The decline in dollar reserves, driven by a few countries, highlights the need for nuanced analysis over broad de-dollarization narratives.

The post Federal Reserve Bank of New York study finds dollar reserve decline driven by handful of countries, not global trend appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

A breach in Tether's infrastructure could destabilize the crypto market, triggering a liquidity crisis and eroding trust in stablecoins.

The post Tether faces breach risk that could expose $91B in USDT to hackers appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Anthropic's IPO faces skepticism due to historical concerns. Market cap below $1.25T at close on IPO day at 0.5% YES.

The post 3 historical reasons cited for avoiding Anthropic’s potentially record-breaking IPO appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Institutional focus on interest rate products signals heightened market volatility expectations, influencing broader financial strategies and stability.

The post CME Group reports record $207B in gross notional open interest as institutional appetite surges appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

JPMorgan's strategy suggests that robust earnings growth can mitigate risks from rising bond yields, encouraging investors to capitalize on market volatility.

The post JPMorgan strategists recommend buying equity dips amid earnings rally appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Alleged White-Hat Hackers Withdraw 4,000 bitcoin from Blockstream’s Liquid Network Federation Reserves

The Liquid Network said Sunday that purported white-hat hackers withdrew about 4,000 bitcoin, worth about $320 million, from the federation wallet that backs L-BTC. Bridge nodes were disabled, and the sidechain was paused. Other issued assets, including USDT, DePix and RWAs, were unaffected, the official account said on X.

The Liquid Network is a federated sidechain of Bitcoin, founded by Adam Back’s Blockstream. The Liquid chain issues a variety of assets such as LBTC, which it backs with BTC on the Bitcoin main chain, held in a large multisig of 15 corporate and known members. 11 of the 15 members need to sign a valid multi-signature transaction to move coins from the treasury. Before the hack, the treasury held over 4200 BTC; after the hack, Blockstream’s proof of reserves page reports a little over 207 BTC left. 

The hackers withdrew 4,019.4 BTC from the reserve address in a peg-out transaction using the SideSwap Peg-out Authorization Key. SideWap is a bridge exchange and a member of the Liquid Federation. While details on the mechanism of the hack are not confirmed yet, it appears an inflation bug on the LBTC side chain was exploited by the hackers to create over 4,000 LBTC that did not exist before, and cash them out for on-chain bitcoin from the federation. Because the transaction appeared as valid, given the consensus bug, the federation members’ HSM security servers signed the BTC withdrawal transaction, worth roughly 320 million at the time. 

The hacker moved the funds to an address ending in 6gyqjlte, from which they quickly signed a new transaction with a message on the OP_RETURN arbitrary data field saying “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.” Those coins were still at that address at the time of writing.

A small mainnet transaction to the hacker address followed by an OP_RETURN saying “Please contact security@blockstream.com”, presumably from a Blockstream public address, though that remains unconfirmed. A later OP_RETURN spend from the hacker address carried “Please contact us on Signal @m671aw.70”, however, this may be spam and does not share a link to the address with the stolen funds.

In response to the breach, exchanges were told to pause L-BTC deposits and withdrawals. Bridge nodes on the Liquid Network have been paused, limiting access to the side chain, which continues to produce blocks. 

JAN3 CEO Samson Mow said Aqua’s Liquid features were affected and that on-chain bitcoin still worked. Other wallets in the industry that use the Liquid Network are expected to be affected. Users holding LBTC now effectively have their savings at risk, since the underlying BTC is currently not redeemable. Given the private nature of the Liquid chain, user onchain analytics are scarce and not much public information is known about how much LBTC is held by retail users versus corporations of Blockstream itself. Nevertheless, should the funds not be returned, it would be a heavy blow to the Liquid Network’s user base.

Users of LBTC don’t have many options but to wait for conversations with the hackers to resolve. Given the size of the hack, it would be difficult for the hackers to get away with stealing all that bitcoin, though perhaps not impossible. What may happen is that the hackers ask for a finder’s fee and return the majority of the funds. 

This post Alleged White-Hat Hackers Withdraw 4,000 bitcoin from Blockstream’s Liquid Network Federation Reserves first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Bitcoin Magazine

Hargreaves Lansdown Reverses Course, Rolls Out Bitcoin Trading 

British financial services firm Hargreaves Lansdown is letting retail investors buy bitcoin — nearly one year after it said the cryptocurrency was “not an asset class.” 

The Bristol, UK-based investment firm’s website said it was offering bitcoin and other crypto exchange-traded notes to investors. ETNs are investment funds which trade on stock exchanges and track the prices of digital assets. 

It comes after the firm, which manages nearly £173 billion (over $233 billion) in assets, last year warned customers about buying bitcoin. 

“While longer-term returns of Bitcoin have been positive, Bitcoin has experienced several periods of extreme losses and is a highly volatile investment — much riskier than stocks or bonds,” the firm said at the time. 

“The HL Investment view is that Bitcoin is not an asset class, and we do not think cryptocurrency has characteristics that mean it should be included in portfolios for growth or income and shouldn’t be relied upon to help clients meet their financial goals.” 

Now, a number of ETNs tracking the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are available. The firm warns users that “crypto ETNs are considered high-risk and may be volatile.”

U.S. regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2024 approved bitcoin exchange-traded funds for investors after a decade of saying no to the products. 

The funds had the most successful debut in the history of ETFs as investors previously unable to buy exposure to the asset class rushed in to buy the products. 

Run by top asset managers and banks like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Morgan Stanley, the investment vehicles now collectively manage over $100 billion in assets. 

This post Hargreaves Lansdown Reverses Course, Rolls Out Bitcoin Trading  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Trezor Breach Worse Than Reported: Another 67,000 US Customers Exposed

Hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor has said that a data breach first announced last month is worse than originally reported. 

The Prague, Czech Republic-based company said Friday that an additional 67,000 U.S. customers had their names, emails, phone numbers, shipping addresses and order numbers leaked. The leaked data came from orders made between November 2019 and August 2021, according to Trezor. 

Trezor first announced in August that data from 11,742 customers from the U.S., UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal had been exposed — with names, emails, phone numbers and shipping addresses leaked. 

Another 1,947 customers just had their names, cities and emails exposed in the breach. 

In Friday’s announcement, Trezor said that its third-party fulfillment partner, ShipMonk, had falsely reassured the company about deleting customer data. 

“Throughout our entire relationship with ShipMonk, we repeatedly requested and received written assurance confirming the deletion of the data, in line with our contract, data policy, and past communications,” Trezor wrote. 

“We are very disappointed that, despite receiving this confirmation, the data was not deleted in their systems.”

Neither Trezor nor ShipMonk immediately responded to Bitcoin Magazine’s questions. 

Trezor first announced in August that the data had been leaked because ShipMonk experienced “unauthorized access to their systems containing customer data.” 

The company added that it had directly emailed all customers involved in the breach. Trezor’s parent company, SatoshiLabs, told Bitcoin Magazine last month that it was investigating the incident. 

Trezor is one of the most popular Bitcoin hardware wallet solutions, and also has support for storing other cryptocurrencies. 

Bitcoiners’ personal data has been targeted by cybercriminals in the past: back in 2020, an unauthorized party accessed popular hardware manufacturer Ledger’s e-commerce and marketing database, leaking over 1 million email addresses and the personal contact data of nearly 10,000 customers. 

At the start of this year, customers reported receiving emails from Global-e, Ledger’s payment partner, that a data breach at its cloud systems leaked sensitive customer data. 

This post Trezor Breach Worse Than Reported: Another 67,000 US Customers Exposed first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

El Salvador Isn’t Buying Bitcoin With Public Money, Says IMF 

El Salvador has not used public funds to accumulate bitcoin since the International Monetary Fund’s last review of its loan program, the fund said Thursday. 

In a report Thursday, the body said that the Central American country had instead received bitcoin from private donations, citing documentation from the government. It added that “no further Bitcoin accumulation beyond the documented donations is expected.”

El Salvador made headlines in 2021 when it became the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender. Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele in 2022 said the country would buy one bitcoin per day but it was never clear where the money was coming from — or if he was actually buying at all. 

“Documentation has been provided verifying that Bitcoin accumulation since the first review reflects private donations and that no public resources were used,” the IMF release said. 

“Understandings were also reached on steps to modernize the legal, regulatory, and supervisory framework for digital assets and to further strengthen the governance and risk-management arrangements for public-sector crypto-asset holdings. Going forward, no further bitcoin accumulation beyond the documented donations is expected.”

The report added that public participation in the government-sponsored bitcoin wallet has been largely wound down, with majority ownership and operational control handed to a private operator. 

El Salvador in 2021 debuted a state-sponsored wallet called Chivo for its citizens as part of its plan to increase bitcoin adoption in the country. 

“IMF staff thank the Salvadoran authorities for the constructive discussions and excellent collaboration,” the report added. 

The IMF El Salvador entered a $1.4 billion loan agreement at the end of December but the fund asked for the country to scale back certain aspects of its bitcoin strategy. 

Institutions like the World Bank and the IMF have long criticized President Bukele’s Bitcoin law, which also asked businesses to accept the cryptocurrency if they had the technological means to do so. 

President Bukele in 2024 admitted that Salvadorans weren’t using the cryptocurrency to buy things as expected, but always boasted that the government was still stacking sats. 

Since launching a crime crackdown to tackle the country’s notorious crime gangs, murder rates in El Salvador have plunged. The country was once the most dangerous place in the Americas but President Bukele is now trying to turn it into a tech hub. 

Crypto companies like Tether have since relocated to its capital, San Salvador. 

This post El Salvador Isn’t Buying Bitcoin With Public Money, Says IMF  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Dips Below $80,000 on Strong US Jobs Report

Bitcoin slid Friday after a better-than-expected labor report showed that the U.S. job market accelerated in August. 

The leading cryptocurrency was recently trading for close to $79,764 after dropping as low as $78,706 earlier in the morning in New York. It’s currently down over 1% over a 24-hour period. On Thursday, the coin soared above $82,000. 

The Federal Reserve is typically more likely to raise interest rates when the labor market is strong, because more people employed means more spending, and more spending can push inflation up. 

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh last week gave his first major speech as head of the U.S. central bank and said he had “more work to do” to fight inflation. Bitcoin has typically done well in a low-interest rate environment. 

Traders currently view a U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate hike at the upcoming September 15–16 policy meeting as roughly a 50% to 60% probability. 

But U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday demanded the Federal Reserve slash interest rates. 

Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said: “Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago!”

He added: “We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World, like ‘the old days.'”

Bitcoin has decoupled from stocks recently as investors have renewed concerns around dollar debasement. 

The cryptocurrency started surging last month, after the U.S. Treasury Department said it would more than double the size of its government debt repurchases. The coin had its best run in three years and third best August ever.  

The much-talked about debasement trade is back in the spotlight, and bitcoin has been trading in lockstep with gold, according to analysts. The so-called debasement trade is when investors buy an asset as a way to hedge against a currency losing value. 

News dropped last month that U.S. public debt exceeded $40 trillion for the first time too. Excessive debt also undermines confidence in the dollar, making assets like bitcoin and gold attractive. 

This post Bitcoin Dips Below $80,000 on Strong US Jobs Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Changpeng Zhao’s September 5 visit to Kyrgyzstan’s crypto council came as President Sadyr Japarov set a three-month deadline for new regulations and officials discussed the risks posed by international sanctions. The decisions put the limits of domestic crypto policy in focus: approval at home does not ensure access abroad.

Zhao, known as CZ, said in a post from @cz_binance that he attended in person and praised progress including a circulating KGST stablecoin. His post did not name USDKG, the separate gold-backed, dollar-pegged project whose issuer is on the UK sanctions list.

USDKG provides a concrete example of the limits of government backing. Its published framework combines a state-owned issuer, reserve management and administrative token controls. Yet its own FAQ reserves direct redemption for institutional clients, while UK-facing services have separate legal obligations. For a retail holder, the practical exit route is a trade with an available counterparty.

Kyrgyzstan sets regulatory deadlines

According to the National Agency for Virtual Assets’ account, Japarov chaired the third council meeting in Cholpon-Ata on September 5. Participants discussed regulation, security and risks from international sanctions and restrictions affecting the country’s virtual-asset market.

The agency, known as NAVA, received two three-month assignments: secure adoption of a package of secondary regulations and work through possible amendments to the virtual-assets law and related legislation. These are instructions for further work, rather than evidence that the resulting rules are already in force.

The timetable extends beyond legislation. The State Tax Service was given two months to review tax regulation. NAVA has one month to determine the cost and funding sources for a digital licensing and supervision platform, with pilot testing planned from Jan. 1, 2027. Kabar, citing the presidential press service, also reported those directions.

The central bank has a separate assignment to develop and pilot a basic digital-som platform by Dec. 31, 2026, followed by real-world testing from 2027 and phased national deployment.

The projects should remain distinct. In a Nov. 6, 2025 statement, the Finance Ministry said USDKG was separate from KGST and the digital som, with different goals, mechanisms and backing. CZ’s praise for KGST therefore cannot be read as an endorsement of USDKG or a statement about its reserves.

State ownership does not determine foreign access

For USDKG, the state connection is through its issuer. The ministry’s November 2025 statement said it owned 100% of OJSC Virtual Asset Issuer. USDKG’s May 22, 2026 announcement continued to describe the issuer as a state-owned entity under the Finance Ministry.

Four days later, the UK designated the issuer under reference RUS3618. Its May 26 sanctions notice identifies the entity through names including USDKG. The current designation record lists an asset freeze, trust-services sanctions, director disqualification and internet-services sanctions.

The UK’s stated rationale is that it has reasonable grounds to suspect the issuer obtained a benefit from or supported Russia’s government through business of economic significance to that government. That is the designating authority’s allegation concerning the issuer, not a finding about CZ, KGST or unrelated token holders.

For financial sanctions, the relevant boundary includes both location and legal identity. OFSI guidance says the rules apply to persons within UK territory and territorial sea, as well as UK persons worldwide, including entities established under UK law and their branches.

The internet-services measure addresses another part of access. Specified services must take reasonable steps to prevent users in the UK from accessing content, websites or applications provided by the designated issuer. The designation establishes that obligation; it does not establish which services have actually blocked access.

These restrictions do not amount to proof of a worldwide shutdown of USDKG transfers. They show why domestic authorization cannot settle every access question: a foreign service may have legal duties that Kyrgyz state ownership does not remove.

USDKG redemption depends on holder eligibility

USDKG’s current redemption FAQ makes the holder distinction explicit. Retail users are directed to supported exchanges for liquidity. Direct minting and redemption are available only to institutional clients, subject to identity and anti-money-laundering checks and issuer-defined procedures. Gold redemption is handled case by case.

For retail holders, the reserve asset and the immediate source of liquidity are therefore different things. Gold may support the issuer’s backing model, but the published retail route relies on somebody else being willing and able to buy the token. A claim about collateral does not establish the price, size or availability of that trade.

The issuer’s December 2025 tokenomics explanation describes tokens being issued after gold enters custody and is verified. It also describes a fiat liquidity buffer intended to support redemptions without requiring immediate gold sales.

That arrangement depends on reserve management and the execution of issuer procedures. USDKG’s transparency page says its gold valuation uses prices at the audit date and displays a 2025 fourth-quarter report. Those figures do not establish how much cash is currently available to meet redemption requests.

The available market observations are limited. A CoinGecko market page on September 6 displayed Ethereum Uniswap V3 and Curve USDKG market rows flagged inactive, indicating no trades in the preceding three hours on those displayed rows. That is a limited observation about tracked markets, not evidence that sanctions caused the inactivity or that every venue is unavailable.

Likewise, the May 22 issuer announcement said USDKG/USDT was available to professional investors through OSL HK’s over-the-counter platform. An announcement of access in May does not establish that the same route is available to a particular holder in September.

Token ownership still sits inside an administrative system

Access also depends on the token’s design. USDKG’s current project documentation assigns the owner the ability to pause transfers and issue tokens. It assigns compliance administrators the ability to blacklist addresses and burn balances held by blacklisted accounts. The documented redemption function burns tokens from the owner’s own balance.

Those are distinct powers with different consequences. A transfer pause concerns token movement, while a blacklist targets addresses. Direct redemption remains an issuer process subject to the eligibility conditions described in its FAQ. Possession of tokens alone does not remove those dependencies.

The Ethereum contract page labels its source an exact verified match and exposes administrative functions including pausing, blacklisting, issuance and redemption in its published interface. That corroborates the existence of the interfaces. It does not identify their current human controllers or show how those powers are being used.

The January 2025 Consensys Diligence audit reviewed a specific code revision and described substantial trust in administrators. Its historical findings should not be treated as a complete account of every current deployed permission, or as evidence of present reserve solvency.

The documented controls add a separate dependency to the exit process. Eligibility determines who can redeem directly; counterparties provide retail liquidity; administrators retain specified powers over token movement.

Japarov’s September deadlines now create concrete milestones for Kyrgyzstan’s domestic framework: secondary regulations, possible legislative amendments and the licensing-platform pilot. Those measures can shape how the country supervises virtual assets.

For USDKG holders, the practical test is whether those services connect to an exit they can use. A retail sale still needs a counterparty, institutional redemption still requires issuer approval, and UK-facing services still have sanctions obligations. The next regulations will shape domestic supervision; access depends on how those separate conditions are met.

The post CZ’s Kyrgyzstan visit highlights why state backing cannot guarantee a stablecoin exit appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Router Protocol will shut down all remaining operations by Sept. 30 after failing to build a sustainable bridge business.

The cross-chain infrastructure project said it spent the past year exploring commercialization, licensing, and acquisition opportunities, including talks with teams that could take over parts of its technology stack.

However, none of this process produced an outcome that could support the protocol team.

Router blamed the economics of cross-chain infrastructure, where bridge fees have compressed while the cost of running always-on systems remains largely fixed. It explained:

“Much of crypto's demand revealed itself to be dopamine wearing a painkiller's clothes: when the speculative tide went out, the fee pool that was supposed to sustain the infrastructure went with it. A business that has to run painkiller-grade infrastructure on vitamin-grade revenue inside a dopamine-driven market is structurally upside down.

That is the honest post-mortem, and it applies to most of our category, not just to us. Bridging economics are thin, compressing fees against costs that never sleep, and the sector has run net negative for a long stretch. We felt every basis point of it.”

It also said activity has concentrated on fewer blockchains and that capital has increasingly shifted toward artificial intelligence.

Indeed, the protocol's current usage reflects the challenge. DefiLlama showed Router Nitro processing about $677 in bridge volume over a 24-hour period on Sept. 7, while ROUTE’s market capitalization stood at roughly $56,600.

Meanwhile, this closure ends a project that raised more than $4 million in 2021 from investors including Coinbase Ventures before launching its own Layer 1 network in 2024.

Router had already begun retreating from that model last year when it proposed shutting Router Chain and shifting resources toward its Open Graph Architecture. The Sept. 4 announcement goes further, ending the remaining protocol operations altogether.

Holders and developers face separate shutdown deadlines

The Sept. 30 closure does not create a single withdrawal deadline for every ROUTE holder.

Router said users holding tokens on centralized exchanges should follow the timetable set by each venue. KuCoin suspended ROUTE deposits on Sept. 5, while final trading and withdrawal schedules remained dependent on individual exchanges.

That leaves token holders exposed to different deadlines depending on where they keep their assets.

On the other hand, developers face a broader operational problem.

Router’s products include an app, API, and widget built around its Open Graph Architecture. The closure announcement did not provide a service-by-service shutdown schedule, meaning projects that depend on Router infrastructure will need to identify those connections and migrate before the protocol disappears.

Router said it will not launch any new ROUTE programs and plans to open-source selected components of its technology, though it has not identified which parts or provided a release date.

The project also plans to permanently burn 303.3 million ROUTE held in its treasury, equivalent to roughly 30% of the token’s nearly 1 billion supply.

The post A Coinbase-backed crypto bridge is shutting down after its business model stopped working appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Liquid Network was effectively halted after nearly $320 million in Bitcoin left its federation reserve through an abnormal peg-out.

The incident began Sept. 6 when a customer submitted 4,000 L-BTC to SideSwap’s peg-out service, which converts Bitcoin represented on Liquid back into BTC on the main network.

SideSwap said the request passed the normal authorization process and prompted the Liquid Federation to release about 3,996 BTC. The Bitcoin later moved to an address that held roughly 3,998.5 BTC at the latest check.

Liquid disabled its bridge nodes after the withdrawal, while SideSwap suspended swaps, peg-ins, and peg-outs. Exchanges also paused or prepared to pause L-BTC deposits and withdrawals as operators investigated the incident.

The actors controlling the Bitcoin subsequently identified themselves through on-chain messages as “whitehats” and said they intended to return most of the funds once the underlying bug had been fixed across the network.

That prospect could limit the eventual financial loss. However, it does not resolve the more important question of how almost 4,000 BTC left the federation without an apparent key compromise.

The withdrawal appears to have followed the rules

Liquid and SideSwap say the incident did not involve stolen signing credentials.

The withdrawal used SideSwap’s valid Peg-out Authorization Key, or PAK, and Liquid said neither that key nor other federation keys were compromised.

Instead, SideSwap said Blockstream traced the 4,000 L-BTC presented for redemption to a flaw in Elements, the software underlying Liquid.

If that explanation is confirmed, the problem occurred before the Bitcoin transaction was signed.

Liquid is designed to maintain one BTC in its federation reserve for every L-BTC in circulation. During a normal peg-out, L-BTC is burned, and an equivalent amount of Bitcoin is released.

In this case, SideSwap says a software bug created L-BTC without corresponding Bitcoin backing. Those tokens nevertheless entered a valid peg-out process, after which federation functionaries treated the withdrawal as legitimate and released real BTC.

Blockchain security firm Bitslab said at least 11 of Liquid’s 15 functionaries ultimately signed the transaction.

That points to a different type of failure from a conventional bridge exploit. Secure keys provide limited protection if every signer is presented with the same invalid state and accepts it as legitimate.

No independent technical postmortem or detailed patch description was public at the latest check, leaving the precise cause attributed to Liquid and SideSwap.

Whitehats want the bug fixed before returning Bitcoin

Meanwhile, the actors holding the funds have been communicating with Blockstream through Bitcoin transactions carrying OP_RETURN messages.

Galaxy Digital research head Alex Thorn said Blockstream first sent a message asking the holder to contact its security team. The holder later responded that it planned to send “most” of the Bitcoin back to the federation.

A subsequent message added a condition that Blockstream should fix the bug first and ensure every node is patched before returning the funds.

That puts Liquid’s next steps beyond simply recovering the Bitcoin.

The federation must identify and remediate the Elements flaw, distribute the fix across affected nodes, and establish that another batch of invalid L-BTC cannot pass through the same authorization process.

It must also reconcile the reserve.

The allegedly bug-created L-BTC was burned during the peg-out, but about 3,996 real BTC still left Liquid’s federation wallet. Until those funds return or the accounting is otherwise restored, the network still has to demonstrate that legitimate outstanding L-BTC remains backed one-for-one.

Liquid’s bridge nodes remain disabled while that work continues.

While the incident may ultimately end with most of the Bitcoin recovered, the harder task is proving that the system which authorized its release cannot make the same mistake twice.

The post A whitehat hacker is holding $320 million in drained Bitcoin until developers prove they patched a fatal network flaw appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Arbitrum's Watchdog Committee, a grant oversight body, has given three DeFi projects until a tentative Sept. 10 deadline to answer high-severity misuse findings and return funds it considers unresolved, or face separate votes on permanent exclusion from future DAO programs.

The cases name Good Entry, Limitless and APX Finance, formerly ApolloX. Their cited figures add to 457,553 ARB, but that total combines different findings rather than representing one amount established as stolen, outstanding or recoverable.

As of Sept. 5, no response from any of the projects appeared in the proposal thread. The committee described the schedule as tentative and said a vote would follow only if a project's explanation is unsatisfactory and its respective funds are not returned within the one-week window. No ban has been approved.

For Good Entry, the committee said on-chain analysis found 142,839 ARB was distributed to 1,032 ineligible users during and after the Short-Term Incentives Program. It also alleged self-farming by wallets connected to team addresses and said the project refused to provide clarification. Good Entry's grant application requested 200,000 ARB, so the watchdog figure covers part of the grant and describes distributions rather than a remaining balance.

Limitless is accused of swapping 75,000 ARB into USDC and transferring the funds to Base. The watchdog said team members could not be reached for clarification or recovery. The figure matches the 75,000 ARB requested in the project's LTIPP application.

The APX Finance finding is less cleanly reducible to a repayment figure. The committee tied 239,714 ARB to overlapping issues, including an unspecified substantial portion left unutilized in treasury addresses. It also cited late transfers to distributor contracts and alleged team-linked Sybil activity. APX had requested 525,000 ARB in its application, but the proposal did not break down the 239,714 ARB by issue.

What the proposed bans can enforce

Each project would face its own off-chain Snapshot vote. The proposal says a ban involving an operating project would cover founders, current team members and affiliated contributors. For projects no longer operating, it would apply only to founders.

The votes would seek social consensus and require no on-chain action. Their stated consequence is that covered projects or people would become ineligible for future programs run by the Arbitrum DAO. That makes the measure a governance-access sanction; it would not itself execute a wallet freeze or disable a protocol.

The watchdog said that, as of Sept. 2, the broader program had received 90 reports, recovered about 532,000 ARB and distributed about 268,000 ARB in reporter bounties. The next signal is whether any of the three projects answers before Sept. 10, followed by whether the committee proceeds with its tentative Snapshot timetable.

The post Three DeFi projects face possible exclusion from future Arbitrum DAO programs appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin's current rally started when the Treasury Department announced on Aug. 19 that, beginning Sept. 9, it would at least double the maximum size of certain buyback operations for government bonds with 10 to 30 years left to maturity, raising the cap from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation.

Simply put, the Treasury was offering to buy more older long-term bonds from dealers that wanted to sell them.

Later that day, the Federal Reserve released minutes from its July meeting, where three members had voted for a quarter-point rate increase, and many others thought another hike would be needed if inflation failed to retreat.

The central bank kept its target range at 3.50% to 3.75%, though the debate had already moved from how long rates should stay high to whether they should go higher.

At first, Washington seemed to be pushing bond markets in two directions. The Fed was trying to make money more expensive across the economy, while Treasury debt managers were trying to make older long-term government bonds easier to trade.

They have different jobs, though borrowers and investors experience both at once, as they affect everything from mortgage pricing to Bitcoin.

The 30-year Treasury yield closed at 5.28% on Aug. 18, fell to 5.19% on the announcement day, then returned to 5.27% by Sept. 2, according to the Treasury's daily yield data. Other forces were moving yields during those two weeks, and the larger buybacks hadn't begun, so the round trip can't be credited to the Treasury alone.

What it does show is that the announcement produced no lasting repricing of what investors charged to lend the government money for a generation.

The Treasury yield curve has two governments

Interest rates often get discussed as if the Fed chooses one number and the rest of finance just updates their own. That's partially true only at the shortest end of the market, where the central bank pays interest on reserve balances and uses overnight operations to keep the federal funds rate inside its chosen range.

The July implementation note set the rate paid on reserve balances at 3.65%, giving banks little reason to lend overnight for much less.

The 30-year Treasury yield, however, comes from a much more complex set of factors. Investors start with an estimate of where short-term rates might average across the coming decades, account for inflation, then demand extra compensation for locking up money while federal borrowing and the economy move in ways nobody can accurately predict.

Economists call that final piece the term premium, simply the price of waiting a very long time.

The distinction helps explain the recent bond selloff because the Fed minutes said nominal Treasury yields had gained 25 to 30 basis points during the July meeting window, driven mainly by higher real rates.

Inflation expectations moved much less, so investors demanded a better return once inflation was stripped out. Markets had also priced a quarter-point increase by the September Fed meeting and another by the end of the first quarter of 2027.

Bitcoin feels that change quickly because real yields tell investors how much they can earn while taking very little credit risk. Bitcoin offers no return, so a government bond offering a generous return above inflation makes holding it more expensive by comparison.

The same math reaches technology shares valued on profits many years away, since higher real yields give those future earnings a harsher discount in today's dollars.

Treasury has a different problem because Congress decides how much the federal government spends and collects in taxes, leaving debt managers to finance the gap, refinance maturing securities, and keep US government debt functioning as the world's main pool of collateral.

Treasury expects $739 billion of privately held net marketable borrowing from July through September, followed by another $628 billion from October through December. Its debt office has to move an enormous volume of securities into private hands while keeping older bonds from becoming awkward and expensive to trade.

The separation between the two institutions gets even stranger once the Fed's own purchases enter the picture. It buys Treasury bills and, when needed, other government securities with three years or less to maturity so the banking system keeps an ample supply of reserves.

Those purchases can coexist with a restrictive policy rate, allowing the Fed to supply overnight money while keeping it expensive, just as the Treasury can support trading in long bonds while issuing far more debt than it repurchases.

The key is maturities: the Fed sets the price of short money, the Treasury sets the volume and composition of federal debt, and private investors connect the two by deciding how much compensation they require at every point in between.

A $4 billion umbrella in a $739 billion rainstorm

Treasury buybacks sound more powerful than they are because they make it sound like debt disappears.

However, the operation is closer to exchanging one shape of debt for another: Treasury sells new benchmark securities, uses some of its cash to repurchase older issues, and gives dealers room to move inventory that has become harder to trade.

Newer bonds serve as current benchmarks, while older, off-the-run bonds can drift away from nearby prices and consume scarce room on dealer balance sheets.

The government still owes the replacement debt, and Treasury says buybacks should have little effect on net marketable borrowing because new issuance replaces the securities being repurchased.

The program can make older bonds easier to trade and reduce the risk that dealers retreat during a volatile session, while leaving the broad supply of federal obligations largely intact.

That also separates the program from quantitative easing because when the Fed expands its balance sheet, it creates reserve balances and buys securities as part of monetary policy.

Treasury spends cash from its own account and replenishes that cash through taxes or borrowing, so its buyback rearranges the government's liabilities while leaving the supply of central-bank money unchanged.

The difference becomes easier to see at full scale because Treasury's Aug. 5 refunding plan contemplated as much as $38 billion of off-the-run purchases for liquidity support during the quarter and another $25 billion of short-maturity purchases for cash management.

Two weeks later, Treasury raised the cap on selected long-end operations and is yet to publish a revised quarterly total. The same refunding plan included a $125 billion package of new 3-, 10-, and 30-year debt, while the department projected hundreds of billions in net borrowing.

A $4 billion operation can help dealers digest a difficult corner of the market, though the much larger supply of debt keeps setting the background price.

Long-term yields also absorb several forces at once, with federal deficits competing for a finite pool of savings while the AI buildout pulls vast sums toward data centers and power generation. Investors have to price decades of inflation and political risk, while dealers and foreign reserve managers operate with their own limits.

The 30-year yield compresses all of that uncertainty into one quote, which helps explain why neither the Fed nor Treasury can control it on their own.

Bitcoin gets both versions of the dollar

Bitcoin usually feels the Fed side first because a higher expected policy path makes cash more attractive, supports the dollar, and raises the cost of holding leveraged crypto positions.

Kevin Warsh's less predictable Fed showed how a surprise increase could force traders to reprice monetary policy in a hurry. A high real return on government debt also creates a daily opportunity cost for owning an asset with no contractual income.

Treasury reaches Bitcoin through liquidity and fiscal credibility, since heavy issuance draws cash toward government auctions and, depending on the Treasury General Account and reserve conditions, can leave less balance-sheet room for risk.

An examination of the $739 billion borrowing wave explains why the buyback program can sound large while its net cash effect stays modest.

Across a longer horizon, persistent deficits and a larger federal interest bill can strengthen the case for holding a scarce asset outside the sovereign balance sheet.

That moves much slower than a bond selloff. Bitcoin can trade like a long-duration risk asset during a week when real yields jump, then draw support across years from investors who distrust the fiscal path that helped push those yields upward.

All this tells us to see the curve as one connected system. The 2-year yield carries much of the expected Fed path, while the 10- and 30-year yields add debt supply and term compensation.

Real yields show Bitcoin's opportunity cost, the Treasury General Account tracks cash moving between markets and the government, and bank reserves show how much funding room the financial system has.

Washington controls important pieces of that system. The Fed can make overnight dollars dearer, and the Treasury can decide which bonds to issue or repurchase. The long end still belongs to investors willing to part with money for decades.

Bitcoin now trades inside that market, receiving monetary restraint from one part of Washington and a fiscal sales pitch from another.

The post Bitcoin’s faces a weird new macro reality as the Fed turns off the tap and Treasury opens the floodgates appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin's oldest sidechain just lost almost everything it was holding, and the person who took it is asking politely how to give it back.

On Saturday, 6 September 2026, roughly 4,000 $BTC worth about $320 million left the federation wallet that backs Liquid Network, the Blockstream-built Bitcoin sidechain that has been running since 2018. The wallet held around 4,200 BTC before the incident. It now holds a little over 200. That is about 95% of every Bitcoin ever pegged into Liquid, gone in the space of 23 minutes.

Then things got strange. The attacker attached a message to a Bitcoin transaction announcing himself as a white hat and inviting Blockstream to get in touch. Blockstream did. The two sides have spent the weekend negotiating a $320 million return in public, one small Bitcoin transaction at a time.

What Actually Happened In The Liquid Network Hack?

The timeline is unusually clean, because most of it is on the Bitcoin blockchain.

At 14:05 UTC on 6 September, a customer sent 4,000 L-BTC to SideSwap's peg-out service. SideSwap is a Liquid Federation member and a normal, approved route for converting L-BTC back into real Bitcoin. It processed the order like any other: the L-BTC was burned on Liquid, a valid peg-out authorisation was attached, and 23 minutes later the federation paid out roughly 3,996 BTC on the Bitcoin mainchain.

Nothing about that transaction looked wrong. It was confirmed in Bitcoin block 965,783 at 14:28:56 UTC, and the coins landed in a single address holding just under 4,000 BTC.

Shortly afterwards, that same address broadcast a tiny second transaction carrying an OP_RETURN message: the sender identified himself as a white hat and asked to be contacted on-chain. Blockstream replied the same way, sending 1,000 satoshis to the address in block 965,822 with a message pointing to its security contact. The conversation has since moved into PGP-signed notes passed back and forth.

Liquid disabled its bridge nodes and paused the network. Exchanges were notified, and several have suspended L-BTC deposits and withdrawals.

How Did The Elements Bug Let 4,000 BTC Out?

This is the part that should worry people more than the missing money.

Liquid's security model looks solid on paper. The Bitcoin backing L-BTC sits in an 11-of-15 multisig controlled by vetted federation members, and peg-outs back to Bitcoin are gated by a second layer called Peg-out Authorisation Keys. Neither of those layers broke. No key was stolen, no signer was phished, no hardware security module was tricked.

Instead, Blockstream has attributed the incident to a software bug in Elements, the open-source codebase Liquid runs on. Independent analysis points to a consensus-level inflation bug in how confidential transaction rangeproofs were cached. A cache key that left out asset and script context meant a previously verified proof could be reused, which let unbacked L-BTC be created out of nothing and accepted by a subset of nodes.

From there the attacker did not need to hack anything else. He simply redeemed his counterfeit L-BTC through the front door. SideSwap has said it had no way to tell the exploit-created coins apart from real ones, so it treated them the same, and the federation's HSMs signed a withdrawal that was perfectly valid under Liquid's consensus rules at the time.

The uncomfortable footnote: a fix had reportedly already been merged into the Elements repository days earlier, but had not yet shipped in a tagged release.

Is The Liquid Network Hacker Really A White Hat?

He says he will return most of the funds once the bug is patched and every node has updated. He has not said how much "most" means, has not given a deadline, and has not revealed who he is. As of Monday, the Bitcoin has not moved.

Plenty of people in the industry are not buying the framing. Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet pointed out that genuine white hats disclose a flaw before moving hundreds of millions in collateral, not after, and compared the situation to the Ronin bridge hack and the Euler Finance attacker's post-exploit change of heart. Draining a bridge and then asking for a chat looks less like responsible disclosure and more like leverage.

Former Blockstream CSO Samson Mow added another wrinkle, saying a Signal contact request that surfaced during the negotiation did not come from the address actually holding the coins. Which is a good reminder that in a public negotiation with an anonymous counterparty, anyone can pretend to be either side.

What Does This Mean For Bitcoin And L-BTC Holders?

Bitcoin itself is fine. The exploit never touched the base layer, and BTC has been sitting comfortably near $80,000 through the whole episode. This was a bug in a system built on top of Bitcoin, not in Bitcoin.

The damage is concentrated where you would expect: L-BTC liquidity, and any business or token that depends on Liquid as a settlement layer. Liquid exists to give exchanges fast settlement by issuing L-BTC against locked Bitcoin, and a reserve that is 95% empty is not a functioning peg. Until the coins come back, or the federation explains how it will cover the hole, L-BTC redemptions are stuck.

There is also a broader point about federated bridges. Liquid's federation did nothing wrong in the sense that everyone followed the rules. The rules themselves were wrong for a few blocks, and that was enough. For anyone holding assets through a bridge, custodian, or wrapper, a protocol-level bug in a shared reserve is a risk no amount of personal opsec can audit away.

What Happens Next?

Three things to watch:

• A confirmed return transaction. Nothing else counts. Until Bitcoin moves from that address back to the federation, the promise is just text in an OP_RETURN field.
• Blockstream's post-mortem. The company has not yet published a full technical account, including exactly how the peg-out cleared normal controls and why the Elements fix had not shipped.
• Reconciliation. Even in the best case, someone has to explain the gap between 4,000 BTC and "most" of 4,000 BTC, whether any of it is being kept as a self-awarded bounty, and how the remaining reserves are accounted for.

This story is not over when the hacker says nice things. It is over when the Bitcoin is back and the numbers add up.

Gifting bitcoin to children: the tax rules that apply in Austria

Transferring bitcoin to your own children is generally possible in Austria without the gift alone triggering income tax on any price gain accrued up to that point. There is no general gift tax either.

Even so, a larger transfer is not automatically without tax consequences. For one thing, a gift reporting obligation can arise. For another, in the case of a genuine gift the child generally takes over the tax history of the bitcoin, including the parent's acquisition costs.

The 50,000 euro threshold applies to parents and children

Children belong to the circle of relatives covered by the Austrian gift notification rules.

Gifts between relatives are generally exempt from the reporting obligation as long as the fair market value of the transfers between the same persons within one year does not exceed 50,000 euros in total. If that threshold is exceeded, the gift generally has to be reported.

Example:

• A parent gifts bitcoin worth 30,000 euros: generally no report on the basis of this gift alone.
• Later in the same relevant period, further bitcoin worth 25,000 euros follow.
• Total value: 55,000 euros.

The reporting threshold may thus have been exceeded.

Which bitcoin value counts?

For the gift reporting obligation, what generally counts is the fair market value at the time of the transfer. With bitcoin this can regularly be determined from a traceable market price.

• The following should therefore be documented:
• date and time of the gift,
• the amount of BTC transferred,
• the euro price used,
• the price source,
• wallet addresses,
• transaction ID.

This data can also help later on to demonstrate the origin of the bitcoin to the tax office.

The child does not get a new tax cost base

The later taxation is particularly important.

A genuine gift does not mean that the bitcoin market value on the day of the gift automatically becomes the new acquisition cost. Under the Austrian income tax guidelines, the recipient instead continues the acquisition costs of the donor.

Example:

• The parent bought bitcoin for 10,000 euros.
• At the time of the gift they are worth 30,000 euros.
• The child later sells them for 40,000 euros.
• The tax base value generally remains 10,000 euros, not 30,000 euros.

With taxable new holdings this can produce a gain of 30,000 euros on the later sale.

Legacy holdings also remain relevant for tax

The same principle makes the date of acquisition particularly relevant. If the transferred bitcoin were already acquired before March 1, 2021, their status as legacy holdings for tax purposes can likewise remain significant. A gratuitous transfer generally does not simply reset that history. Parents should therefore hand the child not only the bitcoin but also the historical purchase records.

Three months to file the report

If the reporting threshold is exceeded, the gift generally has to be reported within three months. If the threshold is only exceeded through several transfers, the deadline starts with the gift that pushes it over the line. The report is generally filed with the Austrian tax office, regularly via FinanzOnline. Wilfully failing to report can carry consequences under fiscal criminal law.

Conclusion

Bitcoin can generally be gifted to children in Austria without the gift alone realising a bitcoin price gain. With larger amounts, however, the gift reporting obligation has to be observed. For relatives the relevant threshold is generally 50,000 euros within one year. More important still for a later sale: in the case of a genuine gift the child generally takes over the parent's acquisition costs for tax purposes. Purchase date, cost basis and transaction history should therefore be documented together with the bitcoin.

Harmony is giving up its own blockchain. On September 6, 2026 the team behind the network announced that it will shut down the mainnet it launched in 2019 and reissue the ONE token as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. For you as a holder, one point matters above all: if your ONE sit inside a smart contract, meaning a liquidity pool, a multisig wallet or a DeFi position, you have to pull them out beforehand. Those positions do not travel with the migration. Balances in an ordinary wallet and on an exchange, by contrast, are captured by a snapshot and credited again on Ethereum without you having to apply for anything.

The window is tight. Reports name both September 9 and September 10, 2026, and they do not name them consistently. Anyone affected should therefore not wait until the last day.

Harmony mainnet shutdown: what happens on September 9 and 10, 2026

A mainnet is the productive main network of a blockchain, where real balances and real transactions live, as opposed to a testnet. Harmony runs such a mainnet as an independent layer 1 chain. Layer 1 describes a blockchain that settles and secures its transactions itself instead of attaching itself to another chain.

That independence is now ending. According to the announcement, the final blocks are to be processed on September 9, 2026; validators may shut down their nodes afterwards. On the exact cut-off date the available reports diverge, and you should know that rather than have it smoothed over: The Block writes that users should exit all smart contracts before September 10, 2026, and names September 10 as the day validators are allowed to cease operations. ETHNews describes September 9 as the day of the final blocks and September 10 as a hard boundary after which funds in certain positions are lost. The Chinese-language industry outlet WuBlockchain names September 9 in its summary as the deadline for exiting smart contracts.

In practice the spread means this: anyone holding a position on Harmony has until September 8 to unwind it safely. After that it depends on whether the chain is still producing blocks, and that is not something to rely on when money is at stake.

Why Harmony is abandoning its own chain: the cross-shard exploit of August 12

The trigger lies four weeks back. On August 12, 2026 Harmony was attacked through a flaw in what is called cross-shard verification. Harmony splits its network into shards, several parallel sub-chains that settle transactions among themselves via receipts. The attacker was able to have valid receipts redeemed more than once. The result was new ONE with no offsetting entry: the attack touched not a single smart contract. It struck one level deeper, at the consensus layer, the place where the network's nodes agree on the valid state.

The scale is the reason an in-flight repair was ruled out. The first confirmed wave covered around 4 billion ONE, which against a total supply of roughly 15.01 billion works out at about 26 percent. Reconstructing the full attack, the security firm Verichains arrived at roughly 3.01 trillion forged ONE. The two figures do not contradict each other; they describe different stages of the post-mortem.

Harmony then opted for a rollback, winding the chain back to a state before the attack. Shard 0 was reset to block 92,730,034 and shard 1 to block 94,978,278; both checkpoints carry the same timestamp, 23:25:37 UTC on August 11, 2026, shortly before the first confirmed forgery. More than 141,000 consecutive blocks and over 109,000 regular transactions were discarded, 109,441 exactly according to ETHNews, along with several hundred staking operations. What such a reversal means for your own holdings and for your holding period is set out in our explainer on the blockchain rollback after an exploit.

The reasoning behind the current shutdown reaches beyond this single case. In the project's words: “The threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great.” That is the team's assessment, not a verified fact, and it stands that way in the announcement.

Snapshot and airdrop: how ONE becomes an ERC-20 token on Ethereum

A snapshot is a point-in-time record of all balances at a defined block. Harmony intends to take that record at the chain's final block and then distribute new ONE as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum to the same addresses. ERC-20 is the standard on which the vast majority of tokens on Ethereum are built; it defines how a token is transferred and queried, so that wallets and exchanges can support it without special handling.

For the majority of holders that is the good news: there is no claim process, no form, no redemption deadline. Anyone holding ONE in a self-custodied wallet whose address also works on Ethereum will be credited the new tokens there automatically. Total supply and issuance rate are to remain unchanged. Newly issued tokens are to be allocated to Harmony's own new venture, an initiative around AI-assisted video production that the team describes as a “remix economy”. Whether that pivot carries is an open question, and not a decisive one for the deadline at issue here.

Not every address is alike: the difference between the ONE and Ethereum formats

Harmony uses two notations for addresses: the familiar Ethereum format beginning with 0x, and its own format with the prefix one1. Both denote the same key, merely encoded differently. If you hold your ONE in a wallet where you own the private key or the seed phrase yourself, that is uncritical for the migration, because the same key also controls the matching 0x address on Ethereum.

It becomes critical somewhere else: with addresses that belong to a program and not to a key. That is exactly what the next section is about.

Balances on an exchange: why you usually have nothing to do here

If your ONE sit on a centralised trading platform, the address belongs to the exchange, not to you. According to the announcement the snapshot also captures holdings on centralised exchanges, and Harmony intends to switch the listings over to the new token. In that case the exchange credits you the ERC-20 token once it has worked through the changeover.

Even so, you should not rely on that blindly. A chain shutdown is a separate operation for every platform: it has to halt deposits and withdrawals on the old network, add the new contract and trigger the credit. Experience shows that exchanges announce this in their announcements section, often only a few days in advance, and that the suspension of deposits usually comes first. So check your platform's notices, and move no ONE to or from it in the days around the cut-off. If in doing so you find that your exchange does not list the token at all, or that its communication stays thin, a sober look at the alternatives helps: our comparison of the best crypto exchanges shows which providers handle changes of this kind cleanly on a regular basis.

Liquidity pools, multisig and DeFi: what the migration leaves behind

This is where the actual work lies. According to the announcement, multisig safes, liquidity pools and on-chain applications cannot be migrated. Users are told to exit all smart contracts before the cut-off date.

A liquidity pool is a contract into which several users deposit two tokens so that others can swap between them for a fee; your share of it is represented by a dedicated pool token. A multisig safe is a wallet that requires several signatures for a payout, technically also a contract rather than an ordinary address. What both have in common is that program code sits behind the address instead of a private key. That is precisely why a snapshot can allocate nothing to you there: on Ethereum that contract does not exist, and no one can rebuild it for you.

The task is therefore clearly defined. Go through the applications in which you have ever deposited anything on Harmony, and pull the holdings back to an address whose key you hold yourself. That applies to pool shares as much as to collateral posted in lending contracts, to wrapped tokens and to anything you brought onto the chain via a bridge. If you no longer remember where everything sits, the chain's block explorer helps: it lists all token balances for your address and the contracts you have interacted with.

For the wallet you pull everything back into, one plain rule applies: it has to be an address whose seed phrase you own. An address inside an application that has never shown you the private key is not a safe choice for this purpose.

Staking delegations and validators: where the rewards end up

Anyone who has staked ONE has as a rule delegated them. Delegation means assigning your tokens to a validator who takes part in consensus on your behalf, without you giving up control over them. The validator in turn is the operator of a node that proposes and confirms blocks and is rewarded for doing so.

A special rule applies to these holdings, and it is the point at which many holders are likely to be unpleasantly surprised: delegated stakes and rewards not yet claimed are not to flow directly to wallets, but into governance treasuries, referred to in the announcement as governor vaults. A treasury in this context is a jointly managed pot whose use the community decides on. Your delegated ONE will therefore not land automatically in your wallet as a freely available ERC-20 token.

If you want to keep control, undelegate before the cut-off date and claim your outstanding rewards, so that both sit as ordinary balance on your own address. Bear in mind that unwinding a delegation carries a waiting period on many networks. Check in your wallet menu how long yours runs before you count on the final day. Harmony has pledged to support validators in moving into roles within the new venture; for you as a delegator that is no substitute for exiting yourself.

ONE in trading: what our count of trading venues on September 7 shows

This analysis was carried out by cryptoticker.io itself on September 7, 2026. At 03:50 UTC we retrieved CoinGecko's public dataset on Harmony (HTTP 200) and counted every trading pair listed there, each with its trading venue, currency pair and reported daily volume.

The result is sobering, and directly relevant to the question of how you act now. Thirty trading pairs across 23 trading venues were recorded. The price stood at $0.00073244, or €0.0006309, the market capitalisation at around €9.38 million, rank 1168. For comparison: before the attack ONE was still traded as a project with a billion-dollar valuation. The dilution from the forged tokens and the rollback have all but wiped out the market value.

Two things stand out when you look at the venues. First, volume is heavily concentrated: Binance accounted for around $481,000 in daily volume with ONE/USDT and around $212,000 with ONE/TRY, followed by Pionex, OKX, Gate, KuCoin and MEXC in the mid five-figure to low six-figure range. Second, there is almost no euro access: among the 30 pairs we found exactly one euro pair, ONE/EUR on OKX, with a reported daily volume of around $533. Providers through which German investors usually trade did not appear in the list at all.

What we could not check belongs here too: we did not evaluate the announcement pages of the individual trading venues one by one, so we cannot say which exchange has already committed to the switch to the ERC-20 token. Three entries were flagged as anomalies in the dataset and one more as stale; we left them in the count but did not use them as a reliable volume figure. And the volume figures come from the trading venues themselves, they are not independently audited.

What follows for you is above all an expectation: selling larger holdings in euros will founder on these volumes. Anyone wanting to sell has to go via a stablecoin, and anyone unwilling to do that holds the position and waits for the migration.

Tax and holding period: what the swap can trigger for German investors

Caution is warranted here, and in both directions. The framework is settled: in Germany, gains from selling crypto assets held as private assets count as a private disposal transaction under section 23 of the Income Tax Act, with a holding period of one year, after which a disposal gain remains tax-free. The Federal Ministry of Finance last set out the cooperation and record-keeping obligations for crypto assets in more detail in its circular of March 6, 2025.

What is not settled is how this particular event is classified. Whether crediting a new ERC-20 token after the original chain is shut down is to be treated for tax purposes as a swap that starts a fresh holding period, or as a mere continuation of the same asset, has not been decided for this case. We are not asserting a legal position that does not exist in this form. What you can do in practice is document: record which holdings you had at which point in time on which address, when the credit occurred and at what price. Without those records, any later classification, whichever way it falls, is barely traceable. Only a tax adviser can give you binding advice on your own case.

Layer 1 shutdown as a risk: how to spot an endangered chain early

The Harmony case stands at the end of a development that is visible across several smaller chains. From the sequence of events you can derive markers that you can check on any chain where you hold meaningful balances.

How many validators actually carry the network?

A rollback across 141,000 blocks presupposes that a manageable number of operators can agree on a new version within days. That is practical when an attack has to be repelled, and at the same time it shows how narrow the circle is that decides on the valid state. Check how many independent validators there are and how much stake falls to the largest among them.

How much of your holdings sits in contracts rather than in a wallet?

The expensive part of this migration hits positions in smart contracts and nothing else. Anyone simply holding a balance in a self-custodied wallet gets through by doing nothing. This asymmetry applies to almost every chain wind-down. On a small chain the extra yield from a liquidity pool is rarely worth the risk of no longer being able to pull it out when it matters.

How quickly do the trading venues react?

For most holders the exchange is the real lifeline, because it goes through the snapshot and handles the changeover. The fewer venues list a token, the greater the chance that nobody takes on the work. Our count above shows how thin that cover has become for ONE.

Is there a bridge, and where does it end?

A bridge connects two blockchains and gives you on the destination chain a claim on a holding that is locked on the origin chain. If the origin chain is switched off, the value of that claim depends on whether anyone can still release the lock. Wrapped tokens are therefore among the positions you unwind first.

Checking the Harmony shutdown: what to take away

1. Open your wallet today and look for contract positions. Pool shares, collateral in lending contracts, wrapped tokens and multisig holdings all go back to an address whose seed phrase you hold yourself. If you notice in the process that your current wallet setup does not even show you what you have deposited where, that is the real finding: our software wallet comparison ranks the common applications by exactly that question.
2. Undelegate your staking positions and claim outstanding rewards. Delegated holdings and unclaimed rewards are to go into governance treasuries, not into your wallet. Factor in the waiting period when unwinding. For amounts you then want to hold longer term, separate custody is the soberer choice; which devices are suited to it is covered in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Check your exchange's notices and move nothing in the days around the cut-off date. Deposits and withdrawals on the old network are, in experience, halted first, and a transfer that falls into that window is the most common way to lose holdings. If your platform is regularly late or silent on changes like this, the exchange comparison lists the providers that handle it more reliably.

You can read the announcement itself in the project's own channel: Harmony on X, September 6, 2026. A detailed write-up of the figures on the rollback and the compensation has been published by ETHNews; it also puts a number on the compensation of $1.372 million, which is to be paid out over four quarters.

(As of September 7, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Crypto Airdrops in Week 37: These Deadlines Are Running Now

The hardest deadline this week concerns tokens that have long been sitting in the account. Anyone holding Beldex or Humanity at the crypto exchange Kraken in June had the replacement token credited automatically by airdrop – and has to withdraw it by September 25, 2026 at 14:00 UTC, otherwise the exchange liquidates it itself. An airdrop you never had to claim can therefore still expire.

And a warning up front that has shaped this edition: among the most frequently named “current” airdrops of the week in search engines is the genesis claim of Holoworld AI, supposedly starting on September 11. The project's post about it, however, dates from September 9, 2025, and the 60-day claim window expired in November 2025. In this format a year in the date costs the entire entry. With every airdrop tip you read anywhere, check the year first.

This overview lists the airdrops for which a claim window is open this week or a date is fixed within the coming 14 days. Every detail comes from the source linked in each case. Where a project has published no end date, it says so explicitly – there are no estimated deadlines here. Last week's position is in our article on the airdrops of week 36.

The Dates at a Glance

1. Beldex and Humanity: The Airdrop That Expires on September 25

This entry is the most unusual on the list, because nobody had to claim anything here. Both projects were attacked in June 2026, both then rolled out a new token contract and distributed the replacement one to one to holders as of the record date. At Beldex the snapshot was taken on June 10, 2026 at 23:36 UTC, and the new token was credited on July 10, 2026 at 14:00 UTC. Kraken took over this distribution for its customers and booked it in automatically – which is why two lines have been sitting in the account there ever since.

The catch is the ending: trading and deposits have already been switched off for all the tickers concerned, and withdrawal is the only function left. It closes on September 25, 2026 at 14:00 UTC. From September 28 to October 2, 2026 the exchange liquidates remaining balances itself and points out expressly in the same notice that the proceeds may lie well below the prices last seen and may in individual cases be minimal or zero. For Beldex there is an additional point: anyone who bought only after the snapshot is not entitled according to the exchange, and there is no application portal.

What has to be done this week is therefore a single action with a date: withdraw before the window closes. We have written up the full process with both projects, the contract addresses distinguishing the old from the new token and the special route for Humanity separately, under “Kraken withdrawal deadline on September 25”.

Source: Kraken Support – “Notice of Beldex ($BDX) delisting and $BELDEX airdrop” (accessed September 7, 2026; snapshot, credit, withdrawal deadline and liquidation window are set out there verbatim)

2. Plume (Season 2): Claim Open, End Date Still Unpublished

Plume is a layer-1 chain for tokenized real-world assets. Season 2 of the points program ended on March 31, 2026, and registration for the distribution ran from April 29 to May 27, 2026. Anyone who missed that step is excluded according to the project; it cannot be remedied after the fact. Eligible were wallets with at least 10,000 Plume Points, in some cases additionally with verification through Human Passport.

The claim has been running since the end of May 2026 through the official portal, and the gap of recent weeks remains unchanged: Plume has at no point named an end date. The announcement text gives the registration deadline and says of the claim itself only that it is planned for “later in May” and that the exact date will follow through the official channels. It has not followed to this day. On checking on September 7, 2026, the most recent post on the project blog was from August 27, 2026 and concerned a partnership, not an airdrop deadline.

The figure circulating in secondary reports of a window of around three months, which on that arithmetic would have run out at the end of August, still does not come from Plume. We mention it only because it circulates, and expressly not as a deadline. In practice that changes nothing about the recommendation, on the contrary: a claim with no published end date can be closed at any time without prior announcement. Anyone eligible and registered should claim rather than wait.

Source: Plume – “Plume Points Season 2 Airdrop Registration Is Now Open” (checked again on September 7, 2026; the announcement still names no end date for the claim, and the project blog carries no more recent post on the subject since August 27)

3. Grass (Stage 2): Deadline of January 22, 2027

The Solana project Grass has been paying out the rewards of its Stage 2 since July 22, 2026. Epochs 1 to 19 are covered, that is the period from October 14, 2024 to June 8, 2026. The claim runs through the project's official dashboard.

Grass is one of the few projects with a cleanly published deadline: the claim is open until January 22, 2027, a full six months. Whatever has not been claimed by then stays with Grass – that is what the project documentation says word for word. This is the most comfortable entry on the list and nonetheless the one where, in our experience, the most is left lying, because half a year feels like unlimited time. Put the date in your calendar if you are eligible.

Source: Grass – “How Your Stage 2 Rewards Allocation Works” (checked again on September 7, 2026; deadline of January 22, 2027 and forfeiture unchanged in wording)

4. GRVT: Every Tranche Has Its Own 30-Day Clock

The derivatives exchange GRVT held its token generation event on July 30, 2026 and is distributing 280 million GRVT in total. The mechanics are the strictest on this list: distribution takes place in tranches over twelve months, and every released tranche has a claim window of 30 days. Once it runs out, the tranche is finally lost according to the project.

Two points are decisive here and are regularly confused. First, registration: it closed on July 27, 2026 at 00:00 UTC, and anyone who missed it has forfeited their allocation – no later claim changes that. Second, the automation: only the first tranche due is sent automatically, and even that only on a registration before July 17, 2026 with a target chain on file. The help text speaks expressly of the “first eligible tranche”; it says nothing about later releases. Assume therefore that you have to claim every further tranche yourself.

GRVT publishes no release schedule, and on checking again on September 7, 2026 the help section carried no date for the second tranche either. We deliberately do not calculate it here. What counts is solely the expiry date the reward portal shows you for your specific tranche. This is exactly where forfeited entitlements arise – set yourself a reminder, as the project itself recommends.

Source: GRVT Help Center – “How to Receive and Manage Your $GRVT Airdrop” (checked again on September 7, 2026)

5. dappOS (DOS): Phase 2 Open, Phase 3 Still Without a Date

The DOS token came out with its TGE on August 10, 2026, and since August 11, 2026 phase 2 has been running, in which eligible wallets can claim transferable DOS. A phase 3 has been announced but without a date, and for none of the phases so far has an end date been published. On checking on September 7, 2026 the claim portal on the project domain was reachable; it is the only official route.

What comes after is the real decision: a freshly distributed token with a small market capitalisation swings wildly in the first weeks, and selling pressure from an ongoing claim hits it on top of that. Anyone who wants to trade such a position at all needs access that covers the small pairs – pure charting tools such as Dexscreener or TradingView only display, no trading happens there. One alternative is the mobile app FOMO Family, in which meme and low-cap tokens can be discovered, swiped through and traded directly in the app, with fast deposits. Download the app through the link and secure yourself ten percent off trading fees. Sobriety belongs with it: trading meme and low-cap tokens is highly risky, volatility is extreme and a total loss is possible at any time. Where else DOS is traded is set out in our comparison of crypto exchanges.

Changed Since Last Week

• New on the list: Beldex and Humanity. The withdrawal deadline of September 25, 2026 is the only hard deadline of this edition that falls within the next 14 days.
• Midnight (NIGHT) drops out of the table. Not because anything has changed, but because we could not verify it for the third time running – more on that in the next section.
• GRVT, registration deadline clarified: registration closed on July 27, 2026 at 00:00 UTC; the separate cut-off for automatic dispatch of the first tranche was July 17, 2026.

What Is Deliberately Missing This Week

These candidates did not make the list. The reason differs in each case, and each is worth as much as an entry:

• Holoworld AI (HOLO) – wrong year. The genesis claim is carried in search results and on exchange learning pages as a current airdrop starting on September 11. The project's announcement, however, dates from September 9, 2025: claim start on September 11, 2025 at 11:00 UTC, window 60 days, hence expired in November 2025. Do not confuse it with a running claim – there is nothing left to collect here.
• Midnight (NIGHT) – source unverifiable three weeks running. The key data carried so far (thawing until December 4, 2026, then a 90-day grace period) come from a check in mid-August. Since then the server has answered from our environment only with a bot protection interstitial (HTTP 403 or 429), most recently on September 7, 2026; the developer documentation does not cover the subject. There is no indication of a change – but we can no longer substantiate the deadline, and an unsubstantiated deadline does not belong in the table in this format. Anyone relying on it should call up the project page themselves.
• AVANT – a period instead of a date. The TGE postponed to “mid-September” still has no calendar date, and the documentation expressly says claim mechanics and deadline will follow closer to the event. As soon as a day is named, the entry follows.
• Ink (INK) – TGE window, no deadline. A TGE in the third to fourth quarter of 2026 is expected for the Kraken layer-2, but no date has been published. Collecting points is not a claim date.
• Arcium (ARX) – open, but without a deadline. The retroactive token grants continue in rolling waves. Neither the project page nor the documentation names a point by which claiming must have happened. Unchanged from last week.
• RISEx, Canopy (CNPY), mint.io (MNTD) – points programs without a TGE date. Unchanged from last week; none of these candidates has published a date since.
• Kaidro (KDR) – over and not verifiable at the project source. The end of the play-to-airdrop program on September 4, 2026 is documented only through gaming portals, not through a project source we could reach. The date lies before this edition in any case.
• Exchange dates without an airdrop connection. The end of trading for 21 Kraken tokens, the VANRY migration and the expiring Binance withdrawals are real deadlines, but not airdrops. They are covered in our articles on exchange dates and do not belong on this list.

Along with the standing rule of this format: projects listed as “live” on aggregator pages but naming neither a snapshot nor a claim window at the project source do not get in. “Airdrop confirmed, date open” is not a deadline.

What to Watch Out for With Every Claim

Airdrops are the preferred hunting ground for wallet drainers, and the patterns repeat:

• Check the year first. This week's Holoworld case shows how an announcement a year old travels through search results as a fresh claim – and an expired claim is the perfect template for a cloned scam page.
• Always call up the claim page through the official project domain, never through links from direct messages, comments or search ads.
• No reputable airdrop asks for your seed phrase or your private key.
• Check what permission you are granting before you sign. An unlimited token approval is not necessary for a claim.
• Weigh the network fee against the value of the allocation. On very small amounts, claiming can cost more than it yields.
• Put every deadline in the calendar – with staggered distributions like GRVT's, every single tranche and not just the first.
• And the point that carries this week too: a claim without a published end date is not a claim with unlimited time, but one whose closure does not have to be announced.

Think About Tax Straight Away

An airdrop is not by definition a tax-free gift. Whether the allocation has to be treated as other income under Section 22 no. 3 of the German Income Tax Act depends above all on whether you provided something in return. This week's Beldex case also shows that two events have to be kept apart: the inflow of the replacement token in July and the later withdrawal or sale – a forced liquidation by the exchange is a transaction requiring documentation too, even if you did not trigger it.

So secure the time, quantity, market value, price source, transaction hash and the terms of participation right at the moment of claiming – the last of these tend to disappear first when a campaign page is switched off. Which details count individually is set out in our guide "Receiving airdrops: save this data immediately". That unsold tokens can also trigger a tax liability we explain under "Unsold airdrops: tax liability even without a sale".

That a distribution once promised can also be repurposed is shown by the Optimism case – set out in our article on the repurposing of the Optimism airdrop. An overview of further campaigns is in our section on crypto airdrops.

Conclusion

Week 37 is the week in which the date matters more than the project. The only hard deadline of the next 14 days concerns, with Beldex and Humanity, an airdrop nobody had to apply for and that can nonetheless be lost by doing nothing until September 25. Three further entries – Plume, GRVT and dappOS – have open windows with no published end, and only Grass names a clean closing date with January 22, 2027.

The second finding of the week is methodological and deserves more attention than any individual entry: a prominently traded “running” airdrop was in truth a year old. Search results, exchange learning pages and aggregators rarely carry years visibly. Check them before you connect a wallet.

And the necessary sobering note: most allocations move in the double to triple digit range, the fee for claiming eats a noticeable part of that, and a considerable share of all allocated tokens is never claimed. The effort pays off above all where you are already eligible anyway.

Disclosure: some of the providers named in this article work with us through partner programs. This has no influence on the editorial assessment.

(As of September 7, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Deadlines and terms of participation change; check them with the provider before taking part.)

The one-year holding period for private crypto gains still applies. On September 2, 2026 the German federal cabinet adopted the draft of an Income Tax Reform Act 2027, and it says nothing about the taxation of crypto assets. Anyone who holds a position for more than a year and then sells remains tax-free under the law as it stands.

That is the most useful piece of information this week for anyone who has been wondering since the summer whether to bring sales forward to get ahead of an announced reform. The announcement exists. The law that would implement it still does not.

What the Federal Cabinet Decided on September 2, 2026

The Federal Ministry of Finance published the cabinet decision the same day. The draft is called the Income Tax Reform Act 2027 and targets relief for low and middle incomes and for families with children. The ministry puts the total relief volume at around ten billion euros; the measures take full effect from 2028.

In detail the announcement names a basic tax-free allowance of 12,564 euros for 2027 and 12,900 euros for 2028, child benefit of 267 and 272 euros per month respectively, and an employee lump-sum allowance rising from 1,230 to 1,430 euros. At the upper end a new bracket of 47 percent from 280,000 euros of annual income is added, while the top rate of 45 percent is to apply from 250,000 euros in future. On the ministry's calculation, families with two children would keep over 600 euros more per year.

Crypto assets do not appear anywhere in that list. Neither Section 23 of the Income Tax Act nor a reclassification of private crypto gains as investment income forms part of the draft. The full announcement is on the site of the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Why an Omission Is News

Abolition of the holding period has been on the table since the spring. Every tax law that has passed cabinet since then is therefore a possible vehicle for that change. When one passes cabinet without it, the earliest possible date for entry into force moves further out. For tax planning in the current year that is a reliable statement.

Section 23 of the Income Tax Act: What the One-Year Holding Period Governs Today

A private disposal transaction is the sale of an asset held privately within a period set by law. On the tax administration's view, crypto assets fall under the other assets covered by Section 23(1) no. 2 of the Income Tax Act.

Two figures decide the outcome. First the period: a gain is taxable only if the interval between acquisition and disposal is no more than one year. Second the exemption threshold: under Section 23(3) sentence 5, gains remain tax-free if the total gain from private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. The statutory text is available at gesetze-im-internet.de.

An exemption threshold means this: once the amount is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable and not merely the excess. That is the difference from a tax-free allowance, and the two are regularly confused. On an annual gain of 999 euros from short-term sales nothing is due; at 1,001 euros the full amount is charged at your personal income tax rate.

Both figures apply unchanged and form the benchmark against which every sale you still make this year has to be measured. If you have lost track of acquisition dates and partial sales, our comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers covers the programs that keep exactly this allocation automatically.

How Far Along Is the German Crypto Tax Reform Really?

The sequence of events can be documented. According to the tax firm Flick Gocke Schaumburg, Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil announced the reform on April 29, 2026. In early July a budget draft followed whose key points for 2027 provide for the removal of the existing holding period; trade media report consistently that the federal cabinet approved those key points and that private crypto gains are in future to be charged at 26.375 percent regardless of the holding period. That rate is the 25 percent flat withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge.

A key-points paper is not a legal basis. It describes a political intention and binds nobody. Between it and a tax liability lie a fully drafted bill, three readings in the Bundestag, the Bundesrat and promulgation in the Federal Law Gazette.

The ministerial draft of the Annual Tax Act 2026 published so far likewise does not contain the amendment to Section 23 of the Income Tax Act, according to a report by BTC-Echo of July 24, 2026. That means two legislative projects in 2026 that could have carried the overhaul are travelling without it.

Which Models Are Before the Bundestag

The direction of the reform is open, because several drafts sit side by side and differ on one decisive point: the treatment of existing holdings.

Abolition With Grandfathering

In Bundestag printed paper 21/5752, BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN propose abolishing the one-year holding period, combined with grandfathering for assets acquired before January 1, 2026. On that model anyone who bought early would stay inside the old system.

Reclassification as Investment Income

Die Linke goes further in printed paper 21/5824 and wants to allocate crypto gains to investment income, combined with a flat withholding tax and an exit tax. Exit tax means the taxation of unrealised gains at the moment a taxable person moves their residence abroad.

A Higher Rate Instead of a New System

From the SPD comes the additional demand to bring crypto into the capital gains tax regime and raise the rate from 25 to 30 percent. Within the coalition the project is contested according to reports in several trade media, with Klingbeil and the SPD pushing and the CDU/CSU holding back. No assessment of which version will prevail can be derived from that, and we offer none here.

How the two basic models would work out on a worked example we have calculated in our comparison of the two tax models. The course of the public debate is documented in our article on the petition against abolishing the holding period.

Why the Acquisition Date Matters More Than the Price

All three models attach to the moment of acquisition, either for calculating the period or for grandfathering. The cut-off date of January 1, 2026 in the Greens' proposal makes that particularly clear.

From this follows an unspectacular but effective step. Every position needs a documented acquisition date, a documented acquisition price and a traceable allocation of partial sales. That is already necessary today for the one-year period and would be all the more so under any conceivable reform model.

It becomes especially awkward with holdings that have been moved between several exchanges and wallets. A transfer to another address is not a sale and triggers no tax, but it frequently breaks the providers' automatic history. Anyone who made such transfers in recent years should close the gaps now, while records can still be obtained.

FIFO and the Question of Which Unit You Are Selling

FIFO stands for first in, first out and describes the assumption that the units acquired first are also the first to be disposed of. For the holding period the allocation is decisive, because it determines whether a unit sold had already passed the one-year mark. With a holding built up over years the acquisition dates lie far apart, and a single sale can affect units from several periods.

Anyone buying regularly, for instance through a Bitcoin savings plan, creates a separate period with every instalment. That is no disadvantage for tax purposes, but it does demand clean record keeping.

The Crypto Tax Transparency Act and DAC8: What Exchanges Report to the Tax Office From 2026

Alongside the debate about the holding period runs a project that is already law in force. The Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act transposes the EU directive DAC8 into German law and obliges providers of crypto asset services to record and report tax-relevant transactions of their users.

The first reporting period is the calendar year 2026. The first electronic transmission to the Federal Central Tax Office takes place in 2027, by July 31 at the latest. According to the material available, what is reported covers personal data such as name, address, date of birth and tax identification number, together with transaction data. Breaches of the reporting and documentation duties expose providers to fines of up to 50,000 euros.

For you that has one plain consequence: the figures your exchange reports for 2026 will later meet the figures in your tax return. Where they diverge, explanation will be required. Whether your provider falls within the scope at all, and how cleanly it exports data, has therefore become a solid selection criterion; our overview of the best crypto exchanges ranks providers on this point too.

What a Sale Brought Forward Costs in Tax

Out of concern about the reform, many investors considered bringing gains forward over the summer. After the cabinet decision of September 2 it is settled that this step is at any rate not forced by this law.

In arithmetic terms a sale brought forward is free of tax consequences only if the units sold have already passed the one-year mark. If the acquisition was less than a year ago, a taxable gain arises at your personal income tax rate as soon as the exemption threshold of 1,000 euros in the calendar year is reached. A sale meant to avoid a reform can thus trigger a tax that would not have existed without it.

On top of that come trading costs and the spread, which fall due a second time on a later repurchase. With Bitcoin and other liquid assets that weighs less heavily than with smaller positions, but it does not disappear.

When a Sale Can Still Make Sense

There are reasons for selling that have nothing to do with legislation: a position that has grown too large, an upcoming need for liquidity, a changed assessment of risk. Those reasons are untouched by the reform debate. What changes is the urgency alone: there is currently no statutory reason to accelerate a decision.

What to Watch in the Coming Months

Three points decide whether the position changes. The first is a ministerial draft that actually contains an amendment to Section 23 of the Income Tax Act; so far none exists. The second is whether such a draft provides for grandfathering with a cut-off date, since that determines whether existing holdings would be affected. The third is the lead time between promulgation and entry into force.

As long as none of these points is established, the legal position remains the one written in the statute today. We deliberately do not write here how likely a reform is, because that cannot be derived from the documents available.

The Crypto Holding Period: What to Take Away

1. Documentation before reaction. Pull together the acquisition date, acquisition price and partial sales for every position before you think about selling. You need this data under the law as it stands today and under every one of the models being discussed. Which programs keep it automatically is set out in the comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.
2. No selling on suspicion. Before any sale brought forward, check whether the units concerned have already passed the one-year mark and whether the annual gain breaches the 1,000 euro exemption threshold. Trading costs and the spread belong in the same calculation; how they differ between providers is set out in the overview of the best crypto exchanges.
3. Prepare for the 2027 data matching. Reconcile your provider's annual statement for 2026 with your own records while the year is still running and records are still within reach. If you buy regularly, it is best to set the periods up cleanly from the outset; how that works with ongoing instalments is set out in the comparison buying Bitcoin with a savings plan.

(As of September 7, 2026. This article is not investment advice and not tax advice. Prices, the legal position and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy, and have tax questions reviewed professionally in your individual case.)

Blockstream and the hackers are engaging with each other through PGP-signed messages in Bitcoin transactions.

Early testers spent OpenAI's launch weekend pushing Astra through 3D cities, playable games, Bach chorales and research papers.

The multi-year deal will place the XRP logo on the field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium starting this season, extending Ripple's push into college athletics.

With a growing number of institutions exploring stablecoins, the bottleneck is regulated infrastructure they can trust.

The team behind Pencil Finance says the financing supported thousands of Southeast Asian students, but it did not disclose borrower costs, defaults, or investor returns.

Whales front-run the Sep. 15 vote on Binance as XRP futures hit a 6-month high and institutional ETF inflows build a solid floor at $1.40.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has rejected a prediction that artificial intelligence could undermine Bitcoin’s security badly enough to trigger a 50% price crash.

XRP is certainly closer to a proper bullish reversal rather than a continuous consolidation.

The purported white-hat hackers behind the $320 million Liquid Network security incident have offered to return "most" of the nearly 4,000 BTC they withdrew, but only after Blockstream fixes the vulnerability that enabled the exploit.

The market is certainly moving in the direction of redistribution as bulls are trying to avoid an excessive bearish pressure.

TLDR

• Bitcoin traded between $79,750 and $80,100 on Sunday morning, holding a tight weekend range.
• The cryptocurrency stayed above all major daily moving averages, keeping its broader uptrend intact.
• Resistance sits between $80,335 and $82,239, a zone bitcoin has not cleared since Sept. 3.
• Weekend trading volume dropped to $20.21 billion, well below the $35 billion to $40 billion seen earlier in the week.
• Options traders leaned bullish, with calls making up 61.69% of open interest compared to 38.31% for puts.

Bitcoin traded between $79,750 and $80,100 early Sunday morning, according to data from Bitstamp. The price has stayed in a narrow band since the start of the weekend.

Earlier in the week, bitcoin pushed above $82,000 before losing steam. That early September run has since cooled into a quiet holding pattern.

On the one hour chart, bitcoin moved inside a tight box between $79,586 and $80,147. Trading volume fell sharply over the weekend, which is common during low activity periods.

A move above $80,147 could open the door to $80,335 and then $80,523. A drop below $79,586 could send the price toward $78,650.

Thin weekend liquidity means any move outside this range could happen without strong volume behind it. That makes the next few sessions worth watching closely.

Four Hour Chart Shows A Cooling Trend

Zooming out, bitcoin pushed into the $81,400 to $82,200 area on Sept. 3 before being turned back. The price then fell into the high $78,000s on Sept. 4.

Since then, bitcoin has settled near the $79,900 to $80,100 range. Both trading range and volume have shrunk during this stretch.

A close below $79,586 could open a path to $78,650. A close above $80,335, followed by $81,430, would be needed to show buyers are pushing back toward the September high.

Daily Trend Still Leans Bullish

On the daily chart, bitcoin built a base between $58,000 and $64,000 over the summer before climbing to $82,239 on Sept. 3. Part of that gain was given back the next day.

The price remains above its 10-day average of $78,771 and its 20-day average of $77,231. Both levels support the idea that the broader uptrend is still in place.

Volume over the weekend came in at $20.21 billion, down from the $35 billion to $40 billion recorded on Sept. 4 and Sept. 5. Lower volume suggests the market is pausing rather than reversing.

Momentum readings are mixed. The relative strength index sits at 67, below the overbought level of 70. The MACD reading came in at 3,230 and was marked bearish, showing momentum has slowed since the recent high.

Moving averages tell a different story. All major short and long term averages, from the 10-period to the 200-period, remain bullish, with bitcoin trading above each one.

The only average acting as resistance is the Hull moving average at $80,523. Below the current price, support sits near $77,231, $76,714 and $76,441.

In the options market, calls account for 61.69% of open interest, compared to 38.31% for puts, according to Coinglass. On Binance, bitcoin’s max pain level sits in the low $70,000s.

Traders are now watching whether bitcoin can close above $80,335 and eventually $81,430 to confirm a retest of its September high, or whether a drop below $79,586 opens the door to $78,650.

The post Bitcoin (BTC) Price: BTC Holds Near $80K as Bulls and Bears Wait for a Breakout appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Musician Jonathan Meléndez, his pregnant wife, their young daughter, and their housemaid were found dead in Atizapán, Mexico.
• Investigators say the killings were tied to $1.5 million in bitcoin Meléndez kept in a hardware wallet.
• Two suspects were arrested within 12 hours, one of whom was a known associate of Meléndez.
• The suspects face up to 70 years in prison for each victim under first degree murder charges.
• The case adds to a rising number of crypto related “wrench attacks” happening around the world.

Jonathan Meléndez, a member of the Mexican rock band Camilo Séptimo, was found dead along with his family on September 1. The killings happened inside their apartment in Atizapán, a city near Mexico City.

Meléndez’s wife, who was four months pregnant, was also killed. Their three year old daughter, the family’s housemaid, and the family dog were found dead at the scene as well.

According to Mexico’s State Prosecutor’s Office, Meléndez and his wife were tied up and shot in the head. Their daughter died the same way. The housemaid was shot in the back.

What Investigators Found

Local media outlets with access to the investigation say the attack was tied to Meléndez’s crypto holdings. He reportedly kept $1.5 million worth of bitcoin in a hardware wallet at the home.

Mexico’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar Garcia Harfuch, announced two arrests less than 12 hours after the bodies were discovered. Officials say the attack stemmed from a debt dispute.

One suspect, identified only as Diego Sebastian “N,” was an associate of Meléndez. Investigators say he used that relationship to get into the home.

The second suspect, identified as Gerardo “N,” was reportedly promised close to $120,000 to help carry out the attack. Both men are accused of knowing about the bitcoin wallet before entering the property.

Investigators believe the two men went to the apartment specifically to find the hardware wallet holding the bitcoin funds.

During the break in, officials say Meléndez warned the attackers that other people knew they were inside the home. Investigators believe this led the suspects to kill everyone present rather than leave witnesses behind.

Government Response

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the case during a press conference on Thursday. She called it “a very sad, regrettable situation.”

Sheinbaum said the dispute between the families involved was already known and had appeared in media reports before the killings. She added that the affected families are receiving support from authorities.

Diego Sebastian “N” and Gerardo “N” now face first degree murder charges. Each charge carries a possible sentence of up to 70 years in prison, meaning the men could face decades behind bars for each of the four victims.

The case is one of the worst instances of a wrench attack recorded in Mexico. Wrench attacks refer to crimes where someone is targeted specifically because of known crypto holdings, rather than through digital hacking.

Reports show wrench attacks have been increasing worldwide as more people hold crypto for savings and daily use. Exchange executives and other high profile crypto holders have also been targeted in recent incidents.

As of the latest updates, both suspects remain in custody while the investigation continues.

The post Bitcoin Wallet Linked to Mexico Family Killings, Police Say appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Router Protocol will shut down all operations by Sept. 30, 2026.
• The team will burn 303,333,198 ROUTE tokens, about 30% of the total supply.
• Attempts to license, sell, or find a buyer for the technology did not produce a sustainable business.
• Router pointed to thin bridging fees and capital moving toward AI as reasons for the closure.
• The shutdown follows similar closures from Syndicate Labs and Botanix earlier in 2026.

Router Protocol, a cross-chain infrastructure project backed by Coinbase Ventures, is closing down. The team said all operations will end by Sept. 30, 2026.

The announcement came in a statement posted on X. Router had spent more than four years building tools that let assets move between different blockchains.

Over the past year, the team looked into commercialization deals, licensing agreements, and a possible sale of its technology. None of those paths led to a business that could support itself.

“None reached an outcome that sustains a protocol team,” the team wrote in its statement.

Router blamed two main trends for its decline. Investment capital has been shifting away from crypto and into artificial intelligence, and the cost of moving assets between chains has dropped.

The team said this combination hurt demand for its bridging services. “Bridging economics are thin, compressing fees against costs that never sleep,” the statement read.

As part of the wind-down, Router will permanently burn 303,333,198 ROUTE tokens. That amount equals about 30% of the token’s near 1 billion total supply.

The team also plans to work with centralized exchanges to remove support for the token. Each exchange will set its own timeline for delisting and withdrawals.

Router said it will not launch any new programs tied to the token going forward. The team does plan to open-source parts of its technology so other developers can use it.

From Layer 1 Launch To Closure

Router raised $4.1 million in 2021 from investors including Coinbase Ventures and Polygon. The funding round did not disclose a valuation at the time.

In July 2024, the project launched its own Layer 1 blockchain called Router Chain. This was a proof-of-stake network that used the token for gas fees, governance, and security.

That blockchain did not last long. Router began winding it down in September 2025, citing infrastructure costs, validator inflation, and security concerns.

The team said it wanted to shift focus to its Open Graph Architecture system instead, which links bridges and trading infrastructure together.

Security Incidents And Wider Industry Trend

Router disclosed two security incidents from 2025 in its shutdown statement. The team said it recovered 80% of the funds lost in a February exploit through negotiations with the attacker.

A separate chain-level exploit in July 2025 resulted in losses that were not recovered. Router said all protocol fees collected since then went toward token buybacks and burns rather than building up a treasury.

Router is not the only infrastructure project to shut down this year. Syndicate Labs, an Ethereum infrastructure provider, announced its closure in May, citing a shrinking rollup market.

Bitcoin Layer 2 developer Botanix followed with its own wind-down announcement in June. That team said transaction demand could not cover the cost of running its network.

Router’s closure adds to this pattern among crypto infrastructure builders in 2026. The team’s final message urged the community to watch for future updates on the token burn and exchange delisting schedules.

The post Coinbase-Backed Crypto Project Burns 303 Million ROUTE Tokens appeared first on Blockonomi.

EagleSwap, a non-custodial cryptocurrency swap platform, today announced that it has reached 10,000 completed swaps. The milestone marks a new stage in the platform’s operations, which allow users to exchange digital assets across supported blockchain networks without creating an account.

The announcement focuses on completed exchanges, providing a concrete measure of activity on the platform. Reaching 10,000 completed swaps represents an operational milestone for EagleSwap and its service for users seeking to exchange cryptocurrencies through a straightforward web interface.

EagleSwap brings asset selection, exchange quotes, and transaction tracking into a single swap flow. Users select the assets and networks they wish to exchange, enter their receiving and refund addresses, and send the required deposit. A dedicated swap page then displays progress through the deposit, processing, and outgoing transaction stages.

This approach gives users a central place to follow an exchange from initiation through completion. Transaction tracking is available within the swap page, while human support is available to assist users with questions or issues during the process.

The platform offers floating and fixed exchange options. Floating rates follow market conditions while a swap is processed. Fixed quotes lock the quoted receiving amount for a specified window, subject to the required deposit being sent correctly and on time. These options allow users to choose how pricing is handled before proceeding with an exchange.

Alongside its public swap interface, EagleSwap provides a reseller API for businesses integrating cryptocurrency exchanges into their own services. The API supports requesting quotes, creating swaps, and tracking their progress through completion. Integration documentation explains how developers can connect these functions to their applications through server-to-server requests.

The 10,000-swap announcement covers EagleSwap’s completed transaction count. It establishes a reference point for the platform’s activity as its website and integration tools continue to provide access to cryptocurrency swaps.

About EagleSwap

EagleSwap is a non-custodial, no-KYC cryptocurrency swap platform that enables exchanges across supported digital assets and blockchain networks. Its website provides swaps without account registration, floating and fixed-rate options, transaction tracking, and access to human support. EagleSwap also offers a reseller API for businesses seeking to integrate swap functionality into their own products.

The post EagleSwap Announces Milestone of 10,000 Completed Swaps appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• European natural gas markets climbed more than 4%, breaching €74/MWh for the first time in three years
• Tehran intends to establish a maritime restricted zone near the Strait of Hormuz after American military strikes targeted Iranian tankers
• Approximately 20% of worldwide LNG shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz, predominantly originating from Qatar
• Gas reserves across Europe stand at merely 62%, trailing the five-year seasonal norm by 17 percentage points
• Market expectations point to a 25 basis point interest rate increase from the ECB amid 3.3% inflation driven by energy costs

Natural gas prices across Europe experienced a sharp rally Monday, touching heights unseen since the final weeks of 2023. The primary Dutch futures contract advanced to approximately €73.80 per megawatt-hour, approaching the previous week’s summit of €74.32.

Across the Channel, British wholesale gas markets registered a 2% increase, hovering around 182.50 pence per therm, approaching the 2023 zenith of 183.95 pence.

The upward momentum follows intensifying military confrontations between Washington and Tehran in Persian Gulf waters.

Middle East Standoff Puts LNG Transit at Risk

Iranian authorities revealed intentions to establish a restricted naval zone adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz within days. The announcement follows weekend operations by American military forces that struck and incapacitated three Iranian petroleum tankers.

The Pentagon justified the military action as a response to Iranian ballistic missile launches targeting two US Naval vessels operating in regional waters.

The strategic waterway facilitates approximately one-fifth of international liquefied natural gas shipments, with Qatar serving as the primary source. Any interruption to maritime passage through this chokepoint would sever a critical supply artery feeding European markets.

European energy companies now find themselves in direct competition with Asian purchasers for Atlantic basin LNG cargoes to compensate for potential supply disruptions.

Market participants remain vigilant as the tit-for-tat military actions demonstrate no indication of de-escalation.

Depleted Storage Levels Compound Winter Concerns

The geopolitical crisis arrives at an inopportune moment for European energy infrastructure. Underground storage inventories currently sit at approximately 62% capacity, significantly below the five-year historical average by roughly 17 percentage points.

Unusually warm temperatures throughout Southern European regions during summer months elevated gas consumption for power generation. Scheduled maintenance on Norwegian pipeline infrastructure and postponed Qatari LNG shipments further constrained storage replenishment efforts throughout August.

Should LNG imports face disruption during autumn months, energy analysts caution that Europe may confront severe price volatility and potential supply allocation measures during peak winter demand.

Meanwhile, Brent crude oil continues trading above $90 per barrel, compounding overall energy cost pressures.

Central Bank Policy Meeting Draws Attention

Escalating energy expenses are amplifying inflationary pressures throughout the eurozone economy. Consumer price inflation registered 3.3% in August, with energy components surging 14.3% on an annual basis.

The European Central Bank convenes Thursday for its policy meeting. Financial markets have almost completely priced in a 25 basis point interest rate increase under President Christine Lagarde’s leadership.

Elevated energy input expenses are constraining both European industrial operations and household budgets, complicating the central bank’s monetary policy calculus.

The convergence of depleted inventories, supply chain vulnerabilities, and accelerating inflation has created substantial anxiety in European energy markets as the heating season approaches.

The post European Gas Markets Surge to 3-Year Peak Amid Middle East Tensions appeared first on Blockonomi.

XRP futures trading had a much busier August as volume climbed to its highest level in six months. This marked the strongest activity since February, according to data shared by CryptoQuant.

The jump was not limited to one exchange.

August Volume Surges

Activity increased across some of the biggest names in crypto, which brought more liquidity and interest back into the XRP derivatives market. CryptoQuant found that Binance dominated the market. The exchange recorded roughly $37 billion in XRP futures volume during August. Bybit was a distant second at around $14.54 billion, followed by OKX at approximately $12.88 billion.

These three exchanges alone handled more than $64.6 billion worth of XRP futures trades during the month.

The change is especially noticeable as XRP futures activity had been running at lower levels, but August brought traders back in a much bigger way. The stronger price action around the crypto asset likely played a role here. It climbed nearly 30%, rising from $1.06 at the start of the month to a high of $1.50 on August 24 before ending at $1.35.

Alongside futures, spot trading volume also reached its highest level since February. Binance, as usual, accounted for the biggest share, posting around $7.28 billion in XRP trades. Next up was Upbit with $4.68 billion, while Bithumb Korea posted nearly $2.59 billion. Bybit, Gate.io, and KuCoin trailed with roughly $1.4 billion, $1.33 billion, and $1.23 billion, respectively. Bitget and Coinbase each came in just below the $1 billion mark.

However, the technical picture is less convincing. Crypto analyst ChartNerd noted that XRP has stayed below its 50-week WEMA for three straight weeks, while the weekly Stoch RSI remains overbought. The 20-week WEMA at $1.29 is now the support level. A continued break below the 50 could lead to a deeper correction.

Weekly Slowdown

On the institutional front, the XRP ETF market remained positive for another week, but the pace of inflows clearly slowed. The funds attracted nearly $19 million over the latest period, and extended their winning streak to eight consecutive weeks.

That result was a sharp step down from the previous week, when inflows topped $110 million and were the strongest weekly performance of 2026.

After $5.64 million entered the funds on August 31, inflows jumped to $14.38 million on September 1. The momentum then broke on Wednesday, when investors pulled $7.2 million from the products. It was the first day of net outflows since August 5. Thursday brought some relief as another $6.14 million flowed into the funds. Friday, however, produced no movement at all.

The post XRP Futures Just Posted Their Biggest Month in 6 Months: Here’s What Changed appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin tried to take down the coveted $80,000 level once again on Monday morning but was denied once again, dipping below $79,000 before it found some support.

Ethereum remains inches away from $2,500, while XRP fights for the $1.40 support. LINK, TAO, MNT, ICP, and WLD have marked major gains from the larger caps.

BTC Fails at $80K

The primary cryptocurrency’s attempts to surge past $80,000 and $81,000 have been halted every time, starting from the middle of the last full week of August. At the time, it tried twice, only to be pushed south to under $77,000 on Friday after the hawkish speech by Kevin Warsh.

Nevertheless, it rebounded over the previous weekend and tapped $79,000 last Sunday before the resumed strikes in the Middle East resulted in another leg down to $77,000. The selling pressure built on in the following days, and BTC slipped to $76,400 on September 2/3.

This is where the bulls stepped up and didn’t allow another leg down. Instead, bitcoin went on the offensive on Thursday and skyrocketed by several grand to $82,400, the highest level reached since mid-May. Another rejection followed, though, after the strong US jobs report on Friday, and BTC dived to $78,800.

The weekend was less eventful, with BTC spending it trading sideways between $79,000 and $80,000. It tried to overcome the upper boundary on Monday morning, but it was stopped at $80,500 and pushed south to just under $79,000. It has rebounded to just over that level now, with its market cap remaining at $1.6 trillion on CMC.

PI Above $0.09, ARB Falls

Most large-cap alts have marked minor losses over the past 24 hours, with ETH struggling below $2,500, BNB dipping beneath $750, and XRP fighting to stay above $1.40.

In contrast, LINK has soared by 9% to well over $13, TAO is up by 14% to $267, MNT sits at $0.635 after a 7.5% daily jump, ICP has gained 12.6%, and WLD has rocketed by over 14.5%. ARB, on the other hand, was rejected at $0.20 and now sits 13% lower than its peak yesterday.

Pi Network’s native token remains well above the $0.09 support and even challenged the key $0.095 resistance, but it remains inches below it as of press time.

The total crypto market cap has remained at essentially the same spot as yesterday at $2.710 trillion on CMC.

The post Pi Network’s PI Remains Above Key Resistance, Bitcoin (BTC) Fails at $80K: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The altcoin market may be approaching a turning point after several major gauges broke out of year-long downtrends, according to analyst Matthew Hyland.

His charts suggest smaller cryptocurrencies are gaining ground against Bitcoin and traditional risk assets, although rising leverage also increases the odds of a painful correction.

Altcoin Gauges Break Long Downtrends

In a post published on September 7, Hyland said ETH, Total 2, Total 3, and OTHERS had all confirmed the end of their year-plus declines by forming higher highs. Let’s break that down a bit.

Total 2 tracks altcoins excluding Bitcoin, while Total 3 removes both BTC and Ethereum. OTHERS excludes the top 10 cryptocurrencies and therefore focuses more heavily on smaller tokens.

Hyland questioned whether the moves were simply a “bear market rally,” then followed up with a more bullish assessment.

In another post, the market watcher wrote, “The largest #Altcoin Bull Run of all time is loading,” and argued it could be “much larger than 2020-2021.” The accompanying OTHERS.D/SPX chart provided the basis for that view. It compares the dominance of cryptocurrencies outside the top 10 to that of the S&P 500.

The ratio has been falling for years after reaching a major peak during the 2017-2018 ICO period, and the chart places the current reading near the lower end of that long decline. A lower oscillator on the chart has also moved into an oversold area around 20-30, and the setup is being compared with the overbought reading near 80 seen in 2017.

But that does not prove that a new altcoin cycle has started. It does show why Hyland believes the market may be approaching a period of relative strength for smaller tokens.

There are already signs of increased trading activity, with data from Coinalyze showing altcoin perpetual futures open interest had overtaken Bitcoin’s for the first time since December 2024.

Leverage Adds Another Side to the Trade

The shift comes as altcoins outside the top 10 have pushed their combined market capitalization to $213 billion, up nearly 12% since the start of September.

Zcash has been one of the dramatic examples. Yesterday, as CryptoPotato reported, it surpassed $1,200, up 370% from its early-June low. Its market cap also moved above $20 billion, putting it ahead of Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Dogecoin (DOGE), both of which were still at the time of writing, having gained over 11% in 24 hours.

DOGE itself and BNB also posted strong moves in that period, with the former climbing 12% from its Friday low to $0.094, while BNB went close to $780, its highest level since early February.

But there’s a warning. ZEC perpetual futures open interest reached $2.7 billion per CoinGlass, while its move above $1,200 triggered $24 million in liquidations in the last 24 hours, more than $17 million of that being shorts, and historically, similar shifts in derivatives positioning have come right before corrections in mid-cap tokens.

That leaves two competing signals: the breadth of the altcoin move is improving, and several long-term charts have broken higher, but at the same time, leverage is building quickly. However, as things stand, Hyland sees the first as evidence that the market could be entering a much larger altcoin phase.

The post “Largest Altcoin Bull Run of All Time Is Loading,” Analyst Says as Key Charts Break Out appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Bitcoin Layer 2 network Liquid Network has reported a security incident in which purported white-hat hackers withdrew approximately 4,000 BTC, worth $320 million, from the Liquid Federation wallet.

Blockstream is attempting to contact the parties involved through a signed on-chain message.

Network Bug Must Be Fixed First

In an update, Liquid said the funds were withdrawn using the SideSwap PAK (Peg-out Authorization Key) but stated that the key itself was not compromised and that no other keys were in jeopardy. Crypto exchanges have been informed and have already suspended, or are preparing to suspend, LBTC deposits and withdrawals.

Liquid said other assets on the network, including USDT, DePix and real-world assets, were not affected. The network has also temporarily disabled its bridge nodes, meaning new transactions cannot be submitted. As a result, the sidechain is effectively paused while the issue is being addressed.

“Liquid wallets will be impacted, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience. Federation members are actively working on resolving this so we can restore normal network activity.”

The public back-and-forth between Blockstream and the party claiming to be the white-hat hacker behind the withdrawal is continuing on-chain. According to Samson Mow, the hacker appears to prefer communicating publicly rather than via email, and is posting messages via Bitcoin transaction data.

They even asked Blockstream to make contact on Signal at @m671aw.70″

The exchange began at 11:30 AM PDT, when the hacker wrote, “we are whitehats. contact us on chain.” Blockstream responded at 12:31 PM on September 6 and asked the hacker to contact its security team by email. Later, Blockstream sent an encrypted, PGP-signed message to the hacker’s key.

The discussion between @Blockstream and the white-hat hacker (WHH) regarding the ~4000 BTC from @Liquid_BTC is happening in public. It seems to be their preference over email. As it’s hard to follow the chain of messages in OP_RETURN, here’s a summary with links.

11:30 AM PDT -… https://t.co/IEXyFpBITx

— Samson Mow (@Excellion) September 7, 2026

At 7:20 PM, the hacker said they planned to send most of the funds back and asked whether a specified address was acceptable. About an hour later, they said the bug needed to be fixed first, and added,

“The chain is under risk at latest commit right now. Make sure every node is patched. Then we will transfer the money back safely after confirming the fix.”

Blockstream replied, “Yes, thank you,” at 8:30 PM. As of 9:12 PM PDT, around 3,998.5 BTC remained unmoved. There were no further messages from either side.

Unusual Hacker Behavior

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet was skeptical of the white-hat claim and pointed out that legitimate security researchers would not typically drain a bridge and then ask to be contacted on-chain.

He drew parallels with the Ronin hack, in which attackers stole around $625 million after compromising validator keys, and the Euler exploit, where the attacker sought to negotiate the return of funds after the theft.

The move to Signal also did little to change Guillemet’s opinion that the behavior was unlike usual white-hat activity. Despite this, the exec noted that criminal groups do not typically reach out to their victims either.

The post Supposed White-Hat Hackers Drain $320 Million in BTC From Liquid Network, Say They’ll Return It After Fix appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Following last Friday’s strong US jobs report and the subsequent odd increase in expectations for an upcoming Fed rate hike, risk-on assets are entering the final week before the crucial FOMC meeting scheduled for September 15-16.

In the coming days, inflation data is likely to determine whether BTC continues its recovery or faces another major correction.

Big Week Ahead

Monday is expected to be an uneventful day since the US financial markets are closed on Labor Day. There are no major events scheduled for Tuesday, while the 10-Year US Note Auction on Wednesday is unlikely to impact crypto. The first major test comes on Thursday, with the release of the August PPI data, which measures inflation at the producer level.

Economists expect headline PPI to rise 0.4% month-over-month, compared with no actual increase in July. The core PPI is forecast at 0.3%. Annual producer inflation is likely to accelerate from 4.7% to 5.4%. A hotter reading could reinforce expectations that inflationary pressure is rebuilding, particularly as oil prices remain elevated due to the resumed conflict in the Middle East.

Friday will be an even more important day for all financial markets, especially risk-on alternatives like crypto. The CPI report goes live, which is estimated to point to inflation remaining at around 3.3%-3.4% annually, while core CPI is expected to ease from July’s 2.5%. The actual results could have a significant and immediate impact on Fed rate-hike expectations.

Once again, a higher-than-expected CPI reading would strengthen the argument for another rate increase and could pressure BTC while pushing Treasury yields higher, and vice versa.

Key Events This Week:

1. US Markets Closed, Labor Day – Monday

2. US 10Y Note Auction – Wednesday

3. August PPI Inflation data – Thursday

4. August Existing Home Sales data – Thursday

5. August CPI Inflation data – Friday

6. September MI Inflation Expectations data -…

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) September 6, 2026

Last Week Before FOMC

Given the hawkish stance taken by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh at the end of August and the strong US jobs report from last Friday, the inflation data coming in the following days will be crucial in determining the central bank’s next move. That move will come on September 16, making this week’s data even more important.

Bitcoin reacted to the hawkish speech by Warsh and the jobs report with an immediate leg down that drove it south by $2,000-$3,000 in hours. It managed to stabilize at around $80,000 even as bearish news and expectations mount, but a higher CPI reading is unlikely to help its bullish case ahead of the FOMC meeting, especially since the odds for a rate hike are well over 50%.

The post Bitcoin Faces a Crucial Week: These US Events Could Decide BTC’s Next Big Move appeared first on CryptoPotato.