The closure threat heightens geopolitical tensions, risking global economic impacts and complicating diplomatic resolutions in the region.

The post Iran warns Strait of Hormuz closure unless US meets demands appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The partnership may boost blockchain's role in finance, enhancing liquidity and accessibility, while potentially elevating Ethereum's market value.

The post Blockchain.com, NYSE partner for 24/7 trading of tokenized US stocks, ETFs appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Morpho Midnight's expansion could redefine DeFi lending by integrating fixed-rate options, potentially attracting a broader user base.

The post Morpho Midnight opens all USDC markets on Morpho Blue, expanding fixed-rate lending options appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

SoftBank's high-yield bond sale tests investor appetite for risk, potentially influencing future AI investment strategies and market dynamics.

The post SoftBank bond sale offers yields nearing 10% as it bets the farm on OpenAI appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The high Russian casualties in Ukraine suggest prolonged conflict, impacting military objectives and market expectations for future advances.

The post Russian war dead in Ukraine exceed 250,000: Kyiv Post appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Assessing the Quantum Threat to Bitcoin w/ Shinobi

The quantum threat to Bitcoin is no longer purely theoretical, so what would an actual attack look like on chain? Bitcoin Magazine technical editor Shinobi says you likely wouldn’t get much warning, just movement people slowly realize is illegitimate, either a fast grab at major exchanges and the ETFs or a quiet drain of Satoshi-era coins moved in chunks. In this conversation with Grace Remington and Sean Hagan, he breaks down the real exposure numbers and why an attacker’s motivation determines everything about how it plays out.

Chapters:
00:00 — What a Quantum Attack on Bitcoin Would Look Like On Chain
01:19 — Whether an Attacker Wants Profit or Wants to Cause Damage
01:52 — How Many Coins Are Vulnerable and How Fast They Could Move
03:07 — Why Exchanges Would Be Negligent Not to Migrate Immediately
03:57 — The Assumption That Dormant Coins Are Lost Coins
05:00 — Migration, Satoshi’s Coins, and the Coins That Won’t Move
06:35 — Post-Quantum Signature Work and Taproot Optionality
07:58 — Three Things That Put You in Control of Your Exposure
09:25 — Why Consensus Changes Wait for Audits
10:11 — Inside Bitcoin Magazine’s Quantum Issue and Its Contributors

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.

This post Assessing the Quantum Threat to Bitcoin w/ Shinobi first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Dave Weisberger on Why Bitcoin FOMO Hasn’t Even Started Yet

Bitcoin’s biggest remaining unlock isn’t an ETF or a treasury company it’s collateral treatment. Dave Weisberger, co-founder of CoinRoutes, explains that the haircut banks face on Bitcoin is close to 100%, and that once it’s treated like any other asset based on volatility and liquidity, everything changes for lenders and for companies like Strategy Inc (formerly MicroStrategy). He calls it the final boss, and notes the Basel committee and rulemakers have all described it as inevitable without it actually happening yet. In this conversation with Grace Remington and Sean Hagan, he also covers tokenization, Hyperliquid, and the Fed.

Chapters:
00:00 — Why Every Asset Gets Tokenized and Wall Street Is Backing It
02:00 — Bitcoin, Gold, and Equities as One Global Liquidity Pool
03:53 — Hyperliquid’s Rise and the Appeal of Controlling Your Own Assets
05:27 — Perpetual Swaps, Segregated Accounts, and What Liquidations Really Mean
06:39 — Waves of Disruption From Program Trading to Citadel and Jane Street
08:06 — Tokenized Stocks, Walled Gardens, and the Open Source Alternative
10:05 — Why Every 25 Basis Points Adds $100 Billion to the Deficit
13:19 — Why ETF Money Lowered Bitcoin’s Volatility
15:24 — Covered Call Replacement Buying and Why FOMO Hasn’t Started
18:18 — Bitcoin as an Asymmetric Option and the Pristine Collateral Problem

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.

This post Dave Weisberger on Why Bitcoin FOMO Hasn’t Even Started Yet first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Investors Buy Nearly $1B in BTC ETFs as Bull Market Returns

The Bitcoin bulls are back — if ETF flows are to be believed. 

U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded funds received $999 million in new investment on Monday, according to Farside Investors data. 

That’s the most in one day since October 6, when the funds received over $1.2 billion and the price of the leading cryptocurrency hit a new all-time high of $126,080. 

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at $86,552 after scraping $87,330 on Monday. Over the past seven days, the coin’s price has surged by nearly 13%. 

Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. — approved by the SEC in 2024 — have helped investors get exposure when they couldn’t before. Now, Wall Street firms can quickly buy shares of funds managed by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, and others. 

When big investment hits the funds, the price often moves significantly — as what happened on Monday. 

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart on Monday said that the average ETF buyer is now in profit after the estimated ETF cost basis surged above $81,72 for the first time since January.  

The ETF to receive the most of Monday’s investment — $381.4 million — was BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin trust. The ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF received $289.1 million; Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund took in $238.8 million. 

Investors have a renewed interest in Bitcoin after the artificial intelligence stock rally cooled and the U.S. Department of the Treasury in August said it would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. 

Analysts said the move pushed 30-year Treasury yields down, weakened the dollar, and made assets like bitcoin more attractive. Following the announcement, the bitcoin price had its best run in years. 

A Tuesday report from crypto market data firm CryptoQuant said that the leading cryptocurrency crossed above its 365-day moving average, a signal that the asset has finished being in a bear market.  

This post Bitcoin Investors Buy Nearly $1B in BTC ETFs as Bull Market Returns first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s Bull Run Is Back — and the Data Agrees

Bitcoin’s run this weekend would have observers believing that the bull market is back. But the data also backs it up. 

A new report from data firm CryptoQuant shows that the leading cryptocurrency crossed above its 365-day moving average — a signal that the asset has finished being in a bear market. 

Bitcoin’s price surged in August and had its best run in years, spurred by an announcement from the U.S. Treasury saying it would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. Its run cooled but then last week shot up again and was recently trading for $86,598 after trading as high as nearly $87,330 on Monday. 

“This crossover is the definitive technical signal that has marked the start of Bitcoin’s bull markets in past cycles, and it is the first time price has reclaimed the 365-day moving average since March 2023,” the report read. 

It added that the moving average is a “cycle-defining” line and confirmed the start of bull runs in previous years. 

“Its track record across cycles is why this reclaim carries real weight rather than being a routine bounce,” the report added. 

The report continued that long-term holders appear to have finished selling, making the way for new investors to enter the market. 

Bitcoin notched a record of $126,080 in October of last year but then began to sink later that month after the biggest liquidation event in crypto history saw over $19 billion in bets closed. 

In the first half of this year it continued its plunge after the Federal Reserve made it clear it was in no hurry to lower interest rates and investors increasingly threw money at artificial intelligence-related stocks to get returns. 

But the so-called debasement trade — where investors throw money at an asset to hedge against a currency losing its value — is hot again. Bitcoin and precious metals like gold have done well when the dollar has weakened. 

And the Federal Reserve last week raised interest rates to get sky-high inflation in the U.S. under control. Investors shrugged the central bank’s move off and bought up the asset. 

Now, people seem more interested in buying an asset that can protect them from government debt and deficit. In August, total U.S. debt topped $40 trillion for the first time. 

This post Bitcoin’s Bull Run Is Back — and the Data Agrees first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

White Hats Move Over $4.5 in Bitcoins From Coldcard to Recovery Trust

White hats have moved bitcoin from the hacked Coldcard signing devices to a trust for would-be victims to reclaim, Galaxy Digital’s Alex Thorn has said. 

Writing on X on Monday, Thorn said that the funds were taken by white hats to protect potential victims. They are now apparently sitting in an address controlled by Crypto Recovery Trust, a Wyoming Trust created to help white hats return funds to victims. 

A total of 52.37 of the bitcoins — worth over $4.5 million at today’s prices — were moved. Thorn added that the funds represented 2.8% of the coldcard exploit. 

Criminals started taking bitcoin stored using Coinkite’s popular Coldcard hardware wallet on July 31. 

Canadian company Coinkite said that a firmware bug in Coldcard devices caused seed generation to fall back to a weak software Pseudorandom Number Generator instead of the hardware true random number generator, allowing hackers to essentially guess investor seedphrases. 

Galaxy Digital tracked the movement of funds and said 1,789.28 bitcoins were lost in the attacks. That’s $154.1 million in bitcoin at today’s prices. 

Earlier this month, Nick Bax of universal market protocol Ump Labs said that he was involved in helping recover the funds. 

“Finally able to say that at the end of July, I was involved in the rescue of ~50 BTC which were “imminently going to be stolen due to the COLDCARD entropy flaw,” Bax wrote on X. 

He added: “The funds are currently held by a Wyoming trust, which will ensure that funds are returned to their rightful owners.”

Since the attack, cautious investors have been moving their coins to other storage solutions — including exchanges.

Coinkite said in a statement that the bug in its software “silently went unnoticed” and “its potential impact grew with every release” of its products. 

Days after the first hack, the company urged investors to update their software or move their funds off the popular hardware wallet.

This post White Hats Move Over $4.5 in Bitcoins From Coldcard to Recovery Trust first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

In the markets Talos tracked, daily volume in RWA perpetual futures tied to equities, commodities and indices rose from less than $1 billion in January to $18.8 billion during Sept. 3-9. That represented 18.5% of futures volume across those venues.

Crypto exchanges built their derivatives businesses around perpetual futures, and the same contract structure now wraps exposure to oil, gold, stocks, indices, and pre-IPO companies.

The Talos data show that crypto-perpetual volume declined over the comparison period while total futures activity in its sample remained roughly flat, with traditional-asset contracts filling the volume gap.

The changing product mix creates a real competitive threat for altcoins. Traders no longer need a new token to find leverage, volatility, or a market that stays open around the clock.

Wallet behavior on Hyperliquid points to mostly separate customer groups, with a smaller group trading across both markets.

Hyperliquid’s traders mostly stay in their lanes

Talos found that traditional asset perps represented 28% of futures volume on Hyperliquid and 24.8% on Binance in its sample. Oil led the weekly increase as Brent crossed $100, showing how crypto venues can capture trading around an event unrelated to cryptocurrency.

CoinDesk Research reported that centralized-exchange volume rose 12.7% month over month to $4.29 trillion in August. Spot increased 18.7%, derivatives rose 11.3%, and traditional-asset perpetual volume increased 2.37% to $602 billion.

Both traditional-asset and crypto activity expanded during that month. Substitution could still occur within a specific venue or account, while the aggregate figures show that the two categories can also grow together.

Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework lets outside builders deploy markets, including contracts linked to stocks and commodities. DefiLlama divided new wallets into RWA-first and “Other-first” cohorts based on the market of their first Hyperliquid trade.

From Jan. 1 through June 30, DefiLlama classified 169,514 new wallets as RWA-first. They represented 31.7% of new wallets and generated $111.6 billion (31.5%) of the trading volume produced by new users.

The economics of this acquisition cohort differed sharply from its share of activity: RWA-first wallets generated only 8.3% of the main trading fees paid by new users in the study.

RWA-first wallets kept 83.6% of their volume in RWA markets, while Other-first wallets, whose first trade was in crypto or another non-RWA market, sent 22.8% of their volume into RWA markets and produced roughly 40% of RWA-market volume.

A DefiLlama follow-up found that 80.9% of RWA-first wallets never crossed into the other market, while 82% of Other-first wallets never crossed into RWA markets.

Cross-market activity increased among the most frequent traders who did cross. The user base divides into three broad groups: RWA-first wallets that mostly stay with those products, crypto-first wallets that mostly stay with crypto, and a smaller high-frequency core that treats both as trading opportunities.

Altcoins face a tougher contest for attention

CryptoRank counted 351 new listings across 10 major centralized exchanges in the second quarter, the fewest since the third quarter of 2023. Tokenized assets accounted for 42 additions, while categories associated with the previous speculative cycle lost momentum.

Gate was responsible for 573 removals, nearly 60% of delistings in the first half. MEXC rarely reported delistings and was effectively excluded from that part of the analysis.

Inside CryptoRank's sample, exchange priorities changed as one venue's cleanup dominated removals and reporting gaps limited the cross-exchange picture. RWA trading cannot be blamed for those delistings.

Binance's tokenized-stock figures also show overlap but do not reveal portfolio rotation. Binance Research reported that 58.5% of early bStocks users also used perpetuals, direct equities, or both.

For altcoin holders, the practical risk is competition at the margin. Market makers have finite balance sheets, exchanges have limited promotional capacity, and traders have limited attention. Familiar stocks and commodities now compete with them inside the same apps and collateral systems.

Altcoins have a new competitor for speculative demand. Another example is the HIP-3, which lets outside builders deploy perpetual markets.

Hyperliquid's fee documentation says deployers may retain up to 50% of trading fees generated by their assets. Trading fees directed to the protocol's Assistance Fund are converted automatically into HYPE, Hyperliquid's native token, and the acquired HYPE is burned.

Only a portion of builder-market activity reaches HYPE-related mechanisms. Assistance Fund burns can reduce token supply, while market price still depends on demand, liquidity and the broader market.

Activity and retained economics can move apart

The divergence appeared in first-half figures calculated by 21Shares, which estimated that Hyperliquid's gross fees rose from $320 million in the first half of 2025 to $419.3 million in the first half of 2026. Its measure of core protocol revenue, the fee share flowing back to the platform treasury, fell from $317.5 million to $305.3 million.

Gross fees and core revenue moved in opposite directions as builder-deployed markets captured a larger share of activity.

Crypto perps led the next monthly expansion, as Hyperliquid's total open interest rose from $6.6 billion to $8.8 billion in September. Meanwhile, HIP-3's share declined from 34% to 25%.

Traditional asset trading can fill a crypto-volume gap in one period and grow alongside crypto in another. It can bring in new wallets, give existing users more products, and create fee streams divided among the protocol, builders, and token-linked mechanisms, making exchanges less dependent on crypto's cycles.

For altcoins, the outcome is more ambiguous. Crypto's trading rails can thrive even when demand for the assets that built them grows more slowly.

The post Altcoin demand meets $18B threat as flows move into RWA perps as just 19% of traders keep alts appeared first on CryptoSlate.

SoFi Bank and Mastercard have announced SoFiUSD settlement is live for the bank's debit and credit card program, moving their March plan into production.

The rollout puts a token-based settlement route behind familiar card payments and, according to SoFi, gives participating merchants a way to receive dollars in a bank account without holding the token. SoFi expects more than $25 billion in annualized card-program volume after migration; it has not disclosed how much has actually settled in SoFiUSD.

The migration remains underway. Cardholders can keep using existing cards, while SoFi describes a bank-account cash route for merchants and separate redemption rules for token holders. Those groups encounter different parts of the arrangement, so a live blockchain transaction alone says little about the scale of merchant benefit or token-holder access.

From a planned rail to live settlement

The March partnership announcement described SoFiUSD settlement as a future option. The companies' September release says transactions are now occurring on a blockchain for SoFi Bank's card program. The full-program migration is still in progress, and SoFi has not given a completion date.

SoFi expects the program to process more than $25 billion annually using SoFiUSD after that migration. The figure is a projection of card activity at an eventual run rate. SoFi has not disclosed the amount or share of transactions already settled in the token. That missing denominator prevents readers from treating the projected program size as the stablecoin's observed throughput.

The token operates behind cards people already carry. SoFi says merchants need no stablecoin holdings or new infrastructure to use its proposed route, and the companies describe no requirement for consumers to acquire crypto at checkout. The visible card payment and the settlement path can therefore change on different schedules.

For merchants, the useful measure is when settlement becomes spendable cash. The September release offers no measured before-and-after comparison of that timing or of cost for this program. A working transaction establishes operating status; merchant-level results would establish the economic effect.

SoFi says businesses using its Big Business Banking platform can receive settlement funds immediately in a SoFi Bank account and access cash around the clock without holding SoFiUSD. That is the bank's product claim. The September release names no live outside merchant settlement customer and says discussions with large US merchants continue. Its April platform announcement described business deposit accounts, continuous fiat and token transfers, and mint-and-burn conversion as capabilities the platform would include.

In the arrangement SoFi describes, the merchant's usable balance is held in a bank account while the stablecoin moves value through settlement. That division could spare a business from managing a token wallet. Actual outside-merchant use and measured cash-availability gains would show how far the capability extends beyond SoFi's own card program.

Account dollars and token rights

A merchant paid into a bank account and a party receiving SOFID on-chain hold different claims. The issuer's redemption and risk terms govern the token holder; the card transaction itself does not make the shopper or merchant a direct redemption customer.

SoFi Bank, a nationally chartered bank regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, issues SoFiUSD and describes it as intended for one-for-one dollar redemption. Under SOFID's terms, direct redemption is available only to approved SoFi customers with separate agreements, subject to conditions and fees. Receiving the token on-chain does not transfer that issuer claim. The terms also allow delays or suspensions under specified conditions.

Bank deposits and tokens carry different protections. SoFi's product disclosure says SoFiUSD itself is not a deposit, lacks FDIC and SIPC insurance and may be subject to delay, disruption or permanent loss. A bank-account payout may be useful precisely because the merchant can receive dollars without taking those token-holder risks.

The reserve terms add another distinction. SoFi's September release describes the token's reserves as primarily cash. The issuer's terms also permit cash equivalents and other legally allowed liquid instruments, with no fixed composition promised at every point. The release describes the backing policy but provides no point-in-time reserve breakdown.

The terms also exclude people and entities located in, resident in or subject to UK or European Economic Area laws from acquiring, holding, transferring or using SOFID. Token eligibility and ordinary card acceptance follow different rules. That restriction concerns token participation; it does not establish a ban on card purchases in those markets.

The scale the networks can actually show

Mastercard outlined a broader settlement menu in June: regulated stablecoins alongside additional fiat timing options. It said USDC had supported early on-chain settlement in select markets and named Paxos-issued coins, RLUSD and SoFiUSD for planned support across multiple networks. SoFi's launch puts one bank-issued coin into use within that wider strategy. Mastercard has not disclosed the eventual traffic share of each token or said every planned pairing is live.

Visa offers a separate measure of scale. It reported on Sept. 8 that stablecoin settlement volume had recently exceeded a $20 billion annualized run rate. That reported run rate tracks stablecoin settlement activity. SoFi's projected figure covers future annualized card-program volume after migration, so the two figures cannot rank the networks' current stablecoin settlement volumes.

SoFi and Mastercard have moved a named bank-issued stablecoin from a proposed card-settlement option to a live one. The next evidence that would establish its wider consequence is actual token-settled volume, outside-merchant adoption and measured access to spendable cash. Until those results are disclosed, the working route is clearer than its commercial scale.

The post Why Mastercard’s $25 billion crypto expansion isn’t what it seems appeared first on CryptoSlate.

EU rules require stablecoins issued by electronic-money institutions to keep at least 30% of their reserves in commercial-bank deposits, rising to 60% for significant tokens. Britain's policy for systemic sterling stablecoin reserves excludes those deposits from coin backing. European central banks now want to remove the EU requirement, bringing the two approaches closer on the risk banks pose to stablecoin reserves.

Reuters reported on Sept. 22 that the European System of Central Banks, comprising the European Central Bank and EU national central banks, recommended replacing the compulsory bank-deposit share under the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation with minimum reserve percentages in assets maturing within one and five working days. The proposal would change where issuers must keep redemption money; MiCA's existing requirements remain in force.

The same day marks the Bank of England's consultation deadline for its draft systemic stablecoin Code of Practice. Its June policy already ruled out commercial-bank backing because of financial, operational and contagion risks. The Bank intends to finalize the code by the end of 2026.

The regimes cover different types of issuer and are at different stages of implementation. Yet the recommendation points toward a shared concern: putting stablecoin reserves in banks can connect two sources of financial stress.

A stablecoin reserve can protect a coin and expose a bank

MiCA's deposit requirements make commercial banks part of the mechanism for meeting redemptions. Cash that backs a token also becomes funding for the bank where the issuer holds it, tying the coin's ability to repay holders to that bank's ability to return the money.

The problem runs in both directions. In a June speech, the ECB explained that bank failure can damage confidence in the quality and availability of stablecoin reserves. USDC's March 2023 loss of its peg, when some backing sat at failing Silicon Valley Bank, illustrated that exposure.

Reverse the sequence and the risk moves into the banking system. If holders rush to redeem a stablecoin, the issuer may withdraw large deposits from its banks to repay them. Money held as a reserve for token holders becomes funding that a bank can lose abruptly.

The reserve can therefore transmit a run as well as help meet one. An issuer's attempt to honor its promise to token holders can force its banks to replace funding at precisely the moment confidence is weakening.

The recommendation reported by Reuters would focus requirements on short-maturity assets. Its proposed relaxation of a compulsory bank allocation differs from Britain's outright exclusion of commercial-bank backing.

The Bank of England's steady-state policy allows up to 70% in short-term UK government debt with no more than six months remaining to maturity, with 30% in central-bank deposits that pay no interest. Eligible issuers deemed systemic at launch can initially hold up to 95% in government debt as they scale.

Central-bank deposits give the UK model a different source of redemption cash, alongside its securities holdings.

The regime primarily covers sterling stablecoins widely used in payments, jointly regulated by the Bank and Financial Conduct Authority after Treasury recognition. CryptoSlate covered the June policy when it was announced, ahead of the consultation ending today.

There is a reason to retain a substantial cash buffer. An ECB analysis of sovereign-bond markets argues that significant stablecoins issued by electronic-money institutions could meet redemptions equal to 60% of supply by drawing down deposits, without immediately selling sovereign bonds.

That benefit depends on the deposits being available. It nevertheless captures the trade-off: avoiding commercial-bank credit exposure can leave issuers needing to turn securities into cash when holders want repayment. Even short-dated securities can fluctuate in value or prove difficult to turn into cash under stress.

Britain's policy includes financial risk reserves and a planned central-bank liquidity backstop. Those protections address the difficulty of producing redemption cash under stress, when securities must be sold or financed to meet withdrawals.

For EU issuers, the next decisive step would be a change to MiCA's statutory floors. Removing the floors requires legislative amendment through the EU's lawmaking process. Until then, the deposit requirements remain the operating constraint.

For token holders, the comparison exposes what a stablecoin reserve percentage cannot answer by itself: whether the backing remains accessible, and how quickly it can become cash when redemptions accelerate.

The post Europe’s central banks want to scrap this stablecoin reserve safeguard appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Microsoft and Coinbase helped dismantle EvilTokens, an AI phishing service tied to more than 12,000 compromised inboxes worldwide.

The operation had reached more than 10,000 organizations within months of launching, spanning financial services, real estate, healthcare, construction and other industries, Microsoft said.

The company and its partners seized 50 websites used by EvilTokens and disabled more than 150 related domains, while UK police arrested two men on Sept. 11 on suspicion of offenses connected to the alleged operation. Police later released both on conditional bail.

EvilTokens' phishing service relied on AI use

EvilTokens had packaged much of the business-email-compromise process into a subscription service sold through Telegram. Microsoft said customers paid a $1,500 initiation fee and $500 recurring subscription for tools that combined account compromise, mailbox access, reconnaissance, and AI-assisted fraud preparation in a single interface.

The service’s entry point relied on Microsoft’s device-code authentication, a legitimate sign-in flow designed for hardware such as smart TVs and conferencing equipment that cannot easily support standard browser logins.

Attackers initiated the authentication request themselves, then sent the resulting code to targets through phishing emails disguised as invoices, shared files, and other routine business communications.

Victims who entered that code on Microsoft’s legitimate website effectively approved the session waiting on the attacker’s device.

The process could still require a password and multifactor authentication when the user was signed out, but those credentials remained on Microsoft’s infrastructure. The process generated authorization for the attacker-initiated session.

That gave EvilTokens something more useful than a stolen password: an authenticated foothold inside the mailbox. The platform then automated work that has traditionally required attackers to spend hours reading correspondence and reconstructing how an organization moves money.

Its AI tools could translate and summarize messages, identify reporting lines and trusted contacts, surface pending invoices and wire-transfer conversations, and determine which employees had authority over payments.

Microsoft said preset prompts could identify an organization’s “money movers” and recommend people to impersonate, letting customers move from account access to targeted fraud with far less manual reconnaissance.

Investigators also found evidence that parts of EvilTokens were built with AI-assisted coding tools, lowering the technical burden on both sides of the operation.

The result was a service that could help less-skilled customers gain access to an account, understand its contents, and prepare an impersonation campaign without assembling each capability separately.

Crypto payments gave investigators a trail

The subscription model also created the financial trail Coinbase used to work backward through the operation.

Coinbase’s Global Intelligence team traced about $1.1 million in EvilTokens platform revenue across four Tron addresses between October 2025 and June 2026. It identified more than 1,000 deposits from over 700 distinct addresses and mapped flows from payments into EvilTokens through their eventual cash-out destinations. The figures represent revenue paid to the service rather than the amount ultimately stolen from phishing victims.

Coinbase said it combined transaction data with merchant records, device information and open-source intelligence to help attribute the platform to its alleged operators before referring the matter to London’s Metropolitan Police.

The exchange also investigated EvilTokens purchasers it identified on its own platform and referred those cases to law enforcement. Its evidence contributed to Microsoft’s civil action against the service.

Coinbase customers were also among those caught downstream. The exchange said some users were manipulated through compromised email conversations into sending cryptocurrency to scam-controlled addresses. Coinbase accounts and credentials were not compromised.

The disruption interrupted an operation that was already looking beyond Microsoft. Coinbase said EvilTokens’ operator had signaled plans to extend the toolkit to Gmail and Okta accounts, potentially spreading the same model across other identity platforms.

Microsoft warned that removing the service’s current infrastructure would not eliminate the method. The company recommends organizations block device-code authentication where it is unnecessary and tightly restrict it where operationally required. For accounts suspected of compromise, it advises revoking refresh tokens, forcing reauthentication and, in some cases, temporarily disabling the account.

That last step can carry a short-term operational cost, but Microsoft said standard session revocation may leave existing access tokens usable for up to an hour. Attackers have exploited that window in recent campaigns, leaving security teams to choose between brief disruption to legitimate users and continued access for someone already inside the mailbox.

The post Coinbase traced $1.1 million crypto trail behind AI phishing service EvilTokens appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin options carrying roughly $16 billion in notional value expire on Deribit at 08:00 UTC on Friday, Sept. 25. Calls account for about $9.6 billion of that open interest and puts for about $6.4 billion.

Bitcoin trades near $86,300 heading into the settlement, after climbing above $85,000 this week. Two US economic releases and the expiry of CME's September Bitcoin futures follow within seven hours, stacking three separate tests into one trading day.

The equity side settled first

Ledn co-founder Mauricio Di Bartolomeo sees Friday as the second half of an expiry cycle that began on Wall Street.

He said in a note to CryptoSlate that quarterly expirations like September's are a two-act event. Options on BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust expired last week in IBIT's largest single expiration on record, and he described the book as heavily tilted toward calls.

In his account, Bitcoin's rally through $80,000 pushed many of those calls into the money, and dealers short those contracts bought IBIT shares to stay hedged.

Di Bartolomeo argued that this demand reached Bitcoin itself once it grew large enough to require new IBIT shares, a process that pulls spot Bitcoin into the fund through authorized participants. He expects the Deribit book to inherit the same setup.

He noted:

“If the move continues, the large call blocks at $85,000 and $100,000 are where the same dynamic kicks in on the Deribit book.”

Calls make up about 60% of Friday's expiring open interest. Estimating how dealers hedge that book requires an assumption about which side of each contract they hold, since exchange data records open interest in aggregate.

ByKaranteli's open-source gamma model, which its authors present as a map of possible hedging flows under one such assumption, places the largest call wall at $95,000 and the largest put wall at $60,000. It also puts the put-to-call ratio at 0.52 and the zero-gamma level near $71,000.

That zero-gamma level sits where dealer hedging flips character.

Above it, dealers who are net long gamma sell into rallies and buy dips, absorbing moves and pulling price toward heavily populated strikes. Below it, net short gamma forces dealers to buy as price climbs and sell as it falls, amplifying whatever move is underway.

With Bitcoin trading in the $86,000 zone, the model places the market comfortably inside the zone it treats as stabilizing.

Bitcoin options markets are pricing a moderate move

Deribit's DVOL index stood at 38.1 on Sept. 22, a reading ByKaranteli classifies as very low across five years of history. Friday's at-the-money implied volatility was also 38.1%, and skew was near neutral, with 25-delta puts and calls both priced near 39.2%.

At that level, a one-standard-deviation move through Friday works out to about $2,720, or 3.15%, placing a rough band between $83,600 and $89,100. That band puts $90,000 at its outer edge and leaves the $95,000 call wall as a distant target.

Deribit sets its delivery price using a 30-minute time-weighted average of its Bitcoin index between 07:30 and 08:00 UTC.

A 2026 study published in Finance Research Letters found intraday Bitcoin price reversals around Deribit expirations that held up under statistical testing, strongest when at-the-money open interest ran high and estimated gamma exposure was negative.

The same research recorded heavier trading in Deribit perpetuals and in the spot venues feeding the settlement index during those windows.

ByKaranteli's model places the market in positive gamma at current prices, a different condition from the one where the study found the effect strongest. A sharp move that reverses within two hours of 08:00 UTC would fit that documented pattern, and a move that holds through the afternoon's events would carry broader confirmation.

The afternoon handoff

US durable goods orders arrive at 12:30 UTC, four and a half hours past Deribit's settlement. The University of Michigan's final September consumer sentiment reading, which includes inflation expectations, lands at 14:00 UTC, and CME's September Bitcoin futures settle against the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate at 15:00 UTC.

The Fed raised its target range to 3.75% to 4.00% on Sept. 16, leaving both data points relevant to rate-sensitive assets.

Once Deribit's contracts settle, the hedges tied to them unwind or roll into October and December expiries. A macro surprise at 12:30 or 14:00 UTC then meets whatever hedging structure survives that reset.

If the expired book had been stabilizing price, the same surprise could produce a larger move than it did the day before.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $159.5 million on Sept. 17, $433 million on Sept. 18 and $999 million on Sept. 21, according to Farside Investors.

Monday's rally also included about $647.9 million in short liquidations out of $746.6 million in total liquidations over 24 hours, while aggregate crypto open interest climbed 7.59% to $156 billion.

The rally is supported by spot buying through ETFs and fresh leverage on top of forced short covering.

Bitcoin's rally faces three tests

The bull case has Bitcoin climbing toward $90,000 before settlement while ETF inflows continue and funding stays positive at moderate levels. Traders roll expiring calls into October and December contracts, and price holds through the durable goods, sentiment, and CME events.

Under that path, the $85,000 and $100,000 call blocks Di Bartolomeo flagged become active on the Deribit book, and buyers replace the hedging flows that expired.

The bear case has Bitcoin stalling between $88,000 and $90,000 as ETF flows slow and perpetual futures open interest stays elevated. The strength built into expiry fades once the book settles, and a firmer-than-expected durable goods or inflation-expectations reading hits a market carrying fewer hedges.

In that scenario, Bitcoin slides toward the lower edge of the implied band near $83,600, with $80,000 as the next level beneath it.

Deribit's settlement opens Friday at 08:00 UTC and CME's closes it at 15:00 UTC. Bitcoin's rally holds through that window if the buyers behind it remain in the market once every hedge tied to the expiring contracts has cleared.

The post Bitcoin faces $16 billion options expiry Friday, then two more tests hit the rally appeared first on CryptoSlate.

As of today, September 23, 2026, an exchange-traded product on the LIT token is trading on the Deutsche Börse in Frankfurt: the Bitwise Lighter Staking ETP, ticker BLIT, ISIN DE000A4AV9T5. You buy it through an ordinary securities account, you need neither a wallet nor an account at a crypto exchange, and you pay a total expense ratio of 0.85 percent a year. One point is worth knowing before you open the order screen: although the word staking appears in the product name, no staking income is flowing at present. Bitwise states on its own product page that the LIT holdings behind the product are currently not being staked.

This article sets out what the launch means for investors in Germany: what sits inside the product, what Lighter actually is, what buying through a securities account costs, who holds the tokens, and why the holding period is a different question for an ETP than it is for a directly held token.

Bitwise Lighter Staking ETP: the key facts from ticker to expense ratio

The issuer is Bitwise Europe GmbH, based in Germany. The product carries the ticker BLIT, the ISIN DE000A4AV9T5 and the German security number A4AV9T. It trades in euros on Xetra, the electronic trading venue of the Deutsche Börse. The minimum investment is one unit. The reference is the Kaiko Lighter Reference Rate, a price index on the LIT token.

One point matters for understanding the structure: in legal terms an ETP is a debt security issued by the provider, not ring-fenced fund assets. In a fund, your holding would be legally separated from the company’s own assets should the provider fail. In an ETP, the collateral protects you instead: Bitwise backs the notes with LIT tokens physically and in full. Both structures can work, but they work differently, and the distinction is one of the things a product name does not reveal.

The key facts at a glance:

• Name: Bitwise Lighter Staking ETP
• Ticker / ISIN / WKN: BLIT / DE000A4AV9T5 / A4AV9T
• Issuer: Bitwise Europe GmbH, Germany
• Venue: Deutsche Börse Xetra, trading currency euro
• Launch: September 23, 2026
• Total expense ratio: 0.85 percent a year
• Reference index: Kaiko Lighter Reference Rate
• Collateral: 100 percent physically backed with LIT tokens
• Custodian: BitGo Europe GmbH, cold storage

Why staking is in the name while no staking income is flowing yet

Staking means locking tokens in a blockchain network, for which the protocol pays an ongoing reward. That reward is exactly what BLIT is meant to pass on to investors later: according to the Bitwise announcement, the product is designed so that staking income is earned on the Lighter network and credited daily to the individual ETP units.

The conditional here is no accident. On its product page, Bitwise explicitly notes that the Bitwise Lighter Staking ETP does not currently stake its LIT holdings. The announcement adds that the staking function is intended to start once assets under management reach a sufficient size. The company gives no date for that.

For you this simply means that anyone buying BLIT today is buying pure price exposure to the LIT token for now, and paying 0.85 percent a year for it. The yield component the product is named after is an announcement, not a running feature. If the staking income were the reason for your purchase, that is an argument for waiting until it starts and checking the product page again from time to time.

What Lighter is: perpetual futures on Apple, Amazon and Tesla around the clock

Behind the underlying sits a trading venue that is still little known in Germany. Lighter is a decentralised derivatives platform settled entirely on the blockchain. Alongside cryptocurrencies, it also lists large equities as perpetual futures contracts, among them Apple, Amazon and Tesla.

A perpetual future, or perp, is a futures contract without an expiry date: it runs indefinitely for as long as the position is held and the margin is served. It is tied to the spot price through the funding rate, a payment exchanged between the long and the short side. The practical difference from conventional brokerage lies in the trading hours: a share trades on its home exchange only during market hours, while a perp on it can be traded around the clock.

Lighter says it charges retail clients no trading fees, earning instead through market making, liquidations and its own treasury. Technically the platform relies on zero-knowledge proofs. Founder and chief executive Vladimir Novakovski is quoted in the announcement as saying that Lighter enables institutional perpetual trading fully on-chain and delivers fair, verifiable execution without giving up speed. That is the provider’s account, not a verified property.

In the announcement, Bitwise explicitly positions Lighter as a fast-growing challenger to Hyperliquid, currently the best-known name in this product class. For how this market segment is set up overall, which platforms can be used from Germany, and how to tell a sound one from a risky one, see our overview of the best perp DEX platforms.

How to buy BLIT through your securities account, and what can block the trade

The decisive advantage of the ETP wrapper is the route in. Because BLIT is a security with an ISIN listed on a German exchange, the purchase works exactly as it does for a share: open your account, put the ISIN into the search field, select Xetra as the venue, place the order. You need no wallet, no seed phrase and no registration at a crypto exchange, and the position appears in the same portfolio overview as your other securities.

Two things can still block the trade. First, not every bank offers every ETP: some branch banks and individual direct banks exclude crypto ETPs across the board, or release them only after a separate opt-in. The most reliable way to see whether your provider carries BLIT is whether the ISIN returns a tradable result in the securities search. Second, a freshly listed product is rarely liquid on day one. Until regular trading settles in, the spread between the bid and the offer can be noticeable.

In practice that means using a limit order rather than a market order, and setting the limit deliberately instead of being filled at any price. Trade within Xetra hours of 9:00 to 17:30 where possible, when the market makers are active. The LIT token itself trades around the clock; the ETP does not, and the exchange price catches up with overnight moves only at the open.

The reason the route runs through an ETP rather than a spot ETF lies in European fund regulation: a UCITS fund has to be diversified and therefore cannot track a single crypto underlying. For which exchange-traded crypto products are available in Germany and how they differ, see our guide to crypto ETFs and ETPs in Germany.

A 0.85 percent expense ratio: what the product actually costs you a year

The total expense ratio, usually shortened to TER, is the annual management fee taken continuously from the product’s assets. It is not billed separately; it reduces the value of your unit on a daily pro-rata basis. For BLIT it is 0.85 percent a year.

In numbers: on 5,000 euros invested that is roughly 42.50 euros a year, on 10,000 euros roughly 85 euros, in each case measured against the market value and therefore variable. On top come your broker’s order fees on the way in and out, plus the trading spread. There is no front-end load.

You give up those costs in exchange for something harder to put a number on: you do not have to secure private keys, manage a wallet backup or arrange access to a venue that lists the LIT token. Holding LIT directly costs no ongoing fee, but custody is then your own responsibility. Whether 0.85 percent a year is a fair price for that convenience depends on how much you invest and for how long; over a long holding period the ratio adds up noticeably.

Cold storage at BitGo Europe: who actually holds the LIT tokens

Custody of the tokens behind the product sits with BitGo Europe GmbH, and in cold storage: the private keys are kept offline, separated from the internet, which closes off the attack route over the network. This is the industry standard for institutional custody, and the reason you do not have to organise your own wallet security with an ETP.

The flip side: you never hold tokens yourself at any point. What sits in your account is a collateralised debt security, not LIT. According to the product documents, units can in principle be redeemed in kind, meaning you receive the underlying LIT, or in cash where delivery in cryptocurrency is not permitted for regulatory reasons. In practice this route is usually handled by authorised participants, not by retail investors through their custodian bank.

Assessing the risk therefore still requires a double look: at the creditworthiness and diligence of the issuer, and at the quality of the collateral. Full physical backing exists for precisely that purpose. It does not, however, replace the legal separation a fund would bring with it.

Holding period and tax: why an ETP is not certain to be treated like the token

This is where investors in Germany most often go wrong. For a directly held token the legal position is settled: cryptocurrencies count as other economic assets within the meaning of section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, and the Federal Fiscal Court has confirmed the tax authorities’ view. After a holding period of more than one year, a disposal gain is tax-free.

For a crypto ETP that read-across is precisely not automatic. If section 20 of the Income Tax Act applies instead, because the note is classified as a capital claim, withholding tax of 25 percent plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax falls due, regardless of the holding period. The argument for the more favourable treatment under section 23 rests on the full physical backing and the claim to delivery of the underlying. The question has not been settled conclusively for crypto ETPs; the tax literature continues to judge it differently.

Three things follow in practice. First, do not carry the one-year logic over from the direct investment to the ETP without checking. Second, document the purchase date, the number of units and the price from the outset, because you need those details under either reading. Third, settle the classification for your own case with a tax adviser before you sell, not afterwards. Once staking income actually starts to flow, a second question is added, namely how the daily credits are to be treated at ETP level. That one cannot be answered today, because the product is not yet staking.

Slashing, lock-ups and liquidity: the risks Bitwise names itself

The product documents set the risks out openly, and they are worth a look of their own. They name price swings, liquidity risk, custody risk, regulatory risk, lock-up periods in staking, slashing risk and risks arising from changes to the underlying protocol.

Slashing is a penalty a blockchain network imposes on a validator that breaches its duties, through downtime or contradictory attestations for example. Part of the locked tokens is withheld in the process. This risk only reaches you once the product actually stakes, but it belongs in the assessment, because staking is exactly what has been announced. The same applies to lock-up periods: staked tokens cannot be moved freely again straight away, which can make redemption harder in a hectic market.

The most tangible risk from today’s vantage point is a different one: LIT is a young token with a comparatively thin market. The liquidity of an ETP can never be better than that of its underlying. If trading in the token becomes tight, the spread in the exchange price of the ETP widens too, and it does so precisely when many want to sell at once. That is not a design flaw but a property of niche assets.

ETP or LIT directly: when each wrapper suits you

Both routes lead to the same underlying, and neither is generally the better one. They differ in what they take off your hands and what they load onto them.

In favour of the ETP is access: a familiar securities account, an ISIN, settlement through your own bank, plus professional custody in cold storage and a counterparty based in Germany and subject to a prospectus regime. Anyone who could not otherwise buy LIT at all, because no accessible venue lists the token, gets a route in for the first time.

Against the ETP are the ongoing fee of 0.85 percent, the unsettled tax classification and the fact that the staking yield it is named after does not yet exist. Holding the token directly costs no management fee, allows you to stake yourself and leaves you on firmer ground on the holding period, but the key management and the risk of ending up at an unsuitable venue are then yours.

A sober rule of thumb: the larger the intended position and the longer the horizon, the more the fee and the tax question weigh. The smaller the position and the more you value settlement in a familiar account, the more the ETP wrapper carries.

Checking the Bitwise Lighter Staking ETP: what to take away

1. First establish whether your account trades the note at all. Enter the ISIN DE000A4AV9T5 in the securities search and check whether Xetra is offered as a venue. If your provider does not carry crypto ETPs, it is worth looking at alternatives: our overview of the best crypto brokers shows which providers list exchange-traded crypto products and what trading costs there.
2. Open the tax file before you buy, not in the following year. Record the purchase date, the number of units, the price and the fees, because the classification of the ETP between sections 20 and 23 of the Income Tax Act is not conclusively settled and you need the same evidence either way. For what records this cleanly and automatically, see our overview of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
3. Decide deliberately whether to wait for the staking yield. Today you pay 0.85 percent a year for pure price exposure, because the product does not yet stake. If running income is what you are after, compare that with what direct staking currently pays: our overview of the best staking platforms sets out the terms and the respective lock-up periods.

Sources: the Bitwise announcement of the Lighter Staking ETP launch of September 23, 2026 and the product page for the Bitwise Lighter Staking ETP, with fees, custody and a note on the current staking status.

(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.)

Anyone sending their coins from one trading platform to another, or to their own wallet, loses neither the holding period nor triggers a tax. A transfer between addresses that belong to you is not a disposal, because nobody pays anything for it and the asset does not change owner. The one-year period of Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act keeps running without interruption.

The switch still gets expensive, just in a different place: the acquisition data breaks off during the transfer. The new platform does not know when you bought and at what price. Anyone not securing that beforehand faces, come the following spring, a holding with no provenance and has to explain to the tax office why the holding period is supposed to have elapsed. This article shows you what really happens for tax purposes, where the wallet-based approach bites, and which records to pull before you hit send.

Switching exchange: what the transfer triggers for tax

The short answer: nothing. Neither on sending nor on arrival does a taxable event arise, as long as sender and recipient are the same person. That follows directly from the structure of the private disposal transaction.

In its circular of March 6, 2025 on individual questions of the income tax treatment of certain crypto assets, the German Federal Ministry of Finance describes in margin number 54 what an acquisition and what a disposal is. An acquisition is the acquisition from third parties for consideration. Mirroring that, the transfer of the acquired asset to third parties for consideration constitutes a disposal. Both features are absent in a transfer to your own address: there is no third party, and no consideration flows.

Under the same margin number, a disposal arises from the exchange of crypto assets into units of a state currency such as the euro, into goods or services, and into other crypto assets. That is exactly where the distinction that matters lies. Anyone sending Bitcoin from one platform to the next has exchanged it for nothing at all. Anyone switching into a different coin along the way has sold.

Why the blockchain entry is not the moment that counts for tax

A widespread misunderstanding holds that every movement on the blockchain is relevant for tax because it is publicly visible. In margin number 20 the ministry expressly clarifies that the recorded inflow and outflow of crypto assets need not coincide with the acquisition or disposal date relevant for income tax.

The same margin number supplies the background: crypto assets are regularly traded via central trading platforms, being first transferred to the platform's personalised account and only booked back into the user's own wallet at a later point. What is then decisive is the time of the trade via the platform, not the time of the booking. The same applies where you use no wallet of your own at all and hold and trade exclusively via a platform.

For a change of platform that means: the deposit booking on the new exchange is not an acquisition date. Your acquisition date remains the day on which you originally bought the coins, and that holds even where the new platform's tax report claims otherwise.

The holding period keeps running: what that means for your year

Under Section 23 (1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the Income Tax Act, a private disposal transaction in other assets is taxable where no more than one year lies between acquisition and disposal. Once that year has elapsed, the gain remains tax free, no matter its size.

Because the transfer is not a disposal, it does not reset that period. An example makes it tangible. You buy coins on platform A on February 4. On September 20 you send them to platform B, and on December 3 onward to a hardware wallet. If you sell on February 10 of the following year, the sale falls outside the one-year period and the gain remains tax free. February 4 is the only date that counts.

Within the one-year period the threshold of Section 23 (3) sentence 5 of the Income Tax Act applies on top: gains from all private disposal transactions of a calendar year remain tax free if their total comes to less than 1,000 euros. Up to and including the 2023 assessment period this limit stood at 600 euros. Here too: once the amount is reached, the entire gain is taxable.

Ten-year holding period: why the extension does not bite with coins

A stubborn rumour says that anyone lending out their coins or earning income with them extends the holding period from one year to ten. That worry keeps many from moving their holdings at all.

Margin number 63 of the BMF circular clears it up: with currency or payment tokens, the extension of the disposal period under Section 23 (1) sentence 1 no. 2 sentence 4 of the Income Tax Act does not apply. The tax authorities took that position in the predecessor circular already and confirmed it in March 2025. For the common coins it therefore stays at one year, even where income was earned in the meantime.

The real trap: the wallet-based approach

If the transfer itself is harmless, why all the care? Because the ministry prescribes how it is to be determined which coins you actually sold. And that rule is tied to the individual wallet.

Individual identification comes first

Margin number 61 names the principle: for determining the order of use of the crypto assets disposed of, individual identification applies. So where you can attribute precisely which unit you bought when and sold again when, that is the governing route.

Where individual identification is not possible, the crypto assets of a trading designation acquired first are deemed to have been disposed of for the purposes of the holding period, and for the valuation the average method is to be applied. The ministry relies here on a judgment of the Federal Fiscal Court of November 24, 1993. For reasons of simplification it may be assumed for the valuation that the crypto assets acquired first were disposed of first, in other words the familiar FiFo method.

Where the wallet boundary runs

Then comes the sentence that becomes decisive when changing platform: a wallet-based approach applies. Within a wallet the chosen method must be retained until all crypto assets of that trading designation in that wallet have been disposed of in full. Only after a complete disposal and a subsequent fresh acquisition may the method be changed. Where crypto assets with differing trading designations are held via one wallet, a separate election exists for each.

In practice that means: spread the same coin across three addresses and you have three separate accounting circles. The order of consumption is not formed across your total holding, but per wallet. Anyone shifting holdings back and forth builds themselves a set of books that can later only be reconstructed with software and complete exports.

What really gets lost in the transfer: the acquisition data

A trading platform knows only what happened on it. When a holding arrives from outside, it sees a deposit with no prior history. Purchase price, purchase date and the order of consumption applied so far do not travel with it.

The ministry has seen this problem. On the plausibility of tax reports, margin number 90 states that adjustments and corrections do not as a rule stand in the way of plausibility where they are marked as such and substantiated comprehensibly, expressly naming as an example: because of missing acquisition costs or acquisition data on transfers to other trading platforms.

That is a relief with a condition. You may add the data later, but you have to mark the correction and be able to substantiate it. Without documents from the old platform only an estimate remains, and an estimate rarely falls in your favour. A tax tool only helps if you feed it the exports from both platforms; an overview of the providers is given by our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

What to download before you send

Pull the complete transaction export from the old platform as a structured file, not as a PDF. That includes all purchases with date, quantity and price, all sales, all fees, and the withdrawal itself with transaction hash and destination address. Also secure the balance at year end: margin number 104 expressly names wallet holdings on key dates such as December 31 of the assessment period and of the previous year as details the tax authority can request.

The reason for the haste is mundane. Platforms close accounts after inactivity, withdraw from regions or disappear altogether. The export you pull today with two clicks can be a support case in a foreign language two years from now.

The special case: when the switch is a sale after all

Three variants of a platform change are taxable events after all, and to the user they look almost exactly like a harmless transfer.

The detour via a stablecoin. Anyone selling the coin on the old platform, transferring the proceeds as a stablecoin and swapping back on the new platform has triggered two disposals. Both exchanges are disposals under margin number 54, and the holding period starts afresh for the repurchased holding.

The change of wrapper. Where a coin is swapped into a wrapped variant or a network representation during the transfer, an exchange into a different crypto asset regularly exists. Whether asset identity holds in the individual case is a question of the specific design, and in case of doubt the tax authorities will assume an exchange.

The sale on delisting. Where a platform removes an asset from trading and you sell at short notice instead of transferring, that is an entirely ordinary sale with all its consequences. How tight those windows can be is something our editorial team worked through using the example of transferring delisted tokens to a fallback exchange.

Network, fees and minimum amounts: the technical part

The tax side is one half. The other is the transfer itself, and that is where the losses happen that can no longer be corrected.

The network first, then the address

The same coin often exists on several networks, and the address formats look confusingly alike. Anyone sending to the wrong network gets their balance back at best after a support case, and at worst not at all. So check first which network the destination platform supports for that asset, and select it explicitly on the sending side. Which mistakes happen most often is shown in our article on why the wrong network when sending so frequently leads to total loss.

The test transfer

Send a small amount first, wait for it to be credited, and only then send the rest. The double network fee is the cheapest insurance premium you can pay in this context. Watch the minimum withdrawal amount on the sending side and the minimum deposit amount on the receiving side, because amounts below the threshold vanish without comment into the accounting on some platforms.

What transaction fees are for tax purposes

Fees incurred on purchase form part of the incidental acquisition costs. Transaction fees expended in connection with a disposal are to be taken into account as income-related expenses under margin number 59. The plain network fee for a transfer between your own addresses, by contrast, is attributed to neither event, because nothing is bought or sold in between. Record it all the same, so that your holding adds up arithmetically after the transfer.

Where you also change the type of custody

Many change platform not because of the fees, but because they want to get their holdings off a platform altogether. That step markedly changes the legal position in the event of insolvency, because with self-custody you hold the keys yourself and depend on no segregation claim.

For tax purposes what was said above still holds: the route to a hardware wallet is also a transfer without consideration and without a third party. What changes is the evidence. On a platform the history sits in the account; with self-custody it sits with you. From that day on you are the bookkeeping yourself, and margin number 103 expressly requires documentation of reallocations within wallets for the wallet-based application of the average or FiFo method.

The checklist for the switch

Work through the points in this order and nothing gets left behind.

1. Pull the complete transaction export from the old platform as a structured file and store it outside the platform.
2. Note the year-end holdings of the assets concerned, for the current and the preceding year.
3. Match the network on both sides and check the minimum amounts.
4. Send a test transfer, wait for it to be credited, then transfer the rest.
5. Record the transaction hash, destination address, date and network fee of every transfer.
6. Document the chosen order of consumption for the new wallet and do not change it again while a holding of that trading designation sits there.
7. Reconcile the holding after the transfer against the export before the old platform is closed.

Switching exchange and the holding period: what to take away

The transfer costs you neither tax nor holding period. It costs you traceability if you trigger it unprepared.

1. Secure the history before you send. The old platform's export is the only evidence of when you bought. Without it you cannot demonstrate that the one-year period has elapsed. Which platforms deliver usable exports is shown in our exchange comparison.
2. Keep the order of consumption per wallet and stick with it. The wallet-based approach is not a recommendation but the requirement from margin number 61. A tax tool calculates that cleanly if you read in both sides, see our comparison of tax tools.
3. If you are moving anyway, move properly. Holdings you intend to keep for more than a year belong at an address whose keys you control yourself. Which devices are suitable for that is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

(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.)

Whether you have to pay tax on an airdrop hangs on a single question: did you do something for the coins? If you had to post on a social network, fill in a form or hand over data going beyond your wallet address, you have other income from services, and that is subject to income tax from 256 euros in a calendar year. If, by contrast, the coins landed in your wallet without any action on your part, the inflow itself is not worth any income tax, but it can fall under gift tax law. That distinction does not come from a law firm's reading, it is set out word for word in the current circular of the German Federal Ministry of Finance on crypto assets.

This article takes you through both cases, shows you which price to use for the valuation, what happens on a later sale, and which records the tax office has expected of you since the 2025 assessment period.

Airdrop and tax: the short answer first

For tax purposes an airdrop is not a category of its own. The Income Tax Act has no word for it. Instead every airdrop is sorted into one of the existing drawers, and which one it is depends solely on the relationship between you and the project handing out the coins.

Three outcomes are possible. First: you rendered a service, in which case the coins are recorded on receipt as other income under Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act, valued at the market price at the time of acquisition. Second: you did nothing, in which case a gift comes into consideration, governed by inheritance and gift tax law rather than income tax. Third: the airdrop belongs to a business, in which case it is business income. For private investors the first two cases are the rule.

The second step is the important one, and many overlook it. Selling the coins is a separate event with its own rules. Whether it becomes a taxable private disposal transaction depends on whether the inflow was an acquisition at all. That switch is thrown on receipt, not on sale.

What an airdrop is: the German finance ministry's definition

Airdrop denotes the free distribution of crypto assets to a large number of addresses. The Federal Ministry of Finance describes this in its circular of March 6, 2025 on individual questions of the income tax treatment of certain crypto assets (margin number 29) as a marketing exercise whose design can vary widely.

The circular expressly names four variants there. Participants must fill in several online forms so that customer data can be collected. Or they are meant to promote the project on social networks. With larger airdrops, sometimes only a portion of those who meet all the conditions actually receive coins, for instance after a random selection. And finally, an airdrop can take place entirely without any action by the holder of a public key.

Those four variants are not there for illustration; they form the map by which the tax office sorts your case. If you are later asked to show which variant your airdrop fell into, you will need exactly the conditions that applied at the time. This article returns to that in the section on record-keeping obligations.

The circular of March 6, 2025 replaced the older BMF circular of May 10, 2022, incidentally, and is the first to use the term crypto assets instead of virtual currencies and other tokens. Anyone still working with the 2022 version is working from a superseded text. An overview of all current airdrops and the conditions of the individual projects can be found in our airdrop overview.

The key question: did you have to do anything for the airdrop?

The term everything hangs on is service. In tax law it is drawn more widely than everyday usage suggests. Any active, passive or non-economic conduct of whatever kind can qualify as a service. A reciprocal contractual relationship between you and the project is expressly not required.

Active conduct on social media

In margin number 70 the ministry names the clearest case: where interested parties have to render a service, in particular active conduct such as naming the airdrop or the project's initiator in social media posts, other income arises. The marketing character of the exercise changes nothing about that. Anyone posting, working through a task list or recommending a project is rendering a service within the meaning of the law.

The same paragraph covers a second case that is often overlooked in practice: anyone uploading their own images, photos or videos to a platform and receiving crypto assets for it is likewise rendering a service. That applies even where ownership of those images stays with you.

Personal data beyond the public key

Margin number 71 draws a line that is easy to remember. For the mere allocation of an airdrop, your wallet's public key is technically enough. Everything beyond that is a service. If the allocation depends on you making data about yourself available that goes beyond the information required for the technical allocation, that handing over of data is your service, for which you receive crypto assets in return.

That is to be assumed at any rate where you are obliged, or have to declare yourself willing, to make personal data available. The ministry expressly distinguishes this from classic discount schemes and prize draws, where a postal address is needed for identification purposes anyway. With an airdrop it is not.

In practice that means: the email address in the sign-up form, filling in a profile, linking a social media account, stating your country and date of birth. Every one of those steps turns the supposed gift into consideration.

Airdrop in return for something: other income under Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act

Once it is established that you rendered a service, Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act applies. The coins are to be recorded in the year in which they accrued to you, in other words the moment at which you can dispose of them. The sale plays no role in this first act of taxation. That is the point at which airdrops regularly become an unpleasant surprise: the tax arises on a value that you do not yet hold in euros at that time.

The value to be applied is the market price at the time of acquisition. That amount goes into your income tax return and is charged at your personal tax rate. At the top rate that can be well over forty percent of the inflow value, while the token itself may lose value in the weeks that follow. Precisely this divergence between the moment of taxation and the moment of sale is the real risk with airdrops.

The 256 euro threshold and why it breaks sooner than you think

Section 22 No. 3 sentence 2 of the Income Tax Act contains a relief: income from services is not subject to income tax if, together with other income from services, it amounts to less than 256 euros in a calendar year.

Two features of that limit are regularly misunderstood. First, it is an exemption threshold and not an allowance. Stay below it and everything remains tax free. Reach 256 euros and the entire amount is taxable, not merely the excess. A single euro decides here whether the complete amount is taxed.

Second, it applies to all service income of a year taken together. Several airdrops add up. And they also add up with service income that has nothing to do with crypto, such as the occasional letting of movable property or other occasional intermediary services. Anyone taking part in five airdrops spread over the year and receiving coins worth sixty euros each time lands at 300 euros and is therefore fully within the scope of taxation.

Airdrop with nothing given in return: a gift rather than income tax

The second basic case is the airdrop that appears in the wallet without any action on your part. Where the allocation is not economically connected to a service, margin number 74 of the BMF circular states that a gift comes into consideration, for which the gift tax rules are to be observed.

For income tax that means: nothing happens. No inflow of service income, no 256 euro limit, no line in the annex for other income. Gift tax follows different rules with allowances of its own, which depend on the relationship between donor and recipient and apply for a period of ten years at a time. At the usual amounts of a marketing airdrop this remains practically without consequence, but the inflow has not thereby fallen into a legal vacuum.

This case is rarer than it appears in forums. The vast majority of airdrops are tied to some condition or other, even if only the linking of an account. The classic unconditional case is the token that an unrelated project distributes unprompted to a large number of active addresses without the recipients knowing about it beforehand.

Caution with tokens sent unprompted

If an unknown token turns up in your wallet with no recognisable occasion, the tax question is usually the smaller problem. Such deliveries are a common lure: the attempt to sell or swap the token leads to a doctored interface or demands an approval that makes your remaining holdings reachable. Leave tokens sent unprompted untouched and check them via a blockchain explorer first.

The element of chance: why a draw changes the calculation

Between the two basic cases lies a constellation that the ministry regulates separately. Many large airdrops work with a random selection among everyone who met the conditions. So not every participant receives coins.

On this, margin number 72 says: where the airdrop is designed so that, alongside a service, chance also decides on the receipt of crypto assets, the attribution link between service and consideration is interrupted or overlaid by the element of chance.

Translated: where chance has a say, the straight line between your conduct and the inflow that Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act presupposes is missing. That can mean that no other income arises despite a service having been rendered. Whether that holds in your case depends on how the exercise was specifically designed, which is exactly why you should secure the terms of participation while the project page is still online.

Which price to value at, and when zero euros is permissible

Where other income arises, the crypto assets are to be recognised at the market price at the time of acquisition. That is a snapshot, not an average and not a year-end closing price.

Which price source the tax office accepts

Under margin number 43, the price of a trading platform or of a web-based price list may be applied as the market price. The ministry names as examples the Börse Stuttgart Digital Exchange, Kraken, Coinbase and Bitpanda, as well as the price lists of CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko. What matters is that you document the source you choose and do not switch from one transaction to the next depending on which price happens to look more favourable.

The special case: no ascertainable market price

Freshly distributed tokens often have no tradable price at all at the moment of inflow. For that case, margin number 73 contains an express non-objection rule: where no market price can be ascertained at the time of acquisition, no objection is raised if the crypto assets received in the course of an airdrop are recognised at zero euros.

That is the most important practical relief in the whole section. Anyone receiving coins before they are listed anywhere applies a value of zero, and the later rise in value only becomes relevant on sale. The condition, however, is that you can evidence the state of affairs: the time of the inflow, the time of the first listing, a screenshot or an export file. Without that evidence, your assertion later stands against the price list the tax office calls up itself.

The sale afterwards: holding period, acquisition costs and the 1,000 euro threshold

The second moment of taxation arrives when you sell the coins, swap them into Bitcoin or another crypto asset, or pay for something with them. Each of those events is a disposal. Whether it becomes a taxable private disposal transaction is decided by a prior question: was the inflow an acquisition?

Airdrop with a service: an acquisition exists

Margin number 75 is unambiguous here. Where the allocation is made on the basis of a service within the meaning of Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act, an acquisition also exists. The acquisition costs are to be recognised at the value of the data given up or the action carried out, whereby it may be rebuttably presumed that this value corresponds to the market price of the consideration.

From the inflow onwards, the one-year holding period of Section 23 of the Income Tax Act therefore runs. Sell within a year and the gain is taxable, in other words the difference between the sale proceeds and the acquisition costs applied. Sell after the year has elapsed and the gain remains tax free. The first act of taxation under Section 22 No. 3 is unaffected by that; it already happened on inflow.

The threshold of Section 23 (3) sentence 5 of the Income Tax Act applies on top here: gains from private disposal transactions remain tax free if the total of all gains realised in the calendar year comes to less than 1,000 euros. Up to and including the 2023 assessment period this limit stood at 600 euros. This too is an exemption threshold, not an allowance.

Airdrop without a service: acquisition free of charge

Where the inflow was not consideration, you acquired the coins free of charge. In that case, under the same subsection and Section 23 (1) sentence 3 of the Income Tax Act, the acquisition by the legal predecessor is decisive. For tax purposes you step into the position of whoever acquired the coins before you, together with their acquisition date and acquisition costs.

In the practice of a marketing airdrop those details about the predecessor are next to never ascertainable. That is precisely why the question of the service is not merely a formality at the outset, but determines whether you can present a clean tax base at all when you sell. Anyone without records here ends up negotiating an estimate with the tax office.

Record-keeping obligations: what you have had to document since the 2025 assessment period

The BMF circular of March 6, 2025 contains, for the first time, a section of its own on obligations to cooperate, to keep records and to retain them. Under the application rule in margin number 106, the circular applies from its publication in the Federal Tax Gazette Part I to all open cases. Records that depart from the new requirements are no longer objected to only for assessment periods up to and including 2024. For the current year the new standard applies.

Margin number 103 lists what the tax offices can request. For airdrops there is one point there that follows directly from everything set out above: to be stated are the time of acquisition, the quantity acquired and the nature of the acquisition process, and specifically, in the case of an airdrop, expressly for the purpose of determining whether a service exists, a description of the conditions that were decisive for the allocation of the crypto assets.

The evidence list for every single airdrop

From that requirement a list can be derived which you should draw up on the day you take part, and not in the spring of the following year. The compilation comprises the name of the project and the address of the smart contract, the terms of participation in their wording as a screenshot or saved page, a note of which data or actions were demanded of you, the time of the inflow with the transaction hash, the wallet address used, and the market price together with the source, or the evidence that no price was available at that time.

In addition, margin number 103 requires documentation of the chosen order of use, in other words whether you apply individual identification, the average method or FiFo, and that for the respective wallet. Anyone who has chosen a method once should not switch it from year to year. Software takes the arithmetic off your hands; an overview of tested providers is given by our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers. No software, however, can reconstruct the conditions of the airdrop for you once the project page has been taken down.

Where airdrop income ends up in the tax return

Other income from services under Section 22 No. 3 of the Income Tax Act belongs in Annex SO of the income tax return, in the section for services. There you enter the total of the values that accrued; you can set costs against it, such as transaction fees you incurred in collecting the coins.

Private disposal transactions from the later sale likewise belong in Annex SO, but in a different section. Both events stand side by side and concern the same holding at different points in time. A frequent error consists in forgetting the inflow and declaring only the sale, or conversely in recognising the inflow value a second time as a gain although it already forms the acquisition costs.

Losses from private disposal transactions may be offset only against gains from the same type of income, not against your employment income. Something similar applies to losses from services under Section 22 No. 3.

Four mistakes that get expensive with airdrops

The inflow is ignored because nothing was sold. The tax under Section 22 No. 3 arises at the moment of inflow. Anyone waiting until they sell declares the wrong year and risks a correction plus interest.

The terms of participation are not secured. Projects disappear, announcement pages are deleted, channels are closed. Without the conditions you can later show neither that no service was rendered nor that chance had a say.

The 256 euro limit is treated as an allowance. With 260 euros of service income it is not four euros that are taxable, but 260.

The coins are left on a trading platform with no usable export. If you cannot later pull the movements as a file, every review turns into manual work. Anyone taking part in airdrops regularly should use a platform that provides complete transaction overviews as a structured file for download, and should not try the export for the first time in the spring of the following year.

Airdrop tax: what to take away

The rules are more complicated than the picture of a gift that many projects paint. They remain manageable all the same, provided you do three things in this order.

1. Settle the service question for every airdrop and put it in writing. Note on the day you take part what was demanded, and secure the conditions as a screenshot. That single note decides income tax, holding period and acquisition costs. Which trading platform will let you sell the coins at all later is best clarified beforehand, for instance via our exchange comparison.
2. Record the inflow value in the year of the inflow, not in the year of the sale. Apply the market price from a source you use consistently, or document that there was no price yet. A tax tool takes over the valuation and the order of use automatically, see our comparison of tax tools.
3. Move the holdings to where you can evidence them. Put coins you intend to hold for more than a year into a wallet whose keys you control yourself, and document the transfer. Which devices are suitable for that is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

(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.)

Bitcoin Cash gained around 29 percent in a single trading day on September 22, 2026, closing at 301.19 euros against 232.97 the day before on Kraken. The question everyone then asks is: buy in or wait? We did not guess at it, we recalculated it. Over the past two years there were 49 such jump days among the largest coins. Thirty days later the median case stood at minus 6.7 percent, and only 19 of 45 assessable cases were up at all. The average of plus 23.7 percent looks friendlier, but comes almost entirely from a single coin.

This analysis was compiled by cryptoticker.io on September 23, 2026. What came out of it, what the numbers do not support, and what you can actually check before buying in, is set out below.

Bitcoin Cash up 29 percent: what happened on September 22

The trigger is known. On September 22 the derivatives exchange CME Group announced that it will list futures on Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap from October 19, subject to regulatory review. Standard contracts of 250 BCH and 10,000 UNI are planned, alongside micro contracts of 25 BCH and 1,000 UNI. This follows from the CME Group announcement of September 22, 2026. We reported the announcement the same day and set out the contract details there.

A future is an exchange-traded forward contract: buyer and seller agree a price today for delivery or a cash settlement at a later date. For professional investors it is above all a hedging instrument, and that is precisely where the expectation that moved the price lies: anyone holding large positions will be able to hedge them on a regulated US exchange from October.

On the morning of September 23, Bitcoin Cash is quoted at 302.12 euros on Kraken. The range over the past 24 hours runs from 230.35 to 317.87 euros, measured at 07:20 UTC. Uniswap stands at 9.14 euros. In dollar terms, CoinGecko shows Bitcoin Cash up 30.8 percent over 24 hours at the same moment, and Uniswap up 16.8 percent. The small divergences from our figures are no contradiction: we work with daily closing prices in euros, CoinGecko with a rolling 24-hour window in dollars.

Method: where the data comes from and what was counted

The data base is the daily closing prices of the euro trading pairs on Kraken, retrieved on September 23, 2026 via the exchange's public OHLC interface. OHLC stands for open, high, low and close of a given period. The request delivers up to 721 daily candles per trading pair and therefore reaches back to October 3, 2024.

Nineteen trading pairs were examined. They cover the coins in the current top 25 by market capitalisation for which Kraken runs a euro pair, stablecoins excluded. A jump day is any day on which the closing price was at least 20 percent above the previous day's close. For each of those days we set the closing price 7 and 30 calendar days later against the close of the jump day itself.

Two things we could not check. First, coins without a euro pair on Kraken are missing, which in the current field means Dogecoin and LEO. Second, the history is not equally long everywhere: BNB reaches back to April 2025, Hyperliquid to January 2026, Whitebit Token to March 2026. A coin that only became tradable later can simply contribute fewer jump days within this window. Four of the 49 jump days sit too close to the present to have a complete 30-day window; they feed into the overview, but not into the 30-day analysis.

49 jump days in two years: which coins were affected at all

A 20 percent gain in a single day is no everyday event among the large coins, but no rarity either: 49 cases in just under 24 months works out at a good two per month, spread over 13 different coins.

The distribution is anything but even. Zcash alone accounts for 14 of the 49 jump days, Uniswap and Stellar for six each, NEAR for four, and Cardano, Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin and XRP for three each. Ethereum, Solana and Tron come to one apiece. And six coins in the field had no jump day at all during their respective observation period: Bitcoin, BNB, Monero, Litecoin, Hyperliquid and Whitebit Token.

That is already a finding in itself. Anyone waiting for large daily moves waits in vain with Bitcoin. The jumps happen in the second tier, and there they cluster in a handful of assets that happen to have a story of their own.

Seven days after the jump: a coin toss

For 46 of the 49 jump days the price can be measured a week later. The result is remarkably unspectacular: the median stands at plus 0.1 percent. The median is the middle value of a sorted series, in other words the case where one half does better and the other worse. Unlike the average, it barely reacts to individual outliers.

In 23 of 46 cases the price stood higher seven days on than on the evening of the jump day, and lower in 23 cases. Exactly half. Anyone buying a week after a jump day in the hope of a continuation is betting on a coin toss.

Thirty days after the jump: the median case loses

After 30 days the picture turns negative. This window can be assessed for 45 jump days. The median stands at minus 6.7 percent, and only 19 of the 45 cases were up at all. In 11 cases the price had after a month fallen even below the level that applied before the jump. The whole move had therefore not merely fizzled out, but turned negative.

The spread is enormous. The bottom quarter of cases stood at minus 23.3 percent or worse after 30 days, the top quarter at plus 44.9 percent or better. The weakest single case lost 47.2 percent, the strongest gained 266.6 percent. That dispersion is precisely why an average figure misleads here.

Why the average deceives: a single coin carries the entire gain

The arithmetic mean across all 45 cases is plus 23.7 percent. That sounds like a durable continuation. Break the sample apart and little of it survives.

Excluding Zcash, 32 cases remain. Their median is minus 12.5 percent, their mean minus 0.4 percent, and only 10 of 32 stood higher after 30 days. The 13 assessable Zcash cases, by contrast, come to a median of plus 77.4 percent, 9 of them up. The reason is the coin's run in the autumn of 2025: after the jump day of October 8, 2025, Zcash stood 266.6 percent higher 30 days later, after October 1 it was 241.5 percent, and after October 4 it was 182.6 percent.

Such runs exist, and they are why the story of the jump as a starting gun survives so stubbornly. Statistically they mean the opposite of what they suggest: an average carried by a single episode describes no normal case, but an exception.

The bigger the jump, the worse the outcome

One pattern withstands the breakdown, and it is uncomfortable for anyone hunting large moves. Sort the jump days by size and the result deteriorates as the jump grows.

The 21 cases between 20 and just under 25 percent come to a median of minus 11.5 percent after 30 days, with 7 of 21 standing higher. The 12 cases at 30 percent and above sit at minus 20.8 percent in the median, 5 of 12 up. Bitcoin Cash's jump of 29.3 percent lies right on the boundary between the two groups.

Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap: what their own history shows

For the two coins at issue today, a look into their own past is worthwhile. Bitcoin Cash had two jump days in the observation period before September 22. On March 5, 2025 the price gained 20.0 percent and stood 24.2 percent lower 30 days later. On August 21, 2026 it was 29.2 percent, and a month later the price lay 10.8 percent below that. On both occasions the jump had not held after a month.

Uniswap brings six jump days with it, and here the picture is split. The jump day of November 6, 2024, at plus 31.6 percent, led to a further 92.0 percent within 30 days. The one of November 10, 2025, at plus 41.2 percent, ended 40.3 percent lower. The remaining four lay between minus 13.6 and plus 2.1 percent.

No forecast can be derived from this, and this article does not attempt one. What can be derived is the order of magnitude of the risk you have to reckon with if you buy in after a day like that.

Check the buying route: MiCA licence, euro pair and fees

If you want to buy after a jump day, the route decides the outcome first. Since January 1, 2026, providers of crypto asset services in Germany need authorisation from BaFin or a valid MiCA licence from another EU state with passporting. MiCA stands for Markets in Crypto-Assets, the EU regulation that governs trading in crypto assets on a uniform basis.

In practice that means: check whether your provider is licensed, whether it runs a euro pair for the coin in question at all, and what the purchase ends up costing. Without a euro pair the purchase runs through an intermediate step in dollars or a stablecoin, and a fee hangs on every step. Which exchanges are licensed for German customers and what they charge for trading can be found in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

On a day with 30 percent of movement, a second block of costs is added that many overlook: the spread, in other words the difference between the buying and selling price. It widens in fast markets. The 24-hour range for Bitcoin Cash ran from 230.35 to 317.87 euros. Anyone reaching for a market order inside a band that wide pays the price currently in the book, not the one seen on screen.

Leverage and liquidation: why a jump day shifts financing costs

Large daily moves shift the cost of leveraged positions. With perpetual futures, the perpetuals, the funding rate keeps the contract price anchored to the spot market: if there are more buyers than sellers in the market, the buyers pay the sellers on a running basis. After a jump upwards this rate is typically positive, and it runs against you for as long as you are long.

The second point is liquidation, the forced closure of a position once the margin no longer suffices. A pullback of 20 percent sits, on the numbers of this analysis, within the normal range. At fivefold leverage a counter-move of 20 percent is arithmetically enough to wipe out the deposit entirely. Anyone working with leverage should therefore know what financing costs and what liquidation thresholds their provider applies; an overview is set out in our comparison of the best perp DEX.

Holding period and tax: what a quick trade triggers in Germany

For tax purposes the difference between a quick trade and a long holding period is considerable in Germany. Gains from the sale of crypto assets fall under private disposal transactions pursuant to Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Anyone selling within a year of buying pays tax on the gain at their personal income tax rate, provided the exemption threshold is exceeded. After twelve months of holding, the sale is tax free.

Anyone buying in after a jump day and selling again a few weeks later therefore always lands in the taxable range. That applies to a swap into another coin as well, since a swap is also a disposal. Since January 1, 2026, crypto asset service providers additionally report their customers' identity and transaction data to the Federal Central Tax Office; the first report for the 2026 period follows in 2027. Clean records of every transaction are no longer optional. Which tools automate that is shown in our comparison of crypto tax tools.

Custody after the jump: exchange account or your own wallet

A third point often gets lost in the excitement of a jump day. Coins you leave sitting in an exchange account belong to you economically, but lie within the provider's power of disposal. Anyone who wants to trade needs them there. Anyone who wants to hold a position for longer can transfer it to their own wallet and keep the keys themselves.

The transfer costs a network fee and is not a sale for tax purposes, as long as the coins continue to belong to you. For the holding period, the original acquisition date counts, not the date of the transfer. All that matters is that you carry the acquisition data with you and can evidence it.

Levels up and down: which marks now count for Bitcoin Cash

No forecast, but measured levels: on the downside, the closing price before the jump is the first relevant mark, which for Bitcoin Cash means 232.97 euros from September 21. If the price falls back there, the jump has been given up in full. That is exactly what happened within 30 days in 11 of the 45 cases assessed.

On the upside, the 24-hour high of 317.87 euros is the next mark, with the jump day's close at 301.19 euros as an intermediate level. The current price of 302.12 euros sits practically on that close. The date that actually matters lies in October in any case: the CME contracts are due to start on October 19, subject to regulatory review.

Limits of the analysis: what these numbers do not show

Honesty about the limits is part of running your own survey. Forty-five assessable cases are a small sample, and it comes almost entirely from a market phase of rising prices. A different market phase can deliver different results.

The analysis also says nothing about the cause of a jump. Whether an exchange listing, a protocol upgrade or pure positioning sits behind a given day, it does not distinguish. And it measures daily closing prices: what happened between two closes remains invisible. Anyone deriving a rule for the individual case from this overstretches the data. What the numbers deliver is a sense of the order of magnitude.

Putting a price jump in context: what to take away

1. Work with the median, not the average. After 30 days the median case stood at minus 6.7 percent, and without the Zcash anomaly at minus 12.5 percent. If you still want to buy, first check your provider's licence, euro pair and fees in the comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Treat leverage after a jump day as its own risk class. A pullback of 20 percent is normal on this data, and at fivefold leverage it is arithmetically enough for liquidation. Which funding costs and liquidation rules apply is set out in the comparison of the best perp DEX.
3. Keep the tax question clean from the outset. Buying now and selling a few weeks later is a taxable private disposal transaction in Germany. Record every transaction with date, quantity and price; that can be automated with the tools from our comparison of crypto tax tools.

(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.)

When you place a sell order on a crypto exchange and the platform rejects it without comment, the fault is rarely yours. More often the trading pair sits in a state that the exchange itself publishes, but which appears nowhere on the buy screen. The most important of these states is called cancel only, and it means this: existing orders can only be cancelled, new ones are no longer accepted. You cannot sell in that pair any more.

This analysis was compiled by cryptoticker.io on September 23, 2026. We pulled the public market directories of three trading venues and counted the status fields programmatically. The result at Kraken: 82 of 1,450 trading pairs are listed as cancel only, spread across 45 underlying assets. The delisting notice of August 27, which we reported on September 3, named 21 tickers. The remaining 24 assets appear in no announcement we could find.

What cancel only means at a crypto exchange

Every trading pair on an exchange carries an operating state. Kraken publishes it in the status field of its public market directory and lists five possible values in its own API documentation. Three of them are worth knowing.

online is the normal case: the order book accepts buy and sell orders, market and limit orders work as usual. cancel only, according to the documentation, means that only the cancellation of existing orders is permitted. A new order, in either direction, is rejected. post only allows only orders that are placed into the order book and are not executed immediately against an existing counterparty. A market order fails there, and so does a tightly set limit order.

The decisive difference from a delisting: a delisting is an announced decision with dates, which the exchange communicates to its customers. A status change to cancel only is, at first, no more than a technical state in the order book. It can be the run-up to a delisting, it can be the aftermath of a trading halt already carried out, and it can be a temporary measure. From the outside, the status field alone does not tell these apart, and that is precisely where the practical problem lies for you as a holder.

Our September 23, 2026 count: 1,450 trading pairs reviewed

The method in one sentence: on September 23, 2026, at around 4:00 UTC, we pulled the public market directories of Kraken, Bitvavo and Coinbase Exchange and counted the status fields reported by the exchanges themselves for each trading pair. All three requests returned HTTP 200.

At Kraken the directory covered 1,450 trading pairs. Of these, 1,351 were online, 82 cancel only and 17 post only. Mapping the pairs back to their underlying assets gives 623 normally tradable assets, 45 assets in the cancel only state and 11 in post only.

The 82 blocked pairs break down into 37 euro pairs, 44 dollar pairs and one pair against a stablecoin. For an investor in Germany the euro figure is the more relevant one: in 37 cases the direct route back into euros via the order book is currently shut. Anyone who bought these assets in euros cannot swap them back into euros that way.

45 underlying assets on cancel only: which tickers are affected

Kraken names the assets in the directory by ticker only. These 45 underlying assets were listed as cancel only at the time of our count, in alphabetical order: ACA, ACX, AI3, BKS, BNC, CLV, CQT, CXT, EGLD, EPT, ESX, GAIA, GHIBLI, HDX, HIPPO, HOUSE, IR, JUNO, KEY, KIN, KOBAN, KP3R, LOCKIN, M, MAT, MIR, MNGO, MULTI, NTRN, OMNI, RBC, RIZE, SBR, SCA, SIDEKICK, SLAY, TEA, TREMP, U2U, VANRY, VULT, WEN, WMTX, XTER and YALA.

Several of these tickers are short and therefore ambiguous. M, IR and KEY can hardly be identified with confidence without the full project name, and the exchange does not carry it in the directory. If you see one of these tickers in your account, match it against the project name in your portfolio view before you decide anything.

24 assets with no announcement: how our list differs from Kraken's notice

On September 3 we reported on a Kraken notice dated August 27 in which the exchange ended trading in 21 tokens as of September 11. Our article on the Kraken trading halt for 21 tokens lists the tickers in full. We set today's measurement against that list.

All 21 announced assets are on cancel only today: ACA, BKS, BNC, CQT, CXT, EPT, GAIA, HDX, IR, JUNO, M, MAT, MIR, MULTI, RBC, RIZE, SBR, SCA, VANRY, VULT and XTER. The state matches the announcement, since trading stopped on September 11 while the balances remain in the accounts.

The remaining 24 assets do not appear in that notice: ACX, AI3, CLV, EGLD, ESX, GHIBLI, HIPPO, HOUSE, KEY, KIN, KOBAN, KP3R, LOCKIN, MNGO, NTRN, OMNI, SIDEKICK, SLAY, TEA, TREMP, U2U, WEN, WMTX and YALA. Seventeen of them have a euro pair that is likewise on cancel only. Among them are assets that are no footnote in the market, such as EGLD, NTRN and KP3R.

What this means needs to be kept cleanly apart. What is documented: these 24 underlying assets carried the cancel only status at the time of our count, and we did not find them in the delisting notice cited above. What is not documented: why they carry that status. It could be a later notice that we do not have, a technical measure, or a quiet clean-up. We do not impute to the exchange an intention we cannot evidence. For you, though, the cause changes little about the practical finding: selling through the order book is currently impossible in these pairs.

post only and limit only: two further states that reject your order

Alongside cancel only there are two milder states that still cause a routine order to fail. At Kraken, 17 pairs were on post only, spread across eleven underlying assets: AIO, AKE, AUSD, BOS, EURR, GAIB, NODE, RLUSD, USDR, VELVET and XBT against USDR. It is striking that several value-referenced tokens and stablecoins are among them.

In practice, post only means this: a market order is rejected. You have to set a limit order that is not executed immediately, in other words above the best ask or below the best bid. Anyone unaware of the difference will take a rejected order for a bug in the app. At Coinbase Exchange we additionally found 23 products in the limit only state, in which nothing but limit orders is accepted.

Bitvavo and Coinbase Exchange: what halted, delisted and trading_disabled mean there

To put the Kraken figure in context, we counted two further trading venues using the same method. The states go by different names there, and the orders of magnitude are far apart.

Bitvavo listed 438 markets. Of these, 437 were on trading and a single one on halted, namely WMTX against the euro. That is the most revealing individual finding of the survey, because WMTX also appears on Kraken's list of blocked assets. Anyone holding this token currently finds no working euro order book at either venue.

Coinbase Exchange listed 838 products. Of these, 515 were online and 323 carried the delisted marker and were flagged as not tradable at the same time. Those 323 are not a snapshot of a current event, however: Coinbase keeps permanently discontinued products in the directory, so the number is an archive rather than a fresh occurrence. The meaningful slice is the euro pairs. Of 87 listed euro pairs, 54 were not tradable, leaving 33 usable euro order books.

That figure fits a survey of our own published on August 17, 2026: at that point 34 of 399 assets at Coinbase Exchange had a euro order book. The finding on euro trading pairs at four venues comes from our own house and is therefore not an independent confirmation, but a continuation of the same series of measurements. We cite it with date and origin so that you can place the numbers.

How to check your own account in five minutes

The list above is no substitute for checking your own portfolio, because status values change. Here is how to go about it.

First open the holdings overview of your account and note every asset that is not one of the large, broadly traded coins. Then, for each of those assets, try a limit sell order at a price well above the market, in other words an order that will not be executed. If it is accepted, the pair is tradable and you cancel it again. If it is rejected, the pair sits in a restricted state. The order of operations matters here: test first with an order that cannot be executed, not with a market order.

Also check whether the asset has an active euro order book at a second venue accessible to you. If it does, moving is an option. If it does not, that route falls away and only a withdrawal to your own wallet remains. If you are looking for a second venue, our overview of the best crypto exchanges helps with the choice, because it also lists euro connectivity and withdrawal routes.

Withdrawal instead of selling: which way out remains under cancel only

A blocked trading pair says nothing about whether withdrawing the balance still works. These are separate functions, and as a rule the withdrawal stays open longer than trading does. In Kraken's August 27 notice, three months lay between the trading halt on September 11 and the end of the withdrawal window on December 10.

That gap is the deadline that actually matters. Once it has passed, an exchange may liquidate a residual balance itself, and the proceeds of such a liquidation can be very low, because no liquid market need exist for it any more. For you, a clear order of operations follows: first establish whether a withdrawal window is running, then act. In the case of the stablecoin USDP being dropped by another exchange, which we reported on September 10, several weeks likewise lay between the end of trading and the end of the deadline.

If withdrawal is technically impossible because the network has been switched off on the platform, contact customer support and document the process with date and time. You may need that documentation later, in dealings with the tax office.

Self-custody after the withdrawal: what to watch with your own wallet

Withdrawing to your own wallet is often the only route left when a trading pair is blocked, and it shifts responsibility entirely onto you. Three points decide whether that goes well.

First, the wallet must support the specific network the token sits on. Many of the affected assets are not large coins with a chain of their own, but tokens on someone else's chain. Second, you need a small amount of that chain's native currency in order to be able to move the token at all later on. Anyone who withdraws only the token and keeps no fee reserve has it safely in custody but can no longer send it. Third, the recovery phrase belongs somewhere outside every device that is connected to the internet.

Which device makes sense for that depends on how many different chains you need to cover. Our hardware wallet comparison lists the supported networks per model, and with smaller tokens that is exactly the decisive point.

Tax on blocked pairs: what Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act does to the holding period

A blocked trading pair does not pause the holding period. Under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, the one-year period keeps running from the date of acquisition, regardless of whether you can currently sell the asset. For gains that is favourable, since after the year has elapsed a sale from private holdings is tax free.

With losses the picture reverses. A loss only takes tax effect once it is realised, and it is realised through a disposal. When the order book is closed, that is precisely what you cannot do. The loss stays on paper, and it cannot be set this year against gains from other private disposal transactions. Anyone who had counted on that should review their planning for the current year.

If the exchange liquidates a residual balance itself once the deadline has passed, that too is a disposal, only without your decision on the timing. The proceeds and the date then appear in the exchange's statement, and both belong in your records. Keep the documentation complete, because with small, illiquid assets tax tools frequently lack the price data, and then your own evidence is all that counts.

The December 31, 2026 cutoff date: why a blocked sale can get expensive

A draft bill from the German finance ministry proposes bringing crypto assets under the flat-rate withholding tax in future, while holdings acquired up to December 31, 2026 would remain under the existing rules. We have set out the details in our article on grandfathering and the December 31, 2026 cutoff date. None of it has been enacted; this is a draft.

For the case described here, a practical consideration follows all the same. Anyone wanting to reshuffle an asset before the end of the year in order to tidy up their tax position needs a functioning order book to do it. If the pair is blocked and no second venue exists, that option drops out, regardless of how the legislation ends up. That is no reason to rush, but it is a reason to look through the portfolio now rather than in December.

Limits of this analysis: what we could not check

We reviewed 1,450 trading pairs at Kraken, 438 markets at Bitvavo and 838 products at Coinbase Exchange, 2,726 entries in total, each on September 23, 2026 and each with HTTP 200.

Four things we could not check. We know the reason for not a single status value, because the directories do not supply it. We placed no test orders, but counted only the states reported by the exchanges themselves. We do not know whether a withdrawal window is running for the 24 unannounced assets, or when it ends. And we did not check whether the display in the apps and in the simplified buy screens reflects the same state as the order book, which in our experience can diverge.

Status values are snapshots, too. A pair that is on cancel only today can be online again tomorrow. The figures in this article therefore carry a date, and your own check inside the account cannot be replaced by any list.

Checking blocked trading pairs: what to take away

1. Go through your holdings for small assets. For every asset outside the large coins, use a limit order that cannot be executed to test whether the order book accepts orders. If it is rejected, the pair sits in a restricted state. You will find a second venue with euro connectivity in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Establish the withdrawal deadline before you do anything else. The trading halt and the end of withdrawals are two different dates, and only the second determines whether you still keep your balance in your own hands. If you are switching provider, the licensing is worth a look, which we set out in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Prepare self-custody while the withdrawal is still running. Check in advance that your wallet supports the chain in question, and put aside a small fee reserve in the network's currency. Which devices cover which networks is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

Anyone who checks the state of their portfolio regularly notices a status change like this while routes are still open. Anyone who only looks when trying to sell notices it on the day when none are left.

(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.)

Crypto majors continue their climb while alt leaders hit new ATHs. What’s driving the recent run up?

A seven-agency advisory ties the WaterPlum hacking crew and Pyongyang's remote IT worker scheme to the same bureau.

Three weeks after fining a teleprompter operator who traded on speeches he had already read, regulators set out what exchanges must show.

Investigators are combing the site where the exchange's founder was last seen in 2022, using experts and forensic equipment.

DeepSeek will address the UN Security Council on AI risks this week, sharing a stage with Dario Amodei—who has spent a year calling China's government the industry's biggest threat.

Shiba Inu coin finishes its most bullish Q3 in history, paving the way for October’s hidden 167% historical price pattern.

XRP is gaining momentum amid sustained demand from institutional investors as Bitwise buys over $19 million worth of XRP in one day.

Chainlink’s Infosys partnership opens the door to enormous banking exposure, but its immediate impact on LINK remains difficult to quantify.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Uniswap (UNI) surged sharply after derivatives marketplace CME Group announced new futures contracts listing.

Bloomberg warns Bitcoin's $60,000 floor is a fake bottom as 5% Treasury yields and record stocks dry up crypto liquidity.

Key Takeaways

• HSBC increased its STOXX 600 year-end 2026 forecast to 680 from 670.
• Current projections suggest approximately 6% to 7% potential gains ahead.
• The bank anticipates the benchmark will climb to 760 by year-end 2027, representing nearly 20% upside.
• European corporate earnings are projected to expand more than 15% annually in both 2026 and 2027.
• Italy received an upgrade to overweight, while France was downgraded to underweight.

HSBC has increased its forecast for Europe’s STOXX 600 index for the first time this year, pointing to enhanced corporate profitability, rising business confidence, and an improved macroeconomic environment.

The financial institution now projects the pan-European benchmark will hit 680 by December 2026, revised upward from its prior estimate of 670. According to Reuters, this represents approximately 6.3% appreciation potential from present trading levels, with HSBC anticipating further advancement to 760 by the conclusion of 2027.

Corporate Profitability Expectations Strengthen

HSBC is projecting earnings per share growth of 15.6% during 2026 and 15.4% throughout 2027 for European companies. The bank’s updated analytical framework incorporates adjustments to EPS projections, gross domestic product estimates, corporate sentiment indicators, and valuation metrics.

The investment bank also noted an evolving pattern in revenue generation for European enterprises. Domestic market exposure has increased to 51.2%, marking the highest concentration since 2017, though international operations still account for approximately 49% of total sales.

This revenue composition creates vulnerability to foreign exchange fluctuations. HSBC calculates that a 5% depreciation in European currencies relative to the U.S. dollar could contribute roughly 3.1 percentage points to regional earnings per share expansion in 2026.

Recent equity market activity has further bolstered optimism surrounding European stocks. The STOXX 600 gained 1% on Monday driven by strength in technology and financial services sectors, while declining crude oil prices alleviated worries about inflation and energy expenditures.

Geographic Preferences Shift Toward Italy

While maintaining its broader sector positioning, HSBC elevated Italy from neutral to overweight. The rationale includes enhanced GDP growth projections, accelerating earnings trends, and decreased dependency on Middle Eastern natural gas and liquefied natural gas imports.

Conversely, France was reduced to underweight status due to deteriorating economic projections, diminishing analyst sentiment, and persistent challenges facing consumer discretionary businesses.

HSBC also expresses confidence in UK mid-capitalization equities. The FTSE 250 continues trading approximately 25% beneath its ten-year average on a forward price-to-book valuation basis, notwithstanding its recent recovery.

The bank anticipates FTSE 250 earnings will advance 14% in 2027, contrasting with just 5% for the FTSE 100, benefiting from greater alignment with the strengthening domestic UK economy. HSBC also raised its FTSE 100 year-end projection to 11,390 from 10,980.

HSBC’s forecasts represent analytical estimates rather than assured outcomes, as European equity markets remain subject to foreign exchange volatility, energy price fluctuations, geopolitical uncertainties, and variations in economic performance.

The post HSBC Upgrades European Stock Outlook, Raises STOXX 600 Price Targets appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• CoreWeave shares advanced approximately 1% during Wednesday’s premarket session.
• UBS initiated coverage with a Buy recommendation and established a $120 price objective.
• The price objective suggests approximately 38% potential appreciation from Tuesday’s closing price.
• CoreWeave revealed a strategic multi-year cloud services agreement with Harell Data.
• Elevated debt levels and narrow customer base continue to present significant investment concerns.

Shares of CoreWeave (CRWV) advanced approximately 1% during Wednesday’s premarket session, reaching around $87.65 after settling at $86.76 on Tuesday. The shares climbed 1.6% in Tuesday’s regular session and have accumulated gains of approximately 19% year-to-date.

CoreWeave, Inc. Class A Common Stock, CRWV

The primary driver behind the upward movement is fresh bullish commentary from UBS. Analyst Karl Keirstead launched coverage with a Buy recommendation and established a $120 price objective, indicating roughly 38% potential appreciation from Tuesday’s closing level.

UBS characterized its recommendation as a contrarian bullish position given that investor sentiment surrounding CoreWeave remains relatively cautious. The investment bank believes concerns regarding financial leverage and credit exposure may be nearing a climax.

UBS Projects Sustained AI Infrastructure Growth

Keirstead contends that market participants may be overlooking the sustainability of demand for artificial intelligence computing infrastructure. He anticipates demand will increasingly originate from corporate enterprises alongside the major AI model development companies.

UBS also forecasts improved GPU unit economics that should enhance CoreWeave’s revenue generation per gigawatt of capacity. The firm projects this metric could eventually exceed $15 billion compared to approximately $11 billion currently.

CoreWeave presently trades at roughly three times UBS’s projection for 2027 revenue. Keirstead considers this valuation compelling for an organization anticipated to deliver substantial revenue expansion, though this perspective relies significantly on sustained artificial intelligence infrastructure demand.

The $120 price objective reflects approximately 3.8 times estimated 2028 revenue. UBS also emphasized CoreWeave’s track record for infrastructure dependability as a competitive differentiator in the AI cloud services marketplace.

CoreWeave’s financial structure remains among the primary areas of investor scrutiny. The organization completed an expanded $4.2 billion issuance of 2.875% convertible senior notes maturing in 2033 on September 22.

Strategic Biotech Partnership Provides Additional Momentum

CoreWeave simultaneously announced a multi-year partnership Wednesday with Harell Data. The biotechnology data platform will leverage CoreWeave Cloud infrastructure for AI model development, refinement, and inference operations.

Harell Data’s platform enables scientific researchers to develop models utilizing proprietary research datasets without extracting the fundamental data. Model development will operate on Nvidia A100 and Hopper GPU infrastructure provided through CoreWeave’s platform.

The partnership provides CoreWeave with an additional enterprise application beyond the major AI research laboratories that have fueled substantial portions of its expansion. The agreement’s financial parameters were not revealed, making its immediate revenue contribution uncertain.

The principal investment concerns remain substantial leverage, increasing financing expenses, and revenue concentration. UBS observed that approximately 72% of CoreWeave’s revenue originates from merely three customers, creating vulnerability to expenditure fluctuations at a limited number of clients.

CoreWeave additionally confronts uncertainty regarding sustained profitability in AI infrastructure as competitive pressures intensify and capital investment requirements remain substantial. The organization’s robust expansion supports the optimistic perspective, though debt burdens and concentration vulnerabilities remain challenging to dismiss.

Currently, UBS’s $120 price objective appears to be the principal catalyst for Wednesday’s premarket advancement, while the Harell Data partnership delivers a secondary positive development. CRWV was trading near $87.65 prior to the market open.

The post CoreWeave (CRWV) Stock Gains Momentum After UBS Initiates Coverage with $120 Target appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• • Raiffeisen Bank International will offer crypto trading through Bitpanda across 11 European markets.
  • The partnership could extend digital asset access to nearly 18 million Raiffeisen banking customers.
  • Bitpanda operates under MiCA regulation, ensuring compliant crypto services across EU member states.

• Individual Raiffeisen subsidiaries will determine rollout timing based on local regulatory requirements.
  

Raiffeisen Bank International has partnered with Bitpanda to bring cryptocurrency trading to customers across Central and Eastern Europe.

The Austrian banking group, which holds roughly $234 billion in assets, will roll out digital asset services through its network banks in 11 markets. Customers will access these offerings directly through their local Raiffeisen banking apps.

The rollout timing will vary by subsidiary, depending on regional regulatory requirements. This expansion builds on earlier crypto initiatives already running in Austria.

Bitpanda Enterprise to Power Crypto Services

Bitpanda Enterprise will supply the digital infrastructure needed for RBI network banks to launch crypto services. The infrastructure could extend access to nearly 18 million customers across the region.

Individual banks will decide their own product offerings and launch schedules. Local regulatory requirements will shape each subsidiary’s approach to the rollout.

RBI CEO Michael Höllerer commented on the growing customer interest in digital assets. He said, “As a customer-centric bank, we are committed to meeting our customers’ needs” in the best possible way.

Höllerer’s remarks came as part of a joint statement released this week. The comments reflect a broader trend among banks embracing crypto services.

A Bitpanda spokesperson told reporters that the rollout is still in early stages. The company said, “the rollout remains at an early stage” and will proceed gradually.

Further details will emerge as individual markets confirm their plans. The company emphasized a cautious, phased approach to introducing new services.

This move follows an earlier collaboration between Bitpanda and Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien in Austria. That 2024 partnership marked Bitpanda’s first crypto integration with an Austrian bank.

The new agreement extends this cooperation across the wider Raiffeisen banking network. It represents a broader strategy to integrate digital assets into traditional banking.

Regulatory Compliance Guides Regional Expansion

Bitpanda operates under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, known as MiCA. This authorization allows the company to offer compliant crypto services across EU member states.

The MiCA framework provides a unified regulatory structure for digital asset providers. Compliance under MiCA supports Bitpanda’s expansion into new banking partnerships.

Each Raiffeisen subsidiary will introduce crypto trading according to its own regulatory timeline. Markets with clearer crypto regulations may see faster rollouts than others.

This phased strategy allows individual banks to adapt to local financial rules. The approach reduces regulatory risk while expanding access gradually across the region.

Bitpanda noted it regularly discusses crypto brokerage opportunities with banks and financial institutions. The company declined to comment on any other ongoing or confidential negotiations.

This suggests further banking partnerships could emerge as demand grows. The crypto infrastructure provider continues to position itself as a key partner for traditional banks.

The Raiffeisen-Bitpanda partnership shows how banks are responding to rising customer demand for crypto. Traditional financial institutions increasingly view digital assets as part of their core offerings.

This shift signals continued integration between conventional banking and cryptocurrency markets. The Raiffeisen Bank International deal may encourage similar moves among European peers.

The post Raiffeisen Bank International Partners With Bitpanda to Launch Crypto Trading Across Europe appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Amazon and Best Buy are broadening their Fire TV collaboration with a new advertising component.
• Insignia television ad inventory through Fire TV will become available to Best Buy Ads.
• Campaign execution, planning, and analytics will run on Amazon Ads infrastructure beginning February 2027.
• Insignia televisions from Best Buy will continue using Fire TV as their sole operating system.
• This arrangement strengthens Best Buy’s retail media ambitions while extending Amazon’s reach in the CTV advertising sector.

Amazon and Best Buy are taking their Fire TV partnership to the next level, introducing an advertising component that will allow marketers to tap into connected TV ad space on Insignia television sets.

The extended multiyear agreement will enable Best Buy Ads to leverage Amazon Ads infrastructure for campaign development, execution, optimization, and performance tracking. Implementation is slated for February 2027.

Best Buy Ads Expands Into CTV Territory

Marketing teams will gain the ability to purchase video and display advertising across both new and legacy Insignia TV models equipped with Fire TV. Amazon’s programmatic platform will deliver AI-driven campaign management capabilities alongside comprehensive analytics.

This development provides Best Buy with an additional revenue stream for its advertising division beyond traditional in-store and e-commerce channels. The company has been aggressively building out Best Buy Ads as a key pillar of its media and monetization strategy.

Amazon benefits by expanding the reach of its Fire TV advertising ecosystem, offering brands additional touchpoints to engage audiences through internet-connected television devices.

According to Best Buy Chief Ads and Media Officer Lisa Valentino, the collaboration unlocks fresh possibilities for advertisers to connect with consumers while maintaining Amazon’s Fire TV interface within the Insignia product line.

Fire TV Maintains Exclusive Position on Insignia Television Line

Fire TV will continue serving as the sole software platform for all Insignia televisions manufactured by Best Buy. The current product range spans from 24-inch models up to 85-inch displays, with Alexa voice assistant functionality built into the majority of units.

Best Buy will also maintain its position as the only brick-and-mortar and online retailer offering Insignia TVs through its physical locations and via Amazon.com, where Best Buy serves as the seller.

The partnership between these retail powerhouses originated in 2018, when Amazon and Best Buy initially unveiled Fire TV Edition sets under the Insignia and Toshiba brands.

Since that time, the alliance has produced over 100 television models, establishing Fire TV as a cornerstone of Best Buy’s private-label television approach.

For Best Buy, this latest evolution generates an additional monetization channel through advertising while maintaining its existing hardware collaboration with Amazon. For Amazon, the deal brings more connected TV ad inventory into an advertising operation that continues to expand well beyond its e-commerce foundation.

With the agreement taking effect in February 2027, the financial impact will hinge on how quickly advertisers embrace the platform and the volume of demand Best Buy Ads can generate for this Fire TV inventory.

The post Best Buy and Amazon Forge Deeper Alliance in Connected TV Advertising Space appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Palantir shares edged marginally higher during Wednesday’s premarket session, trading around $185.
• Rosenblatt Securities maintained its Buy recommendation with a $225 price objective.
• The Federal Aviation Administration deployed its SMART artificial intelligence platform in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.
• Air Space Intelligence secured the primary $875 million SMART agreement, not Palantir.
• Rosenblatt analysts suggest Palantir may capture additional FAA safety monitoring and data analysis contracts.

Palantir (PLTR) shares advanced approximately 0.1% during Wednesday’s premarket session, hovering near $185 following Tuesday’s close at $184.99, which represented a 1.0% daily increase. Year-to-date in 2026, the equity has climbed roughly 4%.

Palantir Technologies Inc., PLTR

The recent price movement follows a research report from Rosenblatt Securities analyzing Palantir’s prospective involvement in the Federal Aviation Administration’s comprehensive artificial intelligence transformation initiative. John McPeake, the covering analyst, reaffirmed his Buy recommendation alongside a $225 price objective.

This price target suggests approximately 22% appreciation potential from Tuesday’s settlement level. It’s crucial to note that Rosenblatt’s projection regarding increased FAA-related revenue represents analyst speculation rather than confirmation of a newly awarded Palantir agreement.

Federal Aviation Administration Launches AI Initiative, Opening Potential Doors

The FAA activated its SMART platform Monday across three principal airports serving the Washington metropolitan region. SMART—an acronym for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories—leverages artificial intelligence algorithms to forecast congestion patterns and optimize flight operations.

Air Space Intelligence secured the principal SMART arrangement, signing a 12-year FAA deal valued at $875 million this past June. The platform is undergoing initial evaluation in the Washington region ahead of nationwide implementation.

This clarification matters significantly for Palantir shareholders. Palantir did not secure the core SMART agreement, and no official confirmation exists regarding its participation in the $875 million contract value.

Despite this reality, Rosenblatt maintains optimism that multiple technology providers could participate as the FAA broadens its artificial intelligence and predictive analytics capabilities. The research firm views Palantir’s established agency relationship as a potential pathway toward supplementary opportunities.

Palantir initiated collaboration with the FAA during 2021 on aircraft safety surveillance following issues surrounding the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. Rosenblatt approximates that initial agreement was valued near $18 million.

McPeake contends the FAA is extending Palantir’s deployment across wider safety monitoring and predictive capabilities. This evaluation stems from Rosenblatt’s interpretation of Palantir’s recent AIPCon investor presentation rather than confirmation of fresh FAA contract awards.

Public Sector Revenue Reinforces Investment Thesis

Government contracts constitute a substantial portion of Palantir’s revenue portfolio. Rosenblatt highlighted that public sector clients generated 51% of second-quarter revenue, while the organization’s aggregate revenue expansion remained robust.

Palantir’s second-quarter financial performance provided another catalyst maintaining investor attention. Domestic revenue more than doubled on a year-over-year basis, contributing to significant upward momentum during August.

The FAA opportunity may represent an incremental growth catalyst should Palantir’s current safety monitoring technologies expand across additional programs. At present, however, both the magnitude and timeline of prospective revenue streams remain speculative.

Principal investment risks include elevated valuation metrics, reliance on sustained government contract expansion, and the scenario where FAA expenditures predominantly benefit alternative vendors. Air Space Intelligence already controls the foundational SMART contract, suggesting Palantir’s prospective role warrants realistic expectations.

The most recent confirmed development involves the FAA’s SMART deployment and Rosenblatt’s decision to preserve its $225 valuation target. Palantir maintained its position near $185 Wednesday morning as market participants evaluated the possibility of supplementary FAA engagements against the absence of formally announced contract wins.

The post Palantir (PLTR) Stock Eyes Federal Aviation Administration AI Opportunities Amid SMART System Launch appeared first on Blockonomi.

Ripple’s XRP climbed above $1.60 on Tuesday for the first time since early February, aside from a brief uptick in August, as network activity increased alongside the price move. Data from blockchain analytics firm Santiment showed a rise in large transactions and the creation of thousands of new XRP addresses during the latest advance.

The firm recorded 1,917 XRP transactions worth at least $100,000, the highest level of such activity in roughly a month. While the figure points to increased activity among larger holders, Santiment noted that the transfers do not reveal whether whales were buying or selling.

XRP Network Activity Picks Up

The network also added 3,647 new XRP addresses during the period tracked by the analytics firm. That increase suggests participation extended beyond existing users, although new addresses do not necessarily represent new investors or independent individuals.

Santiment’s data covering mid-April to late September showed both whale transaction activity and network growth rising as XRP moved above $1.60. At its latest snapshot, XRP traded near $1.60, with 2,479 new addresses and 1,281 whale transactions.

Beyond wallet and whale activity, the XRP Ledger has also continued to expand across tokenized assets and stablecoins. Tokenized assets and RLUSD balances on the network recently reached about $4.26 billion. Ripple has reported roughly $2.4 billion of RLUSD in circulation.

Interest in XRP has also extended into investment products. Bitwise filed an updated registration for an XRP exchange-traded fund with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on September 18. The filing adds to a market that already includes several XRP exchange-traded products.

Whale Activity Gets Mixed Readings

The whale data has drawn different interpretations from market observers. One view is that 1,917 large transactions remain relatively small compared with XRP’s market capitalization of about $99 billion. Others see the increase in new addresses as a broader sign of network participation.

The 12.6% rise in XRP over seven days when the data was assessed also makes the increase in large transfers harder to interpret as clear accumulation. Santiment said the combination of price growth, address creation, whale activity and expanding infrastructure could remain important if those trends continue.

The post XRP Pushes Above $1.60 as Network Activity Picks Up appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The second-largest cryptocurrency has rallied by double digits over the past week amid the broader market’s resurgence, surging to well above $2,700.

Most analysts are optimistic the revival could turn into a full-blown bull run, with some projecting a move to a new all-time high.

The Next Targets

X user Wealthmanager believes ETH should reach $3,000 “relatively soon.” They claimed there is little resistance between $2,750 and $3,000, adding that “the next impulse up is just a matter of time.”

Popular analyst Michael van de Poppe argued that Ethereum is entering an “interesting zone,” stressing that rising above its current levels could lead to a completely new phase.

“If this area breaks, the next area of resistance is likely $3,400, and that would mean that we’re back into a new range. I don’t think we’ll see anything sub $2,000 in the near future again,” he said.

Trader Tardigrade spotted an inverse head-and-shoulders setup on ETH’s 3-day chart, assuming the asset is primed for a massive breakout, and projecting a rally to $4,100.

X user Gerla appears to be among the biggest optimists, maintaining that the cryptocurrency is still “ridiculously early in this move” and forecasting a potential explosion to a new historical peak of $10,000.

“The next Ethereum run could surprise a lot of people,” he added.

Meanwhile, ETH investors have been abandoning Binance at a pace not seen in three years. The development reduces immediate selling pressure, reflects a longer-term holding strategy, and strengthens the bullish price scenario.

Bull Trap?

Of course, not everyone is certain that the cryptocurrency will keep pumping. Earlier this month, X user DANNY claimed ETH is setting up for “a huge trap” and envisioned potential capitulation to $1,500 and reaching a cycle bottom by the end of the year. The analyst who goes by Midas echoed a similar prediction, envisioning a retest of the $1,700-$1,800 range and then a drop to as low as $1,400.

“But I still don’t expect ETH to make the same kind of new cycle lows as BTC. ETH has been showing much stronger relative structure, and I still think it will outperform once this correction is finished. There is just one major downside target left to clear before the real expansion starts. So, short-term, I’m bearish on ETH. Long term this setup can become one of the strongest opportunities of the cycle,” they added.

The post Ethereum (ETH) Soars 15% Weekly and Now Enters an ‘Interesting Zone:’ Analyst appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Zcash (ZEC) climbed above $1,600 for the first time since 2016 after 21Shares launched Europe’s first Zcash exchange-traded product (ETP) on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam.

The rally coincides with the privacy coin expanding access through traditional investment markets, while heady short liquidations and leveraged trading add another layer to the price action.

21Shares Launches Europe’s First Zcash ETP

CoinGecko reported the price milestone on September 23, with ZEC trading around $1,600 after reaching an intraday high of approximately $1,643. The listing gives investors another way to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency without holding ZEC directly.

The physically backed product trades on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam. Investors can buy it through traditional brokerage accounts, avoiding the need to manage crypto wallets or take direct custody of the tokens. Its annual management fee is 2.5%.

21Shares also launched a physically backed ETP tracking ETHFI, the governance and utility token of the Ether.fi decentralized finance protocol. That product carries the same 2.5% annual fee as its ZEC counterpart.

The European listing follows Grayscale’s launch of its spot Zcash ETF, which trades on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH. Together, the products give investors in the United States and Europe regulated investment vehicles tied to ZEC.

The price move has also caught the attention of leveraged traders, with Lookonchain reporting that a trader identified as 0xE34E opened a 50x long position on 140 ZEC, worth around $224,000. With the token breaking above $1,600, the position showed an unrealized profit of approximately $70,700, representing a reported return of 1,581%.

ZEC Outpaces the Broader Crypto Market

CoinGecko’s latest figures put ZEC just slightly above $1,600, up more than 10% over 24 hours, 43% in seven days, and over 91% across 30 days. Its one-year gain stands at 3,266%. The weekly performance comfortably exceeds the broader crypto market’s 14.1% increase in the same period.

Trading activity has also picked up. ZEC recorded around $1.77 billion in 24-hour volume, a 61.1% increase from the previous day, with its price moving between roughly $1,456 and $1,643 during that period.

ZEC cleared $1,500 last week after climbing 190% in a month, and analysts at the time did not agree on what would happen next. One of them, Ali Martinez, wrote that “momentum remains strong” and pointed to $1,800 as his next target, a call he first made in late August when the asset was trading near $820.

Picolas Cage, another trader on X, predicted Zcash could eventually reach $14,000, arguing that investors have not properly placed where the token sits in the current market cycle.

But others have leaned bearish, including Crypto with Haris ₿, who opened a $100,000 short earlier this month, insisting that the rally had relied heavily on short liquidations rather than new buying and that most of the bullish catalysts were already priced in by the time ZEC passed $1,500.

Interestingly, data from CoinGlass shows Zcash’s jump past $1,600 caused about $21.62 million in liquidations in 24 hours, with $19.39 million of that hitting short positions.

The post Zcash Tops $1,600 After Europe’s First ZEC ETP Debuts appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Solana’s native token, which plunged below $100 in mid-September, now trades near $120 after a solid 16% weekly pump. Of course, the main catalyst for that move is the broader market resurgence, with Bitcoin (BTC) briefly soaring to $87,000.

The big question now is whether SOL is gearing up for a further ascent or a short-term correction, and most analysts support the bullish scenario.

New ATH Incoming?

Earlier this month, Ali Martinez spotted a bull flag forming on SOL’s 4-hour chart and said he will watch the $105 level closely. The analyst assumed that a sustained close above (as it has happened) could confirm the bullish breakout and set the stage for a rally toward $130.

Many other analysts have also weighed in on the matter following the latest pump. X user Ash Crypto argued that SOL has one of the most bullish setups among altcoins right now. The market observer said the asset has reclaimed the weekly MA200, hit $120 for the first time in eight months, and formed a weekly golden cross, suggesting the bottom is already behind us.

Veteran trader Peter Brandt also chipped in, pointing to what he believes is a textbook cup-and-handle pattern on Solana’s chart. X user FOUR | Crypto Spaces shared the same thesis, saying:

“This is not a random pump setup. Chart is cooking like a massive cup & handle. Now we wait for the neckline because no breakout = patience. Breakout = things get very stupid. I will enter only on confirmation on retest.”

For his part, Gerla said SOL has entered the phase he has been waiting for. The analyst believes that expansion is now happening at a fast pace, setting $500 as a target.

“The only question is how long it takes to get there,” he concluded.

Overall Altcoin Season?

X user Cup, who has been quite bullish on several cryptocurrencies over the past few months, claimed that “the altcoin breakout is here” and predicted that SOL could explode to $450 amid such positive enviroinment.

As CryptoPotato recently reported, Glassnode’s Altcoin Cycle Signal flipped from Bitcoin season to altcoin season this week, thus strengthening the analyst’s prediction.

It is worth noting that the market rally came after a particularly challenging week, marked by the CLARITY Act setback, rising interest rates in the US, and escalating geopolitical tensions. Meanwhile, the crypto sector has spent much of the past several months in an evident bearish trend, suggesting it may still be too early to declare the start of a full-blown bull run or altcoin season.

The post Solana (SOL) Hits a 9-Month Peak as Analysts Project an Explosion to $500 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin’s price ascent drove the asset to over $87,000 once again in the past several hours, but the bears were more persistent so far, pushing it down toward $86,000.

Several altcoins have posted major gains over the past day, including Ripple’s XRP, which has soared past $1.60, and Hyperliquid’s HYPE, which tapped a new all-time high close to $100.

BTC Stopped at $87.3K Again

After last week’s failed advancement vote on the CLARITY Act and the subsequent rate hike by the US Federal Reserve, concerns emerged about BTC’s ability to sustain its August breakout. After all, the asset was rejected at $80,000 on several occasions, and both of these developments pushed it south to a three-week low at $75,000.

However, the cryptocurrency rebounded swiftly and quickly reclaimed $78,000 by Friday morning. The bulls stepped up on the gas pedal later that day, driving it past $80,000. Unlike previous occasions, though, BTC managed to continue forward and challenged $82,000 on Saturday.

The latest escalation in the Middle East conflict as well as the Ukraine-Russia war halted its progress, and bitcoin slipped to $80,300. However, it didn’t slip below $80,000. Instead, it went on a wild run on Monday, adding $7,000 in value and surging past $87,000 for the first time since late January.

It was halted there, though, and dipped to $85,000 before it tried again, only for the same scenario to repeat. As of press time, BTC has been pushed to $86,000, while its dominance over the alts remains at 59% and its total market cap is still above $1.730 trillion on CMC.

BCH, UNI, BTW Fly

ETH, BNB, SOL, DOGE, and ADA have remained at the same levels as yesterday. HYPE broke its all-time high, setting a new one at $98. Ripple’s XRP has reclaimed the key $1.60 resistance. ZEC has rocketed past $1,600 after a 7% daily surge.

Even more impressive gains are evident from BCH and UNI. Both assets benefited from this CME announcement. The former has jumped by over 33% now, while the latter is up by 16%. BTW has increased by double digits as well. AAVE and MNT are also well in the green.

The total crypto market cap has added $50 billion daily and is up to $2.950 trillion on CMC.

The post HYPE Hits New ATH Close to $100, BTC Stopped at $87K Again: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.