Stricter crypto regulations could reshape market dynamics, impacting industry lobbying efforts and potentially leading to partisan conflicts.

The post House Democrats prepare tougher crypto rules with SEC oversight appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Helsing's Clarity highlights Europe's push for tech sovereignty, reducing reliance on foreign AI in defense, and strengthening regional autonomy.

The post Helsing unveils Clarity, a European rival to Palantir’s Maven AI system appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

MSCI's decision could trigger significant market shifts, influencing index fund strategies and potentially reshaping investment in non-operating entities.

The post MSCI set to announce whether Strategy and Metaplanet stay in its global indexes appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The case highlights the resilience of self-custody in crypto security, while underscoring the risks of physical attacks on asset holders.

The post Robert Barr jailed for 8 years over £2 million crypto theft plot run from prison appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Tesla's German battery production could enhance European supply chain resilience, but success hinges on new tech efficiency and cost management.

The post Tesla plans to start battery cell production in Germany by mid-2027 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Heated Hot Tubs and 278 Washington Bitcoin Merchants : Now Accepting Bitcoin

Washington Bitcoin merchant list has 278 businesses, from coffee shops and salons to a hot tub maker that heats its tubs with bitcoin mining. The list spans 94 named cities, and Seattle leads the way with 46 listings. First up is a homegrown US manufacturing business from Washington that makes a super unique product.

Snorkel: A Hot Tub Maker That Heats With Bitcoin

Snorkel has been making hot tubs in the Pacific Northwest since 1979, and its wood-stove business dates to the late 1970s. What makes them special is their full cedar tubs, and the wood stove which is fully submerged into the water of the cedar hot tub and has the “snorkel” coming out of the water. This is very convenient for anyone who has no electrical hook up.

It started with a bet in 2025. Michael Diederich, the owner, began accepting bitcoin for hot tubs after a wager with his brother. Payments were slow to trickle in at first, but bitcoiners kept asking him to build a hot tub powered by bitcoin miners. He started building one, pairing the tub with miners that heat the water. Snorkel works with Dane Soja of Hashrate House on the build.

The prototype with two S19J Pro miners drawing about 8 kW, which it says heated a tub from cold to 104°F (40°C) in under four hours. The project won an innovation award at the Heat Punk Summit in Denver, and a Snorkel tub is on display in Denver. Diederich sees a future where every electric hot tub is heated by miners, because the mining income helps pay back the cost of energy that would otherwise be wasted as heat.

The Rose Gift House and Coffee, Renton

The Rose sits at 226 Main Ave S in downtown Renton, in the Old Renton Pub building. Owner Katie Newman opened it in October 2020 as a gift shop that happened to serve coffee, and the coffee side grew into the larger part of the business. The shop stocks locally roasted coffee, handpicked artisan goods, and grab-and-go food. It won Best Customer Service in the 2025 Best of Renton readers’ poll.

Overcast Coffee, Seattle

Overcast Coffee is on Capitol Hill, and it started as a walk-up counter at 312 15th Ave E beside Kaiser Permanente. Owner Jonathan Pak opened the first shop there in June 2020. A second location, at 1517 12th Ave inside the Metier bike complex, came later, and the company buys its coffee and ingredients from small, local Seattle businesses.

Washington Bitcoin Merchant Directory

These 278 businesses come from the BTC Map survey of Washington. BTC Map is community-maintained, please write BTC Map and our series vagabond@b.tc if you’d like to see an update.

Coffee, Bakery & Sweets (42)

• Overcast Coffee (312 15th Ave E), Seattle, WA
• Overcast Coffee (1517 12th Ave), Seattle, WA 98122
• Toasted. Bagels & Coffee, Bellevue, WA 98004
• Ashuri Baklava & Cafe, Bellingham, WA 98225
• Daytrip Cafe, Bellingham, WA 98225
• Aloha Cafe, Blaine, WA 98230
• Koa Table Café, Blaine, WA 98230
• Dg Coffee, Bothell, WA 98011
• Los Encantos World Bakery, Bremerton, WA 98312
• Rustic Heritage Bakery, Centralia, WA 98531
• Two Brewnettes LLC, Centralia, WA 98531
• Mint City Coffee Roasting, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Stout Coffee House, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Chickalatte beautiful coffee, Everett, WA 98203
• Make It Healthy, Federal Way, WA 98003
• Fortunato Chocolate, Issaquah, WA 98027
• Fortunato Chocolate, Issaquah, WA 98027
• Fumie’s Gold, Kirkland, WA 98033
• Hub Boba, Mercer Island, WA 98040
• Little Prague Bakery, Mukilteo, WA 98275
• Bar Francis, Olympia, WA 98501
• Glowies, Olympia, WA 98501
• Buckin Coffee, Omak, WA 98841
• Mountain Goat Coffee Roaster and Bakery, Packwood, WA 98361
• Pink Pony Cafe, Port Angeles, WA 98362
• The Rose Gifts & Coffee, Renton, WA 98057
• Bright Spot, Seattle, WA 98144
• Cannolo, Seattle, WA 98109
• Hellenika Cultured Creamery, Seattle, WA 98101
• Panino, Seattle, WA 98109
• Samra Cafe & Baklava, Seattle, WA 98118
• Theo’s Gyros, Seattle, WA 98103
• TOASTED. Bagels & Coffee, Seattle, WA 98109
• TOASTED. Bagels & Coffee, Seattle, WA 98105
• Toasted. Bagels & Coffee, Seattle, WA 98104
• Tres Lecheria, Seattle, WA 98103
• Yoka Tea, Seattle, WA 98122
• Half Baked & lil Fruity, Spokane, WA 99207
• Half Baked and a Lil Fruity, Spokane, WA 99207
• Happy Belly Eatery & Juice Bar, Tacoma, WA 98402
• Naomi Joe Coffee Roasters, Tacoma, WA 98402
• Rooster Brew Espresso, Woodland, WA 98674

Restaurants & Fast Food (44)

• La Pasta @ West Seattle Farmers Market, WA
• Skylar’s, Bay Center, WA 98527
• La Tia Angelina, Bellevue, WA 98007
• La Tía Angelina, Bellevue, WA 98007
• Grouchy’s Diner, Bellingham, WA 98225
• Luchadora Burger, Bellingham, WA 98225
• Super Duper Teriyaki, Bellingham, WA 98225
• Taqueria El Rinconcito Express, Bingen, WA 98605
• Alaska Wild Fish & Chip Co., Blaine, WA 98230
• Virasat Indian Cuisine, Camas, WA 98607
• Good Fork, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Yabes Food Truck, Forks, WA 98331
• The Popcorn Shoppe, Grand Coulee, WA 99133
• Barbe-Queen Kitchen, Ilwaco, WA 98624
• Papa Zuzu’s Pizza, Kelso, WA 98626
• Skooder’s Hot Dog, Kent, WA 98032
• The Hive, Klickitat, WA 98628
• Leavenworth Coffee and Waffles, Leavenworth, WA 98826
• Zuri’s Gourmet Donutz, Lynnwood, WA 98036
• Maggie’s Kitchen, Moses Lake, WA 98837
• Best Pizza Ever, Pasco, WA 99301
• Alderdale Boneyard, Prosser, WA 99350
• Appethaizing Thai Food, Puyallup, WA 98371
• Fast and Curryous, Richland, WA 99354
• Teriyaki Thai Etc, Ridgefield, WA 98642
• Last Roadhouse, Ronald, WA 98940
• Ahadu Ethiopian Restaurant, Seattle, WA 98125
• El burrito feliz, Seattle, WA 98107
• Ka Pow Thai On Wheels, Seattle, WA 98106
• La Pasta Storefront, Seattle, WA 98109
• La Pasta Storefront, Seattle, WA 98115
• Ooink Ramen, Seattle, WA 98103
• Ooink Ramen, Seattle, WA 98122
• Poke Fresh, Seattle, WA 98115
• Wing Xscape by Hot Potato 1.2.3. Express, Seattle, WA 98105
• Burrito House, Spokane, WA 99202
• Island Style Food & BBQ, Spokane, WA 99207
• Craft & Gather, Spokane Valley, WA 99206
• Flying Boots & Wings, Tacoma, WA 98418
• Taco’n Madre, Toppenish, WA 98948
• Wild Nectar, Tumwater, WA 98512
• Steak Your Claim, Vancouver, WA 98682
• Fiddle’s Lunch Box, Yakima, WA 98902
• Jerk Juicy BBQ, Yelm, WA 98597

Bars, Breweries & Wine (11)

• The Hub Bar & Restaurant, Centralia, WA 98531
• Jones Creek Brewery, Chehalis, WA 98532
• McFiler’s, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Union Hill Cider Co., East Wenatchee, WA 98802
• Headworks Brewing, Enumclaw, WA 98022
• 3 Dog Cider and Brewstillary, Ethel, WA 98542
• Strange Ways Bar, Everett, WA 98201
• Plain Valley Brewing Club, Leavenworth;Plain, WA 98826
• Barley POP! Brewing, Snohomish, WA 98290
• Bonaparte Creek, Tonasket, WA 98855
• Paradisos del Sol Winery and Organic Vineyard, Zillah, WA 98953

Groceries & Food Shops (12)

• Bitcoin Lightning Newspaper Machine, WA
• La Pasta, WA
• La Pasta, WA
• Alucinor Farms, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Mt. Capra, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Mt. Capra Wholesale, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Tree To Me, Colbert, WA 99005
• Zambezi Market & Hair Supply, Federal Way, WA 98003
• Oak Meadows Farm, Ferndale, WA 98248
• Northsea Apothecary, Lopez Island, WA 98261
• Serendipity Farm, Quilcene, WA 98376
• Northwest Butchery, Woodinville, WA 98072

Beauty & Wellness (46)

• Rani Beauty Clinic, WA
• Wynn Nail Spa, WA
• Chavez Barbershop, Aberdeen, WA 98520
• Maria’s Beauty Salon, Aberdeen, WA 98520
• Michael Redhawk Salon, Bellevue, WA 98004
• Harbor Moon Salon, Bellingham, WA 98225
• Absolute Hair, Everett, WA 98203
• Beauty37 Studio, Federal Way, WA 98003
• The Shop Hair Studio, Gig Harbor, WA 98335
• Skintegrity Medspa, Kirkland, WA 98033
• Massage Restoration, Lacey, WA 98503
• Flippd Fades Cut Lounge, Lakewood, WA 98499
• Brand X Piercing & Fine Jewelry, Longview, WA 98632
• Beyond Beautiful Salon, Moses Lake, WA 98837
• NW Lash Boutique, Mountlake Terrace, WA 98043
• Lucid Skin Studio, North Bend, WA 98045
• Bright & Bold, Olympia, WA 98502
• Beauty By Suzi, Port Angeles, WA 98362
• Aqeel at Black Castle Barbershop, Puyallup, WA 98373
• Fuji Therapy, Renton, WA 98057
• 14th Avenue Hair, Seattle, WA 98122
• Botanabliss, Seattle, WA 98146
• CamStyledYou, Seattle, WA 98122
• Citron Aesthetics, Seattle, WA 98107
• Cleopatra Ink, Seattle, WA 98101
• CoCo & Company Hair Salon, Seattle, WA 98116
• Jerry Porter Massage Therapies, Seattle, WA 98119
• Lalascuts, Seattle, WA 98109
• Sal’s Pike Street Barbers, Seattle, WA 98122
• Snorkel Hot Tubs, Seattle, WA 98108
• Southpaw Barbershop, Seattle, WA 98116
• Treehouse Massage Therapy at Annie Firefly, Seattle, WA 98115
• Zara Jo Beauty Supply, Seattle, WA 98122
• Ace Of Fades, Selah, WA 98942
• Renay at Saluk Salon, Snohomish, WA 98290
• Flow: Massage and Fitness, Spokane, WA 99201
• Fragrance Station, Spokane, WA 99216
• Kate’s Barber Shop, Spokane Valley, WA 99212
• Flawless Tacoma, Tacoma, WA 98406
• The Crown Correction Lounge, Tacoma, WA 98444
• Cutter’s Barbershop, Tumwater, WA 98501
• Tonsor, Vancouver, WA 98660
• Exhala Wellness, Wenatchee, WA 98801
• Themaadstylist, Wenatchee, WA 98801
• Locs ‘N’ Braids, Yakima, WA 98902
• Valley Barbers, Yakima, WA 98901

Auto & Transport (22)

• Eco Car Cafe, Bellevue, WA 98004
• A&M automotive, Centralia, WA 98531
• Ricks Auto Tint, Ephrata, WA 98823
• Shop Mothership, Everett, WA 98203
• Lexy’s Oil Change, Goldendale, WA 98620
• Anytime Repair and Service, Kennewick, WA 99336
• Marty’s Place at Strawbridge Farm, Langley, WA 98260
• Mukilteo House Of Wax, Mukilteo, WA 98275
• Three Sixty PowerSports, Port Angeles, WA 98362
• OceanHills Auto Detailing, Redmond, WA 98052
• JK Towing, Republic, WA 99166
• S&J Automotive n Tires, Republic, WA 99166
• Abdi Complete Auto Service And Body, Seattle, WA 98108
• Rapid Towing, Seattle, WA 98125
• Tony’s Greenwood Auto Body, Seattle, WA 98103
• Union Square, Seattle, WA 98101
• University Used Tires, Seattle, WA 98105
• CB Automotive, Sedro Woolley, WA 98284
• AR Automotive, Stanwood, WA 98292
• Mad Max Creations, Washougal, WA 98671
• The Paddock, Woodinville, WA 98072
• Refined Rides Detail & Tint, Yakima, WA 98901

Retail, Shopping & Entertainment (31)

• Nova Vita, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
• Kim’s Unique Boutique, Castle Rock, WA 98611
• Let’s Play Something, Centralia, WA 98531
• Vintage Vault 33, Centralia, WA 98531
• McFiler’s Chehalis Theater, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Eastsound Sporting Goods, Eastsound, WA 98245
• Dragonfire, Kennewick, WA 99336
• Gamebound Video Games, Kent, WA 98030
• SBC Kent Snooker & Billiard Club, Kent, WA 98032
• Adorkable Flowers & Gifts, Liberty Lake, WA 99019
• Pirates Keep, Long Beach, WA 98631
• Hello Nature, Moses Lake, WA 98837
• Dos Casas Thrift, Port Orchard, WA 98366
• Park Avenue Studio, Port Townsend, WA 98368
• GameBound Video Games, Renton, WA 98059
• The Little Plant Shop, Richland, WA 99352
• Shoe Express, Seattle, WA 98101
• Slow Love Vintage, Seattle, WA 98105
• Ugly Baby, Seattle, WA 98101
• Art Room 509, Spokane, WA 99212
• Fern Plant Shop, Spokane, WA 99201
• Petunia & Loomis, Spokane, WA 99201
• Teleport Vintage, Spokane, WA 99202
• Zap Lab Fun, Spokane, WA 99207
• Sincere Tacoma, Tacoma, WA 98406
• Aqua Gallery, Vancouver, WA 98660
• Briz Loan & Guitar, Vancouver, WA 98660
• Corridor Gallery, Vancouver, WA 98660
• Petal Me Home Flowers, Walla Walla, WA 99362
• Morning Moon Mercantile, Wenatchee, WA 98801
• Geetaku Market, Yakima, WA 98902

Health, Services & Professional (50)

• Caffery Photo, WA
• Darey Philbrick MD, Aberdeen, WA 98520
• High Performance Homes, Auburn, WA 98002
• New Town Cleaners, Battle Ground, WA 98604
• Stambaugh Designs – Web Design & SEO, Bellingham, WA 98225
• Hero Fence, Camas, WA 98607
• Zues Digital Designs, Eatonville, WA 98328
• Ezzia Healthcare, Everett, WA 98204
• Amigo Cell Phone Repair & PC Kennewick, Kennewick, WA 99336
• iPhone BLVD, Kennewick, WA 99336
• Let’s Go Dog Training, Kennewick, WA 99336
• Sylvia Income Tax And Plus, Kennewick, WA 99301
• Precision Hardscapes & Irrigation, Kent, WA 98032
• Silky – The Screen Print Shop, Kent, WA 98032
• Destak Cleaning Services, Kirkland, WA 98034
• Blessed Driving School, Lacey, WA 98503
• FixLab Electronics, Longview, WA 98632
• Bal Driving School of Lynnwood, Lynnwood, WA 98036
• Cellaxs, Lynnwood, WA 98037
• iRepair Xpert, Lynnwood, WA 98037
• Speedys Multi Services, Mattawa, WA 99349
• Institute of Beauty Professionals, Moses Lake, WA 98837
• J & M Custom Upholstery, Moses Lake, WA 98837
• Sylvia Income Tax And Plus, Pasco, WA 99301
• Purewag, Redmond, WA 98052
• Ez Fix Cell Phone Repair, Richland, WA 99354
• Purewag, Sammamish, WA 98075
• 4th Systems, Seattle, WA 98146
• Farr Design, Seattle, WA 98103
• Gadget Rehab, Seattle, WA 98105
• Nauti Stitches, Seattle, WA 98178
• Savvi Kenpo, Seattle, WA 98103
• Hood Canal Street Eats & Catering, Shelton, WA 98584
• Gig-techs, Shoreline, WA 98155
• Advanta Insurance Brokers, Spokane, WA 99203
• Kalea, Spokane, WA 99207
• North West Terraria, Spokane, WA 99202
• The Guilded Dragon, Spokane, WA 99207
• Cellaxs, Tacoma, WA 98409
• Dubreezy Entertainment, Tacoma, WA 98402
• iRepair Xpert, Tacoma, WA 98409
• Puget Sound Locksmith, Tacoma, WA 98409
• Alianza Hispana, Union Gap, WA 98903
• Adams Chimney Specialist, Vancouver, WA 98682
• Double Barrel Print, Vancouver, WA 98665
• High Performance Homes, Vancouver, WA 98661
• The PC Smith, Wenatchee, WA 98801
• Gorge Ink, White Salmon, WA 98672
• Axiom Technologies, Yakima, WA 98902
• Anderson Woodwork’s, Yelm, WA 98597

Other (20)

• Alucinor Farms, WA Chehalis
• Charron Vision Therapy, WA Bellingham
• Crazy Jumpers, WA Bellingham
• Fancy Flamingo Massage, WA Kennewick
• Health And Exercise Prescriptions, WA Bellingham
• Jennifer Branch Reiki Master, WA Anacortes
• Living Well Family Chiropractic, WA Chelan
• MOHI Sports Performance, WA Bellingham
• Northwest Pastoral Counseling, WA Tacoma
• On Deck, WA Vancouver
• Sacred Path Medicine, WA Lynnwood
• Sarah Enera Manual + Movement Therapy, WA Seattle
• South Sound Hypnosis, WA Olympia
• Strait Fitness, WA Port Angeles
• Terrain Gym, WA Bellingham
• Triangle Bowl, WA
• Bitcoin ATM, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Modulo, Chehalis, WA 98532
• Glacier Foods, East Wenatchee, WA 98802
• Doug Varenas Realtor, estate_agent, WA Vancouver

This post Bitcoin Heated Hot Tubs and 278 Washington Bitcoin Merchants : Now Accepting Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Vagabond.

Bitcoin Magazine

LNbits Releases 1.7.0 Urgent Security Update After November 8 Attacks Drain Funds

LNbits, the open-source Lightning Network wallet and accounts platform, released version 1.7.0 on November 10 as an urgent security update and instructed all operators to upgrade before restarting their servers. The project’s official X account posted the announcement with a link to the GitHub release, calling it a “SECURITY UPDATE”.

The release follows a wave of attacks that began over the weekend. On November 8, LNbits posted on X that all users should stop their LNbits servers immediately after reporting active attacks, adding that security patches were being prepared and that it was “better to err on the side of caution.” 

The project also disabled instances on its hosted service. Multiple reports documented unauthorized account creation and fund withdrawals. 

Kevin Ravensberg, operator of the Telegram tipping service BitTipBot, publicly stated that attackers created new accounts on his instance and withdrew 2,285,545 satoshis (approximately 0.0229 BTC) between roughly 09:22 and 14:00 UTC on November 8.

According to the official upgrade guidance published alongside the release, versions prior to 1.7.0 are affected and “funds running on prior versions of LNbits are at risk of being stolen.” The project stated that 1.7.0 includes security fixes in response to the incident discovered on November 8 and that a full technical report on the exploit will follow. 

Operators are advised to set up a fresh server if compromise is suspected, because updating alone cannot remove access an attacker may already have gained. Additional recovery steps include rotating all user wallet keys as Super Admin, replacing funding-source credentials (API keys or macaroons), rotating other secrets stored in settings, and reviewing or re-creating connections for extensions such as NWC Provider, LNDHub, Bolt Cards, TPOS, Bleskomat, and FOSSA.

The GitHub release notes describe extensive security hardening across authentication, extension management, and payment handling, plus dependency updates. New features shipping with the version include on-chain wallet support, BOLT12 offer payments, TOTP two-factor authentication, NIP-17 support, a job scheduler, automatic extension updates, and hold invoice support for the LNbits funding source. The project notes that LNbits functions as a hot wallet and that operators should keep only operational balances online, regularly review activity, and move excess funds to offline keys.

LNbits was founded as a free and open-source project in 2019 by Ben Arc and later incorporated a commercial entity to support development. It provides multi-user accounts and a large suite of extensions on top of any Lightning funding source (including LND and Core Lightning). Bitcoin Magazine profiled the project in September 2024, describing it as “the WordPress for your Bitcoin Lightning node” noting its widepsread use by individuals, businesses, and node operators seeking accessible Lightning tooling. The software is widely deployed both self-hosted and via managed instances.

As of the v1.7.0 announcement, the project has not published an aggregate total of funds lost across all affected instances. Operators who have not yet upgraded are directed to the official guidance before bringing servers back online.

This post LNbits Releases 1.7.0 Urgent Security Update After November 8 Attacks Drain Funds first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Texas Rep. Files Bill Letting Cities Invest $10 Million in Bitcoin

A Texas lawmaker filed a bill Monday that would let each city and county in the state invest up to $10 million of public money in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, without setting any rules for how those coins would be held.

House Bill 815, filed by Rep. Ron Reynolds, a Missouri City Democrat, on the first day of prefiling for the 90th Texas Legislature, carries the caption “Relating to the authority of a municipality or county to invest money in cryptocurrencies.” The introduced text, posted on the Texas Legislature’s site, is two sections long.

The bill would amend the Public Funds Investment Act, Chapter 2256 of the Texas Government Code, by adding a new Section 2256.0165, titled “Authorized Investments: Cryptocurrency.” Under that section, “a municipality or county may invest not more than $10 million of its money or money under its control in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.” The authority would take effect Sept. 1, 2027, if the bill becomes law.

The $10 million figure is a cap on each city or county, not a single statewide pool. School districts and other local governments covered by the investment act are left out.

What the bill does and does not say

The measure borrows its definitions of “Bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” from Section 403.701 of the Government Code, the definitions written into law last year by Senate Bill 21, which created the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Bitcoin is defined as a decentralized cryptocurrency created by a peer-to-peer network that operates independently of any central authority or bank. Cryptocurrency is defined more broadly as a virtual currency that uses cryptography to secure transactions recorded on a distributed ledger, such as a blockchain.

That means a city or county would not be limited to bitcoin. The bill also does not import the reserve law’s requirement that coins bought for the state fund have an average market capitalization of at least $500 billion over the most recent 24-month period, or its provisions on cold storage and qualified custodians.

The Public Funds Investment Act already requires local governments to adopt a written investment policy that emphasizes safety of principal and liquidity, and to invest with the care a prudent person would use in managing their own affairs. A city or county would still have to add cryptocurrency to that policy before buying any. The new section itself is silent on custody, on audits specific to digital assets, and on how a loss would be handled.

A narrower version of last year’s proposal

Reynolds filed a broader measure, House Bill 4258, on March 10, 2025, with Rep. Mihaela Plesa. That bill would have let the comptroller invest as much as $250 million of the Economic Stabilization Fund, the state’s rainy day fund, in bitcoin or another cryptocurrency, and it included the same $10 million cap for cities and counties. It was referred to the House Delivery of Government Efficiency Committee on April 1, 2025, and did not become law.

House Bill 815 drops the rainy day fund language and keeps only the local-government piece. The state’s own reserve was created separately through Senate Bill 21, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed in June 2025.

The Texas Comptroller’s office later bought $5 million of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust on Nov. 20, 2025, as a placeholder while it worked on direct custody, The Texas Tribune reported, with the office confirming the purchase. A second purchase brought the reserve’s IBIT exposure to about $10 million. In May, Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock named an advisory committee and issued a request for proposals for a custodian, a step toward holding bitcoin directly.

What comes next

Prefiling for the 90th Texas Legislature opened Monday, and the regular session convenes Jan. 12, 2027. The bill has been filed but has not yet been referred to a committee, a step that typically waits until lawmakers convene. Even if it passes both chambers and is signed, cities and counties could not use the new authority until Sept. 1, 2027.

This post Texas Rep. Files Bill Letting Cities Invest $10 Million in Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Poland’s Parliament Votes 240-202 to Let Officials Freeze Crypto Before Court Review

Poland’s lower house of parliament voted 240-202 on Friday to let the interior minister freeze crypto assets, bank accounts and other property of people placed on a national sanctions list, before any court reviews the order.

The Sejm, Poland’s lower house, passed the Act on Restrictive Measures at its 68th sitting, with one member abstaining and 17 not voting. The Senate received the bill Monday and has 30 days under Article 121 of the Constitution to adopt, amend or reject it, after which it would go to President Karol Nawrocki.

The law, a government bill that also implements European Union sanctions rules, treats crypto assets as financial means that can be frozen, using the definition in the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation. A freeze, as the text defines it, is meant to stop any movement, transfer, use or other change that would let the holder benefit from the assets.

The freeze applies only to people and entities the interior minister adds to a public national list, either on the minister’s own initiative or at the request of agencies that include the financial watchdog, the central bank, the financial intelligence unit and the internal security service. Grounds include supporting a country already under EU sanctions, serious human rights abuses, or initiating or financing information manipulation that poses a serious threat to Poland’s national security.

A listing on that last ground requires a showing of a real and serious threat to Poland’s interests, borders, security or elections. The bill carves out ordinary journalism, political speech and publishing, unless that activity is a knowing campaign of the kind the law describes.

A freeze that starts before a judge weighs in

The interior minister’s decision takes effect the day after it is posted in the ministry’s Public Information Bulletin and is immediately enforceable. There is no request to the minister to reconsider. A listed person may file a complaint with an administrative court, but the law says the decision remains in force until a judgment becomes final, and it sets aside the usual rule that would let a court pause a challenged order.

The measures also bar making funds or property available to listed persons and can exclude them from public contracts. In some cases, the economy minister may appoint a temporary administrator to sell frozen assets or, under a separate order, take them over for the State Treasury.

What the freeze would mean for bitcoin

The Poland bill does not target ordinary bitcoin holders in Poland. It reaches crypto assets owned, held or under the control of people and firms on the sanctions list. Banks, exchanges and other parties face administrative fines if they fail to freeze those assets or make them available, and compliance is checked by the financial intelligence unit and the Polish Financial Supervision Authority for the firms they already oversee.

The text does not describe a way for officials to obtain the keys to coins held in self-custody. The practical enforcement path in Poland runs through exchanges, custodians and other obliged institutions that can actually stop a transfer.

What comes next for the bill

The bill still has to clear the Senate and Nawrocki’s desk. The president refused to sign a separate crypto-assets market bill the Sejm passed on May 15, and lawmakers in September failed to override that veto, voting 241-198. He had also vetoed earlier versions of that market bill, arguing the rules went too far.

That earlier fight was about licensing and supervision under the EU’s crypto-assets rulebook, not about a sanctions freeze. Whether the Senate trims the pre-court freeze, and whether Nawrocki will sign a sanctions law that reaches bitcoin, is the question the bill now leaves open.

This post Poland’s Parliament Votes 240-202 to Let Officials Freeze Crypto Before Court Review first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Canaan (CAN) Swings to an $8 Million Profit on Bitcoin Gains as Rig Sales Collapse 96%

Canaan Inc. (NASDAQ: CAN) swung to $8.0 million of third-quarter net income on a $51.9 million fair-value gain in its bitcoin holdings and derivatives, the mining-rig maker said Tuesday, even as machine sales collapsed 96%.

The company filed the unaudited results Tuesday in a 6-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Total revenue fell to $14.5 million from $150.5 million a year earlier, including $4.8 million from product sales and $9.5 million from mining. Canaan sold 1.0 million terahashes per second of computing power and mined 133 bitcoin.

The profit did not come from the business. Canaan posted an $8.6 million gross loss and a $42.9 million operating loss. Chief financial officer Jin “James” Cheng said a recovery in bitcoin prices toward quarter-end generated the $51.9 million fair-value gain and called it “distinct from underlying operating performance.”

The $51.9 million is the sum of a $20.1 million gain on cryptocurrency and a $31.9 million gain on financial derivatives. Canaan also reported $22.4 million of non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA, a figure that still includes those gains. Strip them out and adjusted EBITDA would have been a loss of about $29.5 million.

Nangeng Zhang, Canaan’s chairman and chief executive officer, pointed to “continued weakness in bitcoin mining equipment demand and intense industry pricing competition.” Products revenue dropped from $13.6 million in the second quarter and from $118.6 million in the same period of 2025. The company blamed lower volumes and a lower average selling price.

The treasury carries the quarter

Canaan took $8.2 million of inventory-related write-downs, down from $25.3 million in the second quarter. Mining operations posted a gross margin of about 30% before depreciation, with an all-in power cost of about $0.043 per kilowatt-hour and roughly 10 exahashes per second of installed capacity outside joint ventures.

The company held 1,875.5 bitcoin as of Sept. 30. Of that, 517.5 coins were owned outright, 1,258 were pledged for secured term loans and 100 sat in a fixed-term product. It booked $43.7 million of cryptocurrency assets and $114.2 million of cryptocurrency receivables.

The stack is down about 40 bitcoin from the 1,915.5 Canaan reported at the end of the second quarter, even after the company mined 133 in the period, implying it moved roughly 173 bitcoin off the treasury. Zhang said Canaan is “selectively monetizing cryptocurrency holdings to fund share repurchases.”

On Nov. 6, the board approved a new $100 million share repurchase authorization over 12 months and launched an initial $20 million program under that cap.

A 2-gigawatt Texas bet, and a reverse split

Canaan is trying to recast itself around power and compute infrastructure. Its 1-gigawatt project in Duval County, Texas, received a conditional “Studied Load – Firm” classification under ERCOT’s Batch Zero process, a grid-connection step Zhang said remains “subject to further studies and approvals.” A second 1-gigawatt project in Zapata County is in early-stage development.

To support those plans, Canaan set aside $50 million of restricted cash as collateral for a letter of credit tied to infrastructure contracts and made about $3.3 million of project prepayments. In October it bought a parcel of U.S. land for about $1.1 million. Cash ended Sept. 30 at $72.8 million, $50 million of it restricted, leaving $22.8 million unrestricted.

Canaan also plans a 1-for-25 reverse ADS split, effective on or about Dec. 4, changing each ADS from 15 Class A ordinary shares to 375. The move is meant to help the company regain compliance with Nasdaq’s minimum bid price requirement.

For the fourth quarter, Canaan expects revenue of $18 million to $22 million.

The shift toward power and compute puts Canaan in the same lane as other public bitcoin miners. MARA sold 13,597 bitcoin to fund AI infrastructure, and Hyperscale Data sold its last coins for a Michigan data center.

Whether a paper gain on 1,875 bitcoin and a pair of early-stage Texas power projects can carry Canaan until customers start buying machines again is the question the quarter leaves open.

This post Canaan (CAN) Swings to an $8 Million Profit on Bitcoin Gains as Rig Sales Collapse 96% first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

November 10 below-cost deposits fell 29.22% from the prior day but still accounted for about 96% of the cohort's exchange inflows.

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The OCC authorized a November 9 opening and approved gradual account transfers, while client-level migration timing remains undisclosed.

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The v8.3.3 release gives staking and non-staking beacon nodes high priority, while validator-client updates remain routine.

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Babylon reports ARFC passage for the plan, with proposed credit limits and a restricted mainnet rollout still ahead.

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At 12 months, Rosie users showed no significant anxiety or depression advantage over a monthly children's book program.

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Traders are betting more on Cardano in the futures market again, even though the price keeps slipping. According to data from analytics firm CoinGlass, analyzed by U.Today on Tuesday, open interest in ADA futures rose 5.42 percent within 24 hours to $395.09 million. At the same time, Cardano slipped below $0.175 on Wednesday morning, November 11, 2026. What is documented: new positions are being added while the price falls, and the funding rate in the perpetual market is just below zero. Our assessment follows further down: rising open interest during a falling price mainly increases the risk of violent swings in both directions, and no bottom can be read from it yet.

On Wednesday morning ADA cost $0.1748 according to CoinGecko and €0.1572 on the Kraken exchange. That is a loss of 2.2 percent over 24 hours, 8.0 percent over seven days and 30.8 percent over 30 days. The daily low was $0.1709. With a market value of around $6.6 billion, Cardano is the 18th-largest cryptocurrency and has lost considerably more since early October than Bitcoin, which gave up around 12 percent over the same period.

Open interest at $395 million: what the CoinGlass figure measures

Open interest is the sum of all open futures contracts on a coin, measured in dollars. Every contract has a buyer and a seller, so the figure does not say whether more money is betting on a rising or a falling price. It shows how much capital is tied up in the futures market and how much leverage is in the system.

If open interest rises while the price falls, traders are opening new positions rather than closing old ones. These are often short sellers betting on further losses. They could just as well be buyers speculating on a rebound after five losing weeks. CoinGlass data offers a clue: in futures on Tuesday, aggressive buying, meaning buy orders executed immediately at the market price, outweighed aggressive selling by 3.9 percent. In the spot market, by contrast, selling dominated, by a net $1.27 million.

The contradiction is typical of a phase in which futures traders position themselves against the trend while holders sell their coins. It usually resolves with a fast move: either the futures buyers give up and sell too, or short sellers have to buy back when the price rises.

Funding rate on OKX: longs and shorts almost evenly matched

A second metric shows which side is under more pressure. The funding rate is the fee that buyers and sellers of perpetual futures, known as perpetuals, pay each other every eight hours. If it is positive, buyers pay, because more money is betting on rising prices. If it is negative, short sellers pay.

For the ADA perpetual against Tether on the OKX exchange, the last settled rate on Wednesday morning was minus 0.0014 percent per eight hours, with the current period at minus 0.0006 percent. Both are very close to zero. Short sellers have a slight upper hand, but there is no sign of a one-sided bet in the market. On OKX itself, around 132 million ADA were held in open perpetual contracts at the same time, equivalent to about $23 million.

Order books at $0.177 to $0.179: where large sell orders sit

The order books of the major exchanges show where supply is piling up. According to CoinGlass, on Tuesday there were around $477,000 in sell orders at $0.179 on Bitget, around $415,000 in the same area on Crypto.com and about $445,400 at $0.177 in the Binance futures market. The $0.177 to $0.179 zone is therefore the first area where a rise would meet a lot of supply.

Below that, buy orders gathered between $0.170 and $0.175. That is exactly the zone the price moved into on Wednesday morning. Large orders in the order book are not a fixed boundary, however: traders can withdraw them at any time, and a wall that stands in the evening has sometimes vanished by the next morning.

Since November 9: price almost unchanged, DeFi deposits slightly recovered

On Monday we described Cardano DeFi deposits at their yearly low. ADA cost $0.1741 at the time; today it is $0.1748. The price has barely moved in two days, even though the US inflation data came out on Tuesday in between. According to DefiLlama, deposits in Cardano protocols stood at $48.9 million on Monday and $49.4 million on Wednesday. What is new is the futures market as a second view of the situation: the capital in the protocols stays almost flat, while the capital in futures grows.

ADA has not returned to the first hurdle of $0.193 named at the time. The yearly low of $0.1436, on the other hand, has come closer; measured from Wednesday morning, it is still 17.8 percent away.

From the August low to the yearly low: what happened at $0.174 last time

A look at our own daily values from CoinGecko shows that the zone around $0.174 is not unfamiliar territory for Cardano. On August 18, 2026, ADA stood at $0.1741. Four days later, on August 22, it was at $0.2291, a rise of around 32 percent. Back then the recovery came without the yearly low of June 29 at $0.1436 being tested again.

The comparison has a limit. In August ADA was coming out of a sideways phase; now the coin is coming off a decline from $0.2704 on October 6, the highest daily value of the past six months. Five consecutive losing weeks have pushed many autumn buyers into the red, and precisely these buyers like to sell at their entry price on any recovery. According to CoinCentral, the analyst More Crypto Online named the zone from $0.1617 to $0.1824 as a possible area for a bottom on November 9, but saw no signal for a low yet.

US inflation data as the trigger: why ADA falls harder than Bitcoin

The latest decline was triggered by US consumer prices for October, which came in higher than expected on Tuesday. We put the figures and the consequences for Bitcoin into context in our article on the US inflation data and stops before December 9. Higher inflation makes rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve less likely, and that hits risky assets first.

Cardano reacts more strongly than Bitcoin. Over 24 hours, ADA lost 2.2 percent on Wednesday morning and Bitcoin 1.0 percent. Over 30 days, ADA is down 30.8 percent and Bitcoin 12.1 percent. The reason lies in the market itself: smaller coins lack large buyers such as the Bitcoin ETFs that could cushion a decline. No spot ETF on Cardano trades in the US; according to CoinCentral, Grayscale withdrew its application in August.

Leverage and liquidation: at 5x, the threshold sits close to the yearly low

If you trade ADA futures, you should calculate the liquidation threshold before entering. Liquidation means the exchange forcibly closes a leveraged position as soon as the posted collateral no longer covers the loss. A worked example with Wednesday morning's price and an isolated long position: at 10x leverage, a decline of just under 10 percent is enough, putting the threshold at roughly $0.159. At 5x leverage, it is around $0.142, almost exactly at the yearly low. The exact values depend on the exchange's maintenance margin and fees.

This matters especially when open interest is rising. If many leveraged positions cluster in the same zone, a break of the $0.170 mark can trigger a wave of forced sales that makes the price fall faster than the actual trigger would. Conversely, short sellers buying back push the price higher still on a rise above $0.179.

For retail investors in Germany, leverage on crypto CFDs is capped at 2 to 1; the financial regulator has set this for regulated brokers. Anyone trading on foreign platforms with higher leverage bears the full risk of losing all their collateral. You can find an overview of providers for leveraged trading in our comparison of the best crypto brokers.

ADA holding period in Germany: using losses before one year is up

If you bought ADA in the past twelve months, you are almost certainly at a loss at the current price: a year ago Cardano still cost around $0.55. In Germany, a sale within the one-year holding period is a private sale transaction. The loss can then be offset against gains from other private sale transactions in the same year or carried forward to later years. After the period expires, a sale is tax-free, but a loss then no longer counts either. We track the status of plans to abolish the holding period on our page on the holding period reform.

The holding period does not apply to futures. Gains and losses from futures transactions are treated differently for tax purposes than a spot purchase, regardless of how long the position was open. Anyone mixing spot and futures therefore needs a clean record of all trades.

Cardano staking continues: delegated ADA remain freely available

One difference from many other networks helps holders in a phase like this. Staking on Cardano does not lock the coins. If you delegate ADA to a stake pool, you can sell or move them at any time, and rewards are credited every five days at the end of an epoch. According to a query of the blockchain service Koios, epoch 667 is currently running. The network's treasury holds around 1.42 billion ADA, whose use the community votes on; an open proposal for 22 million ADA for a copper reserve expires with epoch 668.

Staking does nothing to change the price risk. It does, however, bring ongoing income in ADA without tying you to a date. When buying through an exchange, it is worth checking whether it offers staking itself and what share of the reward it keeps. We compare exchanges with a MiCA license for customers in Germany on our page on the best crypto exchanges. If you want to buy ADA in this situation, you are better off placing a limit order in the $0.170 to $0.175 zone than buying at the market price.

Our view of the ADA futures market

From the editorial team's perspective, more points to continued swings than to a quick bottom. Three documented points support this: open interest of $395 million that grows as the price falls, the sell orders between $0.177 and $0.179, and the net spot outflow of $1.27 million in a single day. The neutral funding rate argues against a further slide. If short sellers dominated the market, it would be clearly negative.

In our view, the $0.170 to $0.175 zone is decisive. If it holds, a move like the one in August is possible, when ADA rose around 32 percent within four days from the same area. If it breaks, the next documented level is only the yearly low of $0.1436. This is an assessment of the situation and not a recommendation to buy or sell. With cryptocurrencies, a total loss is possible.

ADA futures: below $0.170 things get tight for longs

1. Calculate the liquidation threshold: For every leveraged ADA position, check where the exchange will forcibly close you out, and compare the conditions in our comparison of the best perp DEXs.
2. Document losses: Record the purchase date and entry price of every ADA position before the holding period expires. Suitable tools are listed in our comparison of crypto tax tools.
3. Use staking: If you hold ADA anyway, you can delegate them without a lock-up. Providers and their fees are in the comparison of staking platforms.

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

Zcash is trading below the $1,000 mark on Wednesday morning. At around 7:50 a.m. CET, one ZEC cost $980.82 according to CoinGecko, down 14.8 percent in 24 hours. On Kraken the price fell as low as $976.80, its lowest level since September 4. At the same time, asset manager Grayscale is promoting its Zcash fund ZCSH more loudly than ever, with a Wall Street Journal front page and a $1 million grant pledge. The fund's investors are pulling money out regardless.

Zcash price on November 11: $981 after a 14.8 percent drop

The decline began on Tuesday afternoon and continued overnight. CoinGecko puts the high of the past 24 hours at $1,196.04. By the morning, ZEC had given up almost $200 of that. No other coin among the 25 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization lost more over those 24 hours; Uniswap came next with a drop of 8.4 percent. Over seven days, Zcash is down 16.3 percent.

Zcash ranks 11th by market capitalization. Trading volume over the past 24 hours was just under $1.28 billion, according to CoinGecko. The broader market fell far less: Bitcoin lost 1.4 percent over the same period and traded at around $73,500, while Ether fell 2.9 percent. The Fear and Greed Index from alternative.me stands at 29, which signals fear. The slide in Zcash therefore goes well beyond the general weakness.

Lowest Zcash price since September 4

On Tuesday evening we reported on Zcash's slide to $1,003. ZEC lost 16 percent in under two hours at the time. The price has not recovered since. It tested the zone around $1,000 again overnight and slipped below it in the morning. The mark that just about held on Tuesday now sits roughly 2 percent above the current price.

The distance to the highs is large. The daily high of September 26 on Kraken was $1,695; Zcash has lost around 42 percent since then. It would need to rise 69 percent to return to the all-time high of $3,191.93 listed by CoinGecko. This comparison is based on Kraken daily prices since November 2024 and on CoinGecko market data; cryptoticker.io compiled it itself on November 11, 2026.

Grayscale's ZCSH campaign: zebra stripes on the front page

Grayscale chose the day of the slump to launch a broad advertising campaign. As The Block reports, Grayscale wrapped the front page of the Wall Street Journal in a zebra-striped cover on Tuesday and ran a full-page ad for the Zcash fund inside. The zebra is a symbol of the Zcash community; the Zcash Foundation's node client is also called Zebra. According to the report, the campaign is also running in print, outdoor, digital, streaming and social media.

It includes a dedicated education site at ZcashInvest.com that explains the fund and Zcash's privacy features. The address redirects to a Grayscale subpage. Steve Vanourny, head of indexes at Grayscale, told The Block that financial privacy is becoming indispensable as more economic activity moves onchain and AI makes it easier to analyze.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a fund whose shares trade on an exchange like stocks. The Grayscale Zcash Trust started in 2017 as a private placement and has traded as an ETF under the ticker ZCSH on NYSE Arca since August 2026. On Tuesday, the fund's shares fell around 12 percent to $27.25, according to The Block.

$1 million grant pledge: who gets Grayscale's money

Besides the advertising, Grayscale announced more money for the Zcash ecosystem. According to The Block, the fund provider is raising its grants to non-profit Zcash organizations and projects to a total of $1 million. $400,000 has already been awarded, in four equal tranches of around $100,000.

• Zcash Foundation, the non-profit behind the Zebra node client
• Pretty Good Policy for Zcash, a policy advocacy group
• Shielded Labs, a protocol development team
• Project Tachyon, an initiative to scale shielded payments

Grayscale also intends to put up to 100 percent of the ZCSH sponsor fee into the Zcash network during its first year as an ETF, spread across development, marketing, community and education. The sponsor fee is the ongoing management fee that the fund deducts from investors' assets each year. The pledge does not change anything for fund investors on the fee side. They keep paying it; Grayscale simply spends the income differently.

ZCSH outflows: $46.25 million in October

The advertising comes as money has been leaving the fund for weeks. According to The Block, ZCSH recorded net outflows of $46.25 million in October. More than $15 million followed in November up to and including Monday; Tuesday's figures are not yet included. A net outflow means investors redeem more fund shares than new ones are created.

In September the picture looked different. Rising inflows into the fund carried Zcash's rally above $1,000 back then, and ZEC reached prices just below $1,700 at the end of September. Tuesday's campaign therefore lands in a phase in which demand from the fund is weighing on the price instead of supporting it.

Why ETF outflows push down the ZEC price

A spot ETF such as ZCSH holds actual Zcash coins to back its shares. When an investor redeems shares, the fund unwinds the corresponding amount of backing through a so-called authorized participant, an approved trading partner. These coins usually end up on the market. If money flows out for weeks, a steady stream of additional supply is created.

For a coin with a comparatively small market capitalization, this weighs more heavily than for Bitcoin. At the current price, October's outflows are equivalent to a good 47,000 ZEC. Then there is the derivatives market: when prices fall, leveraged long positions are forcibly closed, or liquidated. These sales accelerate a downward move.

NU7 upgrade without a price boost: down since November 6

Technically, Zcash has just taken a big step. The NU7 network upgrade went live on November 6, cutting the target time between two blocks from 75 to 25 seconds. On the day of activation, ZEC gained 7 percent against a falling market, as we reported on November 6.

The gain did not last. In the seven days to Wednesday morning, Zcash lost 16.3 percent. There are no reports of technical problems after the switch; the price pressure comes from trading and from the fund.

Zcash ETF in Germany: why ZCSH is missing from brokerage accounts

Anyone in Germany who wants to respond to the Wall Street Journal ad quickly hits a limit. Retail investors in the EU generally cannot buy US ETFs such as ZCSH, because no key information document under the European PRIIPs Regulation exists for them. German brokers therefore block such funds from trading. Our overview of crypto ETFs in Germany shows which crypto funds and exchange-traded products are available there.

The direct route is via a crypto exchange. Zcash remains tradable there, although the choice is smaller than for large coins. Our crypto exchange comparison shows who lists ZEC and what fees apply. Before buying, check whether the exchange is licensed under the European MiCA Regulation and whether it allows withdrawals to your own wallet.

Tax on ZEC losses in Germany: holding period and offsetting

In Germany, Zcash held as private assets is subject to the same rule as other cryptocurrencies. Gains from a sale are tax-free after a holding period of one year. Within that year they are taxable as a private sale transaction, provided gains from such transactions reach €1,000 or more in the year.

Losses work the other way round. If you sell ZEC at a loss within the one-year period, you can offset that loss against gains from other private sale transactions in the same year or carry it forward to later years. Once the holding period has expired, a loss has no tax effect. To get the period right for every single tranche, you need a complete record of your purchases. Crypto tax software and portfolio trackers that import exchange accounts and wallets can help with that.

Privacy coins and AMLR: what applies to regulated providers from July 2027

Over the medium term, another date matters more than any price level. The EU Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, AMLR for short, applies from July 10, 2027. It prohibits credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto service providers from keeping anonymous accounts, explicitly including accounts that allow anonymization through anonymity-enhancing coins. With its shielded addresses, Zcash is one of the best-known privacy coins.

For holders in Germany, where their coins are kept therefore matters. If your ZEC sit on a regulated exchange, you should follow the provider's announcements on privacy coins. A self-custody wallet is not directly affected by the regulation, but a later exchange through regulated providers is. Our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges lists which exchanges hold a MiCA license.

Zcash technical analysis: $933, $1,000 and $1,196

Three levels emerge from the daily prices. On the downside, the next zone is $933, the daily low of September 4 on Kraken. Back then the price turned higher there and began the rally that lasted until the end of September. If ZEC falls below this zone, there is no clear support until the area of the August prices.

On the upside, the $1,000 mark is the first hurdle. It was support on Tuesday and, now that it has broken, it is the area that will show whether buyers return. Above it, the high of the past 24 hours sits at $1,196. Only a rise above that level would fully reverse the slide of Tuesday and Wednesday.

If you trade with leverage, you should know the distances: $933 is just under 5 percent below the current price, $1,196 around 22 percent above it. With a coin that loses 15 percent in a day, a stop just below the price quickly falls within the range of normal swings.

Zcash below $1,000: three steps before the AMLR deadline

1. Check how you buy: ZCSH is generally not tradable for retail investors in Germany. If you want to hold ZEC, compare fees and withdrawal rules in the crypto exchange comparison.
2. Settle custody: There is time until July 10, 2027, but providers will decide earlier. Watch for announcements from your exchange and for a MiCA license, which the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows.
3. Document for tax: Record the purchase date and price of each tranche. A loss within the holding period can be offset if it is documented; crypto tax tools do this automatically.

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

You read a candlestick chart by treating each candle as a summary of one period: the thick body shows where the price opened and closed, and the thin wicks show the high and the low in between. If the candle is green, the closing price was above the opening price; if it is red, below. With these four values, open, high, low and close, you can see at a glance how sharply a market swung and which side came out ahead at the end.

In crypto, the candlestick chart is the default view: almost every exchange and every charting tool first opens the price of Bitcoin and other coins as a candlestick chart. Anyone buying or selling there sees candles all the time, whether they want to or not. This guide explains how candles are built, the best-known candlestick patterns and their limits. On top of that comes our own analysis: we checked 999 daily bitcoin candles to see what actually happened to the price after a hammer, a doji or an engulfing pattern.

What a candlestick chart shows: open, high, low and close

A candlestick chart is a way of displaying price data in which each period appears as its own candle. Analysts speak of OHLC data, after open, high, low and close. A simple line chart only connects the closing prices and so hides what happened between two closes. The candle, by contrast, also shows the swings up and down.

An example makes this concrete: if bitcoin opens a day at $74,000, climbs to $76,000 along the way, drops to $72,500 and closes at $73,500, the result is a red candle. Its body runs from $74,000 down to $73,500, the upper wick reaches $76,000 and the lower wick $72,500. A line chart would have kept only the point at $73,500 from that day.

A bar chart, also called an OHLC chart, contains the same four values but draws them as a vertical line with two small horizontal ticks. The information is identical. The candlestick chart won out because the filled bodies and the colours are quicker to take in, especially when a hundred or more candles sit side by side.

Candle body and wick: which side had the upper hand at the end

The body of a candle is the distance between the opening and the closing price. A long green body means buyers carried the price higher throughout the period. A long red body shows the opposite: selling pressure lasted until the close. A very short body means that open and close barely differ and neither side won the period.

The wicks, also called shadows, mark the extremes. A long upper wick shows that the price was clearly higher at some point, but sellers pushed it back down. A long lower wick shows that the price slumped and buyers brought it back up. A candle with no wick at all forms when the price never moved beyond the close or below the open during the entire period.

The colour is a convention, not a law of nature. Most crypto exchanges draw rising candles green and falling ones red. In older books and some programs, rising candles are hollow or white and falling ones filled or black. Many trading apps let you swap the colours, and in parts of Asia red traditionally signals rising prices. So when you read an unfamiliar chart, check the legend first.

Timeframes in a candlestick chart: why the daily crypto candle closes at night

Each candle stands for a period you can choose freely, known as the timeframe. Common settings are one minute, five minutes, one hour, four hours, one day and one week. The same market can look completely different depending on the timeframe: a thick red daily candle may, on the hourly chart, consist of a brief slump in the morning and a slow recovery in the afternoon.

For stocks, the daily candle starts and ends with the exchange's trading hours. Cryptocurrencies, by contrast, trade around the clock, weekends included. The daily candle therefore needs a fixed time. On Bitstamp, whose data our analysis below uses, it starts at midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is 1 a.m. German time in winter and 2 a.m. in summer. Other platforms may use different times, and then the same daily candle looks different on two charts.

A second peculiarity concerns price gaps. With stocks, the price often opens well above or below the previous day's close in the morning because news came in overnight. With bitcoin, the opening price almost always matches the previous close: in our 999 daily candles, the open was less than 0.1 percent away from the prior close 995 times. Patterns that textbooks describe as requiring such a gap therefore rarely appear in pure form in crypto trading.

Doji, hammer and shooting star: the key single-candle patterns

A candlestick pattern is a shape made of one or more candles to which chart analysts attribute a message about the price's next move. You should be able to recognise the three best-known single candles, because they show up in almost every chart analysis.

Doji: open and close almost identical

In a doji, the opening and closing prices are so close together that barely any body is visible. The candle looks like a cross or a plus sign. The doji is seen as a sign of indecision: buyers and sellers pushed the price back and forth, and in the end it stood where it had started. Textbooks distinguish subtypes such as the dragonfly doji with a long lower wick and the gravestone doji with a long upper wick. Our older article on candlestick patterns illustrated with the Ethereum price shows an example.

Hammer: long lower wick after a decline

The hammer has a small body at the top and a lower wick at least twice as long as the body. It only counts as a hammer when it appears after a move lower. The reading: sellers pushed the price down hard, and buyers won it back almost entirely by the close. If the same shape appears after a rise, it is called a hanging man and is read as a warning sign.

Shooting star: long upper wick after a rise

The shooting star is the mirror image of the hammer. The small body sits at the bottom with a long wick above it. After a rise, it shows that buyers drove the price far higher, but sellers caught it again by the close. The same shape after a decline is called an inverted hammer.

Engulfing, morning star and harami: patterns made of two and three candles

Patterns made of several candles describe a shift in sentiment over several periods. In a bullish engulfing pattern, a red candle is followed by a green one whose body completely covers the red body. After a decline, this is taken as a sign that buyers have taken control. The bearish engulfing pattern is its counterpart after a rise: a large red candle swallows the green one before it.

The harami is in a sense the reverse of the engulfing pattern. Here, a small candle sits entirely within the body of the large candle before it. The pattern is read as a sign that the previous move is losing strength. The morning star consists of three candles: a long red one, a small candle with barely any body and a long green one that reaches deep into the body of the first. Its counterpart at the end of a rise is the evening star.

What all patterns have in common is that they need context. A hammer in the middle of a sideways phase says little. Analysts therefore also look at the prior trend, at the candle's trading volume and at whether the pattern forms at a level where the price has turned before. Many also combine candles with indicators such as the Relative Strength Index, which our article on bitcoin's RSI explains.

Candlestick patterns put to a bitcoin test: 999 daily candles analysed

Whether the patterns are any use for bitcoin can be measured. To do so, we analysed the 999 daily BTC/USD candles on Bitstamp from February 16, 2024, to November 10, 2026. For each pattern, we counted how often the price five days after the signal candle was higher than at its close. The benchmark is the same share across all days.

The rules were simple and set in advance. A doji is a candle whose body makes up no more than a tenth of the range between high and low. A hammer has a lower wick at least twice the length of the body, a short upper wick, and follows a decline, measured by the close being below the close five days earlier. The shooting star is the counterpart after a rise. For the engulfing patterns, the new body has to fully enclose the old one and be longer.

The result: across all days, bitcoin was higher five days later in 51.0 percent of cases. After the 39 hammer candles, the figure was 59.0 percent, and after the 47 bullish engulfing patterns 53.2 percent. After the 31 shooting stars, the price was higher in only 45.2 percent of cases, and after the 37 bearish engulfing patterns in 45.9 percent. The 110 doji candles, at 51.8 percent, came in almost exactly at the average. On average, the price rose 1.29 percent in the five days after a hammer and fell 0.75 percent after a shooting star.

So the direction matches the textbook reading, but the gap to chance is small. With 39 cases, 59 percent amounts to a mere three more hits than the 51 percent average. With so few cases, a genuine edge cannot be told apart from luck, especially since trading fees and the spread between bid and ask further erode the advantage in real trading. In this test, the doji turns out to be exactly what its reputation suggests: a signal without direction.

Candlestick analysis in research: what a study of Dow Jones stocks found

Our small bitcoin test is not alone. In 2006, the economists Ben Marshall, Martin Young and Lawrence Rose examined in the Journal of Banking & Finance whether candlestick patterns could make money on the stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Their data set ran from 1992 to 2002. The study's title asks the question directly: "Candlestick technical trading strategies: Can they create value for investors?" The authors' answer was sobering: the three economists found no evidence that the candlestick signals they examined predicted the price moves of large US stocks.

That does not make candlestick charts worthless. Candles remain the clearest way to read price data: anyone who understands a candlestick chart grasps volatility, buying pressure and selling pressure faster than in any table. Problems only arise when a single pattern is treated as a reliable buy or sell signal. Neither the research nor our bitcoin analysis supports that expectation.

Where candlestick charts come from: the rice trade in Osaka

Candlestick charts are often traced back to the Japanese rice trader Munehisa Homma, who lived from 1724 to 1803 and traded on the Dojima rice exchange in Osaka. The English-language Wikipedia cautiously describes him as "sometimes considered the father of the candlestick chart". Whether Homma himself already drew candles or whether the method only emerged later is disputed among historians. What is documented is his reputation as a trader who closely observed the mood of market participants.

The method only became known in the West in the early 1990s, when the US analyst Steve Nison published his book "Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques". Many of the Japanese names you read on crypto learning sites today, such as doji or harami, come from this tradition. Harami roughly means "pregnant", because the small candle sits inside the body of the large one.

Candlestick charts in crypto trading: common mistakes with leverage and one-minute candles

The most common mistake when reading candlestick charts is using too short a timeframe. On the one-minute chart, some pattern forms all the time; a hammer or doji turns up there several times an hour. The shorter the timeframe, the more random noise drowns out any signal. Anyone guided by patterns therefore looks at the daily or weekly chart first and only then at shorter periods.

The second mistake is trading patterns with leverage. A signal that in our analysis moved in the expected direction in six out of ten cases at best loses in four out of ten. With leverage, one such miss can wipe out a position entirely. How liquidations and margin calls work is explained in our guide to liquidations in leveraged trading.

The third mistake concerns the unfinished candle. As long as a period is still running, the candle keeps changing. What looks like a hammer in the afternoon can turn into a long red candle by the daily close. Candlestick patterns are therefore only assessed once the candle has closed. If you need price data, indicators and alert levels in one place, our comparison of crypto analytics platforms lists tools with candlestick charts, alerts and custom timeframes.

Candlestick analysis: trend and timeframe first, then the pattern

Candlestick charts are a tool for reading the market, not an oracle. Three steps help you get started:

1. Use charts with clean data: choose a platform that offers candlestick charts in several timeframes, indicators and price alerts. Our comparison of crypto analytics tools gives an overview.
2. Set the rules in advance: if you want to use patterns systematically, write down the conditions beforehand and test them on historical data, as in our bitcoin analysis. Such rules can be automated with trading bots, which our comparison of crypto trading bots sets side by side.
3. Trade without leverage first: when making your first decisions, buy coins directly on the spot market of a regulated exchange and do without leverage. Fees and licences are shown in our crypto exchange comparison.

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

XRP trades at $1.058, or €0.95, on Wednesday morning, according to CoinGecko at around 7:40 a.m. CET. That is 3.8 percent lower than 24 hours earlier, 16.4 percent lower than a week ago and roughly 30 percent below October 5, when XRP still stood at $1.52. The coin last closed lower on August 19. Even so, traders betting on rising prices with leverage are paying more for their positions than at any time since October 2025.

What the data show: the cumulative funding rate for XRP on Binance stands at 0.18 percent over 30 days, the highest reading since October 2025, and on OKX the long side has paid at 76 of 100 settlements since October 9. Our assessment follows further down: as long as these long bets are not unwound, the price lacks a floor, even though another seller is about to leave the market.

Where the price could head over a horizon of months is covered in our XRP price prediction with its long-term scenarios. This piece sticks to the futures market, fund flows and a measurement taken on the XRP Ledger overnight into Wednesday.

XRP funding rate: long bets have been paying up for weeks

The funding rate is a balancing payment between buyers and sellers of perpetual futures. Perpetual futures are derivatives contracts with no expiry date that let traders bet on rising or falling prices, usually with borrowed money. To keep their price from drifting away from the spot price for long, one side pays the other at fixed intervals. If the rate is above zero, long positions pay short positions. If it is below zero, the flow reverses.

A positive rate therefore shows that more capital is betting on rising than on falling prices and is willing to carry an ongoing fee for it. In a rising market, that barely stands out. In a market that has been falling for five weeks, it is unusual: buyers are holding on to their positions even as the price moves against them, or they are buying every dip.

For the coming days, this cuts both ways. If the hoped-for recovery arrives, these positions will amplify it. If the price keeps falling, these are exactly the positions that will be forcibly closed, and every forced closure is an additional sale.

CryptoQuant data on Binance: 0.18 percent in 30 days, the highest since October 2025

The Binance figure comes from the analytics firm CryptoQuant and was published on Tuesday by Coinpedia. It measures the sum of all funding payments over the past 30 days. That sum stands at plus 0.18 percent, as high as it was last in October 2025. Back then, XRP's record high of $3.55 was only a few months in the past.

The comparison shows how far sentiment and price have drifted apart. In October 2025, the high rate came from a market that had only just come off its peak. Today, it comes from a market that has lost a quarter of its value in a month. Coinpedia sums this up as an expression of crowded optimism rather than a guarantee of a recovery.

Futures market on OKX: the long side paid at 76 of 100 settlements

To cross-check the figure, cryptoticker.io queried the public interface of the OKX exchange on Wednesday morning, pulling the last 100 funding settlements for the XRP contract against USDT. The series goes back to October 9, with settlement every eight hours. At 76 of these 100 settlements, the rate was above zero. Together, they add up to 0.39 percent.

The most recent settlements fit the picture. On Tuesday at 1 a.m., 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. CET, 0.0062, 0.0096 and 0.0060 percent fell due, and overnight into Wednesday 0.0056 percent. Only a single settlement in the past three days came in just below zero, on Monday evening at minus 0.0001 percent. For the current period, OKX showed 0.01 percent on Wednesday morning.

Translated into money, that looks small, but it adds up. Anyone holding a $10,000 long position pays $1 per settlement at 0.01 percent, or $3 a day. Based on the OKX data, the same position would have cost around $39 in funding since October 9, on top of a price loss of around $2,300, since XRP still stood at $1.38 on October 9.

Open interest and long-short ratio: leverage is shrinking more slowly than the price

Open interest measures the value of all open futures contracts. On OKX, it stood at $132.1 million for XRP on November 4 and at $101.9 million on November 10, a decline of 23 percent. Because the price fell from $1.28 to $1.10 over the same period, a good half of that decline is down to the lower price alone. Measured in coins, open positions have shrunk by only about a tenth.

The ratio of accounts betting on rising prices to those betting on falling prices stood at 3.70 on OKX on Tuesday. On Sunday it had been 4.27, the highest reading of the past two weeks. For every account with a short position, there are still almost four accounts with a long position.

On November 7, our analysis of the long squeeze at $1.15 described how long positions worth more than $16 million were forcibly closed in a single day. The price has since dropped by just under 10 percent, but the number of long bets has barely declined.

XRP spot ETFs: $10.4 million in outflows ahead of the first anniversary

While the futures market is buying, fund investors are pulling money out. According to Coinpedia, the US spot ETFs for XRP saw net outflows of $10.4 million, equivalent to around 9.37 million XRP. Before that, the funds had recorded neither inflows nor outflows on four consecutive trading days from November 3 to 6, the first such streak since August, as Bitcoin.com News reported based on SoSoValue data.

On Friday, November 13, the first US spot ETF on XRP turns one year old. The Canary Capital fund launched on November 13, 2025. In October, the XRP funds had still logged inflows for the seventh month in a row, albeit only $18.8 million. For the outlook over the coming weeks, what matters is whether this stream returns. An ETF inflow means the issuer buys XRP on the market and holds it in custody. An outflow means it is selling down its holdings.

Since Tuesday's XRP price prediction: $1.04 already breached on day one

Our XRP price prediction from Tuesday set out three scenarios through the end of November: $1.04 in the weak case, $1.13 in the base case and $1.27 in the strong case. On Tuesday morning, XRP stood at $1.10. A little over 24 hours later, the price is at $1.058, and the daily low reached $1.034, according to CoinGecko.

The weak scenario was therefore already hit on the first day, not because of any new development at Ripple but in the wake of the broader market. Bitcoin trades at $73,715 on Wednesday morning, 1.2 percent lower than the previous day. After Tuesday's US inflation data, market participants are once again pricing in a rate hike by the Federal Reserve, as our overnight market report shows. The Fed's next meeting ends on December 9.

The $1.08 level, which still held at Monday's daily close, has broken. What is new, by contrast, is what happened on the XRP Ledger.

Binance attacker: the last untouched wallet has been empty since midnight

For this article, cryptoticker.io queried the wallets of the attacker behind the October 29 Binance hack on the XRP Ledger again on Wednesday at 7:44 a.m. CET, in validated ledger 108,255,241. On Tuesday, they still held 61.8 million XRP, 33.46 million of them in a wallet that had not sent a single payment until then.

That wallet moved overnight. At 1:01 a.m. CET, it transferred 33,455,915 XRP in one go to the collection wallet ryB7NE…ktmx, through which the attacker has been passing on the loot in small tranches since November 5. On Wednesday morning, that wallet held 29,466,416 XRP. The other five wallets now carry only residual amounts in the single or low double digits.

Since Tuesday morning's measurement, the collection wallet has sent out 32.34 million XRP in 193 payments. Tuesday from 6:28 a.m. CET accounted for 28.29 million XRP in 171 payments, and Wednesday up to 4:05 a.m. for 4.05 million XRP in 22 payments. The median payment was around 127,000 XRP, the largest 963,000 XRP. Since 4:05 a.m., no further payment had gone out by the time of the query.

Analytics firm Elliptic writes that the XRP moved out were mostly swapped into bitcoin via the THORChain exchange service. Who exactly is buying on the other side cannot be determined from the ledger alone. Of the 233.46 million XRP originally stolen, around 87 percent have now been passed on. If Tuesday's pace holds, the rest would be gone in about a day; at the slower overnight pace, it would take several days.

Our view: without an unwind of long bets, XRP lacks a floor

In the newsroom's view, two forces are pulling against each other. In favour of stabilisation: the largest single seller of the past week will soon have no coins left. Against a global daily trading volume of around $2.3 billion, according to CoinGecko, 29.5 million XRP is a manageable amount.

The futures market argues the other way. A funding rate at its highest level in 13 months, a long-short ratio of 3.7 and open interest that has barely fallen in coin terms show that the market has not yet responded to the drop from $1.52 to $1.06 by cleaning out its long bets. If the price falls below the daily low of $1.034, a large number of forced liquidations sit underneath. Only when the funding rate drops below zero over several settlements will leveraged buyers have pulled back.

What speaks against this view: a positive funding rate can also mean that large investors are deliberately using the decline and hedging it via futures instead of buying directly. If inflows return around the ETF anniversary, the recovery could come faster than the futures market suggests.

XRP levels through the end of November: $1.00, $1.10 and $1.16

Three levels can be derived from the data, each with its rationale.

Weak case: $1.00

Below the daily low of $1.034 lies the zone around $1.00. XRP last closed lower on August 19, and the year's low based on CoinGecko daily closes was $0.993 on August 17. A break of $1.034 would hit the long bets in the futures market, and a wave of forced liquidations could quickly carry the price into that zone.

Base case: $1.03 to $1.10

The range of the past 24 hours runs from $1.034 to $1.10. If the outflow from the attacker's wallet runs dry and ETF flows stay neutral, much points to XRP moving sideways within this range while the funding rate slowly declines.

Strong case: $1.16

XRP closed at $1.16 last Sunday. According to Coinpedia, analyst Lana Valentis names $1.15 as the first target after a confirmed rebound from the lower edge of the downward channel, with further targets at $1.32 and $1.60. That would require fresh ETF inflows and a market that takes on risk again after the inflation print. Above $1.10, short positions would also come under pressure.

Leveraged products in Germany: no holding period, CFDs capped at 2:1

Anyone looking to trade in this environment should keep two things apart. XRP bought directly is tax-free in Germany after a one-year holding period; gains before that are exempt up to €1,000 a year and fully taxable above it. Where plans to abolish this rule stand is summarised in our overview of the holding period reform. The holding period does not apply to futures and CFDs: under the prevailing view, gains from them count as income from forward transactions and are subject to the 25 percent flat-rate withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge.

Investor protection differs too. Under a rule from the securities regulator ESMA, adopted by BaFin, retail clients in the EU may trade CFDs on crypto assets with leverage of no more than 2:1. The broker has to close the position once the margin falls to half of the initial deposit. For an entry at $1.058, that would be roughly at $0.79, a decline of 25 percent. You can find regulated providers for this in our crypto broker comparison.

Perpetual futures with leverage of 10x or more are mainly offered by exchanges outside these rules. MiCA does not cover such products; in the EU they fall under the MiFID II financial markets directive. At 10x leverage, the liquidation threshold for a long position opened at $1.058 lies roughly at $0.96, only about 9 percent lower, and at 5x at around $0.85. Funding payments come on top for any holding period. If you want to look at providers for decentralised futures trading, you will find them in the perp DEX comparison.

XRP at $1.06: without negative funding, the floor stays open

Three steps you can take today without betting on a direction:

1. Check your leverage. If you hold a long position in XRP, compare your liquidation threshold with the daily low of $1.034 and with the zone around $1.00. If it sits above them, the buffer is too thin. Licensed providers with leverage caps are listed in the broker comparison.
2. Spot rather than futures if you want to buy. If you buy XRP directly, you pay no funding rate and cannot be liquidated, and in Germany the gain becomes tax-free after a year. Exchanges with a MiCA licence are listed in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Document your purchase dates. For the holding period, every single purchase counts. A crypto tax tool records purchase date and price and works out which tranche becomes tax-free when.

(As of November 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy. Crypto assets can lose their entire value.)

RollerCoin pays out real cryptocurrencies, but only in small amounts and only once your balance reaches the minimum for the coin in question. Playing mini-games in the browser earns you virtual computing power, not coins. The coins only come into being when that computing power wins a share of your league's block reward. What eventually lands in your own wallet therefore depends on three variables: your share of the league, the size of the reward and the withdrawal threshold.

For you as an investor, RollerCoin is therefore no substitute for buying Dogecoin or Bitcoin, but a game with a small return in real coins. As soon as a withdrawal is due, you need your own wallet or an account with an exchange that accepts the coin. If you later want to swap the coins you withdraw into euros, you inevitably end up on a trading platform; regulated crypto exchanges compared gives an overview. This guide works out how long the road to the first withdrawal takes and shows what you should plan for in terms of waiting time and tax.

What is RollerCoin? A browser-based mining simulator with no real hardware

RollerCoin is a browser game that recreates cryptocurrency mining. You set up a virtual room, place virtual miners on racks and increase your computing power through short arcade games. No graphics card or ASIC miner does any work in the process. Your computer solves no cryptographic puzzles, and your electricity meter runs no faster than when you are browsing.

Mining on real blockchains means computing new blocks, for which a network such as Bitcoin pays out new coins and fees. RollerCoin borrows the vocabulary of that process, namely hashrate, block and reward, and turns it into a game mechanic. According to the provider's help pages, mining power is simply the number of hashes per second the game credits to you. That number only exists in the operator's database.

The difference from bitcoin mining apps on smartphones is smaller than the name suggests: there, too, the phone does not really compute anything, and the payouts come from the app's business model. With RollerCoin, that model is openly designed as a game, with shops, events and an in-game currency of its own.

Hashrate and block reward: how RollerCoin distributes coins across 15 leagues

At RollerCoin, the block reward is the amount of a token shared among all active players in a league. According to the FAQ, this happens roughly every ten minutes. Your share depends on your computing power relative to the total power of all players in your league mining the same coin. The provider's example: if the reward is 100 DOGE, all DOGE miners in your league split exactly those 100 DOGE according to their power.

The leagues replace an earlier system with a single shared pot. RollerCoin now splits players into 15 leagues, ranked by their maximum power from miners, bonuses and racks. Each league has its own reward pot with a fixed amount of tokens and its own selection of coins. The higher the league, the more coins there are to choose from.

This leads to an important property: your reward falls when others upgrade, even if you change nothing yourself. League power, the sum of all power in your league, works like the mining difficulty of a real network. If many new players join or many choose the same coin, your slice of the pie gets smaller. The provider itself writes that block time can stretch beyond ten minutes for coins in high demand.

Game power expires after one to seven days

RollerCoin recognises five kinds of power: the base power of the miners, bonus power from your miners' percentage values, the rack bonus, power from games and temporary power from events. For beginners, game power matters most, because it costs nothing but time.

That is exactly the power that is time-limited. According to the FAQ, it lasts one, three, five or seven days depending on your PC level. Anyone who does not play for a week therefore loses most of their hashrate, unless they own permanent miners. The provider accordingly recommends playing every day, ideally twice. For your calculation, this means the return is tied to the time you spend playing, not to a device bought once.

Only miners and racks provide permanent power. You buy them in the game, and this is where the in-game currency comes in.

RLT and RST: two in-game currencies with no withdrawal

RLT (RollerToken) is RollerCoin's main currency. You receive it from games, quests, loot boxes, events and offers on the Task Wall, and you spend it on miners and equipment. According to the FAQ, RLT can neither be withdrawn nor exchanged for other tokens; the currency is intended exclusively for use in the game. RLT can also be bought with real money.

RST is a season token earned from daily and weekly tasks. You use it to buy items in the season shop. RST expires at the end of each season. If you do not spend it, you lose it.

When it comes to what RollerCoin pays out, both currencies are therefore ruled out. Only the cryptocurrencies you mine with your power can be withdrawn, and not every one of those either: according to the provider, some coins can only be mined or deposited.

Minimum amount per coin: the threshold decides the first withdrawal

Every withdrawable coin at RollerCoin has its own minimum amount. If your balance is below it, the system does not accept a withdrawal request. You can see the current threshold in the game's wallet section next to each coin; the provider has changed it several times in the past.

One example comes from a blog post from April 2021, in which RollerCoin lowered the minimum withdrawal for DOGE from 360 to 150 DOGE because beginners could hardly reach the old threshold. Review sites cite figures of around 0.0001 BTC for bitcoin, without the provider confirming that number on its help pages. Always check the threshold yourself in your account before you build a strategy around a particular coin.

The threshold is the real bottleneck. As long as your balance is below it, the coins are not effectively yours yet. The balance sits with the operator, and you can neither sell nor transfer it.

Dogecoin worked example: a 0.01 percent league share is enough for around 104 days

How long it takes to reach the first withdrawal can be estimated from the provider's own figures. The following values are assumptions so that the calculation stays easy to follow, not a promise of returns.

Assume the block reward for DOGE in your league is 100 DOGE, as in the FAQ example, and a block is produced every ten minutes. The league then pays out 144 blocks a day with 14,400 DOGE in total. If you consistently hold 0.01 percent of your league's DOGE power, you receive 1.44 DOGE a day. Reaching the 150 DOGE threshold from the 2021 blog post would then take around 104 days.

What this comes to in euros depends on the price. On November 10 we reported Dogecoin at around $0.067, which put 150 DOGE at about $10. The calculation also assumes that your share stays constant. Because game power expires and other players upgrade, that tends to be the exception in practice. If your share halves, the waiting time doubles.

For comparison: anyone running real Dogecoin mining with Scrypt hardware has to factor in the device price, electricity and pool fees. RollerCoin does away with these costs; instead you pay with playing time and, if you buy miners for RLT, possibly with real money.

Withdrawal with a confirmation code: valid for 30 minutes, up to ten business days of review

Once you have reached the threshold, the withdrawal takes a few steps: open the wallet in the game, choose the coin, enter the destination address and amount, add the MEMO number for XRP, then confirm. RollerCoin then sends you a code by email, which you enter in the game. According to the FAQ, this code is only valid for 30 minutes. If it expires, the request lapses and you have to start again.

According to its own help pages, processing usually takes up to ten business days, or roughly two weeks. The provider itself names longer periods: during an investigation of suspicious activity on the account, when many requests come in at once, or when there are technical problems with a blockchain. Requests can also be cancelled if the system detects irregularities.

Double-check the destination address before you confirm. A wallet address is the public identifier to which coins are sent on a blockchain. A wrong address or the wrong network cannot be corrected once the coins have been sent.

Who sets the block rewards: game economics instead of proof of work

With bitcoin, the protocol determines how many new coins a block brings, and no company can change that amount. This process is called proof of work: whoever solves the computational puzzle first receives the reward, and every participant can verify this. At RollerCoin, the operator decides on the rewards. In the blog post mentioned above, RollerCoin writes that the size of the rewards is based on its own AI forecasts and is adjusted to market conditions.

The coins paid out are real coins on their respective blockchains. How many of them are distributed in the game, however, is a business-model decision, not the outcome of an open network. For you, this means that rewards, thresholds and league rules can change at any time, and you cannot verify whether the distribution follows a fixed rule.

Tax on RollerCoin earnings: the €256 exemption limit and the holding period

A mining game is not explicitly covered in the German Federal Ministry of Finance's guidance on crypto assets of March 6, 2025. Classification as other income under Section 22 No. 3 of the German Income Tax Act (EStG) seems likely, similar to rewards from staking or bonuses for tasks. An exemption limit of €256 a year applies to this. If all your income of this kind stays below it, the amount is tax-free; just one euro more makes the entire amount taxable.

What counts is the market value in euros of the coins at the time you receive them. That value also serves as the acquisition cost. If you later sell the coins you withdrew, the rules on private disposal transactions under Section 23 EStG apply: within one year of receipt, a gain is taxable provided all such gains in the year exceed €1,000; after one year, the sale is tax-free. Anyone deploying hashrate on a large scale should check whether the tax office will treat mining as a business.

Record every withdrawal with its date, amount and euro value. The withdrawal history in the game and the transaction on the blockchain are your proof. This classification is not tax advice; for larger amounts, a tax adviser can help.

Buying real coins: an exchange with a MiCA licence instead of game hashrate

If you want to hold DOGE or BTC, buying directly gets you there faster than a mining game. Since the EU's MiCA Regulation, crypto service providers in Germany need authorisation as crypto-asset service providers. Such a MiCA licence governs, among other things, how the exchange keeps customer funds segregated.

RollerCoin, by contrast, is a game. Your balance there is a claim against the operator until you withdraw it. For the coins you withdraw, you need two things: a wallet whose keys you control yourself and, for swapping into euros, an exchange authorised in the EU.

RollerCoin withdrawals: the threshold matters more than playing time

1. Check the threshold: look in the wallet section to see from what amount your coin can be withdrawn, and use your league share to work out the waiting time. For the later swap into euros, compare regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Prepare a wallet: set up your own wallet for the coin before you submit the request, and check the network. Suitable apps can be found in the software wallet comparison.
3. Keep records: log every withdrawal with its date and euro value so that you keep an eye on the exemption limit. Tax tools and portfolio trackers can help.

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

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TLDR

• Moody’s Ratings and Chainlink finished a pilot that sent credit ratings to several blockchains at the same time.
• The test used Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and Moody’s Token Integration Engine (TIE).
• The pilot ran on a testnet with sample data, and no real ratings were published onchain.
• Moody’s has rated or assessed more than 70 digital issuances since January 2017.
• A future live version would keep Moody’s existing publication and governance processes.

Moody’s Ratings has finished a test that sent credit ratings to several blockchain networks at the same time. The pilot used Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, known as CCIP, to move the data.

The two companies announced the results on November 10, 2026, in New York. The test ran in a controlled setting and did not involve any real ratings.

The pilot was built around a Moody’s tool called the Token Integration Engine, or TIE. The tool is designed to share credit ratings and related data for tokenized assets and other blockchain-based products.

Using CCIP, TIE sent ratings to both permissioned and permissionless blockchains at once. Permissioned networks limit who can take part, while permissionless networks are open to anyone.

A Test Run With No Live Ratings

The work was done on a testnet, which is a practice version of a blockchain used for trials. No actual rating actions were published onchain during the pilot.

No live rating processes were involved either. The companies used representative test data to check whether the systems could work together and deliver information correctly.

The setup is designed to handle future updates, including rating actions, with governance and lifecycle controls. Any future production version would keep Moody’s Ratings’ existing publication processes in place.

Fabian Astic, Global Head of Digital Economy at Moody’s Ratings, said tokenized finance is unlikely to sit on a single blockchain, platform or market system. He said investors will expect access to credit ratings no matter what technology supports an asset.

Astic added that the pilot explored how ratings could be offered across several networks. He said this was done while keeping the governance and publication processes that support confidence in the firm’s opinions.

Moody’s Track Record With Digital Bonds

Moody’s Ratings has more than 125 years of experience in credit ratings and research. The firm has also been reviewing digital assets for nearly a decade.

Between January 2017 and October 2026, Moody’s Ratings rated or assessed more than 70 digital issuances. These included digital bonds and tokenized funds.

The companies said that as more financial assets are issued on blockchains, market participants will need trusted credit information inside those systems. The pilot was set up to test one way of delivering that information.

Johann Eid, Chief Business Officer at Chainlink Labs, said credit ratings help institutions decide where to put capital and how to price risk. He said that as more assets move onchain, credit information has to move with them across chains and through every rating change.

Eid said the pilot sets up a key part of the foundation institutional capital needs to adopt tokenization at scale. Chainlink describes itself as the standard for onchain finance.

Chainlink provides data, cross-chain messaging and blockchain connectivity for financial firms and decentralized apps. Its users include Swift, Euroclear, Mastercard, Fidelity International, UBS, S&P Dow Jones Indices, FTSE Russell, WisdomTree and ANZ.

Crypto protocols such as Aave, Polymarket, Lido and Lighter also use its technology. The company says its standard has enabled tens of trillions of dollars in transaction value.

Chainlink uses a fee model where offchain and onchain revenue from enterprise adoption is converted into LINK tokens. Those tokens are stored in a strategic Chainlink Reserve.

The post Chainlink Crypto Network Helps Moody’s Test Blockchain Credit Ratings for Tokenized Assets appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Google’s Gemini Apps Privacy Hub says reviewed chats can be kept for up to three years after a user deletes them.
• A GitHub project says an October 16 edit reversed Google’s 2023 pledge that personal Gmail, Docs and Drive content is not seen by human reviewers.
• Gemini Connected Apps changed from opt-in to on by default across Gmail, Chat and Meet.
• A class action, Thele v. Google, claims the default-on setting violates California’s wiretapping law.
• The GitHub author is pseudonymous, and no independent lab has reproduced the reported behavior at scale.

Google users who delete their Gemini chats may not be erasing every copy. The company’s Gemini Apps Privacy Hub, updated on October 13, 2026, says reviewed conversations can be kept for up to three years after deletion.

The rule applies to personal accounts with Keep Activity turned on. A subset of those chats is read by human reviewers, including outside service providers.

The disclosure is drawing attention because of a separate change to how Gemini links to Gmail, Drive and other Google apps. Critics say the two changes together put personal email and files within reach of reviewers.

What Changed in Google’s Policy

In 2023, Google said personal content from Gmail, Docs and Drive “is not seen by human reviewers.” A GitHub documentation project says an October 16 edit to a Google help article reversed that pledge.

According to the project, connected Drive and email content now flows into human review pipelines. Google also switched Gemini Connected Apps from opt-in to on by default across Gmail, Chat and Meet.

That means users who never turned the feature on may already be covered. Google now warns users against connecting apps that hold “confidential information that you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see.”

The change has also reached the courts. A class action, Thele v. Google, argues the default-on activation violates the California Invasion of Privacy Act, a state wiretapping law.

How the Retrieval Works

The GitHub project is titled “Documentation of Gemini File Leaking Behavior.” Its author says Gemini pulls data “autonomously in background conversation without explicit @Drive or @Gmail tags.”

The author also describes the behavior as probabilistic. The same question can return different data from one session to the next, which makes it hard to track what was exposed.

The project lists four possible outcomes. A query may return nothing, a short metadata summary, or a “2–4 sentence exact quotation” containing “sensitive PII, account details.”

In the fourth outcome, the “complete, unredacted text” of a document enters the chat. That content could then become part of a conversation selected for review.

The suggested test is simple. A user with an internet bill in a connected Gmail account casually mentions they may be paying too much for internet service.

The author also questions Google’s privacy filters. The project says Google’s regex and named entity recognition scrubbers “cannot sufficiently deidentify narrative data.”

The issue reaches into the workplace as well. About 67% of people using corporate devices run personal Google accounts on them, and a Workspace license does not close that gap after the fact.

The three-year retention window is longer than most corporate data retention policies. It is also longer than the periods used by competing AI providers, according to the report.

The GitHub author is pseudonymous. No independent lab has yet published a reproduction of the four-outcome behavior at scale.

The post Deleted Gemini Chats Can Stay With Google Reviewers for Up to Three Years appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• October CPI rose 0.4% and core CPI rose 0.3%, both above forecasts.
• Core inflation matched the 0.3% level Fed Governor Christopher Waller flagged for a possible larger rate hike.
• Bitcoin fell to an intraday low of about $72,836 before recovering near $73,300.
• About $178 million in long crypto positions were liquidated within an hour of the report.
• Analysts say a sustained break below $73,000 could open a path toward $69,000 or $70,000.

Bitcoin dropped below $73,000 on November 10 after US inflation data came in hotter than expected. The report hit a level that one Federal Reserve official had named as a possible trigger for a larger rate hike in December.

The October Consumer Price Index rose 0.4% from the previous month, above the 0.3% forecast. Core CPI, which leaves out food and energy, rose 0.3% against expectations of 0.2%.

Inflation Meets the Fed’s Warning Line

Before the report, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he would back a 25-basis-point rate increase in December even if inflation cooled. He also said a stronger move may be needed if core prices rose 0.3% or more from September.

Waller added that a 50-basis-point increase should be considered in that case. October’s core reading landed right on that 0.3% line.

Reuters reported that market odds for a 50-basis-point hike climbed to nearly 15% by midmorning. A quarter-point increase at the December 8 to 9 meeting was already seen as almost certain.

Core CPI has now risen 0.3% for three months in a row, following similar gains in August and September. Shelter costs rose 0.3% in October and made up more than 30% of the monthly increase.

Food prices rose 0.5%, while energy costs climbed 0.7% after a 5.2% jump in September. Headline CPI had risen 0.6% in September.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not publish a yearly inflation figure. The 2025 government shutdown stopped the collection of October 2025 price data, leaving no base for an annual comparison.

Bitcoin’s Price Floor Under Pressure

Bitcoin traded near $74,264 before the release and fell to about $73,494 within five minutes. It later reached an intraday low of about $72,836 before recovering to around $73,294 by 11:01 a.m. ET.

The $73,000 level has history behind it. Matt Mena, senior crypto research strategist at 21Shares, said it sits near Bitcoin’s pre-election 2024 all-time high and its April 2025 lows.

Mena said a sustained break below that level could send Bitcoin toward $69,000, near its 2021 cycle high. Bitget analyst Lewis Huang pointed to the 200-day moving average near $73,200 as a key support to watch.

About $178 million in long crypto positions were liquidated within an hour of the CPI release, according to TokenPost. CoinDesk reported about $1.1 billion in futures liquidations in the 24 hours to November 9, before the data came out.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs saw about $201 million in net outflows on November 9, their third straight day of withdrawals. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust recorded $213.2 million in redemptions, partly offset by inflows into other funds.

Other tokens also fell. Ethereum touched about $2,006 and traded near $2,027, while XRP fell to about $1.0336 before trading near $1.05.

Solana traded around $82.49 after touching an intraday low near $81.59. It was down about 5.2% over 24 hours.

Mena said a break of Bitcoin’s 50-week moving average could pressure Ethereum’s $2,000 support, with $1,800 the next level. If Bitcoin holds $73,000 and stocks keep rebounding, 21Shares sees a possible retest of $78,000 and a path to $85,000 by year-end.

November has been Bitcoin’s strongest month historically, with an average return of 34.4% since 2010. Paul Howard, senior director at Wincent, said that without a shift in policy, regulation or institutional flows, a gradual downward drift is more likely than a rally toward $100,000.

The post Bitcoin Slips Below $73,000 as Core Inflation Hits Fed’s Rate Hike Warning Line appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Banco Santander and Deutsche Bank are among 21 firms backing Project Faro.
• The group has committed about $270 million to cover roughly five years of operating costs.
• A US dollar stablecoin is planned for the first half of 2027, with a euro token next.
• The venture is still searching for a CEO and has not picked a token name or blockchain.
• Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC hold about 85% of the $290 billion stablecoin market.

Project Faro, a stablecoin venture backed by 21 global financial institutions, has funding in place for about five years of operations. It still has no chief executive.

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Banco Santander and Deutsche Bank are among the firms that have committed around $270 million to the project, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The funding details came from people familiar with private talks.

The banks have not disclosed how much each member has committed. The money is meant to cover operating costs while the group prepares to launch a US dollar stablecoin in the first half of 2027.

The consortium plans to operate globally. Its backers say the tokens could benefit clients by offering a trusted form of digital money.

From 10 Banks to 21 Members

The project began in October 2025, when 10 international banks said they were exploring a new form of digital money. The plan was a token backed one-to-one by reserves and available on public blockchains.

That first group included Banco Santander, Bank of America, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, MUFG Bank, TD Bank and UBS. Membership later grew to 19 institutions as the payment plans developed.

In September, the group said it would set up a company by the end of the year. Barclays and BNP Paribas were not part of that update, while Lloyds and BBVA had joined.

The group now counts 21 members. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Fidelity Investments, UBS, Lloyds Banking Group, Capital One, BBVA and MUFG Bank are among the participants, with firms from the United States, Europe and Asia represented.

The company is expected to be incorporated in the United States. Its public name has not been finalized, and Project Faro is an internal name.

What Is Still Undecided

Several key details remain open. The group has not named the token or chosen the blockchain where it will be issued.

The members have also not announced approval from regulators. They plan to follow the US GENIUS Act and Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets rules where those apply.

The first token will focus on cross-border payments and digital asset settlements. It will serve wholesale, institutional and retail markets.

After the dollar token, the group plans to expand into stablecoins tied to other G7 currencies. A euro stablecoin is the next priority, though no launch date has been set.

The venture will enter a market worth about $290 billion, according to DefiLlama data. Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC together hold about 85% of that total, and the new token would compete with both.

Some members are also building their own digital payment tools. Wells Fargo has been preparing for stablecoin services and has created tokenized deposit facilities that allow “continuous payments” for corporate and commercial clients.

Earlier announcements from the group set out its plans but did not include funding totals. Bloomberg’s report on Tuesday added the $270 million figure and the five-year timeframe.

For now, leadership remains the main open task. Project Faro is searching for a chief executive to run the company as it works toward its 2027 launch.

The post Banks Fund Stablecoin Venture Project Faro for Five Years, Still Seek a CEO appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Google DeepMind says two AI agents reproduced a known 1024-bit RSA cryptography computation in three days and 22 hours.
• The human researcher sent about 20 messages, mostly approvals, and wrote no code.
• The agents wrote about 33,500 lines of code and ran 336 distributed experiments.
• The run used 391 CPU core-years, compared with 1,380 for an earlier team on the same instance.
• The papers say the results do not threaten 2048-bit or larger RSA systems.

A researcher at Google DeepMind picked a math problem, set the rules and then mostly stepped aside. Over nearly four days, two AI agents handled the coding, the computing and the debugging, according to a working paper from the company.

The human sent about 20 messages during the run, and most of them were approvals. The paper says the researcher wrote no code, launched no jobs and diagnosed no faults.

The task was a known 1024-bit cryptography computation tied to RSA digital signatures. It was a sandboxed reproduction of a benchmark instance that another team had already solved.

DeepMind researcher Pushmeet Kohli announced the work on Nov. 6. The papers state that the results do not threaten deployed systems that use 2048-bit or larger RSA keys.

How the Work Was Split

The researcher chose the problem, the instance and the limits on a simulated signing service. The researcher also approved the conditions for steps that could not be undone.

A supervisor agent kept track of the design, budgets and checks. An executor agent wrote and tested code, launched distributed jobs and fixed failures.

The supervisor also brought in a specialist sub-agent to speed up one linear algebra step. Across the run, the agents exchanged 218 messages and ran 336 distributed experiments.

The agents produced about 33,500 new lines of code. From design to the verified result, the work took three days and 22 hours.

The setup had several stages. A separate program that held the modulus factorization answered roughly 4 billion advance queries, then was withdrawn before the target was chosen.

The agents then computed the mathematical root needed for a new signature without any more queries. They did not recover a private key.

A Bug Caught Along the Way

The first root the agents computed was wrong. The cause was a 32-bit offset that overflowed.

A correctness check flagged the error. The agents found and fixed it without repeating the advance signing queries.

The completed computation used 391 CPU core-years, according to the paper. An earlier team needed a rounded 1,380 core-years on the same instance and algorithm, which works out to about 3.5 times less CPU use.

That figure excludes about 330 reserved GPU-hours, of which about 100 were busy, plus 7.5 core-years of probes and rehearsals. The two totals also come from different hardware, so the comparison is not like-for-like.

The earlier academic effort took about five months. DeepMind’s run took 3.2 days from its first full-scale sieving job to the verified root, peaking at about 300,000 CPU cores and 16 GPUs, and the authors credit parallelism for most of that gap.

The run did not test the paper’s new algorithm for more restricted signing access at full cryptographic size. A separate Fan Factories paper estimates about 30-fold lower costs per extra 1024-bit target after shared precomputation, but no fan factory has been built.

The working paper names the main models only as A and B. It does not link to a public code repository, which limits outside comparison.

The post Google DeepMind Agents Cut CPU Use 3.5 Times on Known 1024-Bit RSA Benchmark appeared first on Blockonomi.

The higher-than-expected CPI numbers for October resulted in another major leg down for bitcoin yesterday, with the asset plunging below $73,000, thus charting a near-three-month low.

The altcoins shed tons of value once again, and ZEC leads the pack. The privacy token has tanked the most over the past 24 hours, dropping below $1,000 for the first time since early September.

BTC Keeps Struggling

It was just a week ago when the markets rebounded from the midterm election shock, in which the Democrats won decisively on numerous fronts. Bitcoin had dropped from $78,000 to $75,600 before it skyrocketed to $81,000 as the uncertainty seemingly vanished.

However, that rally was short-lived, and the bears were back in control less than 24 hours later. The so-called Thursday crash drove Wall Street and crypto south hard, with BTC plummeting from almost $81,000 to $75,200. It dipped further on Friday to $74,800 before it recovered some ground during the weekend and remained close to $76,000.

Monday began with another nosedive, taking BTC to $73,600. All eyes turned to the US CPI on Tuesday, with bitcoin remaining close to $74,000 ahead of the announcement. Once the MoM data came out higher than expected, bitcoin crashed further to under $73,000 for the first time since mid-August.

Although it has rebounded by a grand since then, it still struggles below $74K. Its market cap is well below $1.5 trillion on CMC, but its dominance over the alts has increased slightly to 60.5%.

ZEC Leads the Pack

Zcash is the poorest performer over the past 24 hours. The privacy coin has tanked by 13% and sits below $1,000 as of now. Its main rival, on the other hand, is up by 5.6%. As a result, XMR sits above $575. BTW is the other big gainer today, surging by 10% to $1.08. AVAX has added another 4% of value and trades close to $8.7.

In contrast, most other larger-cap alts are in the red. ETH has defended the $2,000 support, but it’s still 1.6% down on the day to $2.055. BNB is down to $680, while XRP has tanked to $1.06. SOL, DOGE, HYPE, UNI, QNT, and RAIN have posted losses as well.

The total crypto market cap has declined by another $40 billion in a day, and it’s down to $2.450 trillion on CMC.

The post Zcash (ZEC) Dumps Below $1K, Bitcoin (BTC) Struggles at $74K After CPI Reading: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

When BTC heads south as violently as it did over the past week or so, analysts are trying to determine what caused the calamity and what’s next.

On the surface, there are always some evident reasons, such as the building macro pressure, uncertainty after the midterm elections for crypto, and the Bitcoin ETF outflows, which neared $1.3 billion last week alone, and have continued as the new week began.

But we will focus on more unexpected factors in this article that could be behind this major leg down. Those that remain behind the scenes.

Liquidity and Longs

The first factor came from stablecoins, which have helped finance virtually every major crypto rally this cycle. CryptoQuant, though, highlighted that USDT supply has contracted sharply, with its market cap falling by around $6.6 billion in the past couple of months. Its recent research pointed out that this decline is more than twice the one seen in December 2022 after the collapse of FTX.

Since stablecoins effectively represent deployable dollar liquidity inside crypto, the shrinking supply means that one important source of marginal demand disappears.

Joao Wednes referred to his Long & Short Liquidation Exposure Within ±10% metric, which showed approximately $580 million of longs exposed to liquidation versus less than $150 million of shorts if BTC moves 10% in either direction. He argued that such an imbalance creates significantly more downside liquidation fuel than upside short-squeeze fuel.

The results can be quite devastating, as falling prices liquidate leveraged longs, force traders to close positions and create additional selling, while the next layer of leveraged positions comes under pressure.

IPO Pulls Capital Away?

Perhaps the most unexpected theory involves the gigantic Anthropic public listing right around the corner. Popular analyst Crypto Rover noted that BTC fell almost 30% around the run-up to SpaceX’s IPO earlier this year and has now declined by 16%-17% ahead of Anthropic’s expected Nasdaq debut on November 19.

The company behind Claude is seeking to raise as much as $64.4 billion through the offering, making it one of the largest IPOs ever. A separate private placement could take the capital raised alongside the listing above $90 billion.

The theory is that exceptionally large IPOs compete with other risk assets for investor liquidity and attention, temporarily drawing capital away from markets such as crypto.

Adding the growing inflation fears, Fed uncertainty, and liquidity already under pressure, Crypto Rover concluded that the timing “couldn’t be worse.”

“The big question now is whether Bitcoin is repeating the same pattern,” he noted.

The post 3 Surprising Factors Behind Bitcoin’s Brutal $8K Weekly Drop appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has said that The Open Network’s native GRAM token is undervalued and predicted that it will eventually rank among CoinMarketCap’s three largest cryptocurrencies.

This was after GRAM gained about 8% on November 11, while pretty much every other asset above it, including Bitcoin and the top 10 altcoins by market cap, traded lower.

Durov Says GRAM Is the Only Coin Rising in a Red Market

“Crypto’s a sea of red. Only GRAM is up +8%,” Durov wrote in a post on X. This was accompanied by a market snapshot showing coins like LTC, AVAX, SUI, and HBAR, all losing between 1.70% and 3.57% while GRAM was trading at approximately $1.12, with an 8.65% gain and a market cap of $3.21 billion.

At the time of writing, figures from CoinGecko had the former Toncoin changing hands near $1.14, with a market capitalization of approximately $3.26 billion and a 50% jump in trading volume in the last 24 hours to reach $113 million.

Durov attributed the performance to the token’s connection to an established social platform:

“No surprise there. It’s the only coin built into a real social ecosystem.”

The Telegram founder was even more bullish about GRAM’s longer-term position, declaring that it was “still ridiculously undervalued” and that it “belongs in CMC’s top 3.”

That performance came as BTC and ETH struggled, with the former hovering below $74,000 after shaving off about 1% from its price in the last day and the latter just above $2,000, having dipped by about 2.4% over the same period.

It was just as bad with other heavyweights such as Ripple’s XRP and Solana (SOL), which had both shaved off 3.5% from their prices in 24 hours, while Zcash (ZEC) was the worst hit among the top ten, plunging by almost 12% in that time.

GRAM Still Facing a Much Larger Recovery

Despite GRAM’s daily advance, its broader performance figures paint a less optimistic picture than Durov’s post portrayed. The coin is still down nearly 8% across two weeks and almost 21% lower than where it was 30 days ago.

Across the last 12 months, the world’s #29-ranked crypto by market cap (CG) has lost over 46% of its value, keeping it about 86% below its all-time high price of $8.25 attained in July 2024.

Market conditions have also not been all smooth, as October’s US Consumer Price Index came in above expectations, with headline inflation going up by 0.4% and core inflation increasing by 0.3%, which helped push BTC below $74,000 as expectations of another Federal Reserve rate increase intensified.

The post Pavel Durov Calls GRAM ‘Ridiculously Undervalued’ After 8% Surge appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are among the banks that have committed about $270 million to a joint stablecoin company, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Banco Santander and Deutsche Bank have also joined, according to people familiar with the matter. That money is meant to cover five years of operations at the new company, which will issue a dollar-denominated stablecoin and is expected to be incorporated in the US, the sources said.

Participants call the initiative Project Faro. The project is still searching for a chief executive, and its final name remains under discussion. Goldman and Citi referred questions to a project spokesperson, who declined to comment.

Ten Founders Became 21

Project Faro dates back to October 10, 2025, when ten banks said they were jointly exploring a 1:1 reserve-backed form of digital money on public blockchains, focused on G7 currencies. Barclays and BNP Paribas were in that group, alongside the four banks Bloomberg named.

On September 1, the group expanded to 21 institutions and committed to set up a company in the second half of 2026, subject to closing conditions. The new members included Wells Fargo, Fidelity Investments, Lloyds Banking Group and Standard Bank. Barclays and BNP Paribas were not on the September list.

The consortium plans a dollar token first, with a market launch targeted for the first half of 2027. After that, the group’s priority is a euro version. The group said the product will serve wholesale, institutional, and retail markets, including cross-border payments and digital asset settlement. It intends to comply with the US GENIUS Act and the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) rules, where they apply.

Banks Back Competing Projects

Bank of America, Citi, and Wells Fargo also back a separate blockchain payment effort. Those three banks were building a tokenized deposit network called The Bridge through the Clearing House, the Wall Street Journal reported in June. The report put that network’s launch in the first half of 2027.

European banks run a separate euro project through Qivalis, an Amsterdam company backed by 37 banks across 15 countries. On October 14, Qivalis said the Dutch central bank had authorized it as an electronic money institution.

New entrants have struggled to dent the lead of Tether and Circle, Bloomberg noted. Tether’s USDT has about $176 billion in circulation, according to DefiLlama. Circle’s USDC is second at about $70 billion. All dollar-pegged stablecoins tracked by DefiLlama total about $293 billion.

The post Goldman, Citi Among Banks Committing $270M to Fund Joint Stablecoin Issuer for Five Years appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The cryptocurrency market is once again in a dire state, with bitcoin dumping from over $81,000 a week ago to a multi-month low of under $73,000 yesterday. Today’s rebound attempt has seen little success.

While essentially all major assets are down since their explosive rallies after the midterm elections last Wednesday, Ripple’s cross-border token has taken the correction harder than most.

Why So?

Current data from CoinMarketCap shows that BTC’s weekly declines stand at just over 5%, while ETH has tanked by nearly 10%. SOL is down by a similar percentage to ETH, while HYPE has plummeted by 14.6%. Ripple’s XRP, though, has shed 17% of its value, dropping to $1.06 as of press time. Moreover, the asset slumped to $1.03 yesterday, which brought its losses to over 23% at one point. XRP has lost the fifth position in terms of market cap to USDC as a result.

Popular crypto analyst EGRAG CRYPTO flagged this underperformance by XRP and outlined why he believes the token has fallen much harder than most larger-cap digital assets. He attributed 20% of the blame to OG wallets disposing of their holdings, commenting, “early holders potentially taking profits and rotating into other coins.”

30% of the blame went to leverage flush: “Long liquidations and weak buying demand accelerating the crash.” The remaining 50% was attributed to market manipulation, though. EGRAG argued that major players are deliberately hunting liquidity at lower levels to “shake out weak hands.”

He admitted that these are his personal estimates, and outlined $1.00-$1.04 as the critical stabilization zone that XRP has to maintain to potentially reverse its trajectory. If it does, then he predicted a surge to the $1.15-$1.25 cluster, which XRP must reclaim to stage a more notable recovery.

XRP ETFs Bleed

CryptoPotato reported on Monday morning that the spot XRP ETFs basically turned into a ghost town during the previous business week, with demand disappearing in four out of the five trading days. The landscape worsened on November 9 and 10 as investors started pulling funds out of the ETFs.

Monday was particularly painful, with $10.42 million leaving the financial vehicle; the most since May 9. Tuesday saw another $7.62 million in net outflows, bringing the total to over $18 million in just two days. The cumulative net inflows have dropped from ATH levels of $1.81 billion to $1.79 billion.

The post Why Has XRP Plunged Harder Than Most? Analyst Blames Manipulation appeared first on CryptoPotato.