Decentralizing app management allows Morpho to focus on protocol development, potentially enhancing innovation and operational efficiency.

The post Morpho hands its 2.2 million-user Mini App to Featherlend in latest decentralization play appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

RBI's foreign-currency deposit drive boosts forex reserves, potentially stabilizing the rupee and offsetting hedging costs through investments.

The post Reserve Bank of India rejects cost concerns over foreign-currency deposit drive appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Market volatility underscores the complexity of balancing inflation control with economic growth, complicating future Fed policy decisions.

The post US CPI data triggers volatile market reaction as yields surge and stocks rebound appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The cell phone price surge complicates inflation analysis, potentially influencing Fed policy and impacting telecom market dynamics and consumer behavior.

The post US inflation data shows record cell phone price jump, boosts core CPI appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The reduced Russian oil output forecasts could exacerbate global energy market volatility, impacting prices and geopolitical dynamics.

The post IEA cuts Russian oil output forecasts as Ukrainian drone strikes cripple energy infrastructure appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Ringleader of $245M Crypto Theft Pleads Guilty 

The man behind one of the biggest bitcoin thefts in history this week pleaded guilty.

Malone Lam, 22, a Miami resident from Singapore, on Tuesday admitted his role as ringleader of the international crime group which stole 4,100 bitcoins — worth over $230 million at the time — to fund a life of luxury. 

The U.S. Department of Justice said that from October 2023 and through at least May 2025, Lam and others hacked databases to steal crypto users’ information and con them into providing user logins and private keys. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies worth $245 million were taken in the theft. 

On one occasion, a co-defendant broke into a residence in New Mexico and stole a hardware wallet while Lam monitored the victim’s movements by hacking their iCloud account.

“This defendant led an international network that preyed on victims through deception, invaded their privacy, and stole hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said in a statement. 

“If you build a cybercrime empire, we will find you, dismantle your operation, and hold you accountable,” Attorney Pirro added. 

The DOJ said: “The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act conspiracy used social engineering and occasional home break-ins to obtain information that allowed the conspirators to drain their victims’ cryptocurrency wallets.” 

The crimes started after a group of online gamers became friends before working together to commit the cybercrimes, the indictment read.

Lam and co-defendants laundered the stolen bitcoin and spent it on bottle service parties, private jet rentals, security guards, luxury handbags and watches, and properties in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, and Miami. 

The defendants would spend up to $500,000 a night on parties and give away designer handbags worth tens of thousands of dollars, Tuesday’s announcement read. 

Lam was arrested in 2024 at his rental home in Miami. 

This post Ringleader of $245M Crypto Theft Pleads Guilty  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Trezor Reveals Another Data Breach After Scammers Target Marketing Platform 

Trezor has warned that a data breach at the third-party marketing platform it uses for sending newsletters is leading criminals to target customers with phishing attacks. 

The top hardware wallet manufacturer said Wednesday that an unauthorized actor got access to Brevo’s system and sent emails to 347,000 Trezor customers. Brevo is a platform businesses use to send customer communications. 

Scammers managed to use Trezor’s domain name to send the email, making the phishing attempt all the more believable. The email contained a malicious link asking users to download an app and enter their wallet backup. 

The news comes after Trezor last month announced that data from 11,742 customers had been exposed after its third-party fulfillment partner, ShipMonk, was targeted. 

It then said last week that an additional 67,000 U.S. customers had their names, emails, phone numbers, shipping addresses and order numbers leaked in the breach. 

“We took down the domain at the DNS level within 20 minutes, preventing the link from working for anyone else and limiting access to 2,500 people who had clicked it before we took it down,” Trezor said on Wednesday. 

“These addresses might be potentially used for other phishing attacks in the future. No other Trezor system was touched,” Trezor added.

“We have suspended the Brevo account to stop further email distribution.”

Trezor reminded users that it never asks customers to ask for their wallet backups. 

Criminals have been targeting data this year, with scammers getting hold of customer information via crypto wallet Ledger’s payment processor Global-e to send phishing emails. 

Crypto wallet provider SafePal last month also announced a data breach that involved ​unauthorized access to about 39,798 customers’ order information, ‌including personal details such as names, addresses and purchase data.

This post Trezor Reveals Another Data Breach After Scammers Target Marketing Platform  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Updated Crypto Clarity Act Starts Circulating Days Before Key Vote 

A new draft of the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act has dropped with amendments.

As first reported by Eleanor Terrett from Crypto in America and Punchbowl’s Brendan Pedersen, the updated bill contains changes including requiring non-decentralized DeFi protocols to register with the CFTC, and changes around how credit unions deal in crypto, according to reporters. 

The specifics include that a decentralized finance app fails the test of being such a protocol test if someone can control or materially alter its functionality, if it doesn’t run solely on pre-established transparent encoded rules, or if someone can restrict or censor its use.

It also adds that a federal credit union may use a digital asset or distributed ledger system to perform, provide, or deliver any activity, function, product, or service it is otherwise authorized by law to perform.

Lawmakers were hoping a crucial vote on the crypto market structure bill would go ahead in August before their five-week recess. It was delayed and the Senate will now vote on it on September 15. 

The bill is not bipartisan yet, according to the reporters. Senate Republicans started circulating the updated legislation on Thursday. 

The Clarity Act drafts a framework to formally divide oversight between regulators, distinguishing which digital assets are securities, commodities or stablecoins. Crypto industry executives have long called for such rules to be in place. 

Though passed by the House of Representatives last July, it has been stalled this year, mostly because the banking lobby clashed with crypto companies over paying customers stablecoin yield. 

A new draft tackling the issue of ethics started circulating in July, banning government officials from promoting or making money from crypto — something Democrats have criticized the Trump family for doing. 

Despite the changes, a group of Democrats said the bill fell short and demanded amendments to the bill. 

Pro-crypto lawmakers have blasted Democratic politicians who they think are deliberately holding back the bill.  

President Donald Trump has urged lawmakers to get the legislation over the line. In August, he said that in order for the U.S. to remain the “undisputed leader in Bitcoin and crypto,” they had to pass the “very, very powerful legislation.”

This post Updated Crypto Clarity Act Starts Circulating Days Before Key Vote  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Nasdaq Invests $100M in Kraken Parent Company: Report 

Nasdaq Inc. is investing $100 million in crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, Payward, according to reports. 

The deal — not yet announced by either party — will help build out structure for tokenized stocks, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The deal values the crypto company at $21 billion, according to the report. 

It comes as Wall Street increasingly eyes up bitcoin and crypto-related infrastructure. Kraken has made deals this year and last with traditional finance firms and the S&P Dow Jones Indices in March made a deal to debut a new derivative contract on decentralized exchange Hyperliquid. 

Bloomberg’s report said that Kraken will distribute Nasdaq’s tokenized stocks on its own platform, giving customers the ability to own Nasdaq-listed stocks in a tokenized form. 

Wall Street has been eying up crypto companies and their infrastructure particularly because its interested in tokenizing assets like stocks. 

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

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

Under the agreement, SoFi will send its digital asset order flow to Kraken Prime, Kraken’s prime brokerage arm, which launched in 2025. 

Kraken — like other crypto exchanges — is pushing into the traditional finance world, allowing users to trade stocks, bonds and other assets. The company has sold its app as a “primary account for everything.”

This post Nasdaq Invests $100M in Kraken Parent Company: Report  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Suffers On Renewed US-Iran Fighting 

Bitcoin’s price slid on Thursday after the price of oil shot over $105 a barrel thanks to renewed tensions in the Middle East. 

The biggest and oldest cryptocurrency was recently trading for $77,208 after sliding as low as $76,748 — down more than 2% over the past day. 

Its dip came after Iran signaled that it had no intention of backing down against U.S. forces. The two countries earlier this week stepped up attacks in some of the heaviest fighting since the war started in February. 

Tehran-backed Houthis in Yemen this week hit Saudi Arabian assets, also pushing the price of oil up. 

War in the Middle East pushes oil prices higher and makes the chances of interest rate cuts lower because of inflation. Bitcoin has typically performed well in a low interest rate environment and has experienced sell-offs when the Federal Reserve pivots to hawkishness. 

The U.S. is currently in the grips of an affordability crisis and rising oil prices are a hot topic ahead of the midterm elections. U.S. President Donald Trump has reassured voters that prices will get under control. 

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said at his first speech as leader of the central bank and said that inflation in the world’s largest economy had not come down enough. 

Traders are now pricing in an interest rate hike next week when the bank meets. 

Still,  bitcoin had one of its best runs in August after the U.S. Treasury said it would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations, in response to surging borrowing costs. 

The announcement hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets like bitcoin and gold have benefited. 

Despite previously trading in line with risk-on assets like tech stocks, bitcoin has this year traded more in tandem with gold as the so-called debasement trade becomes hot again. 

Investors have bought the largest cryptocurrency — along with the precious metal — to hedge against the dollar’s decline. 

This post Bitcoin Suffers On Renewed US-Iran Fighting  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

BitMine Immersion Technologies has amassed a staked ETH position equivalent to almost 12% of Ethereum’s active stake, without disclosing who controls the validators behind it.

The company reported 5.07 million ETH staked as of Sept. 7, representing about 85% of its 5.93 million ETH holdings and worth roughly $12.6 billion at prices used in its latest filing. Using the roughly 43.03 million ETH actively securing Ethereum as of press time, BitMine’s position was equivalent to about 11.8% of the network’s active stake.

That establishes the scale of BitMine’s economic exposure. Measuring its influence over Ethereum’s consensus requires another set of information: how those assets are distributed among validator operators and who controls the signing keys used to propose blocks and attest to transactions.

BitMine has not provided that breakdown.

Its Sept. 8 operational update said only “a portion” of its ETH was already staked through MAVAN, its institutional staking platform. The company also said that, at scale, it would stake ETH through “MAVAN and its staking partners,” leaving the split between BitMine’s own infrastructure and outside operators undisclosed.

BitMine’s economic stake outruns its validator disclosures

The distinction grows more consequential as BitMine approaches its goal of owning 5% of Ethereum’s total supply and directs most of those holdings toward staking.

Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system assigns consensus influence through validators, whose signing keys authorize block proposals and attestations. Ownership of the ETH funding those validators does not by itself disclose who can exercise those duties.

That separation is important because Ethereum’s security model becomes increasingly sensitive as signing authority concentrates. The network requires attestations representing two-thirds of staked ETH to finalize checkpoints, while an operator controlling at least one-third could prevent finality by withholding its votes.

BitMine’s 11.8% economic position remains well below that threshold. Public disclosures also provide no basis for assigning the full percentage to BitMine, MAVAN, or any single staking provider.

An earlier quarterly filing described BitMine as the principal node operator while also outlining its reliance on outside infrastructure. Its latest disclosures add further participants without showing how validator responsibilities are divided.

BitMine ended a management-services agreement with Ethereum Tower on Sept. 3 and appointed its affiliate American Validator the following day to advise MAVAN Holdings. American Validator will receive a fee equal to 1.5% of rewards generated from company-staked ETH, but the agreement does not identify it as the operator of the entire validator fleet or assign it signing authority.

MAVAN’s documentation similarly separates the destination of withdrawn ETH from validator operations, allowing users to designate where funds ultimately return while using its staking infrastructure.

A clearer concentration assessment would require BitMine to disclose the validator cohorts operated by each provider, their signing-key arrangements and how infrastructure is distributed across software clients and hosting environments.

Those details could become more important if BitMine continues expanding MAVAN beyond its own treasury.

The company says the platform has grown to serve institutional investors, custodians and ecosystem partners, potentially putting more third-party ETH onto infrastructure associated with the BitMine staking business.

For Ethereum investors, the next number to watch therefore extends beyond how much ETH BitMine stakes. Its growing validator business will determine whether the company eventually provides enough operational data to show where the corresponding consensus authority actually resides.

The post BitMine’s staked ETH equals nearly 12% of Ethereum’s active stake, but who controls it? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Monthly volume on real-world-asset perpetual futures grew from $85 billion in January to an August record of $799.5 billion, with stocks accounting for 62.3% of that total on both DeFi and centralized venues, according to CoinMarketCap.

Trading venues are moving away from single-asset margin toward unified portfolio accounts, where a trader's entire holdings back every position at once, well beyond a single stablecoin deposit.

One account is absorbing everything DeFi does

DeFi trading began with depositing USDC, posting it as margin, and trading crypto perps. Hyperliquid's portfolio margin now lets spot balances and perp positions offset each other directly, with HYPE and BTC both eligible as non-stablecoin collateral.

Backpack added equity holdings to that same pool on Sept. 3, letting shares in SPCX support perp trades, dollar borrowing and spot-margin positions inside one unified account. Synthetix built a dedicated liquidity vault this year specifically to handle ETH-denominated collateral, market-making and liquidations together.

Katana CEO Matthew Fisher said that unified margin adds leverage to the system. He argued that it also lets sophisticated trading firms net risk across an entire book, turning the same tool into something that can support genuine hedging alongside larger directional bets.

A second price creates a second way to get liquidated

A stablecoin-margined Bitcoin long carries BTC's price as the risk variable. Fisher's point is that collateral built from anything else introduces a second, independent trigger.

If Bitcoin falls, the position loses money as any trader would expect. If the collateral backing that position falls instead, the margin ratio deteriorates on its own, even with Bitcoin unchanged.

Fisher described a trader who can end up liquidated while the underlying derivative is still profitable, purely because the asset propping it up has dropped far enough.

Fisher frames adding yield-bearing collateral as reconciling two separate clocks. Yield accrues on a smooth, near-continuous schedule, while the asset's price still moves tick by tick, and the margin engine has to stay accurate about both at the moment a liquidation might trigger.

Pricing the collateral is the easier half

Every crypto venue can already tell a trader what their tokenized gold, staked ETH, or equity position is worth at any given moment, but Fisher noted that knowing the price solves only half the problem.

He said:

“The challenge is basically liquidating the new collateral safely.”

Even an asset as liquid as Bitcoin or gold needs a route into a stable settlement asset that works quickly and without meaningful slippage once a forced sale begins.

That distinction between knowing what something is worth and being able to sell enough of it fast enough is where Hyperliquid's design becomes evident. Its documentation routes portfolio-margin liquidations through a dedicated backstop liquidator, a different track from the ordinary market process used for perps.

Seized collateral converts through a time-weighted average price with a 10-minute half-life, because spot order books have less consistent liquidity than perp markets.

Synthetix built its liquidity vault around the identical problem, assigning it the combined role of market maker, liquidator, and collateral converter for every non-stablecoin asset it accepts.

A real liquidation cascade in DeFi already tested this weakness

Galaxy's research on an August incident described a Seoul pre-market print for SK Hynix that came in 29.96% below the prior close and fed directly into a tokenized perpetual contract margined in USDC on Hyperliquid.

That triggered roughly $60 million of leveraged long liquidations across nearly a thousand accounts. Galaxy concludes that correct price discovery is not the same as sound liquidation design.

Fisher expects DeFi to eventually rediscover the same collateral hierarchy traditional finance built over decades: cash first, then government debt, high-quality credit, other debt, equities, and only then more volatile or illiquid assets.

Wrapping something in an ERC-20 standard makes it transferable, though it says nothing about how that asset behaves under real selling stress.

What determines an asset's place on that ladder remains the same two things traditional finance has always weighed: volatility and how easily it can be sold once a sale becomes mandatory.

Fisher's read on the competitive landscape runs counter to the usual crypto assumption that DeFi always innovates first and traditional finance follows years later.

Banks and prime brokers have accepted securities, gold, and money-market fund shares as collateral for decades, complete with established haircut methodologies and stress-testing frameworks.

Tokenization functions as an infrastructure upgrade to a practice institutions already run, well short of a new discipline they need to learn from scratch. Recent moves support that reading.

Nasdaq has agreed to invest $100 million in Kraken parent Payward to help build infrastructure for tokenized assets trading outside conventional market hours, and US market plumbing is separately extending toward round-the-clock clearing and settlement.

The collateral arms race

The bull case has RWA perp volume continuing to grow, tokenized Treasuries and equities building genuinely deep order books, and backstop liquidation vaults proving they can convert seized collateral profitably through real stress events.

Under that path, DEXs come to resemble on-chain prime brokers, offering spot holdings, perps, lending, and collateral management inside one account. Bitcoin benefits directly, since traders can hold it spot while shorting perps or borrowing against it without ever selling.

The bear case has a crowded trade that reverses sharply and collateral assets gap down together. Spot order books prove unable to absorb seized positions anywhere near their oracle-marked value, echoing what happened during the SK Hynix incident at far larger scale.

That risk sits more concentrated than headline volume implies. DEX share of RWA perp trading fell from roughly 45% in December to just 13% by August. Hyperliquid's HIP-3 markets carry most of the remaining DeFi share, with a single deployer behind nearly all of that volume.

In that scenario, venues cut loan-to-value ratios, shrink collateral caps, and retreat toward stablecoin-first margin. Bitcoin ends up absorbing much of the shock anyway, since forced liquidations in less liquid collateral often settle through crypto's deepest, most liquid derivatives market, regardless of where the stress began.

The harder question for DeFi now is whether it can sell a tokenized asset fast enough, at scale, the one moment it has to.

The post Your Bitcoin trade can now get liquidated because a stock crashed appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A 3% return on Bitcoin can look like a single number on an allocation sheet, even when the economic bargain underneath it is completely different.

Stacks said its first institutional Bitcoin Staking bond went live on Sept. 10 with roughly 250 BTC committed by 21Shares, digital-asset manager HashKey Cloud, Bitcoin-focused investor UTXO Management and Sypher Capital.

The six-month Genesis Bond targets about 3% annualized yield paid in BTC, with the first weekly rewards expected on Sept. 17.

The launch packages a miner-funded BTC reward stream for institutions whose first screens are custody, lockup, and sustainability. The advertised APY shows what an investor hopes to receive, while the funding source reveals what the investor is being paid to risk.

How the Stacks bond turns miner payments into yield

Stacks says new bonding periods should open roughly monthly as the initial system gathers data, with a later protocol phase intended to replace the whitelist with permissionless allocation.

The Bitcoin committed by 21Shares, HashKey Cloud and UTXO Management sit under each participant's keys in a standard timelock script on Bitcoin's base layer. Sypher Capital used StackingDAO, a Stacks yield protocol that handles the operational bonding process through a liquid-staking implementation.

The implementation changes the operational surface, as direct participants rely on the Bitcoin timelock and the Stacks reward process. A pooled route also introduces the contracts and operator processes used to represent and manage the position.

Stacks' mechanism explainer says participants pair BTC with STX worth about 5% of the Bitcoin position, and describes the STX as staking capacity that secures the allocation and claim on rewards.

The bond runs for six months. Stacks estimates that its roughly 3% annualized target translates into about 1.44% over one term, distributed weekly.

A participant may withdraw BTC before the term ends and forfeit yield not yet distributed, while the paired STX remains locked for the full term.

Stacks also says the direct bond has no protocol condition that can slash the time-locked BTC. The position still carries liquidity, operational, protocol, STX-market, and reward-sustainability risks, all of which matter to an investment committee even when Bitcoin stays on its own chain.

Under Stacks' Proof of Transfer system, miners spend BTC for the right to produce Stacks blocks and receive STX block rewards. That BTC enters a reward pool, and Bitcoin Staking gives bonded BTC a priority claim on the flow.

Bitcoin's proof-of-work consensus remains unchanged. The Genesis Bond is a Stacks mechanism built around BTC, where Stacks miners are the economic payers, and their participation supports the reward pool.

Stacks says Proof of Transfer has distributed more than 4,200 BTC since January 2021. The new bond turns that existing flow into a time-bound product designed around institutional custody and diligence.

Its roughly 250 BTC first cohort gives participants live experience with onboarding, keys, weekly distributions, and exit mechanics, while leaving the system with a limited operating history at scale.

The first expected distribution on Sept. 17 will provide an early operational checkpoint. Sustained performance across more bonding periods and changing network conditions will determine how much weight institutions eventually place on the target rate.

What an equal APY can be paying for

A return number becomes useful only after an allocator identifies the payer and the path by which revenue reaches the portfolio.

In a custodial structure, a platform pools or deploys customer crypto, borrowers provide collateral and pay interest, and the lender depends on contractual counterparties and the platform's controls.

A regulatory record describing crypto-lending models distinguishes those arrangements from noncustodial protocols, where smart contracts, collateral ratios, and automated liquidations create technical and liquidity exposure without the same legal debtor-creditor structure.

Covered-call income begins with volatility demand. A call seller collects premiums while granting another market participant the gains above a specified price.

The Global X Bitcoin Covered Call ETF prospectus says its strategy limits participation in gains while leaving investors exposed to losses in the Bitcoin-linked position. The investor receives cash income by reshaping Bitcoin's payoff, retaining downside while selling some upside.

A cash-and-carry trade harvests a pricing spread. The investor buys spot Bitcoin or an ETF and shorts futures when the futures price is higher, seeking to capture the basis as the two prices converge.

Realized performance also reflects financing, execution, margin management, and convergence reliability.

Bitcoin-backed security introduces a different bargain. Babylon's Bitcoin staking paper describes BTC being committed to help secure proof-of-stake chains, with protocol violators exposed to slashing.

In that design, yield compensates holders for supplying punishable economic security. Stacks instead says its direct Genesis Bond protects BTC principal from slashing while placing risk around reward delivery, lockups, and the surrounding protocol.

These mechanisms can all produce a BTC-denominated return while responding to a different economic cycle.

Lending revenue follows credit demand and collateral performance; covered-call premiums follow volatility and the market's appetite for upside exposure; basis returns follow derivatives pricing and funding conditions; and security rewards depend on networks paying for protection.

Stacks' reward pool depends on BTC miners' spend and the economics that keep them participating.

A shared denomination makes those returns easy to rank and easy to misunderstand. A credit event, volatility surge, derivatives deleveraging, or decline in network activity will affect each strategy differently.

The institutional question moves beyond 3%

Bitcoin held in custody produces no native cash flow for a passive holder. At institutional scale, a low-single-digit return can still be economically meaningful, which shifts the allocation problem from whether yield exists to whether its risks fit the mandate.

A Bitcoin timelock avoids the bridge and borrower exposure embedded in some alternatives, yet the committee must still evaluate the term, early-exit conditions, STX commitment, operational dependencies, and reward source. A pooled implementation can alter that analysis even when its headline APY resembles the direct bond.

Stacks says this bond design lacks BTC slashing, while some security protocols make slashing central to the service being sold.

Lending can transmit borrower or platform failure, covered calls preserve Bitcoin's downside and cap part of its upside, and basis trades introduce margin and financing constraints. The yield is compensation for a specific path of exposure.

An allocator has to ask whether the payer will remain willing and able to fund the return when market conditions turn. Miner spending, borrowing demand, option premiums, and futures basis can each contract, but for different reasons and on different timelines.

Ethereum validators stake ETH directly to secure Ethereum's proof-of-stake consensus, but Bitcoin uses proof-of-work, so passive BTC holders have no equivalent base-protocol staking rate. Products such as the Genesis Bond build return streams around Bitcoin without changing that fact.

Custody-preserving, low-complexity structures may occupy one end, followed by credit, derivatives, slashable security, and multilayer smart contract strategies. The ordering will depend on legal terms and implementation, and any label such as “risk-free-ish” would overstate what these products can promise.

Stacks' first bond's identifiable reward source and direct custody design address two questions institutions care about, while its small cohort and short operating record leave scaling and durability to be demonstrated.

If productive Bitcoin becomes a standard institutional objective, committees may eventually choose a reference return and demand additional spread for added complexity. Markets will construct the benchmark from competing claims on credit, volatility, derivatives pricing, network activity, and economic security.

The durable question is who funds the yield, how long that funding can last, and what breaks when the conditions supporting it reverse.

The post Crypto institutions are chasing a 3% return on Bitcoin, but the entire payout machine collapses if miners stop burning cash appeared first on CryptoSlate.

White House digital assets adviser Patrick Witt has reduced the Senate's immediate choice on the CLARITY Act to “get on the bill and let's keep talking.”

The Sept. 15 vote is a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633, scheduled to ripen at 2:15 p.m., according to the Senate floor schedule. Sixty votes would open debate and an amendment process.

Four days before that procedural test, Republicans released EHF26718, proposed substitute text for CLARITY that adds a Commodity Futures Trading Commission framework for protocols that call themselves decentralized while remaining under an identifiable party's control.

The change repairs part of the bill's regulatory architecture and gives negotiators a targeted response to concerns about DeFi and prediction markets.

No senator who raised prediction market and Tribal-sovereignty concerns has publicly said the substitute changed their vote. Presidential crypto ethics and stablecoin rewards also remain active disputes.

Republicans are patching the coalition's perimeter while leaving its decisive fights for another round of negotiations. Their immediate task is to persuade senators who may oppose today's text to preserve the process for changing it.

A CFTC-side DeFi patch

The new CLARITY Act draft is labeled an “amendment in the nature of a substitute intended to be proposed”. Its table of contents expands Section 20209 from the July draft's “Software developer protections” to “Software developer protections and non-decentralized finance trading protocols.”

That addition creates a CFTC-side framework for determining when a nominally decentralized protocol still has a controlling party subject to intermediary rules.

Section 10301 already instructed the Securities and Exchange Commission to address a “non-decentralized finance trading protocol,” while the revised Section 20209 gives the CFTC a corresponding assignment.

The operative distinction is control: describing a venue as decentralized would not necessarily keep intermediary obligations from attaching when an identifiable person or group administers it.

The July substitute already made one Section 20209 protection for administering a DeFi protocol or liquidity pool specific to spot transactions, so EHF26718's verifiable development adds a CFTC framework for controlled protocols.

In July, 12 Democratic senators warned that broad DeFi exemptions could shelter blockchain prediction markets from derivatives rules. They asked negotiators to limit any new exemption to spot-market provisions, preserve the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and Tribal-state compacts, and prohibit CFTC registrants from offering sports wagers and casino-style contracts.

A CFTC test for controlled protocols addresses part of that concern by making it harder for a centrally controlled venue to obtain a regulatory pass through a DeFi label. The senators also asked for protections extending beyond protocol classification, leaving Tribal sovereignty and the treatment of event contracts in play.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Brian Schatz have separately urged the CFTC to consult Tribes and respect federal Indian gaming law as it considers prediction-market rules.

The revision can make those lawmakers easier to approach. As of Sept. 10, none of the July letter's signers had publicly attributed a change in position to EHF26718.

The coalition math is still unforgiving

Under the Senate's cloture rules, ending debate on a legislative motion requires 60% of the full Senate, or 60 votes when there are no vacancies. With 53 Republicans, perfect party unity leaves at least seven votes to find elsewhere.

The National Sheriffs' Association has already shown how a targeted concession can alter the coalition's perimeter. On Sept. 3, the group moved from opposition to a neutral position after changes addressing illicit-finance concerns.

The clearest public threat inside the Republican conference remains ethics. Semafor reported that Sen. Thom Tillis said the bill could fail unless the White House helps bridge the standoff over restrictions tied to public officials' crypto interests, while Sen.

Mike Rounds expressed pessimism about the bill's prospects. Their comments signal danger rather than a verified whip count, but they also expose the weakness in assuming all 53 Republicans will vote for cloture.

Stablecoin rewards form another coalition-level pressure point. The sponsors' section-by-section summary says permitted rewards may be tied to activities such as opening an account, making payments, and providing liquidity.

Banks argue that those programs can function like interest and pull deposits from the regulated banking system.

That dispute has moved into a public lobbying campaign, as crypto groups launched a late advertising push accusing banks of trying to eliminate stablecoin rewards.

The same constraint applies to the calendar. A floor date forces choices but leaves subsequent votes and potential reconciliation ahead, and September's Senate window was narrow. A successful motion to proceed would preserve that path and move the unresolved issues onto the floor.

A vote to keep negotiating the CLARITY Act

Witt's argument supplies the White House's bridge between an unfinished bill and a 60-vote procedural threshold. In his telling, senators should advance the measure because a failed motion to proceed would deny both parties the opportunity to seek amendments.

Holdouts may decide that withholding cloture gives them more leverage, or that the remaining ethics, stablecoin and Tribal-policy gaps are too large to defer.

Republican negotiators are simultaneously giving those senators a revised text to evaluate. The controlled-protocol framework and the sheriffs' shift to neutral show that discrete objections can move even while the central bargain remains open.

The strategy requires 60 senators to accept the distinction between continuing the process and approving the product.

Cloture would carry the ethics, stablecoin, and prediction-market fights into another round of amendments. Failure would end that strategy before the unfinished compromises reach the floor.

The post CLARITY Act’s biggest Senate vote could happen before the bill is actually finished appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Hardware-wallet makers Trezor and BitBox warned users on Sept. 9 about phishing emails impersonating their brands, urging recipients to avoid the messages' links and instructions.

Trezor said its third-party email provider had been breached and reiterated on Sept. 10 that its wallets remained safe.

Trezor identified an email titled “Critical Security Alert: STM32 Entropy Vulnerability” as a phishing attempt. The company said the message did not come from Trezor and told recipients not to click any link. The technical-sounding subject was part of the fake security alert, rather than a vulnerability announcement from the wallet maker.

In its Sept. 9 warning, Trezor said it had taken down the domain and was investigating how attackers accessed its legitimate domain. The following day, Trezor said its wallets were still safe and again described the incident as a breach at a third-party email provider.

BitBox issued its own impersonation warning on Sept. 9, telling users not to follow the phishing email's instructions while it investigated. In a subsequent update that day, BitBox said its preliminary review found it very likely that its newsletter provider had been compromised.

BitBox also said other Bitcoin companies had been targeted and appeared to share the same newsletter provider. BitBox said it had warned all newsletter subscribers, contacted the provider and reported the phishing domains.

Most phishing links appeared to have been taken down by the time of that update, according to BitBox, which said its investigation was continuing.

Keep recovery seeds private

The warnings concern emails impersonating wallet companies. Trezor's reassurance about its wallets does not make following a phishing message safe: its standing security guidance says anyone who obtains a wallet backup, also called a recovery seed, can move the funds.

Trezor tells users never to share that backup and to check official channels if they are concerned about a message or their wallet's security. Its guidance also advises avoiding suspicious links and attachments and downloading Trezor Suite only from its official website.

For recipients, the immediate response is to ignore the phishing emails' instructions and keep recovery words private. Any follow-up about the incident should be checked through the companies' official channels, rather than through links supplied by the suspicious email.

The post Attackers exploit fake STM32 vulnerability alert to target Trezor and BitBox holders appeared first on CryptoSlate.

An inactivity fee is a fixed amount a provider debits purely because nothing has happened on an account for a defined period. It does not depend on trading, on a withdrawal or on the size of the balance, but on standstill. Anyone who opened a second account at a crypto exchange years ago and then forgot about it may have been paying there for months without noticing.

Two providers have touched their rates in recent weeks, and in both cases the move was upwards. This article explains the mechanics behind it, shows with two documented cases how high the amounts now run, and walks through checking your own dormant account. First, though, the result of our own survey, which is decisive for that check: on publicly accessible fee pages, the answer is very rarely there.

What an inactivity fee is and when a crypto exchange charges it

The term comes from the classic brokerage business. A broker earns on orders; if those dry up, the account still costs money, because account and reporting obligations carry on. The inactivity fee shifts those costs to the customer. Crypto trading venues have adopted the model, partly for trading accounts, partly for the payment cards that go with them.

The trigger is almost always a period without defined activity, twelve months being the usual span. What counts as activity differs considerably, and this is the point where most readers get it wrong: a mere login counts with some providers, not with others. What matters there is a movement of money, that is, a purchase, a sale, a deposit or a withdrawal.

The second peculiarity concerns how it is calculated. Unlike a trading fee, the amount is a flat rate. On an account holding 4,000 euros it is barely noticeable. On a residual balance of 60 euros it eats the account up in less than a year. That is exactly why the fee systematically hits the small, forgotten holdings and not the large ones.

Crypto.com raises its inactivity fee to 5.95 dollars from September 1, 2026

The first documented case concerns the Crypto.com prepaid card. The provider's fee and limit overview states that after twelve months without cardholder-initiated financial activity, a fee of 4.95 US dollars applies for each month of inactivity. It goes on to say that this amount will be raised to 5.95 US dollars with effect from September 1, 2026. As soon as there is activity on the card again, the charge ends and the twelve-month counter starts over.

Two qualifications belong with it, so the figure is placed correctly. The overview quoted applies to the prepaid card in the United States, not automatically to card products from the same provider in the European Union. And it concerns the card, not the trading account. The value of the example therefore lies less in the amount than in the mechanics: a provider states openly from when it charges a dormant product, how high the rate is and what stops it. Those are precisely the three pieces of information you need for your own account.

The increase of one dollar looks small. Over twelve months it is 71.40 US dollars instead of 59.40, and it runs on quietly for as long as nobody touches the card.

Dormancy fee after a withdrawal from the EU: the second case

The second case comes from Luno and shows the harsher variant. The provider has pulled out of several regions, among them the European Economic Area, and has asked customers there to close their accounts. For balances still sitting there after the communicated cut-off date, consistent reports from several trade outlets say a monthly inactivity fee of 2 US dollars applies from September; from December a dormancy fee of 50 US dollars is added, making up to 52 dollars a month in total. The provider's help page on this process does not answer automated requests; in a browser it is reachable.

How this withdrawal played out for the customers affected was described in detail by cryptoticker.io on August 8, 2026. What counts for the context here is the order of magnitude: 52 US dollars a month is no longer an administrative contribution but an amount that consumes a typical residual balance entirely within a few months. The difference between 2 and 52 dollars lies in the word alone. An inactivity fee charges a dormant account; a dormancy fee charges an account the provider regards as definitively abandoned.

Our own survey: 15 fee pages retrieved, 6 were usable

That leaves the question facing every reader with a dormant account: how do you find out whether your provider charges something like this? To answer it, we measured the obvious route a customer takes first, namely a look at the public fee page without logging in.

cryptoticker.io compiled this survey itself on September 11, 2026. Method: for 15 trading venues and brokers relevant to European investors, one publicly linked fee or terms page each was retrieved using an ordinary browser identifier, the visible text was extracted from the source code and searched for the keywords inactivity, dormant, dormancy and the German equivalents.

The result came out more clearly than expected. Eleven of the 15 addresses answered with status code 200; four rejected the automated request with a 403. Of the eleven reachable pages, however, only six delivered enough readable text at all to answer the question; with the remaining five, the content is only assembled in the browser through JavaScript loaded afterwards, so the retrieved document contains practically nothing. On balance, the question could not be answered from the public document on nine of the 15 pages.

Of the six usable pages, exactly one mentioned the keyword at all. At eToro, the fee overview lists, in the section on the money account, the entry inactivity fee with the value free. Third-party sources list a monthly inactivity fee for trading accounts at the same provider; that statement could not be confirmed on the provider's page, and it is therefore not passed on here as fact. At Kraken, Bitpanda, OKX, Bybit and BISON, the keyword did not appear in the retrieved text.

What this survey expressly does not do: it is no proof that the providers named charge no such fee. One page each was checked, not the complete schedule of prices and services, not the terms of use in full and not the logged-in customer area. Four pages were blocked for retrieval, five more were unreadable without a browser. The survey therefore measures how findable the information is, nothing more.

Why the fee is rarely on the public fee page

There is a sober reason for that. Fee pages are sales pages. They set trading fees, spreads and savings plans side by side, because that is exactly what new customers compare. A charge that only bites after a year of standstill plays no part in that decision and therefore sits elsewhere: in the schedule of prices and services, in the general terms and conditions, or in an article in the help section.

On top of that comes the technical hurdle from the survey. Five of the pages checked only assemble their tables in the browser. For a reader that is invisible; for any search across pages it is a wall. Anyone wanting to know what applies at several providers cannot avoid visiting each one. For choosing a new trading venue, an ordered overview of the crypto exchanges relevant to European investors helps, but the question of dormant accounts remains, in every case, one you settle inside your own account.

Inactivity fee and dormancy fee: the difference that decides the amount

The two terms get mixed up in everyday use, but they describe different stages. An inactivity fee is an ongoing contribution for an account the provider continues to run. A dormancy fee is the rate for an account that, from the provider's point of view, has been given up and is only being administered because money is sitting in it.

The sequence is typical: first a small monthly amount runs, then after a further period the large one is added. The Luno case shows both stages on a timetable, September for one, December for the other. For your own check that means searching the terms for both terms and watching for deadlines that come in stages.

A third variant belongs here too, even though it is not a fee in the narrow sense: the minimum withdrawal. If the balance falls below it, the money can no longer be moved out, and the fee runs regardless. In that case the amount is effectively lost without anyone having withheld it.

What resets the counter: login, trading or payments

This is the most important detail in the terms, and it decides how much work is involved. If a provider requires only a login, a date in the calendar will do. If it requires customer-initiated financial activity, as the quoted Crypto.com overview puts it for the card, logging in is not enough.

What counts in such cases is a real movement: a purchase, a sale, a deposit or a withdrawal. Anyone who only wants to keep a dormant account alive typically triggers a small purchase. That incurs trading fees and possibly a spread, and on a sale in Germany the one-year holding period for a private disposal transaction starts running again for the holdings concerned. A transaction made purely to avoid the fee can therefore end up costing more than the fee.

For most dormant accounts, closing is the cheaper route. If you have not used an account for years, you lose nothing by withdrawing the balance and closing it.

Checking your dormant account: these five steps in this order

First: draw up a list of all your accounts. Search your inbox for confirmation emails from the years of the last market cycles, supplemented by your browser's password store. Anyone who bought Bitcoin on a second or third platform in 2021 typically finds more there than expected.

Second: log in and look at the actual balance, separated into crypto holdings and cash in euros or dollars. The two can be treated differently.

Third: in the logged-in area, open the schedule of prices and services or the fee page and search for inactivity, dormant and dormancy. Judging by the survey above, the public page is enough in only a few cases.

Fourth: go through the account statements or the transaction history for the past twelve months. A charge already running shows up there as a recurring entry with an identical amount each time, usually at the start of the month.

Fifth: decide. Either withdraw the balance and have the account closed, or set a reminder that prompts you to generate activity before the deadline expires. A middle course, in which you simply leave the account lying there, is precisely the case the fee charges for.

Minimum withdrawal and residual balance: when the fee eats the account

The unpleasant situation arises when the fee is larger than what could still be withdrawn. With a minimum withdrawal of ten dollars and a balance of eight, there is no regular way out while the monthly charge keeps running. What applies in that position is set out solely in the terms of the provider in question, and the rules differ: some houses cap the fee at the balance available, others stop charging at a balance of zero and close the account.

No general legal advice can be derived from that, because the applicable law, the provider's place of business and the agreed terms interact. Anyone affected with a meaningful amount at stake should settle it with the provider in writing and ask to be told the legal basis for the charge. The related case of a balance left behind after an exchange closes has been worked through by cryptoticker.io in a separate article on residual balances and cut-off date fees.

What a MiCA licence regulates here and what it does not

Since the transition periods ended, providers serving customers in the European Economic Area need authorisation under the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets. That authorisation requires, among other things, holding client assets separately from the firm's own, and it obliges providers to state costs clearly. It contains no upper limit for account maintenance, inactivity or dormancy fees.

A practical distinction follows from this. A licence raises the likelihood that the fee is set out cleanly somewhere at all and that a contact inside the EU remains reachable. It says nothing about how high the rate may be. And it no longer bites where a provider leaves the market: that is precisely the situation in which the highest of the amounts documented here have appeared.

Announcing fee changes: how the message reaches you at all

Fee changes are announced, usually by email to the address on file and with a few weeks' notice. This is the point at which the system becomes unreliable for dormant accounts: anyone who has not used an account for years often has an old address on file there, filed the sender into the promotions folder at some point, or simply does not read the message.

Anyone deliberately keeping a dormant account should therefore do two things: bring the address on file up to date and put the provider's sender on an allow list in the inbox. Both take a few minutes and are the only connection through which a change reaches you at all.

For taking stock, the same thinking applies as with a tax return: an account that appears in no overview does not get checked either. If you bring your holdings together in one place anyway, a dormant account shows up at the next reconciliation.

Checking the inactivity fee: what to take away

1. List every account before you check anything. Search the inbox and the password store and note down the providers. A tool that brings holdings together across several platforms makes this inventory permanent rather than a one-off; you will find the selection in the overview of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
2. Search for the terms in the logged-in area, not on the public fee page. According to the survey of September 11, 2026, the question could not be answered at all on nine of 15 public pages. While you are at it, note where the provider is based and whether it is authorised in the EU; which houses those are is shown in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Decide instead of letting it lie. Either withdraw the balance and close the account, or set a reminder before the deadline and update the email address on file. If you want to consolidate your holdings anyway, move them to a trading venue you use regularly; the candidates are in the comparison of crypto exchanges for European investors.

Sources to read up on: the Crypto.com fee and limit overview for the prepaid card with the rate of 4.95 US dollars and the increase from September 1, 2026, as well as the eToro fee overview, the only one of the six usable pages on which the keyword appeared at all.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Bitwise is closing its Dogecoin ETF. The fund trading under the ticker BWOW is being wound up: the last trading day on NYSE Arca is October 14, 2026, and anyone who has not sold their shares by then will receive the cash equivalent on October 22, 2026. The provider announced this on September 10, 2026 at 3:28 p.m. New York time.

For most European readers this is not a portfolio question but a market question. BWOW was a US product that a retail investor could not normally reach through a European broker at all. The episode is interesting all the same, because it answers a question that has been hanging over the altcoin funds since they launched: is it enough for a crypto product to be approved and tradable for it to actually be bought? For this fund the answer is demonstrably no. And something practical follows from that for you, whether you buy Dogecoin through a securities wrapper or directly at a crypto exchange.

What “Dogecoin ETF discontinued” means: the three Bitwise dates

Bitwise Investment Advisers, the fund's sponsor, resolved on the liquidation with effect from September 10, 2026. Three dates structure the process, and they appear verbatim in the provider's announcement.

October 14, 2026: the last trading day on NYSE Arca. Until the close on that day, shareholders can sell their shares on the secondary market, that is, on the exchange to another buyer. The same day the fund converts its Dogecoin holdings into cash. After the close it ceases operations.

October 15, 2026: before the opening bell, the creation of new BWOW shares ends. That is the mechanism through which an exchange-traded fund grows; take it away and the product can only shrink.

October 22, 2026: remaining shareholders receive the net asset value of their shares, calculated as of October 21, paid out in cash. Net asset value, usually abbreviated NAV, is the fund's assets divided by the number of shares outstanding, in other words the arithmetic value of a single share.

Bitwise adds one sentence that matters more than it sounds: “Shareholders do not need to take any action during this process.” No application is required; the wind-up runs automatically. Anyone who would rather sell than be paid out, though, has to act by October 14.

Why Bitwise is closing the Dogecoin ETF: 722,000 dollars in fund assets

The official reasoning is brief. Bitwise says it is liquidating the fund “as it continues to optimize its product range to meet evolving investor needs”. The company expressly does not cite trading volume, fund size or outflows as the reason. That reticence is standard in the industry and no reproach in itself.

The fund's figures are public, however, and they are clear. The trade publication Cryptopolitan compiled them on September 11, drawing on the fund documents as well as data from The Block, SoSoValue and ETF.com. According to those, on September 8, 2026 BWOW held assets of around 722,000 US dollars (721,815 dollars precisely) and roughly 8.2 million DOGE. For comparison: Bitwise says it manages around 9 billion US dollars in client money.

The decline can be traced quarter by quarter. At the end of 2025 the fund reported net assets of 1.15 million US dollars; by June 30, 2026 it was 473,547 dollars. In the first half of 2026, according to these documents, no new shares were created while 20,000 shares were redeemed. Cumulative performance since inception stood at minus 45.37 percent in the August monthly data. Part of that is simply how Dogecoin traded over the same period, not a flaw in the product.

Trading stayed thin as well. In its opening week BWOW reached around 3 million US dollars in daily turnover and never came close to that figure again. Bitwise announced the fund on November 25, 2025; trading began on November 26.

What is happening to Dogecoin right now: price, market cap and ETF outflows

The coin itself is technically untouched by the fund closure. Dogecoin traded at around 0.0836 US dollars at about 09:50 UTC on September 11, 2026, with a market capitalisation of roughly 14.3 billion US dollars, ranking twelfth among the largest cryptocurrencies; those are our own readings, taken from Coinpaprika. On the day it was down a good 2 percent. The all-time high of around 0.753 US dollars dates from May 8, 2021 and is therefore more than five years old.

More telling than the daily price is demand through the fund wrapper. Over the preceding 30 days the three US Dogecoin funds together recorded around 670,530 US dollars in net outflows, according to the SoSoValue data cited by Cryptopolitan. Cumulative net inflows since inception added up to a mere 11.77 million US dollars. Across all US Dogecoin products, cumulative trading volume to September 10 came to about 300 million US dollars.

Liquidation explained: what happens to the shares between October 14 and 22

Liquidation at an exchange-traded fund means the fund's assets are sold and the proceeds distributed to shareholders. The fund disappears, the money does not. That is precisely what separates an orderly fund closure from an insolvency, where creditors are served and investors stand in line.

In practice two routes run side by side. Sell on the exchange by October 14 and you get the market price a buyer is paying at that moment. That price can deviate from net asset value in either direction, and with a thinly traded product the deviation tends to be larger. Don't sell, and on October 22 you are wired the NAV as of October 21, carrying the full Dogecoin price risk until then.

Bitwise says it has coordinated the wind-up with the NYSE so that delisting and liquidation proceed in an orderly fashion. The company also filed a Form 8-K with the US securities regulator SEC, according to Cryptopolitan — the mandatory disclosure for material events at a listed issuer.

Why BWOW mostly does not concern you as a European investor

Some context matters here, so that this news does not turn into false urgency. BWOW is a US trust under American securities law, not a fund set up under European rules. For distribution to retail investors in the EU it lacks the key information document required by the PRIIPs regulation, that three-page mandatory document without which a broker may not sell a packaged investment product to retail clients in Europe.

Concretely that means BWOW was, as a rule, not available through a European securities account at a local crypto broker. Those affected are above all investors holding through a US broker. If you are unsure whether that includes you, a sober look at your portfolio overview settles it: no BWOW listed there, and the matter is closed for you.

ETF, ETP and ETN: the difference that counts for a European portfolio

Because the terms get muddled in everyday use, a clean separation is worth the space. An ETF is an exchange-traded investment fund whose assets are legally segregated from the assets of the fund company. An ETP is the umbrella term for exchange-traded products as a whole. An ETN, finally, is an exchange-traded note, that is, a claim against the issuer.

For cryptocurrencies this is not hair-splitting. In Europe, individual coins cannot be packaged as a classic UCITS fund for regulatory reasons, because such a fund has to diversify broadly. That is why local products come almost without exception as collateralised bearer notes: legally you hold a claim that is backed by deposited crypto holdings. If the issuer fails, the collateral is what protects you, not the segregation of fund assets.

Alongside that stands the direct route, where you hold the coins yourself, in your own wallet or at an exchange. Choosing between these routes is a trade-off between portfolio convenience and self-custody, and it has tangible consequences for fees, taxes and for whom you are trusting when it matters.

The 21Shares Dogecoin ETP: what is tradable in Europe and what it costs

Anyone in Europe wanting exposure to Dogecoin through a securities account currently ends up, in practice, at the 21Shares Dogecoin ETP with the ISIN CH1431521033 and the German securities number A4A5WJ. The key data come from the product profile at justETF, retrieved on September 11, 2026.

The product was launched in Switzerland on April 8, 2025 and tracks the performance of Dogecoin through a bearer note collateralised with corresponding crypto holdings. Replication is physical and income is accumulated, that is, retained in the product rather than distributed. Fund assets come to around 9 million euros, and the paper is eligible for savings plans.

The most important item sits in the line below: the total expense ratio is 2.50 percent a year. This ongoing fee, usually referred to as the TER, is taken out of the product's value day by day, regardless of whether the price rises or falls. On an investment of 1,000 euros that works out at 25 euros a year for the wrapper alone. It is a multiple of what broadly diversified equity ETFs cost, and it is the price of the convenience of holding a coin in your familiar portfolio. Whether that is worth it depends on how long you intend to hold and how high the fees are on the alternative; a look at an exchange comparison answers the second half of that question.

One note on scale that fits this article's theme: 9 million euros is not an unusual figure for a European crypto ETP, but nor is it a comfortable one. Anyone taking the lesson of BWOW seriously keeps an eye on their product's fund size instead of glancing at it once at purchase.

Approval is not demand: what the SEC listing standards changed in September 2025

The backdrop to the flood of products in recent months is a rule change. On September 17, 2025 the US regulator SEC approved generic listing standards for exchange-traded commodity and trust shares. Since then not every single product needs its own rule-change procedure; if a fund meets the criteria, it can be listed.

That has noticeably increased the number of filings and launches and shortened the time to listing. It has changed nothing about demand. This is exactly the gap that the BWOW closure makes visible: a product can clear every hurdle, list on one of the world's largest exchanges, be reachable through every major US broker, and still be discontinued after ten months for lack of interest.

Where the ETF money went instead: Hyperliquid, Zcash and Chainlink

The figures from the Cryptopolitan analysis allow a comparison within the same product class, and it is unambiguous. To September 10, 2026 the US Dogecoin products reached around 300 million US dollars in cumulative trading volume. Products on Hyperliquid stood at about 2.1 billion over the same period, Zcash products at around 1.5 billion and Chainlink funds at roughly 680 million.

Inflows show the same picture in a different currency. According to estimates compiled by ETF.com and quoted by Cryptopolitan, Solana spot products gathered almost 880 million US dollars in total and XRP products around a billion. Cumulative net inflows across all three US Dogecoin funds came to 11.77 million dollars by contrast.

Putting those numbers in context belongs to the job: they are snapshots from third-party sources, not audited annual accounts, and they measure trading activity and fund flows, not the quality of a network. What they show reliably is a ranking of institutional interest as of the reporting date.

What the closure says about memecoins as an investment product

Dogecoin is the oldest and best known memecoin, meaning a cryptocurrency whose value derives largely from recognition and community rather than from a technical application. At rank twelve and a good 14 billion US dollars in market capitalisation, the coin is anything but a footnote.

That is exactly what makes the finding interesting. A large, visible and loud following evidently does not translate automatically into demand through a securities account. The people who trade Dogecoin mostly do so where they already are: on crypto exchanges, in wallets, through apps. Too little was left over for the route through a fund wrapper with an annual fee.

No verdict on the coin follows from this, and certainly no forecast for its price. What follows is a sober observation about distribution channels: with Dogecoin, demand sits in the crypto-native channel, while for other assets it migrates more strongly into the regulated securities world.

Tax: why a cash settlement can work like a sale

Caution is in order here, in two directions. According to Cryptopolitan's account, the SEC filing notes that the distributions are taxable events. That statement refers to US tax law and to US shareholders. The Bitwise press release itself says nothing about tax treatment; I checked it expressly on that point.

Nothing can be derived from it for taxation in Europe, and I am not claiming anything here either. The general mechanism is no secret, though: when a fund is wound up and you receive a cash payment, your position ends, and an ended position is as a rule a disposal for tax purposes. How it is classified in your specific case depends on the product type, the location of your account and your personal circumstances.

In practice that means: if a wind-up does affect you, collect the settlement statement and the provider's notice for your tax records, and clarify the classification with your tax adviser. Anyone wanting to keep track of many transactions will find suitable support in a specialised tax tool. This article is not tax advice.

How to spot that a crypto product is heading for closure

The warning signs at BWOW sat openly in the documents for months. These patterns transfer to any exchange-traded crypto product you hold.

The first sign is shrinking fund assets. At the Bitwise product, net assets fell from 1.15 million to 473,547 US dollars within six months. Every provider publishes this figure, usually updated daily on the product page.

The second sign is an absence of share creations. In the first half of 2026 not a single new BWOW share was added, while shares were redeemed. A product no fresh money flows into has its growth behind it.

The third sign is thin exchange trading. After an opening week of around 3 million US dollars in daily turnover, the fund never reached that level again. For you as an investor that is doubly unpleasant, because thin trading widens the gap between bid and ask and makes every exit more expensive.

A fourth point concerns the provider's communication: when a product is pulled from marketing material and product overviews, that is often the harbinger. Check these metrics once a quarter and a wind-up will not take you by surprise; you can decide at your own pace instead.

Dogecoin ETF discontinued: what to take away

1. Check whether this affects you at all. BWOW is a US product without a PRIIPs key information document and was as a rule not available through European portfolios. If the ticker is not in your portfolio overview, you need do nothing. Anyone holding through a US broker has until October 14, 2026 to choose between selling themselves and the automatic cash payout on October 22. Which providers come into question for the securities route is shown in the crypto broker comparison.
2. Compare the cost of your wrapper against the direct route. The Dogecoin ETP tradable in Europe carries an ongoing fee of 2.50 percent a year. Weigh that amount against the fees and effort of buying directly before you settle on a route; the terms offered by the trading venues are in the crypto exchange comparison.
3. Keep an eye on fund assets and trading turnover. Shrinking assets, absent share creation and thin trading were readable at BWOW for months. Put a quarterly date in the calendar for that check, and file the statements from any wind-up for tax purposes straight away, for which a portfolio tracker is well suited.

One closing point of context, because it tends to get lost in the excitement around individual products: a fund closure is not a default and not a loss of your money. The process is an orderly retreat in which the assets are sold and paid out. A wind-up only becomes unpleasant when it catches you unprepared and forces you to exit at a bad moment. The story of the first altcoin funds can thus be carried a little further: we covered the launch of the Dogecoin ETF in September 2025, and this is now the other end of the same story.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Sources: press release from Bitwise Investment Advisers of September 10, 2026 on the liquidation of the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF, published via PR Newswire; product profile of the 21Shares Dogecoin ETP (ISIN CH1431521033) at justETF, retrieved on September 11, 2026; analysis of the fund data by Cryptopolitan of September 11, 2026 citing The Block, SoSoValue and ETF.com; own price reading at Coinpaprika on September 11, 2026.

If you run your own node on the Lightning Network using the Alby Hub software, you have had one concrete job since September 9, 2026: check the version number. If it reads anything between v1.7.0 and v1.18.5, and the management interface is reachable from the open internet, an attacker can gain unauthorised access and drain funds, according to the provider. Which puts the answer to the central question right at the top: check the version, close off access from the internet, update to v1.24.0, and change the unlock password afterwards.

Everything else in this article answers the questions that follow from there. Who is actually affected by the flaw, how do you tell that your installation was never exposed in the first place, and why is the fix older than the warning now making the rounds in the trade press.

What Alby Hub is and who actually runs this software

Alby Hub is software that lets you run a node on the Lightning Network yourself. The Lightning Network is a payment layer built on top of Bitcoin that moves small amounts almost instantly and at very low fees: two participants open a payment channel and only the opening and closing of that channel are recorded on the blockchain. A node, in that picture, is the machine that keeps such channels open and forwards payments.

The difference from an ordinary wallet app is decisive in this case. An app on your phone connects to somebody else's service and has no address of its own on the network. Alby Hub, by contrast, is a program that runs permanently, on a small machine at home, on a rented server, or as an application on a desktop computer. And a program that runs permanently has an interface through which it is administered.

That interface is precisely what the September 9 report is about. The people affected are therefore those who settle their bitcoin payments themselves rather than having somebody settle them. For the variant hosted by Alby, none of the reports describes a case.

Which Alby Hub versions are affected: v1.7.0 through v1.18.5

The provider has rated the flaw as critical and drawn a clear line around the affected range: versions v1.7.0 up to and including v1.18.5, all of them releases from before August 2025. From the 1.19 series onwards the flaw is fixed. According to reports so far, exactly one user is confirmed as affected.

A CVE number, the internationally standard identifier for a vulnerability, does not appear in the September 9 reports. The provider has announced that technical details will follow later, as is customary with responsible disclosure: first as many operators as possible should update, then the precise workings of the attack are described. For you that means you cannot yet check the provider's assessment for yourself. The recommended course of action does not depend on it.

One point that tends to get lost in the excitement: the version range alone does not decide the matter. An old release on a machine reachable only within your own home network was, by the provider's description, never exposed. The version number is one half of the check, reachability the other.

Why only a publicly reachable management API is exposed

The management API is the interface through which Alby Hub is administered: opening channels, triggering payments, issuing access for apps. A programming interface of this kind is at heart an address that accepts commands. Sitting behind the front door of your own network, it can only be reached by someone already inside that network. Sitting openly on the internet, it can be reached by anyone who knows or finds the address.

By the provider's account, the flaw only becomes exploitable in that second situation. Anyone who has deliberately made their node reachable from outside, say to operate it from a phone while travelling, belongs to the group at risk. Anyone who only operates it inside the home network does not.

That distinction is why the first recommended measure is not the update but the lock-down. An update takes a few minutes and, if it comes to it, a restart. Taking access off the internet takes one move in the router and works immediately.

Checking your Alby Hub version: where the number sits and what it tells you

The Alby Hub interface carries an information page showing the version alongside the node backend in use; the release notes for v1.24.0 point to exactly that page. Read the string off there and compare it against the range above. Anything below 1.19 needs updating, regardless of whether your node was ever reachable from outside.

If you have no access to the interface, the installation itself offers a way in: the file name of the downloaded package carries the version, and with a container installation it is written into the image used. If none of these routes gives an unambiguous answer, treat the installation as affected and update.

The checks in the right order

Reachability first, then the version, then the update. That order is not a formality. Update first and you leave access open throughout the download and the restart. Lock down first and you take away the flaw's precondition, then handle the rest at your own pace.

The fix is a good twelve months older than the warning

This is where the case gets more interesting than a routine call to update. For this article, cryptoticker.io retrieved the project's release overview on September 11, 2026 and evaluated the 40 most recent entries. The result puts the timeline in order.

The last affected release, v1.18.5, was published on July 31, 2025. The first entry of the 1.19 series in that overview is v1.19.1 of August 29, 2025; v1.19.2 followed the same day and v1.19.3 a day later. The current release, v1.24.0, dates from August 14, 2026. Between the first corrected release and the public warning of September 9, 2026 there is therefore a good twelve months.

One observation from the same evaluation belongs here, because it can cause confusion during the check: a standalone release numbered v1.19.0 does not appear in that overview, even though the coverage names it as the first corrected version. So if you search the list for v1.19.0 and come up empty, you have not searched wrong. What matters for you is the current release anyway, not the first corrected one.

cryptoticker.io compiled this evaluation itself on September 11, 2026. Method: retrieval of the project's release overview via the GitHub programming interface, evaluation of the 40 most recent entries by number and publication date. What could not be verified is which code change exactly fixed the flaw, since the technical details have not yet been published. Nor is it possible to establish from outside how many operators are still running an old release today.

The release notes for v1.24.0 also list a series of hardening measures that all point in the same direction: sensitive calls such as access to the recovery words and to the log now require a key with full access; the limit on failed unlock attempts was moved from the individual address to the installation as a whole; the silent acceptance of an empty unlock password inherited from old releases was removed; and a security policy was added to the documentation. Whether any of these changes is connected to the flaw now reported, the provider does not say.

Updating to v1.24.0: these steps in this order

The provider recommends raising the installation to v1.24.0. The routes there differ depending on how you run it, but the pattern stays the same.

1. End reachability from the internet before you do anything else.
2. Check that you have a backup of the recovery words and the channel data. A node with open payment channels is not a program you can simply reinstall at will.
3. Apply the update and restart the installation.
4. Look at the information page to see whether the new number is actually there.
5. Change the unlock password if the node was ever openly reachable.

A warning that comes from running Lightning nodes in general rather than from this report: restoring a node with open channels from an old backup risks publishing an outdated channel state. That can cost you funds. So read the provider's notes on backups before the update instead of working from memory.

Port forwarding, reverse proxy, tunnel: where reachability actually comes from

Hardly anyone makes their node public by accident. It happens at three typical points, and all three are deliberate decisions that are later forgotten.

The first is port forwarding in the router. It passes requests from the internet through to a device on the home network, and it stays in place until somebody removes it. The second is a web server placed in front, publishing the interface under an address of its own, often set up so the connection runs encrypted. The third is a tunnelling service that builds a connection from outside to inside without anything being changed on the router. The third route in particular is convenient and leaves no trace in the router to remind you later.

If you genuinely need access while out and about, you are better off putting it inside a private network that the phone dials into, rather than placing the management interface openly on the net. And anyone holding meaningful amounts sensibly separates the sum kept ready for everyday payments from the rest, which belongs on a device with no network connection. Which devices qualify and what sets them apart is covered in the hardware wallet comparison.

Changing the unlock password: why the update alone is not enough

The unlock password protects the running installation: without it, the software does not release its keys. The provider explicitly recommends changing it after the update if the installation was openly reachable before, and contacting the provider's security address on any suspicion of an incident.

The thinking behind it is simple. An update closes the door. What it does not undo is that somebody may have walked through that door beforehand and taken a key with them. Raise the version and leave the password as it is, and you have fixed the cause while leaving the possible consequence in place.

The same goes for the access you have granted to individual apps. Go through the list of those connections once after the update and remove anything you no longer use or cannot place.

What happens if you do nothing

Two things should be kept apart. Funds in payment channels are tied to keys that sit on your device; they do not vanish because a report appears, and they do not hang on a deadline either. There is no deadline in this case, unlike with a delisting at an exchange.

The risk is a different one: for as long as an affected release sits openly on the net, the route the provider describes stays open. And the technical details can be expected to be published at some point. From that moment the flaw is reproducible for anyone who cares to look for it. Anyone who has updated by then is out of it.

Run it yourself or have it held for you: what this case says about self-hosting

It would be the wrong conclusion to take from this report that running things yourself is a mistake. A node you run yourself makes you independent of a provider's opening hours, freezes and withdrawal deadlines. The price is the duty to keep software current, and that duty is exactly what has become visible here.

What the case shows is something more modest: the attack surface does not arise from holding the keys, but from being operable remotely. Add convenience and you add attack surface. That equation cannot be configured away, only entered into knowingly.

For most readers, a sober split follows from it. The amount you pay with day to day belongs in a software wallet or in a node that is conveniently reachable. The rest belongs on a device that is not attached to the network and makes nothing operable.

Ledger, BitBox02 and Core Lightning: the fourth wallet incident in four weeks

The case is one in a series. On August 21, 2026, BitBox closed three security holes with firmware 9.26.5; on August 25, Ledger fixed a flaw in its Ethereum app where the display could show something other than what was actually signed; and at the end of August a vulnerability in Core Lightning became known that forced node operators to act. Now Alby Hub joins them.

The cluster is no proof that self-custody has become less safe. It suggests rather that this field is now being searched and disclosed systematically. For you as an operator, one unspectacular habit follows: once a month, check whether a new release exists for every device and every piece of software that holds keys. That costs ten minutes and deals with most such reports before they reach you.

If you want first-hand evidence: the September 9 report is documented at The Hacker News, among other places, and the current release together with its release notes sits in the project's overview for v1.24.0.

Closing the Alby Hub flaw: what to take away

1. Check reachability today, then the version. If the management interface is reachable from the internet and a release below 1.19 is running, take it off the net immediately. If you would rather keep your everyday amount in a lean application than in a node of your own, you will find the candidates in the software wallet comparison.
2. Update to v1.24.0 and change the unlock password. Back up first, then update, then read the version number back. And separate the amount you move daily from the amount that just sits there; the devices for that are in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Put a monthly update slot in the calendar. Four incidents in four weeks are not an outlier but the normal state of an industry where people are actively looking. Ten minutes a month for every device and program that holds keys, plus a look at the software wallet comparison if you want to replace an application.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

If you are holding Viction (VIC) or Layer3 (L3) on Bybit, one hard date matters above all others: trading in both tokens ends there on September 17, 2026 at 08:00 UTC. After that you can no longer sell them on Bybit, but you can still move them out. For VIC that withdrawal window runs until December 16, 2026, 08:00 UTC; for L3, Bybit names no end date at all. The Bybit delisting therefore sets a withdrawal deadline that looks completely different depending on which token you hold.

There is a second calendar on top of that, and almost nobody has it in view. Binance dropped VIC from spot trading back on August 17, and withdrawals there close on October 17, 2026, 03:00 UTC. Anyone holding VIC on both crypto exchanges is working against two clocks that sit two months apart. This piece sorts out both calendars, explains the terms behind them, and tells you which step in the next few days is actually yours to take.

What Bybit is switching off for VIC and L3: the four dates

Bybit published the removal on September 10, 2026. The exchange names the two affected spot trading pairs directly: L3USDT and VICUSDT. The process consists of four dates that fall due one after another.

• Deposits for L3 and VIC close after September 16, 2026, 08:00 UTC. Send tokens to your Bybit account after that and you risk them never being credited.
• Spot trading and Convert end after September 17, 2026, 08:00 UTC. Open orders on the two pairs are removed automatically, so you do not have to cancel them yourself.
• DCA bots and spot grid bots on L3USDT and VICUSDT are yours to close before that moment. If you do not, the system ends them for you.
• Withdrawals stay open for now. For VIC, Bybit draws the line at December 16, 2026, 08:00 UTC; for L3 the notice gives no date and merely recommends withdrawing early.

All four figures appear in the official Bybit announcement of September 10, 2026. Convert the times for your own zone: in September, 08:00 UTC is 10:00 Central European Summer Time. The close of trading therefore lands on Thursday, September 17, at 10:00 CEST.

How to find the details in the original announcement

The notice is written in English and carries the title “Delisting of L3, VIC”. If you want to check the details at the source, use the subheadings as your guide: the line “Delisted trading pairs” names L3USDT and VICUSDT. The close of trading sits under “Spot”, written there as “Sep 17, 2026, 8:00AM UTC”. The block that takes effect a day earlier is under “Deposits”. The request to shut down running bots yourself hides behind the heading “DCA Bot & Spot Grid Bot”, and the end of VIC withdrawals is right at the bottom under “Asset retirement”.

Close of trading, deposit freeze and withdrawal deadline are three different dates

The most common mistake when reading notices like this is to lump all the dates together. The three cut-offs mean very different things, and only one of them can cost you your balance.

Delisting

A delisting is the removal of a token from an exchange's offering. The token disappears from the venue, not from the blockchain: your VIC still exist unchanged after September 17, they are simply no longer tradable on Bybit.

Trading pair and close of trading

A trading pair is the combination of the token and the currency you swap it against. Bybit is not removing the tokens as such here, but the pairs against USDT. When trading closes the sell button disappears, while your balance stays visible in the account.

Deposit freeze

The deposit freeze only cuts off new supply. For anything already sitting in the account it is harmless, and at Bybit it takes effect one day before trading closes. In practice that means one thing: moving tokens from another exchange to Bybit after September 16 in order to sell them there will fail.

Withdrawal deadline

The withdrawal deadline is the last moment at which you can transfer the token from the exchange to an address you own yourself. This is the date where things get expensive, because after it your balance depends on a goodwill decision by the exchange. We have described how this chain plays out in practice in our primer on a delisting at a crypto exchange.

Why VIC holders now face two withdrawal deadlines at two exchanges

Viction is the more unusual of the two cases, because the token already has one delisting round behind it. On August 3, Binance announced it would drop six tokens, VIC among them, and ended spot trading on August 17, 2026 at 03:00 UTC. We wrote it up in detail at the time: Binance delisting on August 17: ACX, HFT, PIVX, PYR, VANRY and VIC leave spot trading.

The decisive line is the one that still looked far off back then. The Binance notice states in so many words that withdrawals of these tokens will no longer be supported after October 17, 2026, 03:00 UTC. So if you hold VIC at both venues, your calendar looks like this:

• Binance: trading ended on August 17, withdrawals until October 17, 2026, 03:00 UTC.
• Bybit: trading until September 17, 2026, 08:00 UTC, withdrawals until December 16, 2026, 08:00 UTC.

That is two cut-offs 60 days apart for one and the same token. Remember the later one and forget the earlier one, and the Binance balance drops off your radar even though the clock there runs faster. This confusion is exactly why one calendar entry per exchange and per token works better than one entry per token. And if you spread your holdings across several venues anyway, it is worth taking a sober look beforehand at which crypto exchange is actually good for which purpose.

L3 has no stated withdrawal end at Bybit, and that is no all-clear

For Layer3, the Bybit notice says only that you can continue to withdraw your holdings once trading has ended, together with a recommendation to do so early. The exchange names no end date for L3. The December 16 deadline in the notice applies to VIC alone.

Two conclusions follow from that, and a third does not. You may conclude, first, that no countdown is currently running for L3, and second, that Bybit is keeping the option open to set one later. What you may not conclude is that withdrawals will stay open indefinitely. A missing deadline is certainly not a promise; it marks a gap in the notice, and exchanges routinely add such deadlines in a second announcement. Leave L3 sitting in your account after trading closes and you are relying on reading a future announcement in time.

Forced conversion into stablecoins is a possibility, not a commitment by the exchange

Both exchanges describe the same procedure for tokens still sitting in an account once the withdrawal deadline has passed: the balance may be converted into stablecoins and credited. What matters is how carefully both houses phrase it.

Bybit writes that VIC may be converted into stablecoins on your behalf, “though this is not guaranteed” — explicitly without any guarantee. Binance puts it almost the same way and adds a second line that regularly gets lost: where a conversion is not feasible, Binance says it will keep withdrawals open, subject to the availability of the respective network.

For you that means two things. The conversion is a safety net, not an entitlement you can plan around. And it depends on conditions outside your reach, such as whether any trading venue for the conversion still exists for the token in question. With a token at VIC's trading volume that is a real question, not a theoretical one. No sentence in this announcement hands you a payout the exchanges do not promise themselves.

The system ends DCA bots and spot grid bots by itself on September 17

A spot grid bot is an automated tool that places a stream of small buy and sell orders within a defined price range. A DCA bot instead buys a fixed amount at fixed intervals, regardless of the price. Both tie up capital, and both keep running quietly if you set them up once and then forgot about them.

Bybit explicitly asks users to close active DCA and spot grid bots on L3USDT and VICUSDT before September 17, 2026, 08:00 UTC, failing which the system will end them automatically. That automation is convenient, but it comes with a catch: you no longer decide at what price the last position is unwound. Close the bot yourself and you choose the moment. Leave it to the system and you take whatever a thinned-out market offers on the day. Checking the bot overview in your account takes two minutes and belongs on the list of things you want done before the weekend.

Is Bybit authorised in the EU, and does the delisting affect you as an EU customer?

Yes, Bybit is authorised in the EU. Austria's financial market authority FMA authorised Bybit EU GmbH on May 28, 2025 as a provider of crypto-asset services under Article 63 of the European MiCA regulation. Via the European passport that authorisation applies across the entire European Economic Area, with the European seat in Vienna.

That brings a limitation you have to check yourself. The delisting notice comes from the exchange's global announcement service. If your account is held with the European entity, the range available there can differ from the global one, because MiCA sets its own requirements for listed crypto assets. So do not assume the pairs in your account are named exactly as they are in the notice. Open your balance instead and look for yourself whether VIC or L3 are actually there. If licensing is something you want to be certain about in general, our overview of regulated crypto exchanges lists the providers holding a European licence.

Where to send VIC and L3 after the withdrawal: wallet, second exchange or sale

If you have decided not to sell the tokens before trading closes, you need a destination for the withdrawal. There are three workable routes, and they differ less in effort than in the question of who holds the key afterwards.

Your own wallet

Withdrawing to an address whose key is in your hands makes you independent of any further exchange decision. For a token that has just been dropped by two venues, that is the strongest argument there is. Take care to pick the right network: Viction runs on a chain of its own, Layer3 as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. A withdrawal sent to the wrong network is as a rule not recoverable. Our hardware wallet comparison shows which devices are suited to the job.

A second exchange

Transferring to another exchange makes sense if you can still sell the token there. Check two things first: whether the venue lists the pair at all, and whether it is currently accepting deposits for that token. After a wave of delistings it happens regularly that several houses drop the same token within a short span. A transfer into an account that blocks the token three weeks later merely postpones the problem.

Selling before trading closes

Selling by September 17 is the simplest route, and for the amounts involved here often the most sensible one. Expect liquidity to thin out in the final days before a delisting, though, with the gap between bid and ask wider than usual. A limit order protects you from exiting at a price you never intended.

What a delisting triggers for tax purposes and what it does not

In our experience this distinction costs people the most nerves, even though the core of it is simple. What counts is whether a transaction qualifies as a disposal.

A withdrawal to your own wallet is not a disposal. No owner changes, no gain or loss arises, and the holding period keeps running unchanged. In tax terms, nothing happens at all.

A sale before trading closes, by contrast, is a private disposal transaction under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If the purchase was more than a year ago, the gain remains tax free. Within the year, an exemption threshold of 1,000 euros has applied since 2024 for all private disposal transactions combined. Exceed it and the entire gain becomes taxable, not just the part above the threshold.

The third case is where it gets interesting. A forced conversion into stablecoins is economically an exchange, and tax law usually treats exchanges like a disposal. That argues for classifying this transaction as tax relevant too, at a moment you did not choose yourself. Which is precisely why it is cleaner to sell or withdraw under your own steam rather than leave the decision to the exchange. For larger amounts this question belongs in front of a tax adviser, not in a forum. If you have your transactions recorded on an ongoing basis anyway, our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers covers the suitable tools.

One practical note: secure the trade history and account statement for both tokens while you still have access. After a delisting, export functions for removed pairs disappear at some houses sooner than expected, and without acquisition data every later calculation turns into an estimate.

How big Viction and Layer3 actually still are

To keep the scale straight, a look at the numbers helps. According to CoinGecko data retrieved on September 11, 2026 at 08:17 UTC, Layer3 (L3) stands at around 0.0033 US dollars, a market capitalisation of roughly 5.97 million US dollars and rank 1521. Viction (VIC) trades at around 0.0047 US dollars with a good 0.6 million US dollars in market capitalisation at rank 3351. Daily volume comes to about 370,000 and 91,000 US dollars respectively.

This is not a market event, and this article is not trying to turn it into one. It is a portfolio matter. Those affected are the people still holding these tokens, often from an airdrop round or an old purchase, and who for that reason no longer check the account regularly. For that group the date very much counts, because at volumes like these even the forced conversion is anything but a given.

Your checklist for the next few days

Work through the points in this order; it follows the deadlines:

1. Check your balance. Open your Bybit holdings and look for VIC or L3. Switch on the display of small balances while you are there, otherwise the overview hides tiny amounts.
2. Switch off the bots. Check the bot overview for active DCA or spot grid bots on L3USDT and VICUSDT and close them yourself.
3. No more deposits. From September 16, 08:00 UTC, send nothing further to Bybit from outside.
4. Decide by September 17, 08:00 UTC. Sell while the pair is still running, or deliberately switch to withdrawal.
5. Check the second calendar. If you also hold VIC at Binance: withdrawals there run until October 17, 2026, 03:00 UTC. That date sits two months ahead of the Bybit one.
6. Secure your records. Export the trade history and acquisition data before the pairs vanish from the interface.

Checking the Bybit delisting: what to take away

1. September 17 is your decision day, not your end date. Until 08:00 UTC you can sell on Bybit; after that you can only withdraw. If you opt for the withdrawal, you need a destination where the key belongs to you: the selection is in the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Keep a separate deadline for each exchange. Two clocks are running for VIC: October 17 at Binance and December 16 at Bybit. If you spread holdings across several venues, you should know which provider is good for what: our overview of the best crypto exchanges sorts that out.
3. Document the transaction immediately. Whether you sell, withdraw or are converted later: without an acquisition date and purchase price, the tax return turns into an estimate. You will find the right tools in the comparison of crypto tax software.

(As of September 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Bitcoin Tax Audit in Austria: What Proof the Tax Office Can Demand

Bitcoin transactions run over a blockchain - but the blockchain does not answer every tax question. It shows transfers between addresses, yet not automatically who owns a wallet, why a transaction took place, or which acquisition costs apply for tax purposes.

Anyone declaring larger bitcoin gains, or moving holdings across several exchanges and wallets, should therefore work with detailed documentation.

Acquisition costs matter most, because taxable realised gains are derived in principle from the difference between the sale proceeds and the tax cost base.

Purchase Records Are the Foundation

Where matters are unclear, the tax office may in particular want to trace:

• when the bitcoin was acquired,
• how many BTC were bought,
• at which euro price,
• through which platform,
• which fees arose,
• where the money used for the purchase came from.
• Suitable records can include, for example:
• exchange statements,
• CSV exports,
• bank account statements,
• purchase confirmations,
• tax reports.
• With long-held bitcoin in particular, the original purchase date can be decisive.

A Wallet Transfer Is Not Automatically a Sale

A transaction on the blockchain initially shows only that bitcoin moved from one address to another. When investors move bitcoin between their own wallets, they should therefore document that this really was a self-transfer and not a sale.

Helpful items are:

• the sending address,
• the receiving address,
• the transaction ID,
• proof of control over both wallets,
• the timing against exchange withdrawals or deposits.

This becomes especially relevant when coins are sold years later on a different platform.

Missing Acquisition Costs Can Get Expensive

Austrian crypto service providers need reliable acquisition data, among other things, in order to withhold capital gains tax correctly. Where such data is missing or the figures do not appear plausible, flat-rate tax rules can apply. The Austrian finance ministry has developed its own requirements for these transfer cases.

The same applies towards the tax office: a claim such as “I bought the bitcoin in 2018” is considerably more robust when old account records, exchange data or blockchain transactions can support it.

Document Crypto-to-Crypto Swaps as Well

The bitcoin may not have been bought directly against euros. Anyone who first bought another cryptocurrency and later swapped it tax-neutrally into bitcoin must be able to trace the carried-over cost base.

Austria does not in principle treat the swap of one qualifying cryptocurrency for another as a realisation. The acquisition costs are carried over to the cryptocurrency received. A tax audit can therefore reach transactions that took place years before the actual bitcoin sale.

The Price Source Can Matter Too

Not every crypto transaction settles directly against euros. For tax valuations, the Austrian rules set out an order of precedence for suitable price sources. Where particular exchange rates are unavailable, other market or dealer prices can be used. What matters is a consistent valuation method.

Anyone determining historical values themselves should therefore document which price source was used.

These Records Investors Should Secure

For robust bitcoin tax documentation, the following are particularly useful:

• complete transaction histories,
• purchase and sale statements,
• wallet addresses,
• transaction IDs,
• self-transfers,
• acquisition costs,
• acquisition dates,
• fees,
• the exchange rates used,
• tax reports,
• bank deposits and withdrawals.

Where wallet structures are complex, documentation that assigns every larger movement to a clear economic cause is advisable.

Conclusion

In a bitcoin tax audit, the blockchain alone is often not enough. The Austrian tax office must be able to trace when the bitcoin was acquired, which acquisition costs apply, and what lies behind later wallet transfers and sales. The older and more complex the transaction history, the more important exchange exports, account statements and cleanly documented wallet movements become.

Crypto majors are shaky ahead of this morning’s CPI print, but onchain is heating up for another big potential weekend.

ESMA also asks why Kalshi and Polymarket block some EU countries but not others, and notes VPNs get around the blocks.

A councilor said 90% of crypto kiosk transactions in the city are tied to fraud, calling the machines a conduit for crime.

SBF’s lawyers say he was barred from arguing customers lost nothing, and call the $11 billion forfeiture an "crushing fine."

The draft adds registration requirements for controlled trading protocols and leaves its ethics provisions largely unchanged.

An emerging fraudulent scheme targeting the XRP community has been discovered, and XRPL users have been warned to stay vigilant.

125.33 billion SHIB leaves BitGo for fresh wallet, sparking whale speculation.

XRP is not backing down despite the decreasing market liquidity and velocity.

Ripple’s credit partner Clearpool abandons Ethereum exclusivity for XRPL, triggers a 1:1 token migration, and launches a 50% fee-burn scheme.

Zcash faced a surge in liquidation volume as price loses the top.

Key Takeaways

• Oracle shares climbed 5.9% in premarket trading following stronger-than-expected fiscal Q1 2027 results
• Earnings per share reached $1.92, surpassing the Street’s $1.74 estimate; total revenue arrived at $19.3 billion
• The company secured $30 billion in fresh AI contracts from a diverse set of partners beyond OpenAI
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue soared 121% year-over-year when adjusting for constant currency
• Multiple Wall Street firms including Oppenheimer, Guggenheim, and JMP Securities reaffirmed positive ratings following the report

Oracle delivered results that exceeded Wall Street forecasts on Thursday evening, triggering a strong market response. Shares jumped 5.9% in premarket trading Friday, recovering from the previous session’s 5.4% decline.

Oracle Corporation, ORCL

The enterprise software giant reported fiscal Q1 2027 earnings of $1.92 per share, comfortably beating the analyst consensus of $1.74. Total revenue reached $19.3 billion, surpassing the anticipated $19.13 billion.

The company’s Cloud Services segment expanded 62% when measured on a constant currency basis. Infrastructure-as-a-Service revenue experienced particularly explosive growth, surging 121% compared to the same period last year—significantly outpacing expectations and more than doubling previous year’s growth trajectory.

During the quarter, Oracle secured $30 billion worth of new AI-related bookings. Importantly, these contracts came from a broad array of new partners rather than relying solely on OpenAI.

This diversification is significant. Throughout much of 2026, market participants have primarily viewed Oracle as a proxy investment for gaining OpenAI exposure before its expected public debut. The two firms collaborate on data center development through the massive $500 billion Stargate project.

This narrow perception has negatively impacted Oracle’s share performance. Prior to Thursday’s closing bell, ORCL had fallen 22% year-to-date in 2026, pressured by worries surrounding Anthropic’s emergence as a competitive threat to OpenAI.

Expanding Beyond a Single Partnership

KeyBanc analyst Jackson Ader highlighted the breadth of Oracle’s emerging AI partnerships as a crucial positive signal from the quarterly results. “Reducing dependence on just a handful of AI behemoths represented a significant favorable development,” Ader commented.

Company leadership also clarified that these new agreements don’t necessitate any additional capital raises. This removes a potential concern that had been on investors’ radar.

Oppenheimer maintained its Outperform rating alongside a $275 price target. The firm highlighted that Oracle Cloud Infrastructure expansion surpassed projections and that capacity deployment accelerated meaningfully. Analysts also emphasized that infrastructure demand continues exceeding available supply.

Guggenheim upheld its Buy rating with a $400 price objective. JMP Securities continued its Market Outperform stance with a $285 target. Both firms pointed to robust cloud expansion as their primary rationale for remaining bullish.

Looking Ahead

Operating income demonstrated solid growth during the period. Oppenheimer observed that Oracle is successfully counteracting AI-related gross margin pressure through strategic restructuring efforts and improved cost efficiency.

Cash flow quality deserves attention going forward. Gross margins continue facing compression, while cash generation is becoming more dependent on advance customer payments rather than core operational activities.

Oracle maintained most of its full-year revenue guidance unchanged despite exceeding Q1 expectations. For the second quarter, management projects Cloud Services growth ranging from 64% to 70%, above the 65% analyst consensus.

Net-new remaining performance obligations returned to more typical levels following an exceptionally large fiscal Q4 2026 figure. This normalization was anticipated but remains noteworthy given the previous quarter’s unusual magnitude.

The stock’s next potential catalyst may arrive at Oracle’s AI World conference scheduled for Las Vegas in late October, where executives are anticipated to provide updated long-term strategic targets.

Oracle presently trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 26.52 with a PEG ratio standing at 0.76.

The post Oracle (ORCL) Stock Jumps 6% After Stellar Q1 Results Show Diverse AI Growth Beyond OpenAI appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Oklo unveiled an at-the-market stock sale program designed to generate up to $1 billion through Class A common share sales.
• A consortium of ten prominent Wall Street firms will serve as sales agents, featuring Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley.
• Participating agents will receive compensation of up to 1.5% based on gross proceeds from shares they facilitate selling.
• This arrangement supersedes a previous May 2026 agreement through which the company successfully raised roughly $1 billion.
• Shares of OKLO declined approximately 5% during Friday morning trading after the disclosure.

Oklo (OKLO) experienced a decline of roughly 5% during early Friday trading hours following the company’s disclosure of a new at-the-market equity sale program with the potential to generate as much as $1 billion in capital.

Oklo Inc., OKLO

The disclosure emerged through a regulatory filing dated September 11, 2026, detailing an equity distribution arrangement involving ten prominent financial institutions.

The designated sales agents participating in this arrangement consist of Goldman Sachs, BofA Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, J.P. Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Cantor Fitzgerald, Guggenheim Securities, Canaccord Genuity, and B. Riley Securities.

The program provides Oklo with flexibility to offer Class A common shares at its discretion through standard brokerage transactions executed on the New York Stock Exchange or alternative trading platforms.

Shares may alternatively be distributed through over-the-counter markets, privately arranged deals, block transactions, or any strategic combination thereof.

Share pricing will be determined by current market conditions or through negotiated agreements at the moment of execution.

Sales agents participating in the program will earn commissions reaching up to 1.5% calculated from the gross proceeds of each share successfully sold.

New Program Succeeds Fully-Utilized $1B Facility

This newly established arrangement takes the place of a previous equity distribution framework that Oklo initiated on May 13, 2026.

The earlier framework was officially terminated on September 10, 2026, just one day prior to this new regulatory filing.

Through the previous arrangement, Oklo successfully distributed 17,971,448 shares, accumulating gross capital of approximately $1 billion.

The company verified that no termination penalties or fees were incurred in connection with concluding the previous agreement.

In effect, Oklo is transitioning to a new $1 billion capital-raising mechanism after fully utilizing the capacity of its predecessor program.

Market Reaction to the Announcement

At-the-market equity programs typically exert downward pressure on share prices due to concerns about shareholder dilution from additional stock issuance.

Market participants responded swiftly, with OKLO shares retreating approximately 5% during early Friday trading following publication of the filing.

The stock had previously experienced downward momentum before Friday’s session, with the new offering announcement intensifying selling pressure.

As a development-stage enterprise without substantial revenue generation, Oklo regularly depends on capital-raising initiatives to finance ongoing operations.

The nuclear energy firm has now secured approximately $1 billion through its initial ATM facility and is pursuing an additional $1 billion through this newly established program.

The post Oklo (OKLO) Shares Slide 5% Following $1 Billion Equity Program Announcement appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Shares of RKLB advanced 1.5% during premarket hours following the successful completion of its 16th Electron rocket deployment in 2026, dubbed “Happily Ever Faster.”
• The mission deployed an Earth-observation spacecraft into a 500-kilometer low Earth orbit, launching from New Zealand’s Launch Complex 1.
• New analyst coverage includes Raymond James with a Buy rating and $80 target, plus Berenberg Bank’s Buy rating with $83 target.
• Analyst consensus shows Strong Buy rating with $110.13 average target price, representing 78% potential upside from the $61.96 trading level.
• Company insiders have divested more than 3.6 million shares totaling approximately $312.9 million over three months, while institutional stakes reach 71.78%.

Shares of Rocket Lab (RKLB) gained 1.5% in premarket activity on September 11 following the aerospace company’s successful completion of its 16th Electron launch vehicle mission for 2026. The stock is currently valued at $61.96, reflecting an 11% decline since the start of the year.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc., RKLB

The launch operation, designated “Happily Ever Faster,” departed from New Zealand’s Launch Complex 1 at 3:28 p.m. local time. The mission successfully positioned an Earth-observation satellite for an undisclosed client into a 500-kilometer altitude low Earth orbit.

The deployment marks Rocket Lab’s 95th successful orbital launch since operations began. The company has scheduled an additional Electron launch before September concludes, targeting deployment for a commercial satellite constellation.

Wall Street Coverage Broadens

Brian Gesuale from Raymond James initiated coverage on RKLB on September 11, assigning a Buy recommendation alongside an $80 valuation target. This projection represents a potential 29% gain. Gesuale highlighted robust revenue expansion and order book growth as primary investment drivers.

Michael Filatov at Berenberg Bank maintains a Buy stance with an $83 price objective, emphasizing both the operational Electron platform and the forthcoming Neutron launch vehicle as catalysts. Filatov identified constrained launch availability as an industry-wide constraint creating opportunities.

Filatov acknowledges implementation challenges and elevated valuation metrics. He suggests market corrections present attractive entry opportunities for investors.

The broader analyst community demonstrates optimism. According to TipRanks, RKLB holds a Strong Buy consensus based on 14 Buy recommendations and 3 Hold ratings issued during the past three months. The collective price target averages $110.13, indicating potential 78% appreciation from present trading levels.

Institutions Accumulate While Executives Reduce Holdings

RFG Advisory acquired 19,146 RKLB shares valued at approximately $1.95 million during Q2. BlackRock established a new stake in Q2 exceeding $4.1 billion in value. Institutional holdings currently represent 71.78% of outstanding shares.

Conversely, company insiders have liquidated 3.6 million shares totaling approximately $312.9 million during the trailing 90-day period. SVP Arjun Kampani divested 6,034 shares on August 27 at $66.65 per share. Insider Frank Klein sold 35,558 shares on the identical date at $66.61. Both transactions executed under established Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangements.

Rocket Lab posted Q2 revenue of $234.07 million, surpassing analyst projections of $231.62 million. Earnings per share registered at -$0.08, falling short of the -$0.06 consensus estimate. The organization maintains approximately $2.36 billion in contracted backlog alongside roughly $2.4 billion in cash reserves.

The aerospace firm recently introduced IMM Apex, an advanced high-efficiency solar cell technology designed for spacecraft applications. Following this product unveiling, ARK Invest purchased approximately $154,000 worth of RKLB shares.

Neutron, representing Rocket Lab’s larger launch vehicle currently in development, lacks a definitive launch timeline. The next anticipated development phase involves transporting hardware components to the launch facility rather than conducting an actual flight test.

The post Rocket Lab (RKLB) Stock Gains After 95th Mission as Analysts Project 78% Rally appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Oracle shares soared more than 7% following impressive fiscal Q1 earnings, featuring a 62% year-over-year spike in cloud revenue
• Adobe stock declined approximately 3% even after surpassing earnings projections, as artificial intelligence worries persist
• Copart announced plans to acquire ACV Auctions in a deal valued at approximately $1.9 billion, propelling ACV shares 44% higher
• RH surged 8.2% following better-than-expected profit results and optimistic market expansion commentary
• Futures contracts climbed modestly Friday morning as crude oil prices retreated and traders anticipated the August inflation data release

Stock futures gained ground Friday morning as crude oil prices declined and market participants looked ahead to the August inflation figures. The upcoming data is anticipated to shape future U.S. monetary policy decisions.

A number of prominent equities experienced significant price fluctuations during premarket hours.

Oracle Delivers Impressive Results, Cloud Business Accelerates

Oracle stock climbed over 7% during premarket activity following the release of fiscal first-quarter earnings that exceeded analyst projections. Overall revenue increased 30% compared to the prior year, while cloud-related revenue surged 62% to reach $11.6 billion.

Oracle Corporation, ORCL

The infrastructure segment saw revenue skyrocket 121% to $7.4 billion. Additionally, the company disclosed that its remaining performance obligations hit $664 billion, representing an increase of $209 billion, which included over $30 billion in fresh AI cloud agreements.

During the quarter, Oracle deployed more than 300,000 GPUs to its AI cloud clientele. These robust figures helped alleviate investor apprehension regarding the company’s relationship with OpenAI.

Looking to the second fiscal quarter, Oracle projected revenue in the range of $20.88 billion to $21.52 billion. Management also announced expectations for fiscal 2027 revenue of no less than $90 billion, surpassing Wall Street estimates.

Adobe Declines Despite Exceeding Expectations

Adobe shares tumbled roughly 3.7% despite posting fiscal third-quarter performance that topped forecasts. Adjusted earnings of $6.13 per share exceeded predictions by $0.05, while revenue grew 13% year over year to $6.76 billion.

The company’s subscription revenue totaled $6.58 billion, and annual recurring revenue climbed to $27.5 billion. Adobe also increased its full-year profit outlook.

However, ongoing investor anxiety about artificial intelligence’s potential effects on Adobe’s core business model kept downward pressure on the shares. The stock has faced headwinds for an extended period due to these AI-related uncertainties.

For the upcoming fourth quarter, Adobe projected revenue between $6.8 billion and $6.85 billion, falling marginally short of analyst expectations at the middle of the range.

Copart to Purchase ACV Auctions

Copart reached an agreement to purchase ACV Auctions at $10.50 per share in an all-cash transaction, valuing the equity at roughly $1.9 billion. The proposal represents approximately a 45% premium over ACV’s closing price on August 10 before acquisition speculation emerged.

ACV Auctions stock soared 44% following the announcement. Copart shares advanced about 7%.

Copart intends to finance the acquisition using existing cash reserves. Both companies’ boards have authorized the transaction, which is projected to finalize by the conclusion of 2026, subject to regulatory approval.

The acquisition is anticipated to be earnings-neutral during its first complete year and become accretive beginning in fiscal 2028.

Additional Market Movers

RH shares rallied 8.2% after the luxury furniture company exceeded second-quarter earnings forecasts. Management indicated that recent brand diversification initiatives could potentially double the company’s addressable market opportunity.

Energy sector stocks such as Chevron and ExxonMobil declined as U.S. crude oil futures retreated below the $100 per barrel threshold.

Zumiez experienced a 16% share price decline after the specialty retailer disclosed a second-quarter loss larger than anticipated and reported a 2.5% decrease in revenue.

The post Premarket Movers Friday: Oracle (ORCL) Soars on Cloud Growth While Adobe (ADBE) Slides Despite Beat appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• The tech giant aims to expand its data center infrastructure from 12GW to 38GW by the end of 2032, representing more than a three-fold increase.
• Capacity dedicated specifically to artificial intelligence workloads will surge from 2GW to approximately one-third of total infrastructure.
• Capital spending is projected at $175 billion throughout calendar year 2026, with $50 billion allocated to Q1 FY2027.
• To optimize financial reporting, the company will amortize data center lease expenses across 25 years rather than the previous 15-year period.
• Wall Street analysts give MSFT a Strong Buy rating on TipRanks, with a consensus price target of $571.41 suggesting 16% potential gains.

According to a recent Bloomberg disclosure, Microsoft is embarking on an ambitious infrastructure expansion strategy that will see its worldwide data center capacity balloon from approximately 12 gigawatts (GW) to over 38GW within the next eight years. This represents a more than three-fold multiplication of its existing infrastructure footprint.

At the time the news broke, MSFT stock was showing modest gains of 0.16%.

Microsoft Corporation, MSFT

This substantial infrastructure growth encompasses both facilities owned directly by the technology company and those secured through lease arrangements. Notably, the figures exclude computing resources obtained from specialized neocloud operators such as CoreWeave (CRWV).

Currently, Microsoft allocates merely 2GW of its existing 12GW infrastructure to processing units designed specifically for artificial intelligence applications. The strategic roadmap calls for AI-dedicated resources to expand significantly, ultimately accounting for roughly one-third of the targeted 38GW total capacity.

This aggressive expansion strategy stems from surging customer demand for AI-powered solutions including Microsoft Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform, both of which operate on Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure. These artificial intelligence applications consume substantially more computational resources compared to traditional cloud-based services.

Supply constraints have already become a limiting factor for Microsoft’s growth trajectory. Reports indicate the technology leader has been forced to decline certain AI and cloud computing contracts because of shortages in specialized processing chips and insufficient power availability.

During a July presentation, CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that Microsoft is “bringing capacity online faster than ever” while simultaneously implementing strategies to maximize efficiency from existing hardware infrastructure.

Massive Capital Investment Program

The financial commitment behind this expansion is staggering. Microsoft allocated $145 billion toward capital investments during its latest fiscal year. Projections call for $50 billion in infrastructure spending during Q1 of fiscal year 2027, with a massive $175 billion earmarked for the entirety of calendar year 2026.

Such extraordinary spending levels have prompted industry observers to question whether infrastructure buildout might be outstripping genuine market demand. However, these concerns were partially addressed when Microsoft delivered cloud revenue growth that exceeded Wall Street expectations in July, providing evidence that its AI-focused investments are beginning to yield tangible financial returns.

To better manage how this capital expenditure appears in financial statements, Microsoft has adjusted its accounting methodology. Extended-term data center lease commitments will now be depreciated over a 25-year timeframe instead of the previous 15-year period, effectively lowering the annual capital expenditure figures reflected in quarterly and annual reports.

Optimization Strategies Complement Growth

Beyond expanding its physical infrastructure, Microsoft is pursuing efficiency improvements across its existing operations. According to company statements, deployment time for new GPU units has been reduced by nearly 20%.

The company is also diversifying its hardware portfolio, incorporating its proprietary CPUs and AI accelerators alongside traditional processors from Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Interestingly, both chipmaker stocks experienced declines on the day this news emerged, with Nvidia dropping 2.26% and AMD falling 3.36%.

It’s worth noting that these expansion plans remain subject to modification. As Bloomberg pointed out, data center development projects require years to complete and frequently undergo adjustments based on evolving technology landscapes and shifting customer requirements.

According to TipRanks data, MSFT maintains a Strong Buy consensus rating supported by 33 Buy recommendations and a single Hold rating. The average analyst price target of $571.41 indicates potential upside of approximately 16% from present trading levels. The stock has gained 2.5% since the beginning of the year.

The post Microsoft (MSFT) Stock: Ambitious Plan to Expand Data Center Capacity to 38GW by 2032 appeared first on Blockonomi.

Somewhat expected, bitcoin’s price dived once again on Friday after the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Consumer Price Index data for August, which matched expectations to a large degree.

The regular CPI showed a 3.4% year-over-year increase, which is exactly as anticipated. The monthly increase is 0.4% – again, as expected.

The core CPI, which excludes more volatile sectors like food and energy, showed a 2.4% YoY jump. The only minor difference from expectations was the core CPI monthly increase of 0.3% versus the anticipated 0.2% bump.

BTC’s reaction is rather interesting. As the chart above shows, it immediately dumped after the news went live by roughly a grand. However, it recovered just as quickly to over $77,000 as of press time.

This was the second inflation report of the week after yesterday’s release of PPI data. It showed a more notable jump of 5.4%.

With the conclusion of this week, meaning that all inflation data has been announced, all eyes have now turned to the United States Federal Reserve. The central bank will hold its next FOMC meeting on September 15-16, with the interest rate decision announced on the second day.

Current odds indicate that experts expect the Fed to hike rates by 25 bps.

The post Bitcoin Price Reacts to August US CPI Data: Here’s What Happened appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The primary cryptocurrency has plunged from its local high of almost $82,000 set earlier this month, while some analysts think a deeper decline may follow.

Despite the risks, one mysterious trader opened an extremely risky position, fueling speculation that they might know something we don’t.

Huge Success so Far

The analytics platform Lookonchain revealed that several hours ago, a trader known as 0x396d opened a 40x long position on 911.55 BTC ($70.08 million). The market participant will be liquidated if the asset’s price drops to $76,308 (unless they add extra collateral). Currently, BTC trades around $76,800 (per CoinGecko), very close to the danger zone.

What’s interesting is that the “gambler” has made 80 BTC trades recently, winning 92.5% of them. Naturally, this has prompted many X users to believe the trader may have inside information to make such staggering bets. One of them stated:

“92.5% win rate across 80 trades and now casually throwing on a $70M 40x BTC long. At what point do we stop calling this dude a gambler?”

The Danger is Real

As mentioned above, the leading digital asset has been quite shaky lately, and its downtrend may intensify in the short term depending on several key developments. Later today (September 11), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the CPI report, which will provide vital inflation data.

Hotter-than-expected results could hurt risk assets like BTC and altcoins and may lead to the mysterious trader’s liquidation. The Federal Reserve is closely monitoring the data as it decides how to proceed with interest rates next week. As of now, it looks like a 0.25% hike is the most probable decision: a development that is likely to trigger a red wave across the crypto market.

Meanwhile, several analysts believe BTC is indeed on the verge of a collapse. X user Crypto With Harris ₿ described the pump to $82K as “a classic bull trap,” arguing that the bottom has not yet arrived. Moreover, the X user expects BTC to dump to $74,000 later today.

Niels chipped in, too, envisioning a dip to $74,000-$75,000 in the coming days, and after that, “things will get interesting.” The X user warned that if BTC loses the $74K level on the weekly timeframe, the downtrend will accelerate.

The post Inside Information or Pure Gambling: This Trader Bets Millions on Bitcoin (BTC) appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Ripple is expanding GSmart across Ripple Treasury as the company adds more AI-driven tools for enterprise finance teams.

The technology is already being used by the San Francisco-based blockchain company’s enterprise customers and is designed to work inside the policies, data, and day-to-day processes that treasury teams already rely on.

Ripple’s GSmart Expansion

The latest expansion covers forecasting, liquidity, risk, reconciliation, and reporting, while giving finance teams new ways to assess information and make decisions. It simultaneously keeps existing controls and audit requirements in place. The development comes as companies rapidly increase their use of AI agents without having governance systems that have kept pace.

Ripple revealed that GSmart takes a different approach to financial decision-making by keeping calculations separate from AI interpretation. Its “deterministic engines” handle the behind-the-scenes financial calculations while AI examines policies, spots patterns, and explains suggested actions.

These agents track their respective processes and can recommend a specific action while identifying the policy clause supporting that recommendation. Execution remains subject to human approval. Meanwhile, Knowledge Studio will serve as the policy and governance layer for GSmart, which will let treasury teams define organizational policies and controls that guide how AI capabilities operate. The Analytics Studio will bring together treasury analytics and AI-based reporting through “Ask GSmart.”

Ripple Treasury’s SVP, Renaat Ver Eecke, stated,

“Every CFO is under pressure to embrace AI, but they’re equally responsible for ensuring every financial decision is explainable, governed and compliant. Rather than asking customers to blindly trust an AI system, GSmart works within each organization’s own treasury policies to surface recommendations transparently, while ensuring humans remain in control of every decision. This isn’t simply AI-native treasury, but rather treasury-native AI.”

The leading research and advisory company, Gartner, expects the average Fortune 500 company to be running more than 150,000 agents in the next two years. Yet only 13 percent of organizations currently believe they have suitable governance for AI agents.

AI Agents Put Crypto in the Spotlight

For Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, the connection between AI agents and crypto goes even further. He believes that these agents could become a major force behind the adoption of the industry as autonomous software looks for payment systems that can operate without human intervention. In an interview with Galaxy Research’s Alex Thorn, he said traditional finance can stop AI agents at card authentication or KYC checks, while blockchain networks are built to work through APIs.

Zhao expects agent-based trading and payments to arrive within months and use crypto.

The post Major Ripple (XRP) Move on AI: Here’s What’s Changing appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The privacy coin ZEC has stunned the crypto world lately, after briefly rising to a ten-year high of almost $1,300. However, bears stepped in and erased much of the gains, and it remains unclear whether the rally will resume.

Cardano’s ADA has been the subject of optimistic price forecasts, while Ethereum (ETH) appears to be at a crossroads.

What Now for ZEC?

The token has been crypto’s top performer over the past few weeks, with its price skyrocketing by 130% in a month and its market capitalization temporarily surging past $20 billion. Potential catalysts include the launch of Grayscale’s ZEC ETF, along with other factors we covered in our article here.

However, bears eventually halted the upswing, and three key developments suggest a more substantial pullback may be on the horizon. According to Ali Martinez, one of those is the TD Sequential indicator, which flashed a sell signal on the 3-day chart.

“The last time this setup appeared, on May 19, it resulted in a 64% price correction. Worth paying attention to this one,” he noted.

Other factors include ZEC’s RSI soaring above 70 and entering bearish territory and the shift from self-custody methods to centralized platforms, which increases immediate selling pressure.

Zcash is, in fact, the worst-performing top 100 cryptocurrency today (September 11), after posting an 8.5% loss. Still, it remains among the 10 biggest digital assets.

ADA Predictions

Cardano’s native token is up 12% on a monthly scale and continues to trade above the psychological $0.20 mark. Not long ago, X user Sssebi saw a “big chance” for a pump to $0.30 if the price reclaims $0.25. Before that, Martinez said the asset’s Tom DeMark Sequential indicator flashed a buy signal.

Other market observers who recently commented on the asset include X user Cup and Alex Marzell. The former argued that “the biggest altseason ever is about to start,” forecasting a potential price explosion to an all-time high of $8 for ADA. Marzell was not so optimistic, outlining $0.2051 as “the shelf the whole run started from.”

“Lose it, and there’s not much underneath,” he added.

ETH at a Turning Point

The second-largest cryptocurrency has been hovering around $2,500 for the past several days, currently trading slightly below that level. According to Ted, a strong weekly close above $2,550 could fuel a rally to $3,000, while Michael van de Poppe claimed that breaking above $2,520 could lead to the same outcome.

Earlier this month, Martinez disclosed that 116,000 ETH (worth nearly $300 million) were withdrawn from centralized platforms in 48 hours, which supports the bullish scenario.

On the other hand, some analysts believe the price must first head south before starting a new bull run. X user Gerla, for instance, noted the formation of an inverted head-and-shoulders pattern and expects a potential drop to $2,000, followed by a big jump toward $4,000 in the coming months.

The post Zcash’s (ZEC) Major Uptrend, Recent Cardano (ADA) Predictions, and More: Bits Recap September 11 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Blockstream has drawn a firm line against the party holding the Bitcoin taken from the Liquid Network and has stated that it will not pay a ransom for the return of the stolen funds.

In its latest statement, Adam Back-led blockchain tech company rejected the claim that the incident qualifies as responsible disclosure, while arguing that taking assets without authorization and then withholding them is theft, not white-hat activity.

“Transactions Do Not Disappear”

Blockstream said it had engaged in good faith to recover the stolen user funds, but added that those efforts should not be taken as acceptance of the hackers’ actions or their demands. While rejecting the demand for a bounty, the company said it would not set a precedent where open-source developers are forced to pay a ransom over software built for the Bitcoin community.

“Bitcoin is hard money and can’t be minted without costs; Bitcoin doesn’t haircut users to pay a ransom.”

Blockstream said there was still an opportunity for those holding the stolen BTC to return it and resolve the situation responsibly. If the funds are not returned, however, the company would pursue every lawful avenue available, including working with law enforcement, exchanges, service providers, and forensic specialists to trace the assets and identify those responsible. It also stressed that Bitcoin transactions remain visible by design, meaning the funds and the evidence associated with their movement do not simply disappear.

No Easy Way Out

The hackers had previously called Blockstream “delusional, greedy, and arrogant” over its handling of security. Samson Mow later warned that they may be underestimating the consequences of their actions. The former CSO of Blockstream said that the company’s willingness to communicate with them through PGP was already a courtesy and questioned whether publicly admitting to taking the assets and then demanding a bounty was a wise move. He also said the group had left behind more clues than it might realize.

The incident began on September 6, when roughly 4,000 BTC was withdrawn from Liquid’s Federation wallet. The alleged white-hat hackers later returned 3,400 units, while about 598 remained in their possession.

Meanwhile, Liquid has now entered another recovery phase. Block production and transactions have resumed, although peg-outs remain disabled. The network said internal and external teams are continuing testing, AI-assisted code scanning, and monitoring, while Liquid node operators have been told to update to Elements v23.3.4.

The post ‘We Will Not Pay’: Blockstream Rejects 10% Bounty Demand From Liquid Hackers appeared first on CryptoPotato.