculation. With a target of 2,820 dollars, the expected move from today's price is around four percent. Two trading fees of one percent each plus spread eat half of that. A forecast that works before costs and not after them is not an opportunity.

Fusaka, blob capacity and Glamsterdam: what hangs on the network itself

Beneath the price sits a technical development that explains more about the medium term than any chart level. The Fusaka upgrade went live on mainnet on December 3, 2025. Its most important innovation is called PeerDAS: validators no longer have to download the large data packets of the layer 2 networks in full, but check samples only. That lowers the bandwidth load and makes it cheaper for layer 2 networks to write their data to Ethereum. The details are in the roadmap documentation on ethereum.org.

Blob capacity was then raised in two steps: on December 17, 2025 to a target of 10 and a maximum of 15 blobs, and on January 7, 2026 to 14 and 21. The next major upgrade carries the working name Glamsterdam and is expected during 2026, with no fixed date. For you the message behind the numbers is simple: Ethereum will earn less on individual data packets in future and more on their quantity. That changes the network's revenue side and with it part of the valuation basis on which the optimistic price targets rest.

Hence a note on how to read upgrade news: a technically successful upgrade often barely moves the price, because the market has known about it for a long time. Anyone expecting a jump on the upgrade date is confusing a piece of news with a surprise.

Ethereum price prediction: what to take away

1. Set your own levels instead of somebody else's price targets. On the upside what counts is a daily close above 2,820 dollars; only then do 3,000 to 3,050 dollars come into play. On the downside, 2,530 dollars is the breaking point. If your purchase route is still open, compare fees and custody model first in the comparison of the best crypto exchanges, because with an expected move of four percent the costs have a say.
2. Check your holding periods and your reward total today. Every ETH tranche acquired before the end of September 2025 is out of the period. For staking rewards, add up the euro values since January 1, 2026 and you will know whether you are under the 256 euro threshold. Which tool supplies that valuation per inflow is set out in the comparison of crypto tax tools.
3. Pull your 2026 transaction exports before the year ends. From the 2026 reporting period onwards, platforms report your data to the Federal Central Tax Office. And if your coins are going to sit for months anyway, check whether they are sitting in the right place on an exchange, or whether self-custody or a staking platform with clear payout logic fits better.

(As of September 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Bybit has published a list of counterparties whose mere involvement is enough, under the exchange's own rules, to have a customer account frozen. According to an analysis by the industry portal coin-turk, the so-called Restricted Counterparty List names more than 50 platforms, payment services, mixing providers, darknet marketplaces and sanctioned organisations. Anyone who sends funds to one of these addresses, receives from one, or comes into contact with one by any other route is in breach of the exchange's terms of use, on Bybit's reading. For you as a user, that means the decisive check concerns not the future but your payment history as it already stands.

The list is both things at once: a protective instrument for the exchange, and a risk for customers who have never documented where their own funds came from.

What Bybit's Restricted Counterparty List actually is

A restricted counterparty list is a register of counterparties whose payment traffic an exchange will not tolerate from its customers. The term counterparty covers every address, every account and every service at the other end of a transaction. Unlike a state sanctions list, the decision here rests with a private company, and it is taken at that company's discretion.

According to coin-turk's analysis of September 26, 2026, the register breaks down into several groups. Among trading venues, Bybit names Garantex, Bitzlato, EXMO, Payeer, Nobitex, Bitpapa, Chatex, Cryptex, Grinex, Rapira, WhiteBird, OMPFinex, Ramzinex and Wallex, among others. The payment services and marketplaces include names such as Tetherland, Bit24 and QvaPay. Added to these are mixing services and darknet marketplaces, and finally organisations subject to international sanctions, among them the Lazarus Group.

What is notable is that, according to the same report, the list also covers trading venues that operate as regular businesses in other regions. Bybit is thus taking a commercial risk decision about what payments it will accept. Inclusion on a private list carries no assessment of those venues by any authority, and that distinction matters for the context.

What Bybit reserves the right to do after a hit

The names are the eye-catching part of this publication. The consequential part sits in the legal consequences. Where the exchange identifies a connection to a listed entity, it reserves four steps, according to the reporting: freezing or terminating accounts, restricting access to balances, liquidating affected open positions, and reporting the incident to supervisory authorities.

The liquidation of open positions deserves particular attention. If a screening hit occurs during a running leveraged position, your exit price is set by the moment the measure is taken; how the market moves plays no part. A loss arising that way is a realised loss for tax purposes. You need a set of records for it consisting of timestamp, execution price and the exchange's settlement statement, and after the fact those are often available only on request.

The report to the supervisor is the point users most often underestimate. For payment service providers and crypto custodians, that step is a statutory duty as soon as a suspicion of money laundering arises. Such a report runs without your involvement, and as a rule you do not learn of it.

Why an indirect connection is enough for screening

The word everything hangs on is indirect. A screening system does not merely check whether your withdrawal went directly to a listed address. It follows the chain across several intermediate stops and assesses how many steps lie between you and a tainted address. Two to five levels is the industry norm, with each exchange setting its own threshold and none of them publishing it.

In practice that means: you buy Bitcoin through a peer-to-peer trade, the seller withdrew those coins from a listed venue a few weeks earlier, and the hit lands on your account. You have done nothing prohibited, yet the burden of proof is yours. How the price is developing in this environment is covered in our Bitcoin price prediction; on September 27, 2026, Bitcoin stood at around 84,535 dollars according to CoinGecko data at 05:47 UTC.

Anyone wanting to keep this risk small pays attention to their venue's licensing. An exchange authorised in the European Union is subject to a defined complaints procedure and must give reasons for its decisions. Our overview of regulated crypto exchanges shows which providers meet that framework and where each company is based.

Garantex and Grinex: where Bybit's rule becomes actual EU law

For some of the venues named, the matter goes beyond the will of a single exchange: the European Union has placed them under sanctions. For you as an investor that is the decisive difference, because EU sanctions apply directly and regardless of which exchange you trade on.

The EU sanctioned Garantex in February 2025. In March 2025 the United States, Germany and Finland shut down the platform's infrastructure in a joint operation, seized the main domain and, according to the authorities involved, froze more than 26 million dollars in crypto assets. Germany was therefore itself party to that operation.

The business then shifted to the successor platform Grinex, registered in Kyrgyzstan. The United States, the United Kingdom and the EU sanctioned Grinex in August and October 2025. In April 2026 Grinex ceased operations after unknown parties drained balances from its wallets; estimates of the amount range from around 13 to 13.7 million dollars. The analytics firm Chainalysis has documented the episode.

Which individuals, companies and bodies currently appear on the EU lists is published by the European Commission in its overview of restrictive measures. That is the authoritative source, not any single provider's list.

How to check the origin of your balance yourself

The only check that helps you now is the backward-looking one. Download the full transaction export for your account, at Bybit as at any other exchange, and work through it from the oldest deposit onwards. You are looking for three things: deposits from peer-to-peer trades, deposits from platforms you can no longer identify today, and inflows from periods in which you used services designed to obscure transactions.

Each of these entries belongs in your files with supporting evidence: the trade confirmation, the bank statement for the transfer, the dated chat log of the peer-to-peer trade, the transaction hash. Assembling that is tedious, and in an emergency it is the difference between a week of clarification and a permanently frozen balance.

If your account really is frozen, the exchange will require a self-declaration on the source of funds. Which questions are standard there, and which formulations make your position worse, is set out in our piece on the self-declaration after an account freeze.

What MiCA and anti-money-laundering law require of exchanges

Bybit is not acting out of high spirits. Since the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short, providers need authorisation to do business with customers in the EU, and with that authorisation come duties to monitor payment traffic. On top of it sits the EU anti-money-laundering regulation, which requires obliged entities to monitor transactions continuously and to report suspicious cases.

The practical consequence is uncomfortable: the more thoroughly a provider discharges its duties, the more often screening also catches uninvolved customers. A venue that freezes nobody has no functioning system.

What an account freeze means for withdrawals and tax

A freeze hits you in three places at once. Access to the balance falls away, open positions can be closed, and the clarification takes time. Where a hit is sanctions-related, a release without an official decision is often not possible at all, because the provider would otherwise be in breach of the sanctions rules itself.

For tax purposes a frozen balance remains your property. A forced sale by the exchange is a disposal, and whether it occurred inside or outside the one-year holding period decides the tax liability. So document the time and price of every forced closure immediately, while you still have access to the view.

When switching venues is the better answer

Anyone holding their entire balance at a provider whose compliance rules they cannot influence carries a concentration risk. The obvious answer is to spread it across more than one venue, at least one of them authorised in the EU. When switching, though, the tax consequences need watching, because a transfer between your own wallets is not the same as a sale. What matters is whether ownership changes. If you move coins to an address that belongs to you, there is no disposal and the one-year holding period continues to run; you do have to carry the acquisition data with you, though, because the new exchange does not know it.

In September 2026 the exchange had already set deadlines when delisting two tokens, forcing customers to act. The pattern is similar: the announcement comes, and implementation follows faster than most users can get their records together. Anyone who starts searching only once the hit lands is negotiating from the weaker position.

Custody in your own hands: limits and price

The most reliable protection against an account freeze is whatever is not sitting in the account. No exchange can freeze coins held in your own custody, and that is precisely why self-custody gains ground after every major incident. A hardware wallet is a device that keeps your private keys offline and releases transactions only after confirmation on the device itself. Which models meet the requirements and what they cost is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

The price of that independence is responsibility. A lost recovery phrase means final loss, and nobody can reset it. On top of that, self-custody does not solve the provenance problem: tainted coins stay tainted, and the next time they pass through an exchange the same hit appears again.

Why mixing services make things worse

A mixing service blends transactions from several users to make attribution harder. From the point of view of the analytics tools, however, such blending is itself a feature that flags a chain. Anyone moving a balance through such a service after a freeze makes clarification practically impossible and additionally draws the supervisor's attention.

What to watch with Nobitex, Rapira and the remaining names

For some of the names, the relevance to European users is obvious; for others it is not. Platforms focused on Iran or Russia play no part for most investors here. They become relevant through peer-to-peer trading and through acquaintances who pass on balances from there.

So check specifically whether any of your deposits originates from the orbit of one of these platforms. If you find a hit, gather the evidence before you initiate a larger withdrawal. A withdrawal is the moment when screening works with particular attention, and an account with no pending withdrawal request can be cleared up calmly.

Checking the counterparty list: what to take away

1. Export your payment history and flag three categories. Work through your deposits from the oldest onwards and mark peer-to-peer trades, inflows you cannot attribute, and amounts from the orbit of listed platforms. File supporting evidence for each entry. Whether your provider holds an EU authorisation at all can be checked in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Spread your balance across more than one venue. A single provider with the power to freeze is a concentration risk. For the second account, pay attention to the company's domicile and licence; the candidates are in our crypto exchange comparison.
3. Move the holdings you intend to keep into your own custody. What sits on your own hardware cannot be frozen by any exchange. Store the recovery phrase separately from the device; the devices are set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

(As of September 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

When coins are stolen, it is not a company's goodwill that decides whether the proceeds can be frozen. It is the way the token was built. The past few days have shown that with unusual clarity. The attacker who drained assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the trading platform Bitget was able to move roughly 83 million dollars in XRP without obstruction. Ripple has no instrument against it. Stablecoins were a different story: there the issuers stepped in, but only for a vanishingly small share of the total.

For you as a holder, that raises a question worth answering before your next purchase: which of your holdings could anyone freeze at all, and who would that be? The answer differs for native coins and issued tokens, and it differs again between self-custody and an exchange account. This piece sorts out the technology, sets out the practical consequences, and shows where an account freeze also hits investors who had nothing to do with the theft.

What has happened since Thursday: 103 million XRP across five accounts

According to the company, assets were transferred to addresses controlled by the attacker at Bitget on Thursday, September 24, 2026. The damage figure has been revised upwards several times. The first estimate stood at 351.6 million dollars, shortly afterwards the figure quoted was 388 million, and on Friday the company named 387.5 million dollars. The platform attributes the increase to further transfers in Zcash and on Tron found while tracing the transactions, not to a second wave of attacks. We deliberately leave that range of 351.6 to 387.5 million dollars unsmoothed here, because it shows how uncertain the numbers are in the first days after an incident.

The XRP formed a block of their own. Just under 103 million XRP were withdrawn on Thursday and distributed across five accounts, according to CoinDesk. The movement began on Saturday. At 04:32 UTC, around 70 million tokens were still sitting in the original five accounts; roughly eight hours later the figure was 49 million. Two accounts that had previously held 20 million XRP each were left with about 23 and 55 tokens respectively, a third with 5.8 million.

The arithmetic behind that is easy to follow. At an XRP price of 1.54 dollars, as quoted by CoinGecko on September 27, 2026 at 12:49 UTC, the roughly 54 million tokens that moved correspond to about 83 million dollars, and the remaining 49 million tokens to around 75 million dollars. Both figures match the numbers CoinDesk published on Saturday.

Why Ripple cannot freeze native XRP

The decisive statement sits in the XRP Ledger's own technical documentation, and it leaves no room for doubt: "No one can freeze XRP in the XRP Ledger." The documentation adds that addresses cannot be made to surrender XRP, and that a network-wide freeze does not apply to XRP at all.

The reason lies in the token's role. XRP is the network's native asset, comparable to the role Ether plays in the Ethereum network. Native assets have no issuer who could lock a position after the fact. The XRP Ledger's freeze functions are aimed exclusively at issuers of tokens built on top of that network.

Individual Freeze, Global Freeze and No Freeze: the three switches in the XRP Ledger

The documentation describes three settings, and all three apply only to issued tokens:

• Individual Freeze: an issuer freezes the trust line to one specific counterparty. That counterparty can then no longer reduce its holding, except by paying it back directly to the issuer.
• Global Freeze: the issuer freezes all tokens it has issued, across every counterparty at once.
• No Freeze: the issuer permanently gives up the ability to freeze individual counterparties. A network-wide freeze remains available, but can never be switched off again afterwards.

Anyone reading that list spots the gap immediately. All three switches presuppose an issuer. XRP has none, so none of them applies. This is not negligence on Ripple's part but a property of the network, documented for years and applying to every holder alike, including you.

Native coins versus issuer tokens: the dividing line that decides whether a freeze is possible

In practice you only need one distinction. A native coin is the base asset of a network: Bitcoin on the Bitcoin network, Ether on Ethereum, XRP on the XRP Ledger, SOL on Solana. Nobody here holds a switch that could lock someone else's balance. An issuer token, by contrast, is a contract that a company or a program issues on somebody else's network. That includes the large stablecoins, tokenised securities and much of what trades under the heading of real world assets.

With issuer tokens, control sits with the issuer, and how far it reaches is written into the respective contract. Tether and Circle can place addresses on a blocklist. On Solana, certain token standards allow a freeze authority to be set that immobilises balances and in some cases claws them back. Whether a token carries that function is part of its contract data and can be checked before you buy.

The result is an uncomfortable double finding. The very property that protects your coins from outside access removes any prospect of a technical recovery if they are stolen. And the very property that makes recovery possible hands a company the power to immobilise your regular balance too. Both are the same function, seen from two directions.

What Circle and Tether actually achieved

In the Bitget case the stablecoin issuers did act. According to the available reports, Circle and Tether froze around 320,000 dollars in USDC and USDT that could be attributed to the incident. That number is the real lesson of the case: measured against damages of 387.5 million dollars, 320,000 dollars is less than one tenth of a percent.

That is not down to any reluctance on the issuers' part but to which assets the attacker held. Anyone moving proceeds in native coins is beyond the reach of this instrument. Bitget itself stated that its own protection fund covers the loss and that customer balances remain untouched. That is a corporate commitment, not a technical recovery.

Self-custody means nobody freezes anything, including for you

The obvious conclusion is to take coins off the exchange. That solves one problem and creates a second. In self-custody on your own hardware wallet, no company has access to your keys. No platform can lock your balance, no custodian's insolvency drags it down, no blocklist reaches you.

The price sits in the same line. If someone takes your keys, there is no authority that stops the process. There is no customer service, no protection fund and no issuer to freeze an address. With native coins the loss is final once the transaction is confirmed. Anyone choosing this route takes on the role the custodian fills at an exchange, along with every duty attached to it. Which devices come into question and how they differ is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

The sensible answer is therefore rarely one extreme or the other, but a split by purpose. Holdings you intend to keep for a longer period belong in self-custody. Amounts you trade with at short notice stay where you need them. And how you secure your recovery words ultimately decides both.

When flagged coins land in your account: the freeze also hits bystanders

This point is regularly overlooked in the coverage, and it affects you directly. While nobody can lock native coins on the network, a trading platform can certainly lock an account into which such coins arrive. That is the lever that bites when it matters: an exchange receiving stolen XRP can restrict the receiving account and block withdrawals. The platform cannot stop the coins while they sit in the perpetrator's wallet, but it can close the exit as soon as somebody tries to turn them into money.

The catch is that at that moment the platform can only see that funds with a suspicious origin have arrived. Whether you are the perpetrator or a buyer who acquired the coins unwittingly in a peer-to-peer deal is only established later. Until then your account stands still, along with every other holding in it. European anti-money-laundering rules and the due diligence duties under the MiCA crypto regulation oblige providers to follow up such signals, and in case of doubt they do so quickly.

How to spot a problematic origin before you buy

As a private investor you cannot carry out a full check of provenance, but a few reliable indicators exist. Peer-to-peer deals with strangers outside regulated platforms are the main route by which flagged funds reach private hands. A noticeable discount to the exchange price is a warning sign, not a bargain, because nobody sells below the market price without a reason. If pressure to settle the matter quickly is added on top, the deal belongs cancelled.

Buying through a platform licensed in the EU shifts that check to the provider. That is the practical advantage of a licence, rarely visible day to day and decisive when something goes wrong. Which providers operate under supervision is listed in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

What MiCA demands of custodians, and what it does not deliver

Since the European MiCA regulation came fully into force, providers that hold customer assets in custody or offer trading need a licence. That brings obligations to segregate customer holdings from a firm's own assets, to organise custody properly, and to be liable for losses arising from the operation of the platform.

What MiCA does not do is change the technology of the networks. The regulation gives no authority and no company the ability to stop native coins after the fact. What it governs is how a provider must handle your balance while it holds it. Once the funds have left, supervisory and civil law apply, but no technical switch does.

A second distinction matters for context. The statutory deposit guarantee that protects bank balances up to 100,000 euros per customer and institution does not apply to crypto assets. It presupposes deposits held at a credit institution. Anyone with coins sitting at a trading platform holds a claim against that company, not a protected deposit.

An exchange protection fund: a promise, not deposit insurance

In the current case Bitget points to its own protection fund. Such funds are common in the industry and have genuinely held up in individual cases. Legally they are a voluntary commitment by the company. Size, composition and payout conditions are determined by the provider itself, there is no state supervision of these funds, and as a rule no individual customer gains an enforceable claim from them.

That is no blanket warning, but it is a question to ask before opening an account: how large is the fund relative to the customer assets held, how transparently does the provider disclose it, and in which assets does it hold it? A fund consisting largely of the platform's own token loses value precisely when it is needed. If a provider publishes neither size nor composition, the commitment is not verifiable for you, and you should weigh it accordingly.

Tax and reporting: what counts after a theft

If an incident hits you directly, the question shifts from technology to documentation. What matters to the tax office is whether and how you can evidence the loss. Which records are required and what treatment is realistic is set out in our piece on stolen coins and the tax evidence you need.

Independently of that, one rule holds: secure the records while they are still available. Platform statements, transaction IDs for the affected transfers, the receiving addresses and your correspondence with the provider. After an incident, interfaces get rebuilt and histories get shortened, and what you can export today may no longer be retrievable in a few weeks. A file export beats a screenshot, because it carries the identifiers in machine-readable form.

The Bitget withdrawal schedule: which dates apply to remaining balances

For anyone with a balance there, the timetable is the most concrete piece of information in the case. The company is reopening withdrawals in stages rather than all at once. Bitcoin withdrawals go first on September 28, Ether follows across the supported networks on September 29, and USDT on September 30. The remaining tokens, fiat services and peer-to-peer trading are due back by October 2.

In practice that means checking, on each date, whether a small test withdrawal goes through before you instruct a larger amount. Expect delays in the first few hours, because many users will be withdrawing at the same time. And record when you placed which instruction. We set out the details of the process and its stages when the resumption of withdrawals was announced.

What this case says about the months ahead

Two developments are taking shape. The first concerns stablecoins. The more often issuers freeze addresses, the more visible their role as a control point becomes, and the more pressing the question of the rules under which they do it. For holders that is a conflict of aims: the same function that helps after a theft is a day-to-day risk to your own balance.

The second concerns the trading venues. Because attackers are visibly switching to native coins, the defence moves to the entrances and exits, which is to say to the platforms. Expect tighter checks on deposits and more provisional account freezes. For you as a legitimate user, that means one thing above all: the route by which you acquire coins is becoming more important than the price you get them at.

Stolen coins and the limits of freezing: what to take away

1. Sort your holdings by design. Native coins such as Bitcoin, Ether or XRP cannot be frozen by anyone, while issuer tokens such as USDT and USDC certainly can. Note down, for each position, who could act in an emergency, and choose your custody route accordingly. For self-custody, the suitable devices are in our hardware wallet comparison.
2. Buy where somebody else carries out the provenance check. A discounted peer-to-peer deal saves a few percent and can immobilise your account for weeks if flagged funds are in it. Which providers operate under supervision in the EU is set out in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Test your custodian's promises before you need them. Protection funds are voluntary commitments with no deposit insurance behind them, and MiCA governs how your balance is handled, not the technology of the networks.

Further reading: the XRP Ledger's technical documentation on its freeze functions, and the CoinDesk report on the movement of the stolen XRP.

(As of September 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Dogecoin trades at $0.0977, or €0.0857, on September 27, 2026 at 11:42 am German time. Almost nothing has moved in the 24 hours before that; the gain comes to 0.64 percent. Days like this one are the most useful days you get, because whatever you work out now about your holding period, your route to buying and your custody, you work out without pressure.

The figures in this article come from CoinGecko's market data interface, retrieved on September 27, 2026 at 09:42 UTC. That is 11:42 am Central European Summer Time. Anyone who works with prices without knowing when they were pulled is working with a number whose age they cannot state.

Dogecoin price on September 27, 2026: the numbers and their source

DOGE is quoted at $0.097699. The range of the past 24 hours ran from $0.095327 to $0.098670, which is roughly 3.5 percent between the low and the high. In euro terms the price stands at €0.085717, with a daily range of €0.083686 to €0.086621.

Market capitalisation comes to $15.24 billion, or €13.38 billion. Circulating supply is 156.09 billion DOGE. Trading volume over the past 24 hours stands at $698.1 million, which is 4.6 percent of market capitalisation. That ratio is the number to watch if you intend to move larger amounts: it tells you how much stock actually changes hands on an average day.

DOGE sits 86.6 percent below its all-time high of $0.731578. That figure is not a price target in either direction. What it gives you is the order of magnitude you need when you value an old position from the peak phase and ask yourself whether a loss from a private disposal is still capable of being offset at all.

Why a quiet Dogecoin price makes the better day for the maths

On days with double-digit swings, investors decide quickly and check little. On a day that moves 0.64 percent, nobody has a decision forced out of their hands. The calendar keeps working regardless, and this autumn it is working on three fronts at once.

First, the 2026 tax year is running towards December 31, and with it the question of which of your Dogecoin holdings satisfy the one-year rule. Second, 2026 is the first year in which crypto service providers have to collect their customers' data for the later report to the Federal Central Tax Office. Third, since January 1, 2026 the transition period for providers without a European authorisation has been over. None of the three has anything to do with the price and everything to do with the date.

Crypto holding period under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act: counted by the day

For tax purposes, Dogecoin is another asset within the meaning of Section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the German Income Tax Act. A gain on sale is a private disposal if no more than one year lies between acquisition and disposal. You will find the wording in the full text of Section 23 EStG.

The most common error of reasoning sits in the way the deadline is calculated. The one-year period runs from the day of acquisition, not from the start of the year. If you bought on September 27, 2025, your period ends with the close of September 27, 2026, so a sale from September 28, 2026 onwards no longer falls under Section 23. Buy today and the earliest you leave the period behind is September 28, 2027.

From that follows a very concrete check for this autumn. If you want to unwind a position tax-free while still in 2026, the day of acquisition has to have been December 30, 2025 at the latest. Anything you bought in January 2026 or later is inside the period until New Year's Eve. So look at your purchase records and write the date, the quantity and the acquisition cost of every purchase into a list. Without that list, every further calculation is an estimate.

One point matters for anyone who lends out DOGE or holds it in a product that yields a return: for payment tokens of this kind, the tax authorities do not assume the period is extended to ten years. The Federal Ministry of Finance circular of March 6, 2025, which replaced the version of May 10, 2022, is the governing administrative instruction here. It is also the first to carry its own sections on record-keeping and cooperation duties. We set out the debate over whether the one-year rule survives politically in a separate piece on the holding period on September 25, 2026.

The 1,000 euro exemption limit: one cent decides the whole amount

Section 23(3) EStG leaves gains from private disposals untaxed where the total gain in the calendar year comes to less than 1,000 euros. The word total is meant seriously: all private disposals in the year count together, so the gold you sold and the bitcoin you sold count too, not only your Dogecoin.

What matters is the difference between an exemption limit and an allowance. With an allowance, the base amount would stay untaxed and only the excess would be taxable. With an exemption limit, the entire gain tips into taxability the moment the threshold is reached. Make 999 euros of gains in the calendar year and you pay nothing. Make 1,000 euros and you are taxed on the full 1,000 euros at your personal income tax rate.

A worked example at today's price: 50,000 DOGE at €0.085717 are worth roughly 4,286 euros. Whether that turns into a gain of 300 euros or of 1,400 euros depends solely on your acquisition cost. If you are just over the threshold, the nearest lever is not the price but the split: a partial sale this year, the rest next year. Nothing is lost that way, and in the favourable case it saves the full claim on the whole amount.

FIFO and partial sales: which Dogecoin you sell in December

Anyone who has bought in instalments over several years does not own a single position but a sequence of acquisitions with different dates and prices. On a partial sale the question is which of those tranches counts as sold. In practice the consumption sequence applied is first in, first out: the oldest units count as disposed of first.

In practical terms that means two things. The oldest tranches are usually the ones that have come out of the period, so a partial sale hits the tax-free holding first. At the same time they are often the ones with the lowest acquisition cost, which is where the calculated gain is largest. Together those two points decide whether a December sale is harmless for tax purposes or whether it carries you over the exemption limit.

If your holdings are spread across several providers and several wallets, you need to consolidate them for that. A portfolio tracker that carries acquisition dates along and shows the deadline for each tranche saves you the sheet of paper. Which programs manage that for the German legal framework is set out in our comparison of crypto tax software. Do not rely on any of them blindly: you are the one signing the tax return.

Crypto reporting from 2026: what your provider reports to the BZSt by July 2027

Since January 1, 2026, providers of crypto-asset services with customers in the European Union have been subject to a new collection duty. The basis is Directive (EU) 2023/2226, known in the trade as DAC8, which Germany implements through the Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act. The first reporting period is the current 2026 calendar year. The first report goes to the Federal Central Tax Office by July 31, 2027.

What gets reported is master data such as name, address, date of birth and tax identification number, along with transaction data: purchases, sales, exchanges, transfers, amounts and timestamps. Exchanges, custodians, wallet providers and transfer services are covered. The private sheet of paper with your recovery words is not.

For you this has a practical consequence that has nothing to do with secrecy and everything to do with reconciliation. What the provider reports is a movement figure and not your taxable gain. Where your tax return diverges from what the tax office already knows from the report, questions follow. We took apart why the reported gross amount and the taxable gain are two different numbers in a piece on the crypto reporting duty.

The task for this autumn is therefore small and concrete. Check that the master data held by your provider is correct, the tax identification number above all. If it is missing or wrongly recorded, the provider will ask in case of doubt and can restrict accounts until the details are complete.

Buying under MiCA: since January 2026 your provider needs an authorisation

The European regulation on markets in crypto-assets has governed the authorisation and supervision of crypto-asset service providers since the end of 2024. The national transitional arrangement has expired: since January 1, 2026 it has been unlawful to provide crypto-asset services in Germany without an authorisation or a valid notification. Supervision is carried out by BaFin, on crypto-asset services.

You can check this yourself, and it takes two minutes. Authorised providers appear in BaFin's company database, and the Europe-wide register is kept by the securities regulator ESMA. A provider that will not name its supervisory authority, or that is absent from the register, is the wrong address for a purchase out of Germany, however attractive the fees look. How the authorised houses differ on fees, deposit routes and withdrawal times is shown in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

Custody: Dogecoin is its own chain, not a token on Ethereum

This point costs money regularly because it sounds so banal. DOGE runs on a blockchain of its own and is not a token under the Ethereum standard. An address intended for ether or for a token on Ethereum will not accept Dogecoin. Send there anyway and the amount is as a rule gone for good, and no provider can reverse it.

Before you withdraw holdings from an exchange, check three things on the device itself. Does your wallet support Dogecoin as its own chain. Does the receiving address begin with the D that is typical for Dogecoin. Does the address your hardware device shows on its own display match the address in the browser window. The third point is the most important one, because it is the only one that malware on the computer cannot forge. Which devices carry Dogecoin and how they differ in daily use is set out in the hardware wallet comparison; on checking against the display we published a separate piece on blind signing after the last device update.

A side effect of self-custody concerns tax. A transfer between your own addresses is not a sale and does not trigger a disposal. It therefore does not interrupt the holding period. Document it with the date and the transaction ID all the same, because your schedule has to explain later why a holding left the exchange without a gain arising.

Issuance and network security: 5.26 billion new DOGE a year

Dogecoin has no cap on its money supply. Each block pays out 10,000 DOGE, and the target block time is one minute. That produces a fixed annual new issuance of around 5.256 billion DOGE.

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on September 27, 2026: we set the circulating supply of 156.09 billion DOGE from the CoinGecko interface against the fixed block reward. The method in one sentence: 10,000 DOGE per block times 525,600 minutes in the year gives 5.256 billion new DOGE, and divided by the circulating supply that is 3.4 percent of growth in the current year. We verified exactly one quantity, namely the circulating supply at that moment. What we could not verify is how many of those DOGE are permanently lost, because no reliable public figure exists for it.

The share falls year by year, because absolute issuance stays constant while the stock grows. No statement about the price follows from that, but an expectation does: hold DOGE and you hold an asset whose quantity grows by design. A scarcity story of the kind Bitcoin has does not carry here.

The network is secured through proof of work with an additional mechanism that has allowed simultaneous mining alongside Litecoin since 2014. The bulk of the hash rate comes from that merged mining. It makes the network more stable than Dogecoin's size alone would deliver, but it ties the network's security to the economics of mining a second chain.

Leverage and liquidation: why perpetuals do not rescue the period anyway

Dogecoin is traded on many venues as a perpetual futures contract. Trade that way and you own no DOGE. You hold a position on the price, with funding costs that fall due several times a day depending on market conditions.

That has two consequences you should know before you think about leverage. For tax purposes, Section 23 EStG does not apply to a transaction of this kind. It falls into the area of futures transactions, with rules of their own that are in part less favourable. The one-year period you can use when holding directly does not exist there. On the practical side, today's daily range comes to roughly 3.5 percent. At tenfold leverage that is 35 percent of movement on the capital you put up, on a day the market counts as quiet.

If you use futures products, work out the liquidation threshold before you open the position rather than afterwards. And keep it separate from the holding on which you are tracking the one-year period, or you will mix two calculations that have nothing to do with each other in tax terms.

Levels above and below: what the calculation orients itself on

On the downside, the nearest point of orientation is the daily low at $0.095327. Fall below it and the day's range has been left on the downside; that level says no more than that. Above sits the daily high at $0.098670, and beyond it the round ten-cent mark, which in dollar terms is a good two percent away.

Round levels are not a technical statement about a network. Such levels work because many market participants place their orders there, and that is enough to make them noticeable in practice. For the questions in this article they are secondary in any case: your holding period does not turn out differently because DOGE stands short of ten cents or beyond it. The period only helps decide how large the gain is that you weigh against the exemption limit.

The distance to the all-time high of $0.731578 is the third figure that belongs in a sober stocktake. Anyone who bought at the peak in 2021 is sitting on a paper loss that arose well outside the one-year period. A sale there would no longer produce an offsettable loss from a private disposal, because the period applies to losses too.

Dogecoin before the year end: what to take away

1. Gather your purchase dates and mark the deadlines. Write down the date, the quantity and the acquisition cost for each purchase and mark which tranches were acquired before December 30, 2025. A tool that carries the deadline for each tranche is in the comparison of crypto tax software.
2. Check your provider against the register and complete your master data. Since January 1, 2026 your trading venue needs an authorisation, and from the same date it collects your data for the 2027 report. Check the tax identification number on file and compare fees and withdrawal routes in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
3. Match the receiving address on the device before your next withdrawal. Dogecoin needs a wallet that carries its own chain, and the address shown belongs on the device's display, not only in the browser. Which models manage that is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

(As of September 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy. Tax information is no substitute for advice in an individual case.)

Three developments this week—a cost breakthrough, a new privacy design, and a custody playbook—show a field moving from theory to logistics, even as "Q-Day" remains hypotheti

New SEC staff guidance says announcing a token buyback on a functional network isn't a promise that turns the token into a security, a shift one attorney says makes securities laws look "opt-in."

Bitcoin ETFs have drawn nearly $3 billion over seven straight sessions, erasing post-Clarity Act losses and pushing 2026 flows back into positive territory.

After the Clarity Act failed in the Senate, the SEC, CFTC, and the Fed moved within days to write crypto's rules themselves. Will it be enough?

An open competition run by StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs drove the estimated cost of building a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction from about $320 to roughly $67, with AI models topping the leaderboards.

Korea’s banking giants to take stage at upcoming XRP event.

Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade nears final mile with key October date being watched.

Solana ETFs have attracted the largest amount of inflow ever recorded since they launched late last year amid growing institutional demand.

Bitcoin and USD aren't usually the best friends, which is why a quick.

Bitcoin is on track to post its second-best third quarter on record, with a roughly 43.5% gain that trails only 2017, according to CoinGlass data.

TLDR:

• Dogecoin ETF inflows reached $2.89 million in the week ended September 25, surpassing the previous weekly high of $2.59 million set in January.
• Grayscale’s GDOG received all $806,060 in Friday inflows and held $13.87 million in assets, about 81% of the group’s reported total.
• The weekly record arrived in three sessions, while DOGE ETF assets represented 0.11% of the token’s market value, SoSoValue data showed.
• Ali Charts reported whale purchases of 1.14 billion DOGE, worth about $112 million, over 96 hours as DOGE traded near $0.10 resistance.

U.S. spot Dogecoin ETF inflows reached a $2.89 million weekly record through September 25, SoSoValue data showed. DOGE traded near $0.098 on September 27, close to the $0.10 level that has capped recent advances. 

The total exceeded the previous weekly high of about $2.59 million, set in the week ending January 2, 2026. It also marked a sharp rise from the only $284,510 net inflow recorded during the prior week. 

The record arrived as DOGE ETF products narrowed, with Bitwise preparing to liquidate its fund in October. ETFs also give investors brokerage-account exposure to DOGE without requiring direct token custody.

Dogecoin ETF Inflows Beat Prior Highs as Grayscale Leads

The new Dogecoin ETF inflows arrived across three sessions: Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. Grayscale’s GDOG accounted for the $806,060 net inflow recorded Friday. Its cumulative net inflows rose to $15.46 million after Bitwise announced its closure. GDOG held $13.87 million in assets, about 81% of the group’s total, according to SoSoValue data. 

Grayscale captured most demand, while rival fund flows moved in the opposite direction. Net flows subtract redemptions from subscriptions, obscuring gross activity across the three products in combined weekly totals. 

21Shares’ TDOG saw cumulative inflows decline from $1.63 million on September 10 to $1.03 million. Bitwise said it would liquidate BWOW, with October 14 set as its last trading day. BWOW held about $801,400 and had recorded $1.23 million in lifetime net outflows. After the liquidation, two U.S. spot Dogecoin funds will remain. The change reduces the number of available products while the category posts its largest week of net inflows since launch. 

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $2.39 billion in the same week, over 800 times the Dogecoin total. SoSoValue data put Dogecoin funds’ assets at 0.11% of DOGE’s market value. Dogecoin ETF inflows appeared in only nine U.S. trading sessions between July 1 and September 18, 2026. 

CoinGecko put DOGE’s 24-hour volume near $704.9 million on September 27. That single-day total exceeded the new ETF inflow by 244 times. 

Dogecoin ETF Inflows Meet Whale Buying Near $0.10 Resistance

Dogecoin ETF inflows coincided with DOGE’s latest test of the $0.10 price level. DOGE traded near $0.098 on September 27, with CoinGecko reporting a market capitalization around $15.3 billion. The $0.10 mark has repeatedly acted as an overhead barrier during recent advances. 

Dogecoin price analysis identifies an area between $0.10 and $0.105 as resistance. One near-term reading identifies $0.095 as a support level. CoinGecko data showed DOGE gained 15.6% over seven days but traded below the $0.10 threshold.

Large-holder activity adds another demand measure. Market analyst Ali Charts reported whale wallets acquired more than 1.14 billion DOGE, worth about $112 million, over a 96-hour window. 

The buying came as DOGE encountered resistance near $0.098, with roughly 28 billion tokens previously traded at that zone. Ali Charts’ estimate equaled roughly 39 times the weekly ETF flow, though it measured purchases by whale wallets instead.

Earlier whale accumulation episodes also drew attention. In May, wallets acquired 525 million DOGE over a 96-hour stretch as the token traded near its 200-day moving average. From September 9 to 14, wallets holding at least 100 million DOGE each added about 240 million tokens. DOGE fell from $0.091 to $0.081 during that period. The combined holdings of those wallets approached 19 billion DOGE.

At other points this year, 149 top wallets each held more than 100 million DOGE. Together, they controlled over 108 billion tokens. Futures open interest climbed into the $1.5 billion to $1.67 billion range during peak activity. Short liquidations exceeded $12 million during recent accumulation phases. Dogecoin ETF inflows, whale wallet totals, and futures open interest track separate market measures.

The post Dogecoin ETF Inflows Break January Record as Grayscale Leads Buying appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Alpenglow replaces Solana’s consensus engine, cutting transaction finality to about 150 milliseconds.
• Solana’s fault tolerance threshold rises from 33 percent to 40 percent under the Alpenglow upgrade.
• US Solana ETFs posted $188.21 million in weekly inflows, their largest total since launching.
• Bitwise’s BSOL fund led ETF inflows with $128.46 million, favored for its SOL staking yield.

Solana has climbed sharply in recent days, with traders pointing to two converging catalysts. A major network upgrade called Alpenglow is nearing activation, promising faster and cheaper transactions.

At the same time, US Solana exchange-traded funds posted their strongest inflow week since launch, signaling growing institutional appetite for the asset alongside the technical shift.

Alpenglow Upgrade Builds Anticipation

The upgrade, developed by core engineering group Anza, replaces Solana’s underlying consensus engine entirely. It swaps the legacy TowerBFT system for a new protocol called Votor, which handles validator votes directly instead of packaging them into on-chain transactions. This change cuts transaction finality from roughly 12.8 seconds down to about 150 milliseconds.

Crypto commentator Sarosh highlighted the scale of the shift on social media. He described it as “the largest overhaul in Solana’s history,” noting it replaces the system validators use to agree on transactions.

Traders have treated the upgrade as a fundamental catalyst, since faster finality and lower fees tend to draw renewed trading activity.

Code for Alpenglow has sat inactive on mainnet since September 18, building expectation ahead of a formal switch.

Activation is scheduled to begin September 28, though the date depends on 95 percent of staked validators updating their node software first. That countdown appears to be feeding speculative buying into the deadline.

Network Improvements Reinforce The Rally

Beyond speed, Alpenglow raises Solana’s fault tolerance threshold from 33 percent to 40 percent of staked validators.

This gives the network stronger protection against outages, routing failures, or hardware crashes. Traders view added resilience as a positive signal for long-term network reliability.

Validator voting has historically consumed a heavy share of network capacity, accounting for up to 75 percent of on-chain transactions.

Moving that process off-chain frees transaction space for regular users and cuts the SOL cost of running a validator. Lower operating costs are seen as supportive for validator participation and network health.

Because the upgrade only touches infrastructure, wallets, smart contracts, and fee structures remain unchanged for users.

This combination of speed, resilience, and cost reduction has given market participants a clear narrative to buy into ahead of activation.

ETF Inflows Add Fuel To The Move

Institutional demand has amplified the rally. US Solana ETFs drew $188.21 million in net inflows between September 21 and 25, the largest weekly total since launch. The official Solana account called it “the biggest week since launch” for these products.

Bitwise’s staking-enabled BSOL fund led inflows with $128.46 million, favored for its yield on staked SOL. It outpaced Grayscale’s GSOL and Fidelity’s FSOL during the same period. Thirty-day inflows reached $447.7 million, with cumulative totals surpassing $1.61 billion.

Solana traded at $123.66 as of writing, up 2.39 percent over 24 hours and 14.75 percent over the past week. Twelve straight weeks of positive ETF flows suggest steady institutional accumulation is compounding with upgrade-driven momentum to push the price higher.

The post Why Solana Is Pumping: Alpenglow Upgrade and Record ETF Inflows Drive Rally appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• A prediction-market contract put the CLARITY Act near 14% odds of becoming law in 2026 before the September 15 vote; that was not a 12-month forecast.
• The CFTC’s September 24 FAQ update clarified tokenized forms of already-permitted customer-fund investments and blockchain-based recordkeeping, without widening eligible assets.
• The SEC’s five-year conditional exemption covers certain permissioned venues trading tokenized U.S. stocks, while leaving altcoin products and most crypto platforms outside its scope.
• Agency guidance can move quickly, but it may change or face legal challenges; a statute could set more durable lines for jurisdiction, registration, and customer protections.

The CLARITY Act has stalled, but U.S. crypto regulation continues through agency action. The SEC and CFTC apply authority to tokenization, recordkeeping, and trading. These steps shape compliance as institutions assess digital assets, including altcoins. However, agencies cannot settle questions about jurisdiction, registration, or consumer safeguards that Congress could address.

On September 15, the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act in a procedural vote, not a final rejection. Before the vote, a prediction-market contract put the bill’s 2026 passage odds near 14%. That was a calendar-year estimate, not a forecast for the next twelve months. No vote is scheduled. 

What the CLARITY Act Could Change for Crypto Markets

The CLARITY Act would set a federal market-structure framework. It would define when tokens qualify as securities or commodities and divide SEC and CFTC oversight. It would also set registration and consumer-protection requirements. Clearer categories could reduce jurisdictional disputes and help firms decide how to operate. The bill would give investors a firmer basis for understanding platform duties.

Those duties matter when an exchange holds customer assets. Users want to know how firms must safeguard funds, keep records, and respond to breaches or losses. Rules under the CLARITY Act could support consistent compliance across platforms. They would not guarantee safety, prevent every hack, or shield investors from losses caused by volatility.

A framework may affect institutional participation. Retirement plans, insurers, and asset managers could assess crypto exposure against clearer responsibilities and safeguards. Registration pathways might attract more buyers and sellers, supporting liquidity and price discovery. Institutions must weigh custody, demand, liquidity, and volatile-asset risk.

SEC and CFTC Rules Move Ahead While Congress Stalls

The CFTC’s September 24 FAQ update offers an example. This matters for compliance across derivatives markets. Staff clarified how registrants may use tokenized forms of investments already permitted for customer funds. They also addressed blockchain systems for keeping and producing required records. The update does not expand the eligible investment list or create a new regime. It applies existing requirements to tokenization and distributed ledgers.

The FAQs build on staff guidance about tokenized collateral. The CFTC says they reflect staff views, create no binding rules, and amend no regulations. The update can guide compliance planning, but is narrower than a statute or agency rule. It concerns registered firms, not a comprehensive definition of digital assets or allocation of SEC and CFTC jurisdiction. 

The SEC has acted under existing authority. On September 17, it approved a temporary, conditional exemption for certain venues trading tokenized U.S. stocks in permissioned settings. The five-year measure allows limited on-chain trading while the agency considers broader rules. It does not authorize all crypto platforms or approve altcoins. Its scope covers tokenized national-market-system stocks. 

These examples show why the CLARITY Act still matters as regulation advances. Agencies can address narrower questions and test approaches, but their actions depend on current statutes. Guidance may change, exemptions have conditions, and agency measures can face court challenges or leadership shifts. Congress could provide more durable rules for asset classifications, venue responsibilities, registration, and investor protections. 

That certainty could help institutions assess crypto, but regulation is not a government endorsement. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remain speculative and volatile. The CLARITY Act would not make those assets safe or eliminate market risk. Stablecoins and distributed-ledger systems may serve payment or settlement uses, especially when tokens represent assets such as U.S. Treasurys. Those uses differ from spending volatile crypto on everyday goods and carry distinct risks.

For now, the CFTC FAQ update clarifies tokenized permitted investments and blockchain recordkeeping within existing rules. The SEC exemption addresses limited trading of tokenized stocks. Unresolved questions include who regulates each market, which firms must register, and what consumer protections users can expect.

The post CLARITY Act Delay Leaves Crypto Rules Moving Through Agencies appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• PeerDAS, live since Fusaka in December 2025, lets nodes sample blob data instead of downloading every blob.
• Hegotá, expected in 2027, could be Ethereum’s last broadly familiar fork before deeper cryptographic redesign.
• EIP-7805 adds validator-backed inclusion lists to curb censorship by individual block builders in Hegotá.
• Ethereum targets 2029 for core post-quantum infrastructure, alongside Lean Consensus and recursive STARKs.

Vitalik Buterin has outlined a long-term architecture for Ethereum that could make the network increasingly difficult to describe as a conventional blockchain. The model combines decentralized consensus, zero-knowledge proofs, distributed computation, privacy systems and post-quantum cryptography.

In a September 27 post titled “The cryptographic world computer,” Buterin said the network now blends Bitcoin-era blockchain principles with newer cryptographic research. His framework describes a system where verification relies less on every node repeating every computation and more on proofs, sampling and specialized distributed infrastructure.

That shift is already visible in several parts of the roadmap. Data availability, block construction and consensus are moving toward designs that reduce duplication while preserving verifiability across the network.

Ethereum’s World Computer Shift Rewrites Blockchain Verification

Traditional blockchains require many nodes to download data and independently re-execute transactions. Buterin described an architecture that increasingly replaces that model with data sampling and cryptographic proof verification.

Consensus has also moved from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, while a more optimized Lean Consensus design remains under development. At the same time, block construction could become more distributed instead of depending heavily on one miner or builder.

PeerDAS provides an early example of that direction. Introduced through the December 2025 Fusaka upgrade, it lets nodes verify blob availability by sampling data rather than downloading every blob.

That reduces bandwidth requirements while supporting higher Layer 2 capacity. As a result, more computation can move outside the base layer without removing Ethereum’s ability to verify results cryptographically.

The next major milestone is Hegotá, currently expected in 2027. Buterin described it as potentially the last upgrade that would remain broadly familiar to developers from earlier network eras.

Hegotá and Lean Ethereum Push Toward Quantum-Safe Design

FOCIL, formally EIP-7805, is scheduled for Hegotá. It introduces validator-backed inclusion lists intended to limit the ability of individual block builders to censor valid transactions.

However, the upgrade’s broader scope remains under development, so additional features and timing could still change. Beyond Hegotá, research increasingly centers on recursive STARKs, formal verification and advanced state management.

EIP-8288 offers one example. The draft proposal would aggregate quantum-resistant signatures and STARK proofs in the mempool before producing one recursive proof for block verification.

Lean Ethereum extends that direction with redesigned consensus, hash-based post-quantum signatures, formal verification and finality targeted in seconds. Separately, the Ethereum Foundation is targeting about 2029 for core post-quantum infrastructure.

Taken together, Buterin’s framework describes a network where decentralized offchain systems handle larger workloads while cryptographic proofs preserve security guarantees. He calls that architecture a “cryptographic world computer.”

The post Vitalik Buterin Maps Ethereum’s Evolution Into a Cryptographic World Computer appeared first on Blockonomi.

Quick Overview

• Wednesday brings the August Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation report, marking the first inflation data release following the Federal Reserve’s September interest rate increase.
• Friday’s September employment report is projected to show 100,000 new positions added, with the jobless rate anticipated to remain steady at 4.2%.
• Micron Technology releases its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results on Wednesday, with Wall Street analysts projecting earnings of $31.52 per share and revenue approaching $51.07 billion.
• Additional earnings releases from CarMax, Carnival, Nike, and Accenture will provide insights into both consumer trends and corporate expenditures.
• Last week saw the 10-year Treasury yield finish at 5.17%, while mortgage borrowing costs reached their peak levels since January 2025.

Wall Street begins this week with attention squarely on inflation metrics, employment figures, and a series of important earnings announcements. The three primary market indexes all posted gains during the previous week. The Nasdaq finished trading near an all-time high, while the Dow ended a three-week decline.

Wednesday will see the Bureau of Economic Analysis publish the August Personal Consumption Expenditures price index. This metric serves as the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation measurement. Additionally, this marks the initial inflation data since the central bank implemented its interest rate increase on September 16.

The previous report showed Core PCE climbing 3.3% on an annual basis. This figure remains considerably above the Fed’s 2% objective. An inflation reading that exceeds expectations could increase the likelihood of an additional rate hike in October.

Employment Numbers and Consumer Sentiment Under Scrutiny

Tuesday brings an update to the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index. The index experienced a decline in August, despite Americans reporting marginally improved perceptions of employment conditions.

Friday’s September employment report is anticipated to show 100,000 new positions created, according to economists polled by Reuters. The jobless rate is projected to hold steady at 4.2%.

While August’s hiring numbers exceeded projections, the gain wasn’t substantial enough to alter the modest hiring and limited layoff trend observed throughout this year. A jobs report that surpasses expectations could strengthen arguments for another Federal Reserve rate increase.

Consumer sentiment faces ongoing challenges. The University of Michigan’s survey revealed sentiment reaching its second-lowest point in the survey’s 74-year existence. Mortgage borrowing costs compound these pressures, with the 30-year fixed rate ascending to 7.45%, marking the highest level since January 2025.

Quarterly Results From Micron, CarMax, and Nike

Micron Technology unveils its fiscal fourth-quarter performance on Wednesday. Wall Street analysts project earnings of $31.52 per share with revenue totaling approximately $51.07 billion. As a memory chip manufacturer, Micron serves as an important indicator of demand connected to AI data center infrastructure.

CarMax announces fiscal second-quarter results on Tuesday. Earlier this year, an activist investor urged the retailer to evaluate price reductions on pre-owned vehicles. The earnings release may indicate whether pricing pressures have diminished.

Carnival Corporation launches the week’s earnings cycle on Monday. Wall Street forecasts $1.35 per share on revenue totaling $8.39 billion. Cruise industry spending remained robust during the summer months despite some consumers reducing expenditures on alternative travel options.

Nike delivers fiscal first-quarter results Wednesday following market close. Analysts anticipate $0.44 per share with revenue of $11.33 billion. The athletic apparel giant’s previous quarterly report revealed a 12% decline in China-based sales.

Accenture releases earnings on Thursday, with analysts projecting $3.18 per share and revenue of $18.03 billion. The consulting giant recently established a five-year AI safety collaboration with Anthropic.

McCormick and Company also announces results Wednesday, with expectations of $0.76 per share on revenue approaching $1.98 billion. The spice manufacturer is planning a merger with Unilever.

Treasury Yields and Overall Market Environment

The 10-year Treasury yield concluded last week’s trading at 5.17%. The 30-year yield hit its highest point in over two decades. Elevated yields diminish the present value of companies’ future earnings streams.

Eight of the eleven sectors within the S&P 500 posted negative returns for September. An equally weighted calculation of the index declined approximately 4% during the month, illustrating how market advances have depended heavily on a limited number of large-cap technology companies.

Gold settled near $4,322.40, crude oil traded around $92.79, and Bitcoin concluded near $83,809. The VIX, which measures anticipated market volatility, dropped to 14.87.

Multiple corporations go ex-dividend during this week, including Cisco Systems, Deere, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Market participants will evaluate this week’s employment and inflation releases alongside elevated bond yields to determine the market’s trajectory ahead.

The post Key Economic Reports and Earnings to Watch This Week: Jobs, Inflation, and Micron (MU) Results appeared first on Blockonomi.

XRP remains in a constructive short-term structure after rebounding sharply from its recent correction. However, the asset is now approaching the same major overhead supply region that has repeatedly capped upside momentum, making the next move around $1.60 particularly important.

Ripple Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, XRP continues to trade well above both displayed moving averages following August’s explosive breakout. More recently, the price found strong support around the $1.25-$1.32 demand zone, which also coincides with the higher moving average, before launching another impulsive recovery.

That rebound has carried the asset back toward the major $1.60-$1.70 supply zone. The latest candles show the price consolidating around $1.54 after several attempts toward $1.60-$1.65 were rejected, suggesting that sellers remain active in this region.

Nevertheless, the broader structure is still constructive as long as XRP maintains its recent higher lows. A decisive daily close above the $1.60-$1.70 resistance zone would represent a significant bullish development and could clear the path toward higher levels.

On the downside, the $1.25-$1.32 zone remains the key daily support. Losing this region would substantially weaken the current bullish structure and could expose the much deeper support area around $0.93-$0.97.

XRP/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour timeframe shows a clearer sequence of higher lows developing from the September low around $1.25. An ascending trendline has supported the recovery and is now converging with price around the $1.51-$1.53 region.

XRP recently rallied toward $1.60 but was rejected before gradually pulling back into this rising support. The latest candles indicate an attempt to bounce from the trendline, with the price recovering toward $1.54. As long as this structure remains intact, another push toward the $1.60-$1.70 supply zone appears possible.

The immediate challenge is reclaiming the recent $1.60-$1.62 highs. A breakout above this area would put the upper portion of the $1.60-$1.70 resistance zone back in focus and could support continuation of the broader rally.

Conversely, a confirmed breakdown below the ascending trendline would weaken the short-term setup. In that case, the $1.42-$1.45 demand zone would likely become the next important support area. A failure there could expose the larger $1.22-$1.28 zone, where the latest recovery originally began.

The post Ripple Price Analysis: XRP Tests Critical Resistance as Bullish Structure Holds appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The spot DOGE ETFs failed to capture investors’ attention for months, which led to the closure of one such fund. However, they have finally shown signs of life by reaching a new all-time high in terms of weekly inflows.

At the same time, Dogecoin whales have gone on an accumulation spree, which could fuel the next major expansion wave.

Whales Buying

Data shared by the popular crypto analyst Ali Martinez indicated that these large market participants have scooped up over 1.14 billion tokens over the past 96 hours alone. In terms of USD value, the stash is worth $112 million at current prices.

Martinez suggested that whales “appear to be positioning for a bullish breakout” even though the meme coin reached its first major barrier at $0.098 after its 15% weekly rally. The asset remains at that significant level at press time, where roughly 28 billion DOGE previously traded, which makes it an important resistance.

The bulls have been quite dominant as of late, especially since the asset rebounded from the sub-$0.07 lows marked in mid-August. It has challenged the same resistance on several occasions since then but to no permanent avail.

If it manages to break through, Martinez noted that the next big supply wall sits at $0.11 where almost 5 billion tokens previously changed hands. If that one falls too, then $0.20 becomes the next major obstacle, which would mean a surge of over 100% from the current levels.

28 BILLION DOGECOIN RESISTANCE

According to the Cost Basis Distribution Heatmap, roughly 28 billion $DOGE changed hands around $0.098, making it a major resistance zone.

If Dogecoin breaks through $0.098, the next supply wall sits near $0.11, where roughly 4.98 billion DOGE… pic.twitter.com/cXTNwpVAn3

— Ali Charts (@alicharts) September 27, 2026

DOGE ETFs Hit New Record

Recall that the spot DOGE ETFs went live for trading on Wall Street last November alongside a wider wave of such crypto funds. However, they failed to attract any meaningful attention as there were entire weeks with no net inflows. Inevitably, some market participants decided to close shop, such as Bitwise, which pulled the plug on its DOGE ETF earlier this month.

The past week, though, was significantly more positive. Although the DOGE ETF numbers are still far from most other crypto ETFs, the financial vehicles still reached a new weekly record in terms of net inflows, attracting nearly $2.90 million. The cumulative net inflows have reached an ATH of their own as well, at $15.27 million.

Nevertheless, this number remains quite insignificant and proves that meme coins are not as attractive to ETF investors as other digital assets.

The post DOGE Rally Brewing? Whales Load Up as Dogecoin ETFs Post Record Inflows appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s rather calm price behavior continues over the weekend, but the asset is gradually grinding toward the $85,000 mark after defending the $83,000 support on Friday.

Some altcoins have produced impressive gains over the past 24 hours, but Quant’s QNT trades in a league of its own after a recent bullish development.

BTC Eyes $85K

The previous business week began with a bang as the largest cryptocurrency exploded from the $80,000 support and blasted through a few major resistance levels before it topped $87,000 for the first time in eight months. The bears tried to intercept the move and pushed the asset south to $85,000 before another leg up resulted in a surge to $87,300.

The subsequent rejection was more profound. BTC failed at that level and slipped by several grand to $83,000 a few days later. After another rejection at a lower high at around $85,000, bitcoin dipped to $83,000 on Friday once again. However, the bulls stepped up at this point and didn’t allow another leg down.

Instead, BTC rebounded to $84,000 and remained there on Saturday despite Trump’s rejection of Iran’s ceasefire proposal. Moreover, the cryptocurrency has increased slightly and now sits inches below $85,000.

Its market capitalization has jumped to $1.7 trillion on CMC, while its dominance over the alts remains at 58.6%.

QNT Sees Big, Big Gains

QNT is today’s top gainer from the largest 100 alts, posting a 75% surge at one point to over $190 before it was stopped and driven to $160. The most probable reason behind this spectacular increase was announced a few days ago, when The Clearing House selected Quant to power its On-Chain Money Initiative.

Double-digit gains are also evident from the likes of BTW, WLD, GRAM, and GRAY. ZEC has soared by over 8% daily and now sits above $1,650. NEAR has reclaimed the $5 level after a 5.4% daily jump. SOL is close to $125 following a 3% increase. ETH, BNB, LINK, and HYPE are also slightly in the green, while XRP, DOGE, and TRX have posted minor losses.

The total crypto market cap has increased slightly to $2.910 trillion now on CMC.

The post QNT Leads Altcoin Rally, BTC Price Aims at $85K Again: Weekend Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

For years and years, the promise of investing in altcoins has been pretty straightforward: accept additional risk in exchange for returns that Bitcoin can no longer deliver as the market leader. That’s the theoretical part, at least. In reality, though, identifying the handful of alts that can actually outperform BTC over a longer timeframe remains remarkably difficult.

Fresh data from Glassnode illustrates the issue: only 9 of the 50 largest alts at the time of BTC’s peak last October have since generated returns better than bitcoin’s.

9 Out of 50

The winner is quite obvious: Zcash (ZEC). The privacy token stands comfortably at the top, delivering almost 14.5 times BTC’s return over the period. HYPE, which is second in line, stands far behind with gains of around 2.9x. XMR and NEAR have produced increases of 2.6x and 2.1x, respectively, compared to BTC. UNI, TRX, LEO, and TAO were also among the outperformers.

That means that 41 of the original top 50 were unable to beat simply holding the largest cryptocurrency. It’s worth noting that even though they underperformed against BTC, it doesn’t mean that they lost money in USD terms. The comparison instead illustrates the opportunity cost of moving capital away from bitcoin in search of larger gains from the more risk-on altcoins.

It also exposes one of the greatest difficulties with the familiar “altseason” narrative. Knowing that some (maybe just a few) alts could outperform is very different from pinpointing which ones beforehand.

Only 9 of the top 50 altcoins have beaten bitcoin:native since its all-time high.

ZEC leads by a wide margin, up 14x against Bitcoin.

HYPE, XMR and NEAR follow at 2–3x. pic.twitter.com/HDAbtE4XRW

— glassnode (@glassnode) September 24, 2026

Is This Starting to Change?

Glassnode’s latest deeper market data suggests that altcoins have recently begun putting up a much stronger fight. Over the past week, more than 72% of those tracked by the monitoring resource outperformed BTC, compared with a peak of just 39 during the breakout rally in August. Glassnode also found little evidence that the latest move was being powered by excessive derivatives leverage, with altcoin perpetual open interest barely increasing over the past month.

This change has even pushed Glassnode’s Altcoin Cycle Signal into altcoin-season territory. However, the broader scale is still different. Glassnode said earlier this month that alts had risen substantially in dollar terms without taking meaningful market share from bitcoin. The 90-day change in altcoin share remained negative at -0.9%, despite their combined market cap jumping 21% over the preceding month.

The post Only 9 of the Top 50 Altcoins Have Beaten Bitcoin Since Its Peak: Picking the Winners Is Brutal appeared first on CryptoPotato.

During a relatively calm weekend trading session in which most larger-cap cryptocurrencies have remained sideways, Quant’s QNT has gone on a tear, skyrocketing by 75% in the past 24 hours alone to over $180.

A major US banking partnership appears to be the most evident catalyst, although on-chain data shows activity began heating up well before the announcement was made public.

Why Is QNT Soaring?

Interestingly, the biggest fundamental development didn’t come in the past 24 hours. It was announced on September 24 when The Clearing House selected Quant to power its On-Chain Money Initiative. The crypto project will provide the interoperability, orchestration, and transaction-management layer for the planned network, allowing financial institutions to clear and settle tokenized deposits while connecting with existing payment infrastructure, including the RTP and CHIPS networks.

Both parties expect to launch the system to participating institutions in the first half of 2027. The scale involved helps explain why this announcement attracted so much attention. The Clearing House says its US payment networks clear and settle more than $2 trillion every day, across wire, ACH, check-image, and real-time payments.

However, the activity around Quant and its native token started to pick up over a week before the partnership made the news. Santiment Intelligence said that active addresses exceeded 870 every day between September 16 and 23, whereas they had not topped 792 during the first half of the month.

New addresses were also running at approximately 1.8 times their earlier September weekday average. After the announcement, though, active addresses exploded to 2,064 on September 24, which marked the highest level in nearly a year. QNT’s price skyrocketed by 27% that day.

$QNT’s on-chain activity stepped up on Sep 16, eight days before its Clearing House headline.

Active addresses topped 870 every day from Sep 16 to 23. From Sep 1 to 15 they never passed 792.
New addresses ran about 1.8x their Sep 1 to 15 weekday average over the same… pic.twitter.com/VIyGPyIhyf

— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) September 25, 2026

How High, QNT?

There’s no way to sugarcoat what happened to QNT’s price in the past day and week. The asset is up by 75% since this time yesterday and by a whopping 185% weekly. It currently trades at $180 after briefly topping $190 earlier today.

Crypto Patel, who outlined the significance of the $115 support recently, noted that QNT has reached a couple of his big targets. However, he warned that investors should not FOMO in and start buying now, trying to catch the next wave up. Instead, he noted that consolidation and retracement become important after such a parabolic move, and predicted that the price could settle somewhere between $50 and $100 before the next big move.

EGRAG CRYPTO shared a similar warning, indicating that investors should buy the retracements on such occasions, as going blindly into a token that has posted such a green candle could prove counterproductive.

The post Quant (QNT) Rockets 75% Today as Major Banking Catalyst Fuels 180% Weekly Rally appeared first on CryptoPotato.