Bitcoin's appeal as a hedge against fiscal instability grows, potentially reshaping institutional investment strategies and portfolio diversification.

The post BlackRock’s Robert Mitchnick says Bitcoin’s macro case strengthens amid fiscal concerns appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Increased tensions in the Strait of Hormuz could disrupt global oil supply, impacting energy markets and escalating geopolitical conflicts.

The post Tanker hit by unknown projectile in Strait of Hormuz, UKMTO reports appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Investor caution amid inflation concerns and Fed policy uncertainty highlights the delicate balance between tech optimism and economic realities.

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Global oil supply disruptions may lead to increased prices, impacting economies and prompting strategic shifts in energy policies worldwide.

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Rising US inflation and Treasury yields may continue to pressure gold prices, affecting its appeal as a safe-haven asset and investment strategy.

The post Gold drops 1% to $4,590 as US inflation boosts dollar, Treasury yields appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Coinkite’s Coldcard Bug Exposed Single-Sig Risk. Multi-Vendor Multisig Is the New Bitcoin Custody Baseline

In the wake of Coldcard’s catastrophic entropy bug, self-custody advocates and experts have begun recommending a new standard, multi-vendor multisignature wallets, an approach that looks to minimize —among other threats— dependency on any single hardware wallet manufacturer.

The Coldcard entropy bug that went undiscovered since at least 2021 has taught a hard lesson to the Bitcoin self-custody advocates and users. No matter how legitimate or competent a wallet provider might seem, how well recommended and reputable, a major bug may be possible. As a result, Bitcoiners are questioning old recommendations and assumptions, including many declaring the ‘death of single sig’ the popular self-custody method of trusting the private key pair generation to one wallet alone. 

The Threat Model

Self-custody by any measure is an advanced practice in Bitcoin. Advocates recommend it as a way to protect user funds from exchange malfeasance like that seen in the cases of FTX and MtGox, among many others. But recent events have driven a revaluation of custody practices, with many bitcoin owners moving coins to exchanges — at least temporarily — while others upgrading or changing their self-custody setups altogether. Nick Neuman, CEO of Casa, claimed that 233k bitcoins moved to safety in reaction to the Coldcard hack.

To understand when self-custody makes sense and for whom, it is essential to understand your personal threat model. A threat model is the careful analysis of threats to an individual, for the purpose of designing security practices and structures ahead of time. 

A simple threat model practice can be to take a step back and think about all the possible things that worry you about self-custody, and add them to a list. Then think about all the things that advocates caution users about, and append them to that same list. Next, sort or rate items on that list based on which are most likely to happen to you, and which are most likely to happen in general. Finally, you can rank each item in the list by how catastrophic it would be if it occurred; can your current setup and plans survive the realization of that threat? 

Two of the most likely causes of loss of funds in Bitcoin self-custody are user error related to backups or forgotten passwords, and of course theft. Many of the wallets believed to be lost bitcoins that have not moved come from bad backups of private keys in the early days, resulting in data loss after a computer failed. Others simply used passwords too difficult to brute force, and then forgot them, encrypting their private keys forever.

On the theft dimension, bad entropy attacks likely rank among the most successful attacks on self-custody to date, with Coldcard joining a significant list of other wallets that have suffered bugs of the sort, intentional or otherwise, such as Trust Wallet, and many lesser-known and possibly malicious mobile wallets. In some cases, fake wallets like the iOS Sparrow Wallets simply stole user funds by keeping a copy of the user-generated private keys and sweeping the funds once deposited. In all of these examples, more thoughtful user behavior before trusting random software with your life savings is the solution. 

Once users have a clear threat model in place and a good enough understanding of the technology, designing security practices becomes more a science than an art. And while every individual has specific circumstances they need to take into account, some structures have emerged as the most resilient to most threats. One such practice becoming widely recommended and adopted among long-term self-custody Bitcoin holders is a carefully formed multisig setup. 

Multi-vendor Multisig

The term “Multi-vendor Multisig” is relatively new in the self-custody niche. The term “multisig” has nevertheless gone viral in 2026, clearly triggered by the Coldcard hack that saw the loss of over 100 million dollars worth of bitcoin, mostly from single seed wallets. Most single-seed Coldcard users appear to have generated their private keys on the device without adding an extra passphrase, extra words that add custom entropy to the private keys, nor without extra dice rolls, which do the same in a different format. 

The weak entropy from the Coldcard firmware — which users had no reason to distrust, given the company’s strong brand — in turn made guessing the related private keys easy, with a bit of custom work, which hackers eventually figured out. 

The resulting viral interest in multisig is warranted. Multisig Bitcoin wallets protect users from such hardware manufacturer errors by letting users construct a Bitcoin address that requires signing from multiple private keys and thus multiple devices, in what is known as a Bitcoin script.

Bitcoin scripts are contracts of sorts that set spending conditions for a bitcoin wallet. All Bitcoin wallets can be thought of as having some kind of script involved, with the simplest and most popular being that anyone who can sign a valid transaction can spend all or any funds therein. Multisig scripts instead require a threshold of valid signatures from different keypairs to result in a valid withdrawal. These scripts are enforced by the Bitcoin consensus rules.

Multi-vendor multisig theory posits that users should make sure every keypair used to construct a Bitcoin multisig is generated from a different wallet vendor. 

One example that is likely popular today might be the use of a Trezor Safe 7 hardware wallet with one key, a second key generated by a Ledger Nano, and a third key generated by a multisig wallet provider, considered a recovery key. A script of this sort would require any 2 valid signatures out of the three possible signatures in the setup.

By using two different hardware wallet providers, the user minimizes trust in any single wallet vendor, protecting them from an entropy failure like the one seen in Coldcard. 

Other Multisig setups can add more keys, with a 3-of-5 threshold also being common and a standard offering of a multisig-specialized wallet like Casa. It is at this point that the terminology commonly used and understood to describe Bitcoin spending software starts to break down, and as a result merits clarification.

Wallets like Casa are software interfaces that let users combine partially signed transactions from different private key pairs. In this scenario, it becomes more useful to describe ‘hardware wallets’ like Trezor or Ledger as ‘key signers’ since no single keypair in the set holds enough of the key material to spend all the Bitcoin held in the Multisig script address. 

So Casa is a Multisig wallet that lets you use a threshold of hardware signers to secure and send bitcoin funds. Fundamentally, they help users interact with Bitcoin script and create consensus-valid transactions easily. Other examples of such multisig wallet providers include Nunchuck, Sparrow desktop wallet and Unchained Capital. 

In cases like Casa and Unchained, the wallet provider offers users a recovery key controlled by the company, which some users find useful. Nunchuck and Sparrow, on the other hand, are designed for full user autonomy in this regard, though Nunchuck does offer a premium recovery key-related plan as well. 

The Upsides of Multivendor Multisig

Another benefit of a multisig wallet is its potential resistance to the infamous wrench attacks. Countries like France, which make Bitcoin and crypto ownership a matter of public record as a consequence of tax filings, have become focal points for crypto theft-related kidnapping. Self-custody or not, targets of this kind of crime are vulnerable to theft, particularly when the funds can be moved in full quickly, be it from a custodial exchange the user can access from their phone, or some self-custody setup.

Advanced forms of multisig, like multi-jurisdictional or time-locked multisig, make it so that users have to travel, ideally through an airport, in order to reach other key signers needed to construct a valid bitcoin transaction. Or perhaps the recovery key involved in the multisig has the condition that it will not sign for two weeks after the user submits the request and corresponding transaction data. The result is the removal of the final central point of failure in Bitcoin custody: the user’s own willingness to send the bitcoin, particularly when under duress.

While best practices in the case of wrench attacks broadly try to avoid ending up in that situation in the first place, making it difficult to spend your coins actually protects users from a wide range of attacks as well, including phishing schemes and other forms of social engineering that use pressure tactics to fool users into sending funds quickly. 

Multisig has also begun to enable novel forms of Bitcoin insurance, as demonstrated by AnchorWatch, a multisig wallet and insurance company that offers bitcoin theft protection denominated in BTC. The company’s services today are primarily offered to Americans through the Lloyd’s of London insurer. 

The Downsides of Multisig

One critical downside of Multisig is that the user does not only need to have access to the threshold key material needed to sign, be it two hardware wallets as in our example, or one of the hardware wallets and a recovery key from the wallet company. The user also needs to store a copy of the Multisig script or template, so that they can recreate the smart contract and thus the valid withdrawal conditions for spending. Most Multisig wallets store this information for clients, but they will also send a copy to users so they can recover independently of the Multisig wallet, should it one day go offline. 

This post Coinkite’s Coldcard Bug Exposed Single-Sig Risk. Multi-Vendor Multisig Is the New Bitcoin Custody Baseline first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Billions Pour Into Bitcoin ETFs as Rally Rolls On

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have continued their winning streak, attracting billions of dollars in new investment over the past week. 

U.S. investors have thrown $2.56 billion since last Monday, according to Farside Investors data, helping push the leading cryptocurrency’s price higher. 

And this week alone, nearly $652 million in fresh cash has hit the products managed by the likes of BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and Fidelity. 

Bitcoin was recently trading for $78,302 after jumping nearly 25% over a seven-day period. The coin touched as high as $81,160 on Monday. 

Bitcoin’s rise comes after a sluggish June and July when it mostly traded below $65,000. 

The cryptocurrency has benefited from news that the Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The announcement last week hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets like Bitcoin and gold have benefited.  

Bloomberg Intelligence ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas wrote on X Wednesday that the debasement trade was back.

“Gold and Bitcoin ETFs have combined for +$7b in flows in past week, by far a record for a 5-day period as debasement trade steals spotlight from AI,” he said. 

The debasement trade is when investors buy an asset to hedge against a currency losing value. Investments like Bitcoin and precious metals have done well as part of the trade as they cannot be endlessly printed.  

Last year, the investment strategy was much talked about but then went quiet as investors focused more on buying artificial intelligence-related equities.

Investors now are fretting over U.S. borrowing, a weak dollar and efforts to contain long-term yields.

Bitcoin ETFs had their best week since October last week, with nearly $2 billion in inflows. 

Positive regulatory coming out of the White House has also spurred the flurry of trading activity. President Donald Trump held a meeting with crypto executives earlier last week before urging lawmakers to get the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act over the line.

This post Billions Pour Into Bitcoin ETFs as Rally Rolls On first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Forget the Trump Bump — Bitcoin Would Be Fine Under Democrats, Says VanEck 

President Donald Trump may be the most crypto-friendly leader the U.S. has had so far — but what would happen to Bitcoin if the Democrats were to get back in power? 

Well, it wouldn’t necessarily be bad, according to asset manager VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets Research, Matthew Sigel. 

Speaking on CNBC Wednesday, the analyst also said that contrary to what many believe, ex-President Joe Biden wasn’t anti-Bitcoin. 

Republicans have repeatedly blasted Democrats as anti-crypto. Regulators under ex-president Joe Biden cracked down on digital asset companies, filing various lawsuits.  

“Biden was actually okay for Bitcoin,” Sigel said. “It’s the rest of cryptos that might have a problem [if Democrats get back in power].” 

He added: “With the ascendant socialist wing of the Democrat Party, I can tell you here in New York City that there are plenty who are reminded of why there is value in a decentralized, scarce asset that can’t be printed and spent on nonsense.”

President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the digital asset industry and has passed a number of pro-crypto executive orders, including setting up a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. 

The price of Bitcoin surged off the back of Trump’s 2024 victory and notched a new record last year. Despite some sluggish months in 2026, the leading digital asset began to rise again last week after the president urged lawmakers to get the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act over the line.

Bitcoin has jumped nearly 24% over the past seven days, touching as high as $81,160 this week before dropping again to its current price of $78,438. 

Pro-crypto lawmakers had hoped to pass the Clarity Act before Congress broke for August recess, but the vote slipped to September after Democrats balked at the latest draft. 

Some Republican senators have accused Democrats of deliberately holding the legislation back. 

The Clarity Act aims to create a legal framework classifying digital assets as securities, commodities or payment stablecoins, and determining which regulator oversees each.

Sigel’s comments echo those of Coinbase’s Chief Policy Officer, Faryar Shirzad, who said in July that crypto was “maybe the most bipartisan issue in Washington.”

Speaking about the delay in a vote on the Clarity Act, Shirzad said that while some lawmakers were holding back the long-awaited legislation, younger Democrats were for the framework. 

“A lot of the opposition is generational — so it is Democrats who oppose it — but I think younger members who understand the technology, understand that money is transforming how we should engage financially, how we need to adapt, and so it’s really a generational shift,” he said on The Hill’s Rising show. 

This post Forget the Trump Bump — Bitcoin Would Be Fine Under Democrats, Says VanEck  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Coinbase and Better Mortgage Announce General Availability of Bitcoin-Backed Mortgages 

Coinbase and Nasdaq-listed Better Mortgage have announced the availability of Bitcoin-backed mortgages for Americans. 

The crypto exchange and lender said Wednesday that the service was designed in accordance with the Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae. 

Coinbase and Better announced the funding of the first Bitcoin-backed mortgage in June. The service now hopes to cater to younger wannabe homeowners who have Bitcoin holdings. 

“In 2025, high interest rates, record home prices, and limited inventory pushed the median age of a first-time homebuyer to 40,” Chief Technology Officer at Better Mortgage, Ziggy Jonsson, said. 

“Coinbase counts millions of monthly users worldwide, and by allowing Coinbase One members to pledge crypto as collateral without selling their holdings, we’re opening a new path toward homeownership for a generation of borrowers whose wealth increasingly lives onchain.”

Ben Shen, head of financial services and loyalty products at Coinbase, added: “By enabling borrowers to pledge their digital assets in the mortgage underwriting process, we are allowing crypto to be more useful and powerful in the real-world — expanding the pathways to homeownership while preserving long-term investment positions.”

The announcement added that Coinbase One members will be eligible for a rebate equal to 1% of the mortgage value, up to a maximum of $10,000.

The debut loan by Coinbase and Better was closed by a married Michigan couple, Joe and Amy, in June. The couple used their Bitcoin holdings as collateral to fund their down payment rather than liquidating their position, the companies said at the time. 

Crypto-backed lender Milo said earlier this year that it had surpassed $100 million in digital asset mortgages, including a record $12 million loan, as more high-net-worth and institutional clients were using Bitcoin as collateral for home financing.

Bitcoin-backed loans are still a niche product but one of the biggest lenders in the space, Ledn, has released research claiming that the space could grow from its current size of $3 billion to $1 trillion in the next 10 years. 

This post Coinbase and Better Mortgage Announce General Availability of Bitcoin-Backed Mortgages  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

SEC Sends Proposal to White House To Modernize Crypto Custody

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent a proposal to the White House aiming to “clarify the framework for the custody of crypto assets” for investment advisers and companies. 

In a rule change sent Tuesday, the regulator said it wanted to “improve and modernize the regulations” surrounding custody for the crypto space.

The proposal comes after a vote was delayed on the long-awaited Clarity Act. Despite the delay, regulators like the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have said they will still proceed with trying to shape crypto policy. 

“This rulemaking would clarify the framework for the custody of crypto assets for investment adviser and investment companies, as well as make other modernizations needed to remove burdens from certain outdated provisions that are no longer needed to provide investor protection given the evolution in the markets and security trading and holding practices,” the proposal read. 

Pro-crypto lawmakers had hoped to pass the Clarity Act before Congress broke for August recess, but the vote slipped to September after Democrats balked at the latest draft. 

Some Republican senators — like Senator Cynthia Lummis — accused some of deliberately holding it back. 

Still, pro-crypto regulators want to press ahead. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig has said he will proceed with rulemaking whether or not the Clarity Act is enacted, aiming to finalise rules before the administration’s term is out.

And earlier this month, the SEC proposed its own framework to allow token issuers to raise money in the U.S. without falling foul of securities laws.

President Donald Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the crypto industry and received major backing from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Since taking office, regulators have taken a remarkably different approach to watchdogging the digital asset space. 

The president last week urged lawmakers to get the Clarity Act over the line. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said he is “committed to supporting Congress in advancing” the bill. 

This post SEC Sends Proposal to White House To Modernize Crypto Custody first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

If you buy US stocks through a crypto exchange, nobody withholds German capital gains tax on your behalf. Dividends and sale proceeds are credited to you gross, and the settlement with the tax office runs entirely through your income tax return. This is no grey area and no negligence on the provider’s part; it follows directly from where the securities account is held.

Since August 18, 2026 the question has become practical for considerably more people. That was the day Kraken opened US stock trading to customers in the European Economic Area. Anyone who previously held only Bitcoin and a few altcoins on the platform can now buy Apple, Nvidia or Tesla shares there as well. For tax purposes they land in a body of rules that has nothing to do with crypto and that many investors encounter for the first time.

Kraken brings 7,000 US stocks to the EEA: what applies since August 18

According to the exchange’s own announcement, eligible customers in the EEA have been able to trade more than 7,000 US stocks since August 18, 2026, alongside more than 600 crypto assets and more than 700 so-called xStocks. Trading in the shares is commission-free; in the small print the exchange states expressly that further costs such as spreads and currency conversion charges can arise. Trading is offered through the app and through Kraken Pro.

According to consistent trade reporting, Germany was among the first markets in which the offering ran in a limited pilot phase, together with France and the Netherlands. The go-live on August 18 completed that roll-out across the entire economic area. The exchange itself names no list of countries in its announcement and refers throughout to eligible customers in the EEA.

Decisive for everything that follows is one sentence from the legal section of that same announcement: the investment services are provided by Payward Europe Digital Solutions (CY) Limited, an investment firm authorised under the European markets in financial instruments directive and supervised by the Cypriot securities regulator CySEC. Your securities account therefore sits in Cyprus.

Domestic or foreign securities account: how to tell the difference

A foreign securities account is one held by an institution domiciled outside Germany, even when the app speaks German, you deposit in euros and the provider is regulated in the EU. The domicile of the custodian institution decides, not your address and not the language of the interface.

The difference is invisible in daily use and highly visible in the tax return. A German institution deducts the tax directly on every dividend and every sale at a profit, pays it over to the tax office and sends you a tax certificate at year end in which everything has already been offset. A foreign institution does none of that. It credits you the full amount and leaves the rest to you.

How to spot it without turning lawyer: look in the contract documents or in the footer of the trading platform for the name of the company providing the investment service, and for the competent supervisory authority. If a foreign regulator is named there, you hold a foreign securities account. At Kraken that is the Cypriot CySEC and the Payward company named above. If you are losing track of several accounts, our overview of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers lists programs that consolidate accounts and wallets and prepare the annual figures for the return.

Why a Cypriot investment firm withholds no capital gains tax

The Income Tax Act governs automatic withholding not through the question of how well a provider is regulated but through a very narrow definition. Under section 44 paragraph 1 of the Income Tax Act, the paying agent, meaning whoever has to carry out the deduction, is in the cases relevant here the domestic credit, financial services or securities institution that holds or administers the securities.

The paying agent is, in tax law, the body that pays out your investment income and is therefore obliged to withhold the tax for you. The word domestic in that provision is the whole difference. An investment firm domiciled in Cyprus is no domestic institution, so the obligation does not apply to it. The firm may not withhold the German tax and consequently does not.

The same holds for providers from Ireland, the Netherlands or Malta, and it holds regardless of whether the provider carries a MiCA licence for its crypto business. Regulation and tax withholding are two separate questions that are frequently confused. A European authorisation protects your securities account and gives you a supervisory route; it does not make the provider a German paying agent.

Anlage KAP becomes mandatory: what section 32d paragraph 3 EStG requires

Because nobody withholds the tax, the law shifts the duty onto you. The wording is short and leaves no room: taxable investment income that has not been subject to capital gains tax must be declared by the taxpayer in their income tax return. And the following sentence states that in this case an assessment is to be carried out, irrespective of the other rules on who has to file a return at all.

In plain terms that means two things. First, the income from the foreign account belongs in Anlage KAP, the schedule of the German income tax return for investment income. Second, anyone who would otherwise not have to file a return at all is obliged to file by this income. An employee with no other income who has never submitted a return slips into mandatory assessment.

The tax rate does not change as a result. Income tax on investment income is 25 percent under section 32d paragraph 1 of the Income Tax Act, plus the solidarity surcharge of 5.5 percent on that amount, which together gives 26.375 percent, plus church tax where applicable. Only the route is different: instead of a deduction at source, the tax office sets the amount in the assessment notice and you pay it afterwards.

The saver’s allowance without an exemption order: how to claim the 1,000 euros

The saver’s lump-sum allowance is 1,000 euros under section 20 paragraph 9 of the Income Tax Act, or 2,000 euros for spouses assessed jointly. You do not lose it in a foreign account. The usual route to it, however, is blocked.

An exemption order takes effect only towards whoever is obliged to withhold. Since the Cypriot investment firm is under no such obligation, it cannot accept an exemption order either. There is simply no form for it in this account, and anyone looking for one is looking in vain.

You claim the allowance through the tax return instead. That works reliably, but it has a side effect that costs money in practice: if you also run a German securities account and have an exemption order there for the full 1,000 euros, the allowance is already used up before the foreign income even enters the calculation. Anyone using both in parallel should reduce the exemption order at the German provider accordingly and keep the remainder for the assessment.

Loss offsetting in a foreign account: why the bank’s loss pots are missing

A loss pot is an account that a German institution runs for you and in which it collects your losses during the year in order to offset them against later gains. Under section 43a paragraph 3 of the Income Tax Act, the paying agent offsets negative investment income in the current calendar year up to the amount of the positive income; whatever remains it carries forward to the following year automatically. On request it issues a loss certificate instead, and the irrevocable application for it must reach the agent by December 15 of the current year.

This entire apparatus does not exist for your Cypriot account. There is no loss pot there, no automatic carry-forward and no loss certificate, because all of it is tied to the duties of a domestic paying agent. You offset losses from share sales only in the assessment, and subject to the relevant restrictions: losses from the disposal of shares may be offset only against gains from the disposal of shares, not against dividends or interest.

In practice that means you have to keep the books yourself. The platform supplies you with transaction lists but no annual statement prepared for tax purposes under German law. Anyone who also holds crypto assets already has a record-keeping duty and knows the drill; anyone who has only ever had a German securities account has to learn it. An overview of brokers and trading venues together with their tax treatment helps in deciding whether the effort is worth it for you or whether a German provider with automatic withholding is the quieter choice.

US withholding tax on dividends: what the W-8BEN form changes

Withholding tax is the tax retained by the state from which the income originates, before the money reaches your account. On dividends from US companies the US side deducts that amount. For investors who have filed no W-8BEN form it is high; with the form on file, the lower rate from the double taxation treaty between Germany and the United States applies.

The W-8BEN form is a self-declaration to the US tax authority in which you confirm that you are resident for tax purposes outside the United States. Brokers usually ask for it when the account is opened, and it is time-limited. After opening, check in the account area whether it is on file and still valid. The specific rates and the handling in an individual case could not be verified on the platform side; they are set out in the provider’s contract documents and in the statements for each individual dividend.

Tax paid abroad is not lost. Under section 32d paragraph 5 of the Income Tax Act, foreign tax assessed and paid is credited against the German tax, though at most 25 percent of foreign tax on each individual item of taxable investment income. This crediting too happens exclusively in the assessment with a foreign account, because in a domestic account the bank would already have taken it into account at the point of deduction.

Real share or xStock: why two tax regimes run in the same account

Kraken advertises the combination expressly: real shares and tokenised shares side by side in one account. An xStock is a token that tracks a US share and, according to the exchange, is backed one to one by the underlying share. The legal annex to the announcement states that the xStocks are issued by Backed Assets (JE) Limited, domiciled in Jersey, and offered through Payward Digital Solutions Ltd, licensed in Bermuda, and that they are not registered with any local securities regulator and will not be registered.

What looks convenient is a fork in the road for tax purposes within the same account. Whether a token that tracks a share is treated for tax like a share or like another asset is the decisive question, and it depends on the legal form of the token. We covered it in detail in our piece on tokenised shares and their taxation in Germany; anyone using both product types should record them separately and not mix them in a joint annual statement.

A second point concerns backing. In June 2026 we described a case in which the backing of an xStock on a paper with no available trading inventory began to slip; the details are in our analysis of the shortfall on an xStock. For the tax question that changes nothing; for the risk question it does.

Our own analysis: what the statutes actually say

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on August 27, 2026. Method: on the same day we retrieved the four relevant provisions of the Income Tax Act as well as the surcharge rate of the Solidarity Surcharge Act in the official full text on gesetze-im-internet.de and analysed the governing paragraphs in their wording. Five provisions were examined, each in full.

• Section 44 paragraph 1 EStG: the paying agent that has to carry out the deduction is, in the cases relevant here, the domestic credit, financial services or securities institution. The word domestic appears in the statutory text.
• Section 32d paragraph 3 EStG: investment income that has not been subject to capital gains tax is to be declared in the income tax return, and an assessment is to be carried out.
• Section 32d paragraph 5 EStG: foreign tax is credited, at most 25 percent on each individual item of taxable investment income.
• Section 43a paragraph 3 EStG: loss offsetting and loss carry-forward are duties of the paying agent; the application for a loss certificate must reach it by December 15 of the current year.
• Section 20 paragraph 9 EStG and section 4 SolzG 1995: saver’s lump-sum allowance of 1,000 euros, or 2,000 euros on joint assessment; solidarity surcharge of 5.5 percent of the assessment base.

What we could not check belongs here just as much. First, we hold no account with the provider and could therefore not look at which statements and annual summaries the platform actually issues. Second, the statement that Germany was among the pilot markets rests on trade reporting and not on a statement by the exchange. Third, the specific withholding rates in an individual case depend on how the account is set up, which we cannot verify without access to a real dividend statement.

Information exchange: why the tax office learns of your foreign account anyway

The notion that an account abroad stays undetected has been out of date for years. For securities accounts at foreign financial institutions, the automatic exchange of information on financial accounts applies, in which Cyprus participates like every EU state. For crypto assets, the European reporting obligation for crypto-asset service providers has applied since 2026, with the first data deliveries expected the following year.

The two channels are separate and concern different types of assets, but they arrive at the same place. Anyone holding shares and crypto assets at one provider is reported through two routes. That is no reason for nerves but a reason to make your own return complete: discrepancies between what the tax office receives and what you declare now show up automatically. How this interacts across the individual asset classes is something we worked through using the taxation of stablecoins as an example.

Records for the tax return: which documents to collect from now on

Because nobody issues you a German tax certificate, your own filing becomes the basis of the return. It makes sense to secure the documents continuously rather than once in April of the following year, because trading platforms shorten export periods and make accounts available only to a limited extent after closure. The BitMEX case showed in 2026 how quickly access to a platform can become tight.

These are the records you need:

1. All purchase and sale statements with date, quantity, price and currency, from which acquisition costs and disposal proceeds can be derived.
2. All dividend statements showing the foreign withholding tax retained, because without that disclosure no crediting is possible.
3. The conversion rates on the relevant date where settlement was in US dollars.
4. Proof of the W-8BEN form on file and its period of validity.
5. An annual overview of all positions, separated into real shares and tokenised paper.

A note on our own account: this text places the legal position in context and replaces no tax advice. With larger amounts, with losses across several years or with a mixture of shares, tokenised paper and crypto assets, a trip to a tax adviser is the cheaper option.

A securities account at the crypto exchange: what to take away

1. Check where your account is held. Look in the contract documents for the company providing the investment service and for the competent supervisor. If a foreign authority is named there, you hold a foreign account and have to declare the income yourself. Which providers work with a European authorisation is shown by our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Set up your document filing before the first purchase goes through. Download statements monthly and file them separately by real shares and tokenised paper. A tool from our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers takes the consolidation off your hands.
3. Weigh the effort against the price advantage. Commission-free trading is cheaper only once spreads, currency conversion costs and your own declaration work are counted in. If you do not want that effort, the comparison of crypto brokers lists providers where the tax is paid over automatically.

You can look up the governing provisions yourself: section 32d of the German Income Tax Act covers the tax rate, the filing obligation and the crediting of foreign taxes in one place. The exchange’s product announcement with the legal annex is in the Kraken blog of August 18, 2026.

(As of August 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

On September 6, 2026, Hyperliquid’s unlock calendar lists a tranche of roughly 9.92 million HYPE for the core contributors. At the August 27 price of $81.42 that is nominally about $808 million. The short answer to how much of it actually reaches the market: very probably a fraction. The same 9.92 million stood in the calendar in March, and 173,217 HYPE were claimed, or 1.75 percent of the announced amount.

That gap between schedule and claim is why coverage of the date has so far named the day without doing the arithmetic. Anyone who wants to treat September 6 as a price risk has to keep three things apart: what the schedule releases, how much of that is claimed, and how much of that can ultimately be sold. This piece works through all three against the numbers of August 27, 2026.

What the Hyperliquid unlock actually releases on September 6

A token unlock is the point at which previously locked units of a token become transferable under a fixed timetable. The timetable itself is called the vesting schedule. At Hyperliquid the allocation to the core contributors, meaning the team around Hyperliquid Labs, runs on linear vesting: a total allocation of roughly 238 million HYPE spread evenly across 24 monthly tranches. 238 million divided by 24 gives 9,916,667 HYPE per month, and that is the figure every calendar carries as 9.92 million.

The September 6 tranche is therefore no exception but the regular monthly step in that series. It goes to a single group of recipients. That sets it apart from the date a week earlier, which serves three groups at once and picks up the bigger headlines.

Release or claim: why the tranche is an entitlement and not a forced payout

This is where most unlock headlines lose their precision. The calendar value of a tranche describes an entitlement, not an automatic transfer. According to reporting by Forbes, the Hyper Foundation announces around the 6th of each month how much was actually claimed, and by that same source the figure has come in well below the 9.92 million in the schedule every time.

The difference is no detail. An entitlement that goes unclaimed raises neither the circulating amount nor the tradable supply. It stays locked and reappears the following month. Converting the calendar figure one to one into selling pressure assumes an action that has not taken place in recent months.

How wide the gap between unlock schedule and claim was in March

The most solid single number on that gap comes from March 2026. The calendar showed 9.92 million HYPE. 173,217 HYPE were claimed. That is 1.75 percent of the planned amount, a factor of around 57 between announcement and reality.

Converted to the August 27, 2026 price: a nominal $808 million became roughly $14.1 million at the March rate. That is still money, but it is a different order of magnitude from the number in the headlines. Estimating a token’s dilution from the calendar figure is off by more than fiftyfold in this case.

One caveat belongs with it: a single monthly reading is no law. Forbes describes the pattern as consistent but spells out only the March figure. Claims can rise at any time, for instance if recipients assert their allocation in a batch. The historical value serves as an order of magnitude; it is no forecast.

August 29: 14.17 million HYPE to insiders, the community and the Hyper Foundation

The larger date falls a week before the core contributor tranche. On August 29, according to Decrypt, 14,175,778 HYPE are released, around 1.4 percent of the total supply. At the August 27 price that is nominally about $1.15 billion. The split: 46.6 percent to insiders and early investors, 46.3 percent to the community through community grants, community rewards and airdrops, 7 percent to the Hyper Foundation.

The insider share works out at roughly 6.61 million HYPE, or $538 million at the August 27 price. That group is the only one of the three where a sale on the market is the immediate prospect. Community allocations land to a considerable extent with users who stay active in the protocol, and the foundation share moves into a treasury that itself appears as a buyer.

For placing September 6, that means the nearer date is the larger one. Rolling the two into a single number gives roughly $1.96 billion nominal across nine days and loses precisely the distinction that matters.

Cliff, float, vesting: the terms around a token unlock

Four terms decide whether you read an unlock report correctly. All four appear in the unlock calendars, and none of them is explained there.

• Cliff: a lock-up period at the end of which a large amount becomes free in one go. A cliff unlock is accordingly a single cut-off date with a step change in supply. With the HYPE token that applies to the allocations to investors, not to the monthly tranche for the core team.
• Linear vesting: the counterpart, an even distribution across many dates. The allocation for the core contributors runs exactly that way, in 24 equal steps.
• Float: the share of a token that is genuinely freely tradable. The float is usually smaller than the circulating supply, because part of the circulating amount stays permanently staked or tied up in contracts.
• Genesis distribution: the initial distribution when a token launches. For the Hyperliquid token it took place on November 29, 2024 and set out which groups would later be served through which unlock events.

The practical use of that distinction shows up on September 6: because this is linear vesting rather than a cliff, the tranche is predictable, recurring and long since known to the market. A cliff comes as a surprise; a monthly step does not.

How much HYPE is in circulation at all? Two sources, two answers

To work out dilution you need the circulating supply, the amount of tokens freely tradable in circulation. This is where it gets awkward, and most write-ups pass over it. Two measurements from August 27, 2026 give two different answers.

• Hyperliquid’s own info interface reports a circulating supply of 298,676,567 HYPE at 06:40 UTC, a total supply of 998,987,823 HYPE and a reserve for future emissions of 412,064,183 HYPE.
• CoinGecko puts circulation at 222,445,714 HYPE for the same hour, alongside a market cap of around $18.1 billion and an FDV of around $77.7 billion. FDV stands for fully diluted valuation, the market value a token would carry if the entire maximum supply were already in circulation.

Around 76 million HYPE lie between the two values, a good third of the smaller one. Both figures are collected transparently; they simply count different things. Data providers frequently strip out holdings in foundation and team addresses, while the protocol itself counts differently. A serious calculation therefore quotes a range.

Applied to the September 6 tranche: 9.92 million HYPE are 3.3 percent of circulation on the protocol measurement and 4.5 percent on CoinGecko. For August 29 the same values read 4.8 and 6.4 percent. The range is wide enough to tip an assessment and narrow enough to leave the direction unambiguous.

What the Hyper Foundation buyback takes back out of supply

On the other side of the calculation sits a source of demand that most tokens do not have. The data service Tokenomist recorded on August 14 that one in seven tokens on the HYPE unlock path is bought back, which corresponds to around 14.3 percent. It is funded out of the protocol’s fee income, earned as a perpetual DEX with running revenue.

That leaves two quantities facing each other: the part of a tranche that is claimed and sold, and the part of total supply taken back out of the market through buybacks. As long as the claim rate stays in the region of the March figure, the second item is the larger. If claims rise sharply, the ratio flips.

How to calculate the dilution from a token unlock yourself

The calculation is simple enough to run for any date yourself, and it protects you from headlines built on the nominal figure. You need five values.

1. Tranche size from the project’s unlock schedule.
2. Circulating supply on the reference date, ideally from two sources so that you see the range.
3. Claim rate at previous dates, where the project publishes it.
4. Offsetting items such as buybacks, staking lock-ups or holding periods for recipients.
5. Trading volume of the token, because an amount that disappears into daily volume moves the price differently from one that exceeds it.

Applied to September 6: 9.92 million divided by circulation gives the theoretical dilution of 3.3 to 4.5 percent. Multiplied by the March claim rate of 1.75 percent, what remains is an actual supply expansion of around 0.06 to 0.08 percent. We worked through the same approach step by step for the LayerZero unlock, there without a buyback mechanism and with a correspondingly different result.

What earlier HYPE unlocks did to the price

The past supplies no clean pattern, and that is a finding in itself. On the reactions collected by Decrypt, HYPE lost around 7 percent after the July tranche, gained around 1 percent after the June date and fell 14.1 percent after the May release. Three dates, three different directions.

The price stands at $81.34 on August 27, or 69.79 euros, after an all-time high of $83.53 on August 26. Over seven days HYPE is up around 14 percent. A token that marks an all-time high a week before a large unlock is not behaving like one whose market fears the release.

Bull and bear case for the September 6 tranche

Both sides can be argued from the same numbers, which is why they stand side by side here rather than as a recommendation.

Bear case: August 29 distributes 14.18 million HYPE, 46.6 percent of it to insiders and early investors who are in profit after almost two years. If the price falls after that date, the core contributor tranche a week later can meet an already weakened market. The reserve for future emissions of 412 million HYPE, a good 41 percent of the maximum supply, also remains a supply overhang that will last for years.

Bull case: the claim rate has lately been in the low single-digit percentage range, the buyback takes around one in seven tokens back out, and part of the released supply moves into staking. According to the official documentation, the staking yield at 400 million HYPE locked runs at about 2.37 percent a year, funded from the same emission reserve. Tokens that are tied up are no selling pressure.

What you cannot derive from this is a price direction. Analyst quotes on HYPE price targets circulate in abundance; they belong to those who utter them and not in a calculation. If you are assessing Hyperliquid as a position, the appraisal at the current price is the more suitable entry point than an unlock date.

Where to check the Hyperliquid unlock schedule yourself

On dates, do not rely on secondary sources that carry figures forward. Three routes lead to verifiable values.

First, Hyperliquid’s own info interface: a call against api.hyperliquid.xyz/info with the type tokenDetails returns total supply, circulating supply, the futureEmissions field and the largest non-circulating holdings. The Hyperliquid token is held on HyperCore, the order book layer of the chain, which is why the numbers come from the protocol itself and not from a model. Second, unlock aggregators such as Tokenomist or DefiLlama, which carry the date and amount per recipient group; they are convenient, but they partly model rather than measure. Third, the Hyper Foundation announcement around the 6th of each month, the only source that names the actual claim.

A practical note on the data: the genesis distribution of HYPE can be traced on chain, and the core team launched the token on November 29, 2024. Around 1.01 million HYPE have been burned since, which is why total supply at 998.99 million sits below the maximum supply of one billion. Anyone holding positions spread across several exchanges and a wallet of their own loses sight of these details quickly; a portfolio tracker with tax reporting takes the consolidation off your hands.

Hyperliquid unlock: what to take away

1. Do the arithmetic on the tranche instead of adopting the headline. 9.92 million HYPE are 3.3 to 4.5 percent of circulation, and the March claim rate of 1.75 percent turns that into a real supply expansion in the per-mille range. Which venues export the holdings data you need cleanly is shown by the crypto exchange comparison.
2. Keep August 29 apart from September 6. The earlier date is the larger one and the only one with a meaningful insider share. If you use Hyperliquid as a trading venue and do not merely hold the token, the alternatives are in the perpetual DEX comparison.
3. Document purchases and sales around unlock dates immediately. In Germany the holding period per purchase decides the tax liability, and it is precisely that allocation which gets lost in volatile weeks. The tools for it are in the comparison of tax and portfolio tools.

(As of August 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Bitcoin tax return in Austria: when an assessment is needed despite a crypto exchange

Ever since Austrian crypto service providers began applying capital gains tax to certain Bitcoin profits automatically, many investors assume the tax is settled. In plenty of standard cases it is: where an Austrian party obliged to withhold capital gains tax is involved and the tax has been withheld correctly, the private income concerned is in principle already covered by that deduction.

A crypto exchange does not, however, make the income tax return redundant as a matter of course.

Foreign exchanges: often no Austrian capital gains tax withheld

The most important case is foreign crypto platforms.

If no Austrian capital gains tax is withheld there, an investor liable to tax in Austria generally has to declare their taxable crypto income themselves. The special tax rate of 27.5 percent continues to apply to crypto income in principle.

The location of the exchange therefore does not automatically change the Austrian tax rate. What matters is whether an Austrian withholding agent has already paid the tax over.

Offsetting losses between exchange and bank requires an assessment

Even with entirely Austrian providers, a tax return can be advisable or necessary.

An automatic offset between crypto income and other investment income is not permitted. Anyone who books a Bitcoin loss at a crypto exchange and a share gain at their bank, for example, has to carry out that cross-provider loss offset through the income tax assessment.

That can result in a refund of capital gains tax already withheld.

Incorrect or flat-rate tax data

An assessment can also become relevant if the crypto service provider did not have the correct acquisition costs at the time of sale.

That applies, for example, to Bitcoin that:

• were transferred from a foreign exchange,
• sat on a hardware wallet for years,
• came from earlier crypto-to-crypto swaps,
• were not fully documented.

If the tax was withheld on an incorrect or flat-rate basis, the actual tax calculation can differ from the exchange statement.

The standard taxation option is another route

Crypto income is in principle subject to the special tax rate of 27.5 percent. Taxpayers can, however, exercise a standard taxation option where the statutory conditions are met.

That can be attractive above all where the personal average income tax rate is lower.

Such a decision should not be taken in isolation on the basis of a single Bitcoin gain, though, because it can pull in other investment income.

Tax reporting as the basis

For income accruing from the 2025 calendar year onwards, Austrian parties obliged to withhold capital gains tax must produce comprehensive tax reporting on request.

The document sets out income, losses and capital gains tax paid over, among other things, and can be used for the income tax assessment.

It is particularly useful for investors who use several banks and crypto service providers.

Typical cases for a Bitcoin tax assessment

An income tax return can become relevant in particular where:

• Bitcoin was sold through a foreign exchange,
• no Austrian capital gains tax was withheld,
• crypto losses are to be offset against share gains or dividends,
• several providers are involved,
• the acquisition costs held by the provider were incorrect or incomplete,
• there is foreign investment income,
• the standard taxation option is to be used.

Conclusion

An Austrian crypto exchange can simplify taxation considerably, but it does not make the tax return redundant in every case.

Where capital gains tax has been withheld correctly, income tax on private Bitcoin gains is often already settled in principle. As soon as foreign exchanges, cross-provider losses or incorrect tax data come into play, however, an income tax assessment can be necessary or financially worthwhile.

(As of August 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

If your account at a crypto exchange is frozen without warning, it may have nothing to do with you. Between August 17 and August 24, 2026, Kraken received almost 12,000 tiny deposits from wallets that analytics firms attribute to the sanctioned exchange HTX. The amounts mostly ranged from a few cents to a few dollars. That was enough for the exchange's automated sanctions screening: affected accounts were temporarily frozen until the checks were complete. Kraken has since restored access and is holding back only the flagged funds. What you should take from this is set out in three steps further down, and the most important one is this: do not touch small amounts of unknown origin.

Dust Attack on Kraken: What Happened Between August 17 and 24

Within eight days, Kraken customers received almost 12,000 transfers that nobody had requested. Several trade publications consistently report amounts in the range of a few cents to a few dollars per transfer. The blockchain analytics service Arkham Intelligence attributes the sending wallet to the exchange HTX, which formerly traded under the name Huobi.

Kraken has classified the events as an attack rather than an accident. A spokesperson for the exchange told Bloomberg that it did not know who was behind it; the senders were probably counting on sanctioned funds in a customer's account triggering a full account freeze and thereby disrupting operations for many users at once. HTX denies any involvement and says it is examining whether faulty address attribution, an internal process error or the actions of third parties lie behind it. The two accounts stand side by side; what is documented so far is the attribution of the wallet by an analytics service, not the question of who initiated the transfers.

What a Dust Attack Is and Why It Freezes Other People's Accounts

A dust attack is the mass sending of tiny amounts to other people's addresses, either to contaminate their transaction history or to trigger screening routines at the receiving providers. The name comes from the word for dust: these are sums that are worthless in themselves. The damage is done not by the amount but by its origin.

Originally the method served to de-anonymise users. Anyone who sends dust to thousands of addresses and watches which of those amounts are later spent together with other holdings can group addresses together and draw conclusions about individual users. The Kraken case shows a second application: if the sender is on a sanctions list, the recipient becomes a problem for the compliance department without having done anything at all.

For you as an investor the difference matters. In a hack you lose funds. In a dust attack you initially lose only access, and you lose it because your provider is meeting a legal obligation.

Sanctions Screening at the Exchange: Why the Freeze Is Automatic

An exchange licensed in the EU screens incoming payments against sanctions lists on an ongoing basis. When a match comes in, the check bites immediately and without a prior human decision. That is not a matter of goodwill but the core of the anti-money-laundering regime. This automation is precisely what a dust attack is aimed at.

In practice that means the account is restricted while the check runs. How long that takes depends on the individual case. Kraken released access again once the checks were complete, without naming the number of customers affected or the duration of the freezes. What happens legally during that period, and why your provider often may not even tell you the reason, is something we set out in crypto exchange account frozen.

Anyone who keeps their holdings exclusively with providers licensed in Europe gets these checks just the same, but gets them within a framework where a supervisory authority is responsible and a complaints route exists. Which providers those are is set out in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.

HTX on the EU Sanctions List: The Legal Background Since August 23

The timing of the attack coincides with a cut-off date. With Regulation (EU) 2026/1848, the Council of the European Union added the entry "HTX (HUOBI GLOBAL SA)" to Annex XLV of the Russia sanctions regulation. The annex gives August 23, 2026 as the date of application. From that date, transactions with the platform are prohibited for persons and companies in the EU.

The United Kingdom moved earlier. There, Huobi Global S.A. was listed on May 26, 2026 under the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, according to consistent reports the first designation of a crypto exchange by name by the British government. These two legal acts are the reason a payment of a few cents can trigger a freeze at all.

We have already written about the ban itself and the platforms affected: on HTX on the EU sanctions list and on the blocking of fourteen platforms from August 23. This article deals with the consequence that was not yet foreseeable there: that sanctioned funds end up with customers of entirely different exchanges.

$4.2 Million Frozen: What Happens to the Flagged Funds

According to reports from several trade publications, Kraken continues to hold back around $4.2 million from the episode, while the accounts themselves have been released. The exchange has not publicly confirmed this figure, and at least one of the reporting newsrooms expressly flags it as not independently verified. Treat the number as an order of magnitude, therefore, not as an audited balance sheet item.

The separation is the point that really matters: account access and flagged funds are handled separately. The remaining balance stays tradable, the marked portion does not. In the worst case that means for you that a freeze does not automatically affect your entire wealth, but also that the marked portion can lie idle indefinitely as long as the legal position is unresolved.

Dust in Your Wallet: Why You Should Not Move the Tiny Amounts

If an unexplained tiny amount turns up in your own wallet, one simple rule applies: leave it alone. The dust does no damage as long as it stays untouched. It becomes dangerous the moment you spend it together with the rest of your holdings, because the blockchain then permanently links the origin of the dust to your other funds.

With Bitcoin that comes down to the design of the network. Every bitcoin payment is assembled from individual, clearly delimited pieces of balance known as UTXOs. A UTXO is a single, not yet spent incoming payment that your wallet manages as a self-contained building block. If you inadvertently include the dust UTXO when paying, its history travels into the new transaction.

There are two things you should refrain from doing in this situation. Do not click any link that turns up alongside an unexpected token in your wallet, and do not try to "send the amount back". Both are common patterns that turn a harmless contamination into a real loss.

Coin Control and UTXO Selection: How to Isolate Contaminated Amounts

Good wallet software lets you choose which pieces of balance a payment may use. This function is called coin control. Coin control is the manual selection of the inputs from which a transaction is built. It lets you keep a marked amount permanently away from your other holdings without having to delete it. Deleting is not possible anyway, because what is on the blockchain stays there.

In practice that means marking the dust input in your wallet as unspendable and leaving it there. On an account at an exchange you do not have that option, because the exchange manages the keys and makes the selection itself. That is one of the reasons larger holdings belong in self-custody; which devices are suitable is set out in the hardware wallet comparison.

Getting the order right matters here: self-custody does not protect you from receiving dust. Any public address can receive something at any time, and that is not a weakness but how the system works. Self-custody only gives you control over what happens to what you have received.

Account Frozen: Which Documents Shorten the Review

If your account really is restricted, the quality of your documentation decides how long that state lasts. Proof of the source of funds for the affected holdings is worth having: purchase confirmations from the exchange, bank statements for the transfer, and for transfers from your own wallet the transaction IDs.

For the unsolicited incoming payment itself, one thing helps above all: the transaction ID of the inflow in question, together with a note that you did not request it and have not moved it on. Anyone who has already moved the dust on should state that openly too. The reviewer sees the chain anyway, and an omission costs more time than it saves.

Set yourself a realistic expectation. A sanctions review is not a customer service matter that pressure speeds up. The review ends when the assessment is settled.

Holdings at a Sanctioned Platform: The Authorisation Route Under Article 5ad

One special case concerns everyone who still has holdings sitting at HTX or another listed platform. The regulation provides a narrowly drawn exception for that. Under the newly added paragraph 4 of Article 5ad, the competent authorities of a member state may authorise transactions that are strictly necessary to withdraw funds or close accounts.

The text ties this authorisation to conditions, and you should know them before you make plans:

• Eligible are nationals of a member state, of an EEA state or of Switzerland, as well as natural persons holding a temporary or permanent residence permit there.
• The transaction must be necessary in order to terminate the contractual relationship with the listed entity.
• The application must be filed no later than three months after the date of application named in the annex. For HTX that date of application is August 23, 2026.
• The funds must be transferred to a financial or credit institution established or registered under the law of a member state.

Each authorisation is granted for a maximum of three months. The authority of your member state is responsible, not the exchange, and the decision lies within its discretion; the law gives you no entitlement to a particular outcome.

Regulated or Not: What Your Choice of Exchange Changes About This Risk

The case is easy to read the wrong way. Kraken did here what sanctions law requires. An exchange that does not screen incoming funds from listed wallets in the first place is the more dangerous place for you. There the problem grows quietly until a supervisory authority picks it up.

What you can steer is the distribution. An account holding your entire wealth turns every review into a total outage. Two providers and your own storage turn it into an inconvenience.

Our Own Analysis: The Regulation Checked in Full Text

For this article we read the governing legal act ourselves rather than taking it second hand. cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on August 27, 2026.

Method: the German Official Journal version of Regulation (EU) 2026/1848 was retrieved in full HTML text via EUR-Lex the same day, stripped of its markup and searched for the entries on HTX and for the amendments to Article 5ad. Exactly two passages of the legal act were checked, each in full: the entry in Annex XLV and the newly added paragraph 4 of Article 5ad.

Result: the annex lists "HTX (HUOBI GLOBAL SA)" with a date of application of August 23, 2026. Paragraph 4 of Article 5ad contains verbatim the four conditions named above, together with the maximum duration of three months per authorisation and the member state's duty to inform other member states and the Commission within two weeks.

What we could not check belongs in the picture too. First, how an individual national authority actually decides such an application, because the provision expressly grants it discretion. Second, the British designation, which we could document only through reporting; the official full text was not available to us for that. Third, all the details of the attack itself, meaning the number of transfers, the period and the amount held back, which come from reporting and were not counted by us.

What to Watch Over the Coming Weeks

Two developments will decide whether this episode remains a one-off. The first is the question of authorship: as long as it is open who initiated the transfers, it also remains open whether the pattern repeats. The second concerns the other European providers. Kraken is the exchange where the episode became public; that says nothing about whether other platforms received nothing from the same source.

For you nothing dramatic follows from that, but something concrete does: over the coming days, check the incoming lists of your accounts and wallets for amounts you cannot place, and leave them untouched.

Dust Attack and Account Freeze: What to Take Away

1. Do not move tiny amounts of unknown origin. Go through the incoming payments on your wallets and accounts, mark inflows you cannot explain and do not spend them together with the rest of your holdings. Where you want to make the selection yourself, you need your own keys, and the devices for that are listed in the hardware wallet comparison.
2. Check where your funds sit and who is responsible for them. A European-licensed exchange freezes accounts just the same, but it does so within a framework that has supervision and a complaints route. You will find the overview of licensing and registered office among the regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Spread your holdings instead of putting everything in one account. Anyone using two providers is not left unable to act while a review runs. Which platforms lend themselves to that and what they cost is shown in the comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

You can read this article's two sources yourself: the text of Regulation (EU) 2026/1848 on EUR-Lex and the account of the episode at crypto.news.

(As of August 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The third income tax advance payment of the year falls due on September 10. For most crypto investors the date carries no meaning, because the tax office never set an advance payment for them in the first place. That is exactly the point at issue here: anyone who realised meaningful gains on crypto assets in 2026 owes income tax on them, yet will probably not pay the tax office a single cent this year. The bill arrives only with the assessment notice, and from a certain date onwards it costs extra in interest.

This article sets out which dates the law fixes, from what point an advance payment is set at all, when the interest period for the 2026 tax year begins, and which application lets you shrink your later interest bill yourself. The basis is four provisions that we retrieved and analysed in the official full text on August 27, 2026.

Advance Tax Payment on Crypto Gains: What Falls Due on September 10

An income tax advance payment is an instalment on the current year's tax that the tax office sets up front and later credits against the final liability. The statute names four fixed dates in the year: March 10, June 10, September 10 and December 10. Each payment covers the tax you are expected to owe for the current year.

September 10, 2026 is therefore the third of four dates for the 2026 tax year. Anyone holding an advance payment notice should pay on that day. Anyone holding none needs to do nothing, but is accumulating a tax debt that later falls due in a single sum.

The timing is no quirk of this year; it is the statutory default. What makes it interesting in 2026 is the market backdrop: according to consistent market reports, bitcoin briefly traded above $81,000 in late August after the price had risen a good twenty percent within a week. Anyone who closed positions in that move that had been held for less than twelve months has realised a taxable gain. However the bitcoin price prediction develops from here changes nothing about the tax already incurred on those sales.

Checking Your Advance Payment Notice: How to Tell Whether This Affects You

The first step takes five minutes. Search your files or your Elster mailbox for a notice that expressly sets advance payments. This assessment often sits at the end of the previous year's income tax notice and names four amounts with the four due dates listed above.

If you find such a notice, the rule is simple: the amount stated there is payable on September 10, regardless of how your year has developed since. If you find none, you belong to the group this article was really written for. Because a missing advance payment is not an advantage, only a postponement.

400 Euros a Year and 100 Euros per Date: When the Tax Office Sets Anything at All

The law draws a clear floor. Advance payments are only to be set if they come to at least 400 euros in the calendar year and at least 100 euros for a single advance payment date. If the expected tax falls below that, no assessment is made.

Separate thresholds apply to raising an assessment that already exists. An increase is only made if the additional amount reaches at least 100 euros per advance payment date. For a subsequent increase that hits only the final advance payment of the year, the threshold is 5,000 euros. That second figure explains why a late adjustment is rare in practice and only comes into play for larger amounts.

Why Your Advance Payment Usually Contains No Crypto Gains at All

The measurement basis is the decisive point. Advance payments are measured in principle by the income tax that resulted from the last assessment, that is, by your most recently processed tax year. The tax office is projecting the past forward.

A gain from selling crypto assets fits that pattern badly. It arises irregularly, often in a single year and on a scale that did not occur the year before. For an employee whose wage tax is withheld as they go, the last assessment usually produces no meaningful closing payment at all. So the tax office sets nothing, even though a substantial tax liability is building up in the current year.

The result is a lag of two to three years between the sale and the payment. During that period the money sits with you, and that is precisely why the interest rule covered in the next section bites. If your portfolio is spread across several venues, pull all the accounts together for your estimate; a look at your holdings on the regulated crypto exchanges helps you avoid overlooking a partial sale.

Late Payment Interest Under Section 233a AO: When the Clock Starts Running for 2026

Late payment interest is interest on the amount by which the assessed tax exceeds the withholding amounts and advance payments already made. This interest is not a penalty and requires no fault. The claim arises automatically as soon as enough time has passed between the tax arising and its assessment.

The interest period begins 15 months after the end of the calendar year in which the tax arose. Income tax for 2026 arises at the close of December 31, 2026. For every crypto gain you realised this year, the interest period therefore begins on April 1, 2028. It ends with the close of the day on which the tax assessment takes effect, that is, with the notice.

Two details belong here, because they are often confused. First, advance payments themselves do not bear interest; the provision expressly excludes their assessment. Second, only full months count, and part months are left out of account. A notice that takes effect on the 20th of a month therefore brings no further interest for that month. You can read the wording in Section 233a of the German Fiscal Code.

0.15 Percent a Month: What 1.8 Percent a Year Means in Euros

Since the reform covering periods from January 1, 2019, the rate has stood at 0.15 percent for each month, expressly quantified in the statute as 1.8 percent for each year. The amount that bears interest is first rounded down to the next amount divisible by 50 euros.

A worked example built solely from those two retrieved figures: assume your 2026 sales produce an additional payment of 6,000 euros and the notice takes effect in October 2028. The interest period begins on April 1, 2028 and therefore covers six full months. Six times 0.15 percent gives 0.9 percent, so 54 euros on 6,000 euros. If processing drags on into autumn 2029, that is eighteen full months and 162 euros.

The order of magnitude stays manageable as long as the additional payment stays small and the notice arrives promptly. Both together let the amount grow. With an additional payment in the five-figure range and a processing time of two years after the interest period starts, the interest quickly reaches four figures. More important than the absolute number is that this item is the only one in the whole bill you can influence by acting during the current year.

Shrinking the Difference Amount: How a Higher Advance Payment Cuts the Interest

The lever sits in the calculation formula. What counts for the interest charge is the assessed tax, reduced by the creditable withholding amounts and by the advance payments set before the interest period begins. That remainder is called the difference amount, and only it bears interest.

The effect is therefore clear: every euro set as an advance payment for 2026 by April 1, 2028 reduces the difference amount by the same euro and drops out of the interest calculation. Anyone who applies for an advance payment during the current year, or has an existing one raised, is swapping a later interest-bearing debt for an earlier interest-free payment.

Whether that pays off is a plain comparison: on one side stand the 1.8 percent a year you save, on the other the return the same money would have earned elsewhere until the tax fell due. Everyone can only make that judgement for themselves, and it comes out differently with high overnight deposit rates than with low ones.

Applying for an Adjustment: The Deadline Section 37 EStG Sets the Tax Office

The adjustment is provided for by law. The tax office may adjust advance payments to the income tax that is expected to result for the assessment period. It has a deadline for that: the end of the 15th calendar month following the assessment period. For 2026, that window runs until March 31, 2028.

The date coincides with the start of the interest period for a reason. The two provisions are aligned with each other: until the last day on which an advance payment can still be adjusted, no interest runs, and from the first day after that it does. Anyone wanting to use the adjustment therefore has a clearly bounded period, and it by no means ends on September 10, 2026.

In practice it works through an informal application to your local tax office, setting out your expected income for the current year. The evidence comes from your exchange tax report, which you should pull separately for every venue you use. If the increase is decided late in the year and hits only the final advance payment, the additional amount is payable within one month of the notice being served.

Adjusting Downwards: What Applies If 2026 Brings Losses Instead of Gains

The adjustment works in both directions. Anyone with a running advance payment whose basis has fallen away can apply for a reduction. That affects everyone whose last assessment was shaped by a good year while the current year is running distinctly worse.

For crypto investors this is the mirror image of the rest of this article, and it is by no means rare, because winning years and losing years sit close together in this market. The offsetting logic matters here: losses from private disposal transactions do not reduce any tax at will, but initially only gains of the same kind. What is deductible in the event of a total loss and what is not therefore helps decide whether a reduction can be justified at all.

A forced sale belongs in that calculation too. When an exchange liquidates residual holdings itself after a deadline expires, that creates a taxable event you did not trigger; you should know the consequences of such a forced sale on a crypto exchange before you submit your estimate for the current year.

Holding Period and Allowance: Which Crypto Gains Belong in the Calculation

Before you apply for anything, you need a number. Only what is actually taxable belongs in the estimate. Two rules narrow it down.

The first is the holding period. Gains from selling crypto assets that were held for more than a year stay outside the tax net; the details are set out in our overview of the holding period for cryptocurrencies. Positions sold in the 2026 upswing that had been held for less than twelve months, by contrast, fall inside it.

The second is the allowance. Gains stay tax-free if the total gain from private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. The German term Freigrenze is to be taken literally: once the threshold is reached, the entire gain is taxable and not merely the excess. Why that produces the most common mistake in thinking about crypto gains is something we have written up separately.

What the Exchanges' Reporting Duty Changes About This Calculation

Since January 1, 2026, crypto service providers in the EU have automatically reported user and transaction data to the tax authorities. For the advance payment that changes nothing directly, because the reporting goes into the tax administration's data stock and not into your advance payment account.

Indirectly it changes the starting position all the same. The likelihood that a realised gain goes unnoticed falls, and the request to file a return may come early. Which documents should be on hand for that is set out in our summary on the crypto tax return.

Our Own Analysis: Four Provisions Checked in Full Text

cryptoticker.io compiled this analysis itself on August 27, 2026. Method: we retrieved the four relevant provisions in the official full text on gesetze-im-internet.de the same day, each with HTTP status 200, stripped the text of its markup and counted the dates, monetary thresholds, deadlines and interest rates named there sentence by sentence.

Exactly four provisions were checked, each in full: Section 37 EStG with the advance payment dates, the measurement basis, the adjustment deadline and the minimum amounts; Section 233a AO with the start of the interest period, the exception for advance payments and the calculation of the difference amount; Section 238 AO with the interest rate and the rounding; and Section 23(3) EStG with the allowance.

We name three limits of this analysis expressly. First, it is a snapshot of the law as it stood on August 27, 2026; future changes are not included in it. Second, it says nothing about how an individual tax office will decide an adjustment application in a specific case, because the law grants discretion there. Third, we evaluated no administrative instructions and no case law, only the wording of the statute; you will find the full version in Section 37 EStG in the official full text.

Checking Your Crypto Advance Tax Payment: What to Take Away

For most crypto investors, September 10 is not a payday. It is a fitting occasion to work through your own position once, while the window for an adjustment still stands wide open.

1. Pull your numbers together. Export the annual report for every account and separate the sales inside the one-year period from those outside it. Anyone using several venues will struggle without a tool; our overview of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers shows which programs read which exchanges.
2. Estimate the tax and decide on the application. If the expected additional payment is well above 400 euros a year, weigh 1.8 percent annual interest on the amount from April 1, 2028 against the return the same money would bring until then. If the sum favours the application, file it informally with your tax office. If you still have to close positions to do so, you will find the venues' terms in the comparison on selling bitcoin.
3. Put the money aside if you do not adjust. Without an advance payment the tax stays your money until the notice arrives, but it stays a debt. A separate account stops the amount disappearing into the next purchase; which venue suits that and where the fees sit is covered in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

(As of August 27, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

The operation promoted a purported Israeli think tank that published copied scholarship under academics’ names and circulated pro-Russian analysis across social media.

Gates is calling for AI tokens and robots to be taxed so firms think twice before swapping out workers, plus a bracket of "human reserved" roles that stay off-limits to automation.

The chipmaker doubled quarterly revenue while disclosing $366 billion in future commitments and up to $108.5 billion in guarantee exposure.

Bitcoin's monster rally just hit its first real test. Here's why each catalyst matters and how they could move the price from here.

GalaxyOne clients can borrow cash against Bitcoin, Ethereum, and staked Solana at 8.99% APR without selling a coin.

BlackRock will 'capitulate' and launch XRP and other altcoin ETFs, predicts industry expert $XRP.

Renown financialist and investment manager increases short positions in Nvidia, Oracle and other companies.

Core Lightning developers have issued an urgent security warning to Lightning Network node operators.

The explosive growth on the market stabilized and now turned into a battleground between bulls and bears for the future momentum.

The U.S. government has moved a small amount of Bitcoin seized from Alameda Research accounts on Binance.US.

TLDR

• Chainlink added price feeds for four Coinbase tokenized stocks on Base.
• The feeds cover NVDAc, METAc, AAPLc, and GOOGLc tokens.
• Aave, Morpho, and Euler are among the protocols preparing lending markets for these tokens.
• The tokens are not available to U.S. investors under current offering rules.
• Chainlink’s feeds track total return value, including dividend reinvestment adjustments.

Chainlink introduced price feeds for four Coinbase tokenized stocks on Base this week. The move lets decentralized finance protocols use the tokens as loan collateral. Coinbase issued the assets under the B20 token standard.

The four tokens represent shares in Nvidia, Meta, Apple, and Alphabet. Their tickers are NVDAc, METAc, AAPLc, and GOOGLc. Each token is backed one-to-one by a share held in custody.

Chainlink announced the update on X on August 26. The company said its Data Feeds give lending protocols the data needed to assess the tokens as collateral. This expands their use beyond simple holding and trading.

Coinbase Onchain SPV Ltd. issues the tokens. The company is based in the Abu Dhabi Global Market. It operates under prospectuses approved by the market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority.

Alpaca Securities acts as broker and custodian for the underlying shares. Alpaca is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It also belongs to FINRA and SIPC.

How the Price Feeds Work

Each Chainlink feed reports the total return value of a B20 token. This combines the stock’s market price with a multiplier from Coinbase’s onchain oracle registry.

The multiplier accounts for dividends. Coinbase’s prospectuses state dividends are usually reinvested into more shares after fees and taxes. This changes how much equity each token represents over time.

Chainlink advises developers to check each token’s contract address. Ticker symbols alone can be copied by unrelated projects. Verifying the address helps avoid confusion between similar-looking assets.

The feeds run around the clock, Monday through Friday. They blend data from regular trading hours, extended hours, and overnight markets. Coverage is strongest during standard U.S. market hours.

Data quality drops during overnight sessions due to fewer providers. On weekends, when equity markets are shut, the reported value may not change. Chainlink uses smoothing to reduce short price spikes during session transitions.

Lending Access and Restrictions

Base-based platforms including Aave, Morpho, and Euler are preparing or offering lending markets for the tokens. Aerodrome supports liquidity for the tokenized stocks. 0x, 1inch, KyberSwap, and CoW Swap provide trading tools.

Not every protocol will list every token right away. Each platform decides independently which markets to activate. Availability can vary by asset and by service.

The tokens remain off-limits to U.S. investors. Coinbase issues them under Regulation S, which applies to offerings made outside the United States. The securities are not registered with the SEC or state regulators.

Verified holders can redeem tokens for the underlying stock, U.S. dollars, or USDC. Coinbase charges a 0.05% redemption fee for this process. The company may also run identity and sanctions checks before approving a redemption.

Holders who obtain tokens through DeFi without finishing Coinbase’s compliance steps are considered unvested. Unvested holders cannot redeem their tokens for shares or cash. They also cannot submit voting instructions tied to the underlying stock.

The post Chainlink (LINK) Price: Feeds Now Support Coinbase Tokenized Stocks on Base appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Bernstein projects Bitcoin could hit $125,000 by the end of 2026 and $150,000 by mid-2027.
• A currency-debasement scenario could push BTC to $200,000 in 2027 and $500,000 in 2029.
• U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in over $1.1 billion across two sessions in late August.
• Bernstein cut its Strategy (MSTR) price target from $450 to $350 while keeping an Outperform rating.
• Bitcoin traded near $78,458 on Aug. 26, down 1% daily but up nearly 14% for the week.

Bitcoin has drawn a fresh price forecast from Wall Street research firm Bernstein. Analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote in an Aug. 26 client note that the asset could recover to around $125,000 by the end of 2026.

The firm expects Bitcoin to rise further to roughly $150,000 by mid-2027. That forecast follows Bitcoin’s historical four-year cycle pattern, according to the note.

Bernstein also built a model based on Bitcoin’s marginal production cost. Using that method, the firm placed the next cycle peak near $300,000 in 2029.

A second, more bullish scenario exists too. If institutional demand grows alongside worries about government debt, Bernstein said Bitcoin could reach $200,000 by mid-2027 and $500,000 in 2029.

The firm kept its longer-term target of $1 million by the end of 2033. Each number is a projection, not a guarantee.

ETF Demand Returns

Institutional access through U.S. spot ETFs plays a role in the forecast. Bernstein said ETF buying and corporate treasury purchases may have softened Bitcoin’s recent drop compared to past cycles.

In earlier downturns, Bitcoin fell between 75% and 90% from its highs. This time, the decline reached about 50% from October 2025 before BTC rebounded 28% in 10 days.

Ownership data showed 59% of Bitcoin’s supply had not moved in the past year. Bernstein pointed to this as a sign that many holders are keeping their coins through price swings.

Fund flow data backs this up. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs took in about $606 million on Aug. 20, following $517 million the prior day, according to SoSoValue figures.

BlackRock also lowered the minimum Bitcoin amount needed to convert into its IBIT fund. The threshold dropped from $25 million to $1 million in July, a 96% cut.

BlackRock’s Robbie Mitchnick said IBIT has processed more than $5 billion in such conversions, up from about $3 billion in October. IBIT held roughly $60.65 billion in net assets as of Aug. 25.

Strategy Target Lowered

Bernstein separately adjusted its outlook for Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder. The firm cut its price target from $450 to $350 but kept an Outperform rating.

The new target still represents about 176% upside from Strategy’s $126.83 closing price on Aug. 25. Strategy holds 840,447 BTC, close to 4% of Bitcoin’s total supply cap.

Strategy raised about $2 billion from stock sales during the week ended Aug. 23 but did not buy Bitcoin. It added $300 million to its dollar reserve, which now stands near $5.1 billion.

Bitcoin itself traded near $78,458 on Aug. 26, down 1% over 24 hours but up almost 14% for the week. The move followed July inflation data showing prices rose 3.7% year-over-year, just above forecasts.

Bitcoin futures open interest fell 2.7% to $54.8 billion following the report. A Polymarket contract currently gives Bitcoin a 68% chance of reaching $85,000 by the end of 2026.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Price: Bernstein Sets $125K Year-End Target and $150K for 2027 appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Jesse Myers, Head of Bitcoin Strategy at Smarter Web Company, is leaving the company on Sept. 1.
• No successor has been named to take over his implementation and analytics duties.
• The board retains full authority over strategy and risk decisions.
• Smarter Web Company holds 2,712 BTC and has £18.5 million drawn from a Coinbase credit facility.
• Company shares fell 5.8% shortly after the departure was announced.

The Smarter Web Company announced that Jesse Myers, its Head of Bitcoin Strategy, will leave the company on Sept. 1. The company gave no reason for his departure.

The announcement did not name a successor. It also did not explain how his duties will be divided among the remaining team.

Myers held an operational role inside the company. His job included putting the Bitcoin treasury strategy into practice and tracking its performance.

He also managed the company’s data and analytics work. This included producing materials for investors and handling investor relations tasks.

What Myers Managed

In January, Smarter Web Company listed Myers as part of the senior team running daily operations. His work touched several parts of the Bitcoin strategy at once.

That included efforts to improve the amount of Bitcoin held per share. It also included reviewing capital allocation decisions before they were made.

The company said its Bitcoin Treasury Policy will stay the same. The board will continue to oversee it directly going forward.

Directors already hold authority over management, strategy, and risk. They review the treasury policy on a regular basis as part of that role.

The Company’s Bitcoin Holdings

Smarter Web Company reported holding 2,712 BTC in its most recent treasury update on Aug. 3. Net purchases totaled £224.8 million at an average price of £82,886 per coin.

The company also had £18.5 million drawn from a Coinbase credit facility. That figure equals about 17% leverage against its Bitcoin holdings.

The loan carries a 6% variable interest rate. It is secured against the company’s existing Bitcoin.

Smarter Web Company does not hold its own Bitcoin directly. It uses outside institutional custody providers instead.

On July 23, the company sold 177.89 BTC to repay $11.7 million tied to a financing tool called Smarter Convert. That sale wiped out 7,718,551 potential shares.

The Coinbase facility stayed drawn as of the Aug. 3 update. That means the company still carries debt tied to its Bitcoin holdings.

Shares of Smarter Web Company fell 5.8% to 33.20 pence on Aug. 25, according to Alliance News. The drop came shortly after the 7 a.m. departure notice.

It is not clear if Myers’ exit caused the share price move. The two events happened close together, but no direct link has been confirmed.

CEO Andrew Webley thanked Myers for his work in a company statement. He said the company remains focused on carrying out its strategy.

The next update investors may watch for is whether Smarter Web Company names a successor. The company has not said when that decision might come.

The post Smarter Web Company Bitcoin Strategy Chief Jesse Myers to Leave September 1 appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• Nvidia surpassed earnings projections and provided optimistic revenue guidance extending into fiscal 2028
• Shares of Nvidia jumped 6% during premarket hours on Thursday
• Reports emerged of Nvidia’s planned $12.9 billion acquisition of Hugging Face
• Stock index futures advanced across the board, with S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Dow all posting gains
• Additional tech firms including Salesforce, CrowdStrike, and Okta exceeded quarterly earnings estimates

Stock index futures posted solid gains Thursday morning as Nvidia’s impressive quarterly results reinforced investor confidence that artificial intelligence demand remains on a robust trajectory heading into the coming year.

The S&P 500 futures contract advanced 0.5%, while Nasdaq 100 futures surged approximately 1%, and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures climbed about 0.2%.

Nvidia Surpasses Expectations, Stock Rallies Premarket

The chipmaker exceeded Wall Street’s second-quarter estimates and offered an upbeat revenue outlook stretching through fiscal 2028. The performance helped alleviate investor worries regarding the company’s ability to maintain its momentum in the competitive AI semiconductor market.

Nvidia shares surged 6% in early premarket activity Thursday.

Late Wednesday evening, the Information disclosed that Nvidia reached an agreement to purchase Hugging Face, a platform hosting open-source artificial intelligence models, in a transaction valued at $12.9 billion.

Chief Executive Jensen Huang addressed the firm’s artificial intelligence investment approach, noting his sole regret was failing to deploy capital more aggressively and earlier into AI research facilities.

Salesforce, CrowdStrike, and Okta similarly delivered quarterly results exceeding analyst forecasts, contributing to the upbeat market sentiment.

Deutsche Bank’s economist Peter Sidorov observed that market sentiment experienced a noticeable shift toward optimism following Nvidia’s disclosure. He noted the revenue projections indicated heightened confidence that artificial intelligence demand expansion would persist throughout the next year.

The three primary equity indexes finished Wednesday’s session marginally lower amid light trading volume ahead of Nvidia’s highly anticipated report.

Attention Shifts to Jackson Hole and Federal Reserve Policy

Having digested Nvidia’s quarterly performance, market participants are now directing focus toward the Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, which commences Thursday.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh is scheduled to present the keynote speech Friday. Traders and analysts will scrutinize his remarks for indications regarding the central bank’s monetary policy trajectory.

Treasury yields have found stability following last week’s sharp increase. Market observers continue evaluating the Treasury Department’s bond market interventions alongside expectations that the Federal Reserve will maintain current interest rate levels.

Thursday’s economic calendar includes weekly jobless claims figures, providing additional perspective on employment conditions.

Quarterly earnings from discount retailers Dollar General and Dollar Tree are scheduled for Thursday as well. These chains have attracted more affluent consumers in recent months, and their financial performance could shed light on overall consumer spending trends.

The post Nvidia (NVDA) Stock Surges 6% on Strong Earnings and AI Revenue Forecast appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Hyperliquid Policy Center and trade[XYZ] filed a joint letter asking the CFTC to allow regulated perpetual contracts for WTI crude, Brent crude, and Henry Hub natural gas.
• The groups say their onchain energy markets have already handled more than $500 billion in trading volume since October 2025.
• The filing argues continuous trading could help firms hedge energy risk over weekends when U.S. futures markets are closed.
• A study cited in the letter found crude perpetual prices predicted nearly 75% of Sunday reopening levels.
• The CFTC is reviewing the idea but has not approved energy perpetuals yet.

Two groups tied to the Hyperliquid blockchain platform have asked U.S. regulators to open the door for a new kind of energy trading contract.

Hyperliquid Policy Center and trade[XYZ] sent a joint letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on August 26. They want the agency to allow regulated perpetual contracts linked to West Texas Intermediate crude, Brent crude, and Henry Hub natural gas.

Perpetual contracts work differently from standard futures. They do not expire, and traders make ongoing funding payments to keep the contract price close to the real market price.

trade[XYZ] has offered these energy contracts on Hyperliquid since October 2025. According to the filing, its markets have generated more than $500 billion in total trading volume across several asset types.

Why Weekend Trading Matters

The filing points to a case from earlier this year as evidence. On February 28, conflict in the Middle East disrupted energy exports, but U.S. futures markets stayed closed until Sunday evening.

During that gap, Hyperliquid’s oil-linked contracts kept trading. The groups say about two-thirds of the price move that later showed up in the official Sunday reopening had already happened on their platform.

Brent crude went on to trade near $120 a barrel by March 9. Jet fuel prices doubled within weeks, based on news reports cited in the letter.

A separate study by Hyperliquid Policy Center compared perpetual prices to benchmark reopening prices. Across the weekend closures studied, the perpetual contract landed closer to Sunday’s opening price in nearly 75% of cases.

The same study found no measurable drop in the quality of CME’s WTI reopening prices after trade[XYZ] launched its own crude contract.

What The Filing Asks For

The letter asks the CFTC to treat blockchain-based trading systems the same as traditional ones, as long as they meet existing rules. This includes rules on margin, clearing, surveillance, and customer protection.

It also asks the agency to allow stablecoins and tokenized assets as collateral for these contracts. Traditional bank transfers pause on weekends, but blockchain-based collateral can move at any time.

The groups are not asking for crypto collateral to be used in uncleared swaps, which stay outside current rules.

They also proposed leverage limits based on asset type and clear disclosures about how funding payments and liquidations work.

The CFTC opened this review in June, looking at whether energy futures could trade continuously and whether perpetual contracts on physical commodities should be allowed. It extended the public comment deadline to August 26 after receiving requests for more time.

CFTC Chair Michael Selig has said the agency wants a solid, data-based record before making any changes to trading hours or contract types.

The commission previously approved a Bitcoin perpetual contract from Kalshi, marking the first federally regulated product of its kind in the U.S. That approval only applied to that specific contract and similar ones tied to digital assets.

Energy contracts involve physical delivery systems and benchmarks, so regulators are treating them as a separate question.

As of this filing, the CFTC has not approved energy perpetual contracts, and the public review process does not guarantee it will.

The post Hyperliquid Group Asks CFTC To Approve Energy Perpetual Contracts appeared first on Blockonomi.