Amazon's potential acquisition of Decart could reshape AI hardware dynamics, impacting competition and innovation in the tech industry.

The post Amazon in talks to acquire AI startup Decart for about $7 billion appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Stripe's singularity declaration highlights the transformative impact of AI on business creation and economic structures, signaling a new era.

The post John Collison says Stripe considers January 1, 2026, the start of the singularity appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

This breach undermines trust in hardware wallets, highlighting vulnerabilities in supply chains and the need for enhanced security measures.

The post Hackers reportedly drain up to $93 million through compromised Ledger reseller appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The intensified military operations in Yemen may shift regional power dynamics, impacting market perceptions and future strategic developments.

The post Yemen government claims 1,732 strikes, over 900 Houthis neutralized appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

As AI costs rise unpredictably, companies centralize budget control, potentially stifling innovation and prioritizing proven over experimental tools.

The post Finance executives tighten budgets as AI costs surge appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Life Insurer Meanwhile Raises $37.5M as Wealthy Families Look to Pass On Their BTC

Meanwhile, the first life insurer licensed to operate entirely in Bitcoin, has raised $37.5 million in new funding from its existing investors, the company announced.

Bain Capital Crypto led the round, with participation from Haun Ventures, Framework Ventures, Pantera Capital, Apollo, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures and Morgan Creek Digital. The raise brings Meanwhile’s total funding to more than $180 million. Sam Altman is also among its backers.

The company said the round follows a surge in demand for its Bitcoin life insurance policies outside the US, particularly in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, amid broader macroeconomic instability.

“Wealthy families around the world already hold Bitcoin. What they haven’t had is a regulated way to pass it on,” Zac Townsend, Meanwhile’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.  

“Brokers came to us because their clients kept asking. This round lets us keep up with them.”

In early 2026, Meanwhile launched BTC Life 1-Pay, a single-premium whole life policy aimed at high-net-worth clients outside the US. It is the company’s second product line, after BTC 10-Pay, which is designed for US taxpayers.

Under BTC Life 1-Pay, a client pays one premium in Bitcoin and receives a guaranteed death benefit in Bitcoin for life. The policy’s value grows in Bitcoin, and after the first year the owner can borrow up to 90% of it, with no repayment schedule and no margin calls.

Policies can be owned by individuals, trusts or companies, which the company says makes them suited to succession and estate planning.

Since launch, Meanwhile has signed 15 brokers serving wealthy families, including in Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and Switzerland. Partners include Lioner, an insurance, trust and family office group with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Zurich, and Apeiron Group, a marketplace for high-net-worth life insurance.

“We’re reaching a turning point where more high-net-worth clients are asking not just how to hold Bitcoin and digital assets, but how to plan around them and ultimately transfer that wealth to the next generation,” said Justin Man, CEO of Apeiron Group. Digital assets.

Meanwhile said its net long-term underwriting income has already passed last year’s total and is on track to more than double in 2026. The company did not disclose specific figures.

“Meanwhile owns every layer of a regulated life insurer and builds it like an AI-enabled startup,” said Stefan Cohen, partner at Bain Capital Crypto. “The growth this year proves the model, and we’re glad to back them again.” 

The company’s operating entity, Meanwhile Insurance Bitcoin (Bermuda) Limited, holds the first Class IILT license granted by the Bermuda Monetary Authority. It received the license in July 2024 after two years in the regulator’s sandbox.

The insurer’s balance sheet, reserves and audited financial statements are all denominated in Bitcoin. Policyholder Bitcoin is held with regulated institutional custodians.

This post Bitcoin Life Insurer Meanwhile Raises $37.5M as Wealthy Families Look to Pass On Their BTC first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

‘We Know Where It Is’: Treasury Secretary Threatens To Freeze $1B of Iran’s Crypto

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the American authorities will soon seize $1 billion in crypto from Iran. 

Speaking on Newsmax’s NPolicy Summit in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Bessent added that economic sanctions on the Middle Eastern country were working. 

Iran has been using bitcoin — and other cryptocurrencies — to skirt around U.S. sanctions. The U.S. in April started targeting crypto wallets linked to the Iranian regime, Bessent said at the time. 

“What we have done has never been seen before,” Bessent said Thursday on Iranian sanctions. 

“We’re probably going to seize $1 billion of crypto this week,” he continued. “We know where it is. We are isolating them. We did have a maximum pressure campaign, now we have an absolute isolation campaign and it’s working.”

Bessent didn’t reveal what cryptocurrencies the U.S. will seize or how. 

It would be very hard — if not impossible — for the U.S. to freeze Iran’s bitcoin unless it keeps it on a centralized exchange. 

Bitcoin, being censorship resistant, cannot be frozen. But many other cryptocurrencies, including Tether’s USDT, can. Bessent previously said the feds had seized Iran’s crypto in the form of the popular stablecoin. 

Iran started a bitcoin-backed insurance service for its counties shipping companies earlier this year.

The Financial Times last month reported that the Middle Eastern country was using bitcoin to settle cross-border transactions through Iranian crypto exchanges after the central bank advised its countrymen to do anything necessary to help the economy.    

U.S. President Donald Trump revived his “maximum pressure” campaign weeks after returning to office. A national security memorandum signed in February 2025 put the Treasury on a sustained campaign against Iran’s shadow banking, money laundering and sanctions-evasion networks.

This post ‘We Know Where It Is’: Treasury Secretary Threatens To Freeze $1B of Iran’s Crypto first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Here’s How Not To Screw up Your Bitcoin Privacy

Just one transaction can compromise years of discreet Bitcoin activity, Cake Wallet’s chief operating officer has warned. 

Speaking on the Bitcoin Rails podcast this week, activist Seth for Privacy talked about different ways of protecting one’s privacy when using Bitcoin and said that focusing on privacy was a must for the West. 

Bitcoin privacy is a hot topic again ever since the developers of private coin mixer Samourai Wallet went on trial last year and were subsequently imprisoned. 

But just this week, the U.S. Department of Treasury scrapped two long-stalled crypto surveillance proposals, handing a major win to privacy advocates and the digital asset industry.

“If you ever spend your no-KYC coins with one of your KYC coins — which if you just let the wallet do its thing, it could do because it doesn’t know the difference — you immediately connect all of the non-KYC Bitcoin that you spend in that with your identity,” Seth said, referring to UTXO management, also called “coin control” by some wallets. 

Bitcoin wallets don’t hold a single balance but a collection of separate unspent transaction outputs — UTXOs — each one a discrete “coin” from a specific past transaction. 

When you send a payment larger than any one UTXO, the wallet picks several and combines them as inputs to the same transaction — an easy mistake to make, Seth highlighted. 

Seth added that unlike in the global South, where people have experienced more oppressive states, citizens in the West will need to “feel pain” in order to realize how important privacy is.

Still, he added that attitudes were changing and people were getting more serious about protecting their privacy. 

“It has been shifting, in the last five or six years a lot of people — even in the West — are starting to think [privacy] really matters, we really need to think about this seriously now,” he said. 

Cake Wallet is a privacy-oriented, self-custody, open-source wallet. The wallet earlier this year integrated Bitcoin’s Lightning Network into its platform. 

Using the second layer solution is not only faster and cheaper, it also offers more privacy than Bitcoin’s main chain. 

While Cake Wallet supports other cryptocurrencies, including privacy coin Monero, Seth for Privacy added that he’d love it if the digital coin didn’t exist. 

“If Bitcoin’s privacy got good enough that you could use it and have at least almost as good privacy as Monero without massive hoops to jump through, and Monero ceased to exist, that’s fine,” he said. 

“I would much rather the thing that more people use has better privacy than a more niche tool that has perfect privacy, and that’s something that less people are using because it’s less well known.”

This post Here’s How Not To Screw up Your Bitcoin Privacy first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin ETFs Shed $729M in Two Days as Investors Reverse Course

U.S. investors this week reversed course, cashing out $729 million from spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds — putting downward pressure on the leading cryptocurrency’s price. 

Funds managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, and ARK 21-Shares all experienced significant outflows on Wednesday and Thursday, according to data from Farside Investors. 

Investors had started the week by selling close to $90 million in shares but then bought nearly $119 million on Tuesday. 

The rest of the week has seen outflows following news that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates. Other negative news includes the price of Brent crude jumping following renewed attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. 

U.S. President Trump also hinted that talks with Iran weren’t bearing fruit — a sign war in the Middle East could continue. 

Bitcoin’s price recently stood at a little over $82,688, down more than 3% over a seven-day period. The leading cryptocurrency has rebounded slightly over the past day, jumping nearly 2% over 24 hours. 

Still, the coin was fast closing in on $90,000 last week. Investors are expecting decent returns as the month dubbed “Uptober” has historically delivered for bitcoin speculators. 

The price of bitcoin has been particularly sensitive to geopolitical headwinds this year — especially since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, leading to an oil price surge. 

Oil prices going up tend to lead investors to bet on the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. And with higher interest rates comes less liquidity for the price of bitcoin to do well. 

Still, that’s not always the case: the Fed last month talked tough on getting inflation down and raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point and bitcoin’s price rose in the following days. 

Bitcoin’s price is 34% below the all-time high of $126,080 it touched in October. It has spent most of 2026 in a bear market but analysts are now increasingly pointing to evidence of a bull market following a rally in August and September. 

This post Bitcoin ETFs Shed $729M in Two Days as Investors Reverse Course first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Ledger Warns Buyers Not to Set Up Wallets From Reseller After Users Report Losses

Hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has said that it is investigating loss of user funds after customers in South East Asia reported issues with devices bought from a reseller. 

The Paris-based company on Friday advised customers who’d bought from vendor CryptoBilis within the last 90 days to not set up their devices. 

Ledger did not reveal how much money users had lost but one blockchain investigator, Specter, wrote on X that he’d traced theft addresses following social media posts and that over $86 million had been lost. 

The issue comes following a number of data breaches this year in the crypto world and a huge hack of popular Coldcard hardware wallet devices in July. 

“Ledger is investigating reports of loss of funds from users in South East Asia who purchased products from a reseller named CryptoBilis,” Ledger said via its support X account. 

Ledger added that it had asked CryptoBilis to pause all sales and shipments of Ledger devices.

“If you have set up your Ledger device, consider moving assets to a new Ledger signer (with new seed). We will continue to inform customers of updates as the investigation progresses,” the company said. 

In a statement to Bitcoin Magazine, Ledger said that based on the information to date, the incident is isolated specifically to this reseller in this specific market. 

“No reports were made of products purchased directly from Ledger, and Ledger’s infrastructure, systems and services were not compromised,” the company added. 

CryptoBilis is a Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based hardware wallet vendor, according to its website. The company did not immediately respond to questions from Bitcoin Magazine. 

The crypto industry is still reeling after hackers in July were able to steal close to $120 million in bitcoin from Coldcard users. 

The products, made by Canadian company Coinkite, had a firmware bug which led to faulty seed generation, allowing hackers to essentially guess investor seedphrases. 

Galaxy Research said in the months following the attack various attackers were able to exploit the bug independently. 

In a separate incident, hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor last month reported that close to 81,000 customers had their details leaked after its third-party fulfillment partner had data stolen. 

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

This post Ledger Warns Buyers Not to Set Up Wallets From Reseller After Users Report Losses first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Optimism is expanding its role as the operator of Ethereum-based chains for other brands. Unichain, Uniswap Labs' Ethereum layer-2 chain, plans to transfer its production sequencing, public node access, monitoring and incident response to Optimism under its October 9 migration announcement.

The planned testnet move on Oct. 13 and mainnet move on Oct. 29 extend the operating strategy set out by Jing Wang in Optimism's Ink announcement: product teams build their applications and ecosystems while Optimism runs the infrastructure beneath them. Soneium's September agreement follows the same division of labor as Ink's earlier June plan; both chains use the OP Stack.

For users, the consequence reaches beyond who answers an outage call. A common provider can bring protocol expertise and coordinated maintenance, but it also becomes a common organizational dependency. Each chain's deployed contracts determine whether users can get a transaction included and recover funds during a provider failure.

Unichain moves from support toward operations

Unichain already had an OP Enterprise relationship. Optimism's enterprise introduction, in its version updated July 31, says Uniswap Labs operates Unichain with the Mission Critical add-on. Read alongside the October announcement, the change is an expansion from support into responsibility for production operations.

Uniswap Labs says the migration preserves the chain ID, contracts, balances, applications and Uniswap v2, v3 and v4 deployments. It also says Unichain remains a Stage 1 rollup with permissionless fault proofs and its existing contract-upgrade governance. The production operator changes while the chain and its upgrade authorities remain in place.

Soneium's Sept. 30 announcement assigns the Optimism Foundation and OP Labs support for deployment, sequencer operations, node infrastructure, upgrades, monitoring and incident response. Soneium keeps its roadmap and engineering involvement, including ongoing work on the chain itself and its Tokenized IP products. The announcement does not specify a cutover date.

Ink offers an earlier version of the same strategy. In her June 23 announcement, Wang described an arrangement in which the Ink Foundation could concentrate on ecosystem growth while Optimism operated and improved the network. The plan targeted an August cutover and included mainnet and testnet sequencers, RPC, the explorer, monitoring and incident response.

A later Optimism guide published Sept. 7 describes Ink's infrastructure as operated by the Foundation through OP Labs.

The reliability promise has an operational price

OP Enterprise is Optimism's chain infrastructure and support service. Its tier definitions explain why the operating model matters. Under Self Managed, the customer runs the infrastructure and controls its sequencer and nodes; Optimism supplies support and monitoring. Under Fully Managed, OP Labs runs the sequencer, batcher, proposer and chain infrastructure, and handles security patching.

Those components perform different jobs. The sequencer orders transactions, the batcher submits transaction data to Ethereum, and the proposer submits claims about the resulting chain state. Moving those day-to-day roles to the protocol developer can reduce the work a partner coordinates internally. Sequencing, data submission and state proposals become provider responsibilities; Ethereum settlement and the contracts that accept proofs remain separate.

Soneium's agreement promises a 99.9% monthly uptime target and around-the-clock on-call incident response. The Mission Critical add-on advertises a 99.95% uptime SLA, a 15-minute initial response to the most serious incidents and status updates every 30 minutes. Unichain's earlier relationship explicitly included that add-on.

These are service commitments, not measured improvements in uptime. The 15-minute target covers an initial response; recovery can take longer.

The rationale is a direct organizational path between operating a chain, identifying a protocol problem and applying a patch. The trade-off is that distinct branded chains increasingly rely on the same organization for sequencing, maintenance and incident handling.

A provider-wide process problem could affect several customers. The announcements establish a shared operator but do not disclose whether cloud regions, signing keys or other infrastructure are shared, so correlated technical failures remain a possibility rather than an observed outcome.

Inclusion survives sequencing failure; exits differ

Ethereum supplies a fallback below the managed service. Current L2BEAT assessments separately list forced transaction inclusion through Ethereum for Unichain, Soneium and Ink, with up to a 12-hour delay.

The OP Stack derivation specification and forced-transaction guide describe how it works: a user submits a deposit transaction to the chain's portal contract on Ethereum. When the sequencing window expires, nodes can derive blocks containing those transactions without normal sequencer batches. A forced transaction can initiate a withdrawal.

That preserves a route around an unavailable or censoring sequencer. Money becomes available on Ethereum only after the withdrawal's separate proposal and proof conditions are met, with permissioned dependencies still possible along the way.

L2BEAT rates Unichain and Ink as Stage 1 and says other actors with sufficient funds can propose state roots. Their canonical exit paths permit others to do the usual proposer's work, provided funded actors submit accepted roots and the applicable proof and withdrawal conditions are met.

Soneium has a different dependency. Its currently respected super permissioned game has no functional onchain dispute process, according to L2BEAT, and only whitelisted proposers can publish roots. If those proposers fail, withdrawals freeze. Forced inclusion can get a transaction into the derived chain; it cannot supply the missing withdrawal proposal authority.

The withdrawal assessments for Unichain, Ink and Soneium also retain a seven-day proof-maturity period for all three chains. Unichain and Ink have additional settlement-related conditions: at least three-and-a-half days for root settlement and three-and-a-half days after settlement. Proof inclusion can precede settlement, so those clocks should not be mechanically added into a universal withdrawal time. Soneium retains withdrawal delays despite its respected game lacking an onchain challenge process.

Optimism operations do not erase upgrade powers

Production operations, contract-upgrade authority and asset custody are separate questions. Uniswap says its governance arrangement persists. L2BEAT's current assessments show joint Foundation and Security Council approval for upgrades on all three chains, with no delay on regular upgrades and no guaranteed exit window against those instant powers.

An Ethereum fallback during sequencer failure therefore does not guarantee an opportunity to leave before an unwanted contract change. Stage 1 preserves meaningful operator-independent paths, but retains powerful upgrade authorities.

Unichain's promised native interoperability remains a future feature. Soneium's announcement expressly excludes interoperability. Ink's June plan describes one-day withdrawals as a proof-system rollout, while its current withdrawal assessment still retains seven-day proof maturity.

CryptoSlate's September Upgrade 20 coverage examined the technical preparation for future interoperability. Outsourcing production operations is a separate development, with its own question of who maintains the chain and handles failures.

The next dated milestones are Unichain's Oct. 13 testnet and Oct. 29 mainnet migrations. Their completion would extend Optimism's strategy from selling protocol support to operating another established production chain. The reliability case will then depend on performance in service, while users' recourse will continue to depend on the specific inclusion, proposal and upgrade rules beneath each brand.

The post Optimism’s Unichain deal will put more chains under one operator appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Some Aave loans backed by yield-bearing collateral had narrow liquidation buffers in LlamaRisk’s Oct. 9 snapshots. Every top PT-AUSD supplier on Monad carried debt, while two syrupUSDC positions accounted for about 97% of supplied syrupUSDC on Arc. Cashing out the collateral involves a market sale or, for Arc holders choosing Ethereum redemption, a withdrawal queue that can take hours.

The two markets present separate versions of the same cash-flow problem. If a borrower becomes eligible for liquidation, a liquidator supplies the borrowed stablecoin, receives collateral and then recovers cash from it. December PT-AUSD requires a sale before maturity. Arc syrupUSDC offers a local sale or a bridge to Ethereum for redemption. An oracle valuation establishes collateral value within Aave; the exit determines what the liquidator can recover.

The Oct. 9 reviews of Monad and Arc recommend larger caps, making the economics of those exits consequential as borrowers seek room to grow.

Aave’s health factor compares collateral value, adjusted for liquidation thresholds, with debt. A position becomes eligible for liquidation below 1. The top Monad PT suppliers had health factors between 1.01 and 1.18, with a median of 1.03, in the Oct. 9 snapshot. USDC was their dominant debt asset, followed by USDT0.

Those readings leave a narrow valuation cushion for part of the cohort. They also reflect why borrowers pair correlated collateral and debt: smaller relative price changes can support higher leverage. Aave notes that lower health factors may be appropriate for correlated assets.

During liquidation, someone repays the borrower’s debt and receives collateral plus an incentive. The liquidator weighs the collateral’s realizable proceeds against the debt repaid, transaction and conversion costs, and the cost of financing any redemption wait. The health factor measures proximity to eligibility; a sale quote measures the exit.

Monad’s PT-AUSD Aave loans need a sale before maturity

The Monad collateral is PT-AUSD-17DEC2026, a Pendle principal token representing a claim on AUSD at its Dec. 17 maturity. The redemption entitlement is in the accounting asset. Receiving one AUSD still requires any conversion needed to obtain the USDC or USDT0 borrowed against it.

LlamaRisk reported that the reserve’s 30 million PT supply cap was fully utilized on Oct. 9 and recommended increasing it to 60 million PT. These limits measure token capacity. A larger cap would allow more collateral into Aave; its successful exit would still depend on buyers or redemption.

Before maturity, Pendle’s documented liquidation route sells PT into SY, its standardized yield wrapper, then redeems SY into a supported output token. After maturity, PT can be redeemed into SY without that market sale. Any further conversion into the borrowed stablecoin remains part of the route.

The Oct. 9 review describes the Pendle pool as 47% PT and 53% SY. A large PT sale draws from the opposite side of the pool, so a useful exit estimate needs the intended sale size, output and price impact across the full conversion.

Pricing adds another constraint. LlamaRisk says the December PT uses a linear discount oracle on AUSD/USD. Pendle’s linear-discount documentation describes a predictable path toward maturity independent of AMM prices. That valuation can follow its curve while a liquidator’s sale price depends on the market’s willingness to absorb seized PT.

LlamaRisk’s Oct. 2 launch recommendation specified a 95% liquidation threshold and a 2.62% bonus for the stablecoin E-mode, alongside a 93% borrowing limit. A liquidator has to compare the incentive applicable at execution with the actual cost of turning PT into the debt token.

Arc’s syrupUSDC Aave loans rely on buyers or a redemption queue

The Arc comparison concerns syrupUSDC, a bridged share in Maple’s Ethereum yield-bearing vault. In the Oct. 9 Arc review, the two largest positions held approximately 97% of the supplied syrupUSDC at health factors of 1.02 and 1.01. All outstanding debt among syrupUSDC suppliers was USDC.

A few positions can therefore dominate demand for that collateral’s exit. The concentration refers to supplied syrupUSDC, while the stablecoin available to Aave lenders sits in a separate reserve.

Arc had substantial Aave liquidity at the snapshot: 143.45 million USDC added to the Core Hub, 83.82 million drawn and 59.63 million available. That available balance is debt-token inventory in Aave. Buyers of syrupUSDC and cash available for Maple redemptions determine other parts of the unwind.

LlamaRisk’s September Arc assessment, using Sept. 23 liquidity data, found one local Uniswap V4 syrupUSDC/USDC venue whose proceeds saturated near $500,000 as its USDC side was exhausted. The sale ran into the venue’s available cash inventory.

The same assessment described no native Arc redemption. A holder could sell locally or bridge to Ethereum and then request redemption. It estimated the bridge transfer alone at two to five minutes under normal conditions, with throughput around $10 million an hour. Maple’s withdrawal queue adds a separate wait.

Maple’s withdrawal terms make the timing constraint explicit: requests enter a first-in, first-out queue and are processed as liquidity becomes available. Most withdrawals take under 24 hours, but they can take up to 30 days. Its contract architecture explains why entitlement to a pool’s value can exceed immediately available withdrawal cash.

For a liquidator using that route, Ethereum redemption and Arc debt repayment are separate stages. The funder needs USDC to repay the Aave loan before the collateral’s later exit pays them back. Bridge capacity, redemption cash and financing duration each affect whether the unwind is economical.

Arc’s shared Hub connects lender exposure with cap growth

LlamaRisk’s Arc onboarding recommendation values syrupUSDC through Chainlink’s syrupUSDC/USDC exchange rate and capped USDC/USD using a CAPO adapter. The exchange-rate input follows the Ethereum vault’s exit value. Local trading depth determines how much of that value a sale can realize.

The recommendation also specifies a 92% collateral factor and a dynamic liquidation bonus capped at 4%. The applicable bonus varies with the liquidation conditions. Its maximum provides a ceiling on the incentive against which a liquidator weighs exit costs.

The Maple Spoke draws from the same Arc Core Hub USDC reserve as the Main Spoke. Aave’s earlier Hub design discussion explains shared solvency inside a Hub: Spoke-level limits constrain exposure, while the Hub remains the common liquidity and accounting venue. Applied to the described Arc arrangement, that architecture places Maple Spoke exposure within the Core Hub’s shared solvency. Monad’s V3 market and Ethereum’s separate Hub configurations have different boundaries.

LlamaRisk’s Oct. 9 Arc proposal would increase the Maple Spoke’s USDC draw cap from 23 million to 46 million USDC and its syrupUSDC add cap from 25 million to 50 million shares. The draw cap was fully utilized and the add cap 87.8% utilized in that review. Share-token capacity requires its own valuation before comparison with dollar debt.

Those caps set maximum collateral or borrowing capacity; additional exposure depends on subsequent deposits and borrowing.

For lenders assessing these Aave loans, the test is concrete: compare recoverable collateral proceeds at the relevant liquidation size with the debt repaid and total exit costs, then identify who funds any redemption delay. The liquidation incentive affects how much collateral the liquidator receives. Monad’s PT requires a market sale before December maturity. Arc requires local buyers or an Ethereum exit with sufficient bridge capacity, redemption cash and financing.

The post Some Aave loans sit near liquidation with collateral that can take hours to cash out appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Evernorth is preparing to begin trading on Nasdaq on Monday, bringing approximately 473 million XRP into a publicly traded treasury company.

The company completed its merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II on Oct. 9 and expects its shares to trade under the ticker XRPN on Oct. 12. It also reported approximately $300 million in gross cash proceeds before transaction expenses, backed by investors including Ripple, SBI Group, Pantera Capital, Kraken, and GSR.

The listing gives stock-market investors access to one of the largest corporate XRP treasuries while establishing a new source of capital for the XRP Ledger's expanding financial ecosystem.

Evernorth targets XRP liquidity and institutional finance

Evernorth intends to distinguish itself from traditional crypto treasury companies that primarily accumulate digital assets and rely on price appreciation to generate shareholder returns.

Instead, Chief Executive Officer Asheesh Birla said the company would actively deploy capital across the XRP ecosystem, supporting infrastructure and financial applications while pursuing strategies designed to increase XRP holdings per share.

The strategy includes institutional and decentralized finance yield opportunities, ecosystem participation, and capital markets activities intended to put the company's assets to productive use.

In an October 9 shareholder letter, Birla outlined a vision of financial markets moving toward blockchain-based infrastructure capable of operating continuously rather than within traditional banking and exchange hours.

He argued that tokenization could transform how securities, credit and other financial assets are traded, settled and used as collateral.

Under that model, assets could carry programmable conditions governing interest payments, lending arrangements and transfers, potentially reducing the delays associated with traditional financial intermediaries.

However, Birla identified market liquidity as an essential requirement for these applications to become commercially viable.

Tokenized assets may technically trade around the clock, but their usefulness depends on sufficient capital and market participation to support transactions whenever investors need to enter or exit positions.

Evernorth intends to help address this constraint by deploying capital on the XRP Ledger, supporting liquidity and working with developers building financial infrastructure for institutional users.

The approach could expand XRP's role beyond payments by supporting applications involving tokenized securities, lending and collateral management.

It could also create additional economic activity around the token, though any direct increase in XRP demand will depend on how Evernorth deploys its resources and whether those applications require XRP rather than other assets.

For shareholders, the company aims to combine cryptocurrency exposure with potential returns from actively managing its holdings.

That creates an additional performance measure beyond XRP's market price: whether Evernorth can generate sufficient income and accumulate additional tokens to increase the amount of XRP backing each share.

Ripple ties could complicate Evernorth's XRP earnings

The company's financial ambitions face an unusual reporting constraint stemming from its relationship with Ripple.

In financial disclosures accompanying the completed merger, Evernorth said it would continue to account for its XRP holdings at historical cost, reduced by accumulated impairment losses.

That differs from the fair-value accounting treatment available to many other corporate cryptocurrency holders.

Under rules introduced by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in 2023, qualifying crypto assets must be valued at prevailing market prices, with unrealized gains and losses reflected in reported earnings.

However, the standard excludes certain digital assets created or issued by a reporting company or its related parties.

Although Evernorth ceased being a wholly owned or consolidated Ripple subsidiary following its merger, management determined that the companies remained related parties.

Consequently, Evernorth concluded that its XRP holdings remained outside the newer fair-value standard and must continue under the older cost-minus-impairment model.

This distinction creates an asymmetry in its financial results.

When XRP prices decline sufficiently, Evernorth may have to recognize impairment losses that reduce the carrying value of its holdings.

However, subsequent price recoveries cannot reverse those write-downs while the assets remain under that accounting treatment.

For example, if a $100 million XRP position is written down to $70 million, a subsequent recovery to $150 million would not automatically restore its accounting value or produce an $80 million unrealized gain in earnings.

That could leave a substantial difference between the market value of Evernorth's treasury and the asset values reflected in its financial statements.

The merger disclosure already illustrates the potential consequences.

Management said XRP's lowest observable Coinbase price between July 1 and the Oct. 9 closing was $0.99, a level that would have produced an additional $6.9 million impairment after June 30. The filing did not confirm whether it ultimately recognized that amount.

Still, the accounting treatment does not prevent Evernorth from profiting economically from higher XRP prices, realizing gains through sales or recognizing income generated by its investment strategies.

However, it could make the company's reported earnings and book value harder to compare with crypto treasury businesses eligible for fair-value accounting.

That distinction becomes particularly relevant to Evernorth's promise of growing XRP per share, because changes in token holdings, market valuation, and reported accounting income may tell different stories about performance.

Investors will therefore need to distinguish returns from active treasury management from changes in XRP's market value, especially when evaluating the company's ability to finance further expansion.

Evernorth's first post-merger financial statements will initially test that distinction, showing how much its treasury activities contribute to reported results even as its accounting treatment continues to exclude unrealized XRP price recoveries.

The post XRP’s next Wall Street expansion comes with an unexpected complication from Ripple appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Lightning Development Kit (LDK), a library for building Bitcoin Lightning wallets and payment applications, has patched a flaw that could let a malicious channel peer steal the value of a forwarded payment by lying after reconnecting. Affected application developers need to incorporate the fix into the software they deploy.

The October 1-dated v0.2.7 and v0.1.13 security releases address the LDK reconnect vulnerability on the 0.2 and 0.1 branches, respectively. Bitcoin Optech described the fixes in its Oct. 9 newsletter.

How the LDK reconnect flaw could cost Bitcoin

The attack starts with a channel peer acknowledging an update, then reconnecting and pretending it never received it. Before the fix, that false claim could cause LDK to sign a conflicting commitment transaction.

A commitment transaction represents a channel's agreed state and can be used to settle it on Bitcoin's blockchain. In the scenario described in PR 5057, the newly signed transaction was not recorded by LDK's channel monitor, the component tracking the channel's on-chain claims.

That gap could turn a forwarded payment into a loss. The malicious sender could confirm the transaction on-chain and let the payment settle with the next recipient. It could then reclaim the incoming payment contract when it expired, even though the forwarding node knew the secret normally used to claim payment.

The forwarding application would have paid downstream without recovering the corresponding incoming funds. The fix permits retransmission only while the peer's acknowledgment remains outstanding and force-closes the channel when the peer claims an already-acknowledged update was missed.

Alongside the LDK reconnect fix, version 0.2.7 addresses a different theft path involving LSPS2 just-in-time payments, where a liquidity service opens a channel as part of handling a payment.

An intercepted payment could misrepresent its amount, causing the service to open a channel and forward more Bitcoin than the incoming payment supplied. The service would cover the difference from its own funds. PR 5042 addresses that amount check.

That exposure concerns the LSPS2 service flow. The v0.1.13 notes list the shared reconnect fix without listing the LSPS2 fix.

These defects differ from the splice-fee diversion and saved-state loading bugs covered in CryptoSlate's Sept. 13 LDK v0.2.6 report. Core Lightning is a separate implementation, as described in the update below.

LDK’s architecture documentation explains that the SDK is compiled and executed inside applications. Developers must incorporate the relevant patched library code into deployed software. For LSPS2 integrations, the PR 5042 commit explanation flags that payment contracts queued by a prior version retain unvalidated amounts; teams need to account for those pending contracts as well as updating the library.

The post Lightning apps using unpatched LDK risk Bitcoin theft from a reconnect lie appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Some Kraken futures limit orders can still execute after a successful cancellation if the cancel arrives during the Maker Protection hold window. Kraken expanded the system on Oct. 8, bringing that order-handling rule to more contracts.

Kraken completed Phase 2 after announcing 61 additional perpetual contracts. Maker Protection applies to selected futures markets; Kraken’s documentation describes an initial 20-millisecond hold.

What a Kraken futures cancellation changes

Maker Protection holds orders that can take liquidity before they reach the matching engine, giving traders with resting orders time to react. A limit order without a post-only instruction is held on a covered market even if it would otherwise have rested on the book.

A cancel inside that window changes what the order may leave behind. Kraken converts the held placement to immediate-or-cancel, meaning it can trade when released but cannot leave an unfilled remainder on the book. The original hold expiry stays the same.

For example, a trader submits a non-post-only limit order and cancels before the hold expires. The cancel request bypasses the delay and converts the held placement to immediate-or-cancel. At the original release time it can still fill; any unfilled amount is discarded.

Kraken reports those instructions separately. The cancel receives success with order status “cancelled,” while the order later reports its own fills or failure to execute. For a converted limit that cannot trade, the REST v3 response is iocWouldNotExecute.

Kraken’s instruments feed identifies each market’s configured hold through makerProtectionMillis. Its documentation says an absent or zero value means no configured delay.

The distinction is contract-specific, so traders cannot infer coverage from the coin name alone. Kraken says its ten most liquid linear perpetual markets are excluded and spot trading is unaffected. Standalone post-only placements bypass the hold. Cancel requests also bypass it; a held limit placement still waits for its original release time.

Other held order types have different cancel responses. A cancel targeting a held immediate-or-cancel, fill-or-kill or market placement returns ORDER_NOT_FOUND; the original request still reaches matching when released.

Automated traders in Kraken futures need to reconcile the order’s execution response as well as the cancellation acknowledgment. A successful held-limit cancel can coexist with a later fill.

The post Some Kraken futures limit orders can still fill after a successful cancel appeared first on CryptoSlate.

You can buy Dogecoin in Europe on any exchange holding MiCA authorisation, and the price difference between the routes is larger than the difference between the exchanges. Put €100 to work on Sunday evening and Kraken, Bitvavo and Coinbase gave you, on paper, between 1,294.78 and 1,295.67 DOGE. The gap is therefore under a euro. Take the convenient instant buy at the same provider instead of the order book, though, and Kraken charges one percent rather than 0.8 percent, and 1.5 percent on a custom order. Choosing the button costs more than choosing the exchange.

Dogecoin stood at €0.077267 and $0.086534 on Sunday evening and is, at around €12.08 billion in market capitalisation, the twelfth-largest crypto asset. Where things could go from here is set out in our Dogecoin price prediction. For the purchase itself, however, the price is the least important number: what counts are the three costs sitting between your euro and your DOGE, namely the trading fee, the spread between bid and ask, and later the network fee for withdrawing to a wallet of your own.

Buying Dogecoin in Europe: these three exchanges hold authorisation in the register

Since the European crypto regulation MiCA took full effect, only a party holding authorisation as a crypto asset service provider may operate a trading venue in the EU. The European securities regulator ESMA collects these authorisations in a public register. As of October 7, 2026 it lists 370 entries. The largest home state is Germany itself: 103 entries name BaFin as the competent authority, followed by France with 36 and the Netherlands with 29.

Crypto asset service provider is a collective term here. The regulation recognises ten individual services, from custody through operating a trading platform to transfers, and every authorisation states expressly which of them a provider may deliver. For the three trading venues most frequently used in Germany to buy DOGE in euros, the register says:

• Bitvavo B.V., authorised by the Dutch regulator AFM on June 26, 2025, for custody, operating a trading platform and transfer services.
• Payward Europe Solutions Limited and Payward Global Solutions Limited, both authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland on June 25, 2025. Kraken stands behind those names; the second company holds the authorisation for operating the trading platform.
• Coinbase Luxembourg S.A., authorised by Luxembourg's CSSF on June 20, 2025, for custody, exchange against funds and the execution of orders, among others.

None of the three authorisations carries an end date. Which other providers may trade with authorisation in Germany is shown in our overview of the best crypto exchanges; the obligations MiCA imposes on companies are set out in our overview of the MiCA licence and its duties.

What €100 buys in DOGE at three trading venues

For this article we queried the order books of the three exchanges in the same minute on Sunday evening and calculated from them how much DOGE a €100 purchase yields at the respective best ask, still before any trading fee:

• Bitvavo: best ask €0.077180, bid €0.077156. €100 yields 1,295.67 DOGE.
• Kraken: best ask €0.0772332, bid €0.0772085. €100 yields 1,294.78 DOGE.
• Coinbase: best ask €0.07723, bid €0.07719. €100 yields 1,294.83 DOGE.

Between the cheapest and the most expensive venue lie 0.89 DOGE, which converts to barely seven cents. Comparing therefore pays off little at this point. The difference only matters once you buy regularly and in larger sums, because the fee accrues as a percentage and grows with the stake.

The spread between bid and ask is the price no fee table discloses

The spread is the gap between the highest price at which somebody wants to buy and the lowest at which somebody wants to sell. That difference is a genuine cost item: buy immediately and sell again immediately and you would lose precisely that gap, even without any fee. It does not appear in the exchanges' fee tables, because it is no price set by the provider but a result of the market.

Measured on Sunday evening it was small at all three venues: 0.0311 percent at Bitvavo, 0.0320 percent at Kraken and 0.0518 percent at Coinbase. On €100 that is three to five cents. With daily turnover of around $396 million, DOGE is liquid enough that the spread carries no weight on small orders. With the thin markets of smaller tokens it looks different, as we described when looking at the order book after the large transfer of October 11.

Since our report of October 10, which had Dogecoin at $0.0862, little has moved on the price: $0.086534 on Sunday evening means a gain of 0.6 percent within a day. The nine-cent level, at which the price turned several times in early October, has still not been reclaimed.

Instant buy or order book: at Kraken a whole percent lies between them

Every larger exchange offers two routes to the same coin. One is a button showing you a price that you accept. The other is the order book, where you place an order with a limit of your own. Both lead to DOGE in the account, but they cost different amounts.

Kraken discloses the rates separately in its fee schedule. In the order book you pay, on the lowest volume tier, meaning from a 30-day turnover of zero, 0.40 percent as maker and 0.80 percent as taker. Maker means your order sits in the book and waits; taker means you accept an existing order immediately. On the instant buy, by contrast, Kraken charges one percent, and 1.5 percent on a custom order, with the spread already included in the price shown. On €100, 20 cents therefore separate the taker in the order book from the instant buy, and 70 cents separate it from the custom order.

The difference looks small and grows large as soon as it repeats. Put €100 through the instant buy every month for twelve months and you pay €12 in fees; via a limit order as maker it would be €4.80. On a savings plan running over several years that adds up to an amount clearly visible in relation to the investment.

Bitvavo charges 0.25 percent as taker and 0.15 percent as maker

Bitvavo assigns every trading pair to a fee category. DOGE against the euro runs in category A there, and for that category Bitvavo's fee table names 0.15 percent for makers and 0.25 percent for takers on the entry tier. The rates fall as 30-day volume rises, which stays irrelevant for private purchases: the entry tier is the tier on which practically all retail investors trade.

That places Bitvavo below Kraken's lowest tier in the order book. On €100, the gap between 0.25 and 0.80 percent means 55 cents. That is more than eight times the difference we measured above between the best asks. For the question of what a DOGE purchase costs, the provider's fee tier is therefore the first lever and the spread the last.

We have deliberately left Coinbase out here. The provider runs several products with different fee models, and the fee page was not readily readable at the time of research. A number we cannot evidence at source is one we do not write down. Check the rates in your account before buying, then; the rate that applies to you is shown there.

Minimum order: 50 DOGE at Kraken, five euros at Bitvavo

Both exchanges set lower limits that become practical for newcomers with small amounts. In the DOGE against euro pair, Kraken requires a minimum quantity of 50 DOGE, converting to around €3.86, and a minimum value of €0.45. Bitvavo requires at least €5.00 in value, which corresponds to about 65.70 DOGE. Start with two euros and you get through at neither venue.

The price increments differ as well. Kraken calculates the pair to seven decimal places and allows price steps of €0.0000001, while Bitvavo works with steps of €0.000001. On a coin costing seven cents, that detail decides how precisely you can set a limit.

What do the service codes in the register say about your trading venue?

The most interesting part of the register sits here, and it is rarely read. Bitvavo holds the authorisation for custody, for operating a trading platform and for transfer services. Kraken and Coinbase hold, in addition, the authorisation for the exchange of crypto assets against funds. Those are not the same activity: in operating a trading platform the provider brings buyers and sellers together and you trade against other customers. In an exchange against funds the provider itself acts as the counterparty and sells you the coin from its own holdings.

For a buyer, that means the convenient instant buy is usually business against the house, while the order book is business against other customers. It also explains why the instant buy is more expensive. The provider takes on the risk of holding the coin and charges for it. Which providers hold which authorisation you can look up yourself in ESMA's MiCA section; the register is available there as a downloadable file. A pre-selection of authorised houses is in our comparison of the best regulated crypto exchanges.

Leverage up to a factor of ten: the trading pair can do more than you need

For DOGE against the euro, Kraken permits leverage tiers from two to ten, along with position limits of 14 million DOGE on the buy side and 6.3 million on the sell side. A margin call falls due at 80 percent, and at 40 percent the position is closed. These numbers are openly stated in the pair's data sheet.

For a purchase where you want to own coins, none of that is needed. Leverage turns the purchase into a forward transaction: you borrow money, and a price decline that merely annoys you without leverage ends the position with it. On a coin that has lost around 88 percent since its high of $0.731578 on May 7, 2021, that is no abstract danger. A total loss is possible at any time with crypto assets, and faster with leverage.

After buying: the transfer to a wallet of your own and what it costs

As long as your DOGE sits in the exchange's account, the exchange holds the keys. A wallet of your own is a program or a device that keeps the private key with you, so that nobody but you can dispose of the coins. The price for that is responsibility: lost access means lost coins, because there is no office that resets it.

Technically the withdrawal is an ordinary transfer in the Dogecoin network. You pay the network fee in DOGE, and it depends not on the amount but on the size of the transaction in bytes. With a small holding the fee can therefore become noticeable in proportion, while with a large one it goes unnoticed. If you buy small amounts monthly, you are better off collecting several months and transferring once. Which devices are suitable and what they cost is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

Holding period and exemption threshold: the tax rules when selling DOGE

For tax purposes, Dogecoin belongs to the other assets within the meaning of section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. A gain from a sale is taxable only where no more than a year lies between acquisition and sale. After a year the gain is tax-free, whatever its size.

Inside the year an exemption threshold applies: where the sum of all gains from private sales in a calendar year stays below €1,000, it remains tax-free. An exemption threshold is not an allowance. Realise €1,000 or more and you pay tax on the entire gain, not merely the part above the line. Important for buyers who switch between coins: a swap of DOGE into another crypto asset counts as a sale, and the one-year period starts afresh for the new coin.

Our assessment: the instant-buy premium weighs more heavily than any spread

From the editorial team's point of view, the widespread hunt for the cheapest exchange for DOGE is the wrong question. The evidence is above: seven cents per €100 separated the best asks of the three trading venues on Sunday evening, while 75 cents separated Kraken's instant buy from Bitvavo's taker fee. The route inside the provider therefore decides costs roughly ten times more strongly than the choice of provider.

One practical objection runs the other way, and it is not a small one: a limit order wants setting and watching, and an order that never executes saves no fee but misses the purchase. Invest a small amount once and you may fare better with the instant buy, because 20 cents of difference is not worth the effort. From regular purchases or three-figure amounts upwards, the arithmetic tips. This is expressly not a recommendation to buy Dogecoin: the coin has no supply cap, mining adds around 5.26 billion DOGE a year, which is about 3.4 percent of today's circulating 156.28 billion units. Our earlier appraisal of that is at Should you buy Dogecoin now?.

Buying Dogecoin: a one percent premium costs one euro on €100

1. Choose a venue by authorisation, not by advertising. Look in the ESMA register to see whether your provider holds authorisation and for which services. A pre-selection is in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Buy in the order book instead of through the instant buy. Place a limit order and check in your account which maker and taker rate applies to you. Whether you then hold the coins yourself is the second cost question; the devices for it are in our hardware wallet comparison.
3. With regular purchases, work the fee out over the year. Twelve monthly purchases of €100 each cost €12 through the instant buy, and €4.80 as maker. How a savings plan is set up in practice is shown in our savings plan comparison.

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

Hold Bitcoin and need cash and you long had only one option: sell. Since October 9, 2026 a second variant is on the table. Mysten Labs, the development firm behind the Sui blockchain, is launching Hashi, a network through which Bitcoin serves as collateral for loans without leaving the Bitcoin blockchain. More than $500 million in capital commitments from over twenty partners stands behind it, according to CoinDesk. The launch runs in phases through October.

For investors in Europe this is, to begin with, news about a product you will not find in your banking app. It becomes interesting at three points: the question of whom you entrust your Bitcoin to, the tax question around the holding period, and the risk that every collateralised loan carries. Bitcoin trades on Sunday at $83,906, or €74,816.

Hashi launches on Sui: Mysten Labs gathers more than $500 million in commitments

Hashi is a network for Bitcoin finance built by Mysten Labs. Bitcoin finance here simply means that Bitcoin already held is put up as security for borrowing instead of sitting unused in a wallet. The loan is paid out in other assets on the Sui chain, not in Bitcoin itself.

The figure travelling through the reports is $500 million. That number comes from the announcement and describes capital committed by more than twenty partners from the industry. The rollout begins in October and proceeds in stages rather than on a single date.

A commitment is not a deposit: starting liquidity remains unclear

The wording deserves a close look here. A capital commitment is a declaration of intent to provide money. No amount sits in the network yet that could be drawn on. Cointelegraph and CoinDesk both describe the $500 million as committed rather than paid-in capital. How much liquidity is actually available on day one, Mysten Labs has not disclosed.

That is no reproach. With a staged launch it is the normal case. It does change what the number tells you. The figure describes the interest of institutional houses in the venture. About the terms on which a loan eventually comes about, it says nothing.

hBTC without a bridge: how Hashi locks Bitcoin and issues a claim on Sui

The technical core is the part that reveals the most about the risk. Hashi works without a cross-chain bridge. A bridge is an intermediary that freezes a balance on one chain and issues a copy on another; over recent years it has been the point at which a great deal of money was lost.

Instead, the Bitcoin is locked in a multisignature vault on the Bitcoin blockchain. Multisignature means several separate keys have to come together before anything moves. In return, a token called hBTC is created on Sui. To exit, you burn your hBTC and receive the Bitcoin back.

The difference from a classic bridge lies in where the collateral sits. It does not leave the Bitcoin chain. What circulates on Sui is a claim on that locked holding.

The multisignature vault: who holds the keys to the deposited Bitcoin

A vault with several keys is safer than one with a single key. It is not the same as self-custody, though. As long as your Bitcoin sits there, control over it is no longer yours alone; you share it with the parties managing the remaining keys.

That is the central trade-off in every collateralised loan on a crypto basis, and it holds regardless of the provider. For a general grounding, the mechanics behind interest rates and risks are set out in our comparison of lending providers. It also lists the questions worth putting to a provider before handing over a balance.

BitGo, Anchorage Digital and Ledger: the partners behind the launch

The firms involved include, according to the available reports, BitGo, Bullish, Cumberland, FalconX and Ledger. Anchorage Digital is likewise named as a launch partner. These are names from the institutional part of the industry: custodians, trading houses, market makers.

That line-up explains where the capital commitments come from. At the same time, the list tells you who Hashi is primarily aimed at. A network whose launch partners are trading desks and custodians is built for professional counterparties first, not for a private portfolio.

Aftermath, Concrete and Fluid: who is to operate the Hashi vaults

The vaults themselves, meaning the pools from which loans are issued, are to be operated by separate providers. Aftermath, Concrete and Fluid are named. In practice that means Hashi lays the rails and others run on them.

For you that has a consequence which is easily missed: the terms of a loan, meaning the collateralisation ratio, the interest rate and the threshold for forced liquidation, are set by the respective vault operator and not by the network. No figures on these are publicly available at launch.

Certora and CommonPrefix: what the two security reviews cover

Two reviews are documented. Certora examined the smart contracts, meaning the program code executed on Sui. CommonPrefix reviewed the MPC cryptography. MPC stands for multi-party computation, a procedure in which several participants compute jointly without revealing their respective key shares.

An audit is a snapshot of the code reviewed. It evidences that specialists have looked, and it is no promise that nothing will happen in live operation. This year's events have shown in several places that gaps can also appear at the seams between audited components.

A trillion dollars of idle Bitcoin: the market Sui is aiming at

Sui justifies the venture with an estimate of its own: around a trillion dollars in Bitcoin lies unused, without working in financial applications. The number is the provider's assumption about the size of the market, not a measured sum.

The thought behind it is sound. Bitcoin generates no yield of its own. There is no staking in the protocol, no interest from the chain itself. Every form of return on Bitcoin arises because somebody else pays for it, and with that comes counterparty risk.

Borrowing against it instead of selling: the holding period under section 23 EStG

In Germany, the holding period decides the tax treatment of privately held crypto assets. Under section 23 of the Income Tax Act, a gain from a private disposal transaction is tax-free where more than a year lies between purchase and sale. Sell before that and the gain is taxed at your personal rate.

This is precisely where the appeal of a loan against Bitcoin lies: no sale takes place, so the period runs on. Whether that holds in every case depends on the details of the construction. Where the collateral is liquidated, that is a disposal with all its tax consequences. The question of whether locking Bitcoin and issuing a different token is to be treated as a swap for tax purposes also has no blanket answer in such models.

Nobody on the internet will give you reliable advice on this; your tax adviser will, looking at your case. That is no empty phrase: for a product a few days old, no settled administrative practice on this question exists yet.

Liquidation risk: when the price pushes collateral below the threshold

A collateralised loan works as long as the collateral is worth enough. Should the Bitcoin price fall, the value of the security sinks while the debt stays the same. Once the ratio drops below an agreed threshold, the collateral is sold in whole or in part to cover the debt.

That is the point at which an idea meant to avoid a sale turns into a forced sale, and typically at the worst possible moment. Bitcoin has lost 1.76 percent over the past seven days and therefore sits in a quiet phase. That has been different several times over the course of the year.

Authorisation in Europe: MiCA covers trading, not lending

Since the European regulation on markets in crypto assets, MiCA for short, providers of certain services need authorisation. These include trading, custody and the exchange of crypto assets for customers. Issuing loans against crypto assets is not in that catalogue.

One practical consequence for you follows. With an authorised exchange you can look the permission up in a register. With a lending offer on a blockchain there is usually no such checkpoint, and no deposit guarantee either. The protection you take for granted with a bank product is absent here.

Custody: hBTC on Sui is a claim, not your Bitcoin

A token representing a locked holding is economically something other than the holding itself. It depends on the lock holding, on key management working, and on the redemption route staying open. Should one of those elements fail, the token on the other chain will not help you.

If you want to keep your Bitcoin balance permanently outside constructions of this kind, there is no way around holding it yourself. Which devices are suitable for that, and how they differ, is set out in our overview of hardware wallets.

SUI at $1.14: the token carries the network, not the loan

Hashi runs on Sui, so the question of the chain's token arises. SUI trades on Sunday at $1.14, or €1.016. The token pays for transactions in the network and secures it. It is neither the collateral nor the currency of the loan.

A common short circuit runs: more activity on a chain automatically means a higher price for its token. That relationship is not documented. What a phased launch in October brings in actual transaction volume can only be measured once it has run.

What remains open: terms and starting liquidity

Three things are not public as matters stand. First, the terms of the individual vaults, meaning collateralisation ratio, interest rate and liquidation threshold. Second, the liquidity genuinely available on day one. Third, the precise schedule by which the October phases follow one another.

As long as those details are missing, the offer cannot be compared with an existing credit product. Wait until the terms are published and you miss nothing that could not be caught up on later.

Bitcoin loans on Sui: $500 million is committed, not deposited

The news is the launch, not the finished product. Three steps make sense if the topic concerns you:

1. Check authorisation before moving a balance. For every provider where you buy or hold crypto assets, the permission can be looked up. Which houses are authorised in Europe is shown in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Settle the custody question. Bitcoin locked as collateral is no longer in your hands alone. For the holding that is meant to stay with you, our hardware wallet comparison is worth a look.
3. Document the holding period. When you bought decides the tax. Keep acquisition dates in order and you can evidence the one-year period; the tax tools and portfolio trackers help with that.

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

The Dogecoin price stands at $0.0868 on Sunday evening, barely one percent above the previous day. The more important number of the day is not in the chart but in the exchange flows: over the past seven days a net $57.2 million in DOGE has been pulled off trading venues. Inflows came to $480.96 million, outflows to $538.16 million. The figures come from CoinGlass and were collected on October 11.

Outflows from exchanges are generally read as a friendly sign, because coins on a private address cannot be sold at short notice. That effect failed to appear this week. The price lost 7.84 percent over the same period. If you hold DOGE, it is worth knowing what the metric measures and what it expressly does not.

Dogecoin price at $0.0868: the net outflow of $57.2 million in seven days

As of October 11, Dogecoin trades at $0.0868. The daily range ran from $0.0849 to $0.0875, market capitalisation stands at $13.57 billion and turnover over the past 24 hours at $395 million. All market figures in this article come from CoinGecko, as of October 11.

The net outflow of $57.2 million sounds like a lot, yet it amounts to 0.42 percent of market capitalisation. It describes the difference between two large, almost equally heavy flows: $480.96 million moved onto exchange accounts during the week, $538.16 million moved off. What remains is a thin layer left after two movements of roughly half a billion dollars each largely cancelled out. Read the number as evidence of a buying wave and you are stretching it.

The current values are public at CoinGlass under Spot Inflow and Outflow. There you can look up the value per coin and per time window yourself, without relying on a summary.

Spot inflow and outflow explained: how exchange flows act on the Dogecoin price

Spot inflow is the sum of crypto assets transferred from private addresses to the addresses of centralised trading venues over a period. Spot outflow is the opposite direction, the withdrawal from an exchange to an address outside it. The net value is the difference between the two. What is measured is the path the coins take, not the intention behind it.

The usual conclusion runs: inflows raise tradable supply and tend to weigh on the price, outflows tighten it. That relationship is real, but it describes only one side of the equation. Supply alone moves no price. Without a counterparty willing to buy at rising bids, tightened supply simply stays tightened supply.

There is also a measurement problem that weighs more heavily with Dogecoin than with Bitcoin: a withdrawal from an exchange can equally be a transfer between two venues, a move into the custody of a payment service, or the wind-down of a product. The metric looks identical in all of those cases. What it depicts is a direction, not a reason.

Down 7.84 percent in seven days: Dogecoin loses more than Bitcoin and Ether

Over the week, Dogecoin stands at minus 7.84 percent. Bitcoin gave up 1.79 percent in the same window, Ethereum 6.01 percent, Solana 7.86 percent. The weakness in DOGE is therefore no isolated case, but it sits at the lower edge of the field.

Over 30 days the gap is clearer. Dogecoin stands at plus 1.49 percent, Bitcoin at plus 7.60 percent, Chainlink at plus 13.86 percent. The monthly high of $0.1004 on September 23 is 13.47 percent above today's price. The average of the past 30 days is $0.0904, which is 3.96 percent above the current level.

$0.0840 and $0.0890: the two levels around the current Dogecoin price

To the downside, the weekly low is the next level with a basis. It sits at $0.0840 and dates from Friday, October 9. Below that, the monthly window holds no further point where the price lingered until $0.0801 from September 16.

To the upside, $0.0890 counts, the level from October 8 and therefore from the day before the slide. The price has not reclaimed that level in the past three days. Yesterday's article still had $0.0871 in play as the bears' next target; that level has since been breached twice and recovered twice, which makes it useless as a dividing line.

A third point of orientation comes from the 30-day average at $0.0904. As long as the price stays below it, every recovery is arithmetically a move inside a falling month rather than a break out of it.

Bitwise closes the DOGE ETF after October 14: where things stand since October 10

On October 10 we wrote in this space about the wind-down of the Bitwise DOGE ETF. The price was $0.0862 then, and $0.0868 today. Two days have therefore moved 0.74 percent, while the weekly balance stands at minus 7.84 percent. The situation has become neither worse nor better since.

Trading in the fund ends after Wednesday, October 14. That matters for this week's net outflow insofar as winding down a product moves holdings that can look like an ordinary exchange outflow in the statistics. With fund volume in the low six figures, however, the product was far too small to account for $57.2 million. Most of the movement comes from other sources.

Turnover to market capitalisation at 2.9 percent: Dogecoin turns over more money than Bitcoin

A second route into the situation runs via the turnover ratio, meaning daily turnover divided by market capitalisation. For Dogecoin that is $395 million against $13.57 billion, or 2.9 percent. Bitcoin comes to 0.9 percent, Ethereum to 2.8 percent, Solana to 2.7 percent, Chainlink to 2.2 percent.

A high ratio means a comparatively large share of the stock changes hands each day. For a holder that cuts two ways. Liquidity is good, and large orders find a counterparty. At the same time the price reacts more sensitively to individual addresses, because less of the stock is tied up long term.

That ratio fits the picture from the exchange flows. Where half a billion dollars moves onto trading venues in a week and half a billion moves off, holdings are not quietly shifting into custody. In a market like that, much is traded and little is held.

Withdrawal fee and network fee: what moving off an exchange really costs

Pull coins off a trading venue or shift them between venues and you pay twice: the exchange's withdrawal fee and the chain's network fee. With Dogecoin the network fee is low; the exchanges' flat withdrawal charge frequently is not. A look at your venue's fee page therefore pays off before the transfer rather than after, because the flat charge is deducted in DOGE and weighs heavily in percentage terms on small amounts.

Self-custody instead of an exchange account: how to proceed with a wallet of your own

Self-custody means the private key to your coins sits with you and not with a company. The difference only becomes visible when a trading venue goes down, discontinues the service or freezes an account.

In practice you need a wallet that supports Dogecoin. Not every device does, because DOGE has its own chain with its own address format; Dogecoin addresses begin with a D. Check support before buying the device. Which models carry the chain and what they cost is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

The same principle applies to a first withdrawal as to any transfer to a new address: a small amount first, then the rest. An incorrectly copied address is no more recoverable on the Dogecoin chain than on any other. The recovery phrase belongs on paper or metal and never in a photo, a notes app or a password manager that syncs to the cloud.

The legal framework deserves a thought. Since the European regulation on markets in crypto assets applied in full, providers holding crypto assets for customers need authorisation and are subject to supervision. Self-custody falls outside it. Hold your own coins and you have no provider behind you to be liable if something goes wrong; the decision swaps counterparty risk for personal responsibility.

Holding period and exemption threshold: what moving into your own wallet triggers for tax

A transfer between two wallets that both belong to you is not a sale. No disposal takes place, so no private disposal transaction arises within the meaning of section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. The holding period runs on unchanged and the acquisition date stays as it was.

What matters is that you can document the connection. The tax office sees only a movement from address to address on the chain, not that both ends belong to you. Save the exchange's transaction history as a file before the withdrawal, then, and note the destination address. After an account closure the export is often no longer available, and without an acquisition date a tax-free sale after twelve months quickly turns into an estimated gain.

For sales inside the one-year period, the €1,000 exemption threshold applies, which aggregates all private disposal transactions in a calendar year. Exceed it and the entire gain is taxable, not just the part above the threshold. If you would rather not keep the records by hand, use a portfolio or tax tool that logs the history per address.

Our assessment: outflows without fresh demand do not carry the Dogecoin price

From the editorial team's point of view, the net outflow of $57.2 million is the weakest of the three pieces of evidence on the table this week. Three numbers support that. First, it amounts to 0.42 percent of the $13.57 billion market capitalisation. Second, it stands against gross volume of more than a billion dollars in both directions; the net value is noise at the edge of two large flows. Third, the price lost 7.84 percent in precisely that window, which argues against a tightening anyone had to pay for.

One argument runs the other way, and we cannot refute it: outflows act with a lag, and a week is a short window. Should the direction continue in the coming days and the price reclaim $0.0890 along the way, that would be a solid signal. Until then we read the situation as reshuffling without new demand. This is expressly not a recommendation to buy or sell; with crypto assets a total loss is possible.

Dogecoin at $0.0868: an outflow without new demand does not carry it

1. Look the net value up yourself before you interpret it. CoinGlass shows spot inflow and outflow per coin and time window. A single weekly figure of 0.42 percent of market capitalisation justifies no reshuffling of a portfolio. While you are at it and reviewing your venue's terms, our exchange comparison helps with the flat withdrawal charges.
2. Decide the custody question separately from the price. Whether DOGE stands at $0.0868 or $0.0950 changes nothing about who holds the key. Check our hardware wallet comparison for which devices carry the Dogecoin chain, and test the route with a small amount.
3. Secure the paperwork before the withdrawal. Download your exchange's transaction history and record the acquisition date and destination address, so that the holding period under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act stays documented. The tools for it are in our comparison of tax tools.

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

The QNT token is an access right. Anyone using Overledger, the connectivity layer built by the British firm Quant Network, pays an annual licence for it, and that licence is payable in QNT. That is the short answer to what the token is for. The longer answer is more interesting, because it leads to a gap between what the token can do and what it has to do according to the company's own filings.

The price stood at $242.50 on Sunday midday, down 3.4 percent in a day and 5.5 percent over the week, which puts QNT 44th by market capitalisation according to CoinPaprika. Our running Quant price prediction places that move in context. This article is about something else: the mechanics behind it.

What the QNT token is: an access right without voting power

QNT is a utility token. A utility token is a digital voucher that entitles the holder to use a particular service, not to a stake in the company. That is exactly how the token transparency filing Quant lodged with the research platform Blockworks describes it: QNT is a utility token that customers use for Quant products and services, staking included.

What the filing explicitly does not say matters more. It records that QNT carries no governance rights. There is no vote on the roadmap, no voting weight by token count, no veto. Holding QNT means holding no piece of the protocol and no share in Quant Network Ltd. That separates QNT from tokens where the size of a holding decides parameters.

The filing is equally explicit in ruling out a structure that comes up often in discussions of QNT: a protocol treasury. No DAO or protocol treasury exists, it states. Fees instead go straight to Quant Network Ltd as commercial revenue, an ordinary British company. So if you read that QNT is "locked in the treasury", check what that claim rests on. It is not in the company's transparency filing.

The Overledger licence: £100 a year, payable in QNT

The actual payment obligation dates back to December 2021. Quant announced a licence fee for Overledger that applies to all customers and developers. The amount: £100 a year. The payment: in QNT, settled through a common browser wallet. Existing customers were given three months of free use at the time.

The sum looks small, and it is. A hundred pounds a year is not a line item a bank board discusses. The figure is therefore no lever for the price, and anyone using it that way is doing the sums wrong. The value of this fee lies elsewhere: it gives the token a function in the business model at all. Without that payment obligation, QNT would be a token alongside a piece of software rather than inside it.

Why the same licence can also be settled in dollars

This is where many accounts turn imprecise. The same transparency filing that confirms payment in QNT also records that users can pay platform fees in US dollars or take out a subscription with QNT. The wording permits both. An obligation to buy tokens in order to use Overledger does not follow from it.

That is no detail, it is the core of the investment question. If Quant's business grows, demand for QNT grows out of it only where customers actually choose the token route. Should they pay in dollars, company revenue rises without a single token being bought on the market. This distinction between corporate success and token demand belongs at the start of any valuation, not in a footnote.

On the question of whether licence tokens are locked for the term, third-party figures circulate. No primary company source describing such a lock-up was available for this article. We therefore do not treat a lock-up as fact here. The vesting history, by contrast, is documented: executives and staff went through a twelve-month lock after the sale closed, and transfers were restricted for two months. Today, the filing says, the tokens held by the company are unrestricted and sellable at any time; no vesting overhang remains.

Supply: 14,881,364 QNT as the cap

The most widely cited cap is 14,881,364 QNT. The large market data providers list this number as the maximum supply, and it has been unchanged for years. No new tokens are created; there is no payout to validators steadily expanding supply, of the kind familiar from proof-of-stake networks. Supply is fixed.

Measured against that cap, CoinPaprika's data puts 12,072,738 QNT in circulation, or 81.1 percent. The remainder sits with the company and in non-circulating holdings. At a price of $242.50 that works out to a market capitalisation of around $2.93 billion on daily turnover of some $115 million. Liquidity is solid for an asset of this size, but it is spread across markedly fewer venues than for the large names, which can show up when larger quantities are sold.

Circulating supply: the data sources differ by 2.47 million QNT

Put the numbers side by side and the discrepancy is larger than a rounding difference. The Quant token transparency filing lodged with Blockworks cites as its authoritative supply evidence a total supply of 14,612,493 QNT and a circulating supply of 14,544,176 QNT. The market data providers list 12,072,738 QNT in circulation.

The two figures are 2,471,438 tokens apart. At Sunday's price that is a difference in market capitalisation of roughly $600 million. Depending on which number you follow, the valuation of QNT moves between about $2.9 billion and $3.5 billion. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis on October 11, 2026 by comparing the two publicly available supply disclosures for QNT.

We deliberately leave that spread unsmoothed. For investors, two things follow. First: metrics such as market capitalisation or fully diluted valuation are not hard numbers for QNT but depend on the source chosen. Second: where an article argues from one of these metrics without naming its source, half the information is missing. With every comparison, check which circulating supply was used.

The 45,467,000 in the smart contract: what the Etherscan figure means

It gets more confusing still for anyone looking at the contract directly in a blockchain explorer. There, a maximum total of 45,467,000 QNT appears, a good three times the usual cap. The transparency filing classifies that number as a theoretical maximum hard-wired into the contract and treats it as an artefact: tokens were never issued in that quantity.

In practice that means the explorer figure describes what the contract code would allow, not what exists. For sizing up supply it carries no information as long as no issuance takes place. Use it for a diluted valuation and you arrive at numbers that have nothing to do with actual supply. That the same metric carries three different values in three places is the real finding of this section.

Fusion Rollup: QNT as the gas token for 74 networks

The token's second documented function lies in the technology. A rollup is a layer that bundles many transactions and passes the result on in aggregate to the networks beneath it. Quant launched its Fusion Rollup on mainnet on June 2, 2026; according to the company it connects 74 networks. That figure comes from the provider itself and is not independently verified. A rollup that writes state data to many networks at once is the exception; the usual designs hang off exactly one base chain.

For the token, one statement in the transparency filing matters more than the number of networks: the multi-ledger rollup will use QNT as its native token for gas and execution fees. Gas is the charge for computing work in the network. That would give QNT a role which does not depend on a customer's purchasing decision but arises technically. Note the tense: the filing describes this in the future. Whether, and to what extent, such fees already accrue is left open.

The Clearing House: what the mandate leaves open for QNT demand

The reason Quant is being talked about at all right now is a mandate from the banking sector. The Clearing House, operator of one of the large US payment networks, selected Quant on September 24, 2026 as the provider of the interoperability, orchestration and transaction management layer for its tokenised money initiative. Twenty-five large banks are behind the project, with a launch planned for the first half of 2027. We set out what the mandate covers on September 26 in our report on tokenised deposits. Alongside it, Quant has announced a connection to MX.3, the capital markets platform from vendor Murex.

And here the circle closes on the open question. A banking mandate is a revenue promise for Quant Network Ltd. Whether it turns into demand for QNT is a separate matter. Against an automatic link stands the transparency filing itself, under which platform fees can be settled in dollars. In favour stands the announced role of QNT as the rollup's gas token. Which of the two routes will carry the payments of those 25 banks is not publicly documented. Anyone telling you today that the mandate necessarily means higher token demand is passing over that gap.

One documented date is fixed: the first half of 2027. Until then, every statement about payment flows is an expectation, not a fact. For observers that means watching two things once operations begin: whether fees accrue in QNT, and whether that shows up in the balances of the addresses involved.

Buying and custody: where QNT can be traded in Europe

QNT is a token on Ethereum and therefore tradable in principle on any exchange that has listed it. For investors in the European Union, the MiCA regulation has applied since the national transitional periods expired: service providers offering or holding crypto assets here need authorisation. Newcomers therefore check a provider's authorisation before their first purchase. Our crypto exchange comparison gives an overview of the authorised venues and their costs.

On custody, nothing applies to QNT that does not apply to any other token on Ethereum. Leave it on the exchange and you hold a claim against the provider. Transfer it to an address of your own and you hold the token itself, along with responsibility for the key. Because QNT sits on Ethereum, the destination address has to support ERC-20 tokens; an address from another network is the most common way to lose tokens. An address from another network will not accept the token.

A note on staking, which the transparency filing names as a use: staking income is treated differently for tax than pure capital gains. If you put QNT to work, record the income separately.

Holding period under section 23 EStG: what to check on QNT before selling

For private investors in Germany, crypto assets still fall under the private disposal rules of section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Where more than twelve months lie between purchase and sale, the gain is tax-free. Inside that period it is taxable once the exemption threshold is passed. This rule is the strongest lever you have on an asset such as QNT, and it hangs on a date rather than on a view of the price.

Three things matter here. First, every additional purchase counts as its own transaction with its own start date; buy over months and you have several periods running side by side. Second, swapping QNT for another token is a sale, even where no euro changes hands. Third, moving between two of your own addresses is not a sale and does not restart the period, provided you can document the connection. That exchanges will report their data to the tax authorities in future makes clean records of your own more important, not redundant.

QNT token: until the 2027 launch, demand stays the open question

The token's functions are documented; the demand that follows from them is not. Sizing up QNT therefore takes three steps:

1. Fix a supply figure and stick to it. Decide whether you work with 12.07 or 14.54 million tokens in circulation, and use the same number in every comparison. The 45,467,000 from the contract belong in no valuation. Tools that keep holdings and metrics in order are in our comparison of tax and portfolio tools.
2. Watch the payment route, not the headline. From the first half of 2027, what counts is whether fees actually accrue in QNT. Until then the banking mandate is a revenue promise for the company and not documented token demand. If you buy during that time, check your venue's authorisation first in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Settle custody and the start date before buying. Decide whether the token stays on the exchange or moves to an address of your own, and note the start date for the holding period on the day of purchase. Which devices are suitable for self-custody is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

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

A federal judge in Chicago sentenced Raheim Hamilton to 40 years in prison and a $5 million fine on Monday, October 5, 2026. Hamilton co-founded the darknet marketplace Empire Market and ran it from 2018 to 2020. Part of his agreement with prosecutors: he hands over around 1,230 bitcoin, 24.4 ether and three properties in Virginia. So says the statement from the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois of October 7. His co-founder Thomas Pavey has agreed to hand over around 1,584 bitcoin, with his sentence due later in October.

Together that comes to 2,814 bitcoin, worth around $234 million or 209 million euros at Sunday morning's price. The more interesting question is what the state does with them rather than how much they are worth. The United States now collects seized bitcoin instead of selling it. Saxony did the opposite in 2024, and the money is still sitting in an account.

Empire Market: $430 million of turnover in cryptocurrency

Empire Market was one of the largest darknet marketplaces until it was taken down in 2020. According to prosecutors, more than four million deals worth over $430 million ran through the site, with drugs accounting for the bulk at just under $375 million. Payment was exclusively in cryptocurrencies, and the operators advised their customers to obscure payments through mixers. Investigators had already secured crypto assets worth $75 million during the inquiry, BleepingComputer reports.

Will the bitcoin end up in Trump's bitcoin reserve?

The basis is an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on March 6, 2025. It created a strategic bitcoin reserve to be stocked with all Treasury bitcoin finally forfeited in criminal or civil proceedings. Bitcoin in that reserve may not be sold. The order names exceptions explicitly, among them the return of funds to identifiable victims of crime and a court order.

A drugs marketplace leaves hardly any victims who would have to be repaid. Much therefore suggests that the coins end up in the reserve. Whether and when that happens has not been announced by the authorities. It requires the forfeiture to be final, and Pavey has yet to be sentenced.

How closely the market watches state holdings was on show this week. Wallets attributed to the government moved 17,733 bitcoin to accounts at Coinbase Prime, and talk of sales followed at once. No sale has been documented to date. Congress is also sitting on a bill that would make state bitcoin unsellable for at least 20 years. It has not been passed.

Saxony sold 49,858 bitcoin in an emergency disposal

Germany went the other way. In the case surrounding the illegal streaming site movie2k, a defendant transferred around 49,858 bitcoin to investigators in January 2024. The Dresden public prosecutor general sold them between June 19 and July 12, 2024 through the Frankfurt bank Bankhaus Scheich, raising 2,639,683,413.92 euros, as set out in its statement of July 16, 2024.

The legal basis was the emergency disposal under section 111p of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Where seized assets face a loss in value of around ten percent or more, they have to be sold before judgment. With bitcoin, the authority considered that condition met at any time because of the price swings. The price on the day of sale plays no part in that decision, it stressed.

In hindsight the sale was expensive. Saxony achieved around 52,944 euros per bitcoin on average. A bitcoin costs around 74,127 euros today, so the same coins would be worth some 3.70 billion euros, a good billion euros more than the proceeds. The sum works the other way round too: had the price fallen, the authority would have speculated with someone else's assets. Preventing exactly that is the point of the emergency disposal.

Who the 2.64 billion euros from the movie2k case belong to

The money does not flow into the state budget. It is secured only provisionally for the criminal proceedings, and the Leipzig regional court decides on forfeiture, with the trial of the alleged main operator having opened there in February 2026. Injured parties would rank ahead of the state, above all the rights holders of the films. The prosecutor general's most recent statement on the complex, dated June 29, 2026, concerns a side case: a Berlin estate agent has to pay around 2.5 million euros in compensation. No final decision on the billions is reported there.

Seized bitcoin: what the difference means for holders

What counts for the price is how much state-held supply can still reach the market. The United States settled the question with its 2025 order: forfeited bitcoin is to stay where it is as a matter of principle. Every case like Empire Market therefore shrinks the supply that might one day be sold, rather than adding to it. Germany has no comparable rule. The Code of Criminal Procedure still governs here, and for bitcoin it generally demands a quick sale.

There are two takeaways in this if you hold bitcoin. Reports of state wallets on the move are not a sale in themselves, and a look at the legal position of the state in question says more than the movement does. And long-term holders should know that a large part of the state-held supply in the United States is tied up for the foreseeable future, while emergency sales of the Saxon kind remain possible at any time. Vetted venues for buying are set out in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.

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

An IMF analysis found that more than half of tokenized stock trading happens outside U.S. market hours, though the roughly $2.3 billion market remains more volatile and less liquid than traditional equities.

Bitcoin ETFs have seen $386.3 million in net outflows through the first seven trading days of October, while Ethereum funds have now posted nine straight days of losses.

Zakura, a Zcash full node developer, says it expects hash-based signatures to land in Zcash in January, and is rolling out a privacy tool for rotating transparent addresses this week.

A proposed rule would expressly fold event contracts tied to sports, politics, culture and weather into the “swap” definition, while an interim rule excludes casino-style gambling—sharpening the agency’s claim to exclusive jurisdiction.

The Bermuda-based insurer, which runs entirely on Bitcoin, drew the funding from existing backers led by Bain Capital Crypto after a record year driven by demand from wealthy families in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has provided a new update on the ongoing wallet-draining scandal.

Saylor teases upcoming Bitcoin purchases at a historic $70 billion milestone for world's largest cryptocurrency treasury firm.

XRP Ledger upgrade countdown begins with key fixes for Lending, DEXs and Permission Delegation set to go live.

XRP Kuwait slams centralized control claims after a 2015 currency-minting bug forced an emergency XRP Ledger patch.

The key question is whether ADA confirm pattern with continued selling or recovers enough to invalidate the short-term bearish setup.

TLDR:

• Ledger found an unauthorized hardware implant in one device linked to the CryptoBilis investigation.
• Blockchain investigators estimate crypto losses above $86 million, but Ledger has not confirmed the total.
• Bitquery estimates $93.2 million was taken from 315 wallets across five blockchain networks.
• CryptoBilis halted wallet sales as Ledger reviews reseller controls and strengthens hardware security measures.

Ledger has confirmed an unauthorized hardware implant in a device linked to the CryptoBilis incident, as blockchain investigators estimate cryptocurrency losses exceeding $86 million.

The October 9 incident involved devices sold through CryptoBilis, a reseller operating in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Ledger’s October 11 update identified the reseller as the source of all confirmed cases while investigations continued.

The company said its internal systems and direct sales channels remain unaffected. However, the discovery of tampered hardware has introduced a physical security concern alongside the reported thefts, with investigators still working to establish the full extent of the incident.

The number of affected devices remains undisclosed, and the manufacturer has not confirmed the total financial losses. Meanwhile, CryptoBilis has stopped selling hardware wallets as the investigation proceeds with relevant authorities.

Blockchain Analysis Estimates $93.2M Taken From 315 Wallets

Blockchain intelligence firm Bitquery estimated that approximately $93.2 million was taken from 315 wallets across Bitcoin, Ethereum, TRON, BNB Chain and Polygon. Its analysis also found that some stolen funds moved through additional addresses after the initial thefts.

The estimate exceeds separate reports placing the suspected losses above $86 million. However, neither figure represents an official loss assessment from Ledger, which has not confirmed the total amount stolen.

Reports of missing cryptocurrency emerged on October 9, when users linked disappearing funds to wallets associated with devices purchased through CryptoBilis. Investigators subsequently identified an unauthorized hardware component inside one affected device.

Hardware wallets typically isolate private keys from internet-connected devices to reduce exposure to online attacks. However, physical modifications can undermine those protections if malicious components compromise sensitive information.

Investigators have not publicly established how the affected devices were compromised or whether the hardware implant caused every reported loss. Therefore, the connection between the discovered component and the broader thefts remains under investigation.

Ledger Issues Security Guidance and Reviews Reseller Controls

Ledger has advised customers who purchased devices through CryptoBilis to take precautions based on their devices’ initialization status. Besides, buyers who have not initialized their devices should not set them up.

On the other hand, customers who have already initialized their wallets should transfer their assets to a new Ledger device using a newly generated recovery phrase. The company has also directed affected users to its official support website for assistance.

The incident has prompted a review of authorized reseller controls, hardware protections and distribution procedures. Ledger has also warned distributors against restocking returned devices, which could introduce modified products into the supply chain.

Customers have therefore been urged to avoid unauthorized sellers as hardware wallets could be counterfeit, modified or outside manufacturer security guidelines. The company also warned about follow-up scams targeting people affected by the incident.

Ledger said it will never call customers, send direct messages or request their 24-word recovery phrases. Users should therefore avoid sharing recovery information with anyone claiming to provide technical support. The investigation remains ongoing, with the number of affected customers, the confirmed financial impact and the precise compromise method still unresolved.

The post Ledger Confirms Tampered Hardware in CryptoBilis Case Amid Reports of $86M in Crypto Losses appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Brian Armstrong backed the SEC’s proposal on October 11 to broaden retail access to private markets.
• The SEC is considering professional credentials and FINRA exams as alternative routes to accredited investor status.
• Current eligibility generally requires $200,000 in annual income or $1 million in net worth, excluding a primary residence.
• The proposal covers regulated funds, adviser compensation disclosures and interval fund rules, but changes are not final.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has backed a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposal to broaden retail investors’ access to private markets. His support comes as regulators consider alternative ways for ordinary Americans to qualify for investments traditionally reserved for wealthier individuals.

In an October 11 post on X, Armstrong argued that everyday investors have missed opportunities as companies increasingly remain private for longer. This trend can leave early shareholders with years of access to private-company growth before ordinary investors can participate through public markets.

Armstrong also warned that late entrants could become exit liquidity for earlier shareholders. This occurs when investors buy into an opportunity while existing holders sell their positions, potentially leaving newcomers exposed to unfavorable valuations.

SEC Weighs Professional Credentials and Exams for Accredited Investor Status

The proposal follows the regulator’s September 30 announcement of potential changes affecting private-market investments and regulated funds. These measures aim to broaden participation while retaining investor protections.

Among the proposed changes, registered investment advisers could receive performance-based compensation from additional client categories, including certain regulated funds. The regulator also plans to require further disclosures about this compensation and modernize rules governing interval funds. Separately, the agency is seeking public feedback on alternative ways to qualify as an accredited investor.

Options under consideration include professional credentials, examinations and certain financial industry licenses. The qualifications being considered include the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charter, Certified Public Accountant (CPA) license and Certified Financial Planner (CFP) certification. Certain Financial Industry Regulatory Authority licenses and an accredited investor examination developed by FINRA are also under consideration.

These alternatives could give individuals another way to demonstrate financial knowledge without meeting existing income or wealth requirements. However, the proposals remain under consideration and have not become established rules.

Under current requirements, individuals generally qualify through annual income exceeding $200,000 for each of the previous two years. Alternatively, joint income exceeding $300,000 or net worth above $1 million, excluding a primary residence, can establish eligibility.

Longer Private Company Lifecycles Raise Concerns About Late-Stage Access

The debate reflects a changing fundraising environment in which businesses can secure successive private funding rounds without listing shares publicly. Consequently, founders and early shareholders can retain control while delaying public disclosure requirements and listing costs.

For retail investors, this can mean waiting until an initial public offering (IPO) to access publicly traded shares. By then, early investors may have participated in private funding rounds and transactions unavailable to the wider market.

Armstrong’s warning about exit liquidity centers on this timing gap. Investors entering later could face elevated valuations while earlier shareholders sell, although outcomes depend on individual companies, investment terms and pricing.

Broader access through regulated funds would not eliminate investment risks. Private-market assets can involve limited liquidity, uncertain valuations, fees and potential losses. Interval funds also typically offer repurchases at scheduled intervals rather than unrestricted daily withdrawals.

The regulatory process will determine which proposed changes proceed and what safeguards accompany them. Until then, the proposal signals a possible change in access to private markets, not an immediate opening of every private investment to retail investors.

The post Coinbase CEO Backs SEC Proposal to Expand Retail Access to Private Markets appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• 42 AI stocks generated 67% of S&P 500 price returns since January 2024, according to reported figures.
• AI companies accounted for 58% of S&P 500 earnings growth over the reported period, according to data.
• AI-related companies drove 81% of combined capital expenditure and R&D growth across the S&P 500.
• Only 29% of stocks outperformed the S&P 500 over the previous three years, indicating narrow market breadth.

A group of 42 artificial intelligence (AI) stocks generated 67% of the S&P 500’s price returns since January 2024, exposing the index’s growing dependence on a relatively small group of companies.

Figures shared by The Kobeissi Letter on October 11, 2026, and attributed to Bloomberg and JPMorgan, show that these companies also accounted for 58% of earnings growth and 81% of combined capital expenditure (CapEx) and research and development (R&D) growth.

The remaining 458 companies contributed 11 percentage points to the index’s price returns, compared with 22 percentage points from the AI group. The figures reveal how market performance and corporate spending have become increasingly concentrated among technology-related businesses.

AI Stocks Dominate Returns and Corporate Spending

The concentration extends beyond share prices. The 42 companies accounted for more than half of earnings growth and over four-fifths of additional spending growth across the index. Much of this spending supports data centers, advanced semiconductors and computing infrastructure required to develop and operate AI systems.

Research and development commitments also contribute to the gap between these companies and the broader market. A separate report from JPMorgan Private Bank’s Eye on the Market Outlook 2026 found that 42 AI-related companies represented approximately 65% to 75% of S&P 500 earnings, revenues and capital spending since ChatGPT launched in November 2022.

However, that analysis covers a longer period and uses different measurements from the figures shared by The Kobeissi Letter. Both sets of data point to the substantial role these companies play in corporate performance. Recent earnings figures further illustrate the concentration.

JPMorgan Asset Management reported in August 2026 that just 10 companies accounted for 77% of expected second-quarter earnings growth. Semiconductor companies drove much of that growth, while heavy infrastructure spending continued to pressure profitability at some major cloud and technology businesses.

Narrow Market Breadth Leaves the S&P 500 Dependent on AI Leaders

The concentration matters as the S&P 500 represents hundreds of companies, yet its overall performance can rely heavily on a limited number of large constituents. Reuters reported on October 9, 2026, that the U.S. bull market remained largely driven by AI-related investments.

The index had gained 117% since its October 2022 low, although rising Treasury yields, interest rates and concentration concerns threatened the rally. The Kobeissi Letter also reported that only 29% of stocks had outperformed the benchmark over the previous three years.

This limited market breadth indicates that index gains have not translated into comparable performance across most constituents. The figures do not establish whether current valuations are justified or predict future returns.

However, they identify a measurable dependence on a narrow group of companies for price performance, earnings expansion and corporate spending. The central issue remains whether continued AI investment will translate into sufficient revenue and productivity gains to support sustained business performance across the sector.

The post 42 AI Stocks Drive 67% of S&P 500 Returns as Market Concentration Deepens appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Tether USDT worth approximately $1.45 million became accessible after restrictions on four THORChain vaults were reversed within three hours.
• THORChain resumed TRON trading, deposits, and transaction signing, while 19 other addresses in the same freezing operation remained restricted.
• Co-founder Chad Barraford said the protocol received no advance communication explaining the freeze and sought clarification from Tether.
• Restoring access to existing tokens resolved an operational disruption, but it did not establish fresh capital inflows or stronger crypto demand.

Tether USDT worth approximately $1.45 million became accessible again after the issuer reversed restrictions on four THORChain vaults on TRON. The reversal followed a roughly three-hour freeze on October 9, allowing disrupted network operations to resume.

The incident briefly interrupted a stablecoin route used for cross-chain trading. Reports said the four vault balances remained intact after their addresses were removed from the blacklist.

Tether USDT Restrictions Lifted as Vault Services Resume

THORChain technical co-founder Chad Barraford said the project received no advance communication explaining the restrictions. Before the reversal, he said the team was seeking contact with Tether and hoped a misunderstanding caused the action.

As reported, Barraford subsequently confirmed the addresses were unfrozen and trading would resume. The publication said neither company immediately responded to its requests for further details.

The four addresses reportedly  left the blacklist at 15:30 UTC. THORChain then restarted TRON trading, deposits, and transaction signing. Another 19 wallets included in the same freezing operation remained blacklisted.

That distinction limits the scope of the announcement. Tether USDT access returned for the affected protocol vaults, while restrictions continued elsewhere. The reversal did not represent a general removal of wallet controls.

For traders, the operational impact concerned whether transactions could proceed through the affected route. For liquidity providers, restored services reopened access to functions interrupted during the freeze.

The incident illustrates an external dependency for protocols using centrally issued stablecoins. Decentralized infrastructure does not remove the issuer controls attached to those tokens.

Tether USDT operates within an established framework that permits wallet restrictions. In December 2023, the issuer announced expanded secondary-market freezing measures covering wallets associated with sanctioned persons.

TRON Supply Growth Puts the Liquidity Impact in Context

The wider liquidity discussion centers on TRON’s growing stablecoin supply.Lookonchain figures show an annual increase of $18.67 billion, bringing USDT supply on TRON to $94.25 billion.

Those figures imply growth of approximately 24.7%. They help explain why interruptions involving TRON can matter to traders using its stablecoin infrastructure.

However, the $1.45 million release represents approximately 0.0015% of that reported network supply. Its significance lies mainly in restoring a specific service, rather than changing marketwide buying capacity.

Tether USDT already held in the vaults remained part of the existing supply during the freeze. Removing restrictions made those balances usable again without demonstrating fresh investor deposits or new token issuance.

The USDT dominance retreated from a September resistance area near 6.7%. A lower dominance reading alone cannot confirm that holders are buying Bitcoin or altcoins.

The ratio compares the stablecoin’s market value with the broader cryptocurrency market. It can decline when other assets appreciate, even without a corresponding reduction in stablecoin holdings.

Similarly, higher stablecoin supply does not establish where holders intend to deploy their funds. Balances can support payments, transfers, collateral, or trading activity.

Any claim that Tether USDT will drive a rebound therefore requires additional evidence of actual buying. The vault reopening itself provides no measurement of subsequent Bitcoin or altcoin purchases.

At the time of reporting, the other 19 addresses remained restricted.

The post Tether USDT Unfreeze Restores $1.45M Across Four THORChain Vaults appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR:

• Peter Brandt favors Monero among the altcoin charts he compared, saying its previous overhead supply has already been absorbed.
• XRP faces potential selling from investors who bought at higher prices, creating resistance that could interrupt a recovery toward $2.16.
• The developing XRP reversal pattern has a short, poorly formed right shoulder, although Brandt says further development is not required.
• The $2.16 daily chart objective and earlier $5.40 monthly projection reflect separate patterns, rather than a revised single forecast.

Peter Brandt favors Monero over XRP, despite identifying a potential XRP advance toward $2.16. The veteran trader says XRP faces substantial overhead supply that could interrupt a recovery. Monero, by comparison, has absorbed the comparable supply in his chart assessment. His preference reflects trading patterns rather than an evaluation of either cryptocurrency’s underlying technology. 

Brandt also compared Solana, Ethereum, and Stellar over the same period, highlighting differences in resistance and chart structure. For XRP, the bullish objective remains conditional. Its developing pattern could change, while investors who bought at higher prices may sell as the market approaches their entry levels.

Peter Brandt Favors Monero as XRP Faces Supply Barriers

Peter Brandt described Monero as his strongest choice among the altcoin charts under review. He argued that its previous overhead supply had already been absorbed, leaving a clearer technical path.

“Of these, my favorite by far is XMR,” he wrote.

That assessment explains why a bullish XRP price target did not make XRP his preferred trade. A chart can suggest potential gains while still showing barriers along the route.

Overhead supply refers to potential selling from holders who purchased above the current market price. When prices recover, some may exit near their original purchase levels, limiting further progress.

Brandt identified that issue as a significant negative for XRP. His comparison focused on the relative burden visible across charts covering the same period.

Solana received a more favorable assessment for its cup and handle formation. He considered that structure stronger than the corresponding pattern developing in XRP.

Ethereum showed considerable congestion, reflecting trading concentrated within a crowded range. However, Brandt distinguished that congestion from the overhead supply he identified in XRP.

Stellar also faced overhead supply, although he considered its burden smaller. These distinctions shaped his preference for Monero without establishing guaranteed outcomes for any asset.

For Peter Brandt, the distinction concerns both the potential move and the resistance that could delay it. His favorable reading of Monero addresses the latter issue, while XRP’s measured objective describes a possible destination without resolving the supply problem along the way.

Peter Brandt said he did not need to understand Monero’s fundamental narrative to assess its chart. His stated approach prioritizes price behavior, with Bitcoin an exception to his broader indifference toward cryptocurrency fundamentals.

Daily XRP Target Differs From Earlier Monthly Projection

Peter Brandt derived the $2.16 objective from a possible inverse head and shoulders pattern. He used daily closing prices to measure the formation, rather than intraday highs and lows.

The setup features three troughs, with the central trough deeper than the surrounding two. Projecting the pattern’s height upward produces a measured objective, subject to the structure developing as anticipated.

His earlier daily XRP chart highlighted a cup and handle formation. He suggested that smaller pattern could become the right shoulder of the larger reversal structure.

However, the shoulder remained short and poorly developed in his assessment. More formation appeared likely, although he explicitly stopped short of calling further development necessary.

Peter Brandt cautioned that chart patterns can evolve into different configurations as trading continues. A projected destination therefore does not establish that the market will reach it.

“Targets or objectives are not sacred,” he wrote.

The XRP price objective also differs from his earlier $5.40 projection, shared on September 21. That assessment came from a monthly chart and addressed a separate, longer term structure.

He did not describe $2.16 as a replacement for $5.40. Nor did he identify the lower figure as a required intermediate stop toward the higher objective.

In a September 26 comment, Brandt said XRP’s chart alone could justify considering a trade. He later asked XRP supporters not to interpret his technical criticism as a personal offense.

The post Peter Brandt Prefers Monero as XRP Rally Faces Selling Pressure appeared first on Blockonomi.

A 25-year-old man has been jailed for two and a half years for his involvement in SIM-swap fraud, which saw four people lose £200,000 worth of crypto in November 2021.

According to the City of London Police, Ajay Shinjin, also known as AJ Marley Cruz, received more than £44,000 from the proceeds of crime and used the money on luxurious vacations to Dubai, an expensive apartment, and gold-plated dental grills.

How the Swap Worked and Where the Money Went

It began in early November 2021, when BT spotted unauthorized activity on its systems. Customer phone numbers were being moved onto SIM cards controlled by criminals, a practice known as SIM swapping.

With a number under their control, the fraudsters could receive one-time passcodes by text and use them to get into a victim’s bank account or crypto wallet.

BT then identified the devices receiving the transferred numbers. Each was eSIM-enabled and had two IMEI numbers, the serial codes that identify a handset. Data from the telecommunications company led to several suspects, and Shinjin, aka AJ Marley Cruz, was attributed to four of the devices.

All the victims reported their crimes in the first week of November 2021, and police detailed four thefts, with the first seeing about £40,000 in crypto taken from a victim on November 2, and roughly £27,000 of it landed in Shinjin’s personal crypto account. A second victim lost around £17,000 between November 5 and 7, and all of which was later found in the defendant’s own wallet. The two sums made up the £44,000 he received.

In the other two cases, he helped to carry out the thefts while the money went elsewhere. Some £8,000 left a third victim’s Coinbase account on November 3, and another £130,000 was stolen from a fourth victim on the 6th and 7th of the same month.

Shinjin was arrested in October 2023 at Heathrow Airport when coming from Dubai, with prosecutors then charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and one of transferring criminal property. He entered a guilty plea in late September 2026.

“This was a complex and calculated fraud that caused significant financial harm to a number of victims,” said Detective Constable Simon Ardeman of the City of London Police.

He also called SIM-swap fraud “a sophisticated and increasingly concerning form of offending.” The detective constable added:

“This conviction sends a clear message that those who use technology to commit fraud will be brought to justice.”

An Earlier UK Case

A much larger UK crypto case reached a courtroom roughly a year ago, when Zhimin Qian, a Chinese national, pleaded guilty in late September 2025 to acquiring criminal property in the form of crypto. That case was tied to what is believed to be the world’s largest cryptocurrency seizure: more than 61,000 BTC, worth over £5.5 billion ($7.43 billion).

Qian had defrauded over 128,000 victims in China between 2014 and 2017 before converting the proceeds into BTC. Will Lyne, the Metropolitan Police’s head of economic and cybercrime command, called it one of the largest money laundering cases in UK history.

The post London Man Gets 2.5 Years for SIM-Swap Crypto Theft appeared first on CryptoPotato.

After reports emerged of a potential theft of over $80 million in crypto from its devices, Ledger confirmed over the weekend that at least one wallet tied to the ongoing CryptoBilis investigation contained an unauthorized hardware implant.

Meanwhile, a new community report on X claimed a suspicious Ledger device bought from MediaMarkt in Europe may also have been compromised, which would widen the scope well beyond Southeast Asia.

Ledger Confirms

In the latest update published on Saturday evening, the hardware wallet manufacturer said it had examined one device belonging to an impacted user and found an “unauthorized hardware implant” inside. The team said they have contacted affected users and have started working with authorities.

CryptoBilis has also responded to Ledger’s plea to stop sales of all hardware-wallet inventory, not merely Ledger products, until the investigation is concluded. The company behind devices such as Nano X said it has no indication that its own security infrastructure, systems, or services were compromised. It has also yet to determine how many affected devices contain implants or confirm that the discovered implant is responsible for all reported wallet drains.

The initial report, which we published yesterday, stated that customers who bought through CryptoBilis in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines were impacted. Initial investigations claimed the suspected losses exceed $86 million, but a new report from Bitquery puts that estimate closer to $93 million across 311 wallets on five chains.

Europe, Too?

A post from one X user claimed that a Ledger purchased through MediaMarkt in Europe also showed signs of possible hardware manipulation. The report quickly circulated through the vast crypto community, prompting warnings that the incident may no longer be geographically isolated to Southeast Asia.

However, the European situation has not been confirmed as compromised by the wallet manufacturer, and users examining the published images disagree about what they actually show. Some argued that the hardware appears inconsistent with a genuine Ledger board, while others said they could not see the same type of additional implant identified in the Southeast Asian case.

Nevertheless, MediaMarkt is an official reseller for Ledger in several European markets, including Germany and Austria. For now, though, this unconfirmed part of the story remains uncertain, while the original case in Asia continues to take new victims, according to reports on X.

The post Ledger Confirms Hardware Implant as Tampered Wallet Reports Allegedly Spread to Europe appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The spot exchange-traded funds tracking bitcoin experienced their worst week in terms of outflows since the end of June, which became one of the reasons behind the underlying asset’s major correction.

Although the net outflows from the spot Ethereum ETFs were slightly less, the overall ETH picture is worse given the lack of any green days.

BTC ETFs Bleed Heavily

The business week began on the wrong foot for the ETFs, with almost $90 million in net outflows. Coincidentally, BTC’s price was rejected at $87,000 and dropped by over a couple of grand on the same day. It recovered some ground on Tuesday when the ETF flows turned positive, and investors poured in $118.86 million.

However, the trend changed for the worse on Wednesday and Thursday, with the net outflows skyrocketing to $487.07 million and $244.13 million, respectively. As expected, BTC tumbled hard during those two days, with the culmination taking place on Thursday, with a nosedive to a 2-week low of $80,400.

The inflows returned on Friday, but they were quite modest, with just $21.13 million entering the funds. This wasn’t nearly enough to offset the major losses experienced during the previous two trading days. As such, the week ended with $681.10 million in net outflows – the most since the last full week of June, when investors pulled out $1.79 billion. The cumulative total net inflows dropped from $57.79 billion to $57.11 billion.

ETH ETFs Fare Even Worse

The Ethereum ETFs began the week with $50.76 million in net outflows. The pace of withdrawals accelerated on Tuesday, with $201.89 million leaving the funds, and $160.77 million on Wednesday. The red streak continued by the end of the week, with another $72.54 million taken out on Thursday and $56.10 million on Friday.

Worse still, these five consecutive red days only built on the previous four. Overall, the funds haven’t been in the green since September 28. Within this timeframe, the cumulative net totals dropped from $13.95 billion to $13.26 billion.

The underlying asset was halted at $2,800 a few weeks ago, but it managed to remain above $2,700 until the mid-week crash, which took it south to $2,400. It has recovered some ground since then and now trades above $2,500.

The post Bitcoin ETF Weekly Outflows Hit 3-Month High, Ethereum Funds Extend Losing Streak appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The past week didn’t go well for the entire cryptocurrency market, with prices falling to local lows after BTC was rejected at $87,000 and dragged most altcoins with it.

The ETF flows were among the reasons behind the market-wide correction, as almost all exchange-traded funds tracking crypto assets were in the red. Almost all.

XRP ETFs Defy the Trend

We will discuss in detail the major outflows from the spot BTC and ETH ETFs in another article, but we will just mention the end results here: $681 million in net outflows from the former, and $542 million from the latter. The funds tracking SOL bled out as well, with nearly $25 million taken out.

And then there were the XRP ETFs. Not only were they not in the red last week, but they actually performed better than the previous five-day trading period. Although there were three (out of five) trading days with no reportable action, which obviously is not ideal, they still attracted $3.14 million on October 6 and $8.17 million on October 8, ending the week with $11.31 million in net inflows.

Once again, the cumulative total net inflows hit a new all-time high of $1.8 billion. The week wasn’t perfect, as mentioned above, but it still extended the green-only streak to 13 consecutive weeks. It started in mid-July, and the financial vehicles have attracted over $300 million since then.

Bitwise’s XRP ETF remains the undisputed market leader, with cumulative net inflows of almost $688 million. Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ follows with $509 million, while Canary Capital’s XRPC is third with $487 million.

XRP Still Suffers

The ETF demand for Ripple’s cross-border token failed to prevent a price crash. The entire market unraveled in the past week, especially on Thursday, and XRP joined the ride south. The asset traded above $1.51 on Monday and Tuesday as analysts outlined the next major targets above $1.60 if it managed to break past that level, but the reality was different.

XRP was rejected immediately, and the market-wide pullback drove it south hard to $1.32 on Thursday evening. This became a three-week low for the token, which finally rebounded after this calamity and currently stands at $1.40. Despite this recovery, XRP is still 7% down weekly, and analysts are still bullish even if it falls to $1.20 next.

The post Ripple ETFs Defy Crypto Slump With Another Green Week but XRP Price Sinks appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Let’s start with a quick disclaimer – we used to write a lot of similar articles several years ago. The reason was simple: searches on Google typically show the demand for the cryptocurrency industry among retail investors. After all, institutions don’t go to the world’s largest search engine to ask about buying BTC or altcoins. They have their own methods.

However, the tide has turned since then, as retail investors have shown a different attitude. The charts we will display in this article prove that the actual Google queries about BTC or crypto as a whole plummeted, especially during bear market years. Now, though, there’s an interesting change.

Buy Crypto Is Back

The first chart below shows that ‘buy crypto’ searches plummeted at the end of 2021 – right at the time when BTC and the alts were charting then-ATHs, and went below 20 for over a year; yes, it coincided with the bear market. They picked up slightly in May 2024 (as prices soared), dropped again as the market cooled, and jumped high at year-end when BTC and the alts were booming after the US presidential elections.

Another decline followed in mid-2025 as the market experienced a fresh drop, and it surged to a five-year high in August. Shortly after, bitcoin marked a new (and its latest) all-time high of just over $126,000. After the October 2025 crash, the leading cryptocurrency went into a 10-11-month-long bear market, in which searches for ‘buy crypto’ decreased significantly.

The yearly bottom came in July when BTC slumped to under $58,000, and most alts struggled just as much. Since then, though, the searches have risen sharply and are projected to beat the 2026 record in October. Needless to say, prices have recovered, and we are far from the recent lows. In other words: the retail pattern has repeated perfectly again.

What About Bitcoin?

The landscape around BTC itself is less straightforward. The ‘buy bitcoin’ searches were below 40 on average for four straight years – from late 2021 to late 2025. Even the US elections couldn’t really break that negative streak. They finally picked up in August 2025, just a few months before BTC’s rise to $126,000, dipped again by January, before suddenly soaring to a new multi-year peak in February.

That was a one-month thing, as the queries quickly dropped to 40-50 for the next few months. Although they jumped again in September, the October projections are quite different than those for ‘buy crypto,’ as current Google Trends data shows a massive decline toward 20. As such, it’s somewhat safe to determine that even if retail is indeed coming back, they are not looking specifically for BTC.

The post ‘Buy Crypto’ Google Searches Hit Yearly Highs: Is Retail Coming Back? appeared first on CryptoPotato.