California's economic struggles and political dynamics could significantly impact public opinion and policy decisions, affecting future governance.

The post California faces scrutiny over economic woes amid wealth tax debate appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The aggressive price cuts by OpenAI and Anthropic could reshape the AI landscape, challenging open source viability and intensifying global competition.

The post OpenAI and Anthropic slash prices in aggressive push against open source AI models appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

This lawsuit highlights ongoing cross-border tensions in the Bitcoin mining sector, potentially affecting future US-Canada business relations.

The post River Exchange sues Canadian Bitcoin miner for $6.7M over unpaid refunds appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Rising data center power demand may strain global grids, potentially increasing electricity costs and impacting broader energy infrastructure.

The post TrendForce forecasts global data center power demand to hit 161 GW in 2026 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The probe could shift voter sentiment, potentially altering the dynamics of a tight race and affecting Collins's reelection prospects.

The post Probe into Susan Collins’s contributions may impact reelection campaign 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.

Crypto projects spent about $638 million with token buybacks through late August 2026, according to Allium Labs data.

That is already a record, up from $545 million over the same stretch of 2025. Hyperliquid accounted for roughly $370 million and Pump.fun for about $200 million, together close to 90% of the total.

On Sept. 25, staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) addressed the legal tension that has shadowed those programs since they began. The more openly a project ties its token to business returns, the easier it becomes to argue that holders are investing in a security.

What SEC staff said

The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance addressed buybacks in a new set of crypto FAQs covering networks that are already functional.

Staff said an issuer's buyback announcement for a non-security crypto asset on such a network falls outside the promises of “essential managerial efforts” at the center of the Howey test for investment contracts.

The same answer warns younger projects that on a network yet to reach functionality, pitching a buyback as a source of yield or returns can feed into an investment-contract analysis.

The answer rests on two built-in assumptions, a functional system and a token that already sits outside securities law, and it carries the weight of staff views, which the SEC describes as lacking legal force.

Under the agency's March interpretation, a network counts as functional when its native token can be used according to its programmed utility.

A regulatory life cycle takes shape

The SEC's March interpretation says a token can be sold as part of an investment contract while a team raises money against promises of managerial work. That contract can end once buyers stop expecting profits from those promised efforts.

The pending Regulation Crypto Assets proposal would let projects raise up to $5 million over four years under a startup exemption. A larger fundraising exemption would allow up to $75 million every 12 months, with disclosure requirements attached to both.

Proposed Rule 400 adds a transition filing, the Form TR, in which an issuer certifies on EDGAR that it has completed or permanently ceased its promised managerial efforts and stopped making new ones.

The issuer files it directly, and the agency could later contest whether the conditions were met. In its paperwork estimates, the SEC assumes about 475 issuers a year could rely on that safe harbor, based on 15% of the roughly 3,165 projects launched in 2024. Comments on the proposal close Oct. 20.

Put together, the pieces sketch a path from securities-regulated fundraising to a mature network that can spend real revenue on its own token. The Form TR covers projects that abandoned their roadmaps as well as those that finished them, while the buyback FAQ applies only once a network is functional.

That structure rewards teams that define their build as a finite list of milestones they can eventually complete, and it discourages marketing that frames buybacks as returns before the product works.

The money already flowing to token buybacks

Pump.fun says half its revenue goes to buying and permanently burning PUMP. Its dashboard shows roughly $500 million in annualized revenue, about $462.5 million in cumulative purchases, and 167.7 billion tokens destroyed, equal to 16.8% of the original supply.

At the current run rate and allocation, that implies around $250 million in annual purchases,
about 6.4% of Pump.fun's displayed $3.91 billion fully diluted valuation. The figure measures purchasing power against valuation, with the cash going into open-market token purchases.

Hyperliquid has bought and burned roughly $1.3 billion of HYPE since launch, and its documentation says more than $1 billion in annualized fees now flows into programmatic HYPE purchases.

Uniswap switched on protocol fees on Ethereum mainnet in December 2025 and has since extended them to other chains, with outside searchers collecting accumulated fees only by burning UNI in exchange.

Hyperliquid funds staking rewards from a reserve of future emissions even as trading fees burn HYPE. A protocol that burns 5% of supply while issuing 8% through emissions and unlocks ends up diluting holders despite a large headline buyback.

A more useful measure for these tokens is net burns against new issuance before comparing the result to valuation.

Aave's program shows how quickly treasury needs can override a buyback. It acquired more than 205,000 AAVE, about 1.28% of supply, for roughly $42 million in its first ten months.

Governance then debated cutting the annual budget from $50 million to $30 million as revenue softened. The DAO paused purchases on April 19, after the rsETH bridge incident, to preserve balance-sheet flexibility.

Crypto's record remains small next to Wall Street, where S&P 500 companies spent $1.02 trillion on repurchases in the 12 months through September 2025. The growth pace sets crypto apart, rising from about $366,000 in 2024 to $638 million in under eight months of 2026, with mechanisms that automatically convert revenue into market purchases.

What token holders own

The rights attached to these tokens remain thin. Uniswap's documentation says value reaches UNI holders through the burn mechanism and whatever future mechanisms governance approves, with protocol revenue staying under the protocol's control.

The SEC's March interpretation describes digital commodities as assets whose holders lack any inherent right to passive yield, future income, or profits. A buyback can reduce supply and create steady demand, and governance can redirect or pause it at any point.

The same distance from securities law that makes a mature token easier to trade also keeps it apart from the cash flows investors use to value it.

Bitcoin, which the SEC lists as a digital commodity, runs without an issuer or protocol revenue to recycle, so revenue multiples and buyback ratios apply to tokens like HYPE, PUMP and UNI.

Where the token buyback model goes from here

If the SEC finalizes Regulation Crypto Assets close to its current form, teams can raise money under the exemptions, write finite roadmaps, file transition reports, and steer revenue into token purchases once their networks work.

Hyperliquid's fee flows and Pump.fun's allocation alone point to industry buybacks above $1 billion a year at current run rates. Revenue and dilution-adjusted buyback yield would become standard tools for valuing protocol tokens.

If the proposal stalls or emerges in weaker form, the nonbinding staff FAQ becomes the main source of comfort, and projects would keep return language out of their marketing while treating buybacks as discretionary.

Revenue-linked programs shrink mechanically when revenue falls, and a major exploit or bad-debt event could push other treasuries to conserve funds the way Aave did. Holders would then find that a buyback resembles a shareholder return in its market effect while remaining revocable, governance-dependent, and free of any contractual claim.

The SEC is building a route for crypto networks to spend their revenue on their tokens. Holders at the end of that route own an asset tied to a business's success through scarcity and demand, while the business's revenue stays with the protocol.

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In 2021, Christie's sold a Beeple NFT for $69.35 million, and Sotheby's took another $24.40 million for 101 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, giving cartoon primates the kind of auction-house treatment usually reserved for Fabergé eggs.

But now, not five years later, one of the marketplaces that helped sell the digital art revolution is explaining how customers could take their belongings with them when it closed.

Nifty Gateway, the NFT marketplace owned by crypto exchange Gemini, announced its closure in January as its parent decided to concentrate on its primary financial app. The exit arrangements included plans for a bulk withdrawal tool and somewhere to host the artwork.

That's a pretty sad and uneventful end for an industry that made ownership sound like a technological breakthrough on the order of discovering fire.

To be fair, there was real art underneath the sales pitch, along with artists who'd found paying audiences and collectors who liked what they bought. But the boom encouraged the assumption that once you'd paid for the token, the business of owning the thing was taken care of, preferably forever.

Marketplace closures have quickly made that assumption incorrect, because the token, the artwork, and the website displaying it can survive for very different lengths of time. As crypto companies close businesses and retire products, somebody has to work out where the files go and who'll keep them available when selling the next collection no longer covers the bills. The person who can answer that has become considerably more relevant to your collection than the person who once assured you that you were early.

Your ape needs a forwarding address

When you buy an NFT, it's easy to think you're putting a picture in your wallet because that's what the app shows you. Underneath that display, though, several separate things are happening, and knowing what lives where explains how you can still own a token while struggling to load the art.

Many Ethereum NFTs use the ERC-721 standard that records who owns each token and allows it to be transferred. The blockchain keeps that ownership record, while the token often points to a separate descriptive file, known as metadata, containing information such as the work's name and a link to its image or video. Your wallet retrieves those files and assembles what you see, so the collection looks like one self-contained possession even when its parts depend on several different services.

Keeping big media files outside the blockchain is a reasonable design choice, but it means those files need their own home. Sending the token to a wallet you control puts you in charge of transferring it; it doesn't automatically download the artwork, take over the server hosting it, or pay the person running that server. If you're picturing your expensive ape safely tucked inside your phone, the app may have given you a rather generous impression of what the transfer accomplished.

Nifty Gateway's closure update addressed this problem, with plans to move descriptive records and media hosting to Arweave, a network designed for long-term storage, but some NFTs created in 2021 or earlier had records permanently linked to its own servers. The company promised to keep hosting that metadata indefinitely and extended its withdrawal window to April 23.

Those promises describe the arrangements the company said it would make, without establishing that every migration succeeded or that any particular artwork was lost. They show us the consequence of making a link permanent: when the address belongs to a company, fixing it in place can preserve your dependence on that company for as long as you want the link to work.

Buyers were supposed to enjoy the freedom of owning something outside a platform's control, and some instead inherited a lasting relationship with its hosting department. The technology can faithfully preserve an ownership record while leaving the owner dependent on a business that has other things it would rather do.

Forever isn't a payment plan

Distributed storage offers a way to reduce that dependence, provided someone actually keeps the files. IPFS, which is used for NFT media, identifies content from the data itself, allowing different computers to provide a verifiable copy without tying its identity to one company's website. That makes it possible for another provider (or the collector) to keep serving the same artwork if the original host stops.

The catch is that joining a network doesn't oblige every computer on it to preserve your collection. The IPFS documentation explains that cached files can be deleted to free space, while a process known as pinning tells a computer to retain specified content. Someone can run that computer themselves or pay a service, but the continuing cost belongs to whoever agrees to keep the copy available.

This also explains why a missing picture doesn't necessarily mean the artwork has vanished. Your browser may retrieve an IPFS file through a gateway, a website that fetches the content for you, and the IPFS guide to NFT storage warns that this route can fail even when the data exists elsewhere. In that case, another gateway can help, but if nobody has retained the data at all, a different web address won't bring it back.

Collectors therefore have to understand whether the problem is reaching their file or finding a surviving copy, which is quite an introduction to network administration for someone who thought they'd just bought a picture. The rare hat on the ape contributes very little to the diagnosis, however much it contributed to the price.

There are ways to reduce these risks, including putting artwork data directly on the blockchain or using storage networks designed to finance retention over many years. Each arrangement has its own dependencies, from the continued operation of the chain to the incentives keeping storage providers involved, so judging a collection means looking at how it's built. The fact that one NFT depends on a company's server tells you very little about another that stores its image data on-chain.

Across those designs, though, the economic problem is the same: selling something brings money in at the moment somebody wants to buy, while caring for it creates work for as long as somebody wants it to survive. Those two periods can be wildly different, especially when the business was built around selling new collections to an excited audience.

Even inexpensive storage needs someone to accept responsibility for it, check that it works, and arrange a successor when the original provider loses interest. Collectors can take on that job, and systems that let them preserve files independently give them real control, but the freedom comes with some administration. Selling people on the future of ownership was always going to be easier than persuading them to become competent custodians of a folder.

The boring people had a point

Museums were thinking about this while the auction records were being set, because caring for art has always involved work that its purchase price doesn't perform. In a December 2021 discussion published by LACMA, digital preservation manager Joey Heinen and computer scientist Elian Carsenat examined the software, storage, and continuing responsibility involved in keeping NFT artworks accessible. While the market was celebrating scarcity, they were considering what would still function in 10 or 30 years.

The profession already had plenty of experience with art that could stop working. In MoMA's 2016 account of restoring Teiji Furuhashi's Lovers, conservator Ben Fino-Radin described a project involving obsolete technology, including MS-DOS and LaserDiscs. Preserving the installation required making its projected images and interactive behavior work again, because keeping old components in storage wouldn't preserve the experience people came to see.

NFT art inherits that responsibility whenever the work depends on software or a live service. Saving a still image is comparatively straightforward, while preserving something interactive can mean documenting how it behaves and maintaining the environment that lets it run. You could retain every original file and still lose the ability to experience the work if nobody knows how its pieces fit together.

That gives the boom's endless arguments about screenshots a pretty funny ending. The token never made the visible image impossible to copy, and preserving faithful copies is precisely what can help the artwork survive. Someone duplicating the media hasn't thereby taken ownership of your token, but by keeping the only surviving copy, they might eventually be doing your collection a favor.

The artists and collectors doing this work deserve better than being treated as props in another joke about expensive JPEGs, even if the market spent several years behaving like a casino with an art department. Some of the work is worth preserving because people care about it, regardless of whether anyone will ever pay its former price again, and digital systems can let those people cooperate without waiting for a marketplace's permission.

That kind of ownership asks more from a collector than clicking buy and watching the valuation. It means knowing where the work lives, keeping what can be copied, and making sure someone else can take over its care when you can't.

If your ape is still visible decades from now, it'll be because people kept doing those jobs long past the point when anyone found them exciting enough to sell.

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The Federal Reserve's proposed rules for the payment stablecoin issuers it supervises include a crisis clock measured in hours. An issuer whose reserves fall below the value of its outstanding tokens would have 24 hours to notify the Fed and submit a plan to restore full backing.

Unless it closes the gap or the Fed directs it to proceed with that plan, the issuer must begin liquidating reserves and redeeming tokens by 5 p.m. on the next business day. The Fed says that window comes to less than 48 hours in many cases.

The 392-page proposal also lets the issuer keep minting new tokens during that rescue window, and the Fed ties that choice to the public nature of blockchains. An abrupt halt in issuance would be visible on-chain and could tip holders off to the problem, speeding up the very run the rules exist to contain.

Comments are open for 60 days once the proposal appears in the Federal Register.

The clock starts at 5 p.m.

The proposal requires reserve assets to equal or exceed outstanding tokens at all times. Issuers must formally record the fair value of those reserves at least once a day at 5 p.m. in the time zone of their supervising Federal Reserve Bank.

The Fed says issuers operating close to the line may need to run that calculation several times a day. The breach clock starts at the beginning of liquidation, and finishing the process can take longer. Once liquidation begins, minting stops and redemption fees are prohibited.

A separate rule for ordinary conditions requires honoring redemption requests within two business days, a timeline that runs independently of the breach clock.

The Fed illustrates the logic with a $100 million stablecoin backed by $95 million in reserves. Split evenly, every holder could recover $0.95 per token. Once $35 million redeems at full par value, $60 million in assets remains against $65 million in tokens, leaving about $0.92 of backing for everyone who holds on.

Extending the same arithmetic, $50 million in par redemptions would leave $0.90 per token, and $80 million would leave $0.75. A fixed reserve hole grows larger per remaining token with every holder who exits at $1, which rewards the fastest redeemers at the expense of everyone behind them.

Forced liquidation is designed to push all holders toward the same pro-rata loss before that happens.

Minting stablecoins keeps the rhythm visible, at a cost

Circle's figures show how much routine issuance activity a large stablecoin generates. As of Sept. 21, USDC had $74.6 billion in circulation against $74.8 billion in reserves.

Over the prior 30 days, Circle issued $40.2 billion and redeemed $39 billion, a gross flow of $79.2 billion that exceeds the token's entire supply even though net circulation grew by only $1.2 billion.

For a token with that kind of daily rhythm, a sudden stop in minting would stand out to anyone watching the chain.

Each fully funded new token spreads the existing hole across a larger supply, leaving its dollar size at $5 million. In the Fed's example, $20 million of fresh issuance alongside the $35 million in redemptions would lift coverage to roughly $0.94, with the new buyers absorbing part of a loss that existed before they arrived.

Closing the hole itself requires new capital, recovery of an impaired asset or a rebound in reserve values, and genuine distress can leave few buyers willing to mint.

The proposal asks commenters directly whether issuance should be capped or prohibited the moment the 1:1 threshold is breached.

The OCC chose the opposite trade-off

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) proposed in March that an issuer under its supervision that falls below minimum reserves would have to stop net new issuance immediately, with a narrow exception for moving existing tokens across ledgers.

Mandatory liquidation would kick in only if the shortfall persisted for 15 consecutive business days, a period the OCC could extend. The Fed's rules govern the issuers it supervises, while the OCC and state regulators oversee other issuers under the GENIUS Act, so the two approaches could run side by side.

The Fed's December 2025 research on the March 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank documents how these runs behave. Circle disclosed that $3.3 billion of USDC reserves, about 8% at the time, were trapped at the failed bank.

Redemptions surged, the primary redemption channel largely shut over the weekend with banking rails offline, and USDC fell as low as $0.86 on secondary markets. Trading volume on those markets hit nearly $2 billion in a single hour on March 11.

The researchers concluded that shutting an issuer's redemption window leaves holders free to keep selling on exchanges, so the run moves venues and keeps going.

In the Fed's view, visible redemptions can prompt more redemptions, while secondary-market trading can absorb selling that would otherwise hit the issuer as par redemptions and forced reserve sales.

Where a stablecoin run would travel next

CoinGecko's survey of the 12 largest centralized exchanges found that 97.7% of stablecoin-denominated trading pairs use USDT or USDC, and most spot volume on those venues trades against stablecoins.

The total stablecoin market stands near $307.3 billion, with USDT at about $183.7 billion and USDC at $76.4 billion as of Sept. 25. Holders fleeing a distressed token could buy Bitcoin, lifting its price quoted in that stablecoin above its dollar price.

They could also exit into fiat or another stablecoin, thinning order books and widening spreads across pairs. Price gaps between Bitcoin's different stablecoin pairs, order book depth, and funding rates would show which path a run was taking.

The GENIUS Act steers reserves toward Treasuries maturing within 93 days and qualifying repo arrangements, and the Fed acknowledges that a large enough Treasury position could be hard to sell in full without moving prices.

An IMF model from January lays out the timing mismatch between stablecoin holders, who can redeem around the clock, and bond and repo markets, which close overnight and on weekends.

A large redemption wave can drain cash buffers and force bond sales as soon as those markets reopen.

If an issuer closes its hole inside the first 24 hours, the episode could pass as a brief dislocation, with minting and redemption resuming their normal rhythm and the Fed's compressed clock working as designed.

A breach that lands late on a Friday, with redemptions and a secondary-market discount feeding each other before the 5 p.m. cutoff, would play out very differently. Each exit at par would thin the backing for the holders who remain, and the scramble would spread into exchange order books.

The issuer's Treasury holdings would wait for Monday's open while its tokens trade all weekend.

The Fed has drafted a run rule for a market where everyone can watch the run in real time. Over the 60-day comment period, regulators will weigh that visibility against the speed they want from a rescue.

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Not that long ago, Washington fined Tether for misleading people about the dollars behind its tokens. Today, the company's insatiable appetite for American debt is the main argument for sending those tokens further around the world.

The distance between those two positions tells us a great deal about where crypto ended up. Tether built a business giving people access to dollars through markets and wallets outside conventional banking. It became the largest stablecoin issuer, then put much of the money backing that business into US government debt. The company, which operated beyond much of America's financial establishment, has now become one of the best and biggest customers of the American state, with a distribution network the state has good reasons to want.

On Sept. 23, Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration was considering an overseas stablecoin initiative, including possible joint ventures with private companies. Treasury and the State Department could participate, as could the US International Development Finance Corporation. The goal is to extend dollar use and support demand for Treasuries.

The report doesn't establish a deal with Tether, and the initiative hasn't been announced as an operating program. But Tether is central to understanding why a proposal like this would appeal to Washington. By the company's account, USDT represented more than 60% of the stablecoin market at the end of June. Its latest reserve report listed $114.96 billion in directly held US Treasury bills.

That makes Tether a leading private distributor of digital dollars and a large customer for short-term American debt. The dollar's global position still rests on a much larger financial system. Tether's particular contribution is extending that system to people who can buy a token more easily than they can open an American bank account.

Its reach gives the company political value. The assets that make its token credible also give Washington influence over the business. Both sides have something the other wants, while the people using USDT have much less say in the terms.

The reserve portfolio became a political asset

In October 2021, the CFTC ordered Tether to pay $41 million over misleading representations about its backing. The order covered claims made between 2016 and 2019 that USDT was fully backed by corresponding fiat currency held in bank accounts. The regulator found that Tether had held other assets and relied on arrangements that didn't match those representations.

Tether's reserves subsequently took a different form. In October 2022, it announced that it had eliminated commercial paper, the short-term debt companies issue, and replaced those investments with US Treasury bills. Moving toward highly liquid government debt addressed a basic financial problem: people expect to exchange their dollar tokens for dollars, including when confidence in crypto collapses.

That portfolio decision also made Tether easier for American policymakers to appreciate. Every business wants dependable customers. The US government issues debt, and Tether had become a very large customer with at least a hundred billion reasons to keep returning.

The company's reserve report put total reserve assets at $187.75 billion and liabilities at $183.64 billion on June 30, leaving $4.11 billion above liabilities. Its directly held Treasury bills had a weighted average maturity below 90 days. It also listed $18.63 billion in overnight reverse repo agreements, transactions in which Tether lends cash against collateral.

Those positions shouldn't be combined and presented as identical Treasury ownership. They do, however, show how deeply Tether's reserve management depends on short-term dollar finance. USDT can move between wallets at any hour; much of the value supporting it comes from very conventional financial contracts.

Its reserves also include other assets. The report lists $18.84 billion in precious metals, $5.80 billion in Bitcoin, and $13.45 billion in secured loans. Saying Tether is a major Treasury holder is true, but treating its entire reserve as a 1:1 portfolio of Treasury bills would be wrong.

Tether's reporting of its reserve has evolved, too. On Aug. 13, the company announced that KPMG US had completed an audit of its 2025 financial statements, issuing an unqualified opinion. It means that the auditor accepted that its financial statements fairly presented its finances under the accounting standards used. That's a considerable departure from the years when the absence of a financial-statement audit dominated almost every argument about Tether.

While neither of these documents gives Washington a reason to treat USDT as a government obligation, they help explain how a company once defined by arguments over its reserves can present itself as an established financial counterparty.

The economics here are pretty straightforward. When customers supply dollars for newly issued USDT, Tether takes on a redemption obligation and holds assets against it. Treasury bills pay a return, but USDT itself doesn't give its holder a contractual share of that return. Tether reported about $1.50 billion in second-quarter net operating profit, led by Treasury and repo income.

CryptoSlate has already examined who owns Tether's Treasury portfolio. The company owns the reserves, while users hold tokens whose value depends on its ability to honor its obligations. The political consequence goes further: Tether can turn demand for accessible dollars into both private earnings and financing for the country issuing those dollars.

Washington gets a debt buyer without having to operate the retail service, Tether gets income from assets that also support confidence in its product, and the user gets a dollar-denominated balance that can travel through markets the user can actually reach.

There are, of course, limits to the debt argument. Treasury purchases don't retire the national debt, and buying short-dated bills doesn't commit Tether to financing the government for decades. Its portfolio must serve people who may want their money back. It's a large, recurring buyer whose decisions depend on the condition of its own business.

But its real value to Washington extends beyond the size of today's portfolio. Lots of institutions can buy Treasury bills. Tether has built a way to gather dollar demand from people who might never become customers of those institutions.

The customer Washington can't easily reach

Imagine a shop owner who wants to keep part of the week's earnings in dollars. Depending on where he lives, opening an overseas bank account could be impossible, and holding cash in dollars can be a burden when the time comes to exchange it. Using USDT, on the other hand, is the fastest and easiest option, especially for people who already own crypto or use digital services like exchanges. The fact that USDT is so widespread means that the overwhelming majority of its users don't have an opinion on American foreign policy.

But the decision to use USDT still has consequences for American influence. Dollars become the unit in which savings are measured. Large and popular businesses that accept the stablecoin create even more reasons for other people to hold it. Familiarity, available trading partners, and places to exchange it for local money all make USDT look more attractive with repeated use.

This is why Tether's customer base deserves more attention than a league table comparing its portfolio with countries' Treasury holdings. A favorable government policy can certainly attract a new issuer, but it can't instantly reproduce a network of dealers, exchanges, and people willing to accept the same token.

But to fully understand the way USDT works, we need to take a closer look at its funding mechanism.

Buying existing USDT from another person doesn't automatically send new money to Tether or produce another Treasury purchase: it just transfers a token already in circulation. Additional reserve assets become relevant only when demand leads to net new issuance. Payments volume and new funding for the US government measure different things.

Nor does every dollar entering stablecoins represent fresh demand for American assets. Someone moving money from a dollar fund into USDT is just rearranging existing dollar savings. Someone seeking dollar exposure for the first time, however, presents a completely different and much more lucrative opportunity.

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran made that point in a November 2025 speech on overseas stablecoin demand. He distinguished transfers from existing dollar holdings from demand among foreign savers whose access to dollars is restricted. His argument was that this second group offers the larger opening.

That helps explain the overseas focus of the reported initiative. Persuading an American with a bank account and a Treasury fund to buy a digital dollar will just reshuffle existing capital. But making dollar balances accessible to someone previously excluded from them can extend the dollar's reach.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already stated the policy objective. In his July 2025 statement on the GENIUS Act, he connected stablecoins with wider access to the dollar economy and more demand for US Treasuries. Washington's interest in this outcome is explicit.

Government participation could make access easier through financing or partnerships, if a program eventually gets established. The DFC's existing financial products include loans, guarantees, and equity investments. Those are different forms of support, with different risks for the public. Nothing in the reported proposal establishes which would be employed for stablecoins or which companies would qualify.

The choice of institution fits the proposal. Overseas finance already combines commercial objectives with American foreign policy, and a dollar-token business can fit that logic without Washington issuing the token or managing its customers.

However, the people who most value an alternative to their local financial system may live in countries whose governments don't welcome another route into dollars. What looks like financial autonomy to a household can look like the loss of monetary control to its central bank.

The IMF has described how foreign-currency stablecoins can displace local money in savings and transactions where inflation, currency volatility, or weak institutional credibility makes alternatives attractive. That doesn't make the household's choice irrational, though. People shouldn't have to sacrifice their savings to help a government defend its currency. It does mean that Washington and the user can benefit from an arrangement that leaves the user's government with less influence over domestic finance.

There's something distinctly American about letting a private company earn the distribution income while the currency's issuer collects the geopolitical advantage. Tether has already built much of the business that an official overseas initiative would want to encourage. The next negotiation is over how much freedom that earns the company, and what Washington expects in return.

Washington wants the reach and the controls

Tether's dependence on dollar finance makes the relationship work in both directions. Its reserve assets derive their value from American institutions, and its business needs financial counterparties and reliable access to markets where those assets can be held and sold. Operating an international token won't remove those dependencies.

There's also an enforcement relationship here. In December 2023, Tether adopted a voluntary freezing policy tied to US sanctions designations. The company can restrict tokens at specified addresses even when the person holding them controls the wallet's private keys. Self-custody of a centrally issued token doesn't remove the issuer's powers.

That kind of cooperation continues to have a huge value for the US. In a Sept. 9 announcement concerning alleged scam proceeds, the Justice Department described restraining $52 million and thanked Tether for assistance. Recovering money linked to fraud is a legitimate public benefit. The same technical capacity also establishes that this supposedly borderless money has an identifiable company capable of acting on demands from authorities.

Washington can therefore want more people to use the product while also wanting stronger control over its issuer. Greater reach expands the relevance of the dollar; cooperation makes that reach more manageable for the state.

The GENIUS Act builds access conditions into the legal framework. Its foreign-issuer route includes a determination that an overseas regulatory regime is comparable, registration requirements, and compliance with lawful orders. Being foreign doesn't simply place an issuer beyond American conditions for entering American markets.

Implementation is still in progress. Treasury's Aug. 17 proposed rule describes Jan. 18, 2027, as the expected effective date of the act and July 18, 2028, for a further restriction on offers and sales to US persons. The proposal also addresses foreign issuers' ability and willingness to comply with lawful orders. Companies have time to prepare, but the direction is explicit: access to American customers will come with American conditions.

Tether has prepared for a more institutional business through a separate product. In January, it announced the launch of USA₮, issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, with Cantor Fitzgerald as the designated reserve custodian and preferred primary dealer. The issuer and token are distinct from offshore USDT. The announcement also says USA₮ is neither government-guaranteed nor covered by federal deposit insurance.

That arrangement gives the group another way into American finance while USDT serves its international market. It also shows how much institutional machinery a dollar token can contain, even when the transfer itself happens on a public blockchain.

This doesn't mean Tether gets to dictate the bargain. Washington's objective is a larger dollar network, and several companies can help supply one. Supporting competing issuers could reduce dependence on Tether while advancing the same monetary goal. The company has a distribution advantage, but an administration promoting stablecoins has no inherent obligation to preserve its market share.

The uncomfortable prospect is that commercial scale becomes a reason to tolerate weaknesses that would be unacceptable in a smaller firm. Officials could come to see an issuer's failures chiefly as threats to Treasury demand or overseas dollar access. That is a risk of the relationship, rather than evidence that an exemption or rescue has already been promised.

The protection against it would have to be specific. Public support should identify who receives funding, what losses the public could bear, and which obligations apply to the issuer. Reserve oversight and routes for contesting restrictions on funds should hold up even when enforcing them inconveniences a politically valuable company. Audits can provide financial assurance about a defined period; they can't settle those choices about power.

Stablecoins were well suited to institutional adoption because their main promise was institutional from the beginning. Keeping a private token worth a dollar requires assets, counterparties, and an organization capable of honoring that promise. Once a company performing that role became large enough, interest from the government issuing the underlying currency was inevitable.

Tether's success is that it made dollars accessible through channels people were willing to use. Washington now has reasons to help expand those channels and reasons to demand influence over them. Users can gain a meaningful escape from the limits of local finance while entering a different set of dependencies. The bargain can work for all three parties, but the state and the issuer will have far more power to write it.

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MAXYZ, a group of former Balancer contributors, is asking for up to 6 million currently non-circulating BAL to seed a successor protocol. If the granted tokens reach other eligible holders before Balancer's proposed wind-down redemption snapshot, the same treasury would be divided among more BAL. In exchange, MAXYZ proposes a contingent allocation from a future fork to the Balancer treasury, an asset with no realized value today.

The fork proposal, posted Sept. 20 and expanded in a Sept. 23 FAQ, sits beside a separate wind-down plan to let BAL holders burn their tokens for a pro rata share of the DAO's remaining assets. Neither forum proposal by itself transfers tokens, changes pool operations or gives the fork rights to code. The financial question for an old holder is how much of the grant would become redeemable, and whether a possible future stake in the fork compensates for a smaller share of the old treasury.

What six million BAL would change

MAXYZ identifies about 3.5 million BAL in the treasury, 1.6 million in a Balancer Labs fundraise safe and 928,000 in a Labs team safe as its proposed seed. Its Sept. 23 FAQ proposes taking half the grant upfront and the rest, up to the same cap, after tetuBAL holders have been paid because those claims may draw on the same non-circulating supply.

MAXYZ says the fork's own treasury would be barred from redeeming against Balancer's treasury. That restriction would not necessarily follow tokens sold or transferred to other holders. The wind-down plan fixes the redeemable supply at the opening snapshot, proposed for the end of May 2027, and says BAL leaving an excluded address after that snapshot would not become eligible. How much granted BAL might enter eligible hands beforehand remains unknown.

A Sept. 20 update to the wind-down proposal gives a dated reference point. Marcus said an unaudited on-chain measurement taken Sept. 18 found $9,959,416 in non-BAL assets available for distribution against 63,068,821 redeemable BAL. At the prices used then, that works out to about $0.1579 for each eligible BAL. Holding that asset value and all other eligibility rules fixed, 3 million additional redeemable BAL would lower the illustration to about $0.1507 per token. If all 6 million became eligible, it would fall to about $0.1442, roughly 8.7% below the original per-token figure.

Those are scenarios, not promised redemption prices. The grant would be staged, the amount ultimately circulating is unknown, and the wind-down ballot would choose whether tetuBAL holders receive 50% or 100% of the BAL behind their permanent lock. The assets and denominator would be measured again at the audited opening snapshot.

The figures also have different boundaries. KPK reported that the Balancer portfolio it managed rose from $8.63 million at the end of July to $9.59 million at the end of August. Marcus's later $9.96 million illustration includes assets across more DAO positions and is net of the wind-down budget held outside that base. Neither KPK's managed portfolio nor the September inventory fixes what holders would receive in 2027. The wind-down plan also excludes assets recovered for liquidity providers affected by attacks from the BAL-holder distribution.

MAXYZ offers a different potential return: if the fork has a token generation event or another liquidity or exit event, 10% of its fully diluted token supply or equivalent value would be allocated to the Balancer treasury. That is a proposed, conditional right. There is no realized fork payment to add to today's redemption calculation.

A longer exit for partners

Under Marcus's amended plan, pausable pools would move to withdrawals only on Oct. 30. Partners requesting an extension for a v3 pool by Oct. 16 could keep that pool live until Nov. 30. MAXYZ wants vaults and pools to remain unpaused until the end of the second quarter of 2027, unless an emergency requires action. The difference matters to partners that use Balancer's pool designs and need time to decide where liquidity can go.

The public support is specific but short of a migration commitment. A Rocket Pool Incentive Management Committee member wrote in the MAXYZ forum thread, explicitly in a personal capacity, that moving some liquidity to a fork was realistic if security and migration paths worked. Royco's forum account supported MAXYZ and said its Royco Day product uses Balancer v3 E-CLPs for secondary liquidity. Neither statement sets a quantity or obliges either project to migrate.

MAXYZ says directors estimated around $5,000 a month for API, hosting and maintenance to keep pools open and argues that continuing revenue or the proposed $220,000 wind-down reserve could cover the cost. The reserve is a capped part of Marcus's proposed budget, drawn only if needed. The $5,000 estimate and revenue offset have not been established as an approved operating plan; spending longer on infrastructure would still affect what is left for holders if revenue does not cover it.

The grant, the pool timetable and rights to Balancer's technology each need their own decision. The proposal also draws tokens from two Balancer Labs safes as well as the DAO treasury, and the forum texts do not establish who may authorize transfers from those entity-held safes. The wind-down proposal says transfers of DAO-owned code, licenses and deployments each need their own Snapshot vote after the DAO establishes what it owns and what belongs to its legal entities. MAXYZ seeks a perpetual, nonexclusive license to IP owned or controlled by Balancer entities, upgrading to an exclusive assignment of an entity's interest if it dissolves. Its FAQ says the request concerns the codebase, not necessarily the Balancer trademarks. The forum texts do not establish legal title to each right or complete a transfer.

MAXYZ also says its two members of the seven-seat Treasury Council would resign before the BAL grant is sent, changing the signing threshold from five of seven to four of five. Under the Council's mandate and Marcus's wind-down plan, Council members oversee and sign treasury actions; they do not have standing authority to rewrite a holder distribution on their own. Council signatures alone would not authorize the proposed grant or change the holder distribution; DAO-owned transfers need governance approval, while authority over entity-held assets must be established separately.

Marcus says he supports a fork decided separately but will not lead a continuation. The wind-down proposal schedules a Sept. 25-29 vote on its terms. A fork grant and IP transfer would require their own decisions. Until those decisions and the later redemption snapshot, the old holder's measurable claim is a share of a changing treasury, while the fork's offered upside remains conditional.

The post Balancer fork’s 6 million BAL ask could cut holders’ redemption value appeared first on CryptoSlate.

On Saturday, October 17, 2026, the Ape community meets for ApeFest, this time at Beeple Studios in Charleston, South Carolina. The official site apefest.com gives the evening as 7pm to midnight local time. The festival falls in a difficult period: ApeCoin trades around 99 percent below its high, the NFT market has thinned out, and since September 24 attackers have been using old marketplace approvals to drain NFTs and WETH. A community is organising a festival regardless, and that says something about how it holds together.

This article is not a party report. It shows you what is actually left of the Ape ecosystem in 2026: how ApeChain works, who uses it, where you swap, buy NFTs and review your transactions, and which risks you need to know before the first click. Every figure carries a date, because in this market a great deal changes within weeks.

What ApeChain Actually Is

ApeChain is a dedicated blockchain for the Ape ecosystem, built as an Orbit chain on Arbitrum. Arbitrum in turn settles on Ethereum. Think of it as a third storey: Ethereum provides the security, Arbitrum bundles transactions, and ApeChain is a storey of its own above that, with its own rules. The most important of those for you is that fees on ApeChain are paid in APE, not in ETH.

ApeChain launched in October 2024. The idea behind it was to give ApeCoin a use value at last. Until then APE was above all a governance and speculation token. On a chain of its own, where every transaction costs APE, demand arises from the usage itself. You know the model from Ethereum and ETH, only a size smaller.

Technically, ApeChain is built on the same Arbitrum stack as Robinhood Chain, which has been making headlines since July 2026. What is happening there with memecoins and tokenised equities is set out in our guide to the Robinhood Chain memecoins. The comparison is instructive because it shows how differently two chains on the same substructure can run.

Who Still Uses ApeChain Today

The honest answer is: considerably fewer people than at launch. The data service DefiLlama puts the total value locked on ApeChain at around $3.1 million on September 26, 2026. For comparison, Robinhood Chain comes to a good $1 billion on the same day and Base to more than $6 billion. Against its late-2024 high, ApeChain has lost more than 80 percent.

The number of daily active addresses stood at around 10,000 in April 2026, according to an analysis by the exchange Phemex. That is not a dead chain, but nor is it one where a new project automatically attracts attention. Anyone launching something on ApeChain lives off the existing community rather than passing trade.

The rebuild behind the scenes matters for context. The ApeCoin DAO, through which APE holders once voted on grants, was dissolved in June 2025 by vote AIP-596 and replaced by the company ApeCo. By June 2026, Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, had brought ApeCoin fully under its own control. Michael Figge has led Yuga Labs as chief executive since April 24, 2026, with co-founder Greg Solano becoming chairman. APE rose around 92 percent on the news but gave back most of it.

For you as a holder that means there is no say over the token in the old form. A company sets the direction. That can be faster and more focused than a DAO, but it is a different bet from 2022.

ApeCoin Price Against Its All-Time High

At 14:11 UTC on September 26, 2026, APE traded at around $0.156 according to CoinGecko. The all-time high stood at $26.70 on April 28, 2022, which puts the gap at a good 99 percent. APE marked its all-time low only on April 2, 2026. Market capitalisation is about $156 million, and over 30 days the token is up around 11 percent.

What these figures do not say is whether APE is now cheap. A token that has lost 99 percent can lose another 90 percent. What decides the case is whether the chain builds usage that consumes APE as a fee, and whether Yuga Labs wins players with Otherside, its own metaverse project. Otherside is currently testing a resource economy with 74 on-chain resources, according to the trade service Blockchain Gamer. There is no fixed date for a broad opening.

If you want to buy APE, in Germany you do so through a regulated exchange. Which providers are authorised under MiCA and what they charge is set out in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

How to Get Onto ApeChain

Two years ago that meant opening a wallet, adding the network by hand, entering the RPC address, chain ID and explorer, then hunting for mistakes. It is easier today. Platforms such as Chainlist add a network to your wallet in one click, and many applications on ApeChain ask on connection whether they may add the network themselves. Always check that the request really comes from the site you called up.

To do anything on ApeChain you need APE as a fee in your wallet on ApeChain itself. APE on Ethereum or in an exchange account is of no use there until you bring it across. The official ApeChain bridge exists for that, and DefiLlama lists it as a protocol in its own right. Smaller amounts are often quicker to move through services that swap balances between chains rather than bridging in the classic way. Large amounts belong on the official route.

Which wallet is suitable for that, and how the well-known software wallets differ, is set out in our comparison of software wallets.

Where to Swap and Buy NFTs on ApeChain

Swapping: the best-known decentralised exchange on ApeChain is Camelot, which you also know from Arbitrum. There you swap APE for other tokens on the chain and provide liquidity if you wish. With small tokens, watch the liquidity in the pool: if it is thin, even a mid-sized order moves the price noticeably.

NFTs: the most important marketplace for ApeChain NFTs is Magic Eden. That is also where the greatest risk currently sits, more on which shortly. An overview of the marketplaces, their fees and their chains can be found in the NFT marketplace comparison.

Meme tokens and launchpads: ApeChain saw a brief wave of ape memecoins in 2024, which we covered at the time in our article on the battle of the ape memecoins on ApeChain. That wave has ebbed away. Anyone buying a token through a launchpad on ApeChain today is trading in very thin markets. That is gambling with an added risk, not an investment.

Checking Transactions With ApeScan

What Etherscan is for Ethereum, ApeScan is for ApeChain. At apescan.io you enter your wallet address, a transaction ID or a contract and see what happened: which tokens were moved, what fee was charged and whether a transaction went through. ApeScan matters to you above all for one reason: your transaction list also contains every approval you have ever signed, that is every permission granted to a contract to move your tokens or NFTs. Those old approvals are precisely what became a problem in September 2026.

The Biggest Risk: Old Token Approvals

Since September 24, 2026, attackers have been exploiting a weakness around the Limit Break payment processor, through which Magic Eden settles sales. Those affected are users who listed NFTs between February and October 2024 and granted an approval that still applies today. According to analyses by Revoke.cash and The Block, more than $2.8 million was stolen, while rescuers moved 23,155 NFTs worth around $5.7 million to safety. Ethereum, Polygon, Base, Arbitrum and ApeChain are affected.

There is a peculiarity for ApeChain: as things stand, the newer V3 version of the payment processor has been halted on every affected chain except ApeChain. There it remains usable until November 30, 2026. Anyone trading NFTs on ApeChain should therefore check their approvals with particular care. How to do that step by step is set out in our article on the Magic Eden incident and revoking approvals, which we update daily.

Three rules that protect you regardless of the current incident:

• Clear out approvals regularly. Revoke anything you no longer actively use. It costs a small fee and is the cheapest insurance the crypto market has to offer.
• Keep valuable NFTs separate. One wallet for trading, a second for what you intend to keep. The second never signs anything on a marketplace. It is safest on a hardware wallet, and the models are set out in our hardware wallet comparison.
• Never sign under time pressure. A mint that is open "for ten more minutes only" is the classic phishing setup. If you cannot check the contract, leave it alone.

How expensive a single mistake with NFTs can be is shown by the case we reported on in the spring: Justin Bieber's loss on his Bored Ape. The difference between purchase price and today's value there is wider than on almost any share.

What ApeFest in Charleston Can Show

ApeFest 2026 takes place in the studios of the digital artist Beeple, who became the face of the NFT boom with his sale at Christie's in 2021. The venue is Charleston, South Carolina, and the date is Saturday, October 17, 2026, from 7pm to midnight according to apefest.com. The choice is a signal: smaller, closer to the art, less of a grand stage than in earlier years.

Organising a festival is a challenge for any crypto community in 2026. Many communities are under strain from hacks, and making money in the crypto market has become considerably harder than in 2021. That makes whatever Yuga Labs announces there all the more revealing. Watch for three things: whether there is a concrete roadmap for Otherside, whether new applications launch on ApeChain that consume APE as a fee, and whether Yuga explains how APE holders are to be involved now the DAO has gone.

On that same October 17, unlock schedules also show a release of APE tokens. New tokens in circulation tend to weigh on the price, particularly when demand is thin. Check how large the tranche is before buying around the festival.

What Counts for Ape Holders Before Year-End

For the coming weeks there are four points worth keeping in view:

1. October 17: ApeFest and an APE unlock on the same day.
2. November 30: the end of the transition period for V3 of the payment processor on ApeChain. Until then, open approvals are a particular risk.
3. Use of the chain: if the total value locked on ApeChain climbs back above the current $3 million or so, that would be the first real sign of a recovery. The figure is available at DefiLlama at any time.
4. Tax: in Germany, gains on APE are tax free after a holding period of one year, and below that the exemption limit for private disposal transactions applies. Losses on a sale within one year can be offset against gains.

Our Read on the Ape Ecosystem

The Ape ecosystem in 2026 is smaller, more centralised and more honest than in 2022. Smaller, because users and capital have moved away. More centralised, because a company decides instead of a DAO. More honest, because nobody still pretends a token alone creates value. Whether ApeChain gets a second chance depends on applications people genuinely use, not on a festival. ApeFest on October 17 is the moment when Yuga Labs can show whether those applications exist.

Disclosure: Dennis Weidner, chief executive of Cryptoticker, is part of the Ape community and owns the ApeCar. This article is not investment advice.

Solana traded at $121.00, or €106.22, at 19:44 UTC on September 26, 2026. That is 8.6 percent more than seven days earlier, and it is the first reading above $120 since January. On an evening like this, the decisive question for a German investor is rarely whether the rally continues. What matters more is what a position in Solana leaves behind once yield, lock-up, tax and trading fees are accounted for. This article works through exactly that, using figures collected on the evening itself.

Solana Price on September 26, 2026: The Measured Numbers

All price data comes from a CoinGecko market snapshot taken on September 26, 2026 at 19:44 UTC, which is 21:44 German time. Solana stands at $121.00. The intraday high was $122.75 and the low $119.89. Over 24 hours that works out at a loss of 0.48 percent, over seven days a gain of 8.6 percent, and over 30 days a gain of 11.82 percent. Market capitalisation is $71.11 billion, and turnover over the past 24 hours came to $3.15 billion.

The distance to the all-time high remains wide. At $293.31, the record sits 58.7 percent above today's level. Anyone who bought Solana in January 2026 is, depending on the entry, still sitting on a loss, and for the tax question further down that matters more than any forecast.

Set against the two heavyweights, the week stands out. Bitcoin comes in at $83,974 in the same snapshot, a weekly gain of 3.11 percent, and Ethereum at $2,681.98, up 1.46 percent. Solana has therefore moved roughly three times as far as bitcoin. Relative strength of that kind rarely lasts long, and on its own it says nothing about the days ahead. It is still the starting point for putting the inflows in context.

Solana ETF Inflows as the Driver: What Is Documented and What Stays Guesswork

Market reports this week agree on the reason for the move: the US spot ETFs on Solana. According to the analysis by AMBCrypto and CoinGape, these products recorded net inflows for ten consecutive weeks and took in more than $360 million in the process; $235.8 million is said to have arrived since September 18 alone. In the same coverage, the analyst Ali Charts names a price target of $160, provided support around $115 holds and the inflows continue.

Two qualifications belong with that. First, this is an analyst opinion and not a fact, and it is quoted here as such. Second, inflows into a security are a snapshot: the same products can post net outflows within days as soon as a larger participant rotates out. An investor in Germany can subscribe to these US products through a local broker only to a limited extent in any case, because they are not approved for distribution in the EU. The inflow is therefore a sentiment indicator for you, not a route to buying.

What you can verify yourself is the chain behind it. Inflows into a spot product mean an issuer has to buy real SOL and have them held in custody. That takes supply off the market. How strongly the effect feeds through depends on how much of the supply is tied up anyway. That figure can be measured, and it appears in the next section.

Solana Staking Yield: 5.27 Percent Gross, Recalculated Here

Staking at Solana means assigning your SOL to a validator, which uses them to confirm blocks and receives a share of the newly issued supply in return. The issuance of new SOL is fixed in the protocol and falls year by year.

For this article the network figures were queried directly from Solana at 19:45 UTC on September 26, 2026, through a public RPC node. The network was in epoch 1043. The reported inflation rate was 3.6298 percent a year. Total supply stood at 634.76 million SOL, of which 587.71 million were in circulation. Bonded to validators were 437.54 million SOL, spread across 676 active and 11 delinquent validators. That amounts to 68.93 percent of total supply.

The gross yield follows almost by itself. The newly issued SOL are distributed among those who stake. If 3.63 percent inflation is spread over 68.93 percent of supply, the arithmetic gives 5.27 percent a year before anyone takes a fee. Anyone who reads a figure of eight or nine percent online should therefore ask which period and which commission were used in that calculation. The process is described in the official Solana staking documentation.

How much of that reaches the investor differs considerably from provider to provider. The terms at a glance can be found in the comparison of staking platforms, including which of them credit rewards daily and which only at the end of an epoch.

Validator Commission and Downtime Risk: What Is Left of the 5.27 Percent

The 5.27 percent is a gross figure for the network. The validator's commission comes off first, and at most operators it sits between five and ten percent of rewards. At a commission of eight percent, roughly 4.85 percent remains. Anyone staking through an exchange or a centralised service often pays a second layer: the provider retains a share of its own, and four percent or less then reaches the investor.

On top of that comes an operational risk that appears in no yield figure. Of the 687 validators measured on this evening, eleven were delinquent, meaning they had cast no valid votes recently. Anyone staked with a delinquent validator earns nothing for that period. Unlike Ethereum, Solana so far has no automatic seizure of deposits for misconduct, so the real risk is lost income rather than a loss of capital through a protocol penalty.

In practice that means checking the validator's availability through one of the public network explorers before you delegate, checking the commission in plain terms, and spreading larger amounts across more than one operator. A yield of 4.8 percent that runs reliably is worth more than an advertised 7 percent that drops out twice a quarter.

Solana Epochs: Why Staked SOL Is Not Immediately Available

An epoch at Solana is the network's settlement period, in which validator slots and rewards are fixed, and it spans 432,000 slots. At the 19:45 UTC measurement, epoch 1043 had reached slot 196,318, leaving 235,682 slots to run. At a target time of 0.4 seconds per slot, that is around 26 hours until the epoch ends.

That number is why staking at Solana is not an overnight deposit. A new delegation only becomes active at the next epoch boundary, and an unstaking likewise only takes effect at the next boundary; after that the balance is freely available again. Between the click and a tradable holding there can therefore be more than a day in the worst case. Anyone wanting to react to a sharp fall cannot reach the staked coins in that window.

From that follows a simple split that has proved itself in practice: part of the holding stays liquid so that you remain able to act, and the rest works in the stake. How large the liquid part should be depends on whether you intend to react to price moves at all. Anyone holding for years in any case needs little liquidity buffer.

One alternative is liquid staking tokens, which securitise a claim on the staked holding and remain tradable themselves. That solves the maturity problem but brings counterparty risk and a possible discount to intrinsic value. They are also awkward for tax, because the swap into such a token can be treated as a disposal.

Leverage and Liquidation: Why a Solana Price of $121 Looks Different on Borrowed Money

The daily range from $119.89 to $122.75 amounts to 2.4 percent. That sounds calm, and in a spot holding it is. At ten times leverage the same range becomes a 24 percent move on the capital employed. A position opened with ten percent margin is already close to forced closure on a pullback to today's low.

Anyone working with leverage therefore calculates two figures before the order: the distance between entry price and liquidation price in percent, and the running financing costs. Perpetual contracts usually carry a funding payment every eight hours; at 0.01 percent per payment that is 0.03 percent a day and around eleven percent a year that the price has to earn back first. In Germany, contracts for difference are available to retail investors only with limited leverage and with negative balance protection.

Holding Period and Tax: What the One-Year Rule Really Means for Solana

For private investors in Germany, Solana counts as another asset within the meaning of Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. A sale within one year of purchase is a private disposal transaction, and the gain is charged at the personal income tax rate. Once a year has passed, the gain remains tax free. Since the 2024 assessment period, the exemption limit for all private disposal transactions in a year has been €1,000; one euro above that makes the entire amount taxable, because it is an exemption limit and not an allowance.

Important for anyone staking: with its circular of March 6, 2025 on the income tax treatment of certain crypto assets, the Federal Ministry of Finance carried forward the line taken in the circular of May 10, 2022. Under it, staking does not extend the holding period to ten years. The tax authorities do not apply the previously debated extension under Section 23(1) no. 2 sentence 4 of the Income Tax Act to crypto assets. The one-year rule therefore remains the one-year rule, including for staked SOL.

The rewards themselves run separately. For tax purposes they count as other income under Section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act at the moment they accrue, valued at the market price on the day of accrual, and they remain untaxed only up to an exemption limit of €256 a year. Each reward received also starts a holding period of its own. Anyone credited with rewards daily therefore accumulates 365 separate acquisition dates in a year, and each of them needs its own price.

That is precisely where the tax return founders in practice. Without clean records, the allocation by year is barely manageable, and the tax office accepts estimates only grudgingly. Which programmes read Solana's epoch credits properly and allocate them on a FIFO basis is shown in the overview of crypto tax tools.

Buying Solana Under MiCA: How to Spot an Authorised Provider

Since the European regulation on markets in crypto assets applied in full, every provider that sells, holds or exchanges crypto assets for retail clients in the EU needs authorisation as a crypto asset service provider. The authorisation is granted by the supervisor of the home member state, in Germany BaFin, and it then applies across the single market.

This can be checked in two steps. The European securities regulator ESMA maintains a public register of authorised providers, and BaFin keeps its own database of supervised companies. If a provider appears in neither register but advertises with a German-language interface and euro deposits, that is a warning sign. A second criterion is custody: authorised custodians must keep client holdings separate from their own assets, and that is exactly what counts in an insolvency.

In practice it also means that switching provider costs effort. Anyone transferring holdings from one platform to the next should take the acquisition data along; without it the one-year period can no longer be evidenced later, and the tax-free status of an old holding is hard to defend against the tax office.

Spread and Fees: What a Solana Order in Euros Really Costs

The most conspicuous cost trap when buying is not the stated order fee but the trading spread between the bid and the ask. To show how large the difference is between a liquid and a narrow market, the order book for the SOL against euro pair was read at Kraken on September 26, 2026 at 19:51 UTC. The best bid was €106.36 and the best ask €106.37. The spread therefore came to one cent, or 0.009 percent.

Those 0.009 percent are the yardstick against which you can measure every other offer. Brokers and apps that advertise without an order fee generally earn through a marked-up spread of 0.5 to 1.5 percent. On a purchase of €2,000 that is €10 to €30 which appears nowhere as a fee. A trading venue with a 0.25 percent order fee and a spread close to zero is clearly cheaper in this calculation than a fee-free offer with a one percent mark-up.

Before the order, therefore, work out the total cost: order fee plus half the trading spread plus any deposit and withdrawal costs, once on the purchase and once on the sale. And compare the execution price shown against an independent market price for the same minute; a gap of more than half a percent is a mark-up and not a market price.

Levels Above and Below: The Checkpoints in the Solana Price

On the upside the first level is today's intraday high at $122.75, because that is where this week's move last turned back. Above it lies the zone between $124 and $130, named in the coverage quoted above as the trigger for a continuation. Only beyond that does January's record come back into play.

On the downside $119.89 is the first checkpoint, today's intraday low. The support cited more often sits at around $115; it is also the condition the quoted analyst attaches to his price target. If the price falls below it, the argument for an ETF-driven recovery is neutralised for the moment, and attention turns to the zone around $100, which held several times in August.

What matters is the reasoning behind the levels. A price level only holds as long as trading actually takes place there. Every level therefore calls for a look at volume: today's $3.15 billion of turnover is about 4.4 percent of market capitalisation. As long as that ratio stays stable, the levels carry weight; if turnover dries up, the price slips through without any news.

Custody After the Purchase: Exchange, Own Wallet or Stake

After the purchase comes the question of where the coins sit. On the trading platform they can be sold quickly but are exposed to the provider's default risk. In your own wallet the risk lies with you, but counterparty risk disappears entirely. In the stake the coins work, but they are tied to the epoch boundaries.

A workable split for a mid-sized holding looks like this: the amount you want to move over the coming weeks stays at an authorised trading venue, the long-term core moves to a hardware wallet, and the part that will sit untouched anyway goes into the stake. Hardware wallets now support delegation to validators directly, and the keys do not leave the device in the process.

Record the date, quantity and price for every move. A transfer between your own wallets is not a disposal and triggers no tax, but the acquisition data has to travel with it without gaps, otherwise a tax-free legacy holding turns, in case of doubt, into a taxable new purchase.

Checking the Solana Price: What to Take Away

1. Work out the total cost of your order before you buy. Order fee plus half the trading spread, measured against the 0.009 percent from this evening's order book. Which trading venues are authorised in Germany and what they cost is set out in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Set up your records before the first reward arrives. Every inflow needs a date, a quantity and the price on the day, and each one starts a holding period of its own. Which programmes read Solana's epoch credits automatically is shown in the overview of crypto tax tools.
3. Separate the liquid part from the core. Around 26 hours to the next epoch boundary means staked SOL are not available on a fast-moving day. What stays put for the long term belongs in your own custody, and the devices for that are in the hardware wallet comparison.

The reading of the current inflows comes from the reporting by AMBCrypto on the break above $119.

(As of September 26, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Anyone looking for an XRP price prediction today is usually looking for a number. The more honest answer is a date: on October 1, 2026 the next release window opens from Ripple's escrow holdings, and it covers up to 1 billion XRP. At the current price that is roughly $1.55 billion of potential supply, and it meets a market that took in $52.7 million through spot ETFs over the past week. That ratio explains more about the coming weeks than any price target.

This article weighs both sides against each other, names the levels that follow from measured data, and then works through the items that genuinely make a position more expensive. Because at a price of $1.55 the incidental costs of an XRP order are not a side issue but the same order of magnitude as an entire day's move.

XRP price today: the measured reading on September 26, 2026

Retrieved on September 26, 2026 at 18:41 German time via CoinGecko market data, XRP trades at $1.55 and 1.36 euros. That puts the price 1.41 percent below the reading of 24 hours earlier. The day's range runs from $1.54 to $1.58, market capitalisation stands at $97.33 billion, and trading volume over the past 24 hours at $3.11 billion.

The all-time high of $3.65 is 57.5 percent away. Put the other way round: from today's level it would take a rise of 135.5 percent to reach that high again. Anyone hanging an XRP price prediction on that figure should know how far it carries.

For comparison, the market picture at the same retrieval time: Bitcoin trades at $84,134 and 0.31 percent up, Ethereum at $2,692.74 and 0.17 percent up, Solana at $121.57 and 0.15 percent up. XRP is therefore the only one of the four large assets giving ground that day. That is not a weakness of the technology but an indication that a supply question of its own is at work here.

Escrow and release windows: how much supply can arrive on October 1

Escrow is a contractually locked portion of Ripple's XRP holdings that opens in monthly tranches on a fixed schedule and cannot be sold freely while it is locked. According to the XRP Supply Report for week 39 of September 26, 2026, it currently holds 31.98 billion XRP, that is 32.0 percent of the total supply of 100 billion. A further 4.74 billion XRP sit in operational wallets.

The report names October 1, 2026 as the next release window, with up to 1 billion XRP. Two points of context, and both belong together:

• Up to 1 billion XRP corresponds at a price of $1.55 to a value of $1.55 billion. Measured against the current daily volume of $3.11 billion, that is around half a trading day.
• Historically such a window is not sold in full. A large part is usually locked up again. How much it will be this time is only established after the date, and that is precisely where the uncertainty of the coming days lies.

For you that does not mean the price has to fall on October 1. It means that on that date information is published which the market does not have beforehand. Anyone planning an order decides deliberately whether it should sit before or after that date.

ETF inflows against the release volume: the calculation that sets the pace

In week 39 of 2026, net 34.0 million XRP flowed into the spot ETFs. According to the same report the week was uneven: Monday an outflow of 716,000 XRP, Tuesday an inflow of 12.7 million, Wednesday 12.5 million, Thursday 9.9 million, Friday another outflow of 473,000. In total the ETFs now hold 1.16 billion XRP, with $1.76 billion under management.

Now the calculation that few people write down. At 34.0 million XRP of net inflow per week, the ETF channel would need 29.4 weeks to absorb the volume of a single full release window of 1 billion XRP. That is not a forecast but a division. It shows the order of magnitude of the two forces that almost every XRP price prediction talks about.

Measured against the freely available supply, that is the total supply less escrow and operational wallets, the ETFs hold around 1.83 percent. The channel is therefore large enough to be visible and too small to absorb a release window on its own. Anyone interested in that route of access will find the position for German investors in our overview of crypto ETFs in Germany.

Exchange balances are falling: what the outflow of 625.9 million XRP says

The item that moved most sharply in week 39 was not the ETF channel. According to the report, wallets attributed to exchanges hold 21.14 billion XRP, and that is 625.9 million XRP less than a week earlier. At the current price that corresponds to a value of around $970 million.

That outflow is 18.4 times the ETF inflow of the same week. Anyone looking only at the ETF figures therefore misses the larger move. Falling exchange balances are usually taken as a sign that holdings are moving into self-custody or long-term portfolios and are not standing in the market as sell-side supply in the short term.

A caveat belongs with this, and it matters: exchange attributions rest on publicly observed addresses. A reshuffle between a provider's internal wallets can look like an outflow without anything changing economically. A single weekly figure therefore serves as an indication, not as proof. It becomes interesting when it continues in the same direction over several weeks.

Which levels up and down count now, and why

Levels are only usable when their origin is stated in the same sentence. So here are the four that follow from measured data, each with its reasoning:

• $1.54 is the low of the past 24 hours. It is the nearest level to the downside, because there was enough demand there in recent hours to turn the price.
• $1.50 is a round level with no technical basis, but experience shows stop orders cluster there. Anyone setting a stop therefore does not place it just above.
• $1.58 is the high of the past 24 hours and thus the first resistance to the upside.
• $1.56 is named in the report as the reading at the close of week 39, after a weekly gain of 4.7 percent. Today's price of $1.55 sits just below it, so the weekly gain has not yet been given back.

The entire daily range from $1.54 to $1.58 covers $0.04, that is 2.6 percent of the low. Remember that number, because it is the yardstick for the next section.

Bull case and bear case: what each scenario requires

Price targets are only worth something with an author attached. Two camps can be distinguished from the market reporting of recent weeks, and neither is a statement by this editorial team.

The bull case requires the ETF channel to hold or increase its inflow over several weeks, exchange balances to keep falling, and only a small part of the release window to actually reach the market. Under those conditions a shrinking available supply meets a constant stream of demand. The requirement is therefore not an opinion but a testable state that you can read off the same three figures every week.

The bear case requires a large part of the release to be sold, while the ETF channel turns negative on individual days in weeks like the one just past, as on the Monday and Friday of week 39. Then a growing available supply faces a fluctuating stream of demand.

What neither camp supplies is a date. The more practical question is therefore not which scenario you believe, but which of the three figures you track yourself: release volume, ETF net inflow, exchange balance. All three are publicly available every week.

Incidental costs when buying XRP: spread and fees against the daily range

Here the prediction turns into a calculation you can do today. The spread is the difference between the bid and ask price a provider quotes, and it is a cost item even when it is not itemised as a fee.

Suppose a provider quotes a spread of 1 percent. Entry and exit together then cost you around 2 percent. XRP's entire measured daily range today was 2.6 percent. Your trading costs in that case are therefore in the same order of magnitude as the price's complete daily move. On an order of 1,000 euros that is about 20 euros, and at 1.36 euros per XRP you get around 735 XRP for 1,000 euros.

In practice that means: with an asset in this price class, a provider with a 0.2 percent trading fee and a tight spread is not a matter of convenience but the difference between a position that stays neutral in a sideways market and one that loses. Which providers in Germany quote which terms is in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges. Check two items separately there: the stated trading fee and the actual spread at trading time, because the second rarely appears in the price list.

Destination tag and minimum reserve: two XRP quirks that cost money

XRP has two technical quirks other assets do not have, and they regularly cost money or nerves on a first transaction.

The first is the destination tag. This is a number attached to a payment to identify the recipient within a pooled account. Exchanges use a single ledger account for many customers and allocate deposits via that tag. According to the XRP Ledger developer documentation the tag is technically optional, and a payment without a tag is processed. It is then simply unclear which customer account the amount should be credited to, which as a rule requires manual clarification with the provider. Exchanges can enable the RequireDest setting, which rejects payments without a tag from the outset. You do not know beforehand whether yours does, so check the tag yourself on every deposit.

The second is the minimum reserve. According to the documentation, an account on the XRP Ledger has to hold a base reserve of 1 XRP, plus 0.2 XRP per additional object, for instance per trust line. That reserve is locked and not transferable as long as the account exists. At today's price that is 1.36 euros of base reserve and 27 cents per object. The amount is small, but it explains why a freshly created wallet can never be emptied entirely. The level can change through validators' fee voting, so it is not a fixed value for all time.

Holding period and exemption threshold: what to check before the quarter ends

The quarter end on September 30 is not a cut-off date for tax purposes; the year end is. It is still worth looking now, because a holding period runs backwards and cannot be repaired in December.

Under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, gains from the sale of crypto-assets count as private disposal transactions. If the period between acquisition and sale is more than one year, the gain remains tax-free. Within the year it is taxed at the personal rate, with an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros applying to the sum of all private disposal gains in a calendar year. An exemption threshold is not an allowance: if it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable, not just the part above it.

Three concrete checks for your portfolio follow from this:

1. Look at which of your XRP tranches have not yet reached the one-year mark and when they will. A sale a few days before it expires costs the full tax rate on a meaningful gain.
2. Add up all private disposal gains for 2026 so far, not just those from crypto. Only that sum decides on the exemption threshold.
3. Check whether your acquisition dates and prices are documented without gaps. Without evidence of the holding period, tax exemption is hard to assert.

This section is no substitute for tax advice. With larger amounts, with sales from several tranches or with holdings across several exchanges, the case belongs with a tax adviser.

Buying route under MiCA: how to recognise an authorised provider

MiCA is the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. It requires providers offering crypto services in the EU to hold authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider, CASP in the jargon, and the regulation governs information and custody obligations towards customers.

In practice you check three points before a first order. First, whether the provider names an authorisation in an EU member state and which supervisory authority granted it. Second, whether there is an information document for the asset you are buying and whether the costs are disclosed in full in it. Third, how custody is organised, that is, whether your holdings are kept separately from the provider's own assets.

One note on a distinction that is often confused in practice: anyone trading XRP through a contract for difference or a leveraged product does not own any XRP. The holding period from the previous section therefore does not apply, because those gains count as investment income and are taxed differently. Anyone considering that route should also factor in the ongoing financing costs of the position, because over a holding period of weeks they can eat up the expected gain.

RLUSD and tokenised assets: what is actually running on the XRP Ledger

One argument that appears in many forecasts runs: real usage is emerging on the XRP Ledger. The figures deserve a close look, because they are often quoted wrongly.

According to the report of September 26, RLUSD, the stablecoin issued by Ripple, has a total supply of $2.41 billion. Of that, $1.07 billion, or 44 percent, sits on the XRP Ledger and $1.34 billion, or 56 percent, on Ethereum. The majority is therefore currently not on the XRP Ledger, even though the opposite has been claimed repeatedly in circulation. For tokenised real-world assets the report shows $282 million of distributed circulation on the ledger, plus $4.06 billion of registered notional values, which is a different measure from actually tradable holdings.

For an XRP price prediction that means: usage is emerging, it is measurable, and it is currently small against the market capitalisation of $97.33 billion. Anyone citing these figures as grounds for a price target should quote them at that order of magnitude and not describe them as a breakthrough.

XRP price prediction: what to take away

1. Put October 1 in the calendar, not a price target. On the release date information arises that nobody has today. Decide deliberately whether your order sits before or after it, and do not place a stop just above the round level of $1.50. Which provider quotes tight terms for that is in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Weigh the incidental costs against the daily range of 2.6 percent. A spread of 1 percent costs you around 2 percent in and out, and therefore almost the entire daily move. Check the trading fee and the spread separately, and if you are considering a leveraged product, also compare the financing costs at the best crypto brokers.
3. Check your holding periods now, not in December. Establish which tranches reach the one-year mark and when, and weigh all private disposal gains for the year against the exemption threshold of 1,000 euros. You can get the documentation for that in order with crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

(As of September 26, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

On September 24, 2026, the trading platform Bitget reported unauthorised outflows from several of its hot wallets. The loss stood at $351.6 million in the first statement and was revised upward to $387.5 million in the following days, once further holdings had been added. For those affected in Germany this raises a question that barely appears in the reporting on the incident: can a loss like this be claimed on a tax return?

Under the prevailing reading today the answer is no, and it hangs on a single term in the Income Tax Act. Anyone who loses crypto-assets to a hack has not sold them. Without a sale, what the law calls a disposal is missing, and without a disposal there is no loss for tax purposes that the tax office could offset against gains. This article explains what that rule rests on, which counterarguments specialist law firms put forward, and which records to secure while the incident is fresh.

Exchange hack and tax: why theft is not a disposal transaction

Under German income tax law, crypto-assets count as other assets. Gains and losses from selling them therefore fall under private disposal transactions pursuant to section 23 of the Income Tax Act. The provision ties the tax liability to an event it calls a disposal: an asset changes owner for consideration.

Theft does not meet that test. There is no buyer, no price and no consideration. In its overview of the tax treatment of hacks dated August 17, 2026, the specialist portal Bitcoin2Go puts it this way: wallet and exchange hacks count as theft for tax purposes and precisely do not constitute a disposal transaction, from which neither advantages nor disadvantages arise. In its account of section 23 dated October 3, 2025, the law firm Hortmann Law reaches the same conclusion and calls it doubly bitter: economic damage without tax relief.

What follows for the exemption threshold

The consequence is uncomfortably concrete. If you realised gains within the one-year period in the same year, those remain taxable, even if a multiple of that amount went missing on the exchange. The exemption threshold of 1,000 euros a year, in force since 2024 and previously 600 euros, is measured against total gains from private disposal transactions. Under the prevailing reading, a hack does not reduce that total.

Section 23 of the Income Tax Act in detail: holding period, exemption threshold and the meaning of disposal

Three variables determine the taxation of private crypto transactions in Germany. The holding period is one year; anyone who holds longer and then sells stays tax-free. The exemption threshold is 1,000 euros a year, and it is a genuine threshold rather than an allowance: exceed it by one euro and the entire gain becomes taxable. And loss offsetting is fenced in, because losses from private disposal transactions can only be set against gains of the same kind, not against employment income and not against investment income.

Disposal here means the transfer of an asset to another party for consideration. This single term decides the whole case. A sale for euros is a disposal, so is a swap from one coin into another, and paying for goods with crypto-assets counts too. An attacker gaining access to an exchange wallet does not.

Realisation as the core condition

A realised loss is a loss that has occurred through an actual market event and has become measurable as a result. As long as a price merely falls, there is a paper loss that tax law ignores. Only the sale turns it into a figure that belongs on the return. The same principle catches the hack case: the coins are gone, but there was no event that realised the loss in the sense of the law. How this looks for holdings that have become worthless is broken down in detail in our analysis of crypto total losses on a tax return.

The Bitget incident of September 24: which details actually count for tax

Bitget detected the incident on September 24, 2026 at 18:31 UTC, suspended withdrawals and published a staggered resumption schedule starting with Bitcoin on September 28. According to the platform the cold wallets remained untouched; parts of the hot and warm wallet layer were affected. The analytics firm Elliptic attributed the attack to actors linked to North Korea, as Bloomberg reported on September 25; by that assessment, the 2026 annual haul attributed to this milieu passes the one-billion-dollar mark. On CryptoSlate's count, September is therefore the most damaging month of 2026.

What matters for tax in these details is less the total sum than the timing. September 24, 2026 is the date on which access to part of the holdings ended. Anyone affected needs exactly that date, the affected quantity per coin and the price on that day, because without those three details no loss can later be quantified and no compensation classified. Which protection mechanisms apply at an exchange at all is examined in our assessment of protection funds and deposit insurance at crypto exchanges.

One note on classifying the provider: Bitget holds no authorisation under the European crypto market regulation, and the European liability rule for authorised service providers therefore does not apply here. What obligations an authorisation brings and how to recognise it is set out in our overview of the MiCA licensing obligations for crypto companies.

Why the tax office needs the sale and the hack does not deliver it

The logic behind this is not harassment by the tax administration but the flip side of a rule investors otherwise benefit from. Because only realised events count, nobody has to pay tax on a price gain while they hold the coins. The price of that system is that a loss in value without a market event likewise stays invisible.

With Bitcoin, which traded at around $84,044 when the price data was retrieved from CoinGecko on September 26, 2026 at about 12:48 UTC, this plays out neatly. Hold for more than a year and you sell tax-free. Sell within the year and you pay tax on the gain above the exemption threshold. Get robbed and you have done neither, which leaves you with no point of connection for tax purposes. We track the price development itself continuously on our Bitcoin price prediction page.

The special case on the other side

The reverse direction is interesting. Bitcoin2Go points out that inflows from fraud schemes may under certain circumstances be taxable as other income under section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act. Anyone who ends up on the receiving side of a questionable transaction can therefore be worse off for tax than the injured party. This asymmetry is one reason several law firms consider current practice in need of review.

The law firms' counterposition: final loss of economic control

The legal position is not as clear-cut as practice makes it appear. In its account of March 10, 2025, Winheller, a firm specialising in crypto law, expressly records that the tax treatment of crypto losses has not yet been conclusively settled, and puts forward good arguments for recognition. At the core of the argument is a comparison with share losses: there too a final loss of economic control occurs, and precisely that state exists with stolen or irrecoverably lost crypto-assets.

This position is a reasoned legal view, not established administrative practice. Anyone relying on it should know what they are taking on: the loss is entered on the return, the tax office will in all likelihood strike it out as matters stand, and the route then runs through an objection and possibly litigation. Without tax advice, that route makes little sense for most of those affected.

What both sides share

Notably, the supportive and the dismissive side agree on one point: without complete documentation the discussion is over anyway. Winheller advises documenting all transactions carefully in order to be able to prove how the loss occurred, and to evidence the timing inside or outside the one-year period as well. Anyone without the records loses regardless of which legal view ultimately prevails.

The Finance Ministry circular of March 6, 2025 and the tightened cooperation duties

For documentation there has been a clear statement since last year. On March 6, 2025 the Federal Ministry of Finance published the circular Individual questions on the income tax treatment of certain crypto-assets, reference IV C 1 - S 2256/00042/064/043. It runs to 34 pages and replaces the earlier circular of May 10, 2022.

What is new, and decisive for the hack case, is that this circular regulates record-keeping and cooperation duties for crypto transactions expressly for the first time and raises the requirements noticeably. It demands traceable documentation of the events, including wallet allocation, timing and price evidence. For those affected by a hack that means two things: the burden of proof rests with you, and a data loss on the exchange's side does not relieve you of it. What records the tax office may demand is covered at length in our piece on crypto tax audits and admissible evidence.

Which evidence to secure immediately after an exchange hack

The most important sentence in this text is a practical one: records you do not pull today you may no longer be able to get later. After a major incident interfaces are rebuilt, announcements disappear from news feeds, and an account being wound down eventually stops producing exports. So while access still exists, secure:

• the complete transaction export of your account as a file, not as a screenshot, covering all deposits, withdrawals and trades since the account was opened
• the balance per coin immediately before the incident, with date and time
• the provider's official statement on the incident, as a screenshot with a visible date and additionally as a saved page
• every message the provider sent you, that is, emails, in-app notifications and support tickets with case numbers
• price evidence in euros for the reference date, from a source you can query again if needed
• your wallet addresses and the transaction IDs, insofar as the outflows are publicly traceable

Then there is the criminal complaint. For tax purposes it is voluntary, but it is also the only document in which a third party confirms the theft, and specialist sources cite it as evidence of the final loss of control. Where it makes sense to file it and what it realistically achieves is described in our piece on where to actually file a report for stolen crypto-assets.

For ongoing documentation a tool that automatically records deposits and withdrawals and captures prices at the time of the transaction is worthwhile in any case. Which programs map this cleanly for German investors and what they cost is in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers. Anyone who only starts collecting after an incident is reconstructing years.

Compensation in coins: the open question of acquisition and holding period

If an exchange reimburses the damage from a protection fund, that raises a question the sources we examined leave unanswered. Neither the Finance Ministry circular of March 6, 2025 nor the specialist accounts reviewed expressly address how compensation in coins after a hack is to be classified. That is an open point, and it is named as such here rather than filled with invented certainty.

In practice two questions arise. The first concerns the acquisition date: does the original acquisition continue to count, or does a new holding period begin with the credit? The second concerns the nature of the payment: a refund in euros looks different from a credit in the same cryptocurrency. As long as there is no reliable statement from the tax administration on this, the only sensible approach is to document the event fully and to settle the question with a tax adviser before filing. For that, note the date of the credit, the quantity, the euro price at that moment, and the exact wording the provider uses to describe the payment.

Annex SO and loss carryforward: where a recognised loss would land

Private disposal transactions are reported in Annex SO of the income tax return. That is where gains and losses from crypto sales within the one-year period go. If losses exceed a year's gains, the remainder is not lost but is separately assessed under section 10d of the Income Tax Act and carried into other years.

This mechanism is why classifying a hack loss would be worth money at all: a recognised loss would relieve not only the current year but, through the carryforward, future crypto gains as well. That is exactly why it pays to look at your own stock of old losses, which we broke down in our piece on the crypto loss carryforward.

Exchange insolvency instead of a hack: when a shortfall does become a loss

A related case is treated differently, and the distinction is worth real money to those affected. If an exchange becomes insolvent, there is a formal procedure with claim filing, a dividend and a conclusion. At the end there is an event that can be quantified and evidenced, which brings tax recognition within reach, whereas plain theft lacks any formal point of connection. Whether your coins even form part of the insolvency estate in such a procedure depends on the form of custody; we took that apart in our piece on segregation at an insolvent crypto exchange.

In practice that means: first establish which procedure you are in. A hack with subsequent reimbursement from a protection fund is something different for tax purposes from an insolvency procedure with a dividend, and both are again different from a token for which no trading pair exists any more.

Limiting holdings on the exchange: what the tax rule means for your custody

An uncomfortable consequence for custody follows from the tax system. Because a hack loss remains without tax consequences under current practice, a balance on a trading platform carries a risk that is cushioned nowhere. The usual rule of thumb of leaving only as much on the exchange as current trading requires thereby gains a second argument alongside the pure security consideration.

Anyone holding larger amounts who wants to hold them longer usually moves them into self-custody. Which devices are suitable, how they differ and which mistakes during setup become expensive is in our hardware wallet comparison. Important for tax: a transfer to your own wallet is not a sale and does not interrupt the holding period, but it has to be documented as an internal transfer so the tax office does not later read it as a disposal.

Markers by which you read the situation

Two signals are worth watching. If an affected provider's withdrawal schedule holds and the announced stages actually begin, that points to an orderly process. If it is postponed, capped or suspended without explanation, the case shifts towards a default, and then the records from the section above become the most valuable thing you still hold in the matter.

Stolen coins and tax: what to take away

1. Expect no tax relief for the hack loss, but do the arithmetic anyway. Check whether you realised gains within the one-year period in the same year, because those remain taxable. A tool that records your transactions cleanly turns that calculation into minutes rather than days; we compared the available programs in our comparison of crypto tax software.
2. Secure today the records you will no longer get tomorrow. Transaction export, balance before the incident, the provider's statement, price evidence for the reference date and transaction IDs. If the case moves you towards self-custody, you will find suitable devices in our hardware wallet comparison.
3. Check your trading venue's authorisation status before you park the next balance there. Authorisation under the European crypto market regulation changes nothing about the tax rule, but it changes the provider's obligations and your complaint channels. Which platforms are authorised for German customers is shown in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

(As of September 26, 2026. This article is not investment advice and not tax advice. Prices, fee structures and administrative views change; check the terms with the provider before you buy and settle individual tax questions with a tax adviser.)

Quant (QNT) has gained 62.0 percent in seven days and traded at $104.88 on September 26, 2026 at 12:39 UTC. The trigger is unusually well documented: on September 24, 2026, The Clearing House, the operator of the major US payment systems, selected Quant as the technology partner for its On-Chain Money Initiative. This article explains what is being built, what tokenised deposits are, and which questions an investor should settle before making a decision.

The most important distinction comes first. The announcement concerns the company Quant and its software. Whether and how the QNT token benefits economically is a separate question, and it is dealt with in detail below. Treating the two as the same thing means buying an expectation rather than a connection.

What The Clearing House agreed with Quant on September 24

The Clearing House is an organisation owned by large US banks, and it runs two of the country's central payment systems: RTP for real-time payments and CHIPS for settling large payment volumes between banks. According to the organisation's statement of September 24, 2026, Quant supplies the layer for interoperability, orchestration and transaction management for a new network through which financial institutions can clear and settle tokenised deposits. Connection to the existing RTP and CHIPS payment systems is explicitly part of it.

The same statement says the initiative is backed by 25 of the country's largest financial institutions, naming Bank of America, Citi, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, HSBC, BNY, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Truist among others. The network is to be available to participating institutions in the first half of 2027. Those two details together are the actual news: this is a banking-sector project with a date attached, not a statement of intent.

What tokenised deposits are, and how they differ from stablecoins

A tokenised deposit is the digital representation of a bank balance. The claim remains a claim against the bank that holds the balance, with the safeguards and supervision that apply to deposits. What changes is the way that balance is recorded and moved: as an entry on a programmable infrastructure rather than solely in the core banking system.

That makes the difference from a stablecoin plain. A stablecoin is the liability of a private issuer that holds reserves and is subject to its own regulation, in Europe the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. A tokenised deposit, by contrast, remains bank money in the supervisory sense. For banks that is the decisive point, because it lets them offer programmable payments without moving customer money off their own balance sheet into someone else's instrument.

Why interoperability is the real problem

A single institution has long been able to tokenise deposits internally. That only becomes useful when one bank's tokenised deposit arrives at another bank and carries the same value there. This mediation between separate systems is precisely the job Quant was selected for, and it explains why the connection to RTP and CHIPS features so prominently in the statement: without a bridge into the existing payment world, any network remains an island.

Overledger: the role Quant's technology plays in the network

Overledger is Quant's operating system for enterprises. It works as a programming interface that connects various public and private blockchains with classic banking systems. The approach is that a bank does not build its own connection for every blockchain, but uses one interface capable of addressing several networks at once.

In the language of the statement, Quant is the provider for programmable money. In practice that means three jobs: coordinating the order of bookings across several systems, managing transaction states during that process, and translating into the message formats that payment systems such as RTP and CHIPS expect. This is infrastructure work that stays invisible to end customers and without which programmable payments in banking do not function.

The European part of this development is running in parallel. The European Central Bank has launched its platform for settling tokenised securities in central bank money, which we assessed on September 22, 2026 under the ECB's Pontes platform and tokenised securities. Both projects target the same gap between the securities side and the money side, only with different sponsors: in Europe the central bank, in the United States the commercial banks.

Quant (QNT) in numbers on September 26, 2026

The following values come from our own query of CoinGecko's public market data interface on September 26, 2026 at 12:39 UTC.

One of those figures deserves attention. A turnover factor of 0.04 means only about four percent of the circulating supply changed hands that day. For a token up 62 percent in a week, that is a low reading. It suggests the rise is not being carried by short-term churn, and it also means larger sales would meet a comparatively thin order book. How to interpret metrics like these yourself is shown by the tools in our comparison of crypto analytics platforms.

Sibos in Miami: what Quant and Murex will show from September 28

The second date this week is the banking conference Sibos, held in Miami from September 28 to October 1, 2026. Quant has worked since March 2026 with the software house Murex, whose MX.3 platform is in use in trading, risk management and post-trade settlement at many banks. According to Murex, Quant's technology is embedded directly into that platform, so institutions can settle tokenised deposits and digital bonds in systems that are already running.

The demonstration is to use a repo transaction with a tokenised bond, that is, a collateralised short-term loan between financial institutions. The design of the demonstration is notable: according to those involved, settlement is deliberately interrupted mid-execution to show that the system can roll back fully without leaving an inconsistent state. For banking technology this proof matters more than speed, because a half-executed settlement is the worst case in payments.

The decisive question for investors: does the token earn from the business?

This is the point at which many reports on corporate partnerships in the crypto market turn vague. A contract between a banking organisation and a software provider generates revenue at the provider. Whether that revenue reaches the token depends on whether the token is bound into usage technically or contractually, as a licence unit, as a fee carrier, or through a mechanism that channels income into buybacks.

That link cannot be inferred from a press release, and it does not appear in the statements examined here. What you should therefore read up on yourself before making a decision:

• The token's role in the product documentation: is QNT required to use Overledger, and in what form? That belongs in the provider's technical documentation, not in a press release.
• The counterparty to the bank contracts: does the corporate entity sign the contracts, and do the proceeds flow there? With infrastructure providers that is the norm.
• A link to the token supply: is there a documented mechanism tying income to the token? Without such a mechanism, demand for the product works only indirectly, through market participants' expectations.
• The time gap: the network is due to be available in the first half of 2027. Months lie between announcement and operation, and scope and participants can change in that time.

The honest interim position is therefore this. The reason for the attention is documented and comes from an organisation owned by large banks. A documented route by which this mandate raises the value of the token is not publicly available. Knowing both at once is a better starting position than an answer to only one of the two questions.

Where QNT can be traded in Germany, and what to check first

QNT is an Ethereum token and trades on several large international crypto exchanges; for investors in Germany the question is less whether the token is available than which provider the purchase runs through. Three points to settle before a first purchase:

1. The platform's authorisation: providers offering crypto-asset services in the European Union need authorisation under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. Whether yours holds it is stated in its legal disclosures; which providers are set up how is shown in our comparison of crypto exchanges.
2. Trading pair and liquidity: check whether there is a pair against the euro or only against a stablecoin. In the second case two exchange steps arise, with two spreads between bid and ask.
3. Custody: for a token you intend to hold for longer, the question of self-custody is legitimate. An Ethereum token can be held in any wallet that supports the standard.

Tax in Germany: what applies when you sell QNT

For private individuals in Germany, selling cryptocurrencies counts as a private disposal transaction under section 23 of the Income Tax Act. If you sell at a profit within one year of buying, that profit is taxed at your personal income tax rate. If more than a year lies between purchase and sale, the profit remains tax-free. An exemption threshold of 1,000 euros applies to the sum of all private disposal gains in a year, at that level since the 2024 tax year; if it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable.

For a token up 62 percent in a week, that is more than a footnote. Anyone taking such a move is highly likely to trigger a taxable transaction. The holding period runs per acquisition, which is why you should record purchase date, quantity and price separately for each position. Tools for that are in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers. How the same period works for tokenised securities is set out in our piece on tokenised stocks and the holding period in Germany.

The risks in this story

Four points belong in a sober assessment. First, the time gap: a network due to start in the first half of 2027 is today a plan with participants, not a running source of income. Second, the missing documented link between corporate business and token described above. Third, competition: on infrastructure for tokenised money, central banks, established payment service providers and several software houses are working on comparable solutions, and mandates of this kind are regularly reawarded.

Fourth, the price history itself. A gain of 67.3 percent in 30 days means part of the expectation is already in the price. For anyone entering today, the September 24 news is no longer an advantage but known information. Anyone who still wants to enter should size the amount so that a fall back to the early-September price level remains bearable. Forecasts of where the price runs from here are deliberately absent from this text.

Quant (QNT): what to take away

1. Separate the corporate news from the token's value. The Clearing House mandate is documented; a mechanism turning it into value for QNT is not. Check that link in the provider's documentation before you buy; tools for ongoing monitoring are in our comparison of crypto analytics platforms.
2. Settle the trading question before the price question. Provider authorisation, a pair against the euro and custody determine your costs, regardless of how the price develops. Our comparison of crypto exchanges lists the differences.
3. Document every purchase immediately. For a token in a strong upward move, the one-year holding period under section 23 of the Income Tax Act is the practically most important number; suitable tools are in our comparison of crypto tax software.

The primary sources for this article are the statement from The Clearing House on its partnership with Quant and the statement from Murex on embedding tokenised deposits into MX.3.

(As of September 26, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

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.

Google Vids now lets any Google account holder generate free HD AI video using Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash, with new scene, timing, and watermark controls.

Federal prosecutors are targeting a Montana payments firm and a Caribbean bank accused of moving money without a license.

XRP flashes bullish golden cross on its Bitcoin chart, with bulls now watching for what comes next.

XRP spot ETFs recorded more than $22 million in net inflows on Sept. 25, extending a recent period of institutional buying despite a sharp decline in XRP's market price.

This marked a deviation from that seen earlier in the week when Shiba Inu's burn activity flattened.

Shiba Inu community warned over fake tokens.

Solana’s founder says the industry is "not ready" for Alpenglow, a radical new consensus upgrade dropping block finality to 100ms.

TLDR:

• Saylor proposes five core rights: create, issue, custody, transfer, and use digital assets freely.
• He sets a goal of financing 10 million new companies through faster digital token issuance.
• Saylor urges banks to custody Bitcoin and extend credit against it under clearer capital rules.
• He criticizes the CLARITY approach and projects a $100 trillion digital asset industry ahead.

Digital asset rights formed the center of Michael Saylor’s policy remarks at the Bitcoin Policy Institute’s Freedom Tech DC summit.

Saylor spoke with Conner Brown about a framework built on five freedoms. These include the right to create, issue, custody, transfer, and use digital assets.

He argued that a more productive economy, driven by artificial intelligence, needs better money and better capital markets. Growth in AI output should be matched by growth in financial access, he said.

Five Freedoms Anchor the Policy Framework

Saylor’s proposal rests on treating digital asset rights as belonging to both individuals and corporations. “Freedom starts with the ability to act,” Saylor said.

Each of the five freedoms serves a distinct purpose, from creating new financial instruments to spending and borrowing against holdings.

The framework also calls for financing structures that support new business formation. Saylor set a goal of enabling 10 million new companies to raise capital through digital tokens.

He described current issuance rules as too costly and complex for entrepreneurs without extensive legal resources. Lowering that cost, he said, would let more founders reach investors directly.

Competition among digital dollar providers formed another part of the discussion. Saylor said banks, fintech companies, and technology platforms should have a clear path to offer dollar-backed digital products.

He also argued that issuers should be permitted to compete on yield. Restrictions that favor institutions paying little interest work against customers, he said.

Bitcoin’s integration into banking and insurance drew separate attention. Saylor called for banks to custody Bitcoin and extend credit against it.

He pointed to the Basel framework’s capital treatment of cryptoasset exposures as an area needing review. Rules should reflect actual risk, he said.

Privacy, Compliance, and Regulatory Priorities

Financial privacy featured prominently in Saylor’s remarks on ordinary transactions. He proposed that lawful transactions below a meaningful threshold should not trigger routine reporting requirements.

Saylor referenced the outdated $10,000 currency-transaction threshold set in 1972 as an example needing inflation adjustment.

Portable compliance credentials also appeared as a policy recommendation. Saylor described repeated identity verification across financial counterparties as costly and inefficient for investors.

He suggested reusable, interoperable credentials could reduce onboarding costs while preserving provider responsibility for monitoring risk. Lower costs, he added, would help new firms compete for customers.

Tax treatment of everyday digital asset spending was another focus area. Saylor argued that a meaningful de minimis exemption would remove the burden of calculating gains on routine purchases. He said thresholds should scale with inflation and eliminate needless transaction-by-transaction recordkeeping.

On regulatory strategy, Saylor pointed to the SEC, CFTC, Treasury, and White House as the near-term path. He criticized the CLARITY approach for emphasizing restrictions over usefulness.

Saylor projected the digital asset industry could reach $100 trillion in value if policy expands rather than limits ownership rights.

The post Michael Saylor Outlines Five Digital Asset Rights to Power AI-Driven Economy appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Ethereum nodes can run on local AI computers, with Buterin’s pruned Geth setup using 461 GiB of storage on one machine.
• Snap sync and EIP-4444 reduce Ethereum’s full-node synchronization time to roughly 12 hours under described conditions.
• Ethereum still recommends a 2 TB NVMe drive, giving node operators additional storage headroom as the blockchain grows.
• Local nodes do not guarantee wallet privacy because applications may still route requests through commercial RPC providers.

Vitalik Buterin says his pruned Geth node occupies 461 GiB, showing how local AI hardware can also support Ethereum nodes. Enthusiasts buying computers for local large language models already receive fast NVMe drives and ample storage. 

That overlap eases hardware demands and lets operators check network data directly rather than relying on third-party RPC providers. The 461 GiB figure reflects one setup, while client selection, pruning settings, and Ethereum network growth can alter storage needs.

Ethereum Nodes Fit Within Some Local AI Systems

High-performance desktops built for local AI workloads often include powerful graphics cards and large NVMe drives. Examples include systems using NVIDIA RTX 5090 cards and compact AI workstations such as the DGX Spark.

Those machines need storage for large language model weights and related files. The same capacity can support a pruned database, letting users run AI workloads and an Ethereum node on one computer.local 

This overlap lets home computers act as independent verification points rather than terminals that depend on cloud infrastructure. A setup gives operators chain data and a way to check information against the network.

Faster Synchronization Reduces the Setup Burden

Buterin linked the shorter setup time to optimizations in Geth’s snap sync process and work related to EIP-4444. Under the conditions he described, a full node can synchronize in roughly 12 hours.

Snap sync lets Geth obtain a recent network state without replaying every earlier state. Pruning removes older data that a standard full node need not retain, reducing locally stored information.

This combination reduces both the download and processing work required during synchronization. It also means operators can begin using a local Ethereum node sooner under the conditions described by Buterin.

The shorter synchronization period changes the practical experience for new operators. Users can reach a local setup faster, while AI hardware provides the processing and storage for the initial download.

Existing high-end AI workstations can therefore support independent blockchain verification alongside local model workloads.

Ethereum Storage Guidance Still Allows Extra Headroom

The 461 GiB figure describes Buterin’s configuration, not a fixed requirement for every operator. Different clients, settings, and future blockchain growth can change the amount of storage a node requires.

Readers should therefore treat the figure as a current example of a pruned setup. It shows one configuration, but it does not replace Ethereum’s hardware guidance for longer-term installations.

Ethereum’s general guidance still recommends a 2 TB NVMe drive. That capacity gives operators more room than the pruned setup uses and delays immediate hardware changes as the chain grows.

That extra capacity can accommodate future client growth without immediately replacing the drive.

The lower current footprint nevertheless makes home verification more accessible for owners of suitable computers. Instead of only querying remote services, these users can check blockchain data through infrastructure they operate themselves.

That distinction also gives AI hardware a second use between model runs. The computer can support local applications while maintaining the files and processes needed for independent blockchain verification.

Local Nodes Do Not Remove Every Privacy Concern

Running a node locally does not guarantee that wallet activity stays private. A wallet or application can still send requests through a commercial RPC provider, exposing information about addresses and transactions.

Buterin has linked those concerns to work on Kohaku tools and command-line wallets. The wallet software and connection method therefore remain important for users seeking more direct control over their data.

Kohaku focuses on Ethereum wallet tools, while the experimental command-line wallet targets private balances. These efforts address the application layer, while the node supplies local blockchain data.

The planned Glamsterdam upgrade is expected to accelerate synchronization further at Ethereum’s base layer. Its development could reduce setup and maintenance time for individual node operators.

The post Vitalik Buterin Says AI Boom Makes Ethereum Nodes Easier at Home appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• UNI price trades near $9.61 after a quarterly breakout, while $12.30 marks the next major hurdle on the daily technical chart.
• Tokenized stocks generated $20.9 billion in DEX volume over 30 days, with Uniswap v4 and v3 processing a combined 60.1% share.
• Uniswap v4 led tokenized-stock DEX trading with a 40.7% share, while Uniswap v3 ranked second at 19.4% during the period.
• Holding $9.33 could support another UNI test of $9.93, while a breakdown would place $8.37 and deeper support back in focus.

The UNI price traded near $9.61 on September 26 after a third-quarter advance reshaped the token’s structure. Market data showed a modest pullback as buyers defended the $9.33 support area. The move followed a rally from $2.35 to $10.85 during the quarter. That advance broke a descending triangle that had contained the token since its 2021 peak.

Meanwhile, Token Terminal reported $20.9 billion in tokenized-stock DEX volume over 30 days. Uniswap v4 led that market with 40.7%, while v3 captured 19.4%. Their combined 60.1% share adds a usage measure to UNI’s price setup.

UNI Price Holds Its Breakout Below the $12.30 Hurdle

The Q3 move changed a structure that had restricted UNI. UNI price cleared the triangle and reached $10.85 before sellers slowed the advance. That breakout separates the range from the decline that followed the $45 peak in 2021.

UNI price must first hold the nearer support levels before challenging the larger targets. Market data places immediate support at $9.33 and short-term resistance near $9.93. A move through $9.93 would reopen the path toward the recent swing high. Failure to defend $9.33 could expose $8.37.

The daily chart identifies $12.30 as the next major hurdle above that short-term range. Buyers would need a sustained move above this area to strengthen the breakout structure. The next chart levels stand at $15.10 and $17.50 if $12.30 becomes support.

Momentum also cooled after the sharp rise, which reduces the strength of immediate continuation signals. UNI price therefore sits between a confirmed quarterly breakout and unresolved short-term resistance. The next directional move depends on whether buyers protect $9.33 and regain $9.93.

The September 30 PCE inflation report is a scheduled macro event for crypto markets. Changing rate expectations could influence volatility around UNI’s established chart levels.

Tokenized Stock Trading Strengthens Uniswap Activity

Protocol usage provides a separate measure from the token’s technical setup. Token Terminal said tokenized stocks produced $20.9 billion in decentralized exchange volume during the latest 30-day period. Uniswap v4 accounted for 40.7% of that trading, making it the largest venue version in the dataset.

Uniswap v3 contributed another 19.4%. Together, both versions processed 60.1% of tokenized-stock DEX volume. The figures show that activity spans two generations of Uniswap infrastructure rather than one isolated deployment.

A different Ethereum market-share comparison also shows growth for Uniswap v4. Its share reached 50% across Uniswap v2, v3, v4, and Curve, up from 31% in August 2025. V4 held the leading monthly position from March 2026 through the latest reading.

Uniswap v2 moved in the opposite direction. Its share fell from 5% to below 1% over the same period. That shift indicates trading activity migrated toward newer pool architecture as v4 gained adoption.

The two percentages measure different markets. The 40.7% figure covers tokenized-stock DEX volume, while the 50% reading covers the selected Ethereum DEX group. Keeping those datasets separate avoids overstating Uniswap v4’s share across all decentralized trading.

Rising protocol activity does not set a fixed value for UNI. However, it gives traders another operating metric beside chart momentum. The UNI price still needs to clear $9.93 before the market can test the broader $12.30 threshold.

If sellers force a break below $9.33, the short-term setup would weaken despite Uniswap’s volume share. The next support sits at $8.37, followed by the wider breakout zones near $8.25 and $6.35. Defending $9.33 would preserve the immediate range and keep $9.93 as the recovery level.

The post UNI Price Holds Breakout as Stock Token DEX Volume Reaches $20.9B appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Bitcoin ETFs attract $2.4 billion for the strongest week since October 2025, turning 2026 net flows positive at $934.1 million.
• BlackRock’s IBIT leads issuers with $1.2 billion, while Fidelity’s FBTC adds $701.7 million and ARKB receives $294.7 million.
• Ether ETFs reverse a $140 million outflow with $689.9 million in inflows, taking 2026 net additions to about $1.6 billion.
• Solana ETFs register a record $86.7 million inflow as weekly demand reaches $188.2 million and assets rise to $1.5 billion.

U.S. Bitcoin ETFs drew $2.4 billion in net inflows during the week ending Sept. 25. That marks their strongest weekly result since October 2025. The demand pushes their 2026 flow total back above zero. According to SosoValue data, the year-to-date inflows now reach about $934.1 million, reversing a deficit that stood near $5.8 billion two months earlier, in mid-July.

Monday provides the week’s largest daily share with a $999 million inflow. Daily additions then slow through Friday, but the funds extend their streak to seven sessions. Ether ETFs reverse the previous week’s outflow, while Solana ETFs record their largest single-day intake since their October 2025 launch.

Bitcoin ETFs Extend Seven-Day Inflow Streak to $3 Billion

The 12 Bitcoin ETFs collect $714.7 million on Tuesday after Monday’s near-billion-dollar opening. They add $347 million on Wednesday, $190.6 million on Thursday, and $134.5 million on Friday. That sequence takes the seven-session run, which starts September 17, to $3 billion.

The prior week brings Bitcoin ETFs only $6.2 million, despite a $433 million Friday addition. Monday’s $999 million total ranks as the ninth-largest daily intake since these products launched in January 2024. It also marks their largest daily result since October 6, 2025. Each session records inflows.

BlackRock’s IBIT leads weekly demand with $1.2 billion, its second-largest weekly intake since October 2025. Fidelity’s FBTC follows with $701.7 million, its best result since the week of September 8, 2025. Ark and 21Shares’ ARKB receives $294.7 million, with most arriving during Monday’s session.

Morgan Stanley’s MSBT adds $203.3 million, setting a weekly record since its April debut. Its previous high was $71.1 million in mid-April. These allocations spread demand beyond the two largest funds, although IBIT and FBTC still account for most of the total.

Bitcoin ETFs hold $108.4 billion in net assets by Friday. Bitcoin ETFs’ cumulative inflows reach $57.6 billion since launch. Weekly trading volume falls to $15 billion from $16.2 billion, even as subscriptions rise. The funds therefore attract more new capital during a week with less secondary-market turnover.

The latest run follows the Treasury Department’s plan to increase buybacks of long-dated bonds. Market commentary links $5.3 billion in Bitcoin ETF inflows since the Treasury announcement to the buyback plan. The timing provides liquidity context for the reversal, although fund data do not establish a single cause.

Ether and Solana ETFs Record Strong Weekly Inflows

Ether ETFs collect $689.9 million during the week after losing about $140 million in the prior period. Monday brings $270 million, their strongest daily result since October 7, 2025. Daily additions then range from $66 million to $162.3 million across the next four sessions.

BlackRock’s ETHA leads with $326.2 million, while Fidelity’s FETH attracts $174 million. Grayscale’s Ethereum Mini Trust adds $100.3 million. BlackRock’s ETHB receives $47.5 million, including $31.9 million on Friday.

Ether ETFs now show about $1.6 billion in net inflows for 2026. Net assets reach $17.8 billion, while cumulative inflows since launch stand at $13.9 billion. Weekly trading volume declines to $4.8 billion from $6.9 billion.

Solana ETFs take in a record $86.7 million on Friday, their largest daily inflow since launching in late October 2025. Bitwise’s BSOL supplies $55.7 million, or about 64% of that amount. Weekly inflows reach $188.2 million, trailing only the products’ $199.2 million launch week.

Friday’s record closes a week that finishes $11 million below the launch-period peak. Combined fund assets rise by $300 million, or about 25%, across the same period. That increase takes the group from $1.2 billion to a record $1.5 billion. BSOL holds about 71% of those assets.

Spot XRP ETFs add $75.6 million for the week. Grayscale’s Zcash fund briefly crosses $1 billion in net assets on Thursday, expanding the week’s inflows beyond Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana products.

The post Bitcoin ETFs Turn Positive in 2026 After $2.4B Weekly Inflow appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 479 points on Friday, marking a 0.9% increase, while both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq advanced 0.5%
• Major equity indexes secured positive weekly performance despite mid-week market turbulence
• The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed to its highest point since 2007, moderating slightly by Friday’s close
• Crude oil markets declined following diplomatic developments regarding the Strait of Hormuz
• Market pricing indicates better than 60% probability of a Federal Reserve rate increase in October

U.S. stocks finished Friday’s session in positive territory, capping off a tumultuous week of trading on Wall Street. The advance occurred despite Treasury yields climbing to heights unseen in nearly two decades.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 479 points, representing a 0.9% gain, settling at 51,829. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite registered approximately 0.5% increases.

On a weekly basis, the Dow posted a 0.3% advance. The S&P 500 recorded a 1.2% gain, while the Nasdaq climbed 2%, successfully recovering from midweek losses.

Among individual movers, Akamai Technologies stood out with a notable 3% rally following its announcement of an extended partnership agreement with Anthropic.

Meta Platforms delivered impressive weekly performance, surging nearly 13% as investors reacted enthusiastically to the company’s latest artificial intelligence initiative, Muse.

Treasury Market Turbulence Shakes Investor Confidence

Fixed income markets experienced significant fluctuations throughout the week. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed to its loftiest level since 2007, briefly touching 5.228% before moderating.

By Friday’s close, it stood at 5.18%, marking a new 19-year peak. The 30-year Treasury yield finished at 5.5%, having breached that threshold for the first time in over two decades.

Meanwhile, the two-year yield declined modestly, settling at 4.862%.

Several catalysts have propelled yields higher. Among them are aggressive rhetoric from Federal Reserve policymakers, elevated energy costs stemming from Middle Eastern tensions, and purchasing managers data that exceeded forecasts.

Current Fed funds futures pricing suggests approximately 64% to 66% odds of a rate increase next month. Market participants are anticipating three additional quarter-percentage-point increases through the conclusion of 2027.

Crude Markets Retreat on Diplomatic Progress

Oil prices declined throughout the week following indications that American and Iranian officials were exploring an agreement to resume normal operations through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian representatives have reportedly requested a return to terms outlined in a June memorandum of understanding.

West Texas Intermediate crude declined 2.33%, finishing at $92.41 per barrel. Brent crude, the global pricing standard, dropped 2.14% to close at $104.32 per barrel.

Market participants also monitored ongoing diplomatic engagement between Washington and Beijing during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s American visit.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicated that both nations had reached consensus on a two-month extension of their existing trade agreement. Additional specifics regarding the negotiations are anticipated in the near term.

Friday brought fresh consumer sentiment figures from the University of Michigan. The September index weakened from previous levels but exceeded initial projections.

The report revealed elevated inflation expectations among consumers across both near-term and extended timeframes. This development presents another consideration for Federal Reserve officials as they deliberate future monetary policy.

Market observers remain divided on the implications. Some warn that persistently elevated yields could ultimately pressure equity valuations and economic expansion. Others point to the economy’s demonstrated durability thus far.

Looking forward, market participants will remain focused on Treasury yields, energy prices, and trade negotiations for signals on market direction.

The post Stock Market Rallies Despite Treasury Yields Hitting Multi-Decade Highs appeared first on Blockonomi.

Researchers behind Alloc Init have proposed “Shielded Bitcoin,” a metaprotocol designed to hide BTC transfer amounts and counterparties without changing Bitcoin’s consensus rules or relying on trusted bridge operators.

The design borrows the encrypted-note approach Zcash made known, but builds it directly on Bitcoin’s existing base layer, using cryptographic proofs instead of a trusted intermediary to move value privately.

How the Privacy Layer Works

Presented by Clara Shikhelman, Mikhail Komarov and Aleksei Moskvin, the proposal starts with a simple limitation: Bitcoin’s ledger is public, so amounts, transaction timing and links between transactions can often be examined and associated with known wallets.

Shielded Bitcoin would place value into encrypted “notes,” with each note containing an amount and its owner’s receiving information. So, for example, when Alice pays Bob, her wallet would publish encrypted notes to Bitcoin alongside a zero-knowledge proof.

The proof confirms that the notes being spent exist and that Alice is authorized to spend them. It also confirms that the amounts balance, without exposing those details publicly.

Software called indexers would then read these transfers, verify the proofs, and track nullifiers, which are unique serial numbers that prevent the same note from being spent twice. According to the researchers, anyone can run indexers, meaning no single party can control the ledger.

The design also distinguishes spending from viewing, letting a wallet split into separate keys: one that spends funds and another that is read-only and detects incoming transfers. There’s also a third key that will detect incoming transfers and another that recovers a user’s own history, letting people share limited details with others without handing over spending power.

Where This Fits Among Bitcoin’s Privacy Options

Shielded Bitcoin could join a handful of existing efforts to keep BTC transaction data private, each with different tradeoffs. Some, like CoinJoin, PayJoin, and Silent Payments, work inside Bitcoin’s current transaction format and can make ownership harder to trace, but amounts and much of the transaction graph stay visible.

Shikhelman and her colleagues described Zcash as the closest precedent for its encrypted-note model. However, the privacy coin, which has been on a run that recently took it to its best price in ten years, uses encrypted notes, nullifiers and zero-knowledge proofs, but operates on its own blockchain and consensus rules while Shielded Bitcoin derives its state from Bitcoin’s history.

That distinction means transaction patterns, distinctive wallet behavior, and repeated publication fees could still help observers narrow down relationships over time.

Recently, Grayscale pointed to AI making it easier to link wallet addresses to real identities, and its research head Zach Pandl said tools like Zcash’s shielded transactions could become close to a necessity for privacy-minded users.

The post Researchers Propose Zcash-Style Privacy for Bitcoin Without a Soft Fork appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Institutional investors are keeping their crypto exposure steady despite the intense turmoil between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026, according to a survey by Bitwise.

The firm interviewed 15 institutions and found that none cut their allocation during a period when the market fell by about 50%.

Bitcoin Is the Institutional Favorite

Crypto allocations remain relatively small across the portfolios surveyed and range from 0.5% to 13% of investable assets. Most institutions hold between 1% and 2%. Their exposure is spread across ETFs, direct crypto holdings, venture capital, and hedge funds. The survey found that institutions are not stepping away from crypto. Some are maintaining their current targets, while others are still working toward higher allocations.

Several investors are also moving away from illiquid private placements. Some are even adding market-neutral strategies to reduce volatility and make crypto investments easier to approve internally. Bitwise said the debate is increasingly focused on how much crypto to hold and which investment vehicles to use, rather than whether to invest at all.

Institutional investors are also taking different approaches when it comes to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

It is no surprise that Bitcoin remains the strongest point of conviction among those interviewed. Every institution that owns crypto also owns BTC. Many see it as a store of value and a hedge against currency debasement, often comparing it with gold. Some institutions hold Bitcoin as a standalone position, while others use a market-cap-weighted basket that still leaves around 80% of their crypto exposure in BTC.

Ethereum and Solana, however, face a different test. Bitwise found that institutions that own them generally keep smaller positions and have shorter investment timelines. Their decisions are tied to specific adoption and value-accrual expectations. Some investors avoid the two assets entirely because they do not see a clear link between blockchain activity and token value.

Others treat them as venture-style technology bets. Institutions holding these assets are watching real-world usage, transaction activity, and fees.

ETFs Change the Game

Meanwhile, spot crypto exchange-traded funds have changed the way institutions enter the market. Almost every institution interviewed either already uses these funds or plans to use them. Several investors moved from direct crypto custody to ETFs as they cited lower costs, less operational work, and simpler reporting.

Institutions still holding private crypto vehicles are also looking at ETFs. Many see better liquidity and more flexibility for portfolio rebalancing.

However, not every player is making the switch. Some face rules that prevent them from holding spot commodities, including through ETFs. Others want direct control of crypto assets and are building their own custody systems. One institution also raised concerns about public disclosure of ETF holdings through 13F filings.

The post Institutions Watched Bitcoin Fall 50%: Yet None of 15 Bitwise Surveyed Investors Cut Exposure appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The failure of the CLARITY Act in the US Senate on September 15 hasn’t deterred the two largest local regulators from trying to clear the air on crypto regulation in the country, with the Securities and Exchange Commission now issuing fresh staff guidance addressing several long-running questions.

The new set of FAQs focuses heavily on when tokens may fall outside securities regulation and what types of issuer activity do or do not create new Howey-related concerns.

New Set of FAQs

One of the more notable sections addresses Staking Receipt Tokens, which represent ownership of crypto assets deposited for staking. The circumstances described by the watchdog indicate that a staking receipt tied to a digital commodity that is not subject to an investment contract can be considered a digital tool since it simply evidences ownership of the underlying asset.

In certain cases, such a token may instead qualify as a digital commodity when issued by a protocol-based liquid staking provider. The distinction depends heavily on what rights the receipt actually creates. The agency said a true “receipt” should not transfer ownership or control of the deposited asset to the issuer, nor allow that issuer to lend, pledge, rehypothecate, or otherwise use it.

According to the statement, continuing to secure, maintain, improve, or enhance a functional blockchain network, including funding development or encouraging network effects, does not constitute the type of “essential managerial efforts” typically associated with an investment contract under Howey.

Once a functional crypto system has no central controlling party, statements by an original issuer would generally be less likely to create a new investment contract around the native asset.

Token Buybacks and Marketing

Announcing a buyback of a non-security token for a functional crypto system would not amount to a promise of essential managerial efforts. The answer, though, changes if the network is not yet functional and the issuer markets the buyback as a mechanism designed to generate yield or returns for holders.

Broader marketing receives similar treatment, as the SEC said simply promoting a network’s existing utility or capabilities would generally not be enough to establish an investment contract. Even aspirational statements about future features may fall outside that threshold if they do not promote the prospect of profit.

These FAQs follow the most recent guidance issued by the SEC and the CFTC after the CLARITY Act vote failed in the US Senate.

The post SEC Issues Fresh Crypto Guidance on Staking Tokens, Buybacks, and the Howey Test appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ethereum remains in a constructive broader structure despite cooling off after its latest rally. ETH is consolidating below $2.7K after rejection from the $2.75K-$2.82K resistance zone, while the daily moving averages are approaching a potentially important bullish crossover.

ETH Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, Ethereum’s structure remains bullish following the explosive breakout from the $1.85K-$1.92K demand zone in August. Since then, the market has established a sequence of higher lows, with the ascending trendline continuing to provide structural support.

The latest rally pushed ETH directly into the major $2.75K-$2.82K resistance zone, where selling pressure emerged and prevented an immediate breakout. The asset has since stabilized around $2.69K rather than undergoing a correction, suggesting buyers are still maintaining control of the broader structure.

Another notable development is the convergence of the two displayed moving averages. The faster yellow average is rising sharply toward the slower orange average around the $2.05K-$2.10K region. If the faster average crosses above the slower one, it would form a golden cross and provide further technical confirmation that the medium-term trend has shifted in favor of buyers. However, the crossover has not occurred yet and therefore remains a potential signal rather than a confirmed one.

A daily breakout above the $2.75K-$2.82K resistance zone could open the door toward the next major supply area around $2.90K-$3K. Meanwhile, the $2.36K-$2.52K zone, reinforced by the rising trendline, represents the key support area if a deeper pullback develops.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart shows ETH compressing immediately beneath the $2.75K-$2.82K resistance area. Following the rejection from roughly $2.8K, the price briefly dipped toward $2.63K before recovering and entering a tight consolidation around $2.68K-$2.70K.

At the same time, the rising trendline connecting the recent higher lows is gradually approaching price. This creates a tightening structure between ascending support and the overhead resistance zone. As long as ETH remains above this trendline, short-term momentum appears constructive, and another challenge of $2.75K-$2.82K remains plausible.

A confirmed breakout above $2.82K would strengthen the continuation scenario toward the $2.90K-$3K resistance zone. Conversely, losing the ascending trendline could trigger a deeper correction, initially putting the $2.43K-$2.49K demand zone back into focus. Below there, the larger $2.21K-$2.28K support area would become relevant.

Sentiment Analysis

The one-week Binance ETH/USDT liquidation heatmap shows significant concentrations of leveraged positions on both sides of the current price, although the most prominent nearby liquidity is above the market.

A particularly dense liquidation cluster has developed around $2.78K-$2.82K, closely overlapping with the technical resistance visible on both price charts. This makes the area especially important. If ETH manages to break above resistance, the liquidation concentration could act as a magnet and potentially amplify the move as short positions are forced out.

On the downside, another substantial liquidity pool is visible around $2.60K-$2.62K. Therefore, failure to break higher and a loss of short-term support could draw the price toward this region first.

Overall, Ethereum is effectively caught between downside liquidity near $2.6K and a larger overhead cluster around $2.8K. Combined with the tightening 4-hour structure and the potential daily golden cross, a decisive break from the current consolidation could lead to a notable expansion in volatility.

The post Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH Eyes $3K, but These Major Hurdles Stand in the Way appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The NYSE-listed semiconductor company Sequans Communications announced earlier this week that it had sold its remaining 34 BTC and had officially closed the book on its Bitcoin treasury strategy.

The company has finalized its exit, which began earlier this year, as management prioritized debt reduction and refocused on its core business.

Done With Bitcoin

The press release shared by the company said the final sale leaves it with no cryptocurrency holdings on its balance sheet and no outstanding debt, except for obligations tied to government-funded research and development programs. Sequans framed the move as the final step in a broader balance-sheet restructuring rather than a bearish call on Bitcoin itself.

CEO Georges Karam said his company had monetized its remaining holdings in a “measured and opportunistic manner,” but it will now devote its full attention to its semiconductor growth strategy.

Sequans began its BTC retreat in May after using a portion of its BTC holdings to redeem all remaining convertible debt issued in July 2025. Back then, it still held roughly 658 BTC, but explicitly announced that its digital asset treasury strategy had concluded and that those remaining units would be monetized over time. By June 30, its total stash had fallen to 314 BTC, but it was emptied out entirely as of late September.

On the plus side, the company’s product revenue rose by more than 80% year-over-year in Q2, while its six-month product backlog more than tripled, according to the PR.

Various Takes on BTC Strategy

Aside from Sequans, other public companies also reduced their exposure to BTC this year, including Satsuma Technologies. It also dismantled its treasury vehicle, disposing of the remaining units a few months back. Empery Digital sold 1,400 BTC for about $87 million earlier this year as well.

Perhaps the biggest surprise came from Strategy, which broke with its long-standing buy-only approach during the summer, completing a few consecutive sales. However, it resumed its accumulation spree in late August and last week as BTC’s price started to recover and Strategy’s position turned green.

Strive has been on the opposite side; no sales have been conducted, and it has only accelerated its BTC purchases. Its stash reached 25,000 units earlier this month, and it acquired another 1,355 BTC last week.

The post Why Is This Company Dumping All of Its Bitcoin and Abandoning Its BTC Strategy? appeared first on CryptoPotato.