Bayern's dominant performance and Saibari's impact highlight their strategic prowess, signaling a formidable season ahead in European football.

The post Bayern Munich dominates with 5-0 win as Saibari scores stunning goal appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Italy's squad rebuild aims to restore national pride and competitiveness, crucial after missing the 2026 World Cup, under Mancini's leadership.

The post Italy names 34-player squad for UEFA Nations League with Donnarumma, Calafiori, and Kayode leading the rebuild appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Independent AI oversight could reshape tech investment strategies, influencing governance and risk management priorities across sectors.

The post AI Evaluator Forum urges independent oversight for AI safety evaluations appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Tokenization in consumer lending could democratize access to capital, reduce costs, and enhance transparency by minimizing intermediaries.

The post Avalanche Summit: Kevin Miao makes the case for tokenization to reshape consumer lending appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Nscale's strategic funding from Nvidia highlights the growing importance of AI infrastructure, potentially reshaping tech investment landscapes.

The post Nscale secures $2 billion in unsecured convertible loan notes from Nvidia ahead of planned IPO appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

CFTC Sends Proposal To Regulate Crypto Transactions Following Clarity Act Fail

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday sent a proposal to the White House to regulate crypto transactions and markets. 

It isn’t clear what the regulations will look like from the post on the Office of Management and Budget’s website. The proposal is titled “Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets.”

The CFTC’s move comes after lawmakers blocked the long-awaited crypto legislation Clarity Act on Tuesday. Despite the law not advancing, both the CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission have said they would go ahead with crypto rulemaking anyway. 

CFTC Chair Mike Selig said on Wednesday that while the Clarity Act didn’t move forward, the watchdog would still help U.S. President Trump “get the job done” in regulating the crypto space. 

“The outcome of yesterday’s Senate vote was unfortunate,” Selig wrote on X, adding that the CFTC was “locked in and ready to ship its rules for the new frontier of finance.”

Before the procedural vote on the legislation this week, Selig had said would proceed with rulemaking whether or not the Clarity Act is enacted — with the aim of finalizing rules before the administration’s term is out.

Senators last year approved Selig as the regulator’s chair. Formerly chief counsel at the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, Selig was described by White House’s Crypto and AI Tsar, David Sacks, as “instrumental in driving forward the President’s crypto agenda” 

President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the crypto space after regulators under the previous administration hit digital asset businesses with lawsuits — mostly for allegedly selling unregistered securities. 

Since Trump became president, the SEC and CFTC have taken a much friendlier approach to watchdogging the space. 

The CFTC isn’t the only regulator going ahead with rulemaking: the SEC earlier this week approved tokenized stocks trading. In August, it also proposed its own framework for crypto asset offerings, pressing ahead while the landmark legislation stalled. 

President Trump last month urged lawmakers to pass the Clarity Act, calling the legislation “very powerful” — but Republicans said that Democrats were deliberately holding it back.  

Democrats mainly took issue with the ethics side of the bill. Trump received backing from major industry players while campaigning and since becoming president, his family has made money from digital asset ventures. 

Some lawmakers have alleged conflicts of interest. The White House has always denied any wrongdoing. 

A new draft of the bill started circulating in July tackling the issue of ethics and banning officials from making money from crypto. But some Democrats said it didn’t go far enough. 

The Clarity Act wants to formally divide oversight between regulators, distinguishing which digital assets are securities, commodities or stablecoins. 

This post CFTC Sends Proposal To Regulate Crypto Transactions Following Clarity Act Fail first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Surges Over $81,000 Despite Clarity Act Fail and Interest Rate Hike

Bitcoin’s price on Friday shot above $81,000 — despite a week of setbacks for the crypto industry. 

The biggest coin was recently trading for $80,982, after jumping as high as $81,055 at one point Friday morning in New York. Over the past 24 hours, it has risen by nearly 6%. 

Its surge comes after lawmakers on Tuesday blocked long-awaited crypto legislation, the Clarity Act, and the Federal Reserve on Wednesday hiked interest rates. 

Digital asset industry bigwigs had long called for clear rules to regulate the crypto space and the Clarity Act — which wants to divide oversight between regulators — aimed to do that. But lawmakers blocked the landmark digital asset market structure bill in a procedural vote. 

And the Federal Reserve increased borrowing costs for the first time due to skyrocketing inflation in the U.S. The central bank’s chair, Kevin Warsh, said that price stability in the U.S. was the Fed’s number one priority. 

“The plain fact is that inflation is too high, and has been for too long,” Warsh said. “This summer’s inflation readings do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”

Bitcoin has in the past done well in a low interest rate environment because it means there is more liquidity to trade the asset. 

While Bitcoin’s price dipped initially news of the Clarity Act blockage and Fed’s move, it shot up on Friday. 

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. have so far this week experienced net negative flows, with investors cashing out nearly $427 million from the vehicles, according to Farside Investors data. 

Flows on Thursday turned positive, with investors chucking nearly $160 million at the funds following two days of consecutive outflows. 

In a research note Thursday, asset manager Grayscale said that it didn’t expect bitcoin’s price to be hurt by the Fed’s decision because the move reflects a mid-cycle adjustment, not a cyclical change. 

And despite lawmakers blocking the Clarity Act, regulators like the SEC are already pushing ahead with pro-crypto regulation. 

This post Bitcoin Price Surges Over $81,000 Despite Clarity Act Fail and Interest Rate Hike first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Community Recognizes Quantum Computing Risk: VanEck

Quantum computing is a risk to Bitcoin but the community recognizes the issue, according to asset manager VanEck’s Head of Digital Assets Research. 

Speaking to CNBC on Friday, Matthew Sigel said that while progress on addressing the issue may be slow because of the crypto network’s decentralized nature, the community was working on it. 

The crypto community has sounded the alarm about hypothetical advancements in quantum computers that could in the future be able to break Bitcoin’s cryptography. 

Some in the space — including Bitcoin developers — have started preparing for a post-quantum future by testing quantum-resistant signatures on live sidechains. 

“It’s a risk,” he said. “But the community has recognized the scope of the issue. There’s a lot of talent that’s now come together with a framework of how to upgrade the system.”

He added: “The upgrades don’t happen as fast because there’s no CEO who can tell the devs, ‘hey, do it now.’ There’s a governance process — it takes more time, it’s a little bit messier, but there are technological paths for quantum resistance, and I think you’ll see more of that over the next couple of years.”

Quantum computers do exist but make mistakes and a machine that can break Bitcoin’s cryptography currently does not exist. Bitcoin currently is the biggest computer network in existence. 

Major companies in the space — including America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, and Bitcoin infrastructure firm, Blockstream — are already working on solutions. 

Back in July, Coinbase said it plans to deliver a post-quantum signing pipeline using secure enclaves and threshold cryptography. 

A Bitcoin Security Consortium — made up of BlackRock, Fidelity Digital Assets, Block, and others — formed in July and donates funds and dedicates engineers to open-source work supporting proposals like BIP-360, which aims to introduce a new transaction output type to reduce long-exposure quantum computing risks.

This post Bitcoin Community Recognizes Quantum Computing Risk: VanEck first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

The Next 3-5 Years of Bitcoin Lending

SALT Lending CRO Hunter Albright says a growing number of Bitcoin holders may eventually borrow against their bitcoin rather than sell it, creating a new relationship between bitcoin, credit and stablecoins.

Bitcoin-backed lending could become an increasingly important part of how holders access the value of their bitcoin without selling it, according to Hunter Albright, Chief Revenue Officer of SALT Lending.

Speaking on BMTV, Albright said he expects borrowing against bitcoin to become more common as the market matures and holders become more comfortable using bitcoin as collateral.

“I’d like to think we will see a growing percentage of the population of bitcoin holders borrow against it,” Albright said.

For Albright, that shift could also change how bitcoin and stablecoins function alongside one another.

“I do believe people borrowing against their bitcoin and leveraging stables is the difference between money in motion and money at rest,” he said. “The speed of conversion really creates a utility and advantage for people willing to operate in that ecosystem.”

In that framework, bitcoin increasingly becomes “money at rest” – an asset held for the long term – while stablecoins serve as “money in motion,” providing liquidity that can be transferred and used more easily without requiring holders to sell their bitcoin.

A Behavioral Shift for Bitcoin Holders

Getting there, however, will require more than simply building lending products.

Albright said greater education around both Bitcoin itself and the mechanics of borrowing against bitcoin will be necessary before the behavior becomes mainstream – something SALT Lending has made part of its own efforts in the market.

It also requires a change in how Bitcoin holders think about the value stored in their assets.

Instead of viewing bitcoin only as something to accumulate and eventually sell, holders can potentially use it as collateral to access liquidity while maintaining their bitcoin exposure.

That model is already common elsewhere in finance, where owners of real estate, equities and other assets regularly borrow against their holdings rather than liquidating them.

For Bitcoin holders, there can also be tax advantages. In the U.S., borrowing against an asset generally does not itself constitute a taxable sale, whereas selling appreciated bitcoin can trigger capital gains taxes. Individual tax consequences depend on the structure of the transaction and the borrower’s circumstances, readers should consult a tax advisor.

Albright sees that combination – long-term bitcoin holdings, growing stablecoin adoption and easier access to credit – as part of a broader shift in how Bitcoin holders may eventually use their wealth.

Rather than bitcoin needing to move every time its value is put to use, bitcoin can remain at rest while liquidity moves around it.

SALT Lending is the Official Liquidity Sponsor of BMTV. Learn more about borrowing against your bitcoin and explore SALT’s BMTV offer at https://saltlending.com/bmtv/?utm_source=bmtv&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=52783658-BMTV%20article&utm_term=BMTV

Disclaimer: SALT Lending is a paid sponsor of BMTV and serves as BMTV’s Official Liquidity Sponsor. This article is sponsored content and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Bitcoin Magazine. The information provided is for promotional purposes and should not be considered financial advice. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research before making any investment decisions related to Bitcoin or other financial products mentioned herein.

This post The Next 3-5 Years of Bitcoin Lending first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Josh Plischke.

Bitcoin Magazine

Dan Hillery: Digital Credit Could Rival BTC’s $1.5 Trillion Market Cap

Two years ago, Bitcoin-backed digital credit barely existed. Today it’s a roughly $16 billion market and Dan Hillery of UXTO thinks the financialization layer on top of Bitcoin could one day rival the network itself. In the debut episode of The Allocators Edge, Hillery breaks down how variable-rate preferred securities like STRC and SATA are priced, why buybacks keep them anchored near $100 par, and what separates digital credit risk from digital equity risk. He also walks through the structured credit fund he’s building, including its senior and junior tranches.

0:00 — Digital Credit Is the Fastest-Growing Part of Bitcoin’s Capital Structure
1:18 — Why STRC’s Variable Rate Design Has No Precedent in Market History
2:59 — What Flat or Falling Bitcoin Prices Mean for Strategy and Strive
4:17 — Short-Duration Bitcoin-Backed Notes and the Next Five Years of Products
5:45 — The Biggest Misconceptions Investors Have About Preferred Securities
6:58 — How Buybacks and Capital Markets Activity Anchor STRC Near $100 Par
8:09 — Why Major Fund Classes Still Can’t Touch Digital Credit Today
9:10 — Inside the UXTO Credit Fund: Senior and Junior Tranche Structure
10:35 — Where the Leverage Comes From and How Volatility Risk Gets Transferred
11:50 — Liquidity, Redemptions, and Digital Credit in a 60/40 Portfolio

This video is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investments in digital assets involve significant risk and may result in loss of capital. Both UTXO Management and BTC Inc., producer of BMTV, are owned by Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA)

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.

This post Dan Hillery: Digital Credit Could Rival BTC’s $1.5 Trillion Market Cap first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.

Dtcpay, a Singapore payments company, has completed a $25 million Series A with SBI Group joining as a strategic investor, giving its stablecoin payments business fresh backing for product and merchant expansion.

The company announced the close on Sept. 18, naming SBI Ventures Asset Pte Ltd and the SBI-NTU-Kyobo Digital Innovation Fund as the Japanese group's investment vehicles. Genedant Capital and existing investor Kwee Liong Tek also participated. Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India led the initial tranche.

The funding will support a revamped business portal for enterprise customers, additional consumer features in the dtcpay app and expansion of its merchant network, the company said. Those priorities put the financing behind the tools businesses and customers use to transact, as dtcpay seeks to widen the use of stablecoins in everyday commerce.

The $25 million figure is the total Series A, rather than the size of SBI's investment alone. Dtcpay did not disclose its valuation or the amounts contributed by individual investors.

In the announcement, SBI Ven Capital CEO Eiichiro So described the investment as the start of a strategic partnership. He linked it to SBI's ambition to expand digital-asset origination between Japan and Southeast Asia through regulated financial infrastructure.

The investment connects SBI's regional ambitions with dtcpay's existing payment business. Dtcpay's stated priorities include deeper financial-institution relationships and further product development, alongside merchant expansion. SBI's participation adds a strategic investor to that effort, although the announcement does not allocate individual funding amounts to those objectives.

The cross-border ambitions remain plans for the partnership; the announcement did not include a date for a dtcpay launch in Japan.

Dtcpay founder and CEO Alice Liu framed the financing around changing how money moves across borders. Co-founder and group chairman Band Zhao identified stronger infrastructure, deeper financial-institution partnerships and entry into additional regulated markets as priorities.

SBI's participation follows the earlier Vertex-led financing. Vertex published an announcement on March 17 describing a $10 million Series A for dtcpay. That release already set out product improvements and European expansion as objectives, putting the latest close within an existing international growth plan.

Funding the products around stablecoin payments

Dtcpay says its infrastructure lets businesses and individuals accept, store and transact in stablecoins, with a swap engine connecting stablecoin and fiat settlement. Its product range includes direct merchant acceptance and card-based spending, giving customers different ways to use digital balances.

The company identifies Singapore department store Metro and hospitality business Capella Singapore among its commerce relationships. It also describes an integration with WalletConnect. These examples show the types of retail and payment connections the company is building on as it expands its merchant network.

Its Visa card offers another route to spending. Dtcpay says the card enables transactions across fiat currencies and stablecoins at more than 150 million merchant locations worldwide. That figure describes card acceptance reach, not the number of merchants directly signed up to accept stablecoins through dtcpay.

Direct merchant acceptance and card spending give dtcpay two channels for reaching customers. The release describes both as part of its business but provides no payment-volume figures, leaving the scale of activity through those channels undisclosed.

Dtcpay describes its regulatory footprint as including a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and an Electronic Money Institution license in Luxembourg. Both were described in the earlier Vertex announcement, which connected the Luxembourg license to plans for European market entry.

The funding follows that earlier push toward European market entry and adds SBI's stated Japan and Southeast Asia ambitions. Dtcpay's near-term product priorities remain the enterprise portal and consumer app, alongside its merchant network. The announcement ties the financing to those practical improvements without specifying how the capital will be divided between products and markets.

The post Why SBI just put millions behind a Singapore startup’s stablecoin push appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority says overseas crypto providers can fall inside the country's incoming authorization regime when they serve British consumers, even when the business is established abroad.

A “UK consumer” for this purpose means an individual in the UK acting outside a trade, business or profession. The definition is a statutory territorial concept and can differ from client categories elsewhere in the FCA Handbook.

The regulator published its final cryptoasset perimeter guidance on Sept. 16. It explains when firms carrying on the new regulated cryptoasset activities may need FCA authorization from Oct. 25, 2027. The application window opens Sept. 30, giving overseas platforms, custodians and staking providers less than two weeks to map how UK consumers reach their services.

Consumer access sets the boundary

Under the FCA's territorial guidance, a business first applies ordinary territorial principles. Section 418 deeming provisions can then bring certain activities involving a UK consumer within the perimeter when the provider is established overseas.

The FCA gives two outcomes for an overseas qualifying cryptoasset trading platform. A platform unavailable to UK consumers remains outside the platform activity perimeter when an authorized UK firm trades on it as principal under the relevant permission.

The overseas operator falls inside the perimeter when that authorized firm instead accesses the platform as agent for UK consumers. The platform guidance says the operator then requires authorization. Consumer access and the UK firm's trading capacity determine the result in this example.

Other services have activity-specific conditions. An overseas provider safeguarding cryptoassets or arranging staking for a UK consumer can be deemed to operate in the UK when it acts independently of a person authorized for that activity. Acting at the authorized person's direction places the arrangement outside that deeming provision.

Automated-protocol interfaces require case-specific assessment. The FCA focuses on whether an identifiable person carries on the elements of a regulated activity by way of business in the UK.

Applications for transitional arrangements run from Sept. 30, 2026 through Feb. 28, 2027. The new activities enter the perimeter on Oct. 25, 2027. Automatic conversion of existing registrations and permissions is unavailable, so an already authorized firm may need to vary its permission when its current scope omits the new activities.

The boundary depends on each service's functions and structure. PERG explains the FCA's interpretation of legislation and lacks binding force in court, leaving exchanges, custodians, staking services and DeFi interfaces to apply the guidance to their particular facts.

The post FCA draws the UK boundary for offshore crypto platforms ahead of 2027 rules appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A routine Radix code refactor created a vault flaw that enabled a roughly $1.3 million theft and later forced validators to halt the blockchain.

The Radix Foundation said Sept. 17 that an RDX Works development team introduced the defect during a June 2023 cleanup of the Radix Engine, the software layer that executes transactions and enforces asset ownership across the network. The vulnerability remained undetected for more than three years before an attacker exploited it on Aug. 31.

A community reconstruction of the ledger shows the attacker withdrew about 458,915 USDC, 72,420 USDT, 61.08 ETH, 6.35 wrapped Bitcoin, 536.16 SOL and 32.91 BNB across 26 transactions. The assets were worth roughly $1.26 million using Aug. 31 market prices, and the attackers took another 13,000 XRD from a vault to pay transaction fees. The two stablecoins alone accounted for about $531,335.

The stolen assets were sent through Hyperlane to Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Solana, then sold for ETH, Radix said. Hyperlane itself operated as designed: the attacker had already obtained the assets through the Radix Engine before using the bridge to move them elsewhere. No private keys were compromised.

However, the immediate loss understated the potential exposure. Radix investigators concluded the flaw could have been used against any vault on the network, putting tokens and other assets beyond the bridged holdings targeted by the attacker at risk.

As a result, network validators deliberately took enough stake offline to prevent it from reaching consensus and stopping additional transactions while developers worked on a fix.

Radix audit miss turns maintenance bug into systemic failure

The vulnerability had already survived an independent security review before the attacker found it.

Zellic audited the Radix protocol in 2024, including the engine kernel containing the defect. The review did not detect the authorization flaw, even though the vulnerable code had been introduced during the previous year's refactor.

The bug changed how the engine handled vault references. A transaction could identify another user's vault by its internal address and pass that reference into purpose-built smart-contract code. The engine then allowed ordinary withdrawal functions to be called without properly enforcing the ownership boundary that should have rejected the request.

That gave the attacker access to assets held by user accounts, applications and liquidity pools without obtaining the owners' signatures.

The Foundation said the attacker completed 26 exploit transactions between 16:02 and 16:57 UTC on Aug. 31. Once investigators determined the vulnerability existed in the execution layer rather than a single application, validators coordinated to stop transaction finalization.

The halt lasted more than 10 days. A protocol fix added checks preventing a restricted vault reference from being used for an ordinary withdrawal, and user transactions resumed Sept. 11, according to the community ledger reconstruction.

The incident also produced secondary losses in liquidity pools after the attacker removed bridged assets from one side of trading pairs. The distorted prices allowed another account to extract millions of XRD from affected pools, showing how an execution-layer failure can keep causing economic damage even after the initial assets have left the network.

Radix said it is adding regression tests, strengthening its security review process, and formalizing the emergency procedure validators used to break network liveness.

The Foundation also said future security work must account for increasingly capable AI-assisted code-analysis tools, which it believes may have helped the attacker identify the years-old defect.

For developers and validators, the next challenge is preventing similarly routine maintenance work from silently altering security assumptions that external audits may miss.

That task extends beyond repairing the exploited code. Radix now has to strengthen the review process around changes to authorization logic while restoring confidence among users and liquidity providers whose assets ultimately depend on the engine enforcing those boundaries correctly.

The post 3-year-old bug triggers $1.3 million drain and forces 10-day blockchain halt appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The US sanctioned Iranian crypto exchange BitBank, widening its campaign against digital-asset infrastructure allegedly used to finance the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

On Sept. 17, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said that the sanctioned Iranian financier Babak Zanjani used BitBank between June and July to facilitate hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin transfers to the IRGC.

Treasury also said Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, previously sanctioned over an alleged maritime-payment scheme in the Strait of Hormuz, had used the exchange since June to move receipts to the Iranian government.

The action reaches beyond BitBank to Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, which developed the exchange’s software, and three people tied to Zanjani’s broader corporate network. OFAC described the group as part of Iran’s digital-asset sanctions-evasion infrastructure and designated them under Executive Order 13902, which Treasury has expanded to cover Iran’s digital-asset sector.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the move demonstrates that crypto-based financing is “not beyond OFAC’s reach,” warning that parties supporting the Iranian government could also become sanctions targets.

The designations deepen Operation Economic Outcast, a campaign Treasury launched Aug. 24 to cut Iran off from financial channels used to move oil revenue, evade sanctions and fund the IRGC. The program also widened secondary-sanctions exposure for companies outside the US that continue doing business with targeted Iranian entities.

BitBank is the latest Iranian crypto platform swept into that effort. In June, OFAC sanctioned Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin and Ramzinex as part of its earlier Economic Fury campaign. The pressure expanded again in August when OFAC designated Shelbit and Aban Tether.

The accumulating designations show Washington increasingly treating Iranian crypto venues as parts of interconnected financing networks rather than isolated trading businesses.

Treasury follows Zanjani’s crypto network beyond the exchange

The BitBank action pushes that strategy further by targeting the developers, executives, and corporate infrastructure Treasury says allowed Zanjani’s network to move funds.

Zanjani, a longtime Iranian businessman already under US sanctions, publicly promoted BitBank beginning in at least 2024, Treasury said. Several other companies tied to his sanctions-evasion network also listed the exchange as a partner.

Pishtaz Simorgh, BitBank’s software developer, is a subsidiary of Dot One Value Creation Group, which OFAC sanctioned in July as part of another action against Zanjani’s commercial network. Treasury said Dot One sits within a portfolio spanning financial services, digital assets, transportation and infrastructure that Zanjani used to obscure ownership and move money.

TRM Labs said the latest designations extend an investigation it began around Zedcex and Zedxion, two crypto exchanges sanctioned with Zanjani in January. The blockchain-intelligence firm said it initially identified about $1 billion in IRGC-linked activity tied to those platforms before broadening its analysis into the companies, payment systems and digital infrastructure surrounding them.

That work eventually mapped a wider ecosystem that included Dot One, ZedPay, transportation companies and other businesses subsequently targeted by Treasury in July. TRM said BitBank and Pishtaz Simorgh sit within that same network, alongside the MyDot social platform, DOTO digital asset and Dot One Smart Chain.

The pattern gives investigators more targets than blockchain addresses alone. Corporate ownership, software development, payment relationships and executive control can connect entities that may otherwise appear separate on-chain.

Treasury’s inclusion of BitBank’s software company reflects that broader approach.

Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein, chief executive of Pishtaz Simorgh and a Dot One manager, was sanctioned for acting on behalf of the software company. Seyed Adel Heidari, vice chairman of Dot One’s board, was designated for acting on behalf of Dot One.

Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein was sanctioned for acting for Zanjani. Treasury alleged he participated in much of Zanjani’s sanctions-evasion activity, including Iranian oil exports and digital-asset transactions, and brokered crypto transfers that ultimately reached the IRGC.

The post US sanctions Iranian crypto exchange and its software developer over alleged IRGC Bitcoin transfers appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin’s rebound above $80,000 on Sept. 18 extended a technology-led relief rally. The move coincided with yen weakness and followed a return to Bitcoin ETF inflows the previous day. The advance was already underway in European trading, hours before weak US economic figures offered a possible argument against further monetary tightening.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $80,856, up 5.60% over 24 hours. The clearest explanation is a broader relief rally with an improving, but still tentative, demand signal. The timing points to a recovery in risk appetite, although it does not identify one decisive trigger.

Dow Jones reported Bitcoin at $78,309, up 2.3%, in early European trading, linking the rebound to Thursday’s technology-led recovery. The 10:54 a.m. BST dispatch described prices earlier that morning.

The equity backdrop was already firmer. Reuters reported Nasdaq 100 E-mini futures up 0.56% at 9:50 a.m. BST as lower oil prices eased inflation concerns. That supports the interpretation of Bitcoin participating in renewed appetite for risk, rather than reacting solely to an afternoon US announcement.

By the opening minutes of US stock trading, Bitcoin was above $79,000 with a gain of more than 4%, according to a Yahoo Finance report published at 3:13 p.m. BST.

The Bank of Japan announced its decision at 3:54 a.m. BST. A 7–2 majority approved a 1.25% overnight call-rate target, up from 1% and in line with expectations. The new setting takes effect Sept. 24.

The yen’s decline was consistent with relief rather than a shock from unexpectedly aggressive tightening. The BoJ’s daily observations showed the dollar buying 156.15–17 yen at 1 a.m. BST and 157.48–50 yen at 9 a.m. BST. The yen therefore weakened across the announcement window.

Reuters attributed that weakness to the two dissenters and guidance that disappointed traders expecting a more hawkish message. A weaker yen is consistent with relief over pressure on yen-funded positions. That remains a possible supporting mechanism, not evidence of money moving from those positions into Bitcoin.

The US policy backdrop also remained restrictive: Wednesday’s Federal Reserve decision was a quarter-point rate hike, as Dow Jones reported.

What supported the move, and what remains uncertain

US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of USD 159.5 million on Sept. 17, according to Farside Investors. BlackRock’s IBIT led the inflows, while withdrawals from other funds reduced the overall total.

That followed net outflows on Sept. 15 and 16. The positive session is evidence that demand through the funds improved before Friday’s advance, but one day does not establish a durable reversal.

The funds provide a concrete demand signal, but daily totals do not reveal when purchases occurred or establish the source of Friday’s buying.

At 2 p.m. BST US industrial production was reported unchanged for August, and manufacturing output fell 0.3%. The Federal Reserve release confirmed those results, while Trading Economics listed expectations for a 0.3% increase in each. At 3 p.m., the leading economic index fell 0.1%, against expectations for a 0.1% rise.

Weaker activity could reduce the case for additional tightening. But these releases cannot explain an advance already visible that morning. Nor was Friday simply a falling-yields story: Reuters reported the 10-year Treasury yield up 2.9 basis points to 4.976% before the US open.

Forced buying may have amplified the move, but the available measurements do not establish its contribution. CoinGlass showed about $230.6 million in total Bitcoin futures liquidations over 24 hours and $56.36 billion in open interest.

The liquidation total includes both sides of the market. A short squeeze would involve bearish positions being forcibly closed as prices rise. The available total, without a short-side breakdown or matching funding and open-interest changes, cannot show how much of Friday’s advance came from that process.

Thursday’s SEC tokenized-stock exemption also offered broader regulatory context. Its conditional relief concerns certain stock-trading venues and liquidity providers, rather than a Bitcoin-specific approval.

For the rally’s durability, repeated ETF inflows would be a clearer demand signal than a one-day rebound, while directional liquidation data could show whether forced buying is playing a substantial role. Friday’s sequence supports a relief rally; it leaves the balance between fresh demand and short covering unresolved.

The post Why Bitcoin hit $80k today hours before bad US data even landed appeared first on CryptoSlate.

XRP is recovering. According to CoinGecko data, the token stood at $1.39 on Friday evening, September 18, 2026, a good 7 percent above the previous day. The daily range ran from $1.29 to $1.40. The trigger is a change of mood across the whole market, set off by a step from the US regulator CFTC, more than any piece of news specific to XRP. For you as an investor in Germany the filing changes nothing legally for now, but it does change the question of how you handle the rise.

What is documented in this article is the price data, the CFTC submission and the liquidation figures. Where it turns to possible consequences for the XRP price, that is an assessment by our editorial team, and we label it as such.

XRP price today at a glance: where the token stands after the recovery

At $1.39, XRP reaches a market capitalization of around $87 billion and ranks fifth among the largest cryptocurrencies. Over one week the gain is a modest 1.3 percent, because the token had lost considerable ground in the days before. Over 30 days, by contrast, it shows an increase of a good 30 percent. XRP is still more than 60 percent away from its all-time high of $3.65 from July 2025.

That context matters, because a daily gain of 7 percent can quickly look like a breakout. In reality XRP is first of all recovering what it gave up after the setback in the US Senate.

CLARITY Act fails: why XRP came under pressure at the start of the week

On Tuesday, September 15, the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act failed in the US Senate. The law was meant to settle which crypto assets count as commodities under the supervision of the futures regulator CFTC and which count as securities under the market regulator SEC. For XRP that distinction has been the central question for years, and the reaction was correspondingly sharp. We put the price slide after the Senate vote into context on September 16.

CFTC rule filing: what the agency submitted on September 17

Two days after the failure in the Senate, the CFTC responded. It sent two rule proposals titled Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a review body of the White House that examines new federal rules before publication. CFTC chief Michael Selig had already instructed his staff to draft a framework for crypto markets that works on the basis of existing powers even without a new law. The industry outlet CoinDesk, among others, describes the filing as one of the triggers of Friday's recovery.

What the CFTC filing is not yet

The content of the two proposals has not been published, and the CFTC did not comment on details. This is an early procedural step. After the review come publication, comment periods and a further round of scrutiny before a binding rule emerges. Industry reports expect that to run into 2027. As things stand today, the submission therefore contains no classification of XRP as a commodity.

Short liquidations: why the XRP rally came so fast

Part of the rise has a mechanical explanation. According to CoinDesk, short positions worth around $470 million were forcibly closed across the entire crypto market within 24 hours. A liquidation hits traders who have bet on falling prices with borrowed money: if the price rises above a certain threshold, the exchange closes their position automatically, and to do so it has to buy the coin back. Those purchases push the price up further and trigger the next round of liquidations.

Our assessment: moves of this kind are fast, though not necessarily durable. Once the leveraged shorts are closed out, that buying pressure disappears. Whether XRP holds the $1.40 mark therefore depends more on demand from investors without leverage than on today's wave.

XRP Ledger: which dates count in the coming weeks

Independently of the price, a technical date is coming up on the XRP Ledger. On September 29, 2026, the batch amendment is due to go live, bundling several transactions into one package. Ordinary holders have nothing to do, but anyone running their own node or automating transactions through software should check beforehand that the software is up to date. What exactly needs doing is set out in our article on the batch amendment in the XRP Ledger.

Buying XRP in Germany: why US rules change nothing here

What is decided in Washington governs the US market. In the EU, XRP falls under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short. The decisive factor for you is the provider rather than the token: since the German transition period ended in late 2025, trading platforms serving customers in Germany need authorization as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA. You can check whether a provider holds it in the register of the European securities regulator ESMA.

Anyone looking to buy after the rise is better off with a regulated crypto exchange than with a provider without EU authorization. The reason is practical: only at an authorized provider do the duties to segregate client assets apply, along with supervision by an authority.

Transferring XRP: check the destination tag and the address

Many investors move their XRP off the exchange after buying. A typical mistake happens here: exchanges often hold XRP on a shared address and assign deposits through an additional number, the destination tag. If it is missing, the transfer does reach the exchange, but it does not reach your account, and sorting it out can take weeks. How to check this before you hit send is explained in our article on the XRP destination tag.

Taking XRP profits: mind the holding period and the exemption limit

Anyone who bought in more cheaply in August is now sitting on a gain. Whether a sale costs tax is decided in Germany by the holding period. For tax purposes XRP counts as a private sale transaction under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If you sell at a profit within a year of buying, that gain is taxable, provided all private sale gains of the year together exceed the exemption limit of 1,000 euros. If the gain is above it, the whole amount is taxed, not only the part above the threshold. After more than a year the gain is tax-free.

Where purchases were made in several installments, the FIFO principle applies: coins bought first count as sold first. Anyone wanting to document this cleanly uses a crypto tax tool that reads in the exchange data. More on the calculation is in our guide on when you can take XRP profits tax-free.

XRP after the rise: which levels investors are watching now

Two zones keep coming up in this week's analyses. On the upside it is the area around $1.40, where the price initially stalled on Friday. On the downside it is the daily low of $1.29, which served as a floor after the Senate vote. These are orientation points rather than price targets: if XRP falls back below the lower zone, the recovery was probably just a counter-move.

Our assessment: the market is currently trading regulatory news from the US above all else. Until the CFTC publishes its proposals, headlines are likely to move the price more than data from the XRP Ledger. Anyone buying should therefore expect larger swings and invest no more than they can do without over a longer period.

XRP price and the CFTC: what you take away

1. Put the news in the right place. The CFTC filing is a first procedural step, not a classification of XRP. If you buy, do it through a regulated exchange with MiCA authorization.
2. Check the destination tag before every transfer. Anyone holding XRP in self-custody should use their own wallet and double-check both the address and the tag. You will find suitable devices in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Clarify the holding period before you sell. A single day can decide between tax-free and taxable. With a tax tool you can see which coins have already passed the one-year mark.

(As of September 18, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

Warren Buffett is no longer chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. The 96-year-old gave up the chairmanship of the board with immediate effect on Friday, September 18, 2026, and now holds the title of chairman emeritus. His son Howard Buffett is the new chairman. For bitcoin investors, Berkshire's stance on crypto stays exactly where it was. What does change is how much weight Buffett's verdict on bitcoin still carries in the market.

What is documented is what Berkshire itself and several large US outlets report consistently: the change of role, its timing and the succession. Where this article turns to the consequences for the crypto market, that is an assessment by our editorial team, and we label it as such.

Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire chairman: what is confirmed

Buffett had led Berkshire Hathaway as chairman since 1970, for 56 years. He had already handed the chief executive role to Greg Abel at the start of 2026, around eight months before this step. With the change at the top of the board, the transition Buffett announced at the 2025 annual meeting is complete.

Chairman emeritus is an honorary title. Buffett remains a member of the board and is expected to stay available to it with his judgment, but he no longer leads it. In his letter to shareholders he gives his age as the reason, in substance: in the end, nobody beats time. Berkshire publishes announcements of this kind on the company's news page, and a detailed summary comes from US broadcaster NPR, among others.

Howard Buffett and Greg Abel: who decides what at Berkshire Hathaway now

The duties are clearly separated. Howard Buffett, who has sat on the board since 1993, takes on a non-executive chairmanship. According to Berkshire, his role is to preserve the corporate culture and to lead the board. The operating business, and above all capital allocation, meaning the question of what Berkshire spends its money on, sits with Greg Abel.

Under Abel the business has run solidly. Operating earnings rose 16 percent in the second quarter of 2026 to around $13 billion, Berkshire bought back about $4.8 billion of its own shares and added to a large position in Alphabet. For the bitcoin question, exactly this division of labor is decisive: if Berkshire ever buys crypto, Abel decides that, not the new chairman.

What chairman emeritus means in practice

The title comes with no power to give instructions. Buffett does remain the largest single shareholder and therefore still carries weight at the annual meeting. Anyone expecting Berkshire's investment policy to change abruptly now overlooks that Abel has been responsible for it since the start of the year and has shown no sign of a change of course.

Warren Buffett and bitcoin: why he has always rejected crypto

Few investors have criticized bitcoin as harshly as Buffett. In 2018 he called the cryptocurrency "probably rat poison squared" in front of journalists. At the 2022 annual meeting he went further: he would not pay $25 for all the bitcoin in the world, because it produces nothing. His yardstick was always the same. An asset has to generate returns out of itself, like a business, a farm or a rented property. Bitcoin does not do that, and its price depends solely on what the next buyer pays.

Berkshire's portfolio follows from that logic. The company holds no bitcoin, no crypto ETFs and no mining stocks. That composition follows a principle Buffett has defended for decades.

Greg Abel and bitcoin: why Berkshire is not buying crypto for now

Abel has never spoken out publicly in favor of bitcoin. He is seen as a manager who continues Buffett's investment philosophy, and in his first months as CEO he has done exactly that: share buybacks, classic holdings, no experiments. From Howard Buffett there is no public statement on bitcoin or other digital assets at all.

Our assessment: the probability that Berkshire buys bitcoin in the foreseeable future is low. The change in the chairmanship does nothing to the people who decide about the money. Anyone reading "Berkshire will buy bitcoin soon" on social media now should treat that as speculation rather than news.

Berkshire's cash pile: why the billions count for the crypto market too

Berkshire sits on one of the largest cash reserves in corporate history. The figures quoted vary by reporting date and by whether short-term US Treasuries are counted: current reports name between roughly $365 billion and $397 billion, with the highest reading referring to the end of the first quarter of 2026. The company is worth around $1.1 trillion on the stock market.

For crypto investors this reserve works as a sentiment gauge, not a buy signal. When an investor of that size holds back that much money, it says something about how few attractive opportunities there are in equity markets. That can be read as caution. Bitcoin currently trades closely in step with US technology stocks, and when those fall, the crypto market usually comes under pressure as well. How large the risk is for your own holdings therefore depends heavily on how big a share crypto has in the portfolio in the first place.

Bitcoin above $80,000: did Buffett's exit move the price?

On the same day, bitcoin climbed back above $80,000. According to CoinGecko data, BTC stood at $80,964 on Friday evening, 5.8 percent above the previous day. As far as anything is known, there is no connection to Berkshire. The reasons for the recovery lie elsewhere: on September 17 the US regulator CFTC sent two rule proposals for crypto markets to the White House for review, and according to CoinDesk around $470 million in short positions were forcibly liquidated within 24 hours. Liquidations of that kind amplify a rise, because short sellers have to buy back their positions.

That bitcoin gains on the day its most prominent critic steps aside is therefore mainly a coincidence of dates. Anyone deriving a trading idea from it is trading on a headline, not on a cause.

Value investing and bitcoin: what Buffett's rules are worth to crypto investors

You do not have to share Buffett's verdict on bitcoin to take something from his rules. Three of them transfer directly to crypto.

First, the circle of competence: invest only in what you understand. For crypto that means knowing how custody, seed phrase and exchange risk hang together before any money moves. Second, the margin of safety: buy in such a way that one mistake does not ruin you. Translated, that means holding only a share in crypto whose total loss you could absorb. Third, staying away from borrowed money. Buffett has always rejected leveraged speculation, and this week's liquidations show why: anyone trading with leverage often loses the position just before the move they were betting on.

A broker that holds equities and crypto in one account makes it easier to keep an eye on bitcoin's share of total wealth than having stocks and coins sitting on separate platforms.

Berkshire stock or bitcoin: how gains are taxed in Germany

Anyone holding both Berkshire shares and bitcoin is dealing with two completely different sets of tax rules. For many readers that is the practically most important point of this day, because after a rise like the current one a lot of people start thinking about taking profits.

Share gains: flat-rate capital gains tax without a holding period

Price gains on shares such as Berkshire are subject in Germany to the flat-rate capital gains tax of 25 percent plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax, so at least 26.375 percent in total. A holding period after which gains become tax-free has not existed for shares since 2009. Only what falls under the saver's allowance of 1,000 euros per year remains tax-free, or 2,000 euros for jointly assessed couples. As a rule the bank pays the tax over for you.

Bitcoin gains: tax-free after one year

For tax purposes bitcoin counts as a private sale transaction under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If you sell at a profit within a year of buying, the gain is taxed at your personal income tax rate. Since the 2024 tax year an exemption limit of 1,000 euros applies to all private sale transactions taken together. The word exemption limit matters: if the gain is even one euro above it, the entire amount becomes taxable. After a holding period of more than one year the gain is completely tax-free. The exchange pays no tax over for you, so you have to declare the gains yourself in your tax return.

That leads to a simple check before every sale: how long have you held the coins? The tax authorities work along the FIFO principle, so coins bought first count as sold first. Anyone who has bought in installments over the years therefore needs a clean record of purchase dates. A crypto tax tool builds it automatically from the exchange data.

Warren Buffett and bitcoin: what you take away

1. Do not trade on the headline. Buffett's withdrawal changes nothing about Berkshire's stance on bitcoin and, as far as anything is known, has not moved the price. Anyone who wants to invest for the long term buys on a plan, for example through a bitcoin savings plan, instead of reacting to news.
2. Check your crypto share. Take Buffett's margin of safety seriously and hold only as much in crypto as you could afford to lose in the worst case. Anyone who wants to manage shares and coins together will find suitable providers in the broker comparison.
3. Clarify the holding period before you sell. With bitcoin a single day decides between tax-free and taxable, with shares that threshold does not exist. A tax tool shows you at a glance which coins have already passed the deadline.

(As of September 18, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

If you have funds sitting in a decentralised lending market, your risk is not decided by the interest rate but by the list of tokens the protocol accepts as collateral. On September 17, 2026, an attacker on Starknet exploited exactly that list and borrowed around 3.5 million US dollars from the Nostra Finance money market. The collateral was the protocol's own token NSTR, whose entire circulating market capitalisation stood between 550,000 and 590,000 US dollars at the time. The borrowed amount exceeded the market value of the posted collateral by more than five times.

This article explains what is technically new about the incident and what is not — and above all, which four figures you can look up in the documentation of your own lending market before you next put money into it. The check takes about ten minutes and requires no expertise in blockchain programming.

What happened on Starknet on September 17: $3.5 million against $550,000 of market value

Nostra Finance runs a money market on the Ethereum scaling solution Starknet. That is a protocol where users deposit tokens and other users take out loans against posted collateral. The protocol reported the incident on September 17, 2026 at 13:28 UTC through its official channel. A single account had treated an inflated NSTR balance as collateral and then borrowed a basket of far more liquid assets: Ether, STRK, USDC, USDT, WBTC and DAI in the first version.

The security firm PeckShield reported on September 18 at 00:41 UTC that around 1.92 million US dollars had been moved to the Ethereum mainnet, specifically 234.57 Ether and 1.3 million DAI. CertiK arrived at a similar split barely two hours later: roughly 1.55 million US dollars initially remained on Starknet, and around 1.93 million was bridged. The analytics firm SlowMist classified the event as oracle manipulation. Nostra itself has switched off deposits, borrowing, withdrawals and liquidations while the team reconciles the pool balances. How large the final loss turns out to be, and how much of it can be recovered, remains open.

Oracle manipulation explained: how a price feed becomes the attack surface

An oracle is the interface through which a protocol learns what a token is currently worth. Without that information a lending market cannot operate: it has to know how much a posted collateral covers and at what point a position must be liquidated. Oracle manipulation is an attack in which it is not the protocol's program code that is broken, but the price that this code takes at face value.

The distinction matters, because it explains why security audits of the code help little here. The protocol calculates correctly — it merely calculates with a false number. Which price provider was in use in the case of NSTR has to this day not been named in the official statements. Security researchers assume that a trading venue with very thin liquidity was used to push the reported price far above the usual trading level. NSTR was trading between 0.0055 and 0.0059 US dollars at the time of reporting.

Nostra has had this weakness before. On March 24, 2025, the price feeds for xSTRK and sSTRK displayed three times the actual value; xSTRK jumped from 0.1793 to 0.5897 US dollars. A second, independent price provider as a fallback did not exist for those assets.

Why thin liquidity in the collateral token is the real risk

The technical debate usually revolves around oracles. The leverage, however, lies elsewhere. A price can only be moved if the market behind it is thin enough. With a token traded in the hundreds of millions each day, an artificial doubling costs more than the attack brings in. With a token carrying half a million dollars of market capitalisation, a modest stake is enough.

From that follows a rule you can apply without technical tools: the smaller the collateral token relative to what may be borrowed against it, the greater the manipulation risk for everyone else in the same pool. That includes you, even if you have only deposited and never taken out a loan — because in the end the payout came from the shared balance.

Borrow caps and isolation mode

Good protocols limit this risk with two tools. A borrow cap sets how much may be borrowed against a particular collateral in total. An isolation mode locks risky tokens into a separate pot, so that a default there does not spill over into the large pools. Both are stated in the documentation, and both are a number you can look at before you deposit. If the cap is missing entirely, or sits above the market capitalisation of the collateral token, that is a finding and not a detail.

Anyone looking for interest on crypto balances will find different risks at centralised providers, but comparable questions — what collateral sits behind it, and who is liable. A look at our comparison of lending providers shows which models exist in the first place, before you decide between decentralised and centralised.

Checking your lending market's collateral list: these four figures are in every documentation

Every serious protocol publishes its parameters. At Nostra you will find them at docs.nostra.finance; at other protocols the section is usually called Markets, Risk Parameters or Asset Listing. Four figures are enough for a first assessment.

First: which tokens are approved as collateral? Not which ones you can deposit, but which ones can be borrowed against. Those are two different lists, and the second is the dangerous one. Look for the protocol's own token — if it appears as collateral, look more closely.

Second: how high is the borrow cap per collateral? Set it against the market capitalisation of that token. At Nostra, more could be borrowed against NSTR than the entire circulating supply was worth.

Third: does an isolation mode apply? If so, for which tokens, and does your balance sit in the shared or in the isolated pot?

Fourth: who supplies the price? More on that in a moment.

Price source and fallback oracle: how to tell whether a protocol seeks a second opinion

The documentation usually states which price provider is used. Less interesting than the name are the answers to two questions. Does the protocol draw the price from several independent sources, or does everything hang on one? And is there a plausibility limit that freezes a position if a price jumps several fold within minutes?

A fallback oracle is a second price source that steps in or objects when the first delivers implausible values. That is precisely what Nostra lacked in March 2025 for the affected assets. If you find no statement on this in the documentation, that is not an all-clear but an open question you can put to the team in the public channel. A protocol that does not answer has already answered you.

We have asked the same question in earlier incidents. In the Moonwell exploit on Base at the end of August, it was the protocol's own token MAMO whose price was manipulated. The pattern has been repeating for months under changing names.

32 price manipulations in one year: what the numbers and our own count show

The Nostra incident is not an isolated case but the latest point in a series. According to data circulated by the exchange KuCoin in early September, decentralised lending protocols have recorded 32 separate price manipulation attacks so far in 2026 — on that count a record for the sector. Roughly one in eight crypto hacks this year can accordingly be traced back to this form of attack. The largest single loss fell on Tectonic on the Cronos chain, where around 75 million US dollars were borrowed after a price had risen a hundredfold within about 20 minutes. The figure comes from a market participant and not from an independent auditor; it shows an order of magnitude, not an official statistic.

Because we wanted to know how this is reflected in our own coverage, we counted the German-language archive of cryptoticker.io. Method: a query of the editorial database on September 18, 2026 for all German articles since July 1, 2026 whose address contains the terms "exploit" or "hack", followed by a manual review of the hits. Result: 21 documented incidents in eleven weeks. Six of them hit lending markets or their price sources — Ostium in July, Ajna, Tectonic, Moonwell and More Markets at the end of August, plus the compromise of a price service across four chains in early September. This analysis was carried out by cryptoticker.io itself on September 18, 2026.

What we cannot measure with it: how many incidents there were in total. Our count only captures what we reported on ourselves, and articles without the two search terms in the address slip through the net. The number works as an indication of a pattern, not as a damage balance sheet. The clustering is striking all the same: four of the six lending market cases fell within a single week at the end of August.

When a market pauses: why you cannot withdraw when it matters most

The part many underestimate comes after the attack. Nostra stopped not only borrowing but withdrawals as well. From the protocol's point of view that is correct, because otherwise the fastest movers clear out the rest and the damage is distributed unevenly. For you it means: at the moment you most urgently want to get your money out, the door closes.

From that follows an uncomfortable but useful exercise. Ask yourself before depositing how long you could do without this amount if it were frozen for an indefinite period. Not whether you could lose it — that is the obvious question — but whether you will not need it for weeks. Anyone who has parked funds for a tax payment or an upcoming bill does not belong in a money market.

You can also check who is allowed to trigger such a pause. In most protocols that right sits with a small circle of key holders, sometimes with a timelock instance with a lead time. Both are stated in the documentation under Governance or Admin Keys.

Yields that look too good: how to read return against collateral risk

High deposit rates in a money market arise because somebody is willing to pay that rate. Who pays double-digit rates for a loan? As a rule, someone building a position with borrowed money that is meant to return more — or someone who has posted collateral they could not borrow against anywhere else. The second case is the same one that led to the loss at Nostra.

That does not mean high rates are automatically a warning sign. It means the rate tells you where to look. If a conspicuously high rate sits next to an exotic collateral token in the list, you have found the explanation. If only Ether and an established stablecoin are listed, the rate is probably an expression of demand and not of risk.

Centralised or decentralised: which risks you take on in each case

The comparison does not come out clear-cut, and anyone presenting it as clear-cut is simplifying. With a decentralised money market you bear the risk of the parameters, the price feed and the program code. You can read up on all of it, and nobody can withdraw your balance at will — as long as the protocol's key management holds.

With a centralised provider you bear counterparty risk instead: the provider lends your balance on, and whether the underlying collateral holds value is something you generally cannot check. In exchange there is a contractual partner you can address and, at providers with European authorisation, a supervisory authority. Which form suits you depends on whether you would rather read parameters or contracts.

What self-custody changes about this

The third route is not to lend at all. Anyone holding their assets in their own custody forgoes interest and thereby rules out both types of risk. That is not a romantic position but a sober one: a return of a few percent a year does not justify every default risk, and the incidents of recent weeks show that default is not the exception.

Checking a DeFi lending market: what to take away

1. Look at the collateral list before you deposit. Find out which tokens can be borrowed against, how high the borrow cap is per token, and whether it exceeds the market capitalisation of that token. If you want to know in advance which providers even come into question and how interest-bearing models differ, our overview of staking and yield platforms helps with the shortlist.
2. Clarify whether you really need the interest. Work out what a year of yield brings on your amount, and set it against the case where the market pauses for weeks. If the sum comes out close, self-custody is the simpler answer; which devices are suitable is set out in our hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document your deposits and withdrawals as you go. If a protocol enters a wind-down, you will later need records of times and amounts — for your tax return as much as for a possible loss offset. A portfolio tracker takes that off your hands; you will find a selection under crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

And in case you are already affected: wait for the team's official settlement before responding to offers that promise you a quick recovery. After every major incident, accounts appear that pose as a recovery service and in truth ask for wallet access. The details of the Nostra wind-down are summarised, among others, in the chronology of the security reports.

(As of September 18, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

On November 5, 2026, the Zcash network activates the NU7 upgrade. If you hold ZEC, the most important answer is also the least dramatic one: you do not need to move your coins, swap them or pull them off an exchange. The only people who have to act are those who run infrastructure themselves, meaning a full node, an indexer or a block explorer. The rest of this article explains why that is the case, which four dates matter between now and then, and where German rules on tax and custody still come into play.

The timeline has been firm since September 17, 2026. That evening at 22:42 UTC, Zcash core developer Sean Bowe, who posts in the forum under the name ebfull, published the dates in the Zcash Community Forum. He describes unanimous agreement among the organisations and development teams involved, naming ZF, Tachyon, Valar, ZODL and SL. Before that there was a vote result but no calendar. Since then there is both.

What is NU7 and why is Zcash activating the upgrade on November 5, 2026?

NU7 is a network upgrade, or in technical terms a hard fork. A hard fork is a rule change that older software no longer understands: anyone who does not update their node stops following the same chain as the rest of the network from the cut-off date. At Zcash these upgrades are numbered, NU stands for Network Upgrade, and NU7 is therefore the seventh of its kind.

According to Bowe's announcement, NU7 consists of three components. First, the target block spacing drops from 75 to 25 seconds (ZIP-218). Second, version 4 transactions are switched off. Third, the Network Sustainability Mechanism is added in the form that emerged from the vote (ZIP-234 in its alternative version, plus ZIP-235). A ZIP is a Zcash Improvement Proposal, a numbered change proposal that the project decides on in public, comparable to an EIP at Ethereum.

One sentence Bowe deliberately put into his announcement matters for context: this upgrade brings no new transaction formats, and the changes are not meant to affect wallets in any material way. What is affected is infrastructure, and he names full nodes, indexers and block explorers specifically. That distinction is precisely why the answer for the vast majority of German ZEC holders is: do nothing.

Which four dates in the Zcash roadmap matter to you?

Bowe explicitly frames the forum post as a checklist and names four markers. By September 30, 2026, the code is due to be finished, with all features implemented and ready for the testnet. On October 6, 2026, the official Zcash testnet activates NU7. On October 20, 2026, the final decision on mainnet activation is taken, including the block height, based on the experience from the testnet; that date falls a week before the Zcash conference Zcon. On November 5, 2026, NU7 goes live on mainnet.

In practice, October 20 is the most interesting of these dates. Only then does the target date turn into a fixed block height. A block height is the running number of a block in the chain; network upgrades do not switch on by clock time but from a particular block number onwards, which is why the calendar date can still shift by hours until the last moment. If you want to follow the timeline, look again on October 20 rather than waiting for November 5.

A look back helps with context: ZEC holders voted on the contents of this upgrade themselves in September. How that vote worked and who was allowed to take part is something we described on September 5, 2026, in a separate article on the Zcash vote on NU7. That piece covers the process; the result and the timeline came afterwards.

Do I have to move my ZEC before the NU7 upgrade?

No. NU7 involves no swap, no migration deadline and no address you would have to send anything to. That sets this upgrade apart from events such as a delisting at an exchange or a token swap, where you genuinely can miss a deadline. If you hold ZEC in a wallet, you will hold the same ZEC in the same wallet after November 5.

A calm stocktake is still worthwhile, because experience shows that phishing attempts cluster around network upgrades. The trick is always the same: a message claims your balance has to be secured to a new address before the upgrade, or unlocked via a form. There is no legitimate process of that kind for NU7. If you want to review your custody anyway, comparing the devices in our hardware wallet comparison is the more sensible route than reacting to any unexpected message.

What applies if your ZEC sit on an exchange?

Then the exchange handles the technical side: the trading venue runs the nodes, it updates the software, and your balance in the customer account remains a claim against the exchange. It is common for trading venues to pause deposits and withdrawals for a few hours around an activation, so that no transfer lands in the moment of the switch. Whether and when a provider does this is stated on its status page, not in the Zcash project's timeline. If you want to know how differently trading venues handle privacy coins in the first place, the overview sits in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

What do 25-second blocks change for transfers and confirmations?

Block time is the average interval at which the network appends a new block. At Zcash that target has so far been 75 seconds; after NU7 it is 25 seconds. A transfer counts as confirmed as soon as it sits in a block, and as effectively final once several further blocks follow it. Intervals three times shorter therefore mean the same number of confirmations accumulates in a third of the time.

Two points belong to an honest account. First, exchanges and payment providers require a certain number of confirmations before they credit a deposit; whether they raise that number after the upgrade is for each provider to decide, and a higher number eats into part of the time saved. Second, a shorter block time changes nothing about the total supply of coins: the project adjusts the payout per block accordingly, otherwise the issuance schedule would fall apart.

What does switching off v4 transactions mean for old wallets?

A transaction version is the technical format in which a transfer is written down. Zcash knows several versions; v4 dates from the period before the NU5 upgrade and today's Orchard pool, while v5 is the current format. NU7 switches v4 off, so the network will no longer accept such transactions afterwards.

This only matters to you if you use very old wallet software that has never been updated. A maintained wallet has been producing v5 transactions for years. If you have carried on using a wallet from before 2022 unchanged, install an update before November 5 and, if in doubt, make a small test transfer well ahead of the date. That is a manageable amount of work and the only wallet task this upgrade creates at all.

And what about old shielded balances?

Zcash holds shielded balances in several pools that stem from different stages of development. If you still hold funds in an older pool, you should complete the migration into the current Orchard pool regardless of NU7; on September 13, 2026, we described how to check whether your ZEC balance still needs migrating. NU7 does not force that migration, but it is the reason many wallets have been showing a note about it for months.

What lies behind the Network Sustainability Mechanism and the halving decision?

The Network Sustainability Mechanism, NSM for short, is a proposal addressing the question of what pays for the Zcash network in the long run, once the block reward keeps shrinking. The variants put to the vote differed in whether the existing halving rhythm is preserved. A halving is the scheduled halving of the reward per block, at Zcash as at Bitcoin a fixed part of the issuance schedule.

The result is in Bowe's announcement: the halvings are preserved, and the amount previously held back will be issued again from February 2031. Cointelegraph reported on the corresponding vote on September 18, 2026, and cites very clear majorities, both for keeping the halvings and for the shorter block time. The direction has therefore been set, though the practical effect on circulating supply only starts in more than four years.

For you as an investor, the main point is this: NU7 is not an event that pays out or withdraws coins in the short term. Anyone expecting price moves around November 5 should treat that as what it is, namely an expectation and not a promise. In the same report, Cointelegraph points to a sharp rise in the ZEC price around the announcement; moves like that say nothing about how an upgrade plays out technically.

Who really has to act: full node, indexer or block explorer?

A full node is a program that stores the entire chain itself and checks every rule independently. An indexer is a service that prepares this chain data for fast queries, for instance for a wallet app. A block explorer is the website where you look up transactions and blocks. All three implement the consensus rules in software, and that is exactly why they need a NU7-capable version before November 5.

Anyone running their own node in Germany therefore has a clear task and a clear deadline. It makes sense not to wait until early November: NU7 runs on the testnet from October 6, and that is the opportunity to test your own setup against the new rules while a mistake costs nothing. If you fail to update the node in time you will not lose funds, but after activation you will be looking at an outdated chain and therefore at wrong balances.

How does the German tax office treat a hard fork like NU7?

The tax question comes up regularly with hard forks, because some forks create a second chain and therefore an additional coin. For that case, the administrative position is clearly set out. On March 6, 2025, the German Federal Ministry of Finance published its circular on individual questions of the income tax treatment of crypto assets (file reference IV C 1 - S 2256/00042/064/043), replacing the 2022 version.

In substance it says: anyone acquiring crypto assets also acquires the assets that later arise on a new blockchain through a hard fork. The acquisition costs are allocated across those assets in proportion to their market prices at the time of the hard fork. If you sell the newly created assets within one year of acquiring the original holdings, the gain is a private disposal transaction under section 22 no. 2 in conjunction with section 23 (1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the German Income Tax Act (EStG).

Applied to NU7, that is good news with one caveat. The core developer's announcement names no second chain and no new coin, but a unanimously backed rule change to the existing network. As long as that holds, no new crypto asset comes into being, there is nothing to allocate, and your holding period on the existing ZEC continues undisturbed. If in doubt, check after November 5 whether your portfolio tracker has wrongly booked an inflow from the upgrade; a properly maintained tax tool shows no inflow in this case.

How long does the holding period run, and what is the exemption limit?

Private disposal transactions in crypto assets carry a holding period of one year: hold for longer and then sell, and you pay no income tax on the gain. Below one year, gains remain tax free up to an exemption limit of 1,000 euros per calendar year, and an exemption limit is not an allowance; once it is exceeded, the entire gain becomes taxable. A network upgrade neither resets these periods nor interrupts them.

What applies to your ZEC once the EU anti-money laundering regulation bites in July 2027?

The second German deadline in this matter falls after NU7 and has nothing to do with the upgrade technically, but it does bear on the question of where you will be able to hold ZEC in future. The EU anti-money laundering regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, prohibits credit institutions, financial institutions and crypto-asset service providers in Article 79 from keeping anonymous accounts as well as accounts that anonymise or heavily obscure holders or transactions, explicitly including through anonymity-enhancing cryptocurrencies. The regulation becomes applicable on July 10, 2027.

Zcash is among the assets regularly named in this debate, because shielded transactions are one of its core features. What that means concretely for trading on regulated European platforms, and what room for interpretation remains, we set out in our analysis of the EU ban on privacy coins from July 2027. For planning your holdings, the order matters: first the technical upgrade in November 2026, then the regulatory deadline in July 2027, and only the second may require a decision about where your coins should sit.

What mistakes do ZEC holders make around a network upgrade?

The most common mistake is moving too soon. Anyone who shifts holdings back and forth out of concern about an upgrade, or sells and buys back, may trigger a taxable disposal and reset their own holding period to zero, even though the upgrade demanded nothing of the sort. The second most important mistake is believing messages that push you towards an action: no legitimate NU7 process asks you to unlock a wallet or enter a recovery phrase.

A third point concerns expectations about the price. Analysts and market commentary like to tie upgrades to price targets; such statements are the opinions of the firms concerned and not a property of the protocol. Between October 20, when the activation height is set, and November 5, there are two weeks in which the dates are fixed and nobody can infer from them where the price will go. And finally: anyone running their own node tends to put the update off until shortly before the deadline, even though the testnet allows a risk-free rehearsal from October 6.

How do you recognise a genuine announcement?

Genuine Zcash announcements appear in the project's community forum, in the development teams' repositories and in the numbered ZIPs. Announcements of that kind contain block heights, version numbers and dates, and they never ask for credentials. If a demand arrives by email, by chat or through an advert, assume the source is a fake, even when the name and the design look right.

Zcash NU7 upgrade: what to take away

1. Leave your holdings alone and update your wallet. NU7 requires no movement of your ZEC. The only wallet task is an update, if you use very old software that still produces v4 transactions. If you are thinking about custody anyway while you are at it, compare the devices in our hardware wallet comparison rather than responding to a prompt from outside.
2. Take another look on October 20. That is the day the activation height for mainnet is set, and only after that is November 5 more than a target date. If your coins sit with a trading venue, a glance at its status page is enough; how the providers differ is shown in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
3. Do not rush anything on tax. Without a second chain no new crypto asset arises, your holding period keeps running, and sales made out of nerves cost you that period. Check your entries after November 5 all the same, ideally with one of the tools from our comparison of crypto tax software.

The sources for this article: the core developer's timeline announcement in the Zcash Community Forum of September 17, 2026 and the German Federal Ministry of Finance circular of March 6, 2025 on crypto assets.

(As of September 18, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

$Bitcoin has punched back through $80,000. BTC is trading at $81,006, up 5.75% over the past 24 hours, pushing its market cap back to $1.62 trillion on roughly $35.5 billion in daily volume. It is the cleanest green day the market has had in weeks, and this time the altcoins came along for the ride.

Why Did the Bitcoin Price Break Back Above $80,000?

There is no single smoking gun. The rebound above $80,000 extended a technology-led relief rally, coinciding with yen weakness and following a return to Bitcoin ETF inflows the previous day. The advance was already underway during European trading hours, before weak US economic figures gave markets a fresh argument against further monetary tightening.

In other words: risk appetite is recovering, and Bitcoin is the highest-beta expression of that. Repeated ETF inflows would be a far more convincing demand signal than a single day of buying, so treat this as a relief bounce until proven otherwise. $BTC is still down 7.43% on the year.

Which Altcoins Are Leading the Crypto Rally?

$Solana is the standout among the majors at $111.53, up 10.28% on the day and 9.66% on the week. $Ethereum added 5.37% to $2,596, $XRP gained 5.94% to $1.38, and $BNB climbed 4.54% to $759. $Dogecoin tacked on 6.91%, Chainlink 7.09%.

Are Privacy Coins Quietly Winning 2026?

This is the trade nobody wants to talk about at dinner parties. $Monero jumped 17.33% to $598, the biggest 24-hour move in the top 15, and is up 38.25% year to date. $Zcash is at $1,474 after a 26.44% weekly run and an eye-watering 187.77% YTD gain. $Hyperliquid is the other outlier, up 11.22% on the day and 259.38% on the year.

While Bitcoin fights to stay above a level it first cleared long ago, privacy coins and a handful of newer names are the only assets on the board with genuinely strong annual numbers.

What Happens Next for BTC Price?

$80,000 was resistance yesterday. If it holds as support into the weekend, the case for a proper reversal gets much stronger. If ETF flows stall and BTC slips back under, this goes down as another bounce in a choppy year.

A new upgrade would cut Zcash block time from 75 seconds to 25, while quietly rewriting how the network pays for its own security after 2031.

Kevin O'Leary believes Bitcoin could hit $1 million if crypto beats its quantum computing problem, and explained why he's ditching Ethereum.

XRP is roaring back as Bitcoin claws its way above $800,000 again, but the charts continue to give traders mixed signals.

The agency submitted a prerule on crypto asset transactions and markets to the White House for review, signaling it will build a derivatives framework on its own authority after the Clarity Act's collapse.

Bitcoin just ripped 5.88% higher in a single session, tearing back toward its 2026 highs. The charts say the move is real, but they also say it's gotten ahead of itself.

Solana jumped 11% to $112 on Thursday, hitting its highest level since January as strong ETF activity, a massive short squeeze and growing institutional adoption added fuel to the rally.

Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas believes Bitcoin ETFs could eventually grow to three times the size of the gold ETF market.

Barry Silbert mirrors his early BTC and Zcash strategies, shifting institutional DCG capital to back Bittensor (TAO) as the next major AI scarcity play.

XRP gains spotlight in South Korea after its largest treasury firm, Evernorth, secured a massive $30 million funding from South Korean investment firm NH Investment & Securities through convertible notes.

XRP whales moving big with Binance inflows reaching 1.6 billion tokens.

TLDR: 

• Bitcoin rebounded above $80K after regulatory, rate, and security fears pressured market sentiment.
• The Fed raised rates 25 bps to 3.75%-4.00%, adding fresh pressure to crypto risk assets.
• BTC faces key resistance at $82K-$84K, while $75K remains a critical support zone.
• A sustained move above $85K-$86K could shift attention toward the $88K-$95K range.

Bitcoin has rebounded above $80,000 after three major fear narratives dominated crypto markets this week. 

BTC now trades at $81,137.97, up 6.05% over 24 hours and 4.30% over seven days. Its 24-hour trading volume stands at $42.20 billion, according to the latest CoinGecko data.

The rebound follows heavy market pressure around U.S. crypto legislation, interest rates, and security incidents. Santiment Intelligence said these themes dominated crypto-related social discussions as Bitcoin fell toward the mid-$75,000 region.

Bitcoin Price Rebound Follows a Wave of Market Fears 

The first major catalyst was the Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act on September 15. The procedural vote on H.R. 3633 failed 49-50, leaving the legislation unable to move forward at that stage.

The setback added regulatory uncertainty for the crypto industry. However, Bitcoin’s subsequent recovery suggests traders absorbed the news without extending the sell-off indefinitely.

Interest rates added another source of pressure one day later. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 3.75%-4.00% on September 16. The move marked a return to rate hikes after the previous increase in July 2023.

Higher rates can tighten financial conditions by increasing borrowing costs across markets. They can also reduce the appeal of riskier assets when safer yields become more attractive.

Security concerns further weighed on sentiment. Santiment pointed to the Symbiosis Bitcoin Bridge exploit and the Revolut breach involving personal information from crypto customers.

Despite those narratives, Bitcoin moved back above $80,000. Santiment suggested that larger buyers may have entered as fear became widespread.

That interpretation remains market analysis rather than confirmed evidence of specific buying activity.

What Bitcoin Price Action Suggests Around $80K?

Bitcoin’s current structure remains closely tied to several technical levels identified by market analysts.

Crypto Patel described an 8-hour bullish flag, with $80,000 serving as the key breakout trigger. The analyst identified $82,250 and $98,000 as potential upside levels after confirmation.

The bearish setup begins below $75,000, according to Patel. A breakdown could expose Bitcoin to $71,000 and then $68,000.

KillaXBT presented a different risk-management approach around the same range. The analyst said a move toward $82,000-$84,000 could trigger a 50% hedge against a continuation long.

Killa also identified $85,000-$86,000 as an important area. A sustained reclaim could leave the $88,000-$95,000 region as the next area under consideration.

These levels represent individual trading frameworks rather than established market outcomes. Bitcoin’s next move, therefore, depends on whether price confirms a breakout or returns toward range support.

The broader mechanism is straightforward: negative headlines can accelerate selling, but that pressure can weaken once sellers become exhausted. Bitcoin’s move above $80,000 shows that sentiment can shift quickly when price absorbs adverse news without breaking key support.

The post Bitcoin Price Hits $81K as BTC Shrugs Off Regulatory and Rate Fears appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Disney stock drops 2.52% as Karandeep Anand joins as chief technology officer.
• Disney creates a new CTO role to oversee technology, data, product, and engineering.
• Anand joins from Character.AI after senior roles at Brex, Meta, and Microsoft.
• Disney expects Character.AI technical employees to follow Anand into the company.
• The leadership move supports Disney’s broader push to modernize digital operations.

The Walts Disney (DIS) shares fell 2.52% to $102.69 on Friday after a sharp mid-morning decline. The move followed Disney’s appointment of Karandeep Anand as its new chief technology officer. Disney created the role as it expands technology, data, product development, and engineering across the company.

The Walt Disney Company, DIS

Disney Stock Extends Losses After Leadership News

Disney created the chief technology officer position to strengthen company-wide technology leadership. Anand will start on October 2 and report directly to Chief Executive Officer Josh D’Amaro. His role will cover enterprise technology, infrastructure, data platforms, product development, and engineering.

Disney shares remained under pressure after the earlier decline accelerated during mid-morning trading. The stock closed down 2.52%, keeping market attention on Disney’s near-term share performance. Meanwhile, management continued outlining a broader plan to modernize technology across its businesses.

Disney also wants to connect its entertainment businesses through stronger digital systems and shared technology. Disney+ remains central as management builds more direct relationships with audiences worldwide. The company plans greater coordination between technology teams serving streaming, parks, entertainment, and other operations.

Karandeep Anand Takes New Technology Role

Anand joins Disney after serving as chief executive officer of Character.AI. He led the company during a period of strong platform growth and expanding consumer engagement. Before Character.AI, Anand served as president and chief product officer at financial technology company Brex.

Earlier, Anand held several leadership positions at Meta, including roles overseeing advertising and business products. He also spent 15 years at Microsoft in senior product and engineering positions. During that period, Anand worked on teams involved in building the Azure cloud platform.

Disney expects several members of Character.AI’s technical team to join the company with Anand. Their arrival could strengthen Disney’s engineering resources across several business areas. However, Disney has not provided specific roles or responsibilities for those incoming technical employees.

Disney Expands Technology Strategy Under D’Amaro

D’Amaro has placed technology among Disney’s main priorities since becoming chief executive officer. His approach combines storytelling, stronger technology support, and closer coordination across the company. Management also wants technology to create more connected experiences across Disney’s major consumer businesses.

The new structure gives Anand company-wide oversight instead of responsibility for one operating division. That setup could help Disney standardize infrastructure, data systems, engineering practices, and product development. It also places one senior executive in charge of coordinating major technology projects across Disney.

Disney faces strong competition across streaming, entertainment, gaming, and other digital platforms. The company has relied more heavily on digital distribution to support engagement and direct customer relationships. Anand’s appointment adds experienced technology leadership as Disney continues reshaping operations around connected products and services.

The post Disney (DIS) Stock: Plunges as Character.AI CEO Joins as Chief Technology Officer appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Amazon’s air cargo network prepares for a major Airbus A330 fleet expansion
• ATSG receives its first Amazon-ready A330 and targets operations in 2027
• ABX Air plans new pilots and maintenance staff for the expanding A330 fleet
• Amazon has committed to multi-year leases covering four Airbus A330 freighters
• ATSG expands beyond Amazon through new Latin American cargo operations

Amazon (AMZN) stock traded at $253.20 as its air cargo network prepared for a wider Airbus A330 rollout. The expansion will gradually reduce reliance on Boeing 767 aircraft across Amazon’s cargo operations. Meanwhile, Air Transport Services Group is preparing its first A330 for Amazon service in 2027.

Amazon.com, Inc., AMZN

Amazon Prepares for A330 Expansion

ATSG received its first A330 freighter modified from a passenger aircraft for Amazon’s cargo network. The company expects ABX Air to begin operating the aircraft during the first quarter of 2027. Meanwhile, Amazon has committed to multi-year operating leases covering four A330 aircraft.

ABX Air must complete Federal Aviation Administration programs before adding the A330 to its operating certificate. These programs cover pilot training, aircraft operations, and maintenance procedures for the new type. Therefore, ATSG plans to hire additional pilots and maintenance workers as A330 capacity increases.

ATSG currently operates 56 aircraft within Amazon’s fleet of more than 100 planes. The company has supported Amazon since 2016 using Boeing 767-200 and 767-300 freighters. Meanwhile, Alaska Airlines operates 11 Airbus A330 freighters for Amazon.

ATSG Builds a New Freighter Fleet

The A330 expansion reflects the declining supply of mid-life Boeing 767 passenger aircraft available for cargo conversions. Boeing no longer produces the 767, while older passenger aircraft continue to leave commercial service. As a result, ATSG has pursued the A330 as its next medium-widebody freighter platform.

ATSG plans to acquire and convert 30 A330 aircraft as part of its broader cargo fleet strategy. Airbus aftermarket affiliate Elbe Flugzeugwerke performs the passenger-to-freighter conversion work. However, supply chain problems have slowed the conversion program and delayed some planned deliveries.

EFW has delivered two converted A330 freighters to Turkey-based ULS Airlines Cargo so far. ATSG also plans to support its new aircraft through maintenance operations in Ohio and Florida. The company is developing an Airbus maintenance program at Wilmington Air Park and in Tampa.

Amazon Cargo Network Expands

ABX Air has also added a new cargo customer as ATSG expands its business beyond Amazon and DHL Express. Miami-based Global Aviation Link hired ABX Air to operate a Boeing 767-300 to Latin America. Under the one-year agreement, ABX Air provides the aircraft and operates the service.

The service began flights between Miami and Quito on September 2 and operates six days each week. Global Aviation Link plans to expand service toward Venezuela and Peru, which export flowers and fruit. The company already provides scheduled cargo service between Miami and Bogota using Boeing 767 aircraft.

ATSG also announced three executive appointments as it continues changes following its 2025 acquisition by Stonepeak. Mike Hough became group president for airlines and services, while Tim Schulze joined as chief risk officer. Doug Belding also joined as vice president for enterprise performance and operating systems.

The post Amazon (AMZN) Stock: Air Cargo Network Prepares for Airbus A330 Expansion appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• HSBC stock falls 1.56% as the bank expands Premier services across the US market.
• Premier now combines wealth, health, travel and cross-border banking services.
• New mobile tools let customers open brokerage accounts and manage investments.
• HSBC adds telemedicine, wellness benefits and enhanced travel support for clients.
• The bank strengthens its US wealth corridor with 21 Wealth Centers nationwide.

HSBC Holdings (HSBC) shares fell 1.56% to $101.24 as the bank expanded its Premier offering across the United States. The upgrade targets affluent customers seeking wealth, health, travel, and international banking services. The move supports HSBC’s broader plan to deepen its global wealth business.

HSBC Holdings plc, HSBC

HSBC Stock Slides as Premier Upgrade Reaches US Market

HSBC launched the enhanced Premier service as affluent customers increasingly manage money across several markets. The bank said the United States remains a leading destination for international investment. Its 2026 research found many wealthy clients plan to maintain or increase exposure to US assets.

The new service combines banking tools with support for customers who travel, relocate, or invest internationally. HSBC also wants to simplify access to financial services across different countries. The bank is positioning Premier as a wider relationship offering for globally connected customers.

HSBC shares still moved lower during the session despite the service expansion. The stock traded at $101.24 after falling 1.56% during the day. The decline came as HSBC promoted its larger US wealth strategy.

HSBC Expands Wealth Health and Travel Services

HSBC added new investment tools to its US mobile application for eligible Premier customers. Clients can open brokerage accounts, review holdings, and trade mutual funds through the platform. Wealth Relationship Managers will also continue providing financial planning and personalized support.

The health package includes third-party telemedicine services and wellness support for members. Customers can access doctors by phone or video for primary, urgent, and mental healthcare needs. The package also includes selected discounts on fitness, nutrition, massage, acupuncture, and other wellness services.

HSBC expanded travel benefits through global support, merchant partnerships, and credit card rewards. Premier customers can receive selected hotel and dining savings alongside points on qualifying travel purchases. Eligible cards also carry no foreign transaction fees for overseas spending.

US Wealth Strategy Targets Cross-Border Banking Demand

HSBC strengthened international banking features for customers moving money or relocating across borders. The service includes competitive foreign exchange rates and no HSBC fees on international transfers. Customers moving to the United States can also open accounts before arriving.

The Premier expansion forms part of HSBC’s wider strategy for the United States. The bank is combining digital services with physical wealth centers in major financial markets. HSBC currently operates 21 Wealth Centers across the country, including locations in New York and California.

HSBC relaunched its Park Avenue Wealth Center earlier this year and plans another relaunch in Cupertino this month. Its network also covers South Florida, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. HSBC expects these centers to support affluent customers with international banking and wealth needs.

The post HSBC Holdings (HSBC) Stock: Plunge as Global Banking Push Expands With Premier Upgrade appeared first on Blockonomi.

Quick Overview

• Bitcoin pushed past the $80,000 threshold with approximately 5.5% gains in one day, shrugging off Federal Reserve rate increases and congressional setbacks on crypto rules
• Cryptocurrency-linked equities saw strong gains: Strategy jumped 12%, Coinbase climbed 10%, and Robinhood rose 8%
• Nvidia’s chief executive indicated potential for chip sales to double from 2026 to 2027
• Ten-year Treasury yields reached the 5% mark, creating headwinds for equities with nine of eleven S&P 500 sectors declining
• Congressional efforts to pass the Clarity Act stalled, leaving digital asset oversight with existing regulatory agencies

Digital currency markets witnessed significant upward momentum with Bitcoin crossing $80,000, while chip manufacturer Nvidia outlined ambitious growth projections and bond markets saw yields climb to levels that created pressure across equity sectors. Here’s a breakdown of the week’s major market developments.

Digital Currency and Related Equities Experience Strong Gains

Bitcoin’s price climbed approximately 5.5% within a 24-hour period, reaching around $80,940. This upward movement occurred even as the Federal Reserve implemented a 25-basis-point rate increase, bringing rates to a 3.75%-4.00% range, and as lawmakers failed to advance crucial digital asset legislation.

Market participants had broadly anticipated the central bank’s decision, which helped mitigate potential negative sentiment. The cryptocurrency’s strength provided momentum across the digital asset sector, with capital flowing back into this asset class.

Equities with cryptocurrency exposure demonstrated similar strength. Strategy’s shares increased approximately 12%, Coinbase recorded gains near 10%, and Robinhood advanced roughly 8%.

Strategy maintains substantial Bitcoin holdings on its corporate balance sheet, creating direct exposure to cryptocurrency price fluctuations. Coinbase sees immediate benefits from increased trading activity in digital assets. These three stocks had experienced declines earlier in the week due to rate concerns and legislative disappointments, making the subsequent bounce particularly notable.

Digital Asset Oversight Returns to Regulatory Agencies

Congressional efforts to move forward with the Clarity Act encountered a roadblock this week. The proposed legislation aimed to establish more definitive regulatory boundaries for digital assets and clarify jurisdictional responsibilities between the SEC and CFTC.

The legislative failure doesn’t signal an end to regulatory development. According to industry sources speaking with CoinDesk, both regulatory bodies are anticipated to continue crafting rules using their current statutory powers, even without fresh congressional mandates.

This situation leaves the digital asset sector navigating an environment without unified federal legislation, with agencies expected to exercise existing regulatory authority to address emerging issues.

Nvidia Executive Projects Dramatic Sales Growth by 2027

Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, projected that the company’s chip sales volume could approximately double between 2026 and 2027.

According to projections referenced by Barron’s, Nvidia’s 2026 sales could reach approximately 5.09 million AI GPUs, plus tens of thousands of fully integrated AI server systems. The anticipated expansion is expected to be driven by the upcoming Vera Rubin architecture generation, central processing units, networking solutions, and additional AI infrastructure offerings.

The company previously indicated that revenue potential for its artificial intelligence chips could exceed $1 trillion cumulatively through 2027, illustrating the enormous investment levels directed toward AI computing infrastructure.

Bond Yields Reach 5%, Creating Equity Market Headwinds

The ten-year United States Treasury yield climbed back to approximately 5% on Friday, enhancing bonds’ relative attractiveness versus equities and compressing stock valuations.

Nine out of eleven sectors in the S&P 500 experienced declines during trading. Markets also navigated quarterly triple witching—the concurrent expiration of equity options, index options, and futures contracts—a phenomenon that typically amplifies market volatility.

Elevated yields disproportionately affect growth-oriented stocks because they increase discount rates applied to projected future earnings, reducing their present-day valuation.

The post Market Roundup: Bitcoin (BTC) Soars Past $80K, Nvidia (NVDA) Projects Chip Surge, Treasuries Touch 5% appeared first on Blockonomi.

The failure of the CLARITY Act in the US Senate has been a major setback for the crypto industry. The outcome raised new questions about the future of regulation in the country and whether the setback could hurt Bitcoin and other digital assets.

But Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan believes the vote may not be enough to derail the broader crypto market rally.

Wall Street Isn’t Waiting

Hougan said the CLARITY Act would have been useful for the industry. The legislation was designed to provide a clearer regulatory framework for digital assets. It also aimed to strengthen investor protections and create rules that could remain in place beyond the current administration. Despite this, the exec said Bitcoin’s latest rally did not depend on the bill’s chances of passing.

According to Hougan, Bitcoin bottomed at about $57,950 on July 1. It then climbed above $80,000 by September 4. During the same period, Polymarket odds of the CLARITY Act becoming law this year fell from 39% to 18%. The two trends moved in opposite directions. For Hougan, that suggests crypto investors were not waiting for Congress to provide regulatory clarity.

Wall Street has also continued moving into the sector. For instance, Robinhood has launched its own blockchain. Morgan Stanley has launched a Solana ETF. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, or DTCC, has also completed its first batch of tokenized stock settlements.

At the same time, US regulators have been working on rules outside Congress. In August, the SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets. This does not mean the loss of the CLARITY Act is unimportant. Agency rules can be changed by a future administration. Congress is also needed to give the CFTC broader authority over spot crypto markets.

Bitcoin fell after the Senate vote, which added short-term market pressure. But Hougan believes the setback is more of a speed bump than a roadblock.

“Crypto spent its first 17 years without core market legislation. Without Clarity, it has managed to go from a fringe idea to a $2.5 trillion asset class that’s reshaped everything from global payments to capital markets.”

Shift Back to Buying

US-based Bitcoin ETFs returned to net inflows after two days of heavy withdrawals. The funds attracted more than $159 million on Thursday. BlackRock’s IBIT was the only ETF to report a net inflow. Interestingly, HYPE also recorded $4.25 million in inflows.

Ethereum ETFs, on the other hand, moved in the opposite direction after posting $39.2 million in net outflows. These investment vehicles extended their losing streak to three days. Market analyst Darkfost said the end of the week appears “calmer” for the ETF market.

The post Here’s Why Bitwise CIO Believes Crypto Could Keep Rallying Without Congress appeared first on CryptoPotato.

SOL has followed the green wave sweeping through the broader cryptocurrency market, surging 6% in the past 24 hours to $105.

Many analysts believe the asset’s rally might be just starting, with one envisioning a potential explosion to as high as $1,300.

Parabolic Jump on the Way?

Earlier this week, the landmark crypto bill known as the CLARITY Act failed in the US Senate and could not advance to formal discussion. The development caused a brief correction for the crypto sector, with Ali Martinez noting that SOL plunged from $101 to around $95.60.

However, he argued the asset found solid support despite the pullback and outlined several bullish factors. First, he pointed to strong institutional demand, with spot SOL ETFs recording several consecutive green weeks and attracting over $200 million in the past month alone. Martinez also mentioned that 3 million tokens were withdrawn from exchanges in the last 30 days and that network growth remains “elevated.”

Shortly after, the analyst opined that a breakout is near, spotting a potential bull flag forming on SOL’s 4-hour chart. He said the key level to watch is $105 and claimed that a sustained close above could confirm the bullish breakout and open the door to an ascent to $130.

Most recently, Martinez claimed that the asset is “ready to go parabolic.” He opined that SOL has spent the last few years building a massive cup-and-handle pattern, with the neckline sitting near $360.

“A confirmed break above that level could mark the beginning of a much larger expansion toward $1,300,” he maintained.

Additional Forecasts

X user CRYPTOKRALI argued that SOL has started to “look interesting” again. The analyst noted that after weeks of compression, the price has finally broken above the descending resistance that kept rejecting every attempt higher. They said $98 has held repeatedly as support, and the strong daily candle through the trendline provides the necessary confirmation.

“Now the key is whether SOL can hold above the breakout and turn that old resistance into support. If it does, I’d be watching $110 first, with room for a bigger continuation if momentum follows through. The downtrend is breaking. Now we see how far the next leg can run,” the analyst added.

Scient also weighed in. The market observer expects one more leg up to around $130, saying they will then de-risk 50% of their spot bags and look to reload if the price dips to $90.

The post Solana to Go Parabolic? Here’s Why SOL Can Explode by 1,100% appeared first on CryptoPotato.

ETH witnessed a notable recovery after briefly plunging near $2,350 this week. The leading altcoin has since climbed over $2,480. At the same time, its transaction fees have fallen sharply, making the network cheaper to use.

The average cost per ETH transfer has dropped to around $0.095 from this year’s peak of $0.72 on April 21, according to Santiment’s findings.

Ethereum Gets Cheaper

The decline comes as mainnet demand softened during the bearish summer. However, network upgrades have also increased Ethereum’s capacity. Fusaka, higher blob throughput, and a 60 million gas limit have helped the network handle more activity. At the same time, Layer 2 solutions are processing large amounts of transactions that previously competed for Ethereum’s mainnet blockspace.

Lower fees could make Ethereum more accessible for users and developers, according to Santiment. Swaps, transfers, DeFi activity, stablecoin movements, and ERC-20 transactions can now be completed at a lower cost.

The analytics platform said that cheap transactions do not necessarily mean demand is recovering. But it is important to note that lower costs remove one of Ethereum’s long-standing barriers. With ETH prices having recovered, cheaper network activity could provide a more favorable environment for Ethereum-based projects.

Meanwhile, Ali Martinez observed that the asset is trading within a defined 4-hour channel despite recent market volatility. ETH has reached the lower boundary of the range, following which the $2,570 level has come into focus. Martinez expects a potential rebound toward the middle and upper end of the channel. A strong 4-hour close above $2,570, supported by higher trading volume, could signal a breakout. He added that the next stops would be $2,700 and then $3,000.

The Long Investor believes Ethereum remains a buy despite an almost 45% rise over the past three months. The investor said buying before ETH moves above $3,000 may put investors ahead of late buyers. They also pointed to the 200-week moving average as a strong long-term reference.

Supply Drain

Less ETH on exchanges is helping the recovery. Recent estimates revealed that only 6.06 million units now sit on exchanges, down from 22.9 million at the June 2020 peak. That is a 73% decline in readily available supply. The drop reflects more ETH moving into staking, ETFs, treasury holdings, and long-term custody.

Validators are also locking ETH to help secure the network. Lower liquid supply may increase the impact of buying activity. Even without a major rise in demand, smaller waves of buying can have a stronger effect when fewer coins are available on exchanges.

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Ethereum has recovered sharply from its mid-year lows and jumped past the key $2.5K level on Friday. The charts show a constructive improvement in the broader market structure, although ETH remains below several important higher-timeframe resistance levels.

Meanwhile, the Coinbase Premium Index is once again negative, suggesting that the recent recovery has not been accompanied by consistently strong spot demand from U.S. investors.

Ethereum Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

On the daily timeframe, ETH has undergone a significant structural recovery from the $1.5K support area. The rebound has pushed price back above both the 100-day and 200-day major moving averages shown on the chart, with the 100-day yellow average aggressively pushing toward the 200-day one from below, likely to form a bullish crossover around $2K.

ETH is currently trading around $2.5K, directly inside a key resistance zone. This area has repeatedly contained price during the recent consolidation. Yet, a valid daily breakout above it can lead to continuation of the recovery.

A successful move above the $2.5K area could expose the next major resistance around $3.0K. Beyond that, the larger daily resistance zone sits around $3.3K-$3.4K, which coincides with the broader structure established earlier in the year.

On the downside, the first important support is around $2.1K, where the moving averages are also currently clustered. Below this area, the $1.9K zone becomes the next notable support. Still, the daily RSI is around the mid-to-upper 50s, meaning momentum is still bullish but not showing an overbought reading anymore. Therefore, there could still be room to the upside if sufficient demand emerges.

ETH/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart provides a clearer picture of the current consolidation. ETH has been trading inside a broad range roughly between $2.35K and $2.65K since the sharp late-August advance.

The latest price action shows ETH recovering from the lower portion of the range and returning toward the $2.5K area. The repeated reactions around the range boundaries suggest that the market is still in consolidation rather than an established directional breakout.

The immediate resistance is around $2.5K, followed by the upper range boundary near $2.65K. A decisive 4-hour breakout above the latter would provide a clearer structural shift and could open the way toward the higher daily resistance zones.

Conversely, rejection around the current resistance and a move back below $2.35K would weaken the short-term structure. Losing that zone would invalidate much of the current range-based bullish setup and bring the next major support into consideration, as a deeper retracement would be probable.

On-Chain Analysis

The Coinbase Premium Index is currently around -0.07, with the indicator spending much of the recent period below the zero line. The metric compares ETH prices on Coinbase with those on other major exchanges and is commonly used as an indication of relative buying or selling pressure from Coinbase’s predominantly U.S.-based market.

The notable point is the divergence between price and the premium index. ETH has recovered from roughly $1.5K to around $2.5K, yet the Coinbase Premium has generally remained negative during much of that advance. This suggests that the recovery visible on the price chart has not been accompanied by consistently strong US-based spot demand.

There have been brief positive spikes, particularly during parts of the summer, but they have not developed into a sustained positive trend. The latest reading has also returned firmly below zero.

This does not necessarily invalidate the broader recovery, since ETH can rise through demand from other venues and derivatives markets. However, a sustained move back above the zero line in the Coinbase Premium Index, particularly alongside a breakout above $2.5K, would provide additional confirmation that spot demand is strengthening, and that the recovery is likely to continue.

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XRP is consolidating after a sharp recovery from the sub-$1 area, with the price now attempting to stabilize around $1.35. The daily chart shows a major structural improvement following the recent rally, while the 4-hour timeframe suggests that the asset is still trading inside a descending channel that is guiding a corrective price action.

Ripple Price Analysis: The USDT Pair

On the daily timeframe, XRP staged a strong impulsive move from the $1.00 support area to roughly $1.70 before entering a prolonged consolidation. The rally also pushed the RSI sharply into overbought territory, but the subsequent cooling-off phase has brought the indicator back toward the neutral 50 area.

The price is currently around $1.35, sitting just above the 200-day moving average at approximately $1.30. This is an important near-term area because holding above this zone would keep the recent structural recovery intact. The yellow 100-day moving average is also located lower, around $1.18, providing a deeper dynamic support area if the correction extends.

On the upside, the most visible resistance is the $1.60-$1.70 zone, marked by the recent swing high. A successful move through this region would put the larger $1.90 resistance zone back into focus.

On the downside, the chart’s major structural support remains around $1.00. This is substantially below the current market and therefore represents a broader invalidation area rather than an immediate support level.

The 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart provides a more cautious picture. XRP has been moving inside a descending channel, with both the upper and lower trendlines sloping downward. The latest rejection from approximately $1.48 resulted in a sharp decline toward the $1.25 support zone and the lower boundary of the channel.

That support area has so far held, and XRP has started to recover toward $1.35. The immediate obstacle, however, is the $1.33-$1.37 resistance zone, which is currently being approached from below. A clean breakout and hold above this area would improve the short-term structure and could open the way toward the channel’s upper boundary around $1.40-$1.45.

Conversely, a rejection around this resistance area could lead to a move back toward the $1.25 support zone again. The lower channel trendline is also located in this area, making it an important level for the current consolidation and for investors, as losing it could lead to a much deeper correction in the coming weeks.

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