Xaman's rapid growth highlights the need for scalable infrastructure solutions to support expanding blockchain ecosystems and user demands.

The post Xaman wallet’s growth triggers XRPL node capacity fix appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The resolution of regulatory conflicts may enhance market stability, potentially boosting investor confidence and fostering Bitcoin's growth prospects.

The post Bloomberg: Crypto regulatory war ends as SEC, CFTC reach mutual acceptance appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The UN's focus on AI safety highlights the urgent need for global cooperation to manage AI risks, balancing innovation with oversight.

The post OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs take AI safety warnings to the UN Security Council appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bessemer's massive funding boost signals intensified competition in AI, potentially accelerating innovation and market shifts globally.

The post Bessemer Venture Partners raises $5.75B to double down on AI bets appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Amazon's larger stake in Anthropic's IPO could enhance its influence in the AI sector, potentially reshaping competitive dynamics with Alphabet.

The post Amazon set to gain more than Alphabet from Anthropic’s $2T IPO appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Slips While US Treasury Yields Soar, Oil Prices Climb

Bitcoin’s price slid on Wednesday, just as U.S. Treasuries surged, with the 10-year yield climbing above 5% and reaching — its highest level since 2007. 

The price of the leading cryptocurrency was down 2% over a 24-hour period Wednesday afternoon in New York, and was trading hands for $84,357. 

Bitcoin’s price had surged earlier in the week as investors piled into exchange-traded funds. At one point, it soared as high as nearly $87,330. 

But its rally has since cooled. It dropped further on Wednesday afternoon around the time the U.S. Treasury said it will purchase up to $6 billion of longer-dated government debt on Thursday. 

Bitcoin previously benefited from the Treasury Department’s announcement of buybacks — having its best run in months — but this time dropped.

The 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 5% on Wednesday for the first time in 19 years, after September’s flash PMI data came in well ahead of forecasts and pushed the composite index to a five-year high.

Inflation details added to the pressure: input costs across manufacturing and services rose to their highest level since October 2022, driven largely by fuel and transportation, while wage pressure also strengthened. 

Rising yields are typically a headwind for bitcoin’s price. When safe government bonds pay 5%, holding an asset that generates no income becomes more expensive. 

Higher rates also tend to strengthen the dollar and dampen appetite for risk-on assets. Bitcoin has repeatedly retreated this year when yields rose on inflation fears, often with ETF outflows and forced selling by leveraged traders amplifying the move.

This post Bitcoin Price Slips While US Treasury Yields Soar, Oil Prices Climb first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

CFTC Chair Selig Says Regulator Is Preparing for ‘24-7, On-Chain’ Markets

Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Mike Selig has said that the regulator was preparing for the transition of markets moving “24-7, on-chain.” 

Speaking to CNBC on Wednesday, the regulator said that it was an exciting time to be regulating markets related to crypto and artificial intelligence. 

The CFTC is fast pushing ahead with rulemaking for the crypto space, despite lawmakers last week blocking the long-awaited Clarity Act. Following the vote on the landmark crypto legislation, Selig said that the watchdog would still help U.S. President Trump “get the job done” in regulating digital assets. 

“Our markets are rapidly evolving,” Selig said. “We really have to reevaluate all of our rules and regulations to make sure that we’re ready and prepared for this transition to 24-7 on-chain and these automated markets that are facilitated through the use of algorithms and agentic finance.”

The Clarity Act wants to formally divide oversight between regulators, distinguishing which digital assets are securities, commodities or stablecoins. 

But the bill stalled and stumbled this year as the banking lobby had issues with crypto companies paying customers stablecoin rewards and some lawmakers — mostly Democrats — were concerned about the ethics side of the legislation. 

Trump received backing from major industry players while campaigning and since becoming president, his family has made money from digital asset ventures. 

Some lawmakers have alleged conflicts of interest; the White House has always denied any wrongdoing. 

Despite lawmakers blocking the Clarity Act, the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission have charged ahead with rulemaking. The CFTC last week sent a proposal to the White House to regulate crypto transactions and markets. 

And the SEC went ahead and approved tokenized stocks trading the same week. In August, it also proposed its own framework for crypto asset offerings, pressing ahead while the landmark legislation stalled.  

Formerly chief counsel at the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, Selig was described by White House’s Crypto and AI Tsar, David Sacks, as “instrumental in driving forward the President’s crypto agenda” 

President Trump in August urged lawmakers to get the Clarity Act over the line, referring to the legislation as “very, very powerful.” 

This post CFTC Chair Selig Says Regulator Is Preparing for ‘24-7, On-Chain’ Markets first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

NYSE and Blockchain.com Working Together To List Tokenized Stocks

The New ​York Stock Exchange and crypto exchange Blockchain.com have signed a memorandum of understanding to debut tokenized stocks. 

According to a Wednesday statement, if approved, Blockchain.com users would be able to trade tokenized U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds on NYSE’s planned digital alternative trading system. 

It comes as Wall Street increasingly eyes up Bitcoin and its related infrastructure. NYSE’s  parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, earlier this year announced it had invested in crypto exchange OKX. 

“People shouldn’t be limited in owning stocks based on where they happen to live or the brokerage and information they may or may not have access to,” Peter Smith, Blockchain.com’s executive chairman and CEO, said in a statement. 

“Connecting to the NYSE digital alternative trading system will enable us to extend the opportunity to invest in these digital assets to tens of millions of Blockchain.com users around the world.”

And NYSE Group President Lynn Martin added: “The future of capital markets belongs to institutions that unite the trust of traditional finance with the innovation and accessibility of digital assets.” 

In January, the NYSE said it was building a platform allowing traders to buy and sell tokenized versions of U.S.-listed equities and exchange-traded funds and settle those trades on the blockchain, 24/7. 

Wall Street has been eying up crypto companies and their infrastructure particularly because it’s interested in tokenizing assets like stocks. Traditional finance titans like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton for years have used blockchain rails to tokenize money funds.

But things have accelerated since the U.S. elected pro-crypto president Donald Trump and regulators have taken a more friendly stance to watchdogging the space. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week approved tokenized stocks trading. 

In January, the S&P 500 gave crypto platform Trade[XYZ] the green light to debut a new derivative contract on decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, giving traders the ability to trade the stock index 24-7. 

And Last month, Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, and fintech company SoFi Technologies, announced a deal to route SoFi customers’ crypto orders through Kraken’s institutional trading platform and list SoFi’s stablecoin on the exchange.

This post NYSE and Blockchain.com Working Together To List Tokenized Stocks first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Quantum Issue: You Never Really Know The Future

People have been debating whether a quantum computer presents a realistic threat to the Bitcoin network for over a decade. It was a serious topic of conversation over 13 years ago when I first discovered Bitcoin myself. 

There has been quite a lot of progress, both in terms of theory and real-world engineering, since long ago when I was just a bumbling idiot trying to figure out what was going on here. 

Two major milestones have been reached since then that make a material difference in the likelihood of a viable quantum computer actually being produced sometime in the next decade or so. That doesn’t inherently mean that it will reach a point of ubiquity, or even relative ease of access for those with large amounts of capital. 

But it is very possible that a number of viable machines will be produced in the near future. 

Error Correction Improvements

The first major improvement has been in error correction. To account for the inherent noise in working with things at this kind of tiny scale, to get a logical qubit that is useful in computation in practice requires the use of multiple redundant physical qubits. 

The prior state of the art way of doing this was surface codes, a way of bundling multiple physical qubits together in a grid and using some of them as check qubits that periodically “check on” their neighbors to ensure no internal errors in the superposition have occurred (without collapsing the superposition). Each grid’s empty spaces need to be filled with check qubits. 

This check qubit requirement creates an extra overhead that can get close to 1,000 physical qubits per logical qubit in total, and it gets bad at scale because check qubits can only check on the qubits immediately next to them. So every grouping of qubits needs to have checkers in equidistant spacing. 

Quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes remove this bottleneck, allowing check qubits to check other qubits at large distances (either through traces interwoven to communicate across chip sections, or by physically moving atoms like with the neutral atom design) across the device. This has allowed a 10x reduction in the amount of physical qubits necessary to produce a reliable logical qubit. 

That is not something to sneeze at. While it might not be a fully functional machine making progress at gaining more efficiency, it is material efficiency gains in the engineering processes that underlie the production of a fully functional quantum computer. 

Progress In Proving Fundamentals

The second has to do with a more fundamental question around the assertion that adding more physical qubits leads to a reduction in overall noise in the system rather than an increase. This is really at this point still theory, and you have to keep in mind that to this day there has never been a fully functional quantum computer that has end-to-end performed a computation a classical computer is incapable of. 

Google performed an experiment using their Sycamore (and later Willow) chips to experimentally verify the effect of adding more physical qubits. To be very clear, this was not a demonstration of performing computations, but simply a demonstration of storing information in memory without it decaying. 

They demonstrated through the use of logical qubits composed of a bundle of 17 physical qubits, a bundle of 49 physical qubits, and a bundle of 101 physical qubits that the logical error rate, the frequency of data corruption, decreased as the physical qubit count went up. This test passed a critical threshold, where the logical qubit being created out of the independent physical qubits maintained coherence longer than any individual physical qubit it was composed of. 

Now again, this is not a jump to a fully functional quantum computer performing computations that classical machines are incapable of, but it is material progress proving one of the fundamental assumptions underlying quantum computers. 

AI

These aren’t the only things that we are finding better solutions to in this problem space either. Artificial intelligence has become a big component in these systems. It is being used in the actual process of reading and decoding information from a quantum computer, a big bottleneck for actually making use of it at scale. 

AI is also being used in the development of new quantum algorithms optimized for these types of machines, and given the recent spate of AI helping to solve (or even disprove existing conjectures) major problems in the field of mathematics, this isn’t really that crazy of a leap to consider the possibility of major breakthroughs brought about by AI. 

They are being put to the same use in actually designing the actual physical quantum circuits that are built using different architectures. This is a very complex problem, actually, finding the optimal way to lay out quantum gates in a physical space to minimize noise at the quantum level, without creating so much empty space that you introduce latency, inefficiency, and other problems to solve. 

This is a factor that very well could hypercharge progress at solving the necessary fundamental problems. 

Outlook Ahead

Ultimately, in my opinion, this comes down to one question: does the assumption that adding more physical qubits reduce noise actually hold when it comes to computation and the active manipulation of quantum information. 

If that assumption does hold, and isn’t experimentally disproven sometime in the near future, then I think there is a very realistic case for a viable quantum computer being produced in the next ten years. 

There is a massive amount of resources being thrown at this problem, significant (but not overwhelming) progress at solving pieces of the problem, and if there fundamentally is a way to do something, human beings usually figure it out. 

I’m not saying that it’s time to panic, but don’t discount the possibility. 

This piece is featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The Quantum Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

This post The Quantum Issue: You Never Really Know The Future first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Shinobi.

Bitcoin Magazine

Raiffeisen Bank International to Roll Out Bitcoin Services Across Europe in Expanded Bitpanda Deal

Austrian banking group Raiffeisen is rolling out bitcoin trading for its 18 million customers.

The firm said in a Wednesday statement that it was working with brokerage Bitpanda as part of the initiative. 

Raiffeisen’s announcement comes as top banks worldwide launch crypto trading and custody services. BBVA, Santander’s Openbank, Germany’s cooperative and savings banks, SoFi, PNC, Charles Schwab and Morgan Stanley have all either launched or announced retail crypto trading over the past 18 months.

RBI chief executive Michael Höllerer pointed to customer demand as the driving force. “We are seeing growing demand for crypto assets in our markets, which we are addressing with a strong, reputable partner,” he said, adding that the bank is committed to “meeting our customers’ needs in the best possible way.”

The deal builds on an arrangement that began in Austria. In 2024, Raiffeisen Landesbank Niederösterreich-Wien (RLB NÖ-Wien) became the first traditional bank in the European Union to offer crypto trading within its existing banking environment, using Bitpanda’s technology. 

The new agreement moves away from striking separate integrations market by market and instead sets up a single approach for the whole group.

Bitpanda Enterprise provides banks, fintechs, brokers, trading firms and family offices with the tools to offer digital asset products to retail and corporate clients. Its services include investment infrastructure, liquidity, custody, payments, stablecoins and tokenisation, with an emphasis on compliance and scalability.

RBI treats Austria and Central and Eastern Europe as its home market, with subsidiary banks in 11 countries in the region. The group has about 42,000 employees serving 18.8 million customers through roughly 1,300 branches, most of them in CEE. Its shares trade on the Vienna Stock Exchange, and the regional Raiffeisen banks own about 61.2 per cent of the company, with the rest in free float.

This post Raiffeisen Bank International to Roll Out Bitcoin Services Across Europe in Expanded Bitpanda Deal first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

BlackRock says AI could create a new class of stablecoin customer: machines that spend continuously without human approval.

The world’s largest asset manager sees increasingly autonomous AI systems purchasing data, accessing software, and acquiring computing resources on their own, potentially adding a new source of transaction demand to digital assets beyond trading and human payments.

That prospect sits at the center of BlackRock’s new report, The Machine-Native Economy, which argues that artificial intelligence could eventually change who initiates economic activity. Instead of people making individual payment decisions, software could execute thousands of small transactions to complete a task.

Stablecoins enter that market with more than $300 billion already in circulation and about $11.2 trillion of adjusted transaction volume in 2025, according to BlackRock. The firm calculated that volume grew at an 80% compound annual rate between 2020 and 2025, compared with roughly 8.5% for the US Automated Clearing House (ACH) network.

ACH still processed about $93 trillion last year, reflecting how far stablecoins remain from the largest traditional payment rails. BlackRock also cautioned against directly comparing stablecoin activity with Visa and Mastercard because the networks measure transactions differently.

The potentially bigger shift, however, is in transaction behavior rather than existing volume.

An AI agent searching for information or computing capacity could pay repeatedly for individual API calls, data feeds, or units of processing power. Those transactions may be worth fractions of a cent and occur around the clock, creating a payment pattern markedly different from card purchases or bank transfers designed primarily around human customers.

That gives stablecoins an opening because software can hold them in programmable wallets and settle transactions without requiring a person to approve each payment.

Stablecoins may win the machine wallet before blockchains win the economics

Payment companies are already competing over how those transactions will move.

Coinbase’s x402 protocol uses the web’s HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status to let a service demand payment before returning data or another resource. An agent can request an API, receive payment instructions, transfer USDC, and get the service without a human completing checkout.

Stripe and Tempo are developing the Machine Payments Protocol, which can settle transactions through stablecoins or traditional payment methods. Stripe and OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol connect AI agents with existing merchant systems, while Google and Visa are working on separate standards around agent identity and authorization.

The competing approaches complicate any assumption that machine commerce will automatically migrate on-chain.

Traditional payment networks can adapt to autonomous software, particularly where agents transact with established businesses and consumers. Stablecoins appear better positioned where payments become especially small, frequent, or native to software.

That leaves a second contest over where the value from those payments eventually accrues.

If agents generate more stablecoin transactions on Ethereum, greater usage could increase demand for blockspace and validator services. ETH is used in the network’s fee and staking system, providing one route through which higher transaction activity can affect the native asset.

But transaction growth and token demand do not necessarily rise together.

BlackRock said the amount captured by native crypto assets will depend on fee structures, staking economics and gas-sponsorship models. Networks can process large volumes while charging very little, while applications can also shield users and agents from holding the underlying gas token themselves.

Circle’s Arc presents a different model. The payments-focused blockchain uses USDC as its native gas asset, meaning additional activity could strengthen the stablecoin’s role without producing the same transmission mechanism to a separate native token such as ETH.

For investors, that distinction could matter more if machine payments scale. Stablecoin issuers may gain transaction demand while the networks processing those transfers compete separately to turn higher throughput into economic value.

AI compute could make the machine customer considerably larger

BlackRock expects the same payment architecture to eventually reach one of AI’s biggest expenses: computing power.

Cumulative investment in AI infrastructure could exceed $5 trillion between 2025 and 2030, while Bloomberg consensus forecasts cited by BlackRock put combined revenue from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business and Google Cloud at about $1.1 trillion by 2030.

That would create a large resource market for increasingly autonomous agents to navigate.

An agent could compare computing providers by price, hardware, location, latency, or performance; purchase capacity for a specific task; and settle the cost automatically. Payments could occur per job, per use, or potentially per model token.

AI inference would then become a recurring machine-to-machine transaction loop: software finding compute, buying it, consuming it, and paying for the resource without a person intervening at each stage.

BlackRock sees an even larger financial market potentially forming around that activity.

Standardized claims on computing capacity could eventually be traded or pledged as collateral, while futures markets could allow buyers and sellers to hedge changes in compute costs. Such markets would require standards that account for major differences between chips, energy prices, locations, and performance.

That part of the thesis remains largely prospective. Agentic payment activity is still nascent, and traditional financial companies are building their own infrastructure for autonomous commerce alongside crypto firms.

The nearer competition is over the machine’s wallet.

Stablecoin issuers need their tokens to become the default settlement asset for software. Payment protocols need to become the standard agents use to request and pay for resources. Ethereum and rival blockchains face the harder task of ensuring that higher stablecoin throughput translates into demand for their own economic assets.

Traditional payment networks, meanwhile, have an incentive to keep that activity on existing rails.

As AI systems gain more authority to spend, those competing infrastructures will increasingly fight over a customer that never sleeps, can transact thousands of times in the background, and may care more about price, settlement speed, and programmability than which financial network sits underneath the payment.

The post BlackRock sees a new $5 trillion AI trade emerging for stablecoins appeared first on CryptoSlate.

At a New York Fed conference on Sept. 22, Treasury officials and market participants discussed whether the government should lend excess cash into the overnight repo market, which finances Treasury trades. Such a move could raise bank reserves. Treasury announced no repo-lending program, amount or timetable at the conference, and any benefit for Bitcoin would be indirect.

Reuters reported that several private-sector panelists welcomed the idea. The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee had considered it in May and urged further study. For now, the discussion is about how Treasury might manage its cash, rather than an operating program.

How a Treasury repo investment would work

The Treasury General Account, or TGA, holds government operating cash at the Federal Reserve. In a May presentation, the advisory committee modeled what would happen if Treasury lent some of that cash overnight against Treasury securities. Money would leave the TGA, while bank reserves, the balances banks hold at the Fed, would rise. Treasury would earn a repo rate, and the Fed would pay interest on the additional reserves.

The two public institutions have to be considered together. Treasury’s interest earnings alone would not be the full government benefit, because additional reserves also bring an interest cost at the Fed. The economic result depends on the repo rate Treasury earns compared with the rate the Fed pays on reserves, after costs. The modeled transaction is Treasury cash lending, not Federal Reserve bond buying.

The size of the TGA is therefore a poor shortcut for the size of any possible operation. Treasury’s August cash plan assumed a $950 billion balance at the end of September and said the account could reach about $1.05 trillion, plus or minus $50 billion, in late October. Those figures are cash-balance plans around government payment needs. Treasury did not present either as money earmarked for repo lending.

The committee’s May report also tempered the economic case. A presenting member estimated that, with ample bank reserves, investing excess cash might produce only 0 to 2 basis points of economic return for the government on a consolidated basis. The committee saw likely benefits as marginal against the challenges of setting up a program and recommended more design work. That small, regime-dependent estimate is not a promised return.

Current funding conditions matter as much as the accounting. In remarks at the conference, Roberto Perli, who manages the Fed’s System Open Market Account, said overnight money-market rates had averaged slightly below the rate paid on reserves. That suggested reserves were in the higher part of the Fed’s ample range. He also said roughly $400 billion of net Treasury bill issuance in the weeks leading up to the Desk’s August purchase decision put only very modest upward pressure on repo rates.

Perli’s observations do not predict the effect of a Treasury lending program. They show that money markets had absorbed a large recent supply of bills without signs of acute repo funding pressure. Whether Treasury cash would meaningfully lower borrowing costs would depend on the amount offered, the timing and how repo rates responded.

What Bitcoin would need to see

If Treasury adopted the proposal and its lending materially eased short-term financing, that could eventually improve conditions for risk-taking. Bitcoin is several steps removed from the initial transaction, however: higher bank reserves do not by themselves establish cheaper funding, fresh Bitcoin demand or a price effect. None of the cited Treasury or Fed work measures such an effect.

The practical test would begin with a Treasury decision and operating terms, then move to actual lending volumes and observable changes in repo rates and reserves. Until then, a discussion about where Treasury holds and lends its cash is not evidence of a trillion-dollar Bitcoin stimulus.

The post Treasury’s cash balance nears $1 trillion while Bitcoin awaits a crucial market signal appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Nearly $20 million of XRP was drained from thousands of hardware wallets in six waves spanning nearly a week.

Blockchain analysis firm XRPL.to traced 11.75 million XRP leaving 6,678 distinct wallets between Sept. 15 and Sept. 20, including several collection waves after DCENT warned users of unauthorized transfers involving its mobile App Wallet.

At XRP’s current price of about $1.59, the tokens are worth roughly $18.68 million.

XRPL.to dates the first identified sweep to 15:35 UTC on Sept. 15. DCENT said it received its first customer report in Korea on Sept. 16 and began notifying users through its app and official channels that day.

The draining then resumed.

Another collection wave began at 07:05 UTC on Sept. 17, according to XRPL.to, while the final sweep captured in its investigation occurred at 20:56 UTC on Sept. 20.

The investigator counted 4,208 wallets swept through payment transactions and another 2,470 emptied through account deletion without a preceding payment in the dataset it traced. It also identified 5,001 AccountDelete transactions originating from 4,950 wallets, including accounts that had already been partially emptied.

Account deletion allowed whoever controlled the keys to extract balances that ordinary payment sweeps could leave behind. XRP Ledger (XRPL) accounts maintain a reserve while they remain open, but an AccountDelete transaction can close an eligible account and forward its remaining XRP, minus the deletion fee, to another address.

One such deletion moved 107,507 XRP, worth about $171,000 at current prices.

XRPL.to said the payment and deletion transactions were validly signed with the affected accounts’ keys. The blockchain trail does not reveal how those keys were obtained, and DCENT has yet to disclose the technical cause of the incident.

More than 5.6 million XRP moved through THORChain

Much of the stolen XRP had already begun leaving the XRP Ledger by the time investigators mapped the flows.

XRPL.to traced 5.67 million XRP through THORChain as of 11:26 UTC on Sept. 21, including about 5.59 million XRP sent from two collection waves through transactions whose memos specified Ethereum destination addresses.

Another 3.24 million XRP flowed to unionchain.ai, which XRPL.to described as an exchange, while about 546,080 XRP reached NEAR Intents and 535,666 XRP moved into Binance deposit tags.

Around 1.31 million XRP remained in wallets linked to the operation at the investigator’s snapshot.

The destinations complicate attempts to recover the assets. THORChain and NEAR Intents can move value between networks, creating additional trails investigators must follow once XRP has been exchanged for assets on another blockchain.

Meanwhile, transfers to exchange-linked addresses could offer potential intervention points, though a deposit address alone does not establish whether the funds were sold or remain accessible.

DCENT said it has been working with Korean law enforcement, outside security specialists, blockchain projects and exchanges to trace the money and request freezes where possible.

The company has not announced a completed freeze or recovery. It has said any such action depends on law enforcement, exchanges and other third parties controlling the services through which funds traveled.

DCENT urges holders to abandon exposed recovery phrases

The continuing sweeps prompted DCENT to escalate its warning on Sept. 20, asking the broader blockchain and crypto community to help reach App Wallet users who might not have seen its earlier notices.

“The most important step to prevent further damage is moving assets out of the DCENT App Wallet,” the company said, urging users and crypto communities to spread its guidance directly to anyone known to use the app.

DCENT told affected users to update the app from an official app store before taking further action and move their holdings to a wallet created with an entirely new recovery phrase.

That requirement also extends to some hardware-wallet users.

DCENT said anyone who previously entered or restored a hardware wallet’s recovery phrase inside its App Wallet should follow the same migration procedure. Moving the same phrase back onto a hardware device does not generate new private keys, meaning any prior exposure follows the phrase into the new device.

The company’s potential-impact criteria also include addresses whose recovery phrase was used in the App Wallet and that signed transactions using an app version earlier than 8.1.0, released Nov. 5, 2025. Users who later upgraded the software are still being asked to consider which version was installed when they previously signed transactions.

DCENT says hardware users who never entered their recovery phrase into the App Wallet and never used the software wallet to sign transactions do not need to migrate under its current criteria.

The company has also warned users against a second wave of potential losses from impersonators exploiting the incident. DCENT said it will never ask for a recovery phrase, private key, or PIN and will not provide a wallet address to which users must send assets for recovery or compensation.

For users who have already suffered unauthorized transfers, DCENT said on Sept. 20 that it was still developing a process for determining the scope of impact and the status of affected assets.

The post Nearly $20 million in XRP drained from 6,678 wallets across six attack waves appeared first on CryptoSlate.

More than $1 billion in reported trading makes Coinbase's stock tokens look active. For a holder looking to sell, the question is how much the market can absorb now, and at what price, particularly outside US equity hours.

A Sept. 23 premarket check found indicative buy and sell routes for about $100,000 of each of Coinbase's ten stock tokens on Base. The estimated proceeds from selling were 0.06% to 0.71% below KyberSwap's own dollar valuation of the tokens offered. The routes price individual orders at one instant; they do not establish capacity for a simultaneous selloff.

The ten principal Aerodrome stock/USDC pools held about $12.97 million in combined displayed balances during the check. Individual pools ranged from roughly $818,700 for MSFTc to $2.11 million for NVDAc. Those balances include both the stock token and USDC. The total alone leaves the amount available to absorb a sale within a specified price range unknown.

Dromos Kitchen's stock-token dashboard put cumulative trading volume at about $1.02 billion and total tokenized value at $19.82 million on Sept. 23. Its community-built data carries a warning that it may be incomplete. Turnover accumulates across trades; it cannot be read as a fresh pool of buyers waiting for a large sell order.

What the $100,000 quotes show

The table pairs each displayed Aerodrome pool balance with KyberSwap's estimated routes for selling a stock token into USDC and buying it with USDC. The quote gap measures how far the router's estimated output dollar value fell below its own dollar valuation of the input. It does not compare the token with the underlying share's exchange price or record a completed trade.

Method: Pool balances are from the ten matching Aerodrome Slipstream 3 stock/USDC records at about 08:00 UTC. KyberSwap GET route summaries were captured from 08:02:01 to 08:02:42 UTC. Sell quantities approximated $100,000 at displayed token prices; KyberSwap's own input marks varied slightly. Values are rounded, gas is separate, and no trades were sent. Its API requires a separate step to build a transaction.

At roughly $10,000 per token, sell-side quote gaps were 0.01% to 0.12%. The $100,000 orders generally widened those gaps. Some routes combined Aerodrome with other liquidity sources, so their estimated prices reflect the router's reach beyond any one pool. That extra access may change quickly as market makers and liquidity providers adjust their offers.

The displayed balances depend partly on what liquidity providers are paid to keep capital in the market. Under Aerodrome's gauge rules, providers who stake their pool positions for AERO emissions give up their direct swap-fee rewards, which go to voters directing the emissions. Fee generation and the AERO stream are separate parts of the pool's economics.

At the August launch, Beefy said Coinbase was supplying USDC incentives through Merkl in two-week periods and Beefy was adding its own boosts alongside Aerodrome emissions. That describes how liquidity was encouraged at launch, not a verified current return for every stock pool. If incentives or votes move elsewhere, providers can reassess their positions regardless of how much the tokens have traded historically.

The funding structure matters most when token trading outlasts the underlying share market.

Base says Coinbase's tokens are backed by underlying shares held in regulated custody and are available only in eligible jurisdictions outside the United States. Its developer documentation describes secondary token trading as permissionless, subject to address controls, while primary minting and redemption of the underlying shares are restricted to authorized participants.

The tokens can change hands while the US stock market is closed. The same Base documentation says the Chainlink equity feed holds its last value outside market hours while onchain token trading can continue. A holder selling after hours therefore faces a live token market whose underlying equity reference may still reflect the prior session. Authorized participants control the separate share-creation and redemption channel, leaving secondary-market liquidity providers to set the price of an immediate exit.

The Sept. 23 routes show that $100,000 individual orders received indicative prices despite modest displayed pools. A change in AERO votes, provider capital or after-hours stock news could alter those routes while the equity feed holds its last value.

The post $1 billion in trading volume masks hidden liquidity risks for Coinbase stock token holders appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Money-market mutual funds absorbed approximately 85% of the US government's latest Treasury-bill surge, giving traditional cash managers the clearest claim to the marginal demand behind the summer issuance wave.

The Treasury Department said net bill supply grew by more than $550 billion in July and August, an increase of about 8% in two months. Money funds took down most of that additional supply, according to remarks delivered Sept. 22 by Deputy Treasury Secretary Francis Brooke.

Stablecoin providers remain important holders of short-dated government debt. Treasury puts their holdings at nearly $200 billion. Yet that number measures a stock of Treasury bills and other close-to-maturity securities, while the money-fund figure measures purchases associated with a specific two-month supply increase. The categories can also overlap because stablecoin reserves may be invested through government money-market funds and repurchase agreements.

The result is a more precise picture of crypto's role in government finance. Stablecoins are already material Treasury-linked investors and could become a larger source of demand as regulation takes shape. The documented incremental buying in 2026, however, has come primarily from money funds and the Federal Reserve, with foreign investors returning in July.

What Treasury's buyer breakdown shows

Four figures frame the market, but they use different clocks and measure different things. They are context for one another, not amounts that can be added into a single buyer total.

Treasury's 85% estimate directly addresses the latest increase in supply. It applies to the additional bills issued during July and August rather than the entire bill market. The remaining share was not allocated among other buyers in the speech.

The stablecoin total serves a different purpose. It shows that issuers have become a meaningful source of demand for short-dated government assets. Treasury described the nearly $200 billion as bills and other close-to-maturity Treasury securities, without splitting the total by security type or specifying how much was acquired during the summer.

Issuer disclosures show why stablecoins and money funds are not always cleanly separated. Circle said in its second-quarter filing that approximately 84% of USDC reserves were held in the Circle Reserve Fund at June 30. The company describes the vehicle as a Rule 2a-7 government money-market fund.

USDC reserve demand can therefore appear inside the money-fund category. Circle is one issuer, so its allocation does not describe the whole stablecoin market, but it demonstrates the accounting overlap behind the broad buyer labels.

The fund's assets also show that Treasury exposure is broader than direct bill ownership. Its annual shareholder report listed $19.111 billion of direct Treasury obligations and $46.998 billion of repurchase agreements at April 30. The repos were collateralized by Treasuries, but remained a separate asset category. The portfolio date precedes Circle's June reserve disclosure and the mix can change, so the filings establish the structure rather than an exact June allocation.

Treasury presented stablecoin demand as a source of potential growth. Brooke said providers may continue expanding and add to their Treasury holdings as rules implementing the GENIUS Act are finalized. That conditional language makes the regulatory channel an option for future demand, rather than a quantified forecast or an explanation for the July-August absorption.

The Fed and foreign buyers add demand on different timelines

The Federal Reserve has also become a major bill buyer in 2026. Treasury said the Fed purchased more than $300 billion through reserve-management purchases and reinvestment of principal payments from agency securities.

The Fed's July monetary policy report had recorded nearly $250 billion of bill purchases through July 1. About $160 billion came from reserve-management purchases and roughly $90 billion from the reinvestment of agency mortgage-backed security principal. The later Treasury figure reflects a more recent cutoff.

These purchases occur in the secondary market, rather than directly at Treasury auctions. The operations are designed to maintain ample reserves and manage the composition of the System Open Market Account, which separates them from both direct government financing and conventional quantitative easing.

The Fed's published balance sheet corroborates the scale of the expansion. Bill holdings were $233.592 billion on Dec. 31, 2025 in the Jan. 2 H.4.1 release and $550.482 billion on Sept. 16 in the Sept. 17 release. The change is a net stock movement rather than a gross-purchase figure, and it does not allocate the July-August issuance. It does show how quickly bills became a larger part of the Fed's portfolio.

Foreign demand turned positive before Treasury published its buyer breakdown. Foreign residents increased their bill holdings by $38.8 billion in July, according to the Treasury International Capital release. That followed declines of $20.0 billion in April, $43.5 billion in May and $29.0 billion in June.

Private foreign holdings rose by $45.0 billion in July, while foreign official holdings fell by $6.3 billion. The rebound shows overseas buyers returning after three monthly declines, but it covers July alone and tracks foreign holdings rather than every buyer class. Treasury also cautions that custody-based TIC data can obscure the beneficial owner when securities are held through third countries or managed by foreign portfolio managers.

Together, the data show broad demand for short-term government debt without making each buyer measure interchangeable. Money funds dominate Treasury's account of the July-August supply increase. The Fed supplied substantial year-to-date secondary-market demand, and foreign holdings rebounded in July. Stablecoin issuers sit inside that market as large holders whose reserve structures can channel demand through money funds and repo.

The regulatory outlook could make stablecoins a bigger force in future Treasury financing. The latest issuance surge arrived before that possibility could be measured as a distinct flow, leaving traditional money funds as the buyer class Treasury identified most clearly.

The post Stablecoins hold nearly $200 billion in US debt, but money funds bought the surge appeared first on CryptoSlate.

As of 04:00 UTC this morning, BitMEX no longer accepts trading orders. The exchange, which launched in 2014 and brought the perpetual swap with hundredfold leverage to the market, has ceased operations for good after eleven years. Anyone still holding an open position at that moment did not have to close it themselves: the exchange force-closed it. And anyone still holding a balance on the account now pays for the privilege.

The decisive question today is therefore no longer whether you withdraw in time. That deadline has passed. The question is what applies now: which amounts end up in your 2026 tax return, which documents you need to secure while the account is still reachable, and what the account fee on a residual balance actually costs.

What actually happened on BitMEX at 04:00 UTC on September 23

BitMEX announced the closure on July 23, 2026. The operator is HDR Global Trading Limited, based in the Seychelles; it cites a strategic review of the business as the reason for the step. New account openings were stopped when the announcement was made.

The process ran in two stages. From August 26, 2026, also at 04:00 UTC, tightened risk limits applied: new positions could no longer be opened, and existing ones could only be reduced. In the period up to the cut-off date, BitMEX says it force-closed open positions on a rolling basis in order to wind the market down in an orderly fashion. For contracts with thin liquidity, early settlement was used.

Trading ended with the closure itself. What remains after it is explicitly no longer exchange operation, but custody alone: you can still log in, see your wallet holdings and your transaction history, and initiate withdrawals. The exchange has unstaked all staked BMEX tokens across the board, and they have been sitting free in the respective accounts ever since.

Force-closure: why open positions were closed without any action from you

A force-closure is the closing of a derivatives position by the exchange rather than by its holder. At BitMEX, in this case, it was not a liquidation for lack of collateral but a wind-down measure: every position still open at the moment of closure was closed immediately, regardless of whether it stood at a profit or a loss.

That has a consequence many underestimate. The timing of the closure was not freely chosen but dictated. Anyone who was waiting for a better price did not get that price. The bitcoin price moved sharply over the course of today: our own call to the CoinGecko interface at 18:48 UTC showed $84,210, down 2.63 percent within 24 hours. How the bitcoin price develops from here changes nothing about your settlement: the profit or loss was realised at the moment of force-closure.

In its notice, BitMEX states explicitly that the exchange accepts no responsibility for trading losses arising from users being unable to close their positions themselves by the cut-off date. Anyone who held a position that was settled late and at an unfavourable price therefore has no claim.

Account fee on residual balances: 1 percent per year or $50, charged monthly

For verified accounts that still carried a balance at the moment of closure, an account fee applies with immediate effect. BitMEX puts it at one percent per year, charged monthly, or at the equivalent of $50 for accounts whose holdings do not exceed that amount. It runs until the balance has been withdrawn in full, and the exchange reserves the right to raise it later; it says it will announce any increase in advance.

The tiering is the point at which this becomes unpleasant for small holdings. One percent per year on a large balance is bearable. On a residual holding of $200, by contrast, the minimum fee applies, and $50 a month eats through such a holding entirely within a few months. Our own analysis of withdrawal routes from September 11 already laid the groundwork for exactly this calculation: at the time, 14 of 62 open withdrawal routes carried a network fee at or above the minimum withdrawal amount. Anyone stuck on one of those routes now faces a choice between a fee that eats the holding and a withdrawal that eats it too.

Withdrawals after the closure: what still works and what is delayed

Withdrawals remain possible, but they run more slowly than in normal operation. BitMEX has announced additional checks for all withdrawal requests and does not rule out that individual networks may be restricted if demand spikes. For bitcoin, the exchange points to blockchain confirmation times and to a fixed pool of withdrawal addresses: as long as a withdrawal carries the status Processing, it is in the queue and will be sent as soon as the next address frees up.

In practice that means an order that does not appear on-chain within a few hours is no cause for concern yet, provided the status is right. An order without a status, by contrast, deserves another look. For queries, BitMEX points to its own support and to its page on reserves and liabilities, where it states that it holds a surplus of assets over liabilities.

What you should secure while the account is still reachable

The login remains in place, but nobody has promised for how long. Download your complete transaction history while it is still retrievable, and in the broadest possible form: all deposits and withdrawals, all contract settlements, all funding payments and the fee charges. This data is the basis for everything that follows in the next section, and it cannot be reconstructed later once the interface is eventually switched off.

Futures transaction or crypto asset: how the tax office classifies your BitMEX gains

For German taxation, a BitMEX account falls into two entirely different parts, and anyone who mixes them up will get the sums wrong.

The first part is the contracts. A perpetual swap is a futures transaction: a transaction in which you do not receive an underlying asset but a cash settlement of the difference, or one settled in bitcoin. The wording of the law is unambiguous here. Section 20 paragraph 2 sentence 1 number 3 letter a of the German Income Tax Act covers the gain from futures transactions through which the taxpayer obtains a settlement of differences or a monetary amount or advantage determined by the value of a variable reference figure. These are investment income, and they are subject to the 25 percent flat-rate withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. There is no one-year holding period here.

The second part is the bitcoin holding itself, in which BitMEX settles. It is not a futures transaction but an economic asset, and it falls under private disposal transactions under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. There, the one-year period applies, and there an exemption threshold applies: under Section 23 paragraph 3 sentence 5, gains remain tax-free if the total gain from private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. The important thing about an exemption threshold is that it is not an allowance: anyone who exceeds it by one euro pays tax on the full amount.

Withdrawing your balance to your own wallet is not in itself a taxable event. You are not selling anything, you are only moving where it is kept. The acquisition dates keep running, and that is precisely why the history is so valuable: without it, you cannot later prove when the individual holdings were acquired.

Offsetting losses on futures transactions: what today's wording of the law says

Many accounts are likely to end the closure in the red, and here the situation has changed in investors' favour compared with previous years. For years, losses from futures transactions were subject to their own offsetting pot with a cap in monetary terms; that restriction sat in Section 20 paragraph 6 of the German Income Tax Act.

This editorial team pulled up the applicable text of the law itself on September 23, 2026. Paragraph 6 today carries five sentences. Sentences 1 and 2 provide that losses from investment income may not be offset against other categories of income, only against future investment income. Sentence 4 contains the familiar special rule for share losses, which remain offsettable only against gains on shares. Sentence 5 requires, for losses subject to withholding tax on investment income, a certificate under Section 43a paragraph 3 sentence 4. A separate cap in monetary terms for futures transactions no longer appears in this wording.

For you, the substance of this is: a loss from the force-closed contracts is, under today's wording, offsettable against other investment income and is not confined to a capped special pot. What it cannot do is reduce your income from employment or from letting; the separation of income categories in sentence 1 remains in place. This analysis was carried out by cryptoticker.io itself on September 23, 2026, and exclusively on the text of the law. Whether your specific case is classified this way is for your tax office to decide, and the classification of an individual contract may differ.

Anlage KAP without a tax certificate: why a foreign exchange puts the duty on you

A German bank withholds the flat-rate tax automatically and issues a tax certificate. BitMEX does neither. HDR Global Trading Limited is based in the Seychelles, is not a domestic paying agent and does not withhold tax on investment income. The consequence is that the income does not show up in your tax assessment by itself: you have to declare it yourself, in the Anlage KAP of your income tax return, on the line for foreign investment income without tax deducted at source.

The point about the certificate in sentence 5 tends to relieve you rather than burden you: it concerns losses subject to withholding tax on investment income, meaning those arising at a domestic paying agent. At a foreign exchange with no tax deducted at source there is no certificate you could produce, and the losses are declared as part of the assessment. What you need instead is documentation that stands up to scrutiny. That is exactly what portfolio and tax tools are built for, reading in trading data and producing an auditable statement from it; which of them are any good is set out in our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

You will need a currency conversion as well. BitMEX settles in bitcoin, the tax office calculates in euros. Every single settlement event therefore has to be converted at the rate applicable at the relevant moment, and the conversion rate belongs in your documentation. A blanket conversion of the closing balance at the year-end rate is not a sound basis.

BMEX tokens and unstaked holdings: holding period and exemption threshold under Section 23

One detail of the wind-down is lost in the headlines: BitMEX has unstaked all staked BMEX tokens, and they have been sitting free in accounts since the moment of closure. That ends a staking arrangement many users had long forgotten about.

For tax purposes, the BMEX token is a crypto asset and falls under Section 23. Unstaking alone is not a sale and does not trigger tax in itself. If you do sell the tokens, though, what matters is the acquisition date and whether you are inside the one-year period. Together with all other private disposal transactions in the year, the 1,000-euro exemption threshold from Section 23 paragraph 3 sentence 5 applies.

In practice that means: check whether there are any BMEX holdings in your account at all. With small residual positions, the withdrawal route may cost more than the holding is worth, and the account fee keeps running alongside it. You should do this calculation explicitly once rather than ignore the position.

Phishing after the closure: how to spot fake withdrawal help

In its own notice, BitMEX warns unusually clearly about fraud attempts around the wind-down, and the warning is well founded: an exchange closure creates exactly the uncertainty in which such attacks work.

Two features are enough to tell them apart. First, the exchange says it never asks for private keys, seed phrases or any payment in connection with the withdrawal of balances. Anyone who does ask is not a member of staff. Second, there is no expedited or preferential withdrawal route. Any offer to move a withdrawal up the queue for a fee is therefore identifiable as a fake, however genuine the sender address may look.

Because your account remains reachable and carries a balance, it stays a worthwhile target. Active two-factor protection and a password you use nowhere else are not general advice here but aimed at the coming weeks.

Where to take your derivatives trading: perp DEXs, regulated brokers and the MiCA question

BitMEX takes with it one of the oldest addresses for leveraged crypto derivatives. Anyone who wants to continue that trading faces a decision that comes out differently than it used to under European regulation.

BitMEX was an offshore exchange without European authorisation. Since the MiCA regulation applies in full, crypto services in Germany may only be provided by authorised firms; the duties that follow from that are set out in our overview of MiCA licensing obligations for crypto companies. For you as an investor, that has two sides. An authorised provider brings supervision, segregated custody and a point of contact in the EU. It also brings leverage limits and product requirements that did not apply on an offshore platform.

If you want to stay with decentralised perpetual trading, you will find the differences in fees, liquidation mechanics and custody in our comparison of the best perp DEXs. If you want to go the other way and apply leverage at a supervised house instead, the regulated addresses are in our comparison of the best crypto brokers. Both routes share one tax feature worth taking with you: derivatives remain futures transactions under Section 20 regardless of the platform you trade them on, and they never become private disposal transactions with a one-year period.

Checking the BitMEX closure: what to take away

1. Secure the history before the interface disappears. Log in, download all settlements, funding payments and deposits and withdrawals, and file them somewhere you will still find them in two years. Without this data you can prove neither your acquisition dates nor your losses. You will find a tool that reads the data in and produces an auditable statement in our comparison of crypto tax software.
2. Weigh the account fee against the withdrawal route. One percent per year, or at least $50 a month, eats through small holdings quickly. Check for each holding individually whether the network fee of the withdrawal route sits below its value, and withdraw whatever can be withdrawn. If you are stuck on an expensive network, check whether the holding can be moved out via a different one; the fee models of the destination platforms are set out in our comparison of the best perp DEXs.
3. Separate contracts from holdings in your tax return. The force-closed positions are investment income under Section 20 and belong in the Anlage KAP with no tax deducted at source. The bitcoin holding itself follows Section 23 with its one-year period and the 1,000-euro exemption threshold. If you want to keep trading with leverage, choose the platform deliberately on supervision and custody, for instance from our comparison of the best crypto brokers.

The primary source on the wind-down is the exchange's own notice, which you can read in the BitMEX closure announcement. The wording of the law on offsetting losses is in Section 20 of the German Income Tax Act.

This article is no substitute for tax advice. For larger amounts or unclear contract types, a trip to a tax adviser is the cheaper route.

(As of September 23, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The Solana price stood at $114.55, or 100.56 euros, at 18:45 German time on September 23, 2026. That is 2.2 percent less than the day before and still 17.7 percent more than seven days ago. Anyone holding Solana therefore has a strong week and a weak day behind them. The more important question arises regardless: in five days the feature gate opens for the largest overhaul the network has prepared in years, and the tax clock on every SOL bought in September has been running anew since this week. Both are things you can check today. The price merely supplies the occasion.

Solana price on September 23: $114 after 17.7 percent in seven days

The figures come from the CoinGecko market database, retrieved on September 23, 2026 at 16:45 UTC, which is 18:45 German time. SOL is quoted at $114.55. The daily high was $119.66, the daily low $113.31. Market capitalisation stands at $67.3 billion, trading turnover over the past 24 hours at $5.33 billion.

Over one week there is a gain of 17.7 percent, over one month one of 18.7 percent. Working the weekly gain backwards puts the price seven days ago at around $97. The entire move of this week therefore plays out in a range of roughly $97 to $119.66. SOL remains 60.9 percent away from its all-time high of $293.31. That last figure is the most uncomfortable one in this article, and it belongs at the start: a weekly gain of 17.7 percent sounds like a turn, but it shortens the distance to the record by only a few percentage points.

Today's pullback of 2.2 percent is not a standalone event. Bitcoin gave up 2.5 percent over the same period, Ethereum 2.7 percent, XRP 3.3 percent. SOL is therefore falling somewhat less than the rest of the field and stays ahead over the week. Anyone deriving an action from a single daily loss is measuring noise.

What has carried the SOL price this week

Two things are running in parallel. One is the network side: Anza, the development firm behind the widely used Agave client, published the release plan for version 4.3 in August and named September 28 in it as the target for activating the new consensus procedure on mainnet. That is a date market participants have been counting down to for weeks.

The other is the supply side. The network's inflation rate stands at 4.9 percent according to the analytics service Staking Rewards, with a staking ratio of 69.32 percent of circulating supply. Almost seven out of ten SOL are therefore locked up and unavailable to the market in the short term. At the same time, the developer community is discussing a doubling of the disinflation rate from minus 15 to minus 30 percent per year under the identifier SIMD-0411. That would shorten the path to the target inflation of 1.5 percent to roughly three years instead of six. Important for context: this switch was not yet active on mainnet as of September 17. It is a proposal, not a network rule in force.

One term that comes up in both contexts deserves a brief definition. A feature gate is a switch in the protocol that arms an already shipped function at a set point in time. The software sits on validators' machines beforehand; it takes effect only once enough stake weight flips the switch.

Alpenglow opens on September 28: what delegators should check beforehand

Alpenglow is the name of the consensus overhaul. It replaces the previous TowerBFT procedure with a new voting protocol called Votor. The tangible effect: the finality of a transaction is meant to drop from around 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds. Finality describes the moment from which a transaction can practically no longer be reversed. At the same time, the network's fault tolerance rises from 33 to 40 percent. The network can therefore cope with a larger share of failed or malicious validators before it stalls.

For you as a delegator, meaning someone who makes their own SOL available to a third-party validator, one concrete check follows from this. First: is your validator already running a client version that supports the switch? Validators running an outdated version on the cut-off date can miss blocks, and missed blocks mean lower rewards for everyone delegating to them. You will find the version details on your validator's page in any common network explorer.

Second: how high is your validator's commission, and has it been changed recently? A commission raised at short notice is the most common silent drag on returns. Third: how much stake weight does your validator bundle? Very large validators are convenient, but they concentrate the network. We described the details of the timetable and the requirements more fully in our assessment of the Alpenglow activation from September 1.

What this date explicitly is not: a price forecast. A protocol upgrade with a date known for weeks is largely priced in. Anyone buying today because September 28 is approaching is buying information everyone else has had for a long time.

Holding period under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act: buying into the September rally restarts the clock

This is where the price move turns into a tax question. In Germany, gains from selling crypto assets held as private assets are tax-free under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act if more than one year lies between acquisition and sale. Sell earlier and the gain is taxable, at your personal income tax rate and not at the 25 percent flat withholding tax.

This week's advance has very probably triggered purchases. Each of those purchases sets its own one-year clock running. Anyone who bought on September 18 is free on September 19, 2027, not earlier. That sounds trivial and is regularly overlooked in practice, because many investors think of their holdings as one block rather than as a series of individually dated additions.

There are two things you should record today, while the figures are fresh. First, the acquisition date of each tranche, to the day. Second, the acquisition price in euros at the time of purchase, not in dollars. The tax office calculates in euros, and anyone back-calculating from dollar prices later builds in a source of error that can hardly be resolved cleanly after the fact. A portfolio tracker takes this bookkeeping off your hands; which tools deliver German reports is set out in our overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

For the order of sales, the rule is generally individual attribution per wallet, or failing that the first in, first out method. Which tranche you sell therefore co-determines whether a gain falls into the tax net. Anyone holding an old position kept well beyond a year alongside a fresh one from this week should settle that before a sale rather than after.

Staking yield at 6.0 to 6.7 percent: when the 256-euro exemption threshold breaks

For tax purposes, staking rewards are something different from price gains. Under Section 22 number 3 of the Income Tax Act they count as other income from services. An exemption threshold of 256 euros per calendar year applies to them. Exemption threshold means: stay below it and the entire amount is tax-free. Reach or exceed it and the entire amount becomes taxable, not merely the excess. The difference from an allowance is the whole point here.

Each reward is valued at the moment it accrues, in euros. And this is exactly where this week's price advance reaches into your tax return. Work it through on today's figures. One SOL costs 100.56 euros. The 256-euro threshold is therefore reached after around 2.55 SOL of rewards. Staking Rewards reports a reward rate of 6.67 percent on September 23; other surveys from the same week came in at a good 6.0 percent. So take the range: at an annual yield of 6.0 to 6.7 percent you need roughly 38 to 42 SOL staked to break the threshold within a year.

A month ago the same calculation looked different. With SOL 18.7 percent lower, that worked out at roughly 85 euros a piece, assuming an unchanged euro-dollar relationship. The threshold would then only have been reached at around three SOL of rewards, and for that you would have had to stake roughly 45 to 50 SOL. The price advance therefore lowers the bar by about seven to eight SOL without your having done anything at all. That is exactly why this check belongs in a price article and not in the week before the filing deadline.

Two additions that are often missing. The 256 euros apply to all income under Section 22 number 3 taken together, not per coin and not per exchange. Anyone staking or lending assets besides SOL has to add them up. And the coins received start a one-year holding period of their own from the moment they accrue. In its circular of March 6, 2025, the Federal Ministry of Finance confirmed that an extension to ten years does not apply to staking and lending. That question was considered open for years and has not been since.

Validator commission: what is really left of the staking yield

The reward rate quoted is a gross figure. Your validator's commission comes off it, a percentage of the reward that the operator retains for running the node. Values between zero and ten percent are common. Work it through on the upper estimate: at a five percent commission, 6.67 percent becomes roughly 6.34 percent; at a ten percent commission, roughly 6.0 percent.

That difference looks small and, calculated over a year, it is. It becomes relevant once the gross yield falls anyway. That is exactly what lies ahead: rewards are fed by network inflation, and that is declining as planned. What the decision on the falling payout means in concrete terms is written up in our analysis of the falling Solana staking yield. Anyone paying a ten percent commission today will still be paying it when the gross yield is four percent. An overview of providers and their terms can be found in the comparison of the best staking platforms.

A note on the distinction: staking through a centralised exchange and delegating yourself from a wallet are the same category of income for tax, but they differ considerably in counterparty risk. At the exchange, the provider holds the keys. When delegating yourself, the key stays with you and the validator receives only the voting right, never control over the coins.

Buying under MiCA: how to recognise an authorised exchange

When the price rises, people buy, and in doing so investors regularly end up with providers that are no longer permitted to operate in Germany at all. The European Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCAR for short, has applied directly since December 30, 2024. Germany shortened the available transition period through its Crypto Markets Supervision Act: under Section 50 of that act it ended on December 31, 2025. Since January 1, 2026, crypto service providers without MiCAR authorisation may no longer provide services in Germany.

The check takes two minutes. Look the provider up in BaFin's company database or in ESMA's European register. If it is not listed there as an authorised crypto service provider, that is not a detail for lawyers but your problem: in a dispute you have no supervisory route, and deposit protection does not apply to crypto assets in any case. Which trading venues hold European authorisation is compiled in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

Pay attention to the execution route as well. A purchase through a contract for difference or a certificate does not deliver you SOL but a claim against the issuer. You cannot stake with it, and different tax rules apply, namely those for investment income with flat withholding tax. Anyone buying because of the holding period has to actually own the coins.

Custody and unstaking: why your SOL is not immediately ready to sell

Delegated SOL is not available instantly. Deactivating a delegation only takes effect at the end of the current epoch, and an epoch on Solana usually lasts about two to three days. So anyone wanting to sell at the high cannot readily do so with staked holdings. Between your decision and the available balance lies the remainder of the epoch.

A simple split follows from this, one many investors run anyway: part of the holdings staked for yield, part liquid for the ability to act. How large those parts are depends on your own situation and not on a rule of thumb from the internet.

On custody itself: anyone holding larger amounts does not belong on an exchange. A hardware wallet separates the private key from the internet-connected computer, and delegating is possible from a hardware wallet too. The recovery phrase remains crucial: keep it offline, in two physically separate places, and never as a photo or a text file on a device.

Levels above and below: $119.66 against $113.31

The levels that count today are measured values and not drawn lines. On the upside, the next relevant figure is the daily high at $119.66. It sits just below the round $120 mark, and the price has not taken that one yet in the current attempt. As long as that remains the case, the move of the past seven days is a forceful recovery within a range and not a confirmed breakout.

On the downside, the first figure is the daily low at $113.31. Below that lies the middle of the weekly range at roughly $108, and below that the starting point of the move at around $97. A fall back to there would erase the entire weekly gain without anything having had to change on the network side. That, too, belongs to an honest reading of a 17.7 percent gain over seven days.

The basis for these three values is deliberately narrow: the daily high and daily low are collected figures from live trading, and the weekly starting point is back-calculated from the weekly change. Anything beyond that would be an expectation, and expectations belong attributed by name rather than presented as fact.

Checking the Solana price: what to take away

1. Record this week's tranches with their date and euro price. Every purchase starts its own one-year clock under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Capturing that today spares you the reconstruction next year. Tools for it are in the comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
2. Measure your staking rewards against the 256-euro exemption threshold. At a price of 100.56 euros and a yield of 6.0 to 6.7 percent, roughly 38 to 42 SOL staked will break the threshold within a year. Check your validator's commission at the same time, because it comes off the gross yield. Provider terms can be found in the comparison of the best staking platforms.
3. Before September 28, check your validator's client version and your exchange's authorisation. A validator on an outdated version costs rewards, and a provider without MiCAR authorisation has not been allowed to serve you in Germany since January 1, 2026. Authorised trading venues are listed in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

You can read the legal basis yourself: the exemption threshold for other income in Section 22 of the Income Tax Act and the treatment of staking and lending in the Federal Ministry of Finance circular of March 6, 2025.

(As of September 23, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The crypto market gave back its move above $87,000 on September 23, 2026. Bitcoin lost 2.59 percent over 24 hours. That sounds like a quiet session, and for Bitcoin it was one. For leveraged altcoin positions it was not: Uniswap travelled 17.04 percent between its daily high and its daily low and still ended almost exactly where it had started, at minus 0.97 percent.

Anyone who sized their distance to liquidation against the daily loss used the wrong number for this session. This analysis was compiled by cryptoticker.io on September 23, 2026. It measures two quantities separately across the top 25: the change over 24 hours, and the daily range, meaning the distance between high and low. The result looks different from what the day's headlines suggest.

What happened in the crypto market on September 23, 2026

Bitcoin reached a high of $87,283 in the 24 hours before the reading and then fell back to $83,856. At the time of measurement the price stood at $84,155. The move above the $85,000 mark was the first since January, and it did not hold.

A pullback after a fast advance is the normal case, not a break. It becomes interesting only once you break it down into 16 individual moves. That is exactly what this analysis does. A retail investor typically holds two or three positions rather than the whole market. For that investor a different question matters: how far did their own holdings swing along the way?

The measurement: 16 top-25 assets, daily loss against daily range

All spot tickers on the OKX exchange were pulled on September 23, 2026 at 15:54 UTC. From them, the USDT pairs of the non-dollar-pegged assets in the CoinGecko top 25 were extracted, 16 in total: Bitcoin and 15 altcoins. For each one, the change over 24 hours and the daily range, measured as the distance between high and low relative to the daily high, were calculated. The ranking was cross-checked against coinlore.net.

The median of the 15 altcoins came in at minus 3.18 percent over 24 hours. Bitcoin stood at minus 2.59 percent. The ratio is therefore 1.22 to 1. Under the common narrative that altcoins fall by a multiple in a pullback, a far larger figure would have to appear there. It does not.

With the daily range the picture flips. Bitcoin swung by 3.93 percent. The median altcoin swung by 9.37 percent, which is 2.4 times as much. The extremes sit well above that: Uniswap at 17.04 percent, Bitcoin Cash at 13.25, NEAR Protocol at 12.09 and Dogecoin at 11.48 percent.

Why daily loss and daily range measure two different things

The daily loss is a difference between two points in time. It says where an asset stood 24 hours ago and where it stands now. What happened in between is invisible to it. The daily range describes precisely that in-between: the furthest point up and the furthest point down.

For an unleveraged investor who simply holds a position, the daily loss is the more relevant number. Their portfolio value follows the current price, and a swing that has since retraced has cost them nothing. As soon as leverage, a stop order or a margin threshold enters the picture, the relationship inverts. These mechanisms do not check the closing price; they check every price along the way. They are triggered by the low, not by the finish.

A stop-loss order at a price that is touched once during the day is executed. It is not reversed because the price ran back afterwards. The same applies to a liquidation, only harder: there the position disappears along with the collateral behind it.

The Uniswap case: 17 percent range on a one percent daily loss

Uniswap is the clearest case in the measurement. The asset ran from $10.944 at the high down to $9.079 at the low and stood at $9.106 when the data was pulled. Calculated over 24 hours, that is a loss of 0.97 percent. In every price table of the day, Uniswap therefore appears as all but unmoved.

Anyone who entered at the previous day's high with five-times leverage was long liquidated by a 17 percent decline, before the price ran back. The table shows that investor a quiet day while their position no longer exists. This is neither an exception nor a quirk of a single exchange. It is the normal consequence of confusing two different quantities.

NEAR Protocol shows the same pattern in weaker form: a 12.09 percent range on a daily loss of 2.05 percent. Zcash belongs in the group too, with a 10.92 percent range and a gain of 0.86 percent at the close. An asset that ends the day higher can have given up eleven percent along the way.

Calculating your liquidation distance: which reference figure is the right one

The liquidation price is the price at which the collateral behind a leveraged position is exhausted and the exchange closes the position by force. On a long position with five-times leverage it sits roughly 20 percent below entry, at ten-times leverage roughly 10 percent, in each case before fees and funding. What the exact calculation looks like, and what role the maintenance margin plays in it, depends on the provider.

What matters is what you hold that distance against. Set it against the average daily loss, meaning three to four percent, and ten-times leverage looks comfortable. Set it against the measured daily range and it looks different: with Uniswap, ten-times leverage would not have survived this single day, with Dogecoin, NEAR Protocol and Bitcoin Cash it would have been close, and all of that on a day nobody would call a crash.

The practical consequence is unspectacular: leverage belongs calibrated to the swing width of the asset actually traded, not to that of the broader market. Leverage that is defensible on Bitcoin with its 3.93 percent daily range is a different bet on the median altcoin at 9.37 percent. On TRON with a 1.68 percent range, the same leverage would in turn be far more cautious than the market allows for. The number sits in every price overview under high and low and costs you ten seconds.

Funding rate, margin calls and licensing: where investors get leverage

For investors in Germany, the question of where leverage may lawfully be offered at all comes before the arithmetic. Since the European crypto regulation MiCA became fully applicable, trading platforms may provide services to German retail clients only with the corresponding authorisation. For derivatives, the securities-law framework is added on top, and the leverage cap it imposes on retail clients trading contracts for difference is considerably stricter than what unregulated platforms offer.

Three different routes with three different risk profiles follow from this. With a regulated broker offering contracts for difference, the supervisory leverage cap applies, and in return protection against a margin-call obligation generally applies too. On a decentralised perpetual exchange there is no such cap, but there is also no deposit protection and no complaints body; an overview of the providers in this segment can be found in our comparison of the best perp DEXs. The third route is to forgo leverage altogether, and on a day like this one it is the route on which the daily range stays without consequence.

With open-ended futures contracts, known as perpetuals, the funding rate is added. It is the payment that flows between the long and the short side at fixed intervals so that the contract price does not detach from the spot price. In phases where many investors are positioned for rising prices, the long side pays. This running payment reduces the collateral posted and pushes the liquidation price closer to the current price over the holding period. Anyone holding a position for several days needs to factor it in.

Holding period and loss offsetting: what a forced sale triggers for tax

A liquidation is not a neutral event for tax purposes; it is a sale. In Germany, the one-year holding period under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act continues to apply to crypto assets held as private assets. An asset that is closed by force before that year is up therefore falls into the taxable range, regardless of whether you wanted the sale.

Where there is a loss, that is not only bad news. Losses from private disposal transactions can be offset against gains in the same category in the same year, and carried forward beyond that. So anyone who realised gains within the one-year window in the same year can set a forced loss against them. The precondition is documentation that evidences the acquisition date, the acquisition cost and the disposal date for each position.

That is precisely where things regularly fail after a liquidation, because the position was not closed by you and the event appears differently in the trading history than a normal sale. It pays to secure the statement on the same day, while it is still retrievable in the account. With derivatives, a different framework applies than with holding the coin directly: gains and losses from futures transactions fall under investment income and are subject to their own offsetting restrictions there. Anyone using both is better off keeping the records separate.

Bitcoin Cash and Zcash in the green: why this was not a broad sell-off

Of the 15 altcoins measured, 13 ended lower and two higher. Bitcoin Cash gained 4.99 percent, Zcash 0.86 percent. Both are at the same time among the assets with the widest daily range, at 13.25 and 10.92 percent respectively.

That argues against reading the day as a broad, top-to-bottom sell-off. A sell-off of that kind usually catches the entire field and leaves little room for exceptions. What the measurement shows instead is a market in which part of the field has its own drivers and detaches from the overall picture. For assessing an individual asset, that means inferring your own position from the market's daily picture misleads you at both ends.

Part of the context is that the weekly balance looks nothing like the day. Over seven days, most of the assets measured stood clearly higher. The pullback on September 23 gives back a portion of that week; it does not reverse it.

Levels above and below: what the market is orienting itself on

On the upside, the level at which the move failed is Bitcoin's daily high of $87,283. As long as that area is not reclaimed durably, the move above $85,000 remains a swing and not an establishment. On the downside, the daily low of $83,856 marks the first point at which it becomes clear whether the pullback ends there.

For the altcoins, the corresponding levels are the daily highs and daily lows from the table above. For an existing position, the lower level is the more practically significant one, because it names the point that has already been reached once during the ongoing pullback. A distance to liquidation that is smaller than the distance to that low is used up on a comparable day.

Anyone looking for a view on the direction from here will deliberately find none in this measurement. It says nothing about whether prices rise or fall. It says something about how far they move on an ordinary day, and that is the quantity against which leverage is measured.

Limits of the measurement: what this analysis does not show

The data comes from a single trading venue. On other exchanges, highs and lows can differ, particularly on the smaller assets and during short spikes. Anyone checking their own liquidation price should take the price series of the venue on which the position actually sits.

Monero could not be measured because no corresponding trading pair is listed there; the analysis therefore covers 16 rather than 17 of the eligible assets. Also not collected were the actual liquidation volumes per asset, since there is no open and verifiable source for them, and the order book depth at the trading venues available in Germany. The daily range of a single day is also not a volatility measure over longer periods; it describes this one day.

Putting the altcoin pullback in context: what to take away

1. Calculate your leverage against the daily range, not against the daily loss. On September 23 the two figures were a factor of 17 apart on Uniswap. The high and low of the past 24 hours sit next to the price at every provider. Which platforms are authorised for investors in Germany and what leverage limits apply there is set out in our comparison of the best crypto brokers.
2. Secure the statement when a position has been closed by force. A loss within the one-year holding period can be offset against gains from the same year, but only with evidence of acquisition and disposal. Tools that keep these records automatically can be found among the crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
3. Check the swing width per asset rather than for the market as a whole. Between TRON at 1.68 percent and Uniswap at 17.04 percent lies a factor of ten on a single day. Where you can trade which assets and on what terms is shown in the overview of the best crypto exchanges.

The raw data behind this analysis is publicly accessible: the price pages for Uniswap and Bitcoin at OKX carry the high, the low and the 24-hour change on a running basis.

(As of September 23, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

On September 16, 2026, the financial services committee of the US House of Representatives advanced a bill, by 28 votes to 21, that would make America's government-held Bitcoin unsellable for at least twenty years. For you as a German investor it changes neither your tax burden nor your holding period today. It does change a quantity you will not see in any portfolio statement: how much Bitcoin in state hands can reach the market at all over the medium term.

This article draws a clean line between what the bill says and what market commentary makes of it. The draft is publicly available, and in several places it reads considerably more soberly than its headlines.

What the US financial services committee decided on September 16

The House Committee on Financial Services debated the bill in what is known as a markup session and then released it for a floor vote. Markup means the committee goes through the text section by section, accepts or rejects amendments and finally votes on the version it recommends to the chamber. The result of 28 votes to 21 fell largely along party lines.

A committee vote of this kind is not legislation. It is the stage at which the vast majority of bills get stuck, and that is exactly why it counts as a signal: no bill on a government Bitcoin reserve had come that far in the United States before.

American Reserve Modernization Act: what the text of H.R. 8957 says

The bill carries the number H.R. 8957 and the short title "American Reserve Modernization Act of 2026". It was introduced on May 21, 2026 by Representative Nicholas J. Begich III of Alaska and then referred to the financial services committee. The official long title states the purpose: to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, to manage the federal government's Bitcoin holdings transparently, and to offset the costs through certain funds of the Federal Reserve System.

Operationally the text governs four things. Section 4(a)(1) obliges the Treasury to set up a secure custody facility for Bitcoin within the department. Section 4(d)(1) channels all "qualifying Bitcoin" of the federal government into it. What qualifies is defined narrowly by section 3(4): Bitcoin finally forfeited in a criminal or civil proceeding. And section 5 sets out how long the state has to hold the holdings.

Anyone reading the bill as a purchase programme is reading it wrongly. First and foremost it puts order into what the state already owns.

At least 20 years of holding: why section 5 is the decisive clause

Section 5(a) provides that the Treasury holds all Bitcoin "for not less than 20 years from the date of deposit into the strategic Bitcoin reserve". Section 5(b) prohibits any sale or other disposal during that minimum period. The period runs per deposit, not for the total holding from a cut-off date: if Bitcoin forfeited in 2029 is added, it is locked up until 2049.

This is the clause where something would actually be decided for the market. Government holdings have so far been a latent source of supply; every forfeiture can at some point land on the market as an offer. A statutory lock-up over two decades takes that source out of the equation for as long as the law stands. How large the effect would be hangs on a figure nobody knows reliably.

How much Bitcoin the US actually holds, and why nobody knows exactly

The estimates diverge. The executive order of March 6, 2025, which first established the strategic Bitcoin reserve by decree, capitalised it, on concurring accounts, with around 198,000 BTC originating from forfeitures. For the entire federal holding, by contrast, surveys from early 2026 put the figure at around 328,000 BTC. The range persists because the two numbers measure different things and neither comes from an official, continuously maintained schedule.

The bill itself addresses precisely that gap. Section 6 requires quarterly reports with detailed information on total holdings, transactions and demonstrated control over the private keys, plus a cryptographic attestation, published on the Treasury's website; the Comptroller General, the head of the US audit office, is to review this regularly. That such a duty is needed at all says more about today's state of the data than any single estimate.

No taxpayer money for Bitcoin purchases: the line drawn by section 9

Section 9 instructs the Treasury to examine budget-neutral routes for acquisitions. Named are the conversion of other federal digital assets, surplus remittances from the Federal Reserve System or a revaluation of the gold certificates, as well as proceeds from forfeitures, fines and settlements. Section 9(d) then draws the line and expressly prohibits any borrowing, any new tax and any deficit-financed spending for the acquisition of Bitcoin.

For market expectations this is the coolest passage in the bill. A state that may only reallocate but not buy with fresh money is not a source of demand on which a price forecast can rest. If you need a figure to place the current market situation: Bitcoin was quoted at $84,534.90 on September 23, 2026 at 14:59 UTC on the spot market of the OKX exchange, after $87,283.00 at the day's high and $83,856.40 at the day's low, down 2.0 percent over 24 hours.

From committee to statute: which hurdles H.R. 8957 still has to clear

Several steps are missing before the bill becomes law. The House floor has to call it up and pass it, the Senate has to agree, differences between the two versions have to be resolved, and at the end comes the president's signature. Each of those stations can change the text, and a committee vote along party lines is no indication that it will go quickly.

Then there is the calendar. The 119th Congress ends in early January 2027. Whatever has not been passed by then lapses and would have to be reintroduced in the new Congress. The recent history of US crypto legislation offers plenty of illustration: the CLARITY Act, the far larger market structure bill, did not survive a vote in September 2026. Anyone treating H.R. 8957 as settled today is pre-empting the most likely outcome instead of waiting for it.

Saxony sold 49,858 Bitcoin: what the German comparison case shows

Germany has already taken the opposite route, and did so without a statutory basis for either course. In January 2024 a defendant in the proceedings concerning the movie2k.to portal transferred around 49,858 Bitcoin to the Federal Criminal Police Office; at the then price of about 39,400 euros that came to roughly 1.96 billion euros. Between June 19 and July 12, 2024 the Saxon authorities sold the entire holding in tranches, realising around 2.6 billion euros. The Saxon justice ministry described the exercise as an emergency disposal.

To this day the proceeds are not budget money. They are held on deposit for the criminal proceedings at the Leipzig regional court and will remain so until those conclude. And the much-quoted calculation of how much more a later sale would have brought is hindsight: it presupposes that the authority could know a price path it could not know.

The comparison is therefore no good as a reproach, but it works as an illustration. In the United States a statute is meant to take the timing of a sale out of the realm of discretion and fix it for twenty years. In Germany procedural law decided, and it decided on an immediate sale. They are two answers to the same question, and neither is a recommendation for your own portfolio.

Custody, holding period, concentration risk: what German Bitcoin holders should check now

A US bill is no reason to rebuild your portfolio. It is a good reason to look over three points that decide your outcome regardless of Washington.

The holding period. In Germany, Section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies to privately held crypto-assets: if more than a year lies between purchase and sale, the gain is tax free. Below that it counts as other income, and the 1,000 euro threshold per calendar year is a cliff, not an allowance. Exceed it by one euro and the entire gain is taxable. Check which of your positions reach the one-year mark and when, before you think about selling.

Custody. The bill requires the US Treasury to demonstrate control of the private keys. You can put the same question to yourself: who holds your keys? If the holdings sit on an exchange, you hold a claim against a company, not the coins themselves. For an investment horizon of years that argues for self-custody; which devices come into question and how to recognise a solid model is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

Concentration risk. A state buyer that, by its own bill, may not buy with fresh money justifies no higher weighting. If a report like this one makes you want to add, first check what share of your total wealth Bitcoin already accounts for. The cost side is the part you can reliably influence: trading fees, spread and withdrawal costs differ markedly between providers, and one percentage point of difference at purchase weighs more over an investment horizon of years than most headlines.

Spot, ETN or your own wallet: which buying route suits which horizon

The twenty-year lock-up in the US bill raises a question that is practically more relevant to you than any price forecast: in what wrapper do you want to hold Bitcoin over long periods? In Germany three routes are essentially open to you, and they differ in tax and legal terms.

With a direct purchase through an exchange or a broker you acquire the coins themselves. Under the European crypto regulation MiCA, providers addressing retail clients in the EU need authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider; whether a provider holds such a licence can be looked up in the register of the competent supervisor and is the first check worth making. For this route the one-year period under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies.

With a crypto exchange followed by a transfer to your own wallet, one step is added that takes you out of the provider's counterparty risk. The transfer itself is not a sale and triggers no tax, but it does bring effort and duties of care in securing the recovery words.

Exchange-traded notes on Bitcoin, traded in Europe as ETNs or ETPs, you buy through your existing securities account. They are convenient but carry issuer risk, and their tax treatment is not in every case the same as for direct holdings: depending on the structure, a paper may fall under the flat-rate withholding tax rather than under the one-year period. Which products are tradable in Germany and what to look out for when selecting is worked through in the overview of crypto ETFs and ETNs in Germany. If in doubt, have the specific classification of your paper confirmed by a tax adviser.

Levels above and below: what the Bitcoin price is currently orienting on

The short-term situation has little to do with the bill. Above, the next notable level is $87,283, the high of the past 24 hours; beyond that begins the zone around $90,000, which has not been sustainably overcome so far this year. Below, the day's low at $83,856 marks the first line of support, and beneath it the round number at $80,000, which the market has oriented on several times in mid-September.

These levels are observation points, not signals. They tell you where many market participants are looking, not what happens next.

Bull and bear case: what speaks for and against the supply thesis

The mechanics of the lock-up speak for the bull case. If a structural source of supply falls away over two decades while further forfeitures keep being added, that tightens the freely tradable supply, and does so independently of the demand side. Were a copycat effect among other states to come on top, the impact would be larger than the US holding alone.

Against the thesis speaks, first of all, the text of the bill itself: without permission to buy with fresh money, no new source of demand arises. On top of that, the holdings are not being sold today either, so to that extent a statute fixes an existing state of affairs rather than changing it. And third, every statute is reversible: what one Congress passes a later one can amend, particularly with a period stretching across five electoral terms. Anyone basing a purchase decision on this supply thesis alone is basing it on a law that is not yet one.

Placing the Bitcoin state reserve: what to take away

1. Treat the bill as news, not as a buy signal. H.R. 8957 has passed a committee and nothing else. If you were going to build or reallocate your Bitcoin position anyway, your outcome is decided by the cost side and not by the headline; the differences in fees and spread are in the crypto exchange comparison.
2. Check your own holding period before you sell anything. A sale one day before the one-year mark costs you tax exemption on the entire gain. Which position falls due when is something you should have documented rather than estimated; which tools keep the periods and acquisition dates cleanly is set out in the comparison of crypto tax software.
3. Settle the custody question for your actual horizon. Anyone intending to hold for years should not be left sitting on an exchange permanently. What self-custody achieves and which mistakes get expensive is broken down in the hardware wallet comparison.

You can read the full text of H.R. 8957 in the original at the US publishing office; the procedural status including co-sponsors is tracked by Congress.gov.

(As of September 23, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

If you accept a fee in Bitcoin as a freelancer or a trader, two separate tax events arise from it, and the second one surprises most people. The first is the inflow: the fee is perfectly ordinary business income, valued at the euro equivalent on the day it reaches you. The second is everything that happens to those coins afterwards. And that is exactly where something different applies to you than to a private investor, because the familiar one-year holding period does not apply to business assets.

This text answers the question for Germany, along the lines of the Income Tax Act, the VAT Act and the two relevant circulars of the Federal Ministry of Finance. It does not replace advice in an individual case, but it shows you which questions to put to your tax adviser and what to document yourself before the first invoice goes out.

Bitcoin as a fee: why the inflow is perfectly ordinary business income

Business income is any accrual of assets in money or money's worth that is occasioned by the business. Bitcoin falls under "money's worth", not under money, and the whole treatment follows from that. For tax purposes, the form of payment does nothing to change the fact that you performed a service and received consideration for it. A graphic designer who builds a campaign has made a sale, whether the client transfers euros or pays in coins.

That accrual is valued at its euro amount at the time of the inflow. Under a cash-basis profit calculation pursuant to Section 4(3) of the Income Tax Act, the inflow principle applies: what counts is the day on which you can economically dispose of the coins, which as a rule means the day they arrive in your wallet and are confirmed. Not the invoice date, and not the day you eventually swap them into euros.

From that follows the first practical piece of advice, and it costs you nothing: record the price at the moment of inflow, ideally with a screenshot, a source and a time of day. That single figure determines two things at once, namely the amount of your business income and the acquisition cost of the coins for everything that comes afterwards. Anyone who fails to document it has to reconstruct it later, and with volatile prices that rarely works out in your favour.

Invoicing in Bitcoin: what really happens for VAT purposes

Here we clear up the most stubborn misunderstanding. It is true that Bitcoin enjoys privileged treatment for VAT, but that concerns the exchange, not your service. Your own service remains subject to VAT, exactly as with any euro invoice. Anyone selling web design for 5,000 euros owes VAT on it, even if the client pays in coins.

The basis for this is the Federal Ministry of Finance circular of February 27, 2018 on the VAT treatment of Bitcoin, which implements a judgment of the European Court of Justice (Hedqvist, C-264/14, judgment of October 22, 2015). Two statements from it are worth knowing:

• Handing over Bitcoin merely to settle a payment is not a taxable transaction. To that extent the use of Bitcoin is treated the same as the use of conventional means of payment. Your client is therefore not supplying you with an additional service by paying in coins.
• The exchange of Bitcoin into conventional currency is exempt, based on Section 4 no. 8(b) of the VAT Act read in conformity with EU law. If you later swap the coins you received into euros, that exchange does not in itself trigger VAT.

That leaves the question of the amount on which you calculate VAT. What counts is the euro equivalent at the time your service is performed, converted at the last published selling rate. In practice that means: your invoice states a euro amount and the VAT attributable to it in euros, and payment in coins is merely the way that amount is settled. An invoice that names only a coin amount is useless to the tax office.

The small business scheme under Section 19 of the VAT Act: when you charge no VAT

If you fall under the small business scheme, the VAT element drops away and matters become considerably simpler. Under the wording of Section 19 of the VAT Act in force since 2025, your turnover is exempt if total turnover in the preceding calendar year did not exceed 25,000 euros and does not exceed 100,000 euros in the current calendar year. If the second threshold is breached during the year, the relief ends from that point.

Two things are not changed by it, though. First, income tax is unaffected: your fee remains business income in full. Second, you still have to establish the euro equivalent cleanly, because that figure is what determines whether you are still within the thresholds at all. With sharply fluctuating prices, that is no detail: a job that was below the threshold when invoiced may be above it on inflow.

The real trap: business assets carry no one-year holding period

This is the point where business and private treatment part company for good, and in practice it costs the most money. As a private investor you know Section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the Income Tax Act: if more than a year lies between acquisition and sale, the gain stays tax free. That does not apply to crypto-assets held as business assets. There, all changes in value are subject to ongoing taxation, regardless of how long you have held the coins.

A worked example makes the consequence tangible. Suppose you issue an invoice for 10,000 euros and let yourself be paid in Bitcoin. On the day of inflow the coins are worth 10,000 euros, so you book 10,000 euros of business income. Two years later you sell the same coins for 18,000 euros. As a private investor the 8,000 euros of price gain would be tax free once the one-year period had run. As business assets they are a further 8,000 euros of business income and are taxed at your personal rate, and for traders with trade tax on top.

The reverse applies equally, and it is the consolation in this rule: if the value falls between inflow and sale, that loss reduces your business profit without the offsetting restrictions that apply in the private sphere. In private assets, losses from private disposal transactions may only be set against gains of the same kind. In a business they are simply an expense.

Private or business assets: what the allocation turns on

Because so much hangs on this distinction, a closer look pays off. Coins you receive as consideration for a business service enter your business assets upon inflow. That is not a choice you make but a consequence of the transaction, because the coins stem from your business activity. The revised Federal Ministry of Finance circular of March 6, 2025 expressly distinguishes crypto-assets in private and in business assets and places particular weight on the allocation.

If you want to move the coins into private assets, that is a withdrawal, and a withdrawal is valued at going-concern value. Any hidden reserve built up until then is thereby realised and taxed. Switching to the private sphere is therefore not a way to escape business taxation; it merely brings it forward. From the withdrawal onwards, however, the private period does start running, with the withdrawal value as the acquisition cost.

So keep business and private holdings technically separate, ideally in different wallets. Anyone mixing the two in the same address will barely be able to evidence the allocation later, and the burden of proof is on you. It is the same thought that lies behind separating a business account from a private one.

Bookkeeping and records: what you have to capture per payment

The circular of March 6, 2025 considerably expanded the requirements on tax return, cooperation and record-keeping obligations compared with the 2022 predecessor. For you as a self-employed person that means, concretely, that you have to record more per incoming payment than you would for a bank transfer. A fixed set of details you capture every time makes sense:

1. Date and time of the inflow, meaning the moment the coins were available, not the moment of the invoice.
2. Quantity and type of the crypto-asset, in the unit in which it arrived.
3. The price used, together with its source, so the euro figure stays traceable and is not disputed later.
4. The euro amount derived from it, which serves both as business income and as acquisition cost.
5. The receiving address or account, so the allocation to business assets can be evidenced.
6. The associated invoice with the euro amount and separately stated VAT, to the extent you charge any.

Because doing this by hand adds up quickly, software that brings inflows and prices together automatically, and can distinguish between business and private holdings, is worth having. Which tools manage that and where the differences lie is set out in the comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers. When choosing, make sure business holdings can be kept separately, because many programs are cut for private investors and do not know the distinction at all.

Price risk between invoice and payment: what to settle in the contract

Between the day you write the invoice and the day the coins arrive there are often weeks. Over that time the price moves, and without a provision you carry that risk alone. Two routes are customary, and both belong in the contract, not in an arrangement by message.

One route is denominated in euros: you agree a euro amount and record that the client owes the coin amount corresponding to it at the time of payment. Then they carry the price risk, and your bookkeeping stays simple because the invoice amount and the business income agree in euros. The other route is denominated in a fixed quantity of coins. That can make sense if you intend to hold the coins anyway, but it shifts the entire price risk to you and means the invoice amount and the actual inflow diverge.

Also settle which price and which source apply, how long your offer is binding, and who bears the network fee. The network fee is no detail: if less arrives with you because the fee was deducted, the inflow is correspondingly lower, while your claim stood at the full amount.

Trader or freelancer: where the difference lies for you

For income tax it initially makes no difference whether you work in a liberal profession under Section 18 of the Income Tax Act or in a trade under Section 15: in both cases the fee is business income, and in both cases the coins belong to business assets with no holding period. The difference lies in trade tax, which falls only on trades and thus burdens the later price gain additionally.

A second difference concerns the method of calculating profit. Members of the liberal professions may use the cash-basis profit calculation regardless of their size, and there the inflow principle applies. If, on the other hand, you are required to keep double-entry books, it is not the inflow that counts but the arising of the receivable, and the crypto-assets have to be valued as at the balance sheet date. That is a different arithmetical world with valuation questions of its own, and at this point at the latest you should not think the matter through alone.

Swap into euros immediately or hold: the practical trade-off

Many self-employed people swap the coins they receive straight into euros. For tax that is the cleanest route, for a simple reason: if inflow and sale take place on the same day at practically the same price, no appreciable change in value arises that you would have to capture and tax separately later. You then have exactly one event instead of two, and the exchange itself is VAT exempt.

If, on the other hand, you want to hold the coins, do so with your eyes open. Every price move afterwards is taxable in the business, you need a solid valuation, and you are tying up business assets in a fluctuating value while your tax liability arises and falls due in euros. Anyone who collects a large fee in the spring and has to pay the tax on it the following year can run into a liquidity gap if the price has fallen, even though they never sold a cent. The tax is measured on the value at inflow, not on today's price.

If you do intend to hold balances for longer, the question of custody belongs with it. Coins that sit permanently in business assets should not be left indefinitely on a trading account.

Taxing Bitcoin received as a fee: what to take away

Three steps with which you set the matter up correctly from the start.

1. Agree in euros and document the inflow. Write the invoice for a euro amount with separately stated VAT, and on receipt record the date, time, quantity, price and source. Where you can reliably realise the equivalent in euros is shown by the crypto exchange comparison.
2. Separate business and private holdings technically. Use a dedicated address for fees, so the allocation stays provable later and private holdings are not pulled into business taxation. For balances held permanently, a custody solution of its own is worth having; the candidates are in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Plan the tax in euros and decide deliberately about holding. Set the tax portion aside as soon as the fee comes in, and reckon with every later price move remaining taxable in the business. Anyone regularly shifting larger amounts will find the right trading routes in the broker comparison.

You can read the two governing administrative instructions yourself: the income tax treatment in the Federal Ministry of Finance circular of March 6, 2025 on individual questions of the income tax treatment of certain crypto-assets and the VAT side in the Federal Ministry of Finance circular of February 27, 2018 on the VAT treatment of Bitcoin. What the taxation looks like when you receive crypto not as a self-employed person but as an employee is covered in our piece on a salary paid in Bitcoin; the basics for private investors we have written up separately.

(As of September 23, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

A tech columnist declined to give Meta's new AI agent access to his messages. It read them anyway, then invented an explanation for how it knew.

21Shares listed Europe's first Zcash exchange-traded product on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam this week as ZEC continues its banner year.

Deribit's strike-by-strike data shows a book stacked with calls, and one price level drawing hedging pressure from both sides at once.

The product lets users lock in their rate and repayment date when borrowing USDC against Bitcoin, marking the first enterprise-scale deployment of Morpho Midnight and a shift away from on-chain lending's variable-rate norm.

BitMEX ended trading at 04:00 UTC Wednesday and is urging users to withdraw their remaining funds, as fees now apply to balances left on the exchange.

Coinbase has disabled trading for IoTeX (IOTX), dealing another blow to the struggling blockchain token after a brutal 85% plunge over the past year.

Coinbase Markets has flagged unusually strong bullish demand in XRP options.

Bitcoin ETFs have staged a stunning comeback.

Zcash cofounder Eli Ben-Sasson names two features that could eventually become baseline requirements across the crypto industry.

A 3,049% liquidation imbalance slams overheated BTC, XRP, and ETH buyers as global markets pivot to $101 Brent oil.

TLDR

• GOOG stock reversed toward $340 after failing to hold above $360.
• Gemini now serves more than 1 billion monthly active users.
• Google Cloud revenue reached $24.8 billion in Q2 2026.
• Alphabet expects $175 billion to $185 billion in 2026 capital spending.
• The $350 level remains important after the latest share-price reversal.

Alphabet shares reversed from above $360 toward $340 on Tuesday, weakening the recovery. GOOG stock now faces attention as investors balance Gemini expansion with rising infrastructure costs, competition, and regulatory pressure. The move follows a rebound from below $330 that failed to hold near resistance.

Alphabet Inc., GOOG

GOOG Stock Faces Fresh Technical Pressure

Alphabet previously climbed toward $384 after strong earnings and Search and Cloud performance. Shares later fell below $330 before recovering toward $364. The latest rejection above $360 shows buyers have struggled to maintain momentum.

The chart also shows pressure around moving averages. Alphabet slipped below its 50-day and 100-day averages earlier this year before finding support near the 200-day average around $270. Shares later rebounded, but resistance has slowed the recovery.

Gemini Growth Raises Spending Demands

Alphabet continues expanding Gemini across its products, including a desktop version that gives users access without opening a browser. Gemini can answer questions, check information, draft content, and create images or videos. Alphabet says the assistant now serves more than 1 billion monthly users.

A Googlebook launch centered on Gemini AI added a consumer channel for the assistant. Wider adoption supports usage growth, but it also raises demand for chips, networking equipment, and data-center capacity.

Cloud Expansion Keeps Capital Costs Elevated

Google Cloud remains a major growth area after second-quarter revenue reached $24.8 billion, up 82% from a year earlier. Alphabet reported quarterly revenue of $119.8 billion and earnings per share of $9.11.

Infrastructure spending remains central to that strategy. A $22 billion financing deal tied to Google TPUs showed the scale of investment surrounding AI computing. Alphabet expects 2026 capital spending of about $175 billion to $185 billion.

Search and Regulation Remain in Focus

Google Search still generates a share of Alphabet’s advertising revenue. The company must add AI features while protecting its core search business. Growing use of conversational tools adds another competitive factor as users change how they find information.

Regulation remains another issue for GOOG stock. A recent federal court decision required ad-tech reforms but stopped short of ordering a breakup. Alphabet continues facing scrutiny across Search, advertising, and its digital operations.

Traders are watching the $350 area. A sustained move above $360 would strengthen the technical picture, while a break below $350 would leave the rebound more exposed as markets assess spending, competition, regulation, and Gemini’s expanding role.

The post GOOG Stock Recovery Stalls Near Key Resistance appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• SMX stock rises as plastic technology expands into new verified markets.
• Digital Material Passport links physical materials with digital records.
• SMX uses molecular markers to authenticate plastic throughout lifecycles.
• Platform connects recycling data with circular economy credit systems.
• Companies can test plastic materials through SMX verification infrastructure.

Security MattersSMX (SMX) stock closed at $9.64, gaining 0.73% as the company expanded its plastic verification technology. The company is developing a system that links physical materials with digital records through its Digital Material Passport platform. The move introduces new applications across verified material markets, recycling systems, and circular economy infrastructure.

SMX (Security Matters) Public Limited Company, SMX

SMX Expands Digital Material Passport Platform

SMX has expanded its technology beyond plastic authentication into broader material tracking solutions. The platform connects physical plastic materials with digital records that store verified lifecycle information. Therefore, the system creates a link between production, reuse, and material verification processes.

The company uses molecular marking technology to identify plastic materials throughout their lifecycle. The markers allow companies to confirm material identity without relying only on external documents. As a result, manufacturers can create stronger records for recycled content and supply chains.

The Digital Material Passport platform adds digital information to physically marked materials. It records details such as origin, composition, custody history, and lifecycle status. Furthermore, the platform supports enterprise systems through data tools and integration features.

SMX Targets Verified Material Markets

SMX designed its platform to connect physical materials with digital markets and asset applications. The system allows verified material information to move through blockchain-based records. Consequently, companies can use authenticated data for different commercial processes.

The platform follows a structure that moves from material identification to market participation. The process connects material marking, digital passports, blockchain records, and circularity credits. This approach creates a continuous record of verified material movement.

SMX is also creating a client experience that allows companies to test their own plastic materials. Businesses can submit materials for marking, identification, and digital passport creation. This process demonstrates how the technology operates across different industrial applications.

SMX Builds Circular Economy Infrastructure

SMX is positioning its technology within the growing demand for recycled material verification. The company links recycling activity with measurable data and documented lifecycle records. Therefore, the platform supports businesses seeking clearer information about recovered materials.

The company’s Circularity-as-a-Service model focuses on documenting plastic recovery and reuse. Verified recycling events can support the creation of Plastic Circularity Credits. These credits represent documented circular activity connected to authenticated materials.

SMX’s platform combines physical verification with digital infrastructure for material management. A manufacturer can mark plastic during production and track it through later reuse cycles. Meanwhile, recyclers and brands can access verified information during material transitions.

The company’s technology addresses challenges within the recycled plastics sector. Market participants increasingly require reliable proof of recycled content and material origin. SMX aims to provide a system that connects this information across the material lifecycle.

The post SMX (SMX) Stock: Gains Attention as Plastic Technology Enters New Markets appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• HUBS stock rose 4.74% as investors responded to HubSpot’s expanding AI strategy and product updates.
• HubSpot expanded its OpenAI partnership with deeper ChatGPT CRM integration and new ChatGPT Ads support.
• The company introduced Breeze Assistant and updates to its Smart CRM, marketing, sales, and service tools.
• RBC, Truist, UBS, BMO, TD Cowen, Stifel, and Stephens updated ratings or price targets after recent HubSpot events.
• HubSpot reported about $3.13 billion in trailing revenue, more than 20% annual growth, and cash near $961 million.

HubSpot Inc. (HUBS) shares rose 4.74% on Wednesday as investors tracked AI products, OpenAI integrations, and analyst updates. HUBS stock traded near $228 after moving between $220 and 231. The gain followed a rebound from the low-210 area after shares weakened from late-August levels near $265.

HubSpot, Inc., HUBS

HUBS Stock Rises as OpenAI Partnership Grows

HubSpot expanded its work with OpenAI by adding more functions to its ChatGPT CRM connector. Customers can now manage campaigns, review deals, and follow lead activity inside ChatGPT. The company also introduced the first CRM integration with ChatGPT Ads. The AI market remains active, with Microsoft’s AI and Azure momentum drawing analyst attention this week.

HubSpot launched an AI Growth Bundle aimed at small and midsize businesses. The package combines discounted HubSpot Starter access, ChatGPT Business seats, and advertising credits. These offers support HubSpot’s plan to bring more customers into its software ecosystem while expanding the use of AI across marketing and sales tasks.

New Products Put AI at CRM Center

At recent events, HubSpot introduced Breeze Assistant and updates to its Smart CRM. The tools aim to keep customer records current while helping teams manage sales, marketing, and service work. HubSpot also added new features designed to increase lead generation, improve sales conversion, and speed up ticket handling.

AI companies continue heavy spending on infrastructure and product development. Recent reporting on OpenAI’s rising infrastructure spending shows how quickly AI investment is growing. For HubSpot, the key test will be whether customers adopt its new tools and increase paid usage across seats and credits.

Analysts Raise Targets After HubSpot Events

Several Wall Street firms updated their views after HubSpot’s recent events. RBC Capital kept its Outperform rating and $300 target. Truist raised its target to $275 from $230 and maintained a Buy rating. UBS lifted its target to $290 while keeping a Buy rating on HUBS stock.

AI demand remains a market focus, with Nvidia’s stronger AI chip demand supporting attention across technology shares. BMO raised its HubSpot target to $250, while TD Cowen set a $260 target. Stifel and Stephens also raised targets but kept more cautious ratings.

HubSpot reported about $3.13 billion in trailing revenue and more than 20% annual growth. Gross margin remained above 80%, while cash stood near $961 million. Its valuation remains elevated, leaving HUBS stock sensitive to growth, AI adoption, and execution.

The post HUBS Stock Rebounds as Wall Street Backs AI Growth appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Rezolve AI targets $60 million in annualized savings through its cost program.
• RZLV stock closed at $2.28, down 2.56%, before rising 0.42% in after-hours trading.
• The company expects H2 2026 cash burn to fall sharply from first-half levels.
• Rezolve targets positive adjusted EBITDA for the month ending June 30, 2027.
• Cost cuts focus on staffing, cloud services, property and outside spending.

Rezolve AI PLC (RZLV) shares outlined a cost reduction program targeting about $60 million in annualized savings. The company expects the measures to sharply reduce cash burn during the second half of 2026. Meanwhile, RZLV stock closed at $2.28, down 2.56%, before gaining 0.42% after hours.

Rezolve AI PLC, RZLV

Rezolve AI Targets Lower Costs and Positive Adjusted EBITDA

Rezolve AI expects its cost program to support positive Adjusted EBITDA when exiting the first half of 2027. The company specifically targets profitability for the month ending June 30, 2027. However, this target does not represent positive Adjusted EBITDA across the full first half.

Management has already reduced acquisition-related spending, marketing costs and external legal expenses. The company also plans to eliminate overlapping expenses inherited through previous acquisitions. Consequently, Rezolve expects recurring operating costs to fall as integration work continues.

The company will also shift more professional services work to external partners. TCS and Tech Mahindra will support this transition as Rezolve changes its delivery structure. Management expects this approach to improve gross margins while supporting future revenue growth.

Operating Program Focuses on Five Cost Areas

Rezolve’s restructuring program targets cloud infrastructure, staffing, professional services, property and discretionary spending. The company plans to optimize technology capacity and renegotiate selected supplier arrangements. It will also consolidate overlapping services across its operating businesses.

Meanwhile, staffing changes will remove duplicated roles created through previous acquisitions. Rezolve will align remaining resources with customer demand and expected revenue opportunities. The company has already completed some office closures and workforce reductions during integration.

Property consolidation will address surplus office space inherited through acquisitions. Rezolve will also direct marketing spending toward activities with measurable commercial returns. Furthermore, management plans to apply tighter controls when considering additional acquisitions and other discretionary spending.

Cash Burn Reduction Supports Rezolve AI Profitability Plan

Rezolve recorded several exceptional cash expenses during the first half of 2026. These included fundraising fees, litigation settlements, office closures and acquisition integration costs. As these expenses decline, management expects second-half cash usage to fall substantially.

The company reported an Adjusted EBITDA margin of negative 24.9% during the first half. Reaching a positive margin by June 2027 would improve that measure by at least 24.9 percentage points. Still, operating cash-flow breakeven remains a separate financial milestone under the company’s plan.

Rezolve will continue funding Rezolve Commerce, Rezolve Pay, Rezolve Reward and Rezolve Insight. It will also maintain spending on brainpowa and supporting infrastructure while reducing broader expenses. The company plans to provide additional business updates during its Investor Day on October 6, 2026.

The post Rezolve AI PLC (RZLV) Stock: Eyes Profitability With $60M Cost Cuts appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• U.S. Treasury will buy back up to $6B of 20- to 30-year bonds on Sept. 24, with settlement Sept. 25.
• The 30-year Treasury yield reached 5.38%, nearing 5.40%, its highest level since 2007 earlier this month.
• The 10-year yield climbed above 5.12% as stronger U.S. business activity supported higher-rate expectations.
• Bitcoin fell below $84,000 from above $87,000 as rising long-term Treasury yields pressured risk assets.

The U.S. Treasury will buy back up to $6 billion of longer-dated government debt on Thursday, September 24, as borrowing costs remain elevated. The operation will target nominal securities in the 20- to 30-year maturity range, covering bonds maturing from September 2046 through September 2056. Bidding is scheduled between 1:40 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. ET, with settlement expected on September 25. Purchased securities will be retired after settlement.

U.S. Treasury Sets $6B Buyback as Long-Term Yields Surge

The $6 billion ceiling marks a sharp increase from the $2 billion maximum initially planned for long-end operations earlier this quarter. In August, Treasury said buybacks covering 10- to 30-year securities would rise to at least $4 billion through November 4.

Officials linked the larger operations to strong participation and efforts to improve liquidity in older, less-traded securities. The latest purchase comes as long-term Treasury yields test levels not seen in years. The 30-year yield reached about 5.38% on Wednesday.

That move brought the rate close to the roughly 5.40% level recorded earlier this month, its highest since 2007. The 10-year yield also moved above 5.12% during Wednesday trading as stronger U.S. business activity supported expectations for elevated interest rates.

Treasury’s previous September 10 operation targeted 10- to 20-year debt and accepted $5.19 billion from about $10.5 billion offered. That total remained below the announced $6 billion ceiling. Afterward, the 10-year yield continued higher toward roughly 4.95%.

Rising Yields Pressure Bitcoin and Broader Risk Assets

Treasury buybacks are designed to remove older, less-liquid, off-the-run securities and give investors regular opportunities to sell those holdings. The department describes the program as a market-liquidity tool rather than a response to acute financial stress.

That distinction matters as the operation does not set a target for borrowing costs or guarantee lower yields across the Treasury market. The same rise in long-term rates also coincided with pressure on Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency fell below $84,000 after trading above $87,000 earlier Wednesday.

The decline came as the 10-year Treasury yield moved above 5%, tightening financial conditions across markets sensitive to borrowing costs and liquidity. A Bitcoin Magazine post on X highlighted the $6 billion purchase and added the phrase “Buy Bitcoin,” linking the operation to crypto market attention.

However, Treasury’s stated purpose remains narrower. The department is using buybacks to improve trading conditions in older securities and retire purchased debt. Broader yield moves still reflect inflation, Federal Reserve policy, government borrowing needs, and investor demand across the Treasury market.

The post U.S. Treasury Sets $6B Long-Bond Buyback as Yields Test Multi-Year Highs appeared first on Blockonomi.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has welcomed Trueo’s planned migration from Base to Ethereum mainnet, describing it as a new prediction-market contender focused on decentralization and ethical design.

The move puts Trueo’s dispute-resolution system and plans for wider DeFi integration at the center of its pitch as prediction markets face legal scrutiny and competition.

Trueo Says Ethereum Fits Its Long-Term Plans

In a post on X, Buterin praised the project for being “dedicated to decentralization, and being ethical and not corposlop,” adding that he was glad to see a team trying to do “interesting and meaningful things” with prediction markets.

Trueo announced the move on September 21, explaining that it first launched on Base in March 2025. The team described the Layer 2 network as a useful environment for early experimentation, when the Ethereum mainnet gas costs were higher and parts of the application were still experimental.

But Trueo now wants to build a platform that is “widely adopted, broadly integrated, fully permissionless, mostly immutable, and highly credible.” It believes Ethereum is a better fit for that goal because of its network effects and global integrations, as well as alignment with the project’s philosophy.

The team’s immediate priorities after migration are to attract liquidity in major market categories and release the next generation of its oracle. Trueo argues that prediction markets depend heavily on how outcomes are resolved, and that existing systems lack adequate due process when disputes arise.

Its oracle is designed to process evidence from a broad range of legitimate data sources to reach outcomes. Trueo says user feedback has reinforced its view that this system is one of the application’s main attractions for traders.

The project also sees Ethereum as a route to integrations involving oracle services and yield opportunities for its TYD asset. According to Trueo, the migration will not interrupt trading on Base, and TYD will continue accruing yield.

Existing Base markets that expire after migration will still be accessible through the official app and will use the current resolution system. However, the team advised Base users not to create additional markets expiring after January 31, 2027, and instead to create them on Ethereum once its mainnet instance goes live.

TRUE Skyrockets Following Buterin’s Endorsement

TRUE, which will remain the protocol’s native token, saw its market cap jump from around $1.7 million to more than $12 million in the hours after Buterin’s post.

At the time of writing, CoinGecko data put it around $0.15, up 699% over the past day and nearly 750% across one week, although it is still nearly 50% below the $0.26 all-time high it hit in August 2025.

The announcement has come at a time when rival prediction market operators are facing legal disputes and uneven trading activity, with well-known trader Machi Big Brother declaring “Kalshi dead. Long live $TRUE.”

As CryptoPotato reported in August, Baltimore officials sued Kalshi and Polymarket over alleged unlicensed sports betting. Meanwhile, the former is also facing a separate lawsuit by the New York attorney general, who argued its event contracts violated state gambling laws.

The post Vitalik Buterin Endorses Trueo as Prediction Market Moves to Ethereum appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Cardano’s native token has been thriving amid the latest green environment, with its valuation climbing to a peak not seen since May.

Naturally, the major ascent has drawn multiple bullish predictions from analysts, but certain elements suggest a correction could also be in the cards.

The Next Upward Move?

As of press time, ADA is worth around $0.25, up about 30% in a week. X user CW claimed that the asset is showing an accumulation signal while gradually rising.

“Accumulation is taking place at the current level. It is gathering energy for its next upward move. MACD and EMA trends are forming a bullish momentum,” they added.

For his part, Jesse Olson argued that Cardano’s cryptocurrency has flipped “ultra bullish” on the daily chart, with the price breaking above a vital zone and continuing to make higher highs and higher lows. Shortly after, the analyst estimated that ADA has a pending buy signal on the weekly chart, noting that it hasn’t been bullish on the seven-day timeframe in 14 months.

More Crypto Online also weighed in, saying the token continues to follow a specific bullish price channel and setting $0.315 as the next target to watch.

Somewhat expected, X user Sssebi, who has issued optimistic price predictions even when ADA traded at much lower levels over the past several months, couldn’t stay silent amid the rally. They simply claimed the token could do “something really crazy” without providing a specific target.

Those who want to explore additional forecasts can read our detailed article here.

Short Setup?

X user Mork differentiated themselves from the overall bullish sentiment, describing ADA as one of their favorite short setups right now. The market observer noted the asset’s strong recent performance but said they won’t rush to chase the first move away from resistance.

“I’m waiting for another move into the level. If buyers don’t step in there, I’ll take a closer look at the short,” they said.

Meanwhile, ADA’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) suggests that the asset may indeed experience a short-term correction. The ratio has risen into overbought territory above 70, meaning the price has soared too much in a short period, and it might be time to cool off. Conversely, readings below 30 are usually interpreted as buying opportunities.

The post Top Cardano Price Predictions as ADA Explodes 30% in a Week appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin has moved above a key long-term technical level that CryptoQuant says has historically marked major shifts in the cryptocurrency’s market cycle. BTC closed above its 365-day moving average, which stood near $80,500, for the first time since March 2023.

At the time, the asset was trading around $86,000 when it closed above the average. The analytics firm said the move confirms the start of a new bull market. The firm cited similar breaks above the average that preceded major advances in 2019 and 2023.

Bitcoin’s Market Signals Turn Positive

CryptoQuant also pointed to earlier periods when Bitcoin fell below the same average, including the end of the 2021 market peak and the downturn in November 2025. Rather than treating the indicator as a short-term trading tool, analysts described the 365-day average as a marker of broader market cycles.

Bitcoin had remained below the level for an extended period before the latest move, making the reclaim a notable change in its longer-term structure. The move also follows signals from CryptoQuant’s internal market indicators, which had already turned more positive several weeks earlier.

Those indicators, including the firm’s Bull Score Index and Bull-Bear Market Cycle Indicator, both moved toward an early bull-market phase by mid-August. The latest price action has now aligned with those earlier on-chain signals.

BTC Clears Key Supply Zone

Bitcoin has also cleared a major supply barrier between $76,000 and $81,000, held by long-term investors and wallets inactive for over seven years. According to the analytics firm, many of those coins were sold earlier this year, creating significant overhead supply that BTC has now cleared.

The next major supply area sits between $88,000 and $90,000, where another large group of coins is concentrated. That range also lines up with the upper end of traders’ realized price, making it an important level to monitor as BTC moves higher.

Below the current price, support remains around the 200-day moving average near $70,600 and the recently reclaimed 365-day average. CryptoQuant warned that pullbacks can still occur even after a broader market-cycle signal turns positive.

Against this backdrop, the latest move follows months of consolidation after Bitcoin’s decline last year. Market participants will watch whether BTC holds above the 365-day average and approaches the $88,000 to $90,000 supply zone.

The post Bitcoin Just Cleared a Crucial Level – Has the New Bull Market Begun? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The primary cryptocurrency has climbed roughly 15% over the past week and briefly reached an eight-month high above $87,000. As of this writing, it trades just below $86,000, but overall bullish sentiment remains.

Popular analyst Ali Martinez set $100,000 as the next target, and here’s why it might come sooner than you think.

The Positive Factors

The renowned X user started his bullish observation by noting that BTC has risen more than 50% since bottoming below $58,000 in July. He claimed that even after this evident resurgence, large investors seem reluctant to take profits.

“Yesterday alone, the BTC network recorded more than 2,722 transactions, each worth over $1 million, showing that large entities remain active during the rally,” he said.

Martinez then turned to the ETF front, highlighting that spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have accumulated more than $1.6 billion worth of the cryptocurrency over the past 72 hours, adding significant buying pressure.

The analyst claimed that BTC continues trading above strong support at $84,569, where nearly 600,000 coins previously changed hands. The second major demand zone sits near $77,000, he added.

“With strong support below, overhead resistance is thinning out. The next major URPD resistance sits near $104,765, where roughly 283,000 BTC were traded,” Martinez revealed.

Last but not least, he paid attention to the MVRV Pricing Bands, which tell a similar story. Martinez said the mean band near $100,670 is the next key resistance for BTC, while the -0.5 band around $74,361 acts as a major support.

“As long as demand remains strong, $100,000 is in focus,” he concluded.

Don’t FOMO Here?

Bitcoin’s $10,000 price increase in less than a week has undoubtedly sparked huge enthusiasm across the crypto world and has led to the highest FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) since 2024.

This phenomenon happens when traders rush to buy the asset after a strong rally, fearing they will miss the chance to make substantial profits. It is worth noting that such crowded positioning often leaves the market vulnerable, and even a small wave of profit-taking can trigger a pullback, sending prices significantly lower.

X user Gerla recently advised traders and investors not to FOMO at current levels, expecting BTC to potentially correct to roughly $80,000 or higher, which could offer another buying opportunity.

“If we get that chance, I’d rather DCA there than chase $95K-$100K,” he concluded.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Eyes $100K as Key Bullish Signals Emerge appeared first on CryptoPotato.

BlackRock is arguing that the wider adoption of AI could create new demand for stablecoins and blockchain payments.

According to the asset manager, autonomous AI systems may require financial infrastructure built for machines, and blockchains could also become a way to pay for the computing resources those systems use.

Three Areas of Convergence

In a paper it published on September 22, the firm described AI as “machine-native intelligence” and digital assets as “machine-native money.”

It argued that the technologies, which have largely developed along separate tracks, are beginning to converge as AI systems gain the ability to interact with financial networks and carry out transactions with limited human involvement.

BlackRock focused on three areas of overlap, with the first being tokenization. Here, large language models divide text into tokens that can be processed numerically, while blockchains represent value and ownership claims as digital tokens. Their functions may be different, but both systems translate information into standardized formats that machines can handle.

Another area BlackRock identified was agentic commerce, where AI agents can make financial transactions. According to the company, this could increase demand for programmable payment infrastructure, and stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies could serve as payment and settlement instruments.

Traditional systems such as card networks and the Automated Clearing House (ACH) already support automated payments; however, per the paper, their onboarding requirements and settlement economics can make them less suited to continuous, very low-value transactions that require programmable execution.

The third area is computing capacity. BlackRock cited analyst estimates that hyperscaler cloud revenue could exceed $1 trillion annually by 2030, and standardized claims on computing capacity, the paper argues, could become a digital asset use case for financing and programmable settlement.

CZ and Arthur Hayes Have the Same Idea

The firm’s argument extended beyond using crypto to pay for goods and services. It also posited that as AI agents become more capable and operate for longer periods, they need access to computing resources through standardized, transferable claims.

Such assets could then allow financing and settlement to take place through programmable systems rather than relying entirely on conventional processes. The report also drew a distinction between the two technologies’ roles. AI interprets information and directs activity, while blockchains can provide machine-readable assets and rules for transferring them.

Smart contracts can apply predefined conditions to transactions, allowing assets to move when the required criteria are met. Essentially, BlackRock describes AI as a potential structural catalyst for digital asset adoption, while presenting digital assets as possible infrastructure for an increasingly autonomous economy.

However, the paper’s case rests on whether autonomous systems can create enough demand for programmable payments and tokenized claims to justify broader use.

As CryptoPotato reported previously, Arthur Hayes has argued that agents consume floating-point operations, not groceries, and may want a token redeemable for compute. Additionally, in June, Changpeng Zhao told Galaxy Research that agentic trading and payments would arrive in months, not years, and would use crypto because blockchains already speak in APIs.

The post BlackRock: AI Agents Will Drive Major Demand for Stablecoins and Blockchain Payments appeared first on CryptoPotato.